Diana Tempest | Page 8

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 himself; and
stopped short with a jarred sense as he saw his own long feeble hands
laid upon the counterpane. 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, handsome face of the 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
circumstances, and being consequently unsuited to any others. Mr.
Tempest, who had not prepared anything, 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 vindictive! 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 appropriate 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