Diana Tempest | Page 8

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 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. Approaching 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,'