"Better stop where you are, man," said Uncle Luke.
"No," said Leslie, as he stood gazing straight before him as one who
tries to see right on into the future along the vista of one's own life.
"But it is nearly one o'clock. Sit down there and get a nap."
"No. I must go home," said Leslie slowly, and in a measured way, as if
he were trying to frame his sentences correctly in carrying on the
conversation while thinking of something else.
"Well, you are your own master."
"Yes," said Leslie. "How is he?"
"Calmer now. He was half mad when he came to, and Knatchbull was afraid
of brain fever, but he gave him something to quiet the excitement.
Better have given you something too."
"What are you going to do?" said Leslie, turning upon the old man
suddenly, and with a wild look in his eyes.
"Do nothing rashly," said Uncle Luke.
"But time is flying, man."
"Yes. Always is," said Uncle Luke, coolly, as he watched his companion
with half-closed eyes.
"But--"
"That will do. I cannot discuss the matter to-night, my head's in a
whirl. Do nothing rashly is a capital maxim."
"But we are wasting time."
"Look here, young man," said Uncle Luke, taking Leslie by the lappet of
the coat. "I'm not blind. I dare say I can see as far through you as
most people can. I am an old man, and at my time of life I can be calm
and dispassionate, and look on at things judicially."
"Judicially?" said Leslie bitterly; "any child could judge here."
"Oh, no," said the old man; "big child as you are, you can't."
"What do you mean?"
"That you are only a big stupid boy, Duncan Leslie."
"Don't insult me in my misery, man."
"Not I, my lad. I like you too well. I am only playing the surgeon,
hurting you to do you good. Look here, Leslie, you are in pain, and you
are madly jealous."
"Jealous!" cried the young man scornfully, "of whom?"
"My niece--that man--both of them."
"Not I. Angry with myself, that's all, for being an idiot."
"And because you are angry with yourself, you want to follow and rend
that man who knocked you down; and because you call yourself an idiot
for being deeply attached to Louise, you are chafing to go after her,
and at any cost bring her back to throw yourself at her feet, and say,
`Don't have him, have me.'"
"All!" cried Leslie furiously. "There, you are an old man and
licensed."
"Yes, I am the licensed master of our family, Leslie, and I always speak
my mind."
"Yes, you sit there talking, when your duty is to follow and bring your
niece back from disgrace," cried the young man furiously.
"Thank you for teaching me my duty, my lad. You have had so much more
experience than I. All the same, Duncan Leslie, my hotheaded Scot, I am
going to sleep on it, and that's what I advise you to do. There: be
reasonable, man. You know you are not in a condition for dispassionate
judgment."
"I tell you any one could judge this case," said Leslie hotly.
"And I tell you, my dear boy, that it would have puzzled Solomon."
"Will you go in search of her directly?"
"Will I go out in the dark, and run my head against the first granite
wall? No, my boy, I will not."
"Then I must."
"What, run your head against a wall?"
"Bah!"
"Look here, Leslie, I've watched you, my lad, for long enough past. I
saw you take a fancy to my darling niece Louie; and I felt as if I
should like to come behind and pitch you off the cliff. Then I grew
more reasonable, for I found by careful watching that you were not such
a bad fellow, after all, and what was worse, it seemed to me that, in
spite of her aunt's teaching, Louie was growing up into a clever
sensible girl, with only one weakness, and that a disposition to think a
little of you."
Leslie made an angry gesture.
"Come, my lad, I'll speak plainly, and put aside all cynical nonsense.
Answer me this: How long have you known my niece?"
"What does that matter?"
"Much. I'll tell you. About a year, and at a distance. And yet you
presume, in your hotheaded, mad, and passionate way, to sit in judgment
upon her, and to treat my advice with contempt."
"You cannot see it all as I do."
"Thank goodness!" muttered Uncle Luke. "You did not witness what I did
to-night."
"No. I wish I had been there."
"I wish you had," said Leslie, bitterly. "Now you are growing wild
again. Be calm, and listen. Now I say you have known our child a few
months at a distance, and you presume to judge her. I have known her
ever since she was the little pink baby which I held in these hands, and
saw smile up in my face. I have known her as the patient, loving,
unwearying daughter, the forbearing niece to her eccentric aunt--and
uncle, my lad. You ought to have said that. I have known her these
twenty years as the gentle sister who fought hard to make a sensible man
of my unfortunate nephew. Moreover, I have known her in every phase,
and while I have openly snarled and sneered at her, I have in my heart
groaned and said to myself, what a different life might mine have been
had I known and won the love of such a woman as that."
"Oh, yes, I grant all that," said Leslie, hurriedly; "but there was the
vein of natural sin within."
"Natural nonsense, sir!" cried Uncle Luke, angrily. "How dare you! A
holier, truer woman never breathed."
"Till that scoundrel got hold of her and cursed her life," groaned
Leslie. "Yes, trample on me. I suppose I deserve it."
"Yes," cried the old man, "if only for daring to judge her, when I tell
you that with all my knowledge of her and her life, I dare not. No, my
lad, I'm going to sleep on it, and in the morning see if I can't find
out the end of the thread, of the clue which will lead us to the truth."
"There is no need," groaned Leslie. "We know the truth."
"And don't even know who this man is. No, indeed, we do not know the
truth. All right, my lad, I can read your looks. I'm a trusting, blind
old fool, am I? Very well, jealous pate, but I warn you, I'm right and
you're wrong."
"Would to Heaven I were! I'd give ten years of my life that it could be
proved."
"Give ten years of nonsense. How generous people are at making gifts of
the impossible! But look here, Duncan Leslie, I'll have you on your
knees for this when we have found out the mystery; and what looks so
black and blind is as simple as A B C. Trash! bolt with some French
adventurer? Our Louie! Rubbish, sir! Everything will be proved by and
by. She couldn't do it. Loves her poor old father too well. There,
once more take my advice, lie down there and have a nap, and set your
brain to work in the sunshine, not in the dark."
"No."
"Going?"
"Yes, I am going. Good-night, sir."
"Good-night, you great stupid, obstinate, thick-headed Scotchman,"
growled Uncle Luke, as he let him out, and stood listening to his
retiring steps. "I hope you'll slip over the cliff and half kill
yourself. There's something about Duncan Leslie that I like after all,"
he muttered, as he went back to the dining-room, and after a few
minutes' thought, went softly up to his brother's chamber, to find him
sleeping heavily from the effect of the sedative given by the doctor.
Uncle Luke stole out quietly, shook his fist at his sister's door, and
then went below to sit for a while studying Louise's letter, before
lying down to think, and dropping off to sleep with the comforting
self-assurance that all would come right in the end.
Meanwhile Duncan Leslie had gone down the steep descent, and made his
way to the foot of the cliff-path, up which, with brain and heart
throbbing painfully, he slowly tramped. The night was dull and cold,
and as he ascended toward Luke Vine's rough cottage, he thought of how
often he had met Louise on her way up there to her uncle's; and how he
had often remained at a distance watching from his own place up at the
mine the graceful form in its simple attire, and the sweet, earnest
face, whose eyes used once to meet his so kindly, and with so trusting a
look.
"Sleep on it!" he said, as he recalled the old man's words. "No sleep
will ever make me think differently. I must have been mad--I must have
been mad."
He had reached the old man's cottage, and almost unconsciously stopped
and seated himself on the rough block of granite which was Uncle Luke's
favourite spot when the sun shone.
Before him lay the sea spreading out deep and black, and as impenetrable
as to its mysteries as the blank future he sought to fathom; and as he
looked ahead, the sea, the sky, the future all seemed to grow more
black.
His had been a busy life; school, where he had been ambitious to excel;
college, where he had worked still more hard for honours, with the
intention of studying afterwards for the bar; but fate had directed his
steps in another direction, and through an uncle's wish and suggestions,
backed by the fact that he held the mine, Duncan Leslie found himself,
when he should have been eating his dinners at the Temple, partaking of
them in the far West of England, with a better appetite, and perhaps
with better prospects from a monetary point of view.
His had been so busy a life that the love-idleness complaint of a young
man was long in getting a hold, but when it did seize him, the malady
was the more intense.
He sat there upon the old, worn piece of granite, making no effort to go
farther, but letting his memory drift back to those halcyon days when he
had first begun to know that he possessed a heart disposed to turn from
its ordinary force-pump work to the playing of a sentimental part such
as had stranded him where he was, desolate and despairing, a wreck with
his future for ever spoiled.
He argued on like that, sometimes with tender recollections of happy
days when he had gone back home from some encounter, with accelerated
pulses and a sensation of hope and joy altogether new.
He dwelt upon one particular day when he had come down from the mine to
find Louise seated where he then was; and as he recalled the whole
scene, he uttered a groan of misery, and swept it away by the
interposition of that of the previous evening; and here his wrath once
more grew hot against the man who had come between them, for without
vanity he could feel that Louise had turned toward him at one time, and
that after a while the memory of the trouble which had come upon them
would have grown more faint, and then she would once more have listened
to his suit.
But for that man--He ground his teeth as he recalled Aunt Marguerite's
hints and smiles; the allusions to the member of the French _haute
noblesse_; their own connection with the blue blood of Gaul, and his own
plebeian descent in Aunt Marguerite's eyes. And now that the French
noble had arrived, how noble he was in presence and in act. Stealing
clandestinely into the house during the father's absence, forcing the
woman he professed to love into obedience by threats, till she knelt at
his feet as one who pleads for mercy.
"And this is the _haute noblesse_!" cried Leslie, with a mocking laugh.
"Thank Heaven, I am only a commoner after all."
He sat trying to compress his head with his hands, for it ached as if it
would split apart. The cool night breeze came off the sea, moist and
bearing refreshment on its wings; but Duncan Leslie found no comfort in
the deep draught he drank. His head burned, his heart felt on fire, and
he gazed straight before him into the blackness trying to make out his
path. What should he do? Act like a man, and cast her off as unworthy
of a second thought, or rouse himself to the manly and forgiving part of
seeking her out, dragging her from this scoundrel, and placing her back
in her stricken father's arms?
It was a hard fight, fought through the darkness of that terrible night,
as he sat there on the rock, with the wind sighing from off the sea, and
the dull, low boom of the waves as they broke at the foot of the cliff
far below.
It was a fight between love and despair, between love and hate, between
the spirit of a true, honest man who loved once in his life, and the
cruel spirits of suspicion, jealousy, and malignity, which tortured him
with their suggestions of Louise's love for one who had tempted her to
leave her father's home.
As the day approached the air grew colder, but Duncan Leslie's brow
still burned, and his heart seemed on fire. The darkness grew more
dense, and the fight still raged.
What should he do? The worse side of his fallible human nature was
growing the stronger; and as he felt himself yielding, the greater grew
his misery and despair.
"My darling!" he groaned aloud, "I loved you--I loved you with all my
heart."
He started, alarmed at his own words, and gazed wildly round as if
expecting that some one might have heard. But he was quite alone, and
all was so dark right away ahead. Was there no such thing as hope for
one stricken as he? The answer to his wild, mental appeal seemed to
come from the far east, for he suddenly became conscious of a pale,
pearly light which came from far down where sea and sky were mingled to
the sight. That pale, soft light grew and grew, seeming to slowly
suffuse the eastern sky, till all at once he caught sight of a fiery
flake far on high, of another, and another, till the whole arc of heaven
was ablaze with splendour, from which the sea borrowed glistening dyes.
And as he gazed the tears rose to his eyes, and seemed to quench the
burning fire in his brain, as a fragment which he had read floated
through his memory--
"Joy cometh in the morning--joy cometh in the morning."
Could joy ever again come to such a one as he? He asked the question
half-bitterly, as he confessed that the dense blackness had passed away,
and that hope might still rise upon his life, as he now saw that
glittering orb of light rise slowly above the sea, and transform the
glorious world with its golden touch.
"No, no," he groaned, as he rose to go on at last to his desolate home.
"I am broken with the fight. I can do no more, and there is no cure for
such a blow as mine. Where could I look for help?"
"Yes; there," he said resignedly. "I'll bear it like a man," and as he
turned he rested his hand upon the rough granite wall to gaze down the
path, and drew back with a curious catching of the breath, as he saw the
light garments of a woman pass a great patch of the black shaley rock.
Madelaine Van Heldre was hurrying up the cliff-path towards where he had
passed those long hours of despair.
Volume 3, Chapter X.