Diana Tempest, Volume I (of 3)

man must be a Nonc

state in the round room in the western tower, and was buried at midnight by torchlight in the

come a butler with a footman under him; and the other servants, too, seemed to melt away, leaving only Mitty, and Mr. Parker, and Mrs. Alcock, in the

n that children are not to be deceived? John was very courteous, even as a boy, but his best friends could not say of him, at that or at any later period of his life, that he was engaging. He had, through life, a cold manner. No one had supposed, what really was the case, namely, that he would have given his body to be burned for the sake of the kind, cheerful young man who had taken an easy fancy to him on his arriva

ouse was empty, but for the servants and the trained nurse. The doctor, who came several times a day, always found him sitting on the stairs, or appearing stealthily from an upper landing, working himself down by the balusters. He said very little, but the doctor seemed to understand the situation, and always had a kind and encouraging word for him,

n master's youngest daughter, came for John, but they were unopened. The next day brought th

erately and went into the drawing-room. Two of the doctors were sit

e was saying emphatic

of the enormity of the crime he was committing in interrupting a consultation. He tried t

for a last warm. They were very kind. They were not jocose with him, as is the horrible way of some elder persons with childhood's troubles. The old doctor who came

s convinced there was so

said the man who was in a hurry, a

patting John's shoulder. "Tom and Edward. They are making a little

nk you," said John

would like to show it you, I know. I could send you back in the carriage w

ost inaudibly, "you are ve

d it was a polite way of saying he would rather not go. The other doctor laughed, but not unkindly, a

s that fly under water at the Zoo?" he in

said

eding time, mid-day. And my nephew, Harry Austin, who is twenty-one and at college, went with them, and said he would not hav

you," s

shook hands with

said the younger one as they went d

him. There's grit in him, and he watches outside that room like a dog. I

reboding of some horrible calamity was upon him. And yet-and yet-they had said he was going to get bett

good-natured young footman, to the "Christian Minstrels." But he lay awake all night, and in the morning after breakfast he crept noiselessly back to the stairs. It was a fog

to her colleague. "I can't a-bear the thought of the o

sters. His heart gave one thro

he told me herself. She says she's never seen such a case all her born days. They'v

erstood

nt. He might be found there. George might come in to see if he would fancy a game of battledore and shuttle-cock, or the cook might step up with a little cake, or the but

rcely cold. Bands of yellow fog peered in over the tops of the shutters. The room had been prepared the day before for the consu

another, but the dust sheet told no tales. He dragged it down with him on to the floor and bit into the wet, cobwebby material. And by degrees the paroxysm passed. The power to keep silence returned. At

ere no

if you like. You divided the Red Sea. Remember all your plagues. Oh, God! God! make something happen. There's half an hour still. Think of

nswer. He waited a long time, but no one spoke. The fog deepened ou

one-the other one. He is so clever, he could soon learn to write with his left, and perhaps hooks

and over again in an agony of su

k-boys were crying in the streets

th; not both!" gasped John, and

seized upon him. He stole out of the drawing-room, and sped swiftly upstairs. On the landing opposite Mr. Goodwin's room the butler was standing listening. Everything was quite still. John could hear the gas burnin

rse inarticulate sound, which se

rawing-room, and crouched down on the floor near the open door, turning his face to the wall. Every now and then a strong shudder passed over him, and he beat his little black head dumbly against the wall. But he did not m

he said, clutc

by the sudden onslaught, and looking down at

h ha

tor hes

I am grieved to say it is

d again as long as I liv

putting out his hand to catch him as he reeled back

where they had now been established nearly seven years. Whether John's was an affectionate nature or not it would be hard to say, for affection had so far intermeddled little with his life; but he had a kind of faithfulness, and a memory of the heart as well as of the head. John never forgot a kindness, never wholly forgot an injury. He might forgive one, for he showed as he grew towards man's estate, and passed through the various vicissitudes of school and college life, a certain stern generosity of temper, and contempt for small retaliations. He was certainly not revengeful, but-he remembered. His

ature which sat at his feet. But John did not sit long. Mr. Goodwin was aghast at the way in which the little chains and check-strings of his scheme of salvation were snapped like thread when John began to rise to his feet. An influence misused, if once shaken, is lost for ever. John went away like a young Samson, taking the poor weaver's inadequate beam wi

to see inefficiently taken up only for the sake of refutation. When the spirit moved him John could be suddenly eloquent, but the spirit very seldom did. As a rule he saw both sides with equal clearness, and could be forced into partisanship on neither. Those who expected he would make a brilliant speaker in the House of Commons would probably be disappointed in him. It was remarkable, conside

s on those who have sufficient strength not only to resist its baneful influence, but also to realize its hopes. The effect of the expectation of others on many minds is to draw into greater activity t

into fixed resolution and self-reliance; turns sloth into energy, earnestness into action, and goads diffidence up the hill of achievement

, had not as yet fallen into either of these two extremes, it was probably because what others might happen

ng man he gave signs, and an openness of mind which encouraged while it ought to have disheartened proselytism, all these attributes had made him an object of interest and importance, which would have ruined a more self-conscious man. As it was, he listened, got to the bottom of the subject, whatever

tellect might be broken, and John might one day be moved to return from the desert and husks and the sw-- philosophy of free thought to his father's home. He sai

They regard it invariably as a voluntary desertion, not of their form of religion, but of religion itself for private ends, or from a sense of irksomeness. Mr. Goodwin had reproachfully suggested that John had got into "a bad set" at Oxford, and was

counsels, the old, old counsels that fortunately always come too late-that are worse than none, because they appeal to motives of self

eacher, who was so quick to believe evil o

. Goodwin included. He wants me to remain a child always. He would break my mind to pieces now if he could, and would offer up the little bits to God. He thinks the voice of God in the heart is a temptation

listening Son, but they shrink from recognizing the same voice speaking in their hearts now, completing all that has gone before. And so the point of life is missed. The individual life, namely, the life of Christ-obedient not to Scripture, but to the Giver of the Scripture-is not lived. The life Christ led-at variance with the recognized faiths and fashionable opinions of the day, at variance just because it did not conform to a dead ritual, just because it was obedient throughout to a personal prompting-that life is not more tolerated to-day than it was eighteen hundred years ago. The Church will have none o

n knew that, from being "the friend of the inner, he had become only the companion of the outer life" of the person he cared for most in the world, and the ways of Providence appeared to him inscrutable. And now Mr. Goodwin understood John even less at seven and twenty than at twenty-one. The conception of the possibility of a mind that after being strongly influenced by a succession of the most "dangerous" teachers and b

y look for it in Bibles, in the minds of anxious friends who turn over everything to help them, in the face of Nature, who betrays the knowledge of the secret in her eyes, but who utters it not. And last of all a remnant of the m