"Still as of old
Man by himself is priced.
For thirty pieces Judas sold
Himself, not Christ."
H.C.C.
Lent gave way to Easter, and Easter melted into the season, and Mrs.
Courtenay gave a little dinner-party, at which John was one of the
guests; and Madeleine was presented on her marriage; and Di had two new
gowns, and renovated an old one, and nearly broke Lord Hemsworth's heart
by refusing the box-seat on his drag at the meeting of the Four-in-hand;
and Lord Hemsworth did not invest in the bay mare with the white
stocking, but turned heaven and earth to find another with black points,
and succeeded, only to drive in lonely bitterness to the meet. And John
was to have been there also, but he had been so severely injured in a
fire which broke out at his lodgings, in the room below his, three weeks
before, that he was still lying helpless at the house in Park Lane,
which he had lent to his aunt, Miss Fane, and whither he was at once
taken, after the accident, to struggle slowly back to life and painful
convalescence.
For the last three weeks, since the fire, hardly any one had seen
Colonel Tempest. The old horror had laid hold upon him like a mortal
sickness. Sleep had left him. Remorse looked at him out of the eyes of
the passers in the street. There was no refuge. He avoided his club.
What might he not hear there! What might not have happened in the night!
He could trust himself to go nowhere for fear of his face betraying
him. He wandered aimlessly out in the evenings in the lonelier portions
of the Park. Sometimes he would stop his loitering, to follow with
momentary interest the children sailing their boats on the Round Pond,
and then look up and see the veiled London sunset watching him from
behind Kensington Palace, and turn away with a guilty sense of
detection. The aimless days and waking ghosts of nights came and went,
came and went, until his misery became greater than he could bear. The
resolutions of the weak are as much the result of the period of feeble,
apathetic inertia that precedes them, as the resolutions of the strong
are the outcome of earnest reflection and mental travail.
"It will kill me if it goes on," he said to himself. There was one way,
and one only, by means of which this intolerable weight might be shifted
from his shoulders. He hung back many days. He said he could not do
_that_, anything but _that_--and then he did it.
His heart beat painfully as he turned his steps towards Park Lane, and
he hesitated many minutes before he mounted the steps and rang the bell
at the familiar door of the Tempest town-house, where his father had
lived during the session, where his mother had spent the last years of
her life after his death.
It was an old-fashioned house. The iron rings into which the links used
to be thrust still flanked the ponderous doorway, together with the
massive extinguisher.
The servant informed him that Mr. Tempest had been out of danger for
some days, but was not seeing any one at present.
"Ask if he will see me," said Colonel Tempest, hoarsely. "Say I am
waiting."
The man left him in the white stone hall where he and his brother Jack
had played as boys. The dappled rocking-horse used to stand under the
staircase, but it was no longer there: given away, no doubt, or broken
up for firewood. John might have kept the poor old rocking-horse.
Recollections that took the form of personal grievances were never far
from Colonel Tempest's mind.
In a few minutes the man returned, and said that Mr. Tempest would see
him, and led the way upstairs. A solemn, melancholy-looking valet was
waiting for him, who respectfully informed him that the doctor's orders
were that his master should be kept very quiet, and should not be
excited in any way. Colonel Tempest nodded unheeding, and was conscious
of a door being opened, and his name announced.
He went forward hesitatingly into a half-darkened room.
"Pull up the further blind, Marshall," said John's voice. The servant
did so, and noiselessly left the room.
Colonel Tempest's heart smote him.
The young man lay quite motionless, his dark head hardly raised, his
swathed hands stretched out beside him. His unshaved face had the
tension of protracted suffering, and the grave steady eyes which met
Colonel Tempest's were bright with suppressed pain. The eyes were the
only things that moved. It seemed to Colonel Tempest that if they were
closed--. He shuddered involuntarily. In his morbid fancy the prostrate
figure seemed to have already taken the rigid lines of death, the
winding-sheet to be even now drawn up round the young haggard face.
Colonel Tempest was not gifted with imagination where he himself was not
concerned. He was under the impression that the influenza, from which he
occasionally suffered, was the most excruciating form of mortal illness
known to mankind. He never believed people were really ill until they
were dead. Now he realized for the first time that John had been at
death's door; that is to say, he realized what being at death's door was
like, and he was fairly staggered!
"Good God, John!" he said with a sort of groan. "I did not know it had
been as bad as this."
"Sit down," said John, as the nurse brought forward a chair to the
bedside, and then withdrew, eyeing the new-comer suspiciously. "It is
much better now. I receive callers. Hemsworth was here yesterday. I can
shake hands a little; only be very gentle with me. I cry like a girl if
I am more than touched."
John feebly raised and held out a bandaged hand, of which the end of
three fingers only were visible. Colonel Tempest, whose own feelings
were invariably too deep to admit of his remembering those of others,
pressed it spasmodically in his.
"It goes to my heart to see you like this, John," he said with a break
in his voice.
John withdrew his hand. His face twitched a little, and he bit his lip,
but in a few moments he spoke again firmly enough.
"It is very good of you to come. Now that I have got round the corner, I
shall be about again in no time."
"Yes, yes," said Colonel Tempest, as if reassuring himself. "You will be
all right again soon."
"You look knocked up," said John, considering him attentively with his
dark earnest gaze.
"Do I?" said Colonel Tempest. "I dare say I do. Yes, people may not
notice it as a rule. I keep things to myself, always have done all my
life, but--it will drag me into my grave if it goes on much longer, I
know that."
"If what goes on?"
It is all very well for a nervous rider to look boldly at a hedge two
fields away, but when he comes up with it, and feels his horse quicken
his pace under him, he begins to wonder what the landing on the
invisible other side will be like. There was a long silence, broken only
by Lindo, John's Spanish poodle, who, ensconced in an armchair by the
bedside, was putting an aristocratic and extended hind leg through an
afternoon toilet by means of searching and sustained suction.
"I don't suppose there is a more wretched man in the world than I am,
John," said Colonel Tempest at last.
"There is something on your mind, perhaps."
"Night and day," said Colonel Tempest, wishing John would not watch him
so closely. "I have not a moment's peace."
"You are in money difficulties," said John, justly divining the only
cause that was likely to permanently interfere with his uncle's peace of
mind.
"Yes," said Colonel Tempest. "I am at my wit's end, and that is the
truth."
John's lips tightened a little, and he remained silent. That was why his
uncle had come to see him then. His pride revolted against Colonel
Tempest's want of it, against Archie's sponge-like absorption of all
John would give him. He felt (and it was no idle fancy of a wealthy man)
that he would have died rather than have asked for a shilling. A Tempest
should be above begging, should scorn to run in debt. John's pride of
race resented what was in his eyes a want of honour in the other
members of the family of which he was the head.
Colonel Tempest was in a position of too much delicacy not to feel hurt
by John's silence. He reflected on the invariable meanness of rich men,
with a momentary retrospect of how open-handed he had been himself in
his youth, and even after his crippling marriage.
"I do not know the circumstances," said John at last.
"No one does," said Colonel Tempest.
"Neither have I any wish to know them," said John, with a touch of
haughtiness, "except in so far as I can be of use to you."
Colonel Tempest found himself very disagreeably placed. He would have
instantly lost his temper if he had been a few weeks younger, but the
memory of those last few weeks recurred to him like a douche of cold
water. Self-interest would not allow him to throw away his last chance
of escaping out of Swayne's clutches, and he had a secret conviction
that no storming or passion of any kind would have any effect on that
prostrate figure, with the stern feeble voice, and intense fixity of
gaze.
John had always felt a secret repulsion towards his uncle, though he
invariably met him with grave, if distant civility. He had borne in a
proud silence the gradual realization, as he grew old enough to
understand it, that there was a slur upon his name, a shadow on his
mother's memory. He believed, as did some others, that his uncle had
originated the slanders, impossible to substantiate, in order to wrest
his inheritance from him. How could this man, after trying to strip him
of everything, even of his name, come to him now for money?
John had a certain rigidity and tenacity of mind, an uprightness and
severity, which come of an intense love of justice and rectitude, but
which in an extreme degree, if not counterbalanced by other qualities,
make a hard and unlovable character.
His clear-eyed judgment made him look at Colonel Tempest with secret
indignation and contempt. But with the harshness of youth other
qualities, rarely joined, went hand in hand. A little knowledge of
others is a dangerous thing. It shows itself in sweeping condemnations
and severe judgments, and a complacent holding up to the light of the
poor foibles and peccadilloes of humanity, which all who will can find.
A greater knowledge shows itself in a greater tenderness towards others,
the tenderness, as some suppose, of wilful ignorance of evil. When or
how John had learnt it I know not, but certainly he had a rapid
intuition of the feelings of others; he could put himself in their
place, and to do that is to be not harsh.
He looked again at Colonel Tempest, and was ashamed of his passing,
though righteous, anger. He realized how hard it must be for an older
man to be obliged to ask a young one for money, and he had no wish to
make it any harder. He looked at the weak, wretched face, with its
tortured selfishness, and understood a little; perhaps only in part, but
enough to make him speak again in a different tone.
"Do not tell me anything you do not wish; but I see something is
troubling you very much. Sometimes things don't look so black when one
has talked them over."
"I can't talk it over, John," said Colonel Tempest, with incontestable
veracity, softened by the kindness of his tone, "but the truth is,"
nervousness was shutting its eyes and making a rush, "I want--_ten
thousand pounds and no questions asked_."
John was startled. Colonel Tempest clutched his hat, and stared out of
the window. He felt benumbed. He had actually done it, actually brought
himself to ask for it. As his faculties slowly returned to him in the
long silence which followed, he became conscious, that if John was too
niggardly to pay his own ransom, he, Colonel Tempest, would not be the
most to blame, if any casualty should hereafter occur.
At last John spoke.
"You say you don't want any questions asked, but I _must_ ask one or
two. You want this money secretly. Would the want of it bring disgrace
upon your--children?" He had nearly said your "daughter."
"If it was found out it would," said Colonel Tempest, in a choked voice.
The detection, which he always told himself was an impossibility, had,
nevertheless, a horrible way of masquerading before him at intervals as
an accomplished fact.
John knit his brows.
"I can't pretend not to know what it is," he said. "It is a debt of
honour. You have been betting."
"Yes," said Colonel Tempest, faintly.
"I suppose you can't touch your capital. That is settled on your
children."
"No," said Colonel Tempest. "There were no settlements when I married. I
had to do the best I could. I had twenty thousand pounds from my father,
and my wife brought me a few thousands after her uncle's death; a very
few, which her relations could not prevent her having. But there were
the children, and one thing with another, and women are extravagant, and
must have everything to their liking; and by the time I had settled up
and sold everything after the break-up, it was all I could do to put
Archie to school."
(Oh! Di, Di, cold in your grave these two and twenty years! Do you
remember the little pile of account books that you wound up, and put in
your writing-table drawer, that last morning in April, thinking that if
anything happened, he would find them there--afterwards. He had always
inveighed against the meanness of your economy before the servants, and
against your extravagance in private. Do you remember the butcher's
book, with thin blotting paper, that blotted tears as badly as ink
sometimes, for meat was dear; and the milk bills? You were always proud
of the milk bills, with the space for cream left blank, except when he
was there. And the little book of sundries, where those quarter pounds
of fresh butter and French rolls, were entered, which Anne ran out to
get if he came home suddenly, because he did not like the cheap butter
from the Stores. Do you remember these things? He never knew, he never
looked at the dumb reproach of that little row of books: but I cannot
think, wherever you are, that you have quite forgotten them.)
John was silent again. How could he deal with this man who roused in him
such a vehement indignation? For several minutes he could not trust
himself to speak.
"I think I had better go," said Colonel Tempest at last.
John started violently.
"No, no," he said. "Wait. Let me think."
The nurse and his aunt came into the room at that moment.
"Are not you feeling tired, sir?" the nurse inquired, warningly.
"Yes, John," said Miss Fane, grunting as her manner was. "Mustn't get
tired."
"I am not," he replied. "Colonel Tempest and I are discussing business
matters which won't wait--which it would trouble me to leave unsettled.
We have not quite finished, but he is more tired than I am. It is the
hottest day we have had. Will you give him a cup of tea, Aunt Flo, and
bring him back in half an hour."
When he was left alone John turned his head painfully on the pillow, and
slowly opened and shut one of the bandaged hands. This not altogether
satisfactory form of exercise was the only substitute he had within his
power for the old habit of pacing up and down while he thought.
Ought he to give the money? He had no right to make a bad use of
anything because he happened to have a good deal of it. This ten
thousand would follow the previous twenty thousand, as a matter of
course.
Giving it did not affect himself, inasmuch as he would hardly miss it.
It was a generous action only in appearance, for he was very wealthy;
even among the rich he was very rich. His long minority, and various
legacies of younger branches, which had shown the Tempest peculiarity of
dying out, and leaving their substance to the head of the family, had
added to an already imposing income. In his present mode of life he did
not spend a third of it.
The thought flashed across his mind that if he had died three weeks ago,
if the hinges of the door had held as firmly as the shot lock, and he
had perished in that room in King Street like a rat in a trap, Colonel
Tempest would at this very moment have been in possession of everything.
He looked at his own death, and all it would have entailed,
dispassionately.
That improvident selfish man had been within an ace of immense wealth.
And yet--John's heart smote him--his uncle had been genuinely grieved to
see him so ill: had been really thankful to think he was out of danger.
He had almost immediately afterwards reverted to himself and his own
affairs; but that was natural to the man. He had nevertheless been
unaffectedly overcome the moment before. The emotion had been genuine.
John struggled hard against his strong personal dislike.
Perhaps Colonel Tempest had become entangled in the money difficulty at
the very time his--John's--life hung in the balance, when he took for
granted he was about to inherit all. The speculation was heartless,
perhaps, but pardonable. John saw no reason why Colonel Tempest should
not have counted on his death. For ten days it had been more than
probable; and now he might live to a hundred. Perhaps the probability of
his reaching old age was slenderer than he supposed.
He lay a little while longer and then rang the bell near his hand, and
directed his servant to bring him a locked feminine elegancy from a
side-table which, until he could replace his burnt possessions, had
evidently been lent him by his aunt to use as a despatch-box. He got out
a cheque-book, and with clumsy fingers filled in and signed a cheque.
Then he lay back panting and exhausted. The will was strong in him, but
the suffering body was desperately weak.
When Colonel Tempest returned, John held the cheque towards him in
silence with a feeble smile.
Colonel Tempest took it without speaking. His lips shook. He was more
moved than he had been for years.
"God bless you, John," he said at last. "You are a good fellow, and I
don't deserve it from you."
"Good-bye," said John, in a more natural tone of voice than he had yet
used towards him. "If you are at the polo match on Thursday, will you
look in and tell me how it has gone? It would be a kindness to me. I
know Archie and Hemsworth are playing." Colonel Tempest murmured
something unintelligible, and went out.
He did not go back at once to his rooms in Brook Street. Almost
involuntarily his steps turned towards the Park. The world was changed
for him. The weary ceaseless beat of the horses' hoofs on the wood
pavement had a cheerful exhilarating ring. All the people looked glad.
There was a confused rejoicing in the rustle of the trees, in the flying
voices of the children playing and rolling in the grass. He wandered
down towards the Serpentine. Dogs were rushing in and out of the water.
An elastic cockeared retriever, undepressed by its doubtful ancestry,
was leaping and waving a wet tail at its master, giving the short sharp
barks of youth and a light heart. An aristocratic pug in a belled collar
was delicately sniffing the evening breeze across the water, watching
the antics of the lower orders with protruding eyes like pieces of toffy
rounded and glazed by suction. An equally aristocratic black
poodle--Lindo out for a stroll with the valet--with more social
tendencies, was hurrying up and down on the extreme verge, beckoning
rapidly with its short tufted tail to the athletes in the water. The
ducks bobbed on the ripples. The children sprawled and shouted and
clambered. The low sun had laid a dancing, glancing pathway across the
water. How glad it all was, how exceeding glad! Colonel Tempest patted
one of the children on the head and felt benevolent.
As he turned away at last and sauntered homewards, he passed a little
knot of people gathered round a gesticulating open-air preacher. Two
girls, arm in arm, just in front of him, were lounging near, talking
earnestly together.
"Sin no more lest a worse thing come unto thee," bawled the strident
fanatic voice.
"I shall have mine trimmed with tulle, and a flower on the crown," said
one of the girls.
Colonel Tempest walked slowly on. Yes, yes; that was it. _Sin no more
lest a worse thing come unto thee._ He had always dreaded that worse
thing, and now that fear was all over. He translated the cry of the
preacher into a message to himself, his first personal transaction with
the Almighty. He felt awed. It was like a voice from another world.
Religion was becoming a reality to him at last. There are still persons
for whom the Law and the Prophets are not enough--who require that one
should rise from the dead to galvanize their superstition into momentary
activity. Sin no more. No--never any more. He had done with sin. He
would make a fresh start from to-day, and life would become easy and
unembarrassed and enjoyable once again; no more nightmares and wakeful
nights and nervous haunting terrors. They were all finished and put
away. The tears came into his eyes. He regretted that he had not enjoyed
these comfortable feelings earlier in life. The load was lifted from his
heart, and the removal of the pain was like a solemn joy.