"After the red pottage comes the exceeding bitter cry."
Fifteen years is a long time. What companies of trite reflections crowd
the mind as it looks back across the marshes and the fens, and the
highlands and the lowlands, and the weary desert places, to some point
that catches the eye in the middle distance! We stood there once.
Perhaps we go back in memory--all the way back--to that little town and
spire in the green country, and pray once again in the cool
vision-haunted church, and peer up once again at the window in the
narrow street where Love lived and looked out, where patience and
affection dwell together now. They were always friends, those two.
Or perhaps we look back to a parting of the ways which did not seem to
be a parting at the time, and recall a "Good-bye" that was lightly
uttered because it was only thought to be _Au revoir_. We see now, from
where we stand, the point where the paths diverged.
Fifteen years!
They have not passed very smoothly over the head of Colonel Tempest.
Whenever he looked back across the breezy uplands of his well-spent
life, his eye avoided and yet was inevitably attracted with a loathing
allurement to one dark spot in the middle distance, where----
Fifteen years ago or yesterday was it?
The old nightmare, with the shuddering horror of yesterday mingled with
the heavy pressure of years, might come back at any moment--was always
coming back.
That sultry night in June!
Everything was disjointed and fragmentary in his memory the morning
after it; he could not see the whole. He had a confused recollection of
an intense passionate hatred that was like a physical pain, and of
Swayne's voice saying, "What's a little boy?" And then there were slips
of paper. Swayne said a bet was a bet. He, Colonel Tempest, had had
something to do with those slips of paper--_What?_--One had fallen on
the floor, and Swayne had blotted it carefully. There was Swayne's voice
again, "Your handwriting ain't up to much, Colonel." He had written
something then. What was it? His own name? Memory failed. Who was that
devil in the room, with Swayne's face and blurred watch-chain--two
watch-chains--and the thick busy hands? And then it was night, and he
was in the streets again in the hot darkness, among the blinking lamps
and stars that looked like eyes, and Swayne was seeing him home. And
there was a horror over everything; horror leant over him at night,
horror woke him in the morning and pursued him throughout the day, and
the next day, and the next. What had he done? He tried to piece together
the broken fragments that his groping memory could glean; but nothing
came of it--at least, nothing he could believe. But Swayne knew. On the
third day he could bear it no longer, and he went to find him; but
Swayne had disappeared. Colonel Tempest went up to his chambers on the
pretence of a letter--of something; he knew not what. They were swept
and garnished in readiness for new arrivals, for if one choice spirit
disappears, a good landlady knows what to expect.
Colonel Tempest looked once round the room, and then sat feebly down. It
was as if for days he had been staring at a blank sheet, and now a dark
slide had been suddenly taken from the magic lantern. The picture was
before him in all its tawdry distinctness. _He knew what he had done._
Colonel Tempest was not a radically bad man. Who is? But there was in
him a kind of weakness of fibre which consists in being subservient to
the impulse of the moment. The effects of a feeble yielding to impulse
are sometimes hardly to be distinguished from those of the most
deliberate and thorough-paced sin.
He was conscious of good in himself, of a refined dislike to coarseness
and vice even when he dabbled in it, of vague longings after better
things, of amiable, even chivalrous, inclinations towards others,
especially towards women not of his own family. In his own family,
where there had always been, even in his mother's time, some feminine
weakness or imperfection for a manly nature to point out and ridicule,
of course courtesy and tenderness could not be expected of him.
Thus at each juncture of his life he was obliged to justify what he
would have called his failings, what some would have called sins, by
laying the blame on others, and by this means to account for the glaring
discrepancy between the inward and spiritual gracefulness of his
feelings and the outward and visible signs of his actions.
A man with such good impulses, such an affectionate nature, cannot be a
sinner. If there was one thing more than another that Colonel Tempest
thoroughly believed in, it was in his affectionate nature. He might have
his faults, he was wont to say, but his heart was in the right place. If
things went amiss, the fault was in the circumstance, in the
temptation, in the unfortunate character of those with whom his life was
knit. Weakness has its superstition, and superstition its scapegoat. His
father had spoilt him. His wife had not understood him. His brother had
played him false. Swayne had tempted him.
What have not those to answer for who teach us in language, however
spiritual, however orthodox, to lay our sins on others--on _any other_
except ourselves!
After the first shock of panic, of terror lest he had done something for
which he might eventually have to suffer, Colonel Tempest struggled back
to the well-worn position, now clutched with both hands, that he had
been betrayed in a moment of passion by a fiend in human shape, and
that, if--anything happened, Swayne was the most to blame.
Still they were dreadful days at first--dreadful weeks in which he
suffered for Swayne's sin. And Swayne seemed to have disappeared for
good--or perhaps for evil.
And then--gradually--inasmuch as nothing had power to affect him for
long together, the horror lightened.
The sun rose and set. The world went on. A year passed. Archie wrote for
money from school. Things took their usual course. Colonel Tempest had
his hair cut as usual; he observed with keen regret that it was thinning
at the top. Life settled back into its old groove.
_Nothing happened._
To persons gifted with imagination, what is more solemn, or more
appalling, than the pause which follows on any decisive action which is
perceived to have within it the seed of a result--a result which even
now is germinating in darkness, is growing towards the light, foreseen,
but unknown? With what body will they come, we ask ourselves--these slow
results that spring from the dust of our spent actions? Faith sows and
waits. Sin sows and trembles. The fool sows and forgets. Colonel Tempest
was practically an Atheist. He did not believe in cause and effect; he
believed in chance. He had sown, but perhaps nothing would come up. He
had seen the lightning, but perhaps the thunder might not follow after
all.
Suddenly, one winter morning, without warning, it growled on the
horizon.
"That inconvenient little nephew of yours has precious nearly hooked
it," said a man in the club to him as he came in. "His tutor must be a
plucky chap. I should owe him a grudge if I were you."
The man held out the paper to him, and, turning away with a laugh, went
out whistling. He meant no harm; but the smallest arrow of a refined
pleasantry can prick if it happens to come between the joints of the
harness.
Colonel Tempest felt sea-sick. The room was empty except for the waiter,
who was arranging his breakfast on one of the tables by the window. The
fire leapt and blazed; everything swayed. He sat down mechanically in
his accustomed place, still clutching the paper. He tried to read it, to
find the place, but he could see nothing. At last he poured out a cup of
coffee and drank it, and then tried again. There it was: Narrow escape
of Mr. Goodwin and Mr. Tempest on the Metropolitan Railway. Mr. Goodwin
and his charge, Mr. Tempest, were returning by the last train from the
Crystal Palace. Tremendous crowd on the platform. Struggle for the train
as it came in. Mr. Tempest pushed down between the still moving train
and the platform. Heroic devotion of Mr. Goodwin. Rescue of Mr. Tempest
uninjured. Serious injuries of Mr. Goodwin.
Colonel Tempest read no more. He wiped his forehead.
Swayne's men were at their devil's work, then! Perhaps they had tried
before and failed, and he had not heard of it? They would try
again--presently. Perhaps next time they would succeed.
The old horror woke up again with an acuteness that for the moment
seemed greater than he could bear. Weak men should abstain from
wrong-doing. They cannot stand the brunt of their own actions; the kick
of the gun is too much for them.
And from that time to this the horror never wholly left him; if it
slumbered, it was only to reawaken. At long intervals incidents
happened, sometimes of the most trifling description, and some of which
he did not even hear of at the time, which roused it afresh. There
seemed to be a fate against John at Eton which followed him to Oxford.
Archie, who was at Eton and Oxford with him, occasionally let things
drop by chance which made Colonel Tempest's blood run cold.
"They have failed so far," he would say to himself; "but they will do it
yet. I know they will do it in the end!"
At last he made a desperate attempt to find Swayne, and cancel the bet;
but perhaps Swayne knew the man he had to deal with, and had foreseen a
movement of that kind. At any rate, he was not to be discovered. Colonel
Tempest found himself helpless.
Was there no anodyne for this recurring agony? He dared not drown it in
drink. What might he not say under its influence? The consolations of
religion, or rather of the Church, which he had always understood to be
a sort of mental chloroform for uneasy consciences, did not seem to meet
his case. The thought of John's danger never troubled him--John's
possible death. The superstitious terror was for himself alone. He
wanted a religion which would adhere to him of its own accord, and be in
the way when needed; and he tried various kinds recommended for the
purpose, but--without effect.
Perhaps a religion for self-centred people remains to be invented. Even
religiosity (the patent medicine of the spiritual life of the age--the
universal pain-killer)--even religiosity, though it meets almost all
requirements, does not quite fill that gap.
Colonel Tempest became subject to long attacks of nervous irritation and
depression. He ceased to be a good, and consequently a popular,
companion. His health, never strong, always abused, began to waver. At
fifty-five he looked thin and aged. He had come before his time to the
evil days and the years which have no pleasure in them.
As he turned out of St. George's Church, Hanover Square, on this
particular spring afternoon, whither he had gone to assist at a certain
fashionable wedding at which his daughter Diana had officiated as
bridesmaid, he looked broken down and feeble beyond his years.
A broad-shouldered, dark man elbowed his way through the throng of
footmen and spectators, and came up with him.
"Are not you going back to the house?" he asked.
"No," said Colonel Tempest--"I hate weddings! I hate the whole thing. I
only went to have a look at my child, who was bridesmaid. Di is my only
daughter, but I don't see much of her; others take care of that." His
tone was pathetic. He had gradually come to believe that his child had
been wrested from him by Mrs. Courtenay, and that he was a defrauded
parent.
"I am not going to the house, either," said John Tempest, for it was he.
"I don't hate weddings, but I detest that one. Do you mind coming down
to my club? I have not seen you really to speak to since I came back. I
want to have a talk with you about Archie; he seems to have been
improving the shining hours during these three years I have been away."
Colonel Tempest winced jealously. He knew John had paid the considerable
debts that Archie had contrived to amass, not only during the short time
he was at Oxford, before he left to cram for the army, but also at
Sandhurst. But Colonel Tempest had felt no gratitude on that score. Was
not all John's wealth Archie's by right? and John must know it. Men do
not grow up in ignorance of such a fact as a slur on their parentage.
What was a dole of a few hundred pounds now and again, when a man was
wrongfully keeping possession of many thousands?
"Young men are all alike," said Colonel Tempest, testily. "Archie is no
worse than the rest. Poor fellow, it's very little I can do for him!
It's deuced expensive living in the Guards; I found it so myself."
John might have asked, except that these are precisely the questions
that make enmity between relations, why Colonel Tempest had put him in
the Guards, considering that it was an idle life, and Archie was
absolutely without expectations of any description. He and his sister Di
had not even the modest fortune of a younger son eventually to divide
between them. One of the beauties of Colonel Tempest's romantic
clandestine marriage had been the lack of settlements, which, though it
had prevented his wife bringing him anything owing to the rupture with
her family, had at any rate enabled him to whittle away his own private
fortune at will, and to inveigh at the same time against the miserliness
of the Courtenays, who ought, of course, to have provided for his
children.
How Colonel Tempest kept going at all no one knew. How Archie was kept
going most people knew, or rather guessed without difficulty. John and
Archie had held firmly together at Eton, and afterwards at Oxford. John
had untied a very uncomfortable knot that had arranged itself round the
innocent Archibald at Sandhurst. It could hardly be said that there was
friendship between the two, but John, though only one year his cousin's
senior, had taken the position of elder brother from the first, and had
stood by Archie on occasions when that choice, but expensive, spirit
needed a good deal of standing by. Archie had inherited other things
from his father besides his perfect profile, and knew as well as most
men which side his bread was buttered. They were friends in the ordinary
acceptance of that misused term. John had just returned from three
years' absence at the Russian and Austrian Courts, and Archie, who had
begun to feel his absence irksome in the extreme, had welcomed him back
with effusion.
"Come into the Carlton and let us talk things over," said John.
In spite of himself, Colonel Tempest occasionally almost liked John,
even while he kicked against the pricks of a certain respect which he
could not entirely smother for this grave quiet man of few words. When
he was not for the moment jealous of him--and there were such
moments--he could afford to indulge a sentiment almost of regret for
him. At times he still hated him with the perfect hatred of the injurer
for the injured; but nothing to stir that latent superstitious horror,
and consequent detestation of the cause of the horror, had occurred of
late years. They had walked slowly down Bond Street and St. James's
Street, and had reached the Carlton. Close by the steps a man was
lounging. Colonel Tempest saw him look attentively at John as they came
up, and the blood left his heart. It was Swayne.
In a moment the horror was awake again--wide awake, hydra-headed, close
at hand, insupportable.
Swayne stared for a moment full at Colonel Tempest, and then turned away
and sauntered slowly along Pall Mall.
"Won't you come in?" said John, as his companion hesitated.
"Not to-day. Another time," said Colonel Tempest, and incoherently
making he knew not what excuse, he left John to join another man who was
entering at that moment, and hurried after Swayne. He overtook him as he
passed through the gates into St. James's Park. It was a dull, foggy
afternoon, and there were not many people about.
Swayne nodded carelessly to him as he joined him. He evidently did not
mind being overtaken.
"Well, Colonel," he said, in the half insolent manner that in men like
Swayne implies a knowledge that they have got the whip hand. Swayne was
not to be outshone in the art of grovelling by any of his own species of
fellow-worm, but he did not grovel unnecessarily. His higher nature was
that of a bully.
"---- you, Swayne, where have you been all these years?" said Colonel
Tempest, hurriedly. "I've tried to find you over and over again."
"I've been busy, Colonel," returned Mr. Swayne, swaying himself on tight
light-checked legs, and pushing back his grey high hat. "Business before
pleasure. That's my motto. And I've been mortal sick, too. Thought I
should have gone up this time last year. I did indeed. You look the
worse for wear too; but I must not be standing talking here, pleasant as
it is to meet old friends."
"Look here, Swayne," said Colonel Tempest, in great agitation, laying a
spasmodic clutch on Swayne's arm, "I can't stand it any longer. I can't
indeed. It's wearing me into my grave. I want you--to cancel the bet.
You must cancel it. I won't bear it. If you won't cancel it, I won't pay
up when the--if the time comes."
"Won't you?" said Swayne, with contempt. "I know better."
"I must get out of it. It's killing me," repeated Colonel Tempest,
ignoring Swayne's last remark.
"Pay up, then," said Swayne. "If you won't bear it, pay up."
Colonel Tempest was staggered.
"I have not a thousand pounds I could lay my hands on," he said
hoarsely, "much less ten. I've been broke these last five years. You
know that."
"Raise it," said Swayne. "I ain't against that; quite the reverse.
There's been a deal of time and money wasted already. All the parties
will be glad to have the money down. He's in England again now, thank
the Lord. That's a saving of expense. I was waiting to have a look at
him myself when you came up. I've never set eyes on him before."
"I can't raise it," said Colonel Tempest with the despairing remembrance
of repeated failures in that direction. "I can't give security for five
hundred."
"If you can't pay it, and you can't raise it," said Swayne, shaking off
Colonel Tempest's hand, and thrusting his own into his pockets, "what's
the good of talking? Sorry not to part friends, Colonel; but what's done
is done. You can't send back shoes to the maker that have come to pinch
on wearing 'em. You should have thought of that before. Business is
business, and a bet's a bet."