Diana Tempest, Volume I (of 3)

salliances est

mself in his travelling rug, and turned up his little collar, and drawn his soft little travelling cap over his eyes in exact, though unconscious, imitation of his father. Colonel Tempest looked at him now and then with paternal compla

before the character had had time to assert itself in the face; before selfishness had learned to look

would have called "the blues," by which he meant any species of reflection calculated to give him that passing annoyance which was the deepest form of emotion of which he was capable. But Punch and the Sporting Times, and even the comic French paper which Archie might not look at, were

of silence and estrangement between his brother and himself ever since. And it had all been about a woman. It seemed extraordinary to Colonel Tempest, as he looked back, that a quarrel which had led to such serious consequences-which had, as he remembered, spoilt his own life-should have come from so slight a cause. It was li

ome excuse for him. (There generally was.) How beautiful she had been with her pale exquisite face, and her innocent eyes, and a certain shy dignity and pride of bearing peculiar to herself. Yes, any other man would have done the same in his place. The latter argument had had

nted in her as the boy is in the butterfly when he has it safe-and crushed-in his hand. She might have made anything of him, he reflected. But somehow there had been a hitch in her character. She had not taken him the right way. She had been unable to effect a radical change in him, to convert weakness and irresolution into strength and decision; and he had been quite ready to have anythi

as settled by a move to London, other occasions seemed to crop up for the shedding of those tears which are known to be the common resource of women for obtaining their own way when other means fail; and others, many others, suggested by youth and inexperience and a devoted love had failed. If they are silent tears, or worse still, if the eyelids betray that they have been shed in secret, a man may with reason become

d went in the course of the next few years several steps further still, till they reached, on her part, that dreary dead level of emaciated semi-maternal tenderness, w

was first laid in his arms, how drawn towards its mother. But his smoking-room fire had been neglected during the following week, and he could not find any large envelopes, and the nurse

tradesman called after dinner for payment of a longstanding account which she had understood was settled. It was not a large bill he remembered wrathfully, and he had intended to keep his promise of paying it directly his money came in, but when it came he had needed it, and more, for his share of the spring fishing he had taken cheap with a friend. Naturally he would not see the man whose loud voice, asking repeatedly for him, could be heard in the hall, and who refused to go away. Colonel Tempest had a dislike to rows with tradespe

ness and cold seemed to have been compressed into that little room. She raised her head as he came in. Her wide eyes had a look in them of a dumb unreasoning animal distress which took him aback. There was no pride nor anger in her face. In his ignorance he suppo

ubber and a molehill in the middle of the bed showed

sore annoyance to him. An anxious housekeeper in her teens sometimes retrenches in the wrong place, namely where it is unpalatable to the husband. Di had cured her

the peculiar distressed look giving place to a more human expression, as she suddenly became aw

ense of ill-usage gene

ome back to the dr

was no

k of making a man's home un

ft. One may come to an end of answers somet

ordered for half-

es

hed e

ill be right this time. And I've told M

ht. Good

d ni

ied next morning to run up to say good-bye before starting for Scotland. Those had been the last words his wi

years ago. He remembered his arrival at the house, and letting himself in and going upstairs. The house seemed strangely quiet. In the drawing-room a woman was sitting motionless in the gaslight. She looked up

hing. "I did not know where you were. You have a

ed his

asked. "Prett

others of his enlightened views, he was of course aware that the pains of c

entrated passion, as she passed him to l

ll he had gone through during the days that followed, and the silent reproach of the face that even in death wor

iled perpetually, and he wanted to get rid of the house, and of all that reminded him of a past that it was distinctly uncomfortable to recall. He put the little yellow-haired boy to school, and, when Mrs. Courtenay repeated her offer, he accepted it;

much for a pretty face, and she had not had a shilling. He had chucked away all his chances in marrying her. He might have married anybody; but he had never seen

penalty, not with an exceeding bitter cry, but in an exceeding bitter silence. Perhaps she had struggled against the disillusion and desecration of life, the despair and the self-loathing that go t

ate, she had a turn of the neck and shoulder

ch had led him to a death-bed, and suddenly remembered with a shud

but he had received no permission to do so. Nevertheless he had actually screwed up his weak and vacillating nature to the sti

wings folded underneath his little great-coat, he would have made a perfect model for an angel, with his fair hair and face, and the sweet serious eyes that contemplated, without any cha

oked at the little red tin shelter erected on the off-side with an alien eye. It had not been there in his time. There was no carriage to meet him, although he had mentioned the train by which he intended to arrive. His heart sank a little as he took

ough the haze of the April trees. They passed through the old Italian gates-there was a new woman at the lodge to open them-and entered the park. Archie drew in

th grave interest, but without anxiety, as his eyes follo

ther, tightening his clasp on the little hand. If Co

. High on a rocky crag, looking out over its hanging woods and gardens, the old grey cast

ong ago, when, as he galloped up the steep winding drive, even as he rode, the

eam where she had stood, her white gown reflected in the water below her, the heart of the summer woods enfolding her like the setting of a jewel. The seringa and the laburnum were out. The air was faint with perfume. She stood looking at him with lovely surprised eyes, in her exceeding youth and beauty. Involuntarily his mind turned from that first meeting to the last parting seven years later. The

ing things were stirring and pressing up to do His will. The larch had hastened to hang out his pink tassels. The primroses had been the first among the flowers to receive the Divine message, and were repeating it already in their own language to those that had ears to hear it. The folded buds of the anemones had

the corpse as he passed. It looked as if it had not afforded much sport before it died. Colonel Tempest puffed a little, for the ascent was steep, and he was not so slim as he had once been. He sat down on a circular wooden seat round a yew tree by the path. He began to dislike the idea of going on. And, perhaps, after all, he would be tol

said Colon

age. Every hair of grass or weed had been scratched up within the irregular wall of fir cones that bounded the enclosure. Grey sand imported from a distance, possibly from the brook,

hells that flanked the main entrance, "then you walk round the lake. Look; he has got a duck ready. Oh, dear! and see, fat

tell when it might not go off, or in what direction. It went off

the ground to right and left. "You may well ask that. John i

ut on the other in a manner painful to behold. It would certainly never swim again. The turn of the squirt mig

t stand fooling there," and he began to mount the path with

ndary was knocked over at one corner. All privacy was lost; anything might get i

ping his hand into that of the grow

sh it were poor John; and not poor Archie. That was your garden, Archie, do you

" said Archie, gravel