Diana Tempest

Front matter

KY MARY CHOLMONDELEY AUTHOR OF y *-* 'THE DANVERS JEWELS,' 'SIK CHARLES DANVERS,' ETC. A NEW EDITION LONDON RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON publishers in fflrbinarj) to Sjer /Hajeate tlu fitecn 1894 [Ail rights reso-veei] So MY SISTER HESTER. ' He put our lives so far apart We cannot hear each other speak.' itself in the face— before selfishness had learned to look out of the clear gray eyes, and a weak self indulgence and irresolution had loosened the well-cut lips. Colonel Tempest, as a rule, took life very easily. If he had fits of uncontrolled passion now and then, they were quickly over. If his feelings were touched, that was quickly over too. But to-day his face was clouded. He had tried the usual antidotes for an impending attack of what he would have called ' the blues,' by which he meant any species of reflec tion 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 powerless to distract him to day. At last he tossed the latter out of the window to corrupt the morals of trespassers on the line, and, as it was, after all, less trouble to yield than to resist, settled himself in his corner, and gave way to a series of gloomy and anxious reflections. He was bent on a mission of importance to his old home, to see his brother, who was dying. His mind always recoiled instinctively from the thought of death, and turned quickly to something else. It was fourteen years since he had been at Overleigh, fourteen years since that event had taken place which had lest a deadly enmity 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 like losing the sight of an eye because a fly had committed trespass in it. A man's mental rank may generally be determined by his estimate of woman. If he stands low he considers her — Heaven help her ! — such an one as himself. If he climbs high he takes his ideal of her along with him, and, to keep it safe, places it above himself. Colonel Tempest pursued the reflections suggested by an untaxed intellect of average calibre which he believed to be profound. A mere girl ! How men threw up everything for women ! What fools men were when they were young ! After all, when he came to think of it, there had been some excuse for him.

Chapter II

' And another dieth in the bitterness of his soul.' — Job xxi. 25. A profound knowledge of human nature enunciated the decree, ' Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house,' and relegated the neighbour's wife to a back seat among the servants and live stock. The intense love of a house, passing the love even of prohibited women, is a passion which those who ' nightly pitch their moving tents ' in villas and hired dwellings, and look upon heaven as their home, can hardly imagine, and frequently regard with the amused contempt of ignorance. But where pride is a leading power the affections will be generally found immediately in its wake. In these days it is the fashion, especially of the vulgar-minded well-born, to decry birth as being of no account. Those who do so apparently fail to perceive that, by the very fact of decrying it, they proclaim their own innate lack of appreciation of those very advantages of refinement, manners, and a certain distinction and freemasonry of feeling, which birth has evidently withheld from them personally, but which, nevertheless, birth alone can bestow.

The strong hereditary pride of race which is as natural a result of time and fixed habitat as the forest oak — which is bred in the bone and comes out in the flesh from generation to generation — is accompanied, as a rule, by a pas sionate love, not of houses, but of the house, the home, the eyrie, the one sacred spot from which the race sprang. Among the Tempests, devotion to Overleigh had been an hereditary instinct from time immemorial. Other possessions, gifts of royalty, or dowers of heiresses, came and went. Overleigh remained from generation to generation. Scapegrace Tempests squandered the family fortune, and mortgaged the family properties, but others rose up in their place, who, whatever else was lost, kept fast hold on Over leigh. The old castle on the crag had passed through many vicissitudes.

It had been originally built in Edward II.'s time, and the remains of fortification, and the immense thickness of the outer walls, showed how fierce had been the inroads of Scot and Borderer which such strength was needed to repel. The massive arched doorway through which the yelling hordes of the Tempests and their retainers swooped down, with black lion on pennant flying, upon the enemy, was walled up in the time of the Tudors, and the vaulted basement with its acutely pointed chamfered arches became the dungeons of the later portion of the building— the cellars of the present day. Overleigh had entertained royalty royally in its time, and had sheltered royalty" more royally still. Cromwell's cannon had not prevailed against it. It had been partially burnt, it had been partially rebuilt.

There it still stood, a glory and a princely possession on the lands that had been meted in the Doomsday Book to a certain Norman knight, Ivo de Tempete, the founder of an iron race. And in the nine teenth century a Tempest held it still. Tempest had become a great name. Gradually wealth had gathered round Overleigh, as the lichen had gathered round its gray stones. There were coal-mines now among the marsh-lands of William the Conqueror's favourite, harbours and towns along the sea-coast. Tempest of Overleigh was a power, a name that might be felt, that had been felt. The name ranked high among the great commoners of England. Titles and honours of various kinds had been offered it from time to time. But for a Tempest to be a Tempest was enough. And Overleigh Castle had remained their solitary dwelling-place.

Houses were built for younger sons, but the head of the family made his home invariably at Overleigh itself. There were town houses in London and York, but country seats were not multiplied. To be a Tempest was enough. To live and die at Overleigh was enough. Someone was dying at Overleigh now. Mr. Tempest had come to that pass, and was taking it very quietly, as he had taken everything so far, from the elopement of his betrothed with his brother fourteen years ago, to the death of his poor, pretty, faithless wife in the room where he was now lying ; the round oak-panelled room, which followed the outer wall of the western tower ; the room in which he had been born, where Tempests had arrived and departed, and lain in state. And now, after a solitary life, he was dying as he had lived, alone.

He had gone too far down the steep path which leads no man knows whither, to care much for any thing that he was leaving behind. He had not read his brother's letter announcing his coming. It lay with a pile of others for someone hereafter to sort or burn. Mr. Tempest had done with letters, had done with everything except Death. The pressure of Death's hand was heavy on him, upon his eyes, upon his heart. He had been a punctual man all his life. He hoped he should not be kept waiting long. Colonel Tempest followed the servant with inward trepidation across the white stone hall. He had been at once admitted, for it was known that Mr. Tempest was dying, and the only wonder in the minds of nurse and doctor and servants was that his only brother had not arrived before. The servant led the way along the picture-gallery.

A child was playing at the further end of it under the Velasquez ; or, to speak more correctly, was looking earnestly out of one of the low mullioned windows. The voice of the young year was calling him from with out, as the spring calls only the young. But he might not go out to-day, though there were nests waiting for him, and holiday glories in wood and meadow that his soul longed aster. He had been told he must stay in, in case that stern silent father who was dying should ask for him. John did not think he would want him, for when had he ever wanted him yet ? but he remained at his post at the window, breathing his silent longing into a little mist on the pane. He looked round as Colonel Tempest and Archie approached, and then came gravely forward and put out a strong little brown hand.

Colonel Tempest just touched it without speaking, and turned his eyes away. He could not trust him self to look again at the erect, dignified little figure with its square dark face. When had there ever been a dark Tempest ? The two boys, near of an age, looked each other straight in the eyes. Archie was the younger and the taller of the two. ' Are you John ?' he asked at once. ' Yes.' ' John what ?' ' No. John Amyas Tempest.' ' Archie,' said Colonel Tempest, who had grown rather pale, ' you can stay here with until I send for you.' And with one backward glance at them he followed the servant to an ante-room, where the doctor presently came to him. ' I am his only brother,' said Colonel Tempest hoarsely. ' Can I see him ?' ' Certainly, my dear sir, certainly ; but at the same time all agitation, all tendency to excitement, must be rigorously avoided.' ' Is he really dying ?' interrupted Colonel Tempest. ' He is.' ' How long has he ?

Colonel Tempest felt as if a hand were tighten ing round his throat. The doctor shrugged his shoulders. ' Three hours. Five hours. He might live through the night. I cannot say.' ' There would be time,' said Colonel Tempest to himself; and, not without a shuddering foreboding that his brother might die in his actual presence, without giving him time to bolt, he entered the sick-room, from which the doctor had beckoned the nurse, and closed the door. The room was full of light, for the dying man had been oppressed by the darkness in which he lay, and a vain attempt had been made to alleviate it by the flood of April sunshine which had been let into the room. Through the open window came the rapture of the birds. Mr. Tempest lay perfectly motionless, with his eyes half closed. His worn face had a strong family resemblance to his brother's, with the beauty left out. ' Jack !' said Colonel Tempest.

Mr. Tempest heard from an immense distance, and came painfully back across long wastes and desert places of confused memories, came slowly back to the room, and the dim sunshine, and him self; and stopped short with a jarred sense as he saw his own long feeble hands laid upon the counter pane. He had forgotten them, though he recognised them now he saw them again. Why had he returned ? 'Jack,' said the voice again Mr. Tempest opened his eyes suddenly, and looked full at his brother — at the false, weak, hand some face ofthe man who had injured him. It all came back, the passion and the despair ; the intolerable agony of jealousy and baffled love ; and the deadly, deadly hatred. Fourteen years ago was it that Diana had been taken from him ? It returned upon him as though it were yesterday. A light flamed up in the dying eyes before which Colonel Tempest quailed.

All the sentences he had prepared beforehand seemed to fail him, as prepared sentences have a way of doing, being made to fit imaginary circum stances, and being consequently unsuited to any others. Mr. Tempest, who had not prepared any thing, had the advantage. 'Curse you,' he said, in 'his low, difficult whisper. ' You damned scoundrel !' Colonel Tempest was shocked. To bear a grudge after all these years ! Jack had always been vindic tive ! And what an unchristian state of mind for one on the brink of that nightmare of horror, the grave ! He was unable to articulate. ' What are you here for ?' said Mr. Tempest, after a pause. ' Who let you in ? Why can't I be allowed to die in peace ?' ' Oh, don't talk like that, Jack !' gasped Colonel Tempest, speaking extempore, after fumbling in all the empty pockets of his mind for something appro priate to say. ' I am sure I am very sorry for ' A look warned him that even his tactful reference to a certain subject would be resented. ' But it's all past and gone now, and — it's a long time ago, and you're ' ' Dying,' suggested Mr. Tempest. ' . . . and,' hurried on Colonel Tempest, glad of the lift, 'it's not for my own sake I've come.

But I've got a boy, Jack ; he is here now. I have brought him with me. Such a fine, handsome boy — every inch a Tempest, and the image of our father. I don't want to speak for myself, but for the sake of the boy, and the place, and the old name.' Colonel Tempest hid his quivering face in his hands. He was really moved. The sick man's mouth twitched ; he evidently understood his brother's incoherent words. ' John succeeds,' he said. The two men looked away from each other. ' John is not a Tempest,' said Colonel Tempest, in a choked voice. ' You know it — everybody knows it !' ' He was born in wedlock.' ' Yes ; but he is not your son. You would have divorced her if she had lived. He is the legal heir, of course, if you countenance him ; but something might be done still — it is not too late.

I know the estate goes, failing you and your children, to me and mine. Don't bear a grudge, Jack. You can't have any feeling for the child— it's against nature. Remember the old name and the old place, that has never been out of the hands of a Tempest yet. Don't drag our honour in the dust and put it to open shame ! Think how it would have grieved our father. Let me call in the doctor and the nurse, and disown him now before witnesses. Such things have been done before, and may be again. I can contest his claim then ; I shall have something to go on. And you must have proofs of his illegitimacy if you will only give them. But there will be no chance if you uphold him to the last, and if — and if you — die — without speaking.' Mr. Tempest made no answer except to look his brother steadily in the face.

The look was sufficient. It said plainly enough, ' That is what I mean to do.' Colonel Tempest lost all hope, but despair made one final clutch — a last desperate appeal to his brother's feelings. It is one of the misfortunes of self-centred people that their otherwise convenient habit of disregarding what is passing in the minds of others leads them to trample on their feelings at the very moment when most desirous of turning them to their own account. Colonel Tempest, with the best intentions of a pure self-interest, trampled heavily. ' Pass me over — cut me out,' he said, with a vague inappreciation of points of law. ' I'll sign anything you please; but let the little chap have it — let Archie have it — Di's son.' There was a silence that might be felt. Approach ing Death seemed to make a stride in those few breathless seconds ; but it seemed also as if a determined will were holding him momentarily at arm's length.

Mr. Tempest turned his fading face towards his brother. His eyes were unflinching, but his voice was almost inaudible. ' Leave me,' he said. ' John succeeds !' The blood rushed to Colonel Tempest's head, and then seemed to ebb away from his heart. A sudden horror took him of some subtle change that was going forward in the room, and, seeing all was lost, he hastily left it. The two boys had fraternized meanwhile. Each, it appeared, was collecting coins, and Archie gave a glowing account of the cabinet his father had given him to put them in. John kept his in an old sock, which he solemnly produced, and the time was happily passed in licking the most important coins, to give them a momentary brightness, and in comparing notes upon them. John was sorry when Colonel Tempest came hurriedly down the gallery and carried Archie off before he had time to say good-bye, or to offer him his best coin, which he had hot in his hand with a view to presentation.

Before he had time to gather up his collection, the old doctor came to him, and told him, very gravely and kindly, that his father wished to see him. John nodded, and put down the sock at once. He was a person of few words, and, though he longed to ask a question now, he asked it with his eyes only. John's deep-set eyes were very dark and melancholy. Could it be that his mother's remorse had left its trace in the young unconscious eyes of her child ? Their beauty somewhat redeemed the square ugliness of the rest of his face. The doctor patted him on the head, and led him gently to Mr. Tempest's door. ' Go in and speak to him,' he said. ' Do not be afraid. I shall be in the next room all the time.' ' I am not afraid,' said John, drawing himself up, and he went quietly across the great oak-panelled room and stood at the bedside.

There was a look of tension in Mr. Tempest's face and hands, as if he were holding on tightly to something which, did he once let go, he would never be able to regain. 'John,' he said, in an acute whisper. ' Yes, father.' The child's face was pale and his eyes looked awed, but they met Mr. Tempest's bravely. ' Try and listen to what I am going to say, and remember it. You are a very little boy now, but you will hold a great position some day— when you are a man. You will be the head of the family. Tempest is one of the oldest names in England. Remember what I say ' — the whisper seemed to break and ravel down under the intense strain put on it to a single quivering strand — ' remember — you will understand it when you are older. It is a great trust put into your hands. When you grow into a man, much will be expected of you.

Never dis grace your name ; it stands high. Keep it up— keep it up.' The whisper seemed to die away altogether, but an iron will forced it momentarily back to the gray toiling lips. ' You are the head of the family ; do your duty by it. You will have no one much to help you. I shall not — be there. You must learn to be an upright, honourable gentleman by yourself. Do you understand?' 'Yes, father.' ' And you will — remember ? 'Yes, father.' If the lip quivered, the answer came nevertheless. ' That is all ; you can go.' The child hesitated. ' Good-night,' he said gravely, advancing a step nearer. The sun was still streaming across the room, but it seemed to him, as he looked at the familiar, unfamiliar face, that it was night already. ' Don't kiss me,' said the dying man. ' Good night.' And the child went.

Mr. Tempest sighed heavily, and relaxed his hold on the consciousness that was ready to slip away from him, and wander feebly out he knew not whither. Hours and voices came and went. His own voice had gone down into silence before him. It was still broad daylight, but the casement was slowly growing 'a glimmering square,' and he observed it. Presently it flickered — glimmered — and went out. CHAPTER HI. ' As the foolish moth returning To its Moloch, and its burning, Wheeling nigh, and ever nigher. Falls at last into the fire, Flame in flame ; So the soul that doth begin Making orbits round a sin, Ends the same.' It was a sultry night in June, rather more than a year after Mr. Tempest's death. An action had been brought by Colonel Tempest directly after his brother's death, when the will was proved in which Mr. Tempest bequeathed everything in his power to bequeath to his ' son John.' The action failed ; no one except Colonel Tempest had ever been sanguine that it would succeed.

Colonel Tempest was unable to support an assertion of which few did not recog nise the probable truth. The long-delayed blow fell at last A verdict was given in favour of the little schoolboy. ' I'm sorry for you, I am indeed,' said Mr. Swayne, composedly watching Colonel Tempest flinging him self about his little room, into which the latter had just rushed, nearly beside himself at the decision of a bribed and perjured court. Mr. Swayne was a stout, florid-looking man be tween forty and fifty, with a heavy face like a grimace that someone else had made, who laboured under the delusion, unshared by any of his fellow-creatures, that he was a gentleman. In what class he had been born no one knew. What he was now anyone could see for himself. He was generally considered by the men with whom he associated a good fellow for an ally in a disreputable pinch, and a blackguard when the pinch was over.

Everyone regarded Dandy Swayne with contempt, but for all that ' The Snow drop,' as he was playfully called, might be seen in the chambers and at the dinners of men far above him in the social scale, who probably for very good reasons tolerated his presence, and for even better reviled him behind his back. He had a certain shrewdness and knowledge of the seamy side of human nature which stood him in good stead. He was a noted billiard-player — a little too noted, perhaps. His short, thick ringed hands did not mind much what they fastened on. He was not troubled by conscientious scruples. The charm of Dandy Swayne's character was that he stuck at nothing. He would go down an}' sewer provided there was money in it, and money there always was somewhere in everything he took in hand. Dandy Swayne's career had had strange ups and downs.

No one knew how he lived. The private fortune on which he was wont to enlarge of course existed only in his own imagination Sometimes he disappeared entirely for longer or shorter periods — generally after money transactions of a nature that required privacy and foreign travel. But the same Providence which tempers the wind to the shorn lamb watches over the shearer also, and he always reappeared again, sooner or later, with his creased white waistcoat and yesterday's gardenia, and the old swagger that endeared him to his fellow-creatures. He was up in the world just now, living ' in style ' in smart chambers strewn with photographs of actresses, and littered with cheap expensive furni ture, and plush hangings redolent of smoke and stale scent, among which Colonel Tempest was knocking about in his disordered evening dress. ' I'm sorry for you, Colonel,' repeated Mr. Swayne slowly ; ' but I wish to you'd sit down and not rush up and down like that.

It's not a bit of good taking on in that way, though it's luck all the same.' Mr. Swayne's conversation was devoid of that severe simplicity which society demands ; indeed, it was so encrusted and enriched with ornamental gems of expression of a surprising and dubious character, that to present his conversation to the reader without the personal peculiarities of his choice of language is to do him an injustice which, however unavoidable, is much to be regretted. Mr. Swayne's conversation without his oaths might be compared to a bird without its feathers ; the body is there, but all individuality and beauty of contour is gone. Mr. Swayne filled his glass and pushed the bottle across to his friend, whose flushed face and shaking hand showed that he had had enough already. Colonel Tempest sat down impatiently and filled his glass too. ' It's the will that did it, I suppose,' suggested Mr. Swayne ; ' that tipped it over.' ' Yes,' said Colonel Tempest, striking his clenched hand on the table. ' My son John he called him in his will when he left him the personalty ; there was no getting over that.

He knew it when he put those words in. He knew I should contest the succession to the estates, and he hated me so that he perjured himself to keep me out of my own, and stuck to it even on his death-bed. John is no more his son than you are. A little dark Fane, that is what he is. They say he takes after his mother's family. He well may do, him !' Mr. Swayne sympathetically echoed the sentiment in a varied but not less forcible form of speech. ' And my son,' continued Colonel Tempest, his fair weak face whitening with passion — ' you know my boy ; look at him — a Tempest to the backbone, down to his finger-nails. You can't look at him among the pictures in the gallery and not see he is bone of their bone and flesh of their flesh. He is as like the Vandyke of Amyas Tempest the cavalier as he can be.

It drives me mad to think of him cut out by a bastard !' Mr. Swayne appeared to be in a meditative turn of mind. He watched the smoke of his cigar curl upwards from the unshaved crater of his lip into the air. ' You're in the tail, I suppose ?' he remarked at last. ' Of course I am. If my brother John died without children, everything was to come to me and my heirs. My brother had only a life-interest in the place.' ' Then I don't see how he was to blame, doing as he did, if it was entailed all along on his son.' Mr. Swayne spoke with a certain cautious interest. ' He never had a son. If he had disowned his wife's child, everything would have come to me.' ' Lor !' said Mr. Swayne, ' I did not understand it was so near as that. Then this little chap, this John, he's all that stands between you and the pro perty, is he ?

Failing him, it still comes to you ?' Mr. Swayne's small tightlywedged eyes, with the expression of dissipated boot-buttons, were beginning to show a gleam of professional interest. ' Yes, it would ; but John won't fail,' said Colonel Tempest savagely. ' He will keep us out. We shall be as poor as rats as long as we live, and shall see him chucking our money right and left !' and Colonel Tempest, who was by this time hardly responsible for what he said, ground his teeth and cursed his enemy in a paroxysm of rage and drink. Mr. Swayne observed him attentively. ' Don't take on so, Colonel,' he remarked sooth ingly. ' Dear me ! what's a little boy ? — What's a little boy here or there,' he continued meditatively, ' one more or one less ? There's a sight of little kids in the world — some wanted, some not.

I've known cases, Colonel ' — here he fixed his eyes on the ceiling — ' cases with parents, maybe, singing up in heaven and takin' no notice, when little chaps that weren't wanted, that nobody took to, seemed to — meet with an accident, get snuffed out by mistake.' ' John won't meet with an accident,' said Colonel Tempest passionately. ' I wish to he would !' ' I look at it this way,' said Mr. Swayne philo sophically. ' There's things gentlemen can do, and there's things they can't. A gentleman is a party that can't do his dirty work for himself, though as often as not he has a deal on his hands that must be shoved through somehow. The thing is to find parties who'll take what I call a personal interest, if it's made worth their while. Now about this little boy, that no one wants, and is a comfort to nobody.

It's quite curious the things little boys will do ; out in boats alone, outriggers now, as dangerous as can be, or leaning out of railway carriages in tunnels. Lor ! you never know what they won't be up to, little rascals ! They're made of mischief. Forty thousand a year, is it, he is keeping you out of, and yours by right ? Well, I don't say anything about that ; but all I say is, I have friends I can find that are open to a bet. What's the harm of betting a thousand pounds to one sovereign that you never come into the property ? It ain't likely, as you say. What's the harm of a bet, provided you don't mind risking your money ? Let's say, just for the sake of — -of argument, that there was ten bets — ten bets at a thousand to one that you never come in. Ten thousand pounds to pay, if you come in after all.