BROOKE'S DISCIPLE.
Lesley was sitting in a low chair near a small wood fire, which the
chillness of the October day made fully acceptable. She had a book on
her lap, but she did not look as if she were reading: her chin was
supported by her hand, and her brown eyes were gazing out of the window,
with, as Maurice Kenyon could not fail to see, a slightly blank and
saddened look. The girl had been now a fortnight in London, and her face
had paled and thinned since her arrival; there was an anxious fold
between her brows, and her mouth drooped at the corners. If her old
friends--Sister Rose of the convent, for instance--had seen her, they
could hardly have recognized this spiritless, brooding maiden for the
joyous "Lisa" of their thoughts.
Mr. Kenyon had only one moment in which to note the significance of her
attitude, for Lesley changed it as soon as she heard his name. He gave
her Ethel's message at once and Ethel's parcel, and then stood, a little
confused and unready for she had risen and was looking as if, when his
errand was accomplished, he ought to go. Fortunately, Doctor Sophy came
in and invited him cordially to sit down; rang for tea and scolded him
roundly for not coming oftener; then suddenly remembered that one of her
everlasting committees was at that moment sitting in a neighboring
house, and started off at once to join her fellows, calling out to
Lesley as she went to give Mr. Kenyon some tea, and tell her father, who
was in the library.
"My father is out: Aunt Sophy does not know that," said Lesley to her
visitor.
"Then I ought to go?" said Maurice, smiling.
"Oh, no!"--Lesley looked disturbed. "I did not mean to be so
inhospitable. The tea is just coming up."
"Thank you," said Maurice, accepting the unspoken invitation and seating
himself. "I shall be very glad of a cup."
She sat down too, veiling the real embarrassment of a school-girl by an
assumption of great dignity. Maurice looked at her and felt perplexed.
Somehow he could not believe that Brooke's daughter was such a very
frivolous girl when he came to look at her. She had a fine brow,
expressive eyes, a very eloquent mouth. He wondered what she was
reading. Glancing at the title of the book, his heart sank within him.
She had a yellow-backed novel in her hand, of a profoundly light and
frivolous type. Maurice was fond of certain kinds of novels, but there
were others that he disliked and despised, and, as it happened, Lesley
had got hold of one of these.
"You are reading?" he said. "Am I interrupting you very much?"
"Oh, no," Lesley answered, smiling and shutting the book. "Tea is coming
up, you see. I am falling into English habits, and beginning to love the
hour of tea."
Sarah brought in the tea-tray as she spoke; and even Sarah's sour visage
relaxed a little at the sight of the young doctor. She went downstairs,
and presently returned with a plate of small, sweet cakes, which she
placed rather ostentatiously upon the table.
"Sarah must have brought those cakes especially for me," said Mr. Kenyon
lightly, when she had left the room. "She knows they are my especial
favorites. And your father's too. I don't know how many dozen your
father and I have not eaten, with our coffee sometimes in an evening! I
suppose you are learning to like them for his sake!"
He was talking against time for the sake of giving her back the
confidence that she seemed to have lost, for her face had flushed and
paled again more than once since his entry. But perhaps he was wrong,
for she answered him with a quietness of tone which showed no
perturbation.
"These little macaroon things, you mean? I like them very much already.
I did not know that my father cared about them. I have been away so
long"--smilingly--"that I know but little of his tastes."
"I could envy you the pleasure you will have, then?" said Maurice,
quickly.
Lesley opened her brown eyes. "The--the pleasure?" she faltered in an
inquiring tone.
"Yes, the pleasure of discovering what are the tastes and feelings of a
man like your father," said Maurice.
Then, as she looked disconcerted still, and as if she did not know quite
what he meant, he went on, ardently:
"You have the privilege, you know, of being the only daughter of a man
who is not only very widely known, but very much respected and admired.
That doesn't seem much to you perhaps?"--for he thought he saw Lesley's
lip curl, and his tone became a little sharp. "I assure you it means a
great deal in a world like ours--in the world of London. It means that
your father is a man of great ability and of unimpeachable honesty--I
mean honesty of thought, honesty of purpose--intellectual honesty. You
have no idea how rare that quality is amongst public men--or literary
men--or journalists. Indeed it is a wonder that Brooke is so successful
as he is, considering that he never wrote or said a word that he did not
mean. No doubt that seems a small thing to you: it is not a small thing
to say of a journalist now-a-days."
"I don't know much about journalists," said Lesley. "But all that you
are saying would be taken as a matter of course amongst _gentlemen_."
There was a snub for Maurice, and a sly hit at her father, too. Maurice
began to wax warm.
"Miss Brooke," he said, "you entirely fail to understand me; and I can
imagine that you, perhaps, fail to understand your father also."
"If I do," said Lesley, proudly, "I hardly need to be set right by a
stranger."
The young doctor sprang to his feet. "I a stranger!" he said. "I, who
have known and appreciated and worked with Caspar Brooke for the last
half dozen years--I to be called a stranger by his daughter? I don't
think that's fair: I don't indeed."
He paused and put his tea-cup down upon the table. "If you'll only think
for a minute, Miss Brooke," he said, entreatingly, with such a sudden
softening of voice and manner that Lesley sat amazed, "I cannot believe
but that you'll pardon me. I owe so much to your father--he has been a
guide, a helper, almost a prophet to me, ever since I came across him
when I was a medical student at King's College Hospital, and I only want
everybody to see him with my eyes--loving and reverent eyes, I can tell
you, though I wouldn't say so to everybody, seeing that love and
reverence seem to have gone out of fashion! But to his daughter----"
"His daughter surely does not need to be taught how to think of him by
another, whether he be an old friend or a comparative stranger," said
Lesley. "She can learn to know him for herself."
"But _can_ she?"--Maurice Kenyon's Irish strain, which always led him to
be more eager and explicit in speech than if he had been entirely of
Anglo-Saxon nationality, was running away with him. "Are you sure that
she can? Look here, Miss Brooke: you come to your father's house
straight from a French convent, I believe. What _can_ you know of
English life? of the strife of political parties, of literary parties,
of faiths and theories and passions? You are plunged into the midst of a
new world--it can't help but be strange to you at first, and you must
feel a trifle forlorn and miserable--at least I should think so----"
Lesley was in a dilemma. Kenyon's words were so true, so apt, that they
brought involuntary tears to her eyes. She could get rid of the lump in
her throat only by working herself up into a rage: she could dissipate
the tears only by making her eyes flash with anger. The melting mood was
not to her taste. She chose the more hostile tone.
"Mr. Kenyon, excuse me, but you have no right at all to talk about my
being miserable. You may know my father: you do not know me."
"But knowing your father so well----"
"That has nothing to do with it. Am I not a separate human being? What
have you to do with me and my feelings? You say that I do not know
English ways--is it an English way," cried Lesley, indignantly, "to try
to thrust yourself into a girl's confidence, and intrude where you have
not been asked to enter? Then English ways are not those that I
approve."
Maurice Kenyon felt that his cause was lost. He had gone rather white
about the lips as he listened to Lesley's protest. Of course, he had
offended her by his abominable want of tact, he told himself--his
intrusive proffer of unneeded sympathy and help. But it was not in his
nature to acknowledge himself beaten, and to take his leave without a
word. His ardor impelled him to speak.
"Miss Brooke, I most sincerely beg your pardon," he said, in tones of
deep humility. "I see that I have made a mistake--but I assure you that
it was from the purest motives. I don't"--forgetting his apologetic
attitude for a moment--"I _don't_ think that you realize what a truly
great man your father is--how good, as well as great. I _don't_ think
you understand him. But I beg your pardon for seeming to think that I
could enlighten you. Of course, it must seem like impertinent
interference to you. But if you knew"--with a tremor of disappointment
in his voice--"what your father has been to me, you would not perhaps be
so surprised at my wanting his daughter to sympathize with me in my
feelings. I had no idea"--this was intended to be a Parthian shot--"that
my admiration would be thought insulting."
He bowed very low, and turned to depart, vowing to himself that nothing
would induce him ever to enter that drawing-room again; but Lesley, pale
and wide-eyed, called him back.
"Stay, Mr. Kenyon," she said, rising from her seat.
He halted, his hat in one hand, his fingers still on the knob of the
door.
"I never meant to say," said Lesley, confronting him, "that I was
incapable of sympathy with you in admiration for my father. With my
feeling towards him you have nothing to do--that is all. I am not angry
because you express your own sentiments, but because----"
She stopped and bit her lip.
"----Because I dared divine what yours might be?" asked Maurice, boldly,
and with an accent of reproach. "Is it possible that yours _can_ be like
mine? and am I to blame for saying so? How can you estimate the worth of
his work? You, a girl fresh from school! I know it is very rude to say
so, but I cannot help it. If you were more of a woman, Miss Brooke, if
you had had a wider experience of life and mankind, you would
acknowledge that you could not possibly know very much of what your
father had done, and you would be glad of the opportunity of learning!"
This was just the speech calculated to make Lesley furiously angry, and
it was with great difficulty that she restrained the words that rose
impetuously to her lips. She stood motionless and silent, and Maurice
mistook her silence for that of stupid obstinacy, when it was the
silence of wounded feeling and passionate resentment. He went on hotly,
for he began to feel himself once more in the right.
"Of course you _may_ know all about him: you may know as much as I who
have lived and worked at his side, so to speak, for the last six years!
You may be familiar with his writings: you may have seen the _Tribune_
every week, and you may know that wonderful book of his--'The
Unexplored' I mean, not the essays--by heart; there may be nothing that
I can tell you, even about his gallant fight for one of the hospitals
last year, or the splendid work he has set going at the Macclesfield
Buildings in North London, or the way in which his name is blessed by
hundreds--yes hundreds--of men and women and children whom he has helped
to lead a better life! You may know all about these things, and plenty
more, but you _can't_ know--coming here without having seen him since
you were a baby--you _can't_ know the beauty of his character, or the
depths of his sympathy for the erring, or the tremendous efforts that he
has made, and is still making, for the laboring poor. You can't know
this, or else I'd tell you, Miss Brooke, what you would be doing! You
would be working heart and soul to lighten his burdens and relieve him
of the incessant drudgery that interferes with his higher work, instead
of sitting here day after day reading yellow-backed novels in a
drawing-room."
And then, in a white heat of indignation, Mr. Maurice Kenyon took his
leave. But he did not know the consternation that he had created in
Lesley's mind. She was positively frightened by his vehemence. But she
had never seen an angry man before--never been spoken to in strong
masculine tones of reprobation and disgust, such as it seemed to her
that Maurice Kenyon had used. And for what? She did not know. She was
not aware that she had behaved in an unfilial manner to her father. She
did not realize that her cold demeanor, her puzzled and bewildered
looks, had told Mr. Kenyon far more than she would have cared to confess
about the state of her feelings. For the rest, Ethel's words and
Maurice's vivid imagination were to blame. And, angry as Lesley was, she
felt with a thrill of dismay that Mr. Kenyon's discourteous words were
perfectly true. She did not appreciate her father; she did not know
anything about him. All that she had hitherto surmised was bad. And here
came a young man, apparently sane, certainly handsome and clever,
although disagreeable--to tell her that Caspar Brooke was a hero, a man
among ten thousand, an intellectual giant, an uncrowned king. It was too
ridiculous; and Lesley laughed aloud--although as she laughed she found
that her eyes were wet with tears.