HUSBAND AND--BROTHER.
The great duke who built Rothbury Castle was no fool.
He chose the best of the hills, placed his house on the brow amidst a
belt of oaks and elms and surrounded by park-like lawns. He made the
body and the two wings in a long facade facing due south, and all along
the front he ran a terrace of white stone with flights of broad steps
leading down to the lawns and Italian gardens, which were then in vogue.
From this terrace a view was obtained which was almost, if not quite,
as grand as that which enraptures the gaze from Richmond Hill; while
looked at from below, the castle presented an appearance which might
well be described as magnificent. Each succeeding duke had done what he
could to improve, or at any rate maintain, the ancestral home, and all
England was proud of Rothbury Castle.
On an evening in June the duke was seated in his bath-chair in a corner
of the terrace looking wistfully and expectantly towards the most
distant part of the drive, which wound round and about the tall elms
like a yellow snake. Beside him stood Grey, also looking expectant, and
every now and then covertly glancing at his watch behind his master's
back.
Just below the terrace was an arch composed of laurels, studded with
roses; the great flag and the Rothbury arms floated from one of the
towers and other flags flapped in the soft breeze from Venetian masts,
and lines stretched from point to point of the castle and grounds.
Servants in their dark claret livery hurried to and fro or stood in
groups looking toward the same spot on which the duke's eye was fixed.
The hall door was open wide, and at the foot of the stairs stood the
general servants of the household--all of them, from the stately
housekeeper in satin to the scullery-maid in her black stuff dress
and white apron. In fact, the whole place was in a state of pleasant
excitement, and no one excepting the duke in his chair seemed able to
keep still in one place for more than a minute at a time.
"That train's late, Grey," said the duke with a painfully poor attempt
at indifference. "It always is late. See that I write to the Traffic
Director about it, will you? It is something shameful the way this line
is mismanaged. It must be twenty minutes late, I know!"
"Not quite, your grace; about a quarter, I should say," said Grey,
pulling out his watch.
"Oh, put that watch away!" said the duke. "You have lugged it out
twenty times during the last half hour. Do you think I haven't seen
you? I wish to heaven you'd go away if you must fidget."
"Beg pardon, your grace," said Grey from behind, and hiding a smile.
"Shall I wheel your grace in, the air is rather----."
"Nonsense! It's as hot as--as a furnace. Are they coming yet? They seem
to forget that I'm a director of this beastly line! By George, I'll
go down to their next board meeting and make it hot for them! More
accidents occur from the unpunctuality of trains than anything else.
Ah, what's that?"
"They're coming, your grace!" exclaimed Grey.
The duke made a movement as if he were about to rise, then he sank back
with a sigh.
"Go and tell them; they can't see as well as we can. See that
everything is ready."
"Yes, your grace; but there's no need, they've seen the carriage," he
added, as the servants began to move about like a hive of bees, and
then, as if by mutual consent, swarmed upon the principal flight of
steps from the terrace.
The carriage, with its four white horses, swept along the avenue, the
postilions cracking their whips and keeping their steeds at a smart
gallop; and presently Yorke, who had been leaning forward, said:
"The first view of the castle, Leslie!"
Leslie bent forward eagerly and a faint cry of amazement and delight
escaped her.
"Oh, Yorke, how lovely, how lovely!" she murmured. "I had no idea it
was so large or so beautiful. It is an Aladdin's palace! And look,
Yorke, there is an arch of flowers! How kind of them! Oh----," she drew
a long breath and sank back. "I think I am a little frightened by it
all!"
He leant his arm on the side of the carriage and looked at her with a
smile on his lips, and the light of a passionate love in his eyes.
The view before them was beautiful enough in all conscience, but the
loveliness beside him transcended it! Six months of such happiness as
falls to few mortals had done wonders for Leslie. It had brought back
the color to her face, the light to her eyes, the music of youth's joy
and love's ecstasy to her voice. It was the Leslie of Portmaris with
something added, a something too delicately intangible for words, but
the charm of which all felt who met and talked with her.
If it was possible Yorke had grown to love her with a deeper and more
passionate love since their marriage, and his pride in her beauty had
verged on the ridiculous; and sometimes Leslie, made to blush under
his gaze, would put her hands over her eyes. The intensity of his love
almost frightened her; and she was as one who fears for the safety of a
precious vase which fate may overturn or some malignant wand cast from
its pedestal and shatter.
The six months of happiness had wrought wonders for Yorke also. The wan
and haggard, the hopeless, listless expression had vanished from his
face, and in its place was a look of contentment and youthful energy
which gave him back all the brightness that had helped to win Leslie's
heart.
It was, indeed, the old Yorke with his ready laugh and jest who sat
beside his sweetheart-wife, as they bowled toward their future home.
"There you are!" he said presently. "You can see the terrace now. By
George, what a mob! It's a regular reception! There'll be a speech
for certain! Do you think you are equal to returning thanks, my lady?
Just think over a few 'graceful phrases,' as the newspapers put
it--something neat and short."
"Oh, don't Yorke!" she pleaded. "If you knew how my heart was
beating----."
"Let me feel it," he said promptly, seizing upon the excuse.
"No, no, sir! You mustn't! Fleming may look round any moment," and she
cast a glance of mock warning at that important individual seated on
the box. "But you may hold my hand, if you like. Isn't it trembling?"
and she turned her eyes upon him piteously, though a soft smile played
upon her parted lips. "Oh, Yorke, I feel so--so small before all this.
I ought to have been six feet high, and very, very stately! And instead
I feel so tiny and insignificant! There is one good thing. I shall be
able to get behind you and hide myself. Do you know that you have grown
dreadfully big, Yorke?"
He laughed.
"Have I? I dare say. Happiness, like laughter, makes one grow fat. I
shouldn't be surprised if I developed into a kind of Daniel Lambert.
There was one fat Rothbury. I'll show you his portrait, and if you like
it I'll try and live up to it. Oh, what lots I have to show you! But,
I forgot, I must leave that to Dolph! The dear old chap will love to
trot you around the place, for he's proud of it, though he is always
growling and calling it a barracks, and an overgrown show. Dear old
Dolph! Now--oh, you are not going to cry!"
"No, no!" Leslie responded, wiping her eyes stealthily. "It--it was
only the sun in my eyes. Oh, Yorke, how good Heaven has been to us in
every way! Think how sad it would have been to have come home and found
him gone from us!"
Yorke nodded with momentary gravity.
"Yes, Heaven has been very good to us, dearest," he said in a low,
fervent voice. "In that as in all things."
The horses tore along as if they knew they were being eagerly waited
for, and presently the sound of cheering rose and swelled into a volume
as the carriage passed under the arch. As it passed Leslie looked up
and uttered an exclamation of delight.
"Oh, look, Yorke!" she cried. "Yorke, look!"
Half a dozen of the prettiest of the village school-girls stood on a
bower on top of the arch, and the moment the carriage was underneath
they began to sing and throw roses into it.
"Stop, stop for one moment!" pleaded Leslie. "I--I want to speak to
them. Oh, I can't, I can't!" she cried. "You speak, Yorke! Thank them,
oh, thank them!"
They could not stop, and in despair Leslie snatched up one of the roses
and kissed it at the children, and waved her hand.
"That's better than a speech," said Yorke delightedly. "Look at them
clapping their hands, and hear them shouting. Commend me to Lady
Auchester for doing the right thing in an emergency. Here we are!" he
exclaimed, as the carriage drew up at the steps, and four grooms ran
forward to the horses' heads, and he got out and held his hand to her.
As they passed up the steps, lined on either side by the servants, the
cheers were redoubled, mingled with shouts:
"Welcome home, my lord! Welcome home, my lady!"
At the top of the steps stood the gray-haired butler. Yorke nearly
spoiled his short speech by shaking hands with him, but the old fellow
stammered it out, and Yorke, with his wife on his arm, looked round
with his bright smile, and opened his lips.
But, as he said afterward, a lump came into his throat, and for a
moment or two he could not utter a word, and even then he found himself
stammering as the butler had done, as he said:
"Thank you, thank you! I should like to tell you how deeply I feel your
kindness, but I can't, somehow! But I do feel it very much, and so does
my wife, my dear wife----," he stopped suddenly, and in the unexpected
silence, a voice--it was that of the little scullery-maid, who had
edged forward--was heard distinctly--"Oh, isn't she lovely!"
A proud light flashed into Yorke's eyes, and he held his head high.
"Yes," he said, "she is lovely! But she is something better than that;
she is good--good!"
One touch of nature like this makes the whole world kin, and a shout
went up which echoed and re-echoed round the old walls.
Leslie stood 'covered with blushes,' but her hand closed on her
husband's, and with a loving, grateful pressure, as she looked up at
him with a pride which equaled his own.
Then Yorke went quickly across the terrace--the servants drawing back
with true delicacy--to where the bath-chair stood, and in another
instant the duke's hand was grasped in his. But after an affectionate
glance at his happy face the duke motioned him aside, and held out
both hands towards Leslie.
"My welcome comes last, but it's not the least, my dear," he said.
Leslie stood for a second hesitating, her color coming and going, then
she bent down and kissed him on the forehead.
His thin face flushed, and he held her a moment, patting her arm in the
way a man does when he is having a hard fight with his emotion.
"You're both looking very well, young people," he said, but without
removing his eyes from Leslie's face. "Very well--and absurdly happy."
Leslie laughed, and her eyes dwelt on him with an expression of
satisfaction and rejoicing, which he did not understand until she said:
"And you--oh, how well you look, how different."
He shook his head with one of his quaintly grim smiles.
"Yes. I'm very sorry, and I hope you'll both forgive me for being so
inconsiderate, but I was never half so well in my life. I'm afraid I'm
going to be a nuisance, and keep poor Yorke waiting for the title for a
year or two."
"All right, Dolph," said Yorke in his old breezy voice. "We'll tell you
when we're tired of waiting."
"Do, do!" he said. "Mind, that's a promise! Now you are tired, and you
want to rest before dinner. Yorke, you'll have to do the honors of the
house; Leslie won't care to wait while I limp along."
Leslie drew his arm through hers and looked down at him with the smile
which a sister bestows upon a beloved and afflicted brother, and with
an added tenderness too subtle for analysis.
"I will not go without you," she said. "Lean upon me, or rather I will
lean upon you, for I am a little tired, and you are quite strong."
The duke's face flushed with pleasure and satisfaction as he got up.
"Very well," he said.
They entered the vast hall, and he pointed out the great staircase
upon which Royalist and Roundhead had fought till the stairs ran with
blood--the stains were there still, under the carpet; the old oak
carving; the tattered banners which the Rothburys of old had borne in
many a fight for king and country; the tapestry hangings, which not
even Windsor could match; the oriel window of stained glass, brought
piece by piece from Flanders; the long line of family portraits. Then
he took her through the state apartments, with their gilded carvings
and priceless furniture, grand lofty rooms, as splendid as anything she
had seen, even in palatial Venice; to the library, which a studious,
book-loving duke had constructed with infinite care and pains, and
filled with rare and choice editions; to the smaller rooms in which he
and she and Yorke would live, and which with their modern decorations
and furniture were the epitome of elegance and comfort. Then they
went up the great staircase and along the broad corridors, lined with
pictures and statuary.
"These are your rooms," he said, opening a door, and smiling as Leslie
uttered a cry of amazement and delight. "You like them?" he said
quietly, but evidently delighted at her delight. "I'm glad of that.
It has been an amusement for me while you have been away getting them
ready. I hope you'll find all you want, but you must remember that I'm
only a miserable bachelor, and make allowances if you miss anything."
"What shall I say to him, Yorke?" she said, appealing to Yorke
helplessly.
The duke drew her on as if to escape her thanks.
"You shan't be bothered with more rooms now," he said. "To-morrow you
shall see it all. You must get acquainted with your own house, you
know, as soon as possible."
As he spoke Yorke, who had walked beside them too moved for speech,
stopped before the half opened door and pushed it open.
It was a plainly furnished room--very plainly, no silks or satins or
inlaid furniture here, but an ordinary iron bedstead, and dressing
table and washstand of plain deal.
"My room," said the duke simply.
Leslie stopped and peeped in, then she stood still, surprised and
touched at its simplicity.
"Why have you given us all the beautiful things, and left none for
yourself, duke?" she said reproachfully.
He laughed.
"Oh, I'm simple in my tastes," he said. "But I half thought of
furnishing this room as a boudoir for you, there is such a pretty view.
Come in!"
She went in and to the window, but she did not look at the view, for
her eye was caught by a picture hanging on the wall at the foot of the
bed.
It was the picture her father had painted, and "Mr. Temple" had bought.
She looked at it in silence and the tears filled her eyes; then she
turned her lovely face to the duke and tried to speak.
"All right, my dear," he said in a low voice. "I like to have it
there. It reminds me of old times. Reminds me of the Portmaris days,
when, blinded by my own conceit, I thought all women were false and
worthless. You have opened my eyes, my dear, and I see more clearly
now! There! There!" for her tears fell fast. "That is all past now."
He paused for a moment, then lifted his eyes to her face with a tender
regard, and murmured:
Love took up the harp of life, and smote on all its chords with might,
Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, passed in music out of sight--
"I suppose he has told you how it was with me, my dear?"
Leslie's eyes dropped for an instant, then she raised them and looked
into his, and her hand closed tightly on his thin one.
"Well," he said with a smile, "you must cut your heart in two, and give
one-half to your husband, and the other to--your brother!"