Diana Tempest | Page 5

looking out over its
hanging woods and gardens, the old gray castle stood, its long walls
and solemn towers outlined against the sky. The flag was flying.
'He is still alive,' said Colonel Tempest, remembering a certain
home-coming long ago, when, as he galloped up the steep winding
drive, even as he rode, the flag dropped half-mast high before his eyes,
and he knew his father was dead.
They had reached the ascent of the castle, and Colonel Tempest turned
from the broad road, and struck into a little path that clambered
upwards towards the gardens through the hanging woods. It was a short
cut to the house. It was here he had first seen Diana, and he pondered

over the fidelity of mind which, after fourteen years, could remember
the exact spot. There was the wooden bridge over the stream 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 sever years later. The cold, dark London bedroom, the bowed
figure in the low chair, the fatigued smell of tepid indiarubber. What a
gulf between the radiant young girl and the woman with the white
exhausted face! Alas for the many parts a woman may have to play in
her time to one and the same man! Colonel Tempest laughed harshly to
himself, and his powerful mind reverted to the old refrain, 'What fools
men are to marry!'
It had been summer when he had seen her first; but now it was early
spring. The woods were very silent. God was making a special
revelation in their heart, was turning over one more page of His New
Testament. He had walked once again in His garden, and at the touch of
His feet, all young sheaths and spears of growing 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 heard the whisper Ephphatha, and were opening one
after another their pure shy eyes. The arched neck of the young bracken
was showing among the brown ancestors of last year. The marsh
marigolds thronged the water's edge. Every battered dyke and rocky
scar was transfigured. God was once again making all things new.
Only a mole, high on its funeral twig, held out tiny human hands, worn
with honest toil, to its Maker, in mute protest against a steel death 'that
nature never made' for little agriculturists. Death was still in the world
apparently, side by side with the resurrection of the flowers. Archie
paused to glance contemptuously and shy a stick at 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 told by the servants that his brother
would not see him. Jack was quite capable of making himself
disagreeable to the last. Really, on the whole, perhaps the best course
would be to go down the hill again. It is always so much easier to go
down than to go up; so much pleasanter at the moment to avoid what
may be distasteful to a sensitive mind.
'Archie,' said Colonel Tempest.
The boy did not hear him. He was looking intently at a little patch of
ground near the garden-seat, which had evidently been carefully laid
out by a landscape-gardener of about his own age. Every hair of grass
or weed had been scratched up within the irregular wall of fir cones that
bounded the enclosure. Gray sand imported from a distance, possibly
from the brook, marked winding paths therein, in course of completion.
A sunk bucket with a squirt in it indicated an intention, as yet
unmatured, to add a fountain to the natural beauties of the site.
'You go in this way, father,' said Archie, grasping the situation with
becoming gravity, and pointing out the two oyster-shells that flanked
the main entrance, 'then you walk round the lake. Look; he has got a
duck ready. Oh, dear! and see, father here is