FRIENDS AND FOES.
Something in the slightly mutinous expression of Lesley's face seemed to
strike her father. He looked at her fixedly for a minute or two, then
smiled a little, and began to busy himself amongst his papers.
"You are very like your mother," he said.
Lesley felt a thrill of strong indignation. How dared he speak of her
mother to her without shame and grief and repentance? She flushed to her
temples and cast down her eyes, for she was resolved to say nothing that
she might afterwards regret.
"Won't you sit down?" said Mr. Brooke, indifferently. "You must make
yourself at home, you know. If you don't, I'm afraid you will be
uncomfortable. You will have to look after yourself."
Lesley made no answer. She was thinking that it would be very
disagreeable to look after herself. She did not know how clearly her
face expressed her sentiments.
"You don't much like the prospect, apparently?" said her father.
"Well"--for he was becoming a little provoked by her silence--"what
_would_ you like? Do you want a maid?"
"Oh, no, thank you," said Lesley, startled into speech.
"You can have one if you like, you know. Speak to your aunt about it. I
suppose you have not been accustomed to wait upon yourself. Can you do
your own hair?"
He spoke with a smile, half-indulgent, half-contemptuous. Lesley
remembered, with intuitive comprehension of his mood, that her mother
was singularly helpless, and never dressed without Dayman's help, or
brushed the soft tresses that were still so luxuriant and so fair. She
rebelled at once against the unspoken criticism.
"I can do everything for myself," she said; "I can do my own hair and
mend my dresses and everything, because I am a schoolgirl; but of
course when I am older I expect to have my own maid, as every lady
does."
Mr. Brooke's short, hard laugh was distinctly unpleasing to her ear.
"I think you will find, when you are older," he said, with an emphasis
on the words, "that a great many ladies have to do without maids--and
very much better for them that they should--but as I do not wish to
stint you in anything, nor to oppose any fairly reasonable desire of
yours, I will tell your aunt to get you a maid as soon as possible."
"Oh, no, please!" cried Lesley, more alarmed than pleased by the
prospect. "I really do not wish for one; I do not wish you to have the
trouble--the ex----"
She stopped short: she did not quite like to speak of the "expense."
"It will not be much trouble to me if Sophia finds you a maid," said her
father drily; "and as to the expense, which is what I suppose you were
going to allude to, I am quite well able to afford it. Otherwise I
should not have proposed such a thing."
Lesley felt herself snubbed, and did not like it, but again kept
silence.
"I cannot promise you much amusement while you stay here," Mr. Brooke
went on, "but anything that you like to see or hear when you are in town
can be easily provided for. I mean in the way of picture galleries,
concerts, theatres--things of that kind. Your Aunt Sophia will probably
be too much occupied to take you to such places; but if you have a maid
you will be pretty independent. I wonder she did not think of it
herself. Of course a maid can go about with you, and so relieve her
mind."
"I am sorry to be troublesome," said Lesley, stiffly.
He cast an amused glance at her. "You won't trouble _me_, my dear. And
Mrs. Romaine says that she will call and make your acquaintance. I dare
say you will find her a help to you."
"Is she--a friend of yours?"
"A very old friend," said Caspar Brooke, with decision. "Then there are
the Kenyons, who live opposite. Ethel Kenyon is a clever girl--a great
favorite of mine. Her brother is a doctor."
"And she lives with him and keeps his house?" said Lesley, growing
interested.
"Well, she lives with him. I don't know that she does much in the way of
keeping his house. I hope I shall not shock your prejudices"--how did he
know that she had any prejudices?--"if I tell you that she is an
actress."
"An actress!"--Lesley flushed with surprise, even with a little horror,
though at the same moment she was conscious of a movement of pleasant
curiosity and a desire to know what an actress was like in private life.
"I thought you would be horrified," said her father, looking at her with
something very like satisfaction. "How could you be anything else? How
long have you lived in a French convent? Eight or ten years, is it not?
Ah, well, I can't be surprised if you have imbibed the conventional idea
of what you would call, I suppose, your class." He gave a little shrug
to his broad shoulders. "It can't be helped now. You must make yourself
as happy as you can, my poor child, as long as you are here, and console
yourself with visions of your happy future at the Courtleroys'."
It was exactly what Lesley intended to do, and yet she felt hurt by the
slightly contemptuous pity of his tone.
"I have no doubt that I shall be very happy," she said, steadying her
voice as well as she could; "and I hope that you will not concern
yourself about me."
"I should not have time to do so if I wished," he answered coolly. "I
never concern myself about anything but my proper business, which is
_not_ to look after girls of eighteen----"
"Then why did you send for me here?" she asked, with lightning rapidity.
The question seemed to surprise him. He raised his eyebrows as he looked
at her.
"That was a family arrangement made many years ago," he answered at last
deliberately. "And I think it was a wise one. There is no reason why you
should grow up in utter ignorance of your father. And I prefer you to
come when you have arrived at something like a reasonable age, rather
than when you were quite a child. As you _are_ at a reasonable age,
Lesley," with a lightening of his tones, "I suppose you have some
tastes, some inclinations, of your own? What are they?"
It must have been obstinacy that prompted Lesley's answer. "I have no
taste," she said, looking down. "No inclinations."
"Are you not fond of music?"
"I play a little--a very little."
"Oh." The tone was one of disappointment. "Art?
Drawing--carving--modelling--any of the fads young ladies are so fond of
now-a-days?"
"No."
"Do you read much?"
"No."
"What do you do, then?"
"I can embroider a little," said Lesley, calmly. "The nuns taught me.
And I can dance."
She raised her eyes and studied the stormy expressions that flitted one
after another across her father's face. She knew that she had taken a
delight in provoking him, and she wondered whether he was not going to
retaliate by an angry word. But after a few moments' pause he only
said--
"Would you like any lessons in singing or drawing now that you are in
town?"
The offer was a temptation to Lesley. Yes, she would dearly have liked
some good singing lessons; her mother even had suggested that she should
take them while she was in London. She was the fortunate possessor of a
voice that was worth cultivating, and she longed to make the best of her
time. But she had come with the notion that her father was poor, and
that she must not be an unnecessary expense to him; and this idea had
not been counteracted by any appearance of luxury or lavish expenditure
in her London home. The furniture, except in her own room, was heavy,
old-fashioned, and decidedly shabby. Her father seemed to work very
hard. He had already promised her a maid; and Lesley could not bear to
ask him for anything else. So she answered--
"No, I think not, thank you."
There might be generosity, but there was also some resentment and hot
temper at the bottom of Lesley's reply. This was a fact, however, that
her father did not discern. He merely paused for a moment, nodded his
head once or twice, and seemed slightly disconcerted. Then he said--
"Very well; do just as you like. Your aunt has a Mudie subscription, I
believe"--what this meant Lesley had not the faintest idea--"and you
will find books in the library, and a piano in the drawing-room. You
must ask for anything you want." As if that was likely, Lesley thought!
"I hope you will make friends and be comfortable. And--a--" he paused,
and hesitated in his speech as he went on--"a--I hope--your mother--Lady
Alice--was well when you left her?"
"Pretty well," Lesley answered, dropping her eyes.
"Was she going to Scotland for the winter?"
"I think so."
"Oh." He seemed satisfied with the answer. "By the way, Lesley, are you
Catholic or Protestant?"
"Protestant. Mamma would not allow the Sisters to talk to me about
religion. I always drove to the English Church on Sundays."
"Oh, very well. Do as you please. There are plenty of churches near us.
But you need not bring more clergy than you can help to the house," said
Brooke, with a peculiar smile. "I am not very fond of the Blacks. I am
more of a Red myself, you know."
"A Red?" Lesley asked, helplessly.
"A Red Republican--Radical--Socialist--anything you like," said Brooke,
laughing outright. "You didn't read the papers in your convent, I
suppose. You had better begin to study them straight away. It will be a
pleasant change from the Lives of the Saints. And now, if we have
finished all that we have to say--I am rather busy, and----"
"Oh, I beg your pardon: I will go," said Lesley, rising at once. "I had
no wish to intrude upon you," she added, with an attempt to be dignified
and womanly, which she felt to be a miserable failure. Her father simply
nodded in reply, took up his pen, and allowed her to leave the room.
But when she had gone, he put the pen down and sat back in his chair,
musing. Lesley had surprised him a little. She had more force and fire
in her composition than he had expected to find. She was, as he had
said, very like her mother in face and figure; and the minute
differences of line and contour that showed Lesley to be strong where
Lady Alice had been weak, original where Lady Alice had been most
conventional, intellectual where Lady Alice had been only intelligent,
were not perceptible at first sight even to a practised observer of men
and women like Caspar Brooke. But the flash of her brown eyes, so like
his own, and an occasional intonation in her voice, had told him
something. She was in arms against him, so much he felt; and she had
more individuality than her mother, in spite of her ignorance. It was a
pity that her education had been so much neglected! Manlike, Caspar
Brooke took literally every word that she had uttered; and reproached
himself for having allowed his foolish, frivolous wife to bring up his
daughter in a place where she had been taught nothing but embroidery and
dancing.
"It is a pity," he reflected; "but we cannot alter the matter now. The
poor girl will feel herself sadly out of place in this house, I fear;
but perhaps it won't do her any harm. She may be a better woman all her
life--the idle, selfish, self-indulgent life that she is bound by all
her traditions and her upbringing to lead--for having seen for a few
months what honest work is like. She is too handsome not to marry well:
let us only hope that Alice won't secure a duke for her. She will if she
can; and I--well, I haven't much opinion of dukes." And so with a laugh
and a shrug, Caspar Brooke returned to his work.
Lesley went upstairs to the drawing-room with burning cheeks and a lump
in her throat. She was offended by her father's manner towards her,
although she could not but acknowledge that in essentials he had seemed
wishful to be kind. And she knew that she had seemed ungracious and had
felt resentful. But the resentment, she assured herself, was all on her
mother's account. If he had treated Lady Alice as he had treated Lady
Alice's daughter--with hardly concealed contempt, with the scornful
indifference of one looking down from a superior height--Lesley did not
wonder that her mother had left him. It was a manner which had never
been displayed to her before, and she said to herself that it was
horribly discourteous. And the worst of it was that it did not seem to
be directed to herself alone: it included her friends the nuns, her
mother, her mother's family, and all the circle of aristocratic
relations to which she belonged. She was despised as part of the class
which he despised; and it was difficult for her to understand the
situation.
It would have been easier if she could have set her father down as a
mere boor, without refinement or intelligence; but there was one item in
her impression of him which she could not reconcile with a want of
culture. She was keenly sensitive to sound; and voices were important to
her in her judgment of acquaintances. Now, Caspar Brooke had a
delightful voice. It was low, musical, and finely modulated: his accent,
moreover, was particularly delicate and refined. Lesley had, without
knowing it, the same charmingly modulated intonation; and her father's
voice was instinctively familiar to her. People had often said that it
was hard to dislike a man with a voice like Caspar Brooke's; and Lesley
was not insensible to its fascination. No, he could not be a mere
insensate clod, with that pleasant and cultivated voice, she decided to
herself; but he might be something worse--a heartless man of the world,
who cared for nothing but himself and his own low ambitions: not a man
who was worthy to be the husband of a gentle, loving, highly-organized
woman like the daughter of Lord Courtleroy.
With a deep sigh, Lesley ceased at last to meditate, and began to look
about her. The room was large and lofty, and had three windows, opening
upon a balcony. There were more books than Lesley had usually seen in
drawing-rooms, and there was a very handsome Broadwood grand piano. The
furniture was mostly of the solid type, handsome enough, but very heavy.
Lesley, noticed, however, that the prints and paintings on the walls
were really good, and that there was some valuable china on the
mantlepiece. It was not an ugly room after all, and it displayed signs
of culture on the part of its occupants; but Lesley turned from it with
an impatient little shake of her head, expressive of deep disgust. And,
indeed, it was sufficiently unlike the rooms to which she was accustomed
to cause her considerable disappointment.
She drew aside the curtains which hung from the archway between the back
room and the front; and here her brow cleared. The one wide window
looked out on a space of green grass and trees, inexpressibly refreshing
to Lesley's eye. The walls were lined with rows of books, from floor to
ceiling; and some easy chairs and small tables gave a look of comfort
and purpose to the room. It was Mr. Brooke's library, though not the
room in which he did his work. That was chiefly done in his little den
downstairs, or at his office in the city.
Lesley looked at the books with great and increasing pleasure. Here,
indeed, was a joy of which her father could not rob her. No one would
take any notice of what she read. She could "browse undisturbed" over
the whole field of English literature if she were so minded. And the
prospect was a delight.
She sauntered back into the front room, and stood at one of the windows
for a minute or two. Her attention was speedily attracted by a little
pantomime at a window opposite her own--a drawing-room window, too, with
a balcony before it, like the window at which she stood. A young lady in
a white dress was talking to a black poodle, who was standing on his
hind-legs, and a young man was balancing a bit of biscuit on the dog's
nose. That was all. But the young lady was so extremely pretty, and the
young man looked so cheerful and bright, and the poodle was such an
extremely fascinating dog, that Lesley sighed in very envy of the
felicity of all three. And it never crossed her mind that the pretty
girl in the white costume, who had such a simple and natural look, could
possibly be Ethel Kenyon, the actress, of whom her father had been
speaking half an hour before. Yet such was the case.
She was still observing the figures at the window when the door opened,
and Sarah announced a visitor.
"Mrs. Romaine, please, ma'am."
Whereupon Lesley remembered the "very old friend" whom Mr. Brooke had
mentioned. But was this the very old friend? This young and
fashionably-dressed woman, with short, dark, curling hair, and a white
veil to enhance the whiteness of her complexion. Mrs. Romaine was very
handsome, without a doubt, but Lesley did not like her.
"Miss Brooke?" said the visitor, in a silvery, flute-like voice, which
the girl could not but admire. "You will forgive me for calling so soon?
My old friendship with Mr. Brooke--whom I have known for years--made me
anxious to see you, dear, as soon as possible. You will receive me also
as a friend, I hope----"
There could be but one answer. Lesley was delighted.
"I have heard so much of you," murmured Mrs. Romaine, sitting down with
the girl's hand in hers and gazing into her face with liquid, dreamy
eyes; "and I wanted to know if I could not be of use to you. Dear Miss
Brooke is so much occupied. I may call you Lesley, may I not? Dear
Lesley, it will be the greatest possible pleasure to me to assist you in
any way."
"Thank you very much," said Lesley, rather lamely.
"Dear," said Mrs. Romaine, "may I speak to you frankly? I knew your dear
mother many years ago----"
Lesley turned upon her with suddenly kindled eyes.
"You knew mamma?"
"I did, indeed, and I cannot express to you what my feeling was for her.
Love, admiration--these seem cold words: worship, Lesley, expresses more
nearly what I felt! Can you wonder that I hasten to welcome her daughter
to her home?"
Lesley's innocent heart warmed to the new-comer at once. How unjust she
had been, she thought, to shrink for a moment from the visitor because
of her youthful and ultra-fashionable appearance. Had she not found a
friend?--a woman who loved her mother?
Mrs. Romaine saw the impression that she had made, and did not try to
deepen it just then. She went on more lightly:
"I am a widow, you know, and I live in Russell Square. I hope that you
will come and see me sometimes. Drop in whenever you like, and if there
is anything that I can do for you count on me. You will want to go
shopping or making calls sometimes when Miss Brooke is too busy to take
you; then you must come to me. And how was dear Lady Alice when you saw
her last?"
Lesley did not like these effusive expressions of affection. But she
answered, gently--
"Mamma was quite well, thank you." Which answer did not give Mrs.
Romaine all the information that she desired.
"I have been looking at a pretty poodle dog over the way," she went on,
conscious of some desire to change the subject. "Its mistress has been
putting it through all sorts of tricks--ah, there it is again!"
"The Kenyons' dog?" said Mrs. Romaine, smiling, as she looked at the
little group which had once more formed itself upon the balcony. "Oh, I
see. That is young Mr. Kenyon, the doctor, a great friend of your
father's; and that is his sister, Ethel Kenyon, the actress."
"My father spoke about her," said Lesley.
"Oh, yes, he admires her very much. He wrote a long article about her in
the _Tribune_ once. Do you see the _Tribune_ regularly? Your dear father
writes a great deal for it, and I am sure you must appreciate his
exquisite writing."
"Do you know Miss Kenyon too?"
"Oh, yes, I know her very well. And I expect to know her better very
soon, because I suppose we shall be connections before long."
Lesley looked a smiling inquiry.
"I have a younger brother--my brother Oliver," said Mrs. Romaine, with a
little laugh; "and younger brothers, dear, have a knack of falling in
love. He has fallen in love with Ethel, who is really a nice girl, as
well as a pretty and a clever girl, and I believe they will be married
by and by."
Lesley could not have said why, but somehow at that moment she was
distinctly glad of the fact.