His brother had not sent for him. Colonel Tempest was hazarding an
unsolicited visit. He had announced his intention of coming, but he had
received no permission to do so. Nevertheless he had actually screwed
up his weak and vacillating nature to the sticking point of putting
himself and his son into the train when the morning arrived that he had
fixed on for going to Overleigh.
"For the sake of the old name, and for the sake of the boy," he said to
himself, looking at the delicate regular profile silhouetted against the
window-pane. If Archie had had a pair of wings folded underneath his
little great-coat, he would have made a perfect model for an angel, with
his fair hair and face, and the sweet serious eyes that contemplated,
without any change of expression, his choir book at chapel, or the last
grappling contortions of a cockroach, ingeniously transfixed to the
book-ledge with a pin, to relieve the monotony of the sermon.
"Overleigh! Overleigh! Overleigh!" called out a porter, as the train
stopped. Colonel Tempest started. There already! How long it was since
he had got out at that station! There was a new station-master, and the
station itself had been altered. He looked at the little red tin shelter
erected on the off-side with an alien eye. It had not been there in
_his_ time. There was no carriage to meet him, although he had mentioned
the train by which he intended to arrive. His heart sank a little as he
took Archie by the hand and set out to walk. The distance was nothing,
for the station had been made specially for the convenience of the
Tempests, and lay within a few hundred yards of the castle gates. But
the omen was a bad one. Would his mission fail?
How unchanged everything was! He seemed to remember every stone upon the
road. There was the turn up to the village, and the low tower of the
church peering through the haze of the April trees. They passed through
the old Italian gates--there was a new woman at the lodge to open
them--and entered the park. Archie drew in his breath. He had never seen
deer at large before. He supposed his uncle must keep a private
zoological gardens on a large scale, and his awe of him increased.
"Are the lions and the tigers loose too?" he inquired, with grave
interest, but without anxiety, as his eyes followed a little band of
fallow deer skimming across the turf.
"There are no lions and tigers, Archie," said his father, tightening his
clasp on the little hand. If Colonel Tempest had ever loved anything, it
was his son.
They had come to a turn in the broad white road which he knew well. He
stopped and looked. High on a rocky crag, looking out over its hanging
woods and gardens, the old grey castle stood, its long walls and solemn
towers outlined against the sky. The flag was flying.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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