"FAME HAS COME TO ME AT LAST."
Leslie lay unconscious while the sun sank below the horizon, and the
delicious summer gloaming came softly upon the moor; lay like a flower
struck down by some rude hand, and the evening star shone pale in the
sky before she came back to life and her great sorrow.
For a while it seemed to her that the whole scene through which she had
passed was a hideous dream, and when its reality came crushing down
upon her she uttered a low cry and shivered as if with cold. The sudden
destruction of her joy and happiness left her stunned and bewildered.
A few short hours ago and she and Yorke had been sitting hand in hand,
heart to heart, talking of their marriage, and now----. Now he was hers
no longer. In a sense he had never been hers, but all the time he had
been wooing her, forcing her to love him, he had been in honor bound to
this other woman.
As she thought of her, this Finetta, this woman with the bold eyes, a
feeling of shame and humiliation was added to the misery of Leslie's
loss. That he, Yorke, her idol, her king, should ever have stooped
to love such a woman seemed to her unspeakably base and terrible.
She had set him on so lofty a pedestal, had regarded him as so noble
and high-minded, that the knowledge of his falseness--to both of
them!--hurt her like a physical blow.
She sat for some time, waiting for strength to enable her to reach
home; and as she sat and looked round it seemed as if something had
gone out of her life, as if a weight which no power nor time could lift
had fallen upon her heart.
Before her she saw stretching in a dull grey, hopeless vista, the many
years she would probably have to live; the long life without Yorke, and
haunted by the memory of these few happy days.
"If I had never seen him! If I had not loved him so dearly!" was the
burden of her heart's wail; "or if I had only died down there before I
saw the locket or heard the woman's story!"
She had fought Death hard enough a little while ago, now she would have
welcomed him.
She rose at last, and went slowly and draggingly towards Portmaris. Her
dress was still heavy with the salt water, she was weak with physical
and mental weariness, and the two miles across the moor were surely the
longest that ever woman journeyed.
When she reached the villa and entered the parlor, she found her father
pacing up and down in the dusk before his easel.
He looked up, but fortunately for her, did not see her white weary
face, or notice how she held the door as if to support herself.
"Where have you been, Leslie?" he asked in a kind of irritable
excitement. "I have been wanting you. Mr. Temple has sent the notes for
the picture, the fifty pounds."
She leant against the door, and drew a long breath as she thought of
this added humiliation.
"He is going to-morrow, it seems, and wished to--er--pay for the
picture before he left. His departure is rather sudden, I think, but I
fancy he is erratic in his movements. I want you to send him a receipt,
and--er--to ask him to allow the picture to be exhibited."
"Yes; to-morrow, papa," she said faintly.
"Why not to-night?" he asked testily.
"I--I am tired, very tired," she said, going to him and leaning her
head on his shoulder.
"You've walked too far," he said in a tone of complaint. "You'd better
go to bed at once. The receipt and the letter must wait till to-morrow,
I suppose. Oh, there was something--oh, yes; did you see the duke? He
came up to me on the beach and inquired for you."
She turned away from him, a lump rising in her throat and threatening
to suffocate her.
"Yes."
"Did he say anything about that sketch of St. Martin's?"
St. Martin's! How the name brought back the memory of that happy, happy
day.
"I don't quite know about that sketch," he went on with an air
of importance. "I may be too much engaged on important pictures
to--er--spare any time for small sketches. However, that matter can
rest for the present. The duke has gone back to London to-night, they
tell me. By the way, I wish you would prepare a fresh canvas for me."
"Not to-night, oh, not to-night, dear!" she said in a low voice. "I
will go to bed as you said, for I am very, very tired. To-morrow----."
She left the sentence unfinished, and crept up to her own room.
To-morrow! What an awful line of dreary to-morrows stretched before
her, was her thought. As she took off her dress the diamond pendant
flashed in the candlelight, each gem seeming to glitter mockingly in
derision of her love and faith and trust. She covered the sparkling
thing with her hand and bowed her head over it. The very day he had
sent it to her, he had given his portrait--his portrait--to that other
woman! She took the pendant off the ribbon, and wrapped it in a piece
of soft paper and put it away out of sight in a small box, and as she
did so she saw Ralph Duncombe's ring.
One's own misery recalls to us that of other people, and in this the
hour of her trouble Leslie remembered Ralph Duncombe, and for the first
time she realized something of what he had suffered. With a rush his
passionate avowal came back upon her, and she took the ring in her hand
and looked at it with a double misery. He had sworn to help her if she
ever should be in trouble, had sworn to help her if ever she suffered
wrong. How feeble had been his vow! Neither he nor anyone else could
help her in this strait; and as to vengeance, she wanted none. Alas,
alas! false as he had been, she loved Yorke still.
She fell asleep at last from sheer exhaustion, and did not awake until
past nine. Then it all came throbbing, crowding back upon her, in that
first awful moment of waking. Surely to the wretched and unhappy, there
is no more awful hour in the twenty-four than that which follows the
morning awakening. Sorrow seems to have had time to sharpen her arrows
during the night, and plunges them with fresh vigor into our aching
hearts.
While she was dressing, Leslie went over the whole of the incidents
of the previous day, bit by bit, and suddenly, with the sharpness of
a flash of lightning, a gleam of hope shot across the darkness of her
misery. Suppose this woman had lied! Such women as she would find no
difficulty in stooping to untruth and deception. Suppose she had got
possession of Yorke's portrait, had forged the letter, had concocted
the whole story? The supposition seemed far-fetched and improbable,
but it sent a thrill of hope through her, and she finished dressing
with feverish haste, and hurried downstairs.
All through the breakfast she felt like one in a dream, as if she were
suspended between life and death, and waiting for the verdict. Her
father talked of his picture, of all he meant to do, now that he was on
the high road to Fame, and his voice sounded in her ears like that of
someone speaking afar off.
Yorke, her Yorke, might prove to be hers still! Oh, blessed hope. How
mad, how wicked, how foolish she had been to put any trust in the woman
who had slandered him!
The revulsion of feeling was so great that it sent a hectic flush to
her face, and a feverish light to her eyes.
"That receipt and note, Leslie," said her father. "Tell Mr. Temple that
I would rather not sell the picture, that I would rather return his
money than forego the right of exhibiting the picture."
"Yes, yes, papa," she said at random. "Yes, it will all come right. It
was wicked, foolish, to doubt him, to believe her."
He stared at her with irritable impatience.
"What are you talking of, Leslie?" he said peevishly. "You seem very
strange this morning, and so you were last night."
"I know, I know, dear!" she broke in with something between a sigh and
a sob. "Don't mind me. I am not very well. You want the receipt?" she
sprang to the writing table. "There it is, and the note. Yes, yes! It
will come right. I know it will; and--and--oh, how hot it is! I must
have air, air!"
She caught up her hat, and with the receipt and note in her hand, ran
to the door.
"I shall see Mr. Temple, papa, and I will give him these."
"And tell him," he called after her, "that I make it a condition that
the picture shall be exhibited; mind that, Leslie!"
"Yes, yes!" she responded, and ran out.
She drew her breath hard as she paused for a moment on the doorstep,
then she hurried to the quay.
A fisherman was drying his net in the sun, but there was no one else
there, and she walked up and down, the note in her hand, repeating to
herself the formula of hope; the woman, Finetta, had lied to her and
deceived her. All would be well. Yorke would be her Yorke still!
She had not been walking thus very long before the bath chair, wheeled
by Grey, was seen coming on to the quay.
She hurried toward it, and the duke motioned to Grey to stop.
"Good morning, Miss Leslie," he said, peering up at her. "It is a fine
morning, isn't it." Then he paused and scanned her face curiously and
earnestly. "Is anything the matter?"
"The matter?" she repeated with a laugh that sounded in her ears hollow
and unnatural. "What should be the matter? I have brought you my
father's receipt and a note, Mr. Temple."
He took it and glanced at it.
"Humph," he said. "Oh, yes, I'll do anything your father wishes. And
there is nothing the matter, Miss Leslie?" and he peered up at her
curiously from under his thick brows.
"Nothing, nothing," she responded feverishly. "But I wanted to ask
you--the duke, the Duke of Rothbury----."
His pale face flushed, and he motioned to Grey to withdraw out of
hearing.
"I thought so!" he said. "Miss Leslie, sick men, like me, acquire a
kind of second sight. Directly I saw you just now, I knew that you had
learnt the truth."
She looked down at him, and her face, which had been flushed
feverishly, paled.
"The truth?" she faltered.
"Yes," he said in a tone that suggested remorse. "You have been cruelly
deceived!"
"Deceived!" she echoed the word as if its significance were lost upon
her. "Deceived!"
"Yes. Cruelly. But you must not blame him altogether.
"Blame him. Whom?" she said slowly.
"Yorke, Yorke," he said in a low voice. "It was as much my fault as
his. I ought to have told you. We have both deceived you wickedly,
inexcusably."
Leslie put out her hand and caught the chair, and stood looking down at
him.
"Blame me more than him," he went on. "Blame us both. We ought to have
told you, at any rate, however we kept other people in the dark. But he
was not free, and I--well, I held my tongue."
"He was not free?" she murmured mechanically.
"No! I don't ask you to forgive us; you'd find it too hard. I don't
expect you even to understand the motive."
She put out her hand to him.
"Wait--stop! Let me think. He has deceived me, then?"
"He has, and I have, yes," he said, averting his eyes from the misery
in her face. "Is it so hard and bitter a blow, Leslie?" he said after a
pause.
"Yes," she responded almost unconsciously. "I hoped that--that----. But
it does not matter. Nothing matters, now."
He fidgeted in his chair, and peered up at her curiously, strangely.
"Anyway, you know the truth now."
"Yes! I know the truth now," she echoed faintly. "Why," hoarsely, "why
did he do it?"
The duke bit his lip.
"It was more my fault than his. I ought to have told you. I did not
know--did not know that you would take it so much to heart. For God's
sake don't look so wretched, so heartbroken," he burst forth. "Leslie,
you make me feel like a criminal!"
She turned her white face to him.
"You let me--love him, go on loving him, knowing all the while----."
He hung his head and plucked at the edge of the shawl across his knees.
"I did!" he said in a low voice. "I tell you so."
"God forgive you!" she panted. "God forgive you--and him!"
She stood a moment as if struggling for breath, and turned and walked
swiftly away.
The duke sat for a full five minutes, staring at the front wheel of his
chair; then he jerked his hand up and called to Grey.
"Take me home!" he snapped. "What the devil are you waiting for? Take
me home and back to London as soon as possible."
Leslie sped along the quay, and staggered rather than walked into the
sitting room, and a moment afterward her father hurried in.
"Leslie, Leslie!" he cried. "Where are you?"
She lifted her head from the sofa cushion with dull, blinded eyes.
"Here's a telegram! A telegram from one of the large dealers. He wants
to see me in London at once! At once, do you hear? Why do you stare
at me like that? There is no time to lose. We must go up to London at
once. At once! Run upstairs and pack our things!"
She rose and staggered to her feet.
"No, no! It is--it is----," she paused and clutched his arm, laughing
hysterically. "Don't believe it, papa. It is not true. I can explain!"
"Explain? Not true? What are you talking about, Leslie! I tell you it
is from one of the first dealers in London. Fame, fame, has come to me
at last! Get ready at once! We will go by the first train we can catch!"