Diana Tempest | Page 3

dark by the black fireplace with her head in her hands. A great deal of darkness 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 supposed she would reproach him. He had not yet realized that the day of reproaches and appeals, very bitter while it lasted, was long past, years past. The silence of those who have loved us is sometimes eloquent as a tombstone of that which has been buried beneath it.
The room was very cold. A faint smell of warm indiarubber and a molehill in the middle of the bed showed that a hot bottle was found more economical than coal.
'Why on earth don't you have a fire?' he asked, still standing in the doorway, personally aggrieved at her economies. Di's economies had often been the subject of 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 herself of this fault of late years, but it cropped up now and again, especially when he returned home unexpectedly, as to-day, and found only mutton chops for dinner.
'It was the coal bill that the man came about this evening,' she said apathetically; and then the peculiar distressed look giving place to a more human expression, as she suddenly became aware of the reproach her words implied, she added quickly, 'but I am not the least cold, thanks.'
Still he lingered ; a sense of ill-usage generally needs expression.
'Why did you not come back to the drawing-room again?'
There was no answer.
'I must say you have a knack of making a man's home uncommonly pleasant for him.'
Still no answer. Perhaps there were none left. One may come to an end of answers sometimes, like other things--money, for instance.
'Is my breakfast ordered for half-past seven, sharp?'
'Yes.'
'Poached eggs?'
'Yes, and stewed kidneys. I hope they will be right this time. And I've told Martha to call you at seven punctually.'
'All right. Good-night.'
'Good-night.'
That had been their parting in this world, Colonel Tempest remembered bitterly, for he had been too much hurried next morning to run up to say goodbye before starting for Scotland. Those had been the last words his wife had spoken to him, the woman for whom he had given up his liberty. So much for woman's love and tenderness.
And as the train went heavily on its way, he recalled, in spite of himself, the last home-coming after that month's fishing, and the fog that he shot into as he neared King's Cross on that dull April morning six 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 as he came in, and he recognised the drawn, haggard face of Mrs. Courtenay, his wife's mother, whom he had never seen in his house before, and who now spoke to him for the first time since her daughter's marriage.
'Is that you?' she said quietly, her face twitching. 'I did not know where you were. You have a daughter, Colonel Tempest, of a few hours old.'
He raised his eyebrows.
'And Di?' he asked. 'Pretty comfortable?'
The question was a concession to custom on Colonel Tempest's part, for, like others of his enlightened views, he was of course aware that the pains of childbirth are as nothing compared to the twinge of gout in the masculine toe.
'Diana,' said the elder woman, with concentrated passion, as she passed him to leave the room--'Diana, thank God, is dead!'
He had never forgiven Mrs. Courtenay for that speech. He remembered even now with a shudder of acute self-pity all he had gone through during the days that followed, and the silent reproach of the face that even in death wore a look not of rest, but of a weariness stern and patient, and a courage that has looked to the end and can wait.
And when Mrs. Courtenay had written to offer to take the little Diana off his hands altogether provided he would lay no claim to her later on, he had refused with indignation. He would not be parted from his children. But the child was delicate and wailed perpetually, and he wanted to get rid of the house, and of all that reminded him of a past which 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 and Di, with her bassinette and the minute feather stitched wardrobe that her mother