Diana Tempest Volume I Part 17

For Mr. Swayne was changed. He was within a measurable distance of being unrecognizable. That evidently would be the next alteration not for the better in him. Already he was slow to recognize others. He was sitting up in bed, swearing and scratching tearfully at the wall-paper. He looked stouter than ever, but as if he might collapse altogether at a pin p.r.i.c.k, and shrivel down to a wrinkled nothing among the creases of his tumbled bedding.

Mrs. Swayne regarded her prostrate lord with arms akimbo. Possibly she considered that her part of the agreement, to love and to cherish Mr.

Swayne, and honour and obey Mr. Swayne, was now at an end, as death was so plainly about to part them. At any rate, she appeared indisposed to add any finis.h.i.+ng touches to her part of the contract. Mr. Swayne had, in all probability, put in his finis.h.i.+ng touches with such vigour, that possibly a remembrance of them accounted for a certain absence of solicitude on the part of his helpmeet.

"Who's this? Who's this? Who's this?" said Mr. Swayne in a rapid whisper, perceiving his visitor, and peering out of the gloom with a bloodshot furtive eye. "Dear, dear, dear! ... Mary ... I'm busy ... I'm pressed for time. Take him away. Quite away; quite away."

Mr. Swayne had been a man of few and evil words when in health. His recording angel would now need a knowledge of shorthand. This sudden flow of language fairly staggered Colonel Tempest.

"I must have out those bonds," he went on, forgetting his visitor again instantly. "I can't lay my hand on 'em, but I've got 'em somewhere. Top left-hand drawer of the walnut escritoire. I know I have 'em. I'll make him bleed. Top left-hand. No, no, no. Where was it, then? Lock's stiff;----the lock. Break it. I say I will have 'em."

As he spoke he tore from under the pillow a little footstool, having the remnant of a frayed dog, in blue beads, worked upon it, a conjugal attention no doubt on the part of Mrs. Swayne, to raise the sick man's head.

And Mr. Swayne, after endeavouring to unlock the dog's tail, smote savagely upon it, and sank back with chattering teeth.

"That's the way he goes on," said Mrs. Swayne. "Mornin', noon, and night. Never a bit of peace, except when he gets into his prayin' fits.

I expect he'll go off in one of them tantrums."

It did not appear unlikely that he would "go off" then and there, but after a few moments a sort of ghastly life seemed to return. Even death did not appear to take to him. He opened his eyes, and looked round bewildered. Then his head fell forward.

"Now's yer time," said the woman. "Before he gets up steam for another of them rages. Parson comes and twitters a bit when he's in this way; and he'll pray very heavy while he recollects hisself, until he goes off again. He'll be better now for a spell," and she left the room, and creaked ponderously downstairs again. Colonel Tempest advanced a step nearer the lair on which poor Swayne was taking his last rest but one, and said faintly:

"Swayne. I say, Swayne. Rouse up."

The only things that roused up were Swayne's eyelids. These certainly trembled a little.

In the next house the accordion was beginning a new tune, was designating Jerusalem as its ha-appy home.

Apprehensive terror for himself as usual overcame other feelings. It overcame in this instance the unspeakable repugnance Colonel Tempest felt to approaching any nearer. He touched the prostrate man on the shoulder with the slender white hand which had served him so exclusively from boyhood upwards, which had never wavered in its fidelity to him to do a hand's turn for others, which shrinkingly did his bidding now.

"Wake up, Swayne," repeated Colonel Tempest, actually stooping over him.

"Wake up, for----," he was going to add "heaven's sake;" but the thought of heaven in connection with Swayne seemed inappropriate; and he altered it to "for mercy's sake," which sounded just as well.

"Is it the parson?" asked Swayne feebly, in a more natural voice.

"No, no," said Colonel Tempest rea.s.suringly. "It's only me, a friend.

It's Colonel Tempest."

"I wish it _was_ the parson," repeated Swayne, seeming to emerge somewhat from his torpor. "He might have come and let off a few more prayers for me. He says it's all right if I repent, and I suppose he knows; but it don't seem likely. Don't seem as if G.o.d _could_ be greened quite as easy as parson makes out. I should have liked to throw off a few more prayers so as to be on the safe side," and he began to mutter incoherently.

As a man lives so, it is said, he generally dies. Swayne seemed to remain true to his own interests, only his aspect of those interests had altered. He felt the awkwardness of going into court absolutely unprepared. Prayer was cheap if it could do what he wanted, and he had had professional advice as to its efficacy. A man who all his life can grovel before his fellow-creatures, may as well do a little grovelling before his Creator at the last, if anything is to be got by it.

It is to the credit of human nature that, as a rule, men even of the lowest type feel the uselessness, the degradation, of trying to annul their past on their deathbeds. But to Swayne, who had never shone as a credit to human nature, a chance remained a chance. He was a gambler and a swindler, a man who had risked long odds, and had been made rich and poor by the drugging of a horse, or the forcing of a card. If, in his strict attention to never losing a chance, he had inadvertently mislaid his soul, he was not likely to be aware of it. But a _chance_ was a thing he had never so far failed to take advantage of. He was taking his last now.

Colonel Tempest looked at him in horror. The interests of the two men clashed, and at a vital moment.

"For G.o.d's sake don't pray now, Swayne," said Colonel Tempest, appealingly, as Swayne began to mutter something more. "I've come to set wrong right, and that will be a great deal better than any prayers; do you more good in the end."

Swayne did not seem to understand. He looked in a perplexed manner at Colonel Tempest.

"I don't appear to fetch it out right," he said. "But it's in the Prayer-book on the mantelpiece. That's what our parson reads out of. You get it, colonel; just get it quick, and pray 'em off one after another.

It don't matter much which. They're all good."

"Swayne," said Colonel Tempest, in utter desperation, "I'll do anything; I'll--pray as much as you like afterwards, if you will only give me up those papers you have against me--those bets."

"What?" said Swayne, a gleam of the old professional interest flickering into his face. "You han't got the money?"

"Yes. Here, here!" and Colonel Tempest tore the banker's note out of his pocket-book, and held it before Swayne's eyes.

"I was to have had twenty-five per cent. commission," said Swayne, rallying perceptibly at the thought. "Twenty-five per cent. on each. I wouldn't let 'em go at less. Two thousand five hundred I should have made. But"--with a sudden restless relapse--"it's no use thinking of that now. Get down the book, colonel."

But for once Colonel Tempest was firm.

Perhaps his indignation against Swayne's egotism enabled him to be so.

He made Swayne understand that business must in this instance come first, and prayers afterwards. It was a compact; not the first between the two.

"The papers," he repeated over and over again, frantic at the speed with which the last links of Swayne's memory seemed falling from him. "Where are they? You have them with you, of course? Tell me where they are?"

and he grasped the dying man by the shoulder.

Swayne was frightened back to some semblance of effort.

"I haven't got 'em," he gasped. "The--the--the chaps engaged in the business have 'em."

"But you know who have got them?"

"Yes, of course. It's all written down somewhere."

"Where?"

But Swayne "did not rightly know." He had the addresses in cipher somewhere, but he could not put his hand upon them. Half wild with fear, Colonel Tempest searched the pockets of the clothes that lay about the room, holding up their contents for Swayne to look at. It was like some hideous game of hide-and-seek. But the latter only shook his head.

"I have 'em somewhere," he repeated, "and there was a change not so long ago. When was it? May. There's one of 'em written down in cipher in my pocket-book in May, I know that."

"Here. This one?" said Colonel Tempest, holding out a greasy pocket-book.

"That's it," said Swayne. "Some time in May."

Colonel Tempest turned to the month, and actually found a page with a faint pencil scrawl in cipher across it.

"That's him," said Swayne. "James Larkin," and he read out a complicated address without difficulty.

"Will that find him?" asked Colonel Tempest, his hand shaking so much that he could hardly write down Swayne's words.

"If it's to his advantage it will."

"For certain?"

"Certain."

"And the others?"