"Broad his shoulders are and strong;
And his eye is scornful,
Threatening and young."
EMERSON.
There was the usual crush at the Speaker's, the usual sprinkling of
stars and orders, and splendid uniforms. If it made Di feel limp to look
at other people's diamonds, she would be very limp to-night.
Two men with their backs to the wall, somewhat withdrawn from the moving
pressure of the crowd, were commenting in the absolute privacy of a
large gathering on the stream of arrivals.
"Who is that old parchment face and the eyeglass?" asked the younger
man, whose bleached eyes and moustache betokened foreign service.
"Which?"
"Coming in now; looks as if he had seen a thing or two. There--he is
talking to one of the Arden twins."
"That man? That is Lord Frederick Fane, an old reprobate. See, he has
buttonholed Hemsworth. I should like to hear what he is saying to him.
Look how his eye twinkles. He is one of our instructors of youth."
"Hemsworth has been standing there for the last half-hour."
"He is waiting; anybody can see that. So am I, though not for the same
person."
"Whom are you looking out for?"
"Do you see that dark man with the high nose, talking to the Post
Office? There--the Duchess of Southark has just spoken to him, and is
introducing her daughter."
"Do you mean that ugly beggar with the clean-shaved face and heavy jaw?"
"I don't see that he is so ugly. He has got a head on his shoulders, and
his face means something, which is more than you can say of many. There
is no lack of ability there. He is one of the men of the future, and
people are beginning to find it out. He has not taken any line in
politics yet, but he is bound to soon. Both sides want him, of course.
He is one of our most promising Commoners, Tempest of Overleigh."
The younger man glanced at the square-shouldered erect figure and strong
dark face with deep interest.
"Is he the man about whom there was a lawsuit when his father died?"
"Yes; Colonel Tempest brought an action, but he lost it. There was no
evidence forthcoming, though there was very little doubt how matters
really stood."
"He is not like the Tempests."
"No; if you want a Tempest pure and simple, look at the man with
tow-coloured hair in the further doorway, making running with the little
soda-water heiress. That is the regular Tempest style."
"He is too beautiful; he has overdone it," said the other. "If he were
less handsome, he would be better looking, and his hair looks like a
wig. He has the face of a fool on him."
"The last two generations have had no grit in them. Jack Tempest, the
last man, might have done something, but he never came to the fore. He
was a trustworthy Conservative, but not an energetic man like his
father, the old minister, who lies in Westminster Abbey."
"Perhaps the present man will come to the fore."
"Perhaps! I know he will; you can see it in his face, and he has the
_prestige_ of his name and wealth to back him. But I don't know which
side he will take. I know that he voted right at the last election, but
so did half the Liberals. I incline to think he has Liberal leanings,
but he refused to stand three years ago for the family constituency,
which is an absolute certainty whatever he professes himself, and he has
been secretary to the Embassy at St. Petersburg for the last three
years."
"He is very like his mother's family, except that the Fanes are not so
ugly."
"Of course he is like his mother's family; it's an open secret. Look at
him now; he is speaking to Lord Frederick Fane, his mother's--first
cousin. There's a family resemblance for you! I wonder they stand
together."
His companion drew in his breath. The likeness between the elder man
and the young one was unmistakable.
"Does he know, do you think?" he asked after a moment.
"Of course he must know that there is a 'but' about himself. People
don't grow up in ignorance of such things; but I should think he does
_not_ know that it is more than a suspicion, that it is a moral
certainty, and that Lord Frederick---- But it is seven and twenty years
ago, and it is half forgotten now. He is not the only heir with a doubt
about him. He will be a credit to the Tempests, anyhow. If the property
had fallen into the hands of those two thieves, Colonel Tempest and his
son, there would not have been much left of it for the next generation."
"It's frightfully hot!" said the younger man. "I shall bolt."
"Just home from Africa, and find it hot!" said the other. "Ah!"--with
sudden interest, looking back to the doorway--"I thought so. Hemsworth
was not waiting for nothing. By ---- she _is_ handsome, and what a
figure! She is the tallest woman in the room except Lady Delmour's two
yards of unmarriageable maypole. Look how she moves, and the way her
head is set on her shoulders. If I had not a wife and seven children, I
should make a fool of myself. I remember her mother, just as handsome
twenty years ago, but not so brilliant, and with an unhappy look about
her. Hang Tempest! I won't wait any longer for him. I must go and speak
to her before Hemsworth takes possession of her."
* * * * *
"You take my advice, John," said Lord Frederick Fane confidentially to
his kinsman; "don't tie yourself to a party any more than you would to a
woman. Leave that for fools like Hemsworth. Just go your own way, and
give no one a claim on you."
"I intend to go my own way when I have decided where I want to go."
"Well, in the meanwhile don't commit yourself. Always leave yourself a
loop-hole."
"I don't see the use of worrying about loop-holes if I don't want to
back out of anything. I shall never consciously put myself anywhere
where it might be necessary to wriggle out on all fours."
"Oh! I dare say. I thought all that in my salad days, but you'll grow
out of it as you get older. You'll chip your shell, John, like the rest
of us, he! he! and not be above a shift. There's not a man who won't
stoop to a shift on a pinch, provided the pinch is sharp enough, any
more than there is a woman, bespoken or otherwise, who does not like
being made love to, provided it is done the right way. That is my
experience."
Lord Frederick's experience was that of most men of his stamp, the crown
of whose maturer years, earned by a youth of strenuous self-indulgence,
is a disbelief in human nature. Secret contempt of women, coupled with a
smooth and adulatory manner towards them, show only too plainly the
school in which these opinions have been formed.
"Look at Hemsworth," continued Lord Frederick, as Mrs. Courtenay and Di,
and Lord Hemsworth in close attendance, were being gradually drifted
towards the room in which they were standing. "If Hemsworth goes on
giving that girl a hold over him, he will find himself deuced
uncomfortable one of these days. He had better hold hard while he can.
Discretion is the better part of valour. I've been telling him so."
"Why should he hold hard?" said John, rather absently. "After all, none
but the brave deserve the fair."
"And none but the brave can live with some of them. He, he!" said Lord
Frederick, chuckling. "There are cheaper ways of getting out of love
than by marriage; but she is a fine woman. Hemsworth has got eyes in his
head, I must own. I remember being dreadfully in love with her mother,
nearly thirty years ago, and she with me. She had that sort of stand-off
manner which takes some men more than anything; it did me. I wonder more
women don't adopt it. I very nearly married her. He, he! But Tempest,
your uncle, made a fool of himself while I hesitated, and was wretched
with her, poor devil! I have never had such a shave since. Upon my word"
putting up his eyeglass--"if I were a young man, I think I'd marry Di
Tempest. Those large women wear well, John; they don't shrivel up to
nothing like Mrs. Graham, or expand like Lady Torrington, that emblem of
plenty without waist. He, he! Look at Mrs. Courtenay, too. There's a
fine old pelican with an eye to the main chance. Always look at the
mother and the grandmother if you can. But she is on too large a scale
for you."
"Not in the least," said John, calmly. "I cherish thoughts of Miss
Delmour, who is quite three inches taller."
"Don't marry a Delmour! They are too thin. Those girls have neither
mind, body, nor estate. I have seen two generations of them. They have a
sort of prettiness when they are quite new; but look at her married
sisters. They all look as if they had shrunk in the wash."
"I must go and speak to Mrs. Courtenay," said John, from whose
impenetrable face it would have been difficult to judge whether his
companion's style of conversation amused or disgusted him. "Three years'
absence blunts the recollection of one's friends." And he moved away
towards the next room. The recollection of a good many people, however,
had apparently not become blunted, and it was some time before he could
make his way to Mrs. Courtenay, who was talking with a Turkish
Ambassador and revolutionizing his ideas of English women.
She was genuinely glad to see John, having known him from a boy.
"You know your cousin Diana, of course?" she said, as Di came towards
them.
"Indeed I do not," said John. "I asked who she was at the Thesinger
wedding to-day, and found myself in the ludicrous position of not
knowing my own first cousin."
"Not recognizing her, you mean?" said Mrs. Courtenay. "Surely you must
have seen her often in my house before you went abroad; but I suppose
she was in a chrysalis school-room state then, and has emerged into
young ladyhood since. Here is your cousin saying he does not know you,"
continued Mrs. Courtenay, turning to Di. "John, this is Di. Di, this is
your first cousin, John Tempest."
Both bowed, and then thought better of it and shook hands. Their eyes
met on the exact level of equal height, and the steady keen glance that
passed between was like the meeting of two formidable powers. Each was
taken by surprise. It was as if, instead of shaking hands, they had
suddenly measured swords.
"If you don't know each other you ought to," continued Mrs. Courtenay.
"Lord Hemsworth, what is that unwholesome-looking compound you have got
hold of?"
"Lemonade for Miss Tempest."
"Kindly fetch me some too." And Mrs. Courtenay turned away to continue
her conversation with the Turk, who was still hovering near, and whose
bead-like eyes under his red fez showed a decided envy of John.
He and Di were standing in the doorway that led into the last room where
the refreshments were, and a stream of people beginning at that moment
to press out again, pressed them back into the room they had just been
leaving.
"I shall upset this down some one's back in another minute and make an
enemy for life," said Di, holding her glass as best she could. She would
have given anything at that instant to say something unusually frivolous
in order to shake off the impression of the moment before; but her
frivolity had temporarily departed with Lord Hemsworth.
"Don't oppose the stream; subside into this backwater," said John,
placing his square shoulders between the throng and herself, and
nodding to a recess by one of the high arched windows.
Having reached it, Di sipped the highwater mark off her lemonade.
"It's safe now," she said. "I don't know why I took it; I don't want it
now I've got it. Have you seen Archie since you came back? You know
_him_, of course? He often talks about you."
"Yes, I saw him at the Thesinger wedding to-day."
"Were you there?"
"Yes, but only at the church. I did not go on to the house; I disliked
the whole affair too much. Many marriages, half the marriages one sees,
are only irrevocable flirtations; but the ceremony of to-day was not
even that."
Di looked away through the mullioned window out across the river and its
gliding shimmer to the lights beyond. She did not know how long it was
before she spoke.
"I think it was a great sin," she said, at last, in a low voice,
unconscious of a pause that to her companion was full of meaning.
"Or a great mistake," he said, gently.
"No, not a mistake," said Di, still looking out. "The others, the
irrevocable flirtations, are the mistakes. There was no mistake to-day.
But it was a dull wedding," she added, with sudden self-recollection and
a change of manner. "Not like one I was at last autumn in the country. I
was staying in the same house as the bridegroom, and he and the best
man, a Mr. Lumley, got up at an early hour, woke some of the other men,
and paraded the house with an _impromptu_ band of music. I remember the
bridegroom performed piercingly upon the comb. I wonder people ever play
the comb; it is so plaintive. But perhaps it is your favourite
instrument, perfected in the course of foreign travel, and I am
trampling on your feelings unawares."
"I used to play upon it," said John, "but not of late years. I left it
off because it tickled and increased the natural melancholy of my
disposition. What were the other instruments?"
"Let me see, Lord Hemsworth murmured upon a gong, and Mr. Lumley uttered
his dark speech upon a tray. The whole was very effective. He told me
afterwards that it was a relief to his feelings, which had been much
lacerated by the misplaced affections of the bride."
Di's laughing mischievous eyes met John's fixed upon her with a grave
attention that took her aback. She had an uncomfortable sense that he
was regarding her with secret amusement. A moment before she had been
sorry that she had inadvertently spoken with a force that was unusual
to her. Now she was equally vexed that she had been flippant.
"Here you are," said Lord Hemsworth, elbowing his way up to them. "I
have been looking for you everywhere. Mrs. Courtenay is going, and is
asking for you."