"My Dear Alice," he wrote—"I hear from Lesley that you are looking for a house. Would it not be better for us all if you made your home with me again? Things have changed since you left me, and I might now be better able to consult your tastes and wishes than I was then. We are both older and, I hope, wiser. Could we not manage to put aside some of our personal predilections and make a home together for our daughter? I use this argument because I believe it will have more weight with you than any other: at the same time, I may add that it is for my own sake, as well as for Lesley's, that I make the proposition. Your affectionate husband,"Caspar Brooke."
"My Dear Alice," he wrote—"I hear from Lesley that you are looking for a house. Would it not be better for us all if you made your home with me again? Things have changed since you left me, and I might now be better able to consult your tastes and wishes than I was then. We are both older and, I hope, wiser. Could we not manage to put aside some of our personal predilections and make a home together for our daughter? I use this argument because I believe it will have more weight with you than any other: at the same time, I may add that it is for my own sake, as well as for Lesley's, that I make the proposition. Your affectionate husband,
"Caspar Brooke."
It was an odd ending, he thought: he had certainly not shown himself an affectionate husband to her for many years. But there was truth in the epithet: little as she might believe it, or as it might appear. He would notstop to re-read the letter: he had said what he wanted to say, and she could read his meaning easily enough. He had held out the olive branch. It was for her to accept or reject it, as she would.
Lesley could not understand why he was so restless and apparently uneasy during the next few days. He seemed to be looking for something—expecting something—nobody knew what. He spent more time than usual with her, and took a new interest in her affairs. She did not know that he was trying to put himself into training for domestic life, and that he found it unexpectedly pleasant.
"What's this?" he said one day, picking up a scrap of paper that fell from a book that she held in her hand. "Not a letter, I think? Have you been making extracts?"
"No," said Lesley, blushing violently, but not trying to take the paper from him.
"May I see it? Oh, a sort of essay—description—impressions of London in a fog." He murmured a few of the words and phrases as he went on. "Why, this is very good. Here's the real literary touch. Where did you get this, Lesley? It's not half bad."
As she made no answer, he looked up and saw the guilty laughter in her eyes, the conscious blushes on her cheeks.
"You don't mean to say——"
"I only wrote it to amuse myself," said Lesley, meekly. "I've had so little to do since I came here, and I thought I would scribble down my impressions."
"My dear child," said Mr. Brooke, "if you can write as well as this, you ought to have a career before you. Why," he added, surveying her, "I had no idea of this. And I always did have a secret wish that a child of mine should take to literature. My dear——"
"But I don't want to take to literature, exactly," said Lesley, with a little gasp. "I only want to amuse myself sometimes—just when I feel inclined, if you don't think it a great waste of time——"
"Waste of time? Certainly not. Go on, by all means. I shall only ask to see what you do now and then; I might be able to give you a hint—though I don't know. Your style is very good already—wants a little compression, perhaps, but you can make sentences—that's a comfort." And Mr. Brooke fell to reading the manuscript again, with a very pleased look upon his face.
It was while he was still reading that a servant brought in some letters which had just arrived. He opened the first that came to hand almost unthinkingly, for his mind was quite absorbed in the discovery which he had made. It was only when his eye rested on the first page of the letter that memory came back to him. He gave a great start, rose up, putting Lesley's paper away from him, and went to the other side of the room to read his letter. It was as follows:—
"Dear Mr. Brooke,—"I have already found a house that I think will suit me, and I hope that Lesley will join me there as soon as you can spare her. I am afraid that it is a little too late to change our respective ways of life. It would be no advantage to Lesley to live with parents who were not agreed."Yours very truly,"Alice Brooke."
"Dear Mr. Brooke,—
"I have already found a house that I think will suit me, and I hope that Lesley will join me there as soon as you can spare her. I am afraid that it is a little too late to change our respective ways of life. It would be no advantage to Lesley to live with parents who were not agreed.
"Yours very truly,
"Alice Brooke."
Caspar Brooke turned round with a face that had grown strangely pale, walked across the room to Lesley, and dropped the letter in her lap.
"There!" he said. "I have done my uttermost. That is your mother's reply to me."
He strode out of the room, without deigning to answer her cry of surprise and inquiry, and Lesley took up the letter.
It was with a burst of tears that she put it down. "Oh, mother, mother!" she cried to herself, "how can you be so unkind, so unjust, so unforgiving? He is the best man in the world, and yet you have the heart to hurt him."
She did not see her father again until the next day, and then, although she made no reference in words to the letter which she restored to him, her pale and downcast looks spoke for her, and told the sympathy which she did not dare to utter. Mr. Brooke kissed her, and felt vaguely comforted; but it began to occur to him that he had made Lesley's position a hard one by insisting on her visit to his house, and that it might have been happier for her if she had remained hostile to himself, or ignorant of his existence. For now, when she went back to her mother, would not the affection that she evidently felt for him rise up as a barrier between herself and Lady Alice? Would she not try to fight for him? She was brave enough, and impetuousenough, to do it. And then Alice might justly accuse him of having embittered the relation, hitherto so sweet, between mother and daughter, and thereby inflicted on her an injury which nothing on earth could repair or justify.
Could nothing be done to remedy this state of things? Caspar Brooke began to feel worried by it. His mind was generally so serene that the intrusion of a personal anxiety seemed monstrous to him. He found it difficult to write in his accustomed manner: he felt a diminution of his interest in the club. With masculine impatience of such an unwonted condition, he went off at last to Maurice Kenyon, and asked him seriously whether his brain, his heart, or his liver were out of order. For that something was the matter with him, he felt sure, and he wanted the doctor to tell him what it was.
Maurice questioned and examined him carefully, then assured him with a hearty laugh that even his digestion was in the best possible working order.
Brooke gave himself a shake like a great dog, looked displeased for a moment, and then burst out laughing too.
"I suppose it is nothing, after all," he said. "I've been a trifle anxious and worried lately. Nothing of any importance, my dear fellow. By the by, have you been to see Lesley lately?"
"May I speak to her?" said Maurice, his face brightening. "I thought——"
"Speak when you like," Caspar answered, curtly. "I almost wish you would get if over. Get it settled, I mean."
"I shall get it settled as soon as I can, certainly," said Maurice.
And Mr. Brooke went away, thinking that after all he had found one way of escape from his troubles. For if Lesley accepted Maurice, and lived with him in a house opposite her father's, there would always be a corner for him at their fireside, and he would not go to the grave feeling himself a childless, loveless, desolate old man.
It must be conceded that Mr. Brooke had sunk to a very low pitch of dejection when he was dominated by such thoughts as these.
LESLEY'S PROMISE.
Mauricewas no backward lover. He made his way to Lesley that very day, and found her in the library—not, as usual, bending over a book, but standing by the window, from which could be seen a piece of waste ground overgrown with grass and weeds, and shaded by some great plane and elm trees. There was nothing particularly fascinating in the outlook, which partook of the usual grimness of a London atmosphere; but the young green of the budding trees spoke, in spite of the blackness of their branches, of spring and spring's delight; and there was a brightness in the tints of the tangled grass which gave a restful satisfaction to the eye. Lesley was looking out upon this scene with a wistfulness which struck Maurice with some surprise.
"You like this window?" he said, interrogatively, when they had shaken hands and exchanged a word or two of greeting.
"Yes, it reminds me in some way of my old convent home; I don't know why it should; but there are trees and grass and greenness."
"Ah, you love the country?"
"Do not you?"
"Yes, but there are better things in the world than even trees and grass."
"Ah, yes," said Lesley, eagerly. Then, with a little smile, she added; as if quoting—"Souls of men."
"I was thinking of their bodies," said the young doctor. "But that's as it should be. You think of the spiritual, I only of the material side. Both sides ought to be considered that is where men and women meet, I take it."
"I suppose so," said Lesley, a little vaguely.
"I'm afraid," Maurice went on, "that it will be a long time before I have a country house of my own: a place where there will be trees and green meadows and flowers,such as one loves and sighs for. I have often thought"—with a note of agitation in his voice—"how much easier it would be to ask any one to share my life if I had these good things to offer. My only chance has been to find someone who cares—as I care—for the souls and bodies of the men and women around us; who would not disdain to help me in my work."
"Whocoulddisdain it?" asked Lesley, innocently indignant.
"Do you mean"—turning suddenly upon her—"that you don't consider a hard working doctor's life something inexpressibly beneath you?"
She drew back a little hurt, a little bit astonished.
"Certainly not. Why should I?"
"You are born to a life of luxury and self-indulgence."
"My father is a journalist," said Lesley with a smile, in which amusement struggled with offence.
"But your grandfather was an earl! It is possible," with a touch of raillery, "that you prefer earls to general practitioners."
"Of the two, it is the doctor that leads the better life, in my opinion," said Lesley, rather hotly; but immediately cooling down, she added the remark—"My preferences have nothing much, however, to do with the matter."
"Have they not? How little you know your own power!"
Lesley looked at him in much amaze. Whither this conversation was tending it had not yet occurred to her to inquire. But something in his look, as he stood fronting her, brought the color to her cheeks and caused her eyes to sink. She became suddenly a little afraid of him, and wished herself a thousand miles away. Indeed she made one backward step, as if her maidenly instincts were about to manifest themselves in actual flight. But Maurice saw the movement, and made two steps forward, which brought him so close to her that he could have touched her hand if he had wished.
"Don't you understand?" he said, in an agitated voice. "Don't you see that your opinion—your preferences—are all the world to me?"
He paused as if expecting her to reply—leaning a little towards her to catch the word from her lips. But Lesley did not speak. She remained motionless, as pale now as she had been red before—her hands hanging at her sidesand her eyes fixed upon the ground. She looked as if she were stricken dumb with dismay.
"I know that I have not recommended myself to you by anything that I have said or done," Maurice went on. "I misjudged you once, and I spoke roughly, rudely, brutally; but it was the way you took what I said which made me understand you. You were so fine, so noble, so sweet! Instead of making my stupidity an excuse for shutting yourself away from what your father was doing, you immediately threw yourself into it, you began to work with him and for him—as of course I might have seen that you would do directly you came to know him. I was a fool, and you were an angel—that summarizes the situation."
A faint smile curled Lesley's lips, although she did not look up. "I am afraid there is not much of the angel about me," she said.
"Ah, you can't see yourself as others see you," he answered, quite ignoring the implication in her remark which a less ardent lover might have resented. "To me, at any rate, you are the one woman in the world, the only one I have ever loved—shall ever love as long as I live—the fulfilment of my ideal—the realization of all mydreams!"
His vehemence made Lesley draw back.
"You exaggerate," she said with a slight shake of the head. "Indeed, I am not all that—I could not be. I am very ignorant and full of faults. I have a bad temper——"
"You have a temper that is sweetness itself!"
"Oh, Mr. Kenyon, how can you say so?"—with a look of reproach. "You who have seen me so angry!"
"Your temper is just like your father's," said Maurice, dogmatically. "A little hot, if you like, but sweet——"
"Something like preserved ginger?" asked Lesley.
The two young people looked at each other with laughter in their eyes. This was Lesley's way of trying to stave off the inevitable. If Maurice's declaration could only be construed into idle compliment, she would be rid of the necessity of giving him a plain answer. And what had been begun as a proposal of marriage seemed likely to degenerate into a fencing match.
Maurice saw the danger, and was too quick-witted to fall unawares into the trap which Lesley had laid for him. A war of words was the very thing in which he and Ethelmost delighted; and it was usually quite easy to induce brother and sister to engage upon it. But on this occasion he was too much in earnest for word-play. He laughed at Lesley's simile, and then became suddenly and almost fiercely grave.
"I can't let you turn the whole thing into a joke," he said. "You know that I mean what I say. It is a matter of life and death to me. I love you with my whole heart, and I come to-day to know whether there is any chance for me—whether you can honor me with your love—whether you will one day consent to be my wife."
His voice sank to a pleading tone, and his face was very pale. But he felt that a great display of emotion would frighten and repel the girl, and he therefore sedulously avoided, as far as possible, any appearance of agitation. He could not, however, entirely achieve the calmness which he desired, and the very suppression of his agitation, which, in spite of himself, made his voice shake, and brought fire to his eyes, had an unwontedly unnerving effect upon Lesley.
"Oh, I don't know," she said hurriedly. "I can't tell—I never thought——"
"Think now," he said persuasively. "Am I disagreeable to you?"
"No,"—very softly.
"Have you forgiven me for my bad behavior in the past?"
"You never did behave badly."
"But you have forgiven me?"
"Oh, yes."
This was illogical, as she had previously intimated that there was nothing to forgive; but, under such circumstances, Lesley may be excused.
"And—surely, then—you like me a little!"
"A little," Lesley breathed, rather than spoke, with an unconscious smile of happiness.
"Can you not call it 'loving?'" asked Maurice, daring for the first time to take her soft little hand in his.
But the question, the look, the touch, suddenly terrified Lesley, and brought back to her mind a long-forgotten promise. What was it her mother had required of her before she left Paris for her father's house? Was it not a pledge that she should not bind herself to marry any man?—that she should not engage herself to be married? Lesley had an instinctive knowledge of the fact that to proclaim her promise would be to cast discredit on Lady Alice; and so, while trying to keep her word, she sought for means to avoid telling the whole truth.
"No, oh no," she said, withdrawing her hand at once and turning away. "Indeed, I could not. Please do not ask me anymore."
The shock was very great to Maurice. He stood perfectly silent for a moment. He had thought that he was making such good progress—and, behold! the wind had suddenly changed; the face of the heavens was overcast. He tried to think that he had been mistaken, and made another attempt to win a favorable hearing.
"Miss Brooke—Lesley—you say you like me a little. Do you not think that your liking for me might grow? When you know that I love you so tenderly, that I would lay down my very life for you, when you can hear all that I can tell you of my hopes, my dreams, my aspirations——"
"I do not want to hear," said Lesley, putting out her hand blindly. "Please do not tell me: it makes me miserable—indeed, I must not listen."
Again Maurice stood silent for a moment.
"Mustnot listen?" he repeated at length, with a keen look at her. "Why must you not?"
Lesley made no answer.
"You speak strangely," said Kenyon, with some slight coldness beginning to manifest itself in his manner. "Why should you not listen to me? If you are thinking of your father, I can assure you that he has no objection to me. I have consulted him already. He would be honestly glad, I believe, if you could care for me—he has told me so. Does his opinion go for nothing?"
She shook her head.
"I can't explain," she said brokenly. "I can only ask you not to say anything—at least—I have promised——"
"Promised not to listen to me?"
"To anything of the kind," said Lesley, feeling that she was making a terrible mess of the whole affair, and yet unable to loosen her tongue sufficiently to explain.
"May I ask to whom you gave this promise?"
"No," said Lesley.
There was another silence, but this time it was a silence charged with ominous significance. Maurice's face was very white, and a peculiar rigidity showed itself in the lines of his features. He was very much disappointed, and he also felt that he had some right to be displeased.
"If you were bound by any such promise, Miss Brooke," he said, "I think it would have been better that your friends should have known of it. I don't think that Mr. Brooke was aware——"
"Oh, no, he knew nothing about it."
"It was a promise made before you came here?"
"Yes."
"Of which your mother—Lady Alice—approves?"
"Oh, yes—it was to her—because she——"
Lesley stammered and tried to explain. There was a tremendous oppression upon her, such as one feels sometimes in a nightmare dream. She longed to speak out, to clear herself in Maurice's eyes, and yet she could not frame a single intelligible sentence. It was as though she were afflicted with dumbness.
"I think," said Maurice, deliberately, "that your father and your aunt had a right to know this fact. You seem to have kept them in ignorance of it. And I have been led into a mistake. I can assure you, Miss Brooke, that if I had been aware of any previous promise—or—or engagement of yours, I should never have presumed to speak as I have spoken to-day. I can but apologize and withdraw."
Before Lesley could answer, he had taken his hat, bowed profoundly, and left the room.
And Lesley, with lips from which all color had faded, and hands pressed tightly together, watched him go, and stood for some minutes in dazed, despairing silence before she could say, even to herself, with a burst of hot and bitter tears,
"Oh, I did not mean him to thinkthat. And now I cannot explain! What shall I do? WhatcanI do to make him understand?"
But that was a question for which she found no answer.
CURED.
"Youare quite well," said the doctor to John Smith, otherwise called Francis Trent, at the great hospital one day. "You can go out to-morrow. There is nothing more that we can do for you."
Smith raised his dull eyes to their faces.
"Am I—cured?" he asked.
One of the doctors shrugged his shoulders a little. Another answered kindly and pityingly,
"You will find that you are not as strong as you used to be. Not the same man in many respects. But you will be able to get your own living, and we see no reason for detaining you here. What was your trade?"
The patient looked down at his white, thin hands. "I don't know," he said.
"Have you friends to go to?"
There was a pause. Some of the medical students who were listening came a little nearer. As a matter of fact, Francis Trent's future depended very largely on the answer he made to this question. The statement that he was "quite well" was hazarded rather by way of experiment than as a matter of fact. The doctors wanted to know what he would say and do under pressure, for some of them were beginning to suggest that the man should be removed to the workhouse infirmary or a lunatic asylum. His faculties seemed to be hopelessly beclouded.
Suddenly he lifted his head. A new sharp light had come into his eyes. He nodded reassuringly.
"Yes, I have friends," he said.
"You have a home where you can go? Shall we write to your friends to meet you?"
"No, thank you, sir. I can find my own way home."
And then they conferred together a little, and left him, and reported that he was cured.
Certainly, there seemed to be nothing the matter with him now. His wounds and injuries had healed, his bodilystrength was returning. But the haze which hung over his mind was far more impenetrable than the doctors guessed. Something of it had been apparent to them in the earlier days of his illness; but his clear and decided answers to their questions convinced them that memory had to some extent returned. As a matter of fact it was not memory that had returned, but a sharpening of his perceptive faculties, awakening him to the fact that he stood in danger of being taken for an idiot or a madman if he did not frame some answer to the questions which the doctors asked him. This new acuteness was perhaps the precursor to a return of his memory; but as yet the Past was like a dead wall, an abyss of darkness surrounding him. Now and then flashes of light seemed to dart across that darkness: he seemed on the point of recalling something—he knew not what; for the flashes faded as quickly as they came, and made the darkness all the greater for the contrast.
He was possessed now by the idea that if he could get out of hospital, and walk along the London streets, he might remember all that he had forgotten. His own name, his own history, had become a blank to him. He knew in some vague, forlorn fashion, that he had once been what the world calls a gentleman. He had not acknowledged so much to the doctors: he had not felt that they would believe him. Even when the groping after the Past became most painful, he made up his mind that he would not ask these scientific men for help: he was afraid of being treated as a "case," experimented on, written about in the papers. There was something in the Past of which he knew he ought to be ashamed. What could it be? He was afraid to ask, lest he might find himself to be a criminal.
In these haunting terrors there was, of course, a distinct token of possible insanity. The man needed a friendly, guiding hand to steer him back to the world of reason and common-sense. But to whom could he go, since he had taken up this violent prejudice against the doctors? He felt drawn to none of the nurses, although some of them had been very kind to him. The only person to whom he might perhaps have disburthened himself, if he had had the opportunity, was the sweet-voiced, sweet-faced woman whom he had warned of the ill effects of her gifts. He did not know her name, or anything about her; but before he left the hospital he asked one of the nurses who she was.
"Lady Alice Brooke—daughter of the Lord Courtleroy, who died the other day," was the reply.
"Could you give me her address?"
"No; and I don't think that if I could it would be of any use to you. She is leaving England, I believe. If you want work or help, why don't you speak to Mr. Kenyon? He's the gentleman to find both for you—Mr. Maurice Kenyon."
"Which is Mr. Kenyon?"
"There—he's just passing through the next ward; shall I speak to him for you?"
"No, thank you: I don't want anything from him: I only wanted the lady's name," said John Smith, in a dogged sullen kind of way, which made the whitecapped nurse look at him suspiciously.
"Brooke!—Kenyon?"—How oddly familiar the names seemed to him! Of course they were not very uncommon names; but there was a distinct familiarity about them which had nothing to do with the names themselves, as if they had some connection with his own history and his own affairs.
He was discharged—"cured." He went out into the streets with half-a-crown in his pocket, and a fixed determination to know the truth, sooner or later, about himself. At the same time he had a great fear of letting any one know the extent of the blanks in his memory. He thought that people might shut him up in a madhouse if he told them that he could not recollect his own name. A certain amount of intellectual force and knowledge remained to him. He could read, and understand what he read. But of his own history he had absolutely no idea; and the only clue to it that he could find lay in those two names—Brooke and Kenyon.
Could he discover anything about the possessors of these names which would help him? He entered a shop where a Post Office Directory was to be found, and looked at Maurice Kenyon's name amongst the doctors. He found Mr. Kenyon's private address; but as yet it told him nothing. Woburn Place? Well, of course he had heard of Woburn Place, it was no wonder that he should know it so well; but the name told him nothing more.
He sat staring at it so long that the people of the shop grew impatient, and asked him to shut the book. He wentaway, and wandered about the streets, vaguely seeking for he knew not what. And after a time he bought a newspaper. Here again he found the name that had attracted his attention—the name of Kenyon. "Last appearance of Miss Kenyon at the Frivolity Theatre—this week only."
"Who's Miss Ethel Kenyon?" he asked—drawing a bow at a venture—of his neighbor in the dingy little coffeehouse into which he had turned. It was ten to one that the man would not know; but he would ask.
As it happened, the youngman did know. "She's an actress," he said. "I went to see her the other night. Pretty girl—going to get married and leave the stage. My brother's a scene shifter at the Frivolity—knows all about her."
"Who is she going to marry?"
"Oh, I don't know—some idle young chap that wants her money, I believe. She ain't the common sort of actress, you know. Bit of a swell, with sixty thousand pounds of her own."
"Oh," said his interlocutor, vaguely. "And—has she any relations?"
"Well, that I can't tell you. Stop a bit, though: I did hear tell of a brother—a doctor, I believe. But I couldn't be sure of it."
"Could you get to know if you wanted?"
The young fellow turned and surveyed his questioner with some doubt. "Dare say I could if I chose," he said. "What do you want to know for, mate?"
"I've been away—out of England for a long time—and I think they're people who used to know me," said Francis Trent, improvising his story readily. "I thought they could put me on the way of work if I could come across them; but I don't know if it's the same."
"Why don't you go to see her to-night? She's worth a look: she's a pretty little thing—but she don't draw crowds: the gallery's never full."
"I think I'll go to-night," said Francis, rising suddenly from his seat. He fancied that the young man looked at him suspiciously. "Yes, no doubt, I should know her if I saw her: I'll go to-night."
He made his way hastily into the street, while his late companion sent a puzzled glance after him. "Got a tile loose, that chap has," he said to the girl at the counter as he also passed out. "Or else he was a bit screwed."
So that night Francis Trent went to the Frivolity, and witnessed, from a half-empty gallery, a smart, sparkling little society play, in which Ethel Kenyon had elected to say farewell to her admirers.
He saw her, but her face produced no impression upon his mind.
It was not familiar to him, although her name was familiar enough. Those gleaming dark eyes in the saucy piquante face, the tiny graceful figure, the silvery accents of her voice, were perfectly strange to him. They suggested absolutely nothing. It was the name alone that he knew; and he was sure that it was in some way connected with his own.
Before the end of the play, he got up and went out. The lights of the theatre made him dizzy: his head ached from the hot atmosphere and from his own physical weakness. He was afraid that he should cry out or do something strange which would make people look at him, if he sat there much longer. So he turned into a side street and leaned against a wall for a little time, until he felt cool and refreshed. The evening was warm, considering that the month was March, and the air that played upon his face was soft and balmy. When he had recovered himself a little, he noticed a group of young men lighting their cigarettes and loitering about a door in the vicinity. Presently he made out that this was the stage-door, and that these young men were waiting to see one of the actresses come out. By the fragments of their talk that floated to him on the still evening air in the quiet side street, Francis Trent gathered that they spoke a good deal of Ethel Kenyon.
"So this is the last we shall see of pretty little Ethel," he heard one man say. "Who's the man she's hooked, eh?"
Nobody seemed to know.
"Why did she go on the boards at all, I wonder? She's got money, and belongs to a pre-eminently respectable family. Her brother's a doctor."
"Stage-struck," said another. "She'll give it up now, of course. Here's her carriage. She'll be here directly."
"And the happy man at her heels, Isuppose," sneered the first speaker. "They say she's madly in love with him, and that he, of course, wants her money."
"He's a cad, I know that," growled a younger man.
Impelled by an interest of which he himself did not know the source, Francis Trent had drawn nearer to the stage door as the young fellows spoke. He was quite close to it, when it opened at last and the pretty actress came forth.
She was escorted by a train of admirers, rich and poor. Her maid was laden with wraps and bouquets. The manager and the actor who played the leading part were on either side of her, and Ethel was laughing the merry, unaffected laugh of a perfectly happy woman as she made her triumphal exit from the little theatre where she had achieved all her artistic success. Another kind of success, she thought, was in store for her now. She was to know another sort of happiness. And the whole world looked very bright to her, although there was one little cloud—no bigger than a man's hand, perhaps—which had already shown itself above the horizon, and might one day cloud the noontide of her love.
Francis Trent was so absorbed in watching her lovely face, and in wondering why her name had seemed so familiar, that he paid scant attention to her followers. It was only as the carriage drove off that his eye was caught by the face of a man who sat beside her. A gleam from a gas-lamp had fallen full upon it, revealing the regular, passionless features, the dark eyes and pale complexion of Ethel's lover. And as soon as he saw that face, a great change came over the mental condition of Francis Trent. He stood for a moment as if paralyzed, his worn features strangely convulsed, a strange lurid light showed itself in his haggard eyes. Then he threw his arms wildly in the air, uttered a choked, gasping cry, and rushed madly and vainly after the retreating carriage, heedless of the shouts which the little crowd sent after him.
"He's mad—he'll never catch up that carriage! What does he run after it for, the fool?" said one of the men on the pavement.
And indeed he soon relinquished the attempt, and sat down on a doorstep, panting and exhausted, with his face buried upon his arms.
But he was not mad. He was sure of that now. It was only that he had—partially and feebly, but to some extent effectually—remembered what had happened to him in the dark dead Past.
DOUBT.
Itwas a difficult matter for Maurice Kenyon so to word his report to Caspar Brooke as not to excite his displeasureagainst Lesley. He felt himself bound to respect Lesley's confidences—if such they might be called—respecting the promise which kept her from returning his love; but he could not help a certain bitterness of tone in referring to his interview with her; and his friend observed the bitterness.
"What reason did she give for refusing you?" he asked sharply.
"I suppose she does not care for me."
"There is something else—to judge from your look. Perhaps there is—somebody else?" said Brooke.
"Well, I don't know that I'm doing right in telling you—but—God help me!—I believe there is," said Maurice, with a groan.
"She did not tell you who?"
"No."
Mr. Brooke knitted his brows. He was inclined to think that Oliver Trent had produced an impression on Lesley's susceptible heart. He could not ask questions of any of the persons concerned; but he had his suspicions, and they made him angry as well as anxious.
He made it his business during the next day or two to find out whether Oliver had been to the house since the day when he had interrupted the interview; but he could not learn that he had ventured there again. It was no use asking Dr. Sophy about Lesley's comings and goings: it was almost impossible for him to question Lesley herself.
"What rubbish it all is—this love-making, marrying, and giving in marriage!" he said, at last, impatiently, to himself. "I'll think no more about these young folks' affairs—let them make or mar their happiness in their own way. I'll think of my work and nothing else—I've neglected it a good deal of late, I fancy. I must make up for lost time now." And sitting down at his table, he turned over the papers upon it, and took up a quill pen. But he did not begin to write for some minutes. He sat frowning at the paper, biting the feathers of his pen, drumming with his fingers on the table. And after a time he muttered to himself, "If any man harms Lesley, I'll wring his neck—that's all;" which did not sound as though he were giving to his literary work all the attention that it required.
As to Lesley, she would have given a great deal at that time for a counsellor of some kind. The old feeling of friendlessness had come back to her. Her aunt was absorbed by her own affairs, her father looked at her with unquiet displeasure in his eyes. Oliver Trent had proved himself a false friend indeed. Ethel was a little reserved with her, and she had sent Maurice Kenyon away. There was nobody else to whom she could turn for comfort. True, she had made many acquaintances by this time: her father's circle was a large one, and she knew more people now than she had ever spoken to in her quiet convent days. But these were all acquaintances—not friends. She could not speak to any one of these about Maurice Kenyon, her lover and her friend. Once or twice she thought vaguely of writing to her mother about him; but she shrank from doing so without quite knowing why. The fact was, she knew her mother's criticism beforehand: she expected to be reproached with having broken her compact in the spirit if not in the letter; and she did not know how to justify herself. Maurice had taken his dismissal as final, and she had not meant him to do so. Now, if ever, the girl wanted a friend who would either encourage her to explain her position to him, or would do it for her. Lady Alice would not fill this post efficiently. And Lesley, in her youthful shamefaced pride, felt that nothing would induce her to make her own explanation to Maurice. It would seem like asking him to ask her again to marry him—an insupportable thought.
So she went about the house pale and heavy-eyed, trying with all her might to throw herself into her father's schemes for his club, writing a little now and then, occupying herself feverishly with all the projects that came in her way, but bearing a sad heart about with her all the time. She was not outwardly depressed—her pride would not let herseem melancholy. She held her head high, and talked and laughed more than usual. But the want of color and brightness in her face and eye could not be controlled.
"You pale-faced wretch," she said to herself one Saturday evening, as she stood before her glass and surveyed the fair image that met her eye; "why cannot you look as usual? It must be this black dress that makes me so colorless: I wish that I had a flower to wear with it."
Mr. Brooke and his sister were holding one of their frequent Saturday evening parties, when they were "at home" to a large number of guests. Lesley was just about to go downstairs. Her dress was black, for she was in mourning for her grandfather; and it must be confessed that the sombre hue made her look very pale indeed. The wish for a flower was gratified, however, almost as soon as formed. Kingston entered her room at that moment carrying a bouquet of flowers, chiefly white, but with a scarlet blossom here and there, which would give exactly the touch of color that Lesley's appearance required.
"These flowers have just come for you, ma'am," Kingston said quietly.
Her subdued voice, her pale face, and heavily shadowed eyes, did not make her a cheerful-looking messenger; but Lesley, for the time being, thought of nothing but the flowers.
"Where do they come from, Kingston?" she asked, eagerly.
"I was only to say one word, ma'am—that they came from over the way."
There was no want of color now in Lesley's face. Her cheeks were rose-tinted, her eyes had grown strangely bright. "Over the way." Of course that meant Maurice. Did not he live over the way?—and was there any one else at the Kenyons' house who would send her such lovely flowers?
If he sent her flowers, she reflected, he could not have yet ceased to care for her, although she had behaved so badly to him—in his eyes, at least. The thought gave her courage and content. Perhaps he was coming that night—he had a standing invitation to all the Brookes' evening parties—and when he came he would perhaps "say something" to her, something which she could answer suitably, so as to make him understand.
She did not know how pretty she looked as she stood looking down at her flowers, the color and smile and dimples coming and going in her fair young face in very unwonted confusion. But Mary Kingston noted every change of tint and expression, and was surprised. For the little mystery was quite plain to her. It was not Mr. Kenyon who sent the flowers at all. Mr. Kenyon was too busy a man to buy bouquets. It was Oliver Trent who had sent them, for Kingston had herself seen him carrying the flowers and entrusting them to a commissionnaire with a message for Miss Brooke. She believed, too, that Lesley knew from whom they came. But she was not sufficiently alert and interested just then to make these matters of great importance to her. She did not think it worth her while to say how much she knew. With a short quick sigh she turned away, and expected to see her young mistress quit the room at once, still with that happy smile upon her face. But Lesley had heard the sigh.
"Oh, Kingston," she said, laying her hand on the woman's arm, "I wish you would not sigh like that!"
"I beg your pardon, ma'am; I did not mean to annoy you."
"I don't meanthat: I mean it for your own sake. You seem so sad about something—you have been sad so long!"
"I've had a sad life, Miss Lesley."
"But there is surely some special sadness now?"
"Yes," said the woman slowly. "Yes, that is true. I've—lost—a friend."
She put a strong emphasis on the word "lost," and paused before and after uttering it, as if it bore a peculiar meaning to her. But Lesley took the word in its ordinary sense.
"I am very sorry," she said. "It must be very terrible, I think, when one's friends die."
She stood silent for a minute—a shadow from Kingston's grief troubling the sweetness of her fair face. It was the maid who broke the silence.
"Excuse me, ma'am; I oughtn't to have troubled you with my affairs to-night, just when you're enjoying yourself too. But it's hard sometimes to keep quiet."
Moved by a sudden instinct of sympathy, Lesley turned and kissed the woman who served her, as if she had been a sister. It was in such ways that she showed her kinshipwith the man who had written "The Unexplored." Lady Alice, in spite of all her kindness of heart, would never have thought of kissing her ladies' maid.
"Don't grieve—don't be sorrowful," said Lesley. "Perhaps things will mend by and by."
"Ah, my dear," said Kingston, forgetting herposition, as Lady Alice would have said, while that young, soft kiss was warm upon her cheek, "the dead don't come back."
And when Lesley had gone downstairs, with the white and scarlet bouquet in her hand, Mary Kingston sat down and wept bitterly.
It was not the first time that Lesley had spoken words of consolation to her; but on this occasion her gentleness had gone home to Mary Kingston's heart as it had never done before. After weeping for herself for a time, she fell to weeping for Lesley too, for it seemed inevitable to her that Lesley should suffer before very long. She believed that Lesley was in love with Oliver, and that for this reason only had she refused Maurice Kenyon, which shows that Lesley had kept her own secret very well.
"I'd do anything to keep her from harm," said Mary Kingston, with a passionate rush of gratitude towards the girl for her kindly words and ways. "Francis Trentbrought me grief enough, God knows; and if she's going to throw herself away on Oliver, she'll have her heart broke sooner than mine. For I've been used to sorrow all my days; and she—poor, pretty lamb—she don't know what it means. And Miss Brooke all taken up with her medicine-fads, and Mr. Brooke only aman, after all, in spite of his goodness; and my lady, her mother, far away and never coming near her—if anybody was friendless and forlorn, it's Miss Lesley. Only me between her and her ruin, maybe! But I'll prevent it," said the woman, rising to her feet with a strange look of exaltation in her sunken eyes: "I'll guard her from Oliver Trent as I couldn't guard my own sister, poor lass! I'll see that she does not come to any harm, and if he means ill by her I'll shame him before all the world, even though I break more hearts than one by it."
And then she roused herself from her reverie, and went downstairs, where she knew that her presence was required in the tea-room. Scarcely had she entered it, when she made a short pause and gave a slightly perceptible start.For there stood Ethel Kenyon, with Oliver Trent in attendance. She had not thought that he would come to the house; a rumor had gone about that he had quarreled with Mr. Brooke; yet there he was, smiling, bland, irreproachable as ever, with quite the look of one who had the right to be present. He was holding Ethel's fan and gloves as she drank a cup of tea, and seemed to be paying her every attention in his power. Ethel, in the daintiest of costumes, was laughing and talking to him as they stood together.Shewas quite unconscious of any reason for his possible absence. Mary Kingston gave them a keen glance as she went by, and decided in her own mind that there was more in the situation than as yet she had understood.
Oliver was playing a bold game. His marriage was fixed for the following Tuesday. From Mr. Brooke's attitude in general towards the Kenyons, he felt sure that Caspar would not place them in any painful or perplexing situation. He would not, for instance, refuse to welcome Oliver to his house again, if Oliver went in Ethel's company. Accordingly, the young man put his pride and his delicacy (if he had either—which is doubtful) in his pocket, and went with his affianced wife to Mr. Brooke's Saturday evening party.
"For I will see Lesley again," he said to himself, "and if I do not go to-night I may not have the opportunity. If she would relent, I would not mind throwing Ethel over—I could do it so easily now that Francis has disappeared. But I would give up Ethel's twenty thousand, if Lesley would go with me instead!"
Little did he guess that only on the previous night had he been recognized and remembered by that missing brother, whose tottering brain was inflamed almost to madness by a conviction of deliberate wrong; or that this brother was even now upon his track, ready to demand the justice that he thought had been denied him, and to punish the man who had brought him to this evil pass! Wild and mad as were the imaginings of Francis Trent's bewildered mind, they boded ill to his brother Oliver whenever the two should meet.
Meanwhile, Ethel's lover, with a white flower in his button-hole, occupied the whole evening in leaning idly against a wall, and feasting his eyes on the fair face and form—not of his betrothed, but—of Lesley Brooke.
IN MR. BROOKE'S STUDY.
Caspar Brooke'sdingy drawing-room looked cheerful enough that night, filled by a crowd of men and women, and animated by the buzz of constant talk and movement. It was a distinguishing characteristic of his parties that they were composed more of men than of women; and the guests were often men or women who had done something in the world, and were known for some special excellence in their work. Lesley generally enjoyed these gatherings very much. The visitors were shabby, unfashionable people sometimes: they had eccentricities of dress and manner; but they were always interesting in Lesley's eyes. Literary men, professors, politicians, travelers, philanthropists, faddists—these were the folk that mostly frequented Caspar Brooke's parties. Neither artists nor musicians were largely represented: the flow of talk was rather political and literary than artistic; and on the whole there were more elderly people than young ones. As a rule, Oliver Trent was not disposed to frequent these assemblies: he shrugged his shoulders at them and called them "slow," but on this occasion he was only too glad to find admittance. It was at least a good opportunity for watching Lesley, as she passed from one group to another, doing the duties of assistant-hostess with grace and tact, giving a smile to one, a word to another, entering into low-toned conversation, which brightened her eyes and flushed her fair cheek, with another. Oliver thought her perfection. Beside her stately proportions, Ethel seemed to him ridiculously tiny and insignificant, and her sparkling prettiness was altogether eclipsed by Lesley's calmer beauty. He was not in an amiable mood. He had steeled himself against the dictates of his own taste and conscience, to encounter Caspar Brooke's cold stare and freezing word of conventional welcome, because he longed so intensely for a last word with Lesley; but he was now almost sorry that he had come.Lesley seemed utterly indifferent to his presence. She certainly carried his flowers in her hand, but she did not glance his way. On the contrary, she anxiously watched the door from time to time, as if she awaited the coming of some one who was slow to make his appearance. Who could the person be for whom she looked? Oliver asked himself jealously. He had not the slightest suspicion that she was watching for Maurice Kenyon. And Maurice Kenyon did not come.
It was his absence that, as the evening wore on, made the color slip from Lesley's cheeks and robbed her eyes of their first brightness. A certain listlessness came over her. And Oliver, watching from his corner, exulted in his heart, for he thought to himself—
"It is for me she is looking sad; and if she will but yield her will to mine, I will win and wear her yet, in spite of all who would say me nay."
It was a veritable love-madness, such as had not come upon him since the days of his youth. He had had a fairly wide experience of love-making; but never had he been so completely mastered by his passion as he was now. The consideration that had once been so potent with him—love of ease, money, and position—seemed all to have vanished away. What mattered it that to abandon Ethel Kenyon at the last moment would mean disgrace and perhaps even beggary? He had no care left for thoughts like these. If Lesley would acknowledge her love for him, he was ready to throw all other considerations to the winds.
"Sing something, Lesley," her father said to her when the evening was well advanced. "You have your music here?"
Oh, yes, Lesley had her music here. But she glanced a little nervously in Oliver's direction. "I wonder if Ethel would accompany me," she said. She shrank nervously from the thought of Oliver's accompaniments.
But Oliver was too quick for her. He moved forward to the piano as soon as he saw Caspar Brooke's eye upon it. And with his hand on the key-board, he addressed himself suavely to Lesley.
"You are going to sing, I hope? May I not have the pleasure of accompanying you?"
Lesley could not say him nay, but she also could not help a glance, half of alarm, half of appeal, towards herfather. Mr. Brooke's face wore an expression which was not often seen upon it at a social gathering. It was distinctly stormy—there was a frown upon the brow, and an ominous setting of the lips which more than one person in the room remarked. "How savage Brooke looks!" one guest murmured into another's ear. "Isn't he friendly with Trent?" And the words were remembered in after days.
But nothing could be said or done to hinder Oliver from taking his place at the piano, for Lesley did not openly object, and her father could not interfere between her and his own guest. So Lesley sang, and did not sing so well as usual, for her heart failed her a little, partly through vexation and partly through disappointment at Maurice Kenyon's disappearance, but she gave pleasure to her hearers, in spite of what seemed to herself a comparative failure, and when she had finished her song, she was besieged by requests that she would sing once more.
"Sing 'Thine is my heart,'" Oliver's soft voice murmured in her ear.
"I have not that song here," said Lesley, quietly. She was not very much discomposed now, but she did not want to encourage his attention. She rose from the music-stool. "My music is downstairs," she said. "I must go and fetch it—I have a new song that Ethel has promised to play for me."
Oliver bit his lips and stood back as Lesley escaped by the door of the front drawing-room. Mr. Brooke's eye was upon him, and he could not therefore follow her; but he made his way into the library through the folding doors, and there a new mode of attack became visible to him. By the library door he gained the landing; and then he softly descended the stairs, which were now almost deserted, for the guests had crowded into the drawing-room, first to hear Lesley's song and then to listen to a recitation by Ethel Kenyon. But where had Lesley gone?
A subtle instinct told him that she had hidden herself for a moment—and told him also where to find her. The lights were burning low in her father's study, which had been set to rights a little, in order to serve as a room where people could lounge and talk if they wanted to escape the din of conversation in the larger rooms. He looked in, and at first thought it empty. But the movement of a curtain revealed some one's presence; and as his eyes becameaccustomed to the dimmer light, he saw that it was Lesley. She was standing between the fireplace and curtained window, and her hand was on the mantelpiece.
She started when she saw him in the doorway. It was her start that betrayed her. He came forward and shut the door behind him—Lesley fancied that she heard the click of the key in the lock. She tried to carry matters with a high hand.
"I am afraid I cannot find my music here," she said, "so please do not shut the door, Mr. Trent. There is little enough light as it is."
She walked forward, but he had planted himself squarely between her and the door. She could not pass.
"Mr. Trent——" she began.
"Wait! don't speak," he said, in a voice so hoarse and stifled that she could hardly recognize it as his own. "I must have a word with you—forgive me—I won't detain you long——"
"Excuse me, I must go back to the drawing-room."
Lesley spoke civilly but coldly, though some sort of fear of him passed shiveringly through her frame.
"You shall not go yet: you shall listen to what I have to say."
"Mr. Trent!"
"Yes, it is all very well to exclaim! You know what I mean, and what I want. I had not time to speak the other night; but I will speak now. Lesley, I love you!—"
"Mr. Trent, Ethel is upstairs. Have you forgotten her? Let me pass."
"I have not forgotten her: I remember her only too well. She is the burden, the incubus of my life. Oh, I know all that you can tell me about her: I know her beauty, her gifts, her virtues; but all that does not charm me. You, you and no other, are the woman that I love; and, beside you, Ethel is nothing to me at all."
"You might at least remember your duty to her," said Lesley, with severity. "You have won her heart, and you are about to vow to make her happy. I cannot understand how you can be so false to her."
"If I am false to her," said Oliver, pleadingly, "I am true to the dictates of my own heart. Hear me, Lesley—pity me! I have promised to marry a woman whom I donot love. I acknowledge it frankly. I shall never make her happy—strive as I may, her nature will never assimilate with mine. She will go through life a disappointed woman; while, if I set her free, she will find some man whom she loves and will be happy with him. You may as well confess that this is true. You may as well acknowledge that her nature is too light, too trivial to be rent asunder by any falsity of mine. Ethel will never break her heart; but you might break yours, Lesley—and I—I also—have a heart to break."
Lesley smiled scornfully. "Yours will not break very easily," she said, "and I can answer for mine."
"You are strong," he said, using the formula by which men know how to soften women's hearts, "stronger than I am. Be merciful, Lesley! I am very weak, I know; but weakness means suffering. Can you not pity me, when you think that my weakness and my suffering come from love of you?"
"I am very sorry, Mr. Trent, but I really cannot help it. It is your own fault—not mine," said Lesley, a little hotly. "I never thought of such a thing."
"No, you were as innocent and as good as you always are," he broke in, "and you did not know what you were doing when you led me on with those sweet looks and sweet words of yours. I can believe that. But you did the mischief, Lesley, without meaning it; and you must not refuse to make amends. You made me think you loved me."
"Oh, no, no," said Lesley, her face aflame with outraged modesty. "I never made you think so! You were mistaken—that is all!"
"You made me think you loved me," Oliver repeated, doggedly, "and you owe me amends. To say the very least, you have given me great pain: you have made me the most miserable of men, and wrecked all chance of happiness between Ethel and myself—have you no heart that you can refuse to repair a little of the harm that you have done? You are a cruel woman—I could almost say a wicked woman: hard, false, and cowardly; and I wish my words could blight your life as your coquetry has blighted mine."
Lesley trembled. No woman could listen to such words unmoved, when her armor of incredulity fell from her as Lesley's armor had fallen. Hitherto she had felt a scornful disbelief in the reality of Oliver's love for her. But now that disbelief had gone. There was a ring of passionate feeling in Oliver's tones which could not be simulated. The coldness, the artificiality of the man had disappeared: his passion for Lesley had taken possession of him, and stirred his nature to the very depths.
"Listen, Lesley," he said, in a low, strained voice, which shook and vibrated with the intensity of his emotion, "don't let me feel this. Don't let me feel that you have merely played with me, and are ready to cast me off like an old shoe when you are tired. Other women do that sort of thing, but not you, my darling!—not you—don't let me think it of you. Forgive me the harsh things I said, and help me—help me—to forget them."
He had grasped the back of a chair with both hands, and was kneeling with one knee on theseat. He now stretched out his hands to her, and came forward as if to take her in his arms. But Lesley drew back.
"I am very sorry," she said, "but I cannot help it. I did not mean to be unkind."
"If you are really sorry for me," he said, still in the deep-shaken voice which moved her to so uneasy a sense of pain and wrong-doing, "you will do all you can for me. You will help me to begin a new life. I love you so much that I am sure I could teach you to love me. I am certain of it, Lesley—dearest—let me try!"
Did she falter for a moment? There flashed over her the remembrance of Maurice's anger, of his continued absence, of the probability that he would never come back to her; and the dream of a tender love that could envelop the rest of her lonely life assailed her like a temptation. She hesitated, and in that moment's pause Oliver drew nearer to her side.
"Kiss me, Lesley!" he whispered, and his head bent over hers, his lips almost touched her own.
Then came the reaction—the awakening.
"Oh, no, no! Do not touch me. Do not come near me. I do not love you. And if I did"—said Lesley, almost violently—"if I loved you more than all the world, do you think that I would betray Ethel, my friend? that I would be so false to her—and to myself?"
"Then you do love me?" he murmured, undisturbed by her vehemence, which he did not think boded ill for his chances, after all.
"No, I do not."
"You are mistaken. Kiss me once, Lesley, and you will know. You will feel your love then."
"You insult me, Mr. Trent. Love you? Come one step nearer and I shall hate you. Oh!" she said, recoiling, as a gleam from the lamp revealed to her the wild expression in his eyes, the tension of his white lips and nostrils, the strange transformation in those usually impassive features which revealed the brutal nature below the polished surface of the man, "I hate you now!"
She was close to the wall, and her head came in sudden contact with the old-fashioned bell-rope. She seized it firmly.
"Open the door," she said, "or I shall ring this bell and send for my father. He will know what to do."
Oliver gazed at her for a minute or two, then, with a smothered oath upon his lips, he turned slowly to the door and opened it. Before leaving the room, however, he said, in a voice half-stifled by impotent passion—
"Is this really your last word?"
"The last I shall ever speak to you," said Lesley, resolutely.
Then he went out, seizing his hat as he passed through the hall and made his way into the street. He did not notice, as he retired, that a woman's figure was only half-concealed behind the curtains that screened a door in the study, and that his interview with Lesley must therefore have had an unseen auditor. He forgot that Ethel and Rosalind waited for him above. He was mad with rage; deaf to all voices saving those of passion: blind to all sights save the visions that floated maddeningly before his eyes.
Mad, blind, deaf to reason as he was, he was obliged to come back to earth and its realities before very long. For he was stopped in the streets by rough hands: a hoarse, passionate voice uttered threats and curses in his ear; and he found himself face to face with his long-vanished and half-forgotten brother, Francis Trent.