MAURICE KENYON'S APOLOGY.
Lesley stood irresolute. In the other room she heard the sound of voices
calling her own name. "We are just going, Lesley," she heard Mrs.
Romaine say. She made a hurried step towards the door.
"I can't stop," she said. "They will go without me."
"What if they do?" asked Mr. Kenyon. "I'll see you home."
Lesley looked amazed, as well she might, at this masterful way of
settling the question. And while she hesitated Maurice acted, as he
usually did.
He strode to the door and spoke to Miss Brooke. "I am just showing your
niece some of the books: I'll follow in a minute or two with her if
you'll kindly walk on. It won't take me more than a minute."
"Then we may as well wait," said Oliver's voice.
Lesley would have been very angry if she had known what happened then.
Mr. Kenyon, by means of energetic pantomime, conveyed to the quick
perceptions of Doctor Sophy a knowledge of the fact that Lesley was a
little agitated and overcome, and that he was soothing her. And that the
departure of the rest of the party would be a blessed relief.
Aunt Sophy was good-natured, and she had complete trust in Maurice
Kenyon.
"Don't stay more than a minute or two," she said. "We'll just walk on
then--Caspar and I. Mr. Trent is, of course, escorting your sister. Mrs.
Romaine will come with us, and you'll follow?"
"I am quite ready," said Lesley.
"All right," answered Maurice, easily, "I must first show you this
book." Then he returned to the library, and she heard the sounds of
retreating steps and voices as her father and his party left the
building.
"You have no book to show me--you had better come at once," Lesley said,
severely. But Mr. Kenyon arrested her.
"I assure you I have. Look here: the men clubbed together a little while
ago and presented your father's works to the library, all bound, you
see, in vellum. I need not mention that _he_ had not thought it worth
while to give his own books to the club."
He showed her the volumes with pride, as if the presentation had been
made to a member of his own family. Lesley touched the books with gentle
fingers and reverent eyes. "I have been reading 'The Unexplored,'" she
said.
"I knew you would! And I knew you would like it!--I am not wrong?"
"I like it very much. But it is all new to me--so new--I feel like Ione
when she first heard of the miseries of England--I have lived in an
enchanted world, where everything of that sort was kept from me;
so--_how_ could I understand?"
"I know! I know!--You make me doubly ashamed of myself. I have lived,
metaphorically, in dust and ashes ever since we had that talk together.
Miss Brooke, I must have seemed to you the most intolerable prig! Can
you ever forgive me for what I said?"
"But," said Lesley, looking straight into his face with her clear brown
eyes, "if what you said was true?----"
"I had no right to say it."
"That is true," Lesley answered, coldly; and she turned about as though
she did not wish to pursue the subject.
"But can you not forgive me for it? I was unjustifiably angry I confess;
but since I confess it----"
"Mr. Kenyon, we ought to be going home. I see the woman is waiting to
put the lights out."
"We will go home if you like--certainly," said Maurice, in a tone of
vexed disappointment. "Take care of the step--yes, here is the door. I
am afraid we cannot get a cab in this neighborhood; but as soon as we
reach a more civilized locality, I will do my best to find one for you."
By this time they were in the yard. Night had already fallen on the
city, whether it had done so in the country or not. The lamps were
lighted in the streets; a murky fog had settled like a pall upon the
roads; and in the Sunday silence the church bells rang out with a
mournful cadence which affected Lesley's spirits.
"London is a terrible place," she said, with a little shiver.
"Can you say that," he asked, looking at her curiously, "after seeing
the good work that is being done here? If it is a terrible place, it is
also a very noble and inspiring one."
"I know I am ignorant," said Lesley, heavily. "It seems terrible to me."
They were silent for a minute or two, for they were passing out of the
yard belonging to the "model dwellings," as Macclesfield Buildings were
called, into the squalid street beyond; and in avoiding the group of
loafers smoking the pipe of idleness, and enjoying the comfortable
repose of sloth, Lesley and Mr. Kenyon were so far separated that
conversation became impossible.
"You had better take my arm," said Maurice, shortly, almost sternly.
"You must, indeed: the place is not fit for you. I ought to have gone
out and got a cab."
"Indeed, I do not need it. I can walk quite well. What other people do,
I suppose I can do as well."
"Miss Brooke, you have not forgiven me."
Lesley was silent.
"What can I say? I have no justification. I simply let my tongue and my
temper run away with me. I am cursed with a hot temper: I do not think
before I speak; but I never intended to hurt you, Miss Brooke, I am sure
of that."
"No," said Lesley, very quietly, "I understand you. If you had not
thought me so stupid as not to see your meaning, or so callous as not to
care if I did, you would not have spoken in that way. I don't know that
your excuse makes matters much better, Mr. Kenyon. But I am not
offended: you need not concern yourself."
"Then you ought to be offended," said Kenyon, doggedly. "And I don't
believe you."
"You don't believe me."
"No, indeed I don't."
Lesley's offence was so great now, whatever it had been before, that it
deprived her of the power of speech. Her stately head went up: her mouth
set itself in straight, hard lines. Maurice saw these tokens, and
interpreted them aright.
"Don't be angry with me again. I mean that you could not fail to despise
me, to look down on me, for my want of tact and sense. I thought that
you did not understand your father--I was vexed at that, because I have
such a respect, such an admiration for him--but I know now that I was
mistaken. You ought to be angry with me, for I acknowledge that I spoke
impertinently; but having been angry, you can now be merciful and
forgive. I apologize from the bottom of my heart."
"How do you know that I understand my father? Why have you changed your
opinion?" said Lesley, coldly. "You have nothing to go upon--just as in
the other case you had nothing to go upon. You rushed to one conclusion,
if you will excuse me for saying so, and now you rush to another--with
no better reason."
"You are very severe, Miss Brooke," said Maurice. "But you are
perfectly right, and I must not complain. Only--if I may make a
representation----"
"Oh, certainly!"
"----I might point out that when I spoke to you first you had not read
your father's book, you had not, I believe, even heard of it; that you
knew nothing about the Macclesfield Club, and that when I spoke to you
about his work amongst the poor you were very much inclined to murmur,
'Can any good come out of Nazareth?'"
"Mr. Kenyon----"
"I beg your pardon, Miss Brooke, but isn't that substantially true? If
you can honestly say that it is a misapprehension on my part, I won't
say another word. But isn't it all true?"
He turned his eager face and bright blue eyes towards her, and read in
her pale, troubled face a little of the conflict that was going on
between her candor and her pride. "Now, what will she say?" he thought,
with what would have seemed to Lesley incomprehensible anxiety. "On her
answer depends my opinion of her, now and for ever."
And this appeared to Maurice quite an important matter, though possibly
Lesley might not have thought it so.
She turned to him at last with a frank, decisive gesture.
"It _is_ true," she said. "I knew nothing about his books or his works,
and so how could I appreciate them? I had never heard of 'The
Unexplored' before. You are right, and I had no business to be so angry.
But how do you know that I am different now?"
"Oh, I know you are," said Maurice, confidently. "You have come to the
club for one thing, you see; and you sang to the people and looked at
them--well, as if you cared. And you have read 'The Unexplored' _now_?"
"Yes. I have," said Lesley, hesitatingly.
"And you like it?"
"Yes--I like it." The girl looked away, and went on nervously,
hesitatingly. "It is very well done," she said, "It is very clever."
"Oh, if that is all you can find to say about it!"
"But isn't it a great deal?--Mr. Kenyon, I don't know what to say about
it. You see I can't be sure whether it is all--true."
"True? The story? But, of course----"
"Of course the _story_ is not true. I am not such a goose as that. But
is the meaning of it true? the moral, so to speak? Is there so much
wickedness in the world as my father says? So much vice and wealth and
selfishness on the one side: so much misery and poverty and crime on the
other? You are a doctor, and you must have seen a great deal of London
life: you ought to know. Is it an exaggeration, or is it true?"
There was such intensity and such pathos in her tones that Kenyon was
silent for a minute or two, startled by the vivid reality which she had
attached to her father's views and ideas. He could not have answered her
lightly, even if it had been in his nature to do so.
"Before God," he said, solemnly, "it is all true--every word of it."
"Then what can we do," said Lesley, gently, "but go down into the midst
of it and help?"
Mr. Maurice Kenyon, being a man of ardent temperament, always vows that
he lost his heart to Lesley there and then. It is possible that if she
had not been a very pretty girl, the most noble of sentiments might have
fallen unheeded from her lips; but as she was "so young, so sweet, so
delicately fair," Kenyon could not hear his own opinions reciprocated
without an answering thrill. How delightful would it be to walk through
life with a woman of this kind by one's side! a woman, whose face was a
picture, whose every movement a poem, whose soul was as finely touched
to fine issues as that of an angel or a saint! All these reflections
rushed through his mind in an instant, and it was almost a wonder that
he did not blurt some of them out at once. But Lesley went on speaking
in a quiet, pensive way.
"I wonder whether I can do anything--while I am here. I shall not have
so very long a time, but I might try."
"Not so long a time, Miss Brooke? I thought you had come home for good."
"Only for a year," said Lesley, coloring hotly. "Then I go back to
mamma."
Maurice said nothing at first. He felt the hand that rested on his arm
tremble slightly, and he knew that he ought to make no more inquiries.
But he could not refrain from adding, almost jealously--
"You will be glad of that?"
"Oh, yes! You do not know my mother?" said Lesley, half shyly, half
boldly.
"No, I never saw her."
"It is very hard to be so long away from her. She is so sweet and good."
"But you have your father? You are learning to know _him_ now."
"Oh, yes, but I want them _both_," said Lesley, with an indescribably
gentle and tender intonation. And as they reached Euston Road and were
obliged to leave off talking while they threaded their way through the
intricacies of vehicular traffic, Mr. Kenyon was revolving in his mind a
new idea, namely, the possibility of a reconciliation between Brooke and
his wife. He had never thought much about Lady Alice before: she seemed
to him to have passed out of Caspar Brooke's life entirely; and if it
were not for this link between the two--this sweet and noble-spirited
and lovely girl--she would not have been likely to come back into it.
But Lesley might perhaps reunite the two, and Maurice's heart began to
burn within him with fear for his hero's happiness. Why should any Lady
Alice trouble the peace of a worker for mankind like Caspar Brooke?
They did not talk very much more on their way to Upper Woburn Place.
They found Ethel and Oliver standing on the steps of Mr. Brooke's house,
evidently waiting for the truants. It struck Lesley as she came up that
Oliver Trent's brow was ominously dark, and that Ethel's pretty, saucy
face wore an expression of something like anxiety or distress.
"We are almost tired of waiting for you, good people," she began
merrily. "Fortunately it is fine and warm, or we should have gone and
left you to your own devices, as Mr. Brooke and Rosalind have done."
"Where have they gone?" asked Maurice.
"Walked off to her house. Miss Brooke is at home. Lesley, you _are_ an
imposition! Think of having a voice like that, and keeping it dark all
this time."
"We shall requisition Miss Brooke for the club very often, I know that,"
said Maurice.
"You'll come in with us, Lesley?" Ethel asked.
"No, thank you, Ethel. Not to-day. Thanks."
She wondered a little nervously why Oliver was looking so vexed
and--yes, so miserable, too! He seemed terribly out of spirits. Had he
and Ethel quarrelled? The thought gave a look of tender inquiry to her
eyes as she held out her hand to him. And on meeting that sweet glance,
Oliver's face brightened. He had been feeling an unreasonable annoyance
with her for walking home with Maurice Kenyon, and had even in his heart
called her "a little French flirt." Though why it should matter to him
that she was a flirt, did not exactly appear.
They said good-bye to each other, and separated. Maurice went off to see
a patient; Oliver accompanied Ethel to her own house; Lesley entered her
own home.
She was alone for an hour or two, and, to tell the truth, she felt
rather dull. Miss Brooke went away to her circle of select souls, and
her father, as she knew, had gone to Mrs. Romaine's. She took out her
much-prized volume of "The Unexplored," and began to read it again;
wishing that she could talk to her mother about it, and explain to her
how really great and good a man her father was. For--she had got as far
as this--she was sure that her mother did not understand him. It would
have been impossible for him to do a mean, a cruel, a dishonorable
action. There had been a misunderstanding somewhere; and Lesley wished,
with her whole soul, that she could clear it up.
The sound of the opening and closing of the front door did not arouse
her from her dreams. She read on, holding the little paper-covered
volume on her lap, deep in deepest thought, until the door of the
drawing-room opened rather suddenly, and her father walked in.
It was an unusual hour at which to see him in the drawing-room, and
Lesley looked up in surprise. Then, half unconsciously, half timidly,
she drew her filmy embroidered handkerchief over the book in her lap.
She had a shy dislike to letting her father see what she was reading.
He did not seem, however, to take any notice of her occupation. He
walked straight to an arm-chair on the opposite side of the hearth, sat
down, stretching out his long legs, and placing his elbows on the arms
of the chair. The unruly lock of hair, which no hairdresser could tame,
had fallen right across his broad brow, and heightened the effect of a
very undeniable frown. Mr. Caspar Brooke was in anything but an amiable
temper.
It was with a laudable attempt, however, to keep the displeasure out of
his voice that he said at length--
"I thought I understood you to say, Lesley, that you were not musical!"
The color flushed Lesley's face to the very roots of her hair.
"I do not think I am--very musical," she said, trying to answer bravely.
"I play the piano very little."
"Of course you must know that that is a quibble," said Mr. Brooke,
dryly. "A talent for music does not confine itself solely to the piano.
I presume that you have been told that you have a good voice?"
"Yes, I have been told so."
"And you have had lessons?"
"Yes, a few."
"Then may I ask what was your motive for declining to take lessons in
London when I asked to do so? You even went so far as to make use of a
subterfuge: you gave me to understand that you had no musical power at
all, and that you knew nothing and could do nothing?"
He paused as if he expected a reply; but Lesley did not say a word.
"I cannot understand it," Mr. Brooke went on; "but,"--after a pause--"I
suppose there is no reason why I should. I did not come to say anything
much about that part of the business. I came rather to suggest that as
you have a good voice, it is wrong not to cultivate it. And your lessons
will give you something to do. It seems to me rather a pity, my dear,
that you should do nothing but sit round and read novels--which, your
aunt tells me, is your principal occupation. Suppose you try to find
something more useful to do?"
He spoke with a smile now and in a softer voice; but Lesley was much too
hurt and depressed to say a word. He looked at her steadfastly for a
minute or two, and decided that she was sullen.
"I will see about the lessons for you," he said, getting up and speaking
decidedly, "and I hope you will make the most of your opportunities. How
much time have you been in the habit of devoting to your singing every
day?"
"An hour and a half," said Lesley, in a very low voice.
"And you left off practising as soon as you came here? That was a great
pity; and you must allow me to say, Lesley, very silly into the bargain.
Surely your own conscience tells you that it was wrong? A voice like
yours is not meant to be hidden."
Lesley wished that at that moment she could find any voice at all. She
sat like a statue, conscious only of an effort to repress her tears. And
Mr. Brooke, having said all that he wanted to say, took up a book, and
thought how difficult it was to manage women who met remonstrances in
silence.
Lesley got up in a few moments and walked quietly out of the room. But
she forgot her book. It fell noiselessly on the soft fur rug, and lay
there, with leaves flattened and back bent outwards. Caspar Brooke was
one of the people who cannot bear to see a book treated with anything
less than reverence. He picked it up, straightened the leaves, and
looked casually at the title. It was "The Unexplored."
He held it for a minute, gazing before him with wide eyes as if he were
troubled or perplexed. Then he shook his head, sighed, smiled, and put
it down upon the nearest table. "Poor little girl!" he said. "I wonder
if I frightened her at all!"