Read Ebook: Godey's Lady's Book Vol. 48 January 1854 by Various Hale Sarah Josepha Buell Editor

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Ebook has 114 lines and 6783 words, and 3 pages

Di did not answer.

"You know the wood below the house," he went on. "When I saw it last all the rhododendrons were out."

"I have never seen Overleigh," said Di, looking at the lilies again, and trying to speak unconcernedly. She knew Lord Hemsworth's tiresome old Border castle. She had visited at many historic houses. She and Mrs. Courtenay were going to some shortly. But her own family place, the one house of all others in the whole world which she would have cared to see, she had never seen. She had often heard about it from acquaintances, had looked wistfully at drawings of it in illustrated magazines, had questioned Mrs. Courtenay and Archie about it, had wandered in imagination in its long gallery, and down the lichened steps from the postern in the wall, that every artist vignetted, to the stone-flagged Italian gardens below. But with her bodily eyes she had never beheld it, and the longing returned at intervals. It had returned now.

"Will you come and see it?" said John, looking away from her. It seemed to him that he was playing a game in which he had staked heavily, against some one who had staked nothing, who was not even conscious of playing, and might inadvertently knock over the board at any moment. He felt as if he had noiselessly pushed forward his piece, and as if everything depended on the withdrawal of his hand from it unobserved.

"I have wished to see Overleigh from a child," said Di, flushing a little. "Think what you feel about it, and my father, and our grandfather. Well--I am a Tempest too."

John was vaguely relieved. He glanced from her to the Gainsborough in the feathered hat that hung behind her. There was just a touch of resemblance under the unlikeness, a look in the pose of the head, in its curled and powdered wig that had reminded him of Di before. It reminded him of her more than ever now.

"Archie has been to Overleigh so constantly that I had not realized you had never seen it," said John. "But I suppose you were not grown up in those days; and since you grew up I have been abroad."

"Shall you go abroad again?"

"No. I have given up my secretaryship. I have come back to England for good."

"I am glad of that."

"I have been away too long as it is."

"Yes," said Di. "I have often thought so."

"Why?"

There was a pause.

"My father never did anything," said John.

"No. I have always heard he had brains, but that he let things go because he was unhappy. Just the reason for holding on to them all the tighter, I should have thought, wouldn't you?"

"Not with some people. Some people can't do anything if there is no one to be glad when they have done it. I partly understand the feeling."

"I don't," said Di. "I mean, I do, but I don't understand giving in to it, and letting a little bit of personal unhappiness, which will die with one, prevent one's being a good useful link in a chain. One owes that to the chain."

"Yes," said John. "And yet I know he had a very strong feeling of responsibility from what he said to me on his death-bed. I have often thought about him since, and tried to piece together all the little fragments I can remember of him; but I think there is no one I can understand less than my own father. He seemed a hard cold man, and yet that face is neither hard nor cold."

John pointed to a picture behind her, and Di rose and turned to look at it.

It was an interesting refined face, destitute of any kind of good looks, except those of high breeding. The eyes had a certain thoughtful challenge in them. The lips were thin and firm.

Both gazed in silence for a moment.

"He looks as if he might have been one of those quiet equable people who may be pushed into a corner," said Di, "and then become rather dangerous. I can imagine his being a harsh man, and an unforgiving one if life went wrong."

"I am afraid he did become that," said John. "As he could not find room for forgiveness, there was naturally no room for happiness either."

"Was there some one whom he could not forgive?" asked Di, turning her keen glance upon him. She evidently knew nothing of the feud of the last generation.

At this moment the rush of James the elephant-footed was heard, and he announced that Mrs. Courtenay was getting into the carriage, and had sent for Miss Tempest.

"Good-bye," said Di, cordially, gathering up her gloves and parasol. "Go to Overleigh and get strong. And--you will have so many other things to think of--try not to forget about asking us."

"I will remember," said John, as if he would make a point of burdening his memory.

He was holding aside the curtain for her to pass.

"You see," said Di, looking back, "when we are on the move we can do things, but once we get back to London we cannot go north again till next year. We can't afford it."

"I will be sure to remember," said John again. He was a little crestfallen, and yet relieved that she should think he might forget. He felt that he could trust his memory.

She smiled gratefully and was gone. She had forgotten to shake hands with him. He knew she had not been aware of the omission. She had been thinking of something else at the moment. But it remained a grievous fact all the same.

He walked back absently into the drawing-room and stopped opposite the tea-table.

"Vinegar," he said to himself. "What can James have been about? I draw the line at vinegar at five o'clock tea. I hope she did not see it."

He took out the glass stopper.

Not vinegar. No. There is but one name for that familiar, that searching smell.

"It's brandy," said John aloud, speaking to himself, while the past unrolled itself like a map before his eyes. "Yes, look at it. Would you like to smell it again? There is no need to be so surprised. You had some of it not ten minutes ago, you poor deluded, blinded, bandaged idiot."

Mrs. Courtenay made no attempt to guess, which was the more remarkable because, when Miss Fane had ordered a cup of tea for Di, James had volunteered the information that he had already taken tea to Mr. and Miss Tempest.

"Whom but John himself," continued Di.

"I thought he was still invisible."

"I am sure he ought to be. I never saw any one look so ill. We had tea together. I really thought you were never going away at all, but I was glad you were such a long time, because it was so pleasant seeing him again. I like John; don't you? I have liked him from the first."

"He is a sensible man, but I prefer people with easier manners myself."

"He is more than sensible, I think."

"We shall be too late for the pony races," said Mrs. Courtenay. "It is nearly six now, and I told Lord Hemsworth we would be at the entrance at half-past five."

"He will survive it," said Di, archly. "And, granny, John is going to ask us to Overleigh. I told him I had never seen it."

"I am not sure I did not," said Di, unfurling her parasol. "Look, granny, there is Mrs. Buller nodding to you, and you won't look at her. Yes, I rather think I did. I can't remember exactly what I said, but he promised he would not forget, and I told him we could only come when we were on the move. I impressed that upon him."

"Really, Di," said Mrs. Courtenay with asperity, "I wish you would prevent your parasol catching in my bonnet, and not offer visits without consulting me. It would have been quite time enough to have gone when he had asked us."

"He might not have asked us."

Mrs. Courtenay, who had seen a good deal of John in the weeks that preceded his accident, was perhaps of a different opinion; but she did not express it. Neither did she mention her own previously fixed intention of going to Overleigh somehow or other during the course of her summer visits.

"What is the use of near relations," continued Di, "if you can't tell them anything of that kind? I believe John will be quite pleased to have us now that he knows we wish to come; if only he remembers. Come, granny, if I take you to Archelot to please you, you ought to take me to Overleigh to please me. That's fair now, isn't it?"

"It may be extremely inconvenient," said Mrs. Courtenay, still ruffled. "And I had rheumatism last time I was there."

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