"Et souvent au moment ou l'on croyait tenir
Une esperance, on voit que c'est un souvenir."
VICTOR HUGO.
When Colonel Tempest lay in a precarious condition owing to the
unexpected explosion of a revolver which he was taking to his gun-maker,
and which he believed to be unloaded--when this fatality occurred, Mrs.
Courtenay somewhat relaxed the stringency of her usual demeanour to him,
and allowed his daughter to be with him constantly in the hospital to
which he was first conveyed, and afterwards in his rooms in Brook Street
when he was sufficiently convalescent to be conveyed thither.
Colonel Tempest was a trying patient; in one sense he was not a patient
at all; melting into querulous tears when denied a sardine on toast for
which his soul thirsted, the application of which would infallibly have
separated his soul from his body; and bemoaning continually, when
consciousness was vouchsafed to him, the neglect of his children and the
callousness of his friends. Di bore it with equanimity. It is only true
accusations which one feels obliged to contradict. She did not love her
father, and his continual appeals to her pity and filial devotion
touched her but little. Colonel Tempest confided to his nurse in the
night-watches that he was the parent of heartless children, and when Di
took her place in the daytime, reviled the nurse's greed, who, whether
he was suffering or not, could eat a large meal in the middle of the
night.
"I hate nurses," he would say. "Your poor mother had such a horrid nurse
when Archie was born. I could not bear her, always making difficulties
and restrictions, and locking the door, and then complaining to the
doctor because I rattled the lock. I urged your mother to part with her
whenever she was not in the room. But she only cried, and said she could
not do without her, and that she was kind to her. That was your mother
all over. She always sided against me. I must say she knew the value of
tears, did your poor mother. She cried herself into hysterics when I
rang the front door bell at four in the morning because I had gone out
without a latch-key. I suppose she expected me to sit all night on the
step. And first the nurse and then the doctor spoke to me about
agitating her, and said it was doing her harm; so I just walked
straight out of the house, and never set foot in it again for a month
till they had both cleared out. They overreached themselves that time."
Archie, who looked in once a day for the space of ten seconds, came in
for the largest share of Colonel Tempest's reproaches.
"I don't like sick people," that young gentleman was wont to remark.
"Don't understand 'em. No use. Nursing not in my line. Better out of the
way."
So, with the consideration of his kind, he was so good as to keep out of
it, while Colonel Tempest wept salt tears into his already too salt
beef-tea (it was always too salt or not salt enough), and remarked with
bitterness that he could have fancied a sardine, and that other people's
sons nursed their parents when they were at death's door. Young
Grandcourt had never left _his_ father's bedside for three weeks when
he had pneumonia; but Archie, it seemed, was different.
"My children are not much comfort to me," he told the doctor as
regularly as he put out his tongue.
"John might have come," he said one day to Di. "He got out of it by
sending a cheque, but I think he might have taken the trouble just to
come and see whether I was alive or dead."
"John is ill himself," said Di.
"John is always ill," said Colonel Tempest, fretfully, with the
half-memory of convalescence--"always ailing and coddling himself; and
yet he has twice my physique. John grows coarse-looking--very coarse. I
fancy he is a large eater. I remember he was ill in the summer. I went
to see him. I was always sitting with him; and there did not seem to be
much the matter with him. I think he gives way."
"Perhaps it is a family failing," said Di, who was beginning to discover
what a continual bottling up and corking down of effervescent irritation
is comprised under the name of patience.
How many weeks was it after Di's return to London when a cloud no larger
than a man's hand arose on the clear horizon of that secret happiness
which no amount of querulousness on Colonel Tempest's part could
effectually dim? It was a very small cloud. It took the shape of a card
with John's name on it, who had come to Brook Street to inquire after
his uncle.
"He is in London. He will call this afternoon," said Di to herself; and
as Colonel Tempest happened to be too sleepy to wish to be read to, she
left him early in the afternoon, and hurried home. And she and Mrs.
Courtenay sat indoors all that afternoon, though they had been lent a
carriage, and they waited to make tea till after the time; and whenever
the door bell rang, Mrs. Courtenay's hands shook quite as much as Di's.
And aimless, foolish persons called, but John did not call.
"He is ill," said Mrs. Courtenay in the dusk, "or he has been prevented
coming. There is some reason. He will write."
"Yes," said Di, "he will come when he can." But nevertheless a little
shiver of doubt crept into her heart for the first time. "If I had been
in his place," she said to herself, "I should have come ill or well, and
I should _not_ have been prevented."
She put the thought aside instantly as unreasonable, but the shy dread
she had previously felt of meeting him changed to a restless longing
just to see him, just to be reassured.
To be loved by one we love is, after all, so incredible a revelation
that it is not wonderful that human nature seeks after a sign. Only a
great self-esteem finds love easy to believe in.
The days passed, and linked themselves to weeks. Was it fancy, or did
Mrs. Courtenay become graver day by day? and Di remembered with
misgiving a certain note which she had written to John the morning she
left Overleigh. The little cloud grew.
* * * * *
One afternoon Di came in rather later than usual, and after a glance
round the room, which had become habitual to her, sat down by her
grandmother, and poured out tea.
"Any callers, granny?"
"One--Archie."
Di sighed. Coming home had always the possibility in it of finding some
one sitting in the drawing-room, or a note on the hall table. Yet
neither possibility happened.
"Archie came to say that the doctor thinks your father does not gain
ground, and that he might be moved to the seaside with advantage. He
wanted to know whether you could go with him. He can't get leave himself
for more than a couple of days. I said I would allow you to do so, if he
took your father down himself, and got him settled. He can do that in
two days, and he ought to take his share. He has left everything to you
so far. He mentioned," continued Mrs. Courtenay with an effort, "that he
had met John at the Carlton yesterday, and that he was all right, and
able to go about again as usual. He went back to Overleigh to-day."
There was a long silence.
"What do you think, granny?" said Di at last.
"How long is it since you were at Overleigh?"
"Two months."
"When you were there did you allow John to see that you had changed your
mind, or were you friendly with him, as you used to be? Nothing
discourages men so much as that."
"No; I tried to be, but I could not. I don't know what I was, except
very uncomfortable."
"Had he any real opportunity of speaking to you without interruption?"
Di remembered the half-hour in the entresol sitting-room. It had never
occurred to her till that moment that certainly, if he had wished to do
so, he could have spoken to her then.
"Yes," she said, "he had; and," she added, "I am sure he knew I liked
him. If he did not know it then, I am quite sure he knows it now. I
wrote a note."
"What kind of note?"
"Oh, granny, that is just it. I don't know what kind it was. It seemed
natural at the time. I can't remember exactly what I said. I've tried
to, often. It was written in such a hurry, for you telegraphed for me,
and I had been up all night waiting to hear whether he was to live or
die, and it was so dreadful to have to go away without a word."
Mrs. Courtenay leaned back in her chair. She seemed tired.
"Tell me what you think," said Di again.
"I think," said Mrs. Courtenay, "that if John had been seriously
attached to you, he would either have come, or have answered your letter
by this time. I am afraid we have made a mistake."
Di did not answer. The world was crumbling down around her.
"I may be making one now," said Mrs. Courtenay; "but it appears to me he
has had every opportunity given him, and he has made no use of them.
Men worth their salt _make_ their opportunities, but if they don't even
take them when they are ready-made to their hand, they cannot be in
earnest. Women don't realize what a hateful position a man is in who is
deeply in love, and who has no knowledge of whether it is returned or
not. He won't remain in it any longer than he can help."
"John is not in that position," said Di, colouring painfully. "Granny,
why don't you reproach me for writing that letter?"
"Because, my dear, though I regret it more than I can say, I should have
done the same in your place."
"And--and what would you do _now_ in my place?"
"This," said Mrs. Courtenay. "You cannot dismiss the subject from your
mind, but whenever it comes into your thoughts, hold steadily before
you the one fact that he is certainly aware you are attached to him, and
he has not acted on that knowledge."
"They say men don't care for anything when once they know they can have
it," said Di hoarsely, pride wringing the words out of her. "Perhaps
John is like that. He knows I--am only waiting to be asked."
"Fools say many things," returned Mrs. Courtenay. "That is about as true
as that women don't care for their children when they get them. A few
unnatural ones don't; the others do. I have seen much trouble caused by
love affairs. After middle life most people decry them, especially those
who have had superficial ones themselves; for there is seldom any love
at all in the mutual attraction of two young people, and the elders know
very well that if it is judiciously checked it can also be judiciously
replaced by something else. But a real love which comes to nothing is
more like the death of an only child than anything else. It _is_ a
death. The great thing is to regard it so. I have known women go on year
after year waiting, as we have been doing during the last two months,
refusing to believe in its death; believing, instead, in some
misunderstanding; building up theories to account for alienation;
clinging to the idea that things might have turned out differently if
only So-and-so had been more tactful, if they had not refused a certain
invitation, if something they had said which might yet be explained had
not been misconstrued. And all the time there is no misunderstanding, no
need of explanation. The position is simple enough. No man is daunted by
such things except in women's imaginations. What men want they will try
to obtain, unless there is some positive bar, such as poverty. And if
they don't try, remember the inference is _sure_, that they don't
really want it."
Di did not answer. Her face had taken a set look, which for the first
time reminded Mrs. Courtenay of her mother. She had often seen the other
Diana look like that.
"My child," she said, stretching out her soft old hand, and laying it on
the cold clenched one, "a death even of what is dearest to us, and a
funeral and a headstone to mark the place, hard as it is, is as nothing
compared to the death in life of an existence which is always dragging
about a corpse. I have seen that not once nor twice. I want to save you
from that."
Di laid her face for a moment on the kind hand.
"I will bury my dead," she said.