Leslie's Loyalty
"The way of the world! That a girl – young, beautiful, graceful – should be sold by her mother and father, should be willing to sell herself – ah, Yorke! – to a thing like me. Is that the way of the world? What a wicked, heartless, vicious world, then; and what an unhappy wretch am I! What fools they are, too, Yorke! They think it is so fine a thing to wear a ducal coronet! Ha, ha!" He laughed with sad bitterness. "So fine, that they would barter their souls to the evil one to feel the pressure of that same coronet on their brows, to hear other women call them 'Your Grace.' Oh, Yorke, what fools! How I could open their eyes if they would let me! Look at me. I am the Duke of Rothbury, Knight of the Garter – poor garter!" and he looked at his thin leg – "and what else? I almost forget some of my titles; and I would swap them all for a straight back and stalwart limbs like yours. But, Yorke, to share those titles, how many women would let me limp to the altar on their arms!"
He laughed again, still more bitterly.
"Sometimes, when some sweet-faced girl, with the look of an angel in her eyes, with a voice like a heavenly harmony, is making what they call 'a dead set' at me, I have hard work to restrain myself from telling her what I think of her and those who set her at me. Yorke, it is this part of the business which makes my life almost unendurable, and it is only by running away from every one who knows, or has heard of, the 'poor' Duke of Rothbury that I can put up with existence."
"Poor old chap," murmured Lord Auchester.
"Just now," continued the duke, "as we drove up to the door, I caught sight of a beautiful girl at the window opposite. I saw her face grow soft with pity, with the angelic pity of a woman, which, though it stings and cuts into one like a cut from a whip, I try to be grateful for. She pitied me, not knowing who and what I am. Tell her that I am the Duke of Rothbury, and in five minutes or less that angelic look of compassion will be exchanged for the one which you see on the face of the hunter as his prey comes within sight. She will think, 'He is ugly, crooked, maimed for life; but he is a man, and I can therefore marry him; he is a duke and I should be a duchess.' And so, like a moral poison, like some plague, I blight the souls of the best and purest. Listen to her now; that is the girl singing. What is it? I can hear the words."
He held up his hand. Leslie was singing, quite unconscious of the two listeners.
"My sweet girl love with frank blue eyes,Though years have passed I see you still;There, where you stood beside the mill,Beneath the bright autumnal skies.Though years have passed I love you yet;Do you still remember, or do you forget?""A nice voice," said Yorke Auchester, approvingly.
"Yes; the voice of a girl-angel. No doubt she is one. She needs only to be informed that an unmarried duke is within reach, and she'll be in a hurry to drop to the earth, and in her hurry to reach and secure him will not mind dragging her white wings in the mud."
"Women are built that way," said Yorke Auchester, concisely.
The duke sighed.
"Oh, yes, they are all alike. Yorke, what a fine duke you would have made! What a mischievous, spiteful old cat Fate is, to make me a duke and you only a younger son! How is it you don't hate and envy me, Yorke?"
"Because I'm not a cad and a beast, I suppose," replied the young fellow, pleasantly. "Why, Dolph, you have been the best friend a man ever had – ."
"Most men hate their best friends," put in the duke, with a sad smile.
"Where should I have been but for you?" continued Yorke Auchester, ignoring the parenthesis. "You have lugged me out of Queer Street by the scruff of my neck half a dozen times. Every penny I ever had came from you, and I've had a mint, a complete mint – and, by the way, Dolph, I want some more."
The duke laughed wearily.
"Take as much as you want, Yorke," he said. "But for you, the money would grow and grow till it buried and smothered me. I cannot spend it; you must help me."
"I will; I always have," said Yorke Auchester, laughing. "It's a pity you haven't got some expensive fad, Dolph – pictures, or coins, or first editions, or racing."
The duke shrugged his shoulders.
"I have only one fad," he said; "to be strong and straight, and that not even the Rothbury money can gratify. But I do get some pleasure out of your expenditure. I fancy you enjoy yourself."
"I do."
"Yes? That is well. Some day you will marry – ."
Yorke Auchester's hand dropped from the duke's shoulder.
"Marry some young girl who loves you for yourself alone."
"She's not likely to love me for anything else."
"All the better. Oh, Heaven! What would I not give for such a love as that?" broke out the duke.
As the passionate exclamation left his lips the door opened, and Mrs. Whiting, the landlady, came in. Her face was flushed; she was in a state of nervous excitement, caused by a mixture of curiosity and fear.
"I beg your pardon, your grace," she faltered, puffing timorously; "but did you ring?"
The duke looked straight at the woman, and then up at Yorke Auchester.
"No," said Yorke.
"I beg your grace's pardon," the curious woman began, stammeringly; but Grey coming behind her seized her by the arm, and, none too gently, swung her into the passage and closed the door.
The duke looked down frowningly.
"They've found you out, Dolph," said Yorke.
The duke was silent for a moment, then he sighed.
"Yes, I suppose so; I do not know how. I am sorry. I had hoped to stay here in peace for a few weeks, at any rate. But I must go now. Better to be in London where everybody knows me, and has, to an extent, grown accustomed to me."
He stopped short, and his face reddened.
"Yorke," he said, "do you think she knew which of us was the duke?"
"I don't know," replied Yorke; "I don't think she did."
"She would naturally think it was you if she didn't know," said the duke, thoughtfully, his eyes resting on the tall form of his cousin, who had gone to the window and was looking at the cottage opposite. "She would never imagine me, the cripple. Don't some of these simple folk think that a king is always at least six feet and a half, and that he lives and sleeps in a crown? Yes, you look more like a duke than I do, Yorke; and I wish to Heaven you were!"
"Thanks," said Yorke Auchester, not too attentively. "What a pretty little scrap of a place this is, Dolph, and – ah – ." He stopped short. "By Jove! Dolph, what a lovely girl! Is that the one of whom you were speaking just now?"
The duke put the plain muslin curtain aside and looked.
Leslie had come to the window, and stood, all unconscious of being watched, with her arms raised above her head, in the act of putting a lump of sugar between the bars of the parrot's cage.
The duke gazed at her, at first with an expression of reverent admiration.
"Ah, yes, beautiful!" he murmured; then his face hardened and darkened. "How good, how sweet, how innocent she looks! And yet I'll wager all I own that she is no better than the rest. That with all her angelic eyes and sweet childlike lips, she will be ready to barter her beauty, her youth, her soul, for rank and wealth." He groaned, and clutched his chair with his long, thin, and, alas! claw-like hands. "I cannot bear it. Yorke, I meant to conceal my title, and while I staid down here pretend to be just a poor man, an ordinary commoner, one who would not tempt any girl to play fast and loose with her soul. I should have liked to have made a friend of that girl; to have seen her, talked with her every day, without the perpetual, ever-present dread that she would try and make me marry her. But it is too late, it seems. This woman here knows, everybody in the place knows, or will know. It is too late, unless – ."
He stopped and looked up.
"Yorke!"
"Hallo!" said that young fellow, scarcely turning his head.
"Will you – do you mind – you say you owe me something?" faltered the duke, eagerly.
"Why, of course," assented Yorke Auchester, and he came and bent over him. "What's the matter, Dolph? What is it you want me to do?"
"Just this," said the duke, laying his hand – it trembled – on the strong arm; "be the Duke of Rothbury for a time, and let this miserable cripple sink into the background. You will not refuse? Say it is a whim; a mere fad. Sick people," he smiled, bitterly, "are entitled to these whims and fads, you know, and I've not had many. Humor this one; be the duke, and save me for once from the humiliation which every young girl inflicts upon me."
Yorke Auchester's brow darkened, and he bit his lip.
"Rather a rum idea, old chap, isn't it?" he said, with an uneasy laugh.
"Call it so if you like," responded the duke, with, if possible, increased eagerness. "Are you going to refuse me, Yorke? By Heaven!" – his thin face flushed – "it is the first, the only thing I have ever asked of you – ."
"Hold on!" interrupted Yorke Auchester, almost sternly. "I did not say I would refuse; you know that I cannot. You have been the best friend – ."
The duke raised his hand.
"I knew you would not. Ring the bell, will you?" His voice, his hand, as he pointed to the bell, trembled.
Yorke Auchester strode across the room and rang the bell.
Grey entered.
"Grey," said the duke, in a low voice, "how came this woman to know my name?"
"It was a mistake, your grace," said Grey, troubled and remorseful. "I let it slip when I was wiring, and the idiot at the telegraph station in London must have wired it down to the people on his own account. But – but, your grace, she doesn't know much after all, for she didn't know which is the dook, as she calls it, beggin' your pardon, your grace."
The duke nodded, clasping his hands impatiently and eagerly.
"Ring the bell. Stand aside, and say nothing," he said, in a tone of stern command which he seldom used.
The landlady, who, like Hamlet, was fat and scant of breath, was heard panting up the stairs, knocked timidly, and, in response to the duke's "Come in," entered, and looked from one to the other, in a fearsome, curious fashion.
"Did you ring?"
She would not venture to say "Your grace" this time.
The duke smiled at her.
"Yes," he said, gravely but pleasantly. "His Grace the Duke of Rothbury will stay with me for a few days if you can give him a room, Mrs. – Mrs. – ."
"Whiting, sir, if you please. Oh, certainly, sir," and she dropped a courtesy to Yorke Auchester. "Certainly your grace. It's humble and homely like, but – ."
Grey edged her gently and persuasively out of the room, and when he had followed her the duke leaned back his chair, and looking up at the handsome face of his cousin, laughed.
"It's like a scene in one of the new farces, isn't it, Yorke – I beg your pardon, Godolphin, Duke of Rothbury?"
Farce? Yes. But at that moment began the tragedy of Leslie Lisle's life.
CHAPTER III.
RALPH DUNCOMBE
The "great artist" went on painting, making the sketch more hideously and idiotically unnatural every minute, and was so absorbed in it that Leslie could not persuade him to leave it even for his lunch, and he maundered from the table to the easel with a slice of bread and butter in his hand, or held between his teeth as if he were a performing dog.
Leslie had played and sung to him until she was tired, and she cast a wistful glance from the window toward the blue sky and sunlit sea.
"Won't you leave it for a little while and come out on the beach, dear?" she said, coaxingly.
But Francis Lisle shook his head.
"No, no. I am just in the vein, Leslie; nothing would induce me to lose this light. But I wish you would go. It – it fidgets and unsettles me to have any one in the room who wants to be elsewhere. Go out for your walk; when you come back you will see what I have made of it; I flatter myself you will be surprised."
If she were not it would only be because she had seen so many similar pictures of his.
She put on her hat and dainty little Norfolk jacket of Scotch homespun, and went out with a handkerchief of his she was hemming in her pocket.
The narrow street was bathed in sunshine; at the open doors some of the fisher wives were sitting or standing at their eternal knitting, children were playing noisily in the road-way. The women, one and all, looked up and smiled as she appeared in the open doorway, and one or two little mites ran to her with the fearless joyousness which is the child's indication of love.
Leslie lifted one tiny girl with blue eyes and clustering curls and kissed her, patted the bare heads of the rest, and nodded pleasantly to the mothers.
"Mayn't we come with 'oo?" asked the mite; but Leslie shook her head.
"Not this afternoon, Trotty," she said, and ran away from them down the street which led sheer on to the beach.
As a rule she allowed the children to accompany her, and play round her as she sat at work, but this afternoon she wanted to be alone.
The arrival of the letter which her father had lost had disturbed and troubled her.
The man from whom it had come was a certain Ralph Duncombe, and he was one of the many unfortunates who had fallen in love with her; but, unlike the rest, he had not been content to take "No" for an answer, and gone away and got over it, or drowned himself, but had persisted in hoping and striving.
She had met him at a sea-side boarding house two years before this, had been pleasant and kind to him, as she was to everybody, but had meant nothing more than kindliness, and was surprised and pained when he had asked her to be his wife, and declined to take a refusal.
Since that time he had cropped up at intervals, like a tax collector, and it seemed as if Leslie would never convince him that there was no hope for him. His persistence distressed her very much, but she did not know what she could do. He was the sort of man who, having set his heart upon a thing, would work with a dogged earnestness until he had got it; and could not be made to understand that women's hearts are not to be won, like a town, by a siege, however long and stringent it may be.
She went down to the breakwater, and sat down in her favorite spot and got out her handkerchief; and two minutes afterward there was a patter-patter on the stones behind her, and a small black-and-tan terrier leaped on her lap with a joyous yap.
She laughed and hugged him for a moment, then forced him down beside her.
"Oh, Dick, what a wicked Dick you are! You've run the needle into my finger, sir!" she said. "Look there." And she held out a tapering forefinger with one little red drop on it.
Dick smiled in dog fashion, and attempted to bite the finger, but to his surprise and disgust Leslie refused to play.
"I'm too busy, Dick," she said, gravely. "I want to finish this handkerchief; besides, it's too hot. Suppose you coil yourself up like a good little doggie, and go to sleep – . Well, if you must you must, I suppose!" And she let him snuggle into her lap, where, seeing that she really meant it, he immediately went to sleep.
It was a lovely afternoon. There was no one on the beach excepting herself, and all was silent save for the drowsy yawing of the gulls and the heavy boom of the tide as it went out, for the sea was very seldom calm at Portmaris, and in the least windy of days there was generally a ground-swell on.
Leslie sat and worked, and thought, thought mostly of Mr. Ralph Duncombe, her persistent suitor; but once or twice the remembrance of the deformed cripple who had come to lodge at Marine Villa crossed her mind, and she was thinking of him pityingly when the sound of footsteps crunching firmly and uncompromisingly over the pebbles made her start, and caused the terrier to leap up with the fury of its kind.
Leslie's brows came together as she looked up.
A middle-sized young man, with broad shoulders and a rather clumsy but steady gait, was coming down the beach. He was not a good-looking man. He had a big head and red hair, a large mouth and a square jaw; his feet and hands were also large, and there was in his air and manner something which indicated aggressiveness and obstinacy.
Sharp men who had seen him as a boy had said, "That chap will get on," and, unlike most prophets, they had been correct; Ralph Duncombe had "got on." He had started as an errand boy in a city office, and had risen step by step until he had become a partner. Rawlings & Co. had always been well thought of in the city, but Rawlings and Duncombe had now become respected and eminent.
His square, resolute face flushed as he saw her, but the hand with which he took off his hat was as steady as a rock.
"Good-morning, Miss Lisle," he said, making his voice heard above the dull roar of the sea and the shrill barking of the terrier.
Leslie held out one hand while she held the furiously struggling Dick with the other.
He took her hand in his huge fist, and dropped heavily on the shingle beside her.
"I didn't know you had a dog," he said, glancing at her and then at the dog, and then at the sea, as a man does who is so much head-over-heels in love that he cannot bear the glory of his mistress' face all at once.
"I haven't," said Leslie, laughing in the slow, soft way which her adorers found so bewitching – and agonizing. "He doesn't really belong to me, though he pretends that he does. He is the abandoned little animal of Mrs. Merrick, our landlady; but he will follow me about and make a nuisance of himself. Be quiet, Dick, or I shall send you home."
"I'm not surprised," said Ralph Duncombe, with a slight flush, and still avoiding her eyes. "I can sympathize with Dick."
Leslie colored, and took up her work, leaving Dick to wander gingerly round the visitor and smell him inquisitively.
"You got my letter, Miss Leslie?"
"No," she said. "I am very sorry; but papa lost it."
He smiled as if he were not astonished.
"It doesn't matter," he said. "It only said that I was coming and – here I am."
"I – I will go and tell papa; you will come and have some lunch?"
"No don't get up," he said, quickly putting out his hand to stay her. "I've had my lunch, and I can go and see Mr. Lisle presently if – ," he paused. "Miss Leslie, I suppose you know why I have come down here?"
Leslie bent her head over her work. She could guess. Such a man as Mr. Ralph Duncombe was not likely to come down to such a place as Portmaris in obedience to a mere whim.
"I've come down because I said that I would come about this time," he went on, slowly and firmly, as if he had well rehearsed his speech – as, indeed, he had. "I'm a man who, when he has set his heart upon anything, doesn't change or give it up because he doesn't happen to get it all at once. I've set my heart upon making you my wife, Miss Leslie – ."
Leslie's face flushed, and she made a motion as if to get up, but sank back again with a faint sigh of resignation.
"That's been my keenest wish and desire since I saw you two years ago; and it's just as keen, no less and no more, as it was the first half hour I spent in your society."
"You – you told me this before, Mr. Duncombe," said Leslie, not angrily nor impatiently, but very softly.
"I know," he assented. "And you told me that it couldn't be. And I suppose most men would have been satisfied – or dissatisfied, and given it up. But I'm not made like that. I shouldn't be where I am and what I am if I were. I dare say you think I'm obstinate."
The faintest shadow of a smile played on Leslie's lips.
"Yes!" she said. "But – but may I not be obstinate, too?" pleadingly.
"No," he said, gravely. "You are a woman, a girl, little more than a child, and I'm a man, a man who has fought his way in the world, and knows what it is; and that makes it different."
"But – ."
"Wait a minute," he said. "You said 'no' because – well, because I'm not good-looking, because I haven't the taking way with me which some men have; in short, because there's nothing about me that would be likely to take a romantic girl's fancy – ."
Leslie laughed softly.
"Who told you that I am romantic, Mr. Duncombe?" she said.
"All girls – young girls who don't know the world – are romantic," he said, as if he were remarking that the world is round, and that two and two make four. "You look at the outside of things, and because I'm not handsome and a – swell – you think you couldn't bring yourself to love me, and that I'm not worth loving."
Leslie shook her head.
"I respect you very much. I like you, Mr. Duncombe," she said, in a low voice.
"Very well. That's all I ask," he retorted, promptly. "Be my wife and I'll change your respect into liking, your liking into love. I'm satisfied with that. When a man's starving he is thankful for half a loaf."
He didn't plead his cause at all badly, and Leslie's gray eyes melted and grew moist.
"Don't shake your head," he said. "Just listen to me first. You know I love you. You can't doubt that. If you did, and you knew what I've given up to come down here, you wouldn't doubt any longer. And you wouldn't if you knew what this love of mine costs me. A business man wants all his wits about him if he means to succeed; he wants all his thoughts and energies for his business; and for the last two years my wits and my thoughts have been wandering after you. It's a wonder that I have succeeded; but I have. Miss Leslie, though I'm plain to look at, I believe I've got brains. If I can't offer you a title – ."
Leslie smiled; it was so likely that anyone would offer her a title!
"I can at least make you a rich woman."
Her face flushed.
"Mr. Duncombe – ."
"I know what you are going to say. All girls declare that they don't care for money, and they mean it. But that's nonsense. A beautiful woman's beautiful whether she's poor or rich, but she's more likely to be happy with plenty of money. And you shall have plenty. I am a rich man now, as times go, and I mean to be richer. I've been working these two years with one object before me. I've made the money solely that I might become less unworthy to offer myself. Miss Leslie, my heart is yours already, such as it is. Be my wife, and share my home and fortune with me!"
Leslie's lips trembled.
"Oh, if I could!" she murmured, almost inaudibly. "I am so sorry, so sorry!"
He took up a pebble, looked hard at it, and cast it from him.
"You mean that you can't love me?" he said, rather hoarsely.
Her silence gave assent.
He drew a long breath.
"I expected you to say that, but I thought I should persuade you to – try and trust yourself to me, and wait for the love to come." He paused a moment. "Miss Leslie, do you ever think of the future?"
"Of the future?" She turned her startled eyes on his face, grave almost to sternness.
"Yes. Forgive me if I speak plainly. You and your father are alone in the world."
"Yes, ah, yes!" dropped from her parted lips.
"And he – well, even now it is you who are the protector; some day – Leslie, it makes my heart ache to think of you alone in the world, alone and poor. I know that the little he has goes with him. Don't be angry! I am thinking only of you. I cannot help thinking of you and your future. If you would say 'yes,' if you would promise to be my wife, not only would your future be secure, but your present, his present, would be easier, happier; for your father's sake if not for your own – ."
He stopped, for Leslie had risen, and stood looking down at him, her lips quivering, her hands clasped tightly.
"No, no!" she panted; "not even for – for his sake! Oh, I could not! I could not!"
He arose. His face was pale, making his red hair more scarlet by contrast.
"I understand," he said. "It isn't that you do not love me, but that you – well, yes, dislike me!"
"No!"
"Yes, that's it," he said, his eyes resting for a moment on the lovely face with the wistful, hungry, half fierce look of a famishing man denied the crust which might save his life. Then his eyes sank to the stones. "I see now that I have been a fool to go on hoping, that my case is hopeless. Don't" – for she had shrunk from his almost savage tone – "don't be afraid. I am not going to bother you any more. I wish I could say that I am going to give up loving you; but I can't do that. Something tells me," he struck his breast, as if he were glad of something to strike, "that I shall go on loving you till I die! See here, Les – Miss Lisle. It's evident that I can't be your husband; but I can be your friend. No," – for she turned her head away – "no, I don't mean that I am going to hang about you and pester you. I couldn't. The sight of you would be torture to me. I hope – yes, I hope I sha'n't see you for years. But what I want to say is this; that if ever you need a friend remember that there is one man in the world who would give his right hand to serve you. Remember that at any time – any time, in one year, two, or when you are old and gray – that you have only to say 'Come!' to bring me like a faithful dog to your feet. That time will never come, you think. Very good. But still you may need me. If you do send to me. I devote my life to you – oh, there's no merit in it. I can't help it. I'm romantic in a way, you see." He smiled with bitter self-scorn for his weakness. "You are the one woman in the world to me. Your case is mine, your friends shall be mine, your foes mine. If you need a protector send for me; if one wrongs you, and you want revenge, send to me, and as there is a heaven above us, I will come at your call to help to avenge you."