DOUBT.
It was a difficult matter for Maurice Kenyon so to word his report to
Caspar Brooke as not to excite his displeasure against Lesley. He felt
himself bound to respect Lesley's confidences--if such they might be
called--respecting the promise which kept her from returning his love;
but he could not help a certain bitterness of tone in referring to his
interview with her; and his friend observed the bitterness.
"What reason did she give for refusing you?" he asked sharply.
"I suppose she does not care for me."
"There is something else--to judge from your look. Perhaps there
is--somebody else?" said Brooke.
"Well, I don't know that I'm doing right in telling you--but--God help
me!--I believe there is," said Maurice, with a groan.
"She did not tell you who?"
"No."
Mr. Brooke knitted his brows. He was inclined to think that Oliver Trent
had produced an impression on Lesley's susceptible heart. He could not
ask questions of any of the persons concerned; but he had his
suspicions, and they made him angry as well as anxious.
He made it his business during the next day or two to find out whether
Oliver had been to the house since the day when he had interrupted the
interview; but he could not learn that he had ventured there again. It
was no use asking Dr. Sophy about Lesley's comings and goings: it was
almost impossible for him to question Lesley herself.
"What rubbish it all is--this love-making, marrying, and giving in
marriage!" he said, at last, impatiently, to himself. "I'll think no
more about these young folks' affairs--let them make or mar their
happiness in their own way. I'll think of my work and nothing else--I've
neglected it a good deal of late, I fancy. I must make up for lost time
now." And sitting down at his table, he turned over the papers upon it,
and took up a quill pen. But he did not begin to write for some minutes.
He sat frowning at the paper, biting the feathers of his pen, drumming
with his fingers on the table. And after a time he muttered to himself,
"If any man harms Lesley, I'll wring his neck--that's all;" which did
not sound as though he were giving to his literary work all the
attention that it required.
As to Lesley, she would have given a great deal at that time for a
counsellor of some kind. The old feeling of friendlessness had come back
to her. Her aunt was absorbed by her own affairs, her father looked at
her with unquiet displeasure in his eyes. Oliver Trent had proved
himself a false friend indeed. Ethel was a little reserved with her, and
she had sent Maurice Kenyon away. There was nobody else to whom she
could turn for comfort. True, she had made many acquaintances by this
time: her father's circle was a large one, and she knew more people now
than she had ever spoken to in her quiet convent days. But these were
all acquaintances--not friends. She could not speak to any one of these
about Maurice Kenyon, her lover and her friend. Once or twice she
thought vaguely of writing to her mother about him; but she shrank from
doing so without quite knowing why. The fact was, she knew her mother's
criticism beforehand: she expected to be reproached with having broken
her compact in the spirit if not in the letter; and she did not know how
to justify herself. Maurice had taken his dismissal as final, and she
had not meant him to do so. Now, if ever, the girl wanted a friend who
would either encourage her to explain her position to him, or would do
it for her. Lady Alice would not fill this post efficiently. And Lesley,
in her youthful shamefaced pride, felt that nothing would induce her to
make her own explanation to Maurice. It would seem like asking him to
ask her again to marry him--an insupportable thought.
So she went about the house pale and heavy-eyed, trying with all her
might to throw herself into her father's schemes for his club, writing a
little now and then, occupying herself feverishly with all the projects
that came in her way, but bearing a sad heart about with her all the
time. She was not outwardly depressed--her pride would not let her seem
melancholy. She held her head high, and talked and laughed more than
usual. But the want of color and brightness in her face and eye could
not be controlled.
"You pale-faced wretch," she said to herself one Saturday evening, as
she stood before her glass and surveyed the fair image that met her eye;
"why cannot you look as usual? It must be this black dress that makes me
so colorless: I wish that I had a flower to wear with it."
Mr. Brooke and his sister were holding one of their frequent Saturday
evening parties, when they were "at home" to a large number of guests.
Lesley was just about to go downstairs. Her dress was black, for she was
in mourning for her grandfather; and it must be confessed that the
sombre hue made her look very pale indeed. The wish for a flower was
gratified, however, almost as soon as formed. Kingston entered her room
at that moment carrying a bouquet of flowers, chiefly white, but with a
scarlet blossom here and there, which would give exactly the touch of
color that Lesley's appearance required.
"These flowers have just come for you, ma'am," Kingston said quietly.
Her subdued voice, her pale face, and heavily shadowed eyes, did not
make her a cheerful-looking messenger; but Lesley, for the time being,
thought of nothing but the flowers.
"Where do they come from, Kingston?" she asked, eagerly.
"I was only to say one word, ma'am--that they came from over the way."
There was no want of color now in Lesley's face. Her cheeks were
rose-tinted, her eyes had grown strangely bright. "Over the way." Of
course that meant Maurice. Did not he live over the way?--and was there
any one else at the Kenyons' house who would send her such lovely
flowers?
If he sent her flowers, she reflected, he could not have yet ceased to
care for her, although she had behaved so badly to him--in his eyes, at
least. The thought gave her courage and content. Perhaps he was coming
that night--he had a standing invitation to all the Brookes' evening
parties--and when he came he would perhaps "say something" to her,
something which she could answer suitably, so as to make him
understand.
She did not know how pretty she looked as she stood looking down at her
flowers, the color and smile and dimples coming and going in her fair
young face in very unwonted confusion. But Mary Kingston noted every
change of tint and expression, and was surprised. For the little mystery
was quite plain to her. It was not Mr. Kenyon who sent the flowers at
all. Mr. Kenyon was too busy a man to buy bouquets. It was Oliver Trent
who had sent them, for Kingston had herself seen him carrying the
flowers and entrusting them to a commissionnaire with a message for Miss
Brooke. She believed, too, that Lesley knew from whom they came. But she
was not sufficiently alert and interested just then to make these
matters of great importance to her. She did not think it worth her while
to say how much she knew. With a short quick sigh she turned away, and
expected to see her young mistress quit the room at once, still with
that happy smile upon her face. But Lesley had heard the sigh.
"Oh, Kingston," she said, laying her hand on the woman's arm, "I wish
you would not sigh like that!"
"I beg your pardon, ma'am; I did not mean to annoy you."
"I don't mean _that_: I mean it for your own sake. You seem so sad about
something--you have been sad so long!"
"I've had a sad life, Miss Lesley."
"But there is surely some special sadness now?"
"Yes," said the woman slowly. "Yes, that is true. I've--lost--a friend."
She put a strong emphasis on the word "lost," and paused before and
after uttering it, as if it bore a peculiar meaning to her. But Lesley
took the word in its ordinary sense.
"I am very sorry," she said. "It must be very terrible, I think, when
one's friends die."
She stood silent for a minute--a shadow from Kingston's grief troubling
the sweetness of her fair face. It was the maid who broke the silence.
"Excuse me, ma'am; I oughtn't to have troubled you with my affairs
to-night, just when you're enjoying yourself too. But it's hard
sometimes to keep quiet."
Moved by a sudden instinct of sympathy, Lesley turned and kissed the
woman who served her, as if she had been a sister. It was in such ways
that she showed her kinship with the man who had written "The
Unexplored." Lady Alice, in spite of all her kindness of heart, would
never have thought of kissing her ladies' maid.
"Don't grieve--don't be sorrowful," said Lesley. "Perhaps things will
mend by and by."
"Ah, my dear," said Kingston, forgetting her position, as Lady Alice
would have said, while that young, soft kiss was warm upon her cheek,
"the dead don't come back."
And when Lesley had gone downstairs, with the white and scarlet bouquet
in her hand, Mary Kingston sat down and wept bitterly.
It was not the first time that Lesley had spoken words of consolation to
her; but on this occasion her gentleness had gone home to Mary
Kingston's heart as it had never done before. After weeping for herself
for a time, she fell to weeping for Lesley too, for it seemed inevitable
to her that Lesley should suffer before very long. She believed that
Lesley was in love with Oliver, and that for this reason only had she
refused Maurice Kenyon, which shows that Lesley had kept her own secret
very well.
"I'd do anything to keep her from harm," said Mary Kingston, with a
passionate rush of gratitude towards the girl for her kindly words and
ways. "Francis Trent brought me grief enough, God knows; and if she's
going to throw herself away on Oliver, she'll have her heart broke
sooner than mine. For I've been used to sorrow all my days; and
she--poor, pretty lamb--she don't know what it means. And Miss Brooke
all taken up with her medicine-fads, and Mr. Brooke only a _man_, after
all, in spite of his goodness; and my lady, her mother, far away and
never coming near her--if anybody was friendless and forlorn, it's Miss
Lesley. Only me between her and her ruin, maybe! But I'll prevent it,"
said the woman, rising to her feet with a strange look of exaltation in
her sunken eyes: "I'll guard her from Oliver Trent as I couldn't guard
my own sister, poor lass! I'll see that she does not come to any harm,
and if he means ill by her I'll shame him before all the world, even
though I break more hearts than one by it."
And then she roused herself from her reverie, and went downstairs, where
she knew that her presence was required in the tea-room. Scarcely had
she entered it, when she made a short pause and gave a slightly
perceptible start. For there stood Ethel Kenyon, with Oliver Trent in
attendance. She had not thought that he would come to the house; a rumor
had gone about that he had quarreled with Mr. Brooke; yet there he was,
smiling, bland, irreproachable as ever, with quite the look of one who
had the right to be present. He was holding Ethel's fan and gloves as
she drank a cup of tea, and seemed to be paying her every attention in
his power. Ethel, in the daintiest of costumes, was laughing and talking
to him as they stood together. _She_ was quite unconscious of any reason
for his possible absence. Mary Kingston gave them a keen glance as she
went by, and decided in her own mind that there was more in the
situation than as yet she had understood.
Oliver was playing a bold game. His marriage was fixed for the following
Tuesday. From Mr. Brooke's attitude in general towards the Kenyons, he
felt sure that Caspar would not place them in any painful or perplexing
situation. He would not, for instance, refuse to welcome Oliver to his
house again, if Oliver went in Ethel's company. Accordingly, the young
man put his pride and his delicacy (if he had either--which is doubtful)
in his pocket, and went with his affianced wife to Mr. Brooke's Saturday
evening party.
"For I will see Lesley again," he said to himself, "and if I do not go
to-night I may not have the opportunity. If she would relent, I would
not mind throwing Ethel over--I could do it so easily now that Francis
has disappeared. But I would give up Ethel's twenty thousand, if Lesley
would go with me instead!"
Little did he guess that only on the previous night had he been
recognized and remembered by that missing brother, whose tottering brain
was inflamed almost to madness by a conviction of deliberate wrong; or
that this brother was even now upon his track, ready to demand the
justice that he thought had been denied him, and to punish the man who
had brought him to this evil pass! Wild and mad as were the imaginings
of Francis Trent's bewildered mind, they boded ill to his brother Oliver
whenever the two should meet.
Meanwhile, Ethel's lover, with a white flower in his button-hole,
occupied the whole evening in leaning idly against a wall, and feasting
his eyes on the fair face and form--not of his betrothed, but--of Lesley
Brooke.