Leslie's Loyalty

"From whom are you expecting a telegram, Yorke? Shall I make a guess and say the young lady herself?"

Yorke thought a moment, the color mounting to his face, then he looked the duke straight in the eyes.

"Yes, it was from her, Dolph," he said. "I'd better make a clean breast of it. You'd get it out of me somehow or other if I didn't own up, for I'm too worried to keep on guard. It is from Leslie I'm expecting that telegram, and – and – Well, look here, Dolph, take it quietly. I've asked her to be my wife, and – and she's consented."

He waited a moment, expecting to see the duke start up and fly into one of his paroxysms, but the duke leant upon his elbow and looked at him with a grave and pitying regard.

"I know that," he said.

"You – knew – that – that I had asked her, that she had agreed to come up to London and marry me on the quiet?" exclaimed Yorke, staring at him. "She told you?"

"No, she did not tell me that you had arranged a clandestine marriage," said the duke quietly, "but she confessed that you had asked her to be your wife. And so you were going to marry her secretly? Was that – was that straight of you, Yorke?"

There was a touch of gentle reproach in the tone that made Yorke wince.

"Put it that way, it wasn't, Dolph," he said. "But look how I am placed. I am up to my ears in debt. Yes, I know I ought to be ashamed of myself, but there it is, you see! And if it got out that I was marrying without money the blessed Jews would be down on me, and – and – I knew you wanted me to – to marry someone else, and that I couldn't count on you; and so – and so I thought Leslie and I would get spliced quietly and wait till things had blown over, and – ."

The duke dropped back on the couch, but kept his eyes fixed on the harassed, anxious face.

"My poor Yorke! You must love her very much."

Yorke flushed red.

"Love her – !" he broke out, then he pulled himself up. "Look here, Dolph, I love her so much that if I knew that by marrying her I should have to drive a hansom cab or sweep a crossing for the rest of my life, I'd marry her!"

He got up and strode to and fro, his eyes flashing.

"I tell you that life wouldn't be worth living without her. Why, why," his voice rang low and tremulous, "I cannot get her out of my thoughts day or night. I see her face before my eyes, hear her voice always. It's Leslie, Leslie, and nothing else with me! I know now, I can understand now why a man cuts his throat or pitches himself off the nearest bridge when he loses the woman he loves. I used to laugh at the old stories, at the Othello and Romeo and Juliet business, but I understand now! It's all true, every word of it! I'd rather die any day and anyhow than lose her. And – and there you are! You see, Dolph," with a kind of rueful smile, "I'm as far gone as a man can be; just raving mad. But it's a madness that will last my life."

"I hope not," said the duke gravely. "Yorke, I am sorry for you. I did not know that the thing had gone so far. I have bad news for you."

"Bad news!" echoed Yorke.

"Yes. As I said, I was right in my estimate of Leslie Lisle, and you were wrong. She knows all, Yorke, and – ." He paused and shrugged his bent shoulders.

"She knows all?" said Yorke, almost stupidly. "What do you mean?"

"She discovered the deceit, the trick, we had played upon her. How, I do not know. Perhaps she came across a peerage, or a society paper referring to the 'crippled Duke of Rothbury,' or Grey may have let slip a word in her hearing which revealed the secret. Who can say? After all, it was wonderful that we succeeded in keeping up the deceit so long. She was bound to discover the truth sooner or later."

Yorke gazed at him with a troubled face.

"You mean that she discovered that you were the duke and not I?" he said.

The duke nodded.

"Yes. She came to me early in the morning, so pale and changed, so thoroughly overwhelmed with disappointment – ."

"Hold on," broke in Yorke. "Disappointment? Do you mean that she was disappointed that I was not the duke, that she was cut up, that she cared one straw?"

"My dear Yorke, if you had seen her you would have been as astonished and as full of remorse as I was – though the trick was not yours, but mine. I told her so, I took all the blame, but it was of no use to plead for you. She was broken down with the agony of disappointment. If, as you say, you had arranged a secret marriage with her, she looked upon herself as already the Duchess of Rothbury, and to have the cup dashed from her lips! My dear Yorke, one must make all allowance for her. Human nature is human nature all the world over, especially feminine human nature – ."

Yorke's face went from white to red and from red to white again.

"You are talking rot, utter rot, Dolph!" he said. "Leslie – Leslie Lisle – cut up and knocked over because she was not going to be a duchess! Ha, ha!" and he laughed scornfully. "How well you know her! she wouldn't care a pin; I've told you so half a dozen times! Why, she was shrinking from the idea of being a duchess; would have refused me for being what I thought I was, if – if – well, if she hadn't cared for me as she does, God bless her!"

He turned his head away and his eyes grew moist.

The duke watched him gravely.

"You doubt my word, Yorke?"

"No, no! But I say you are mistaken. There was something else."

"What else, what other cause could there be? No, I tell you that it was the agony of disappointed ambition – ."

Yorke laughed again.

The duke flushed.

"Come," he said, "you will not credit my statement, or rely on my judgment. Perhaps you are right. A man should have faith in the purity and single-mindedness of the woman he loves. But facts are stubborn things."

"Facts?"

"Yes! She had arranged to come up to London to you – to send to you. I don't know what plans you made, but I can imagine them. I know how I should have arranged in your case. Well, she is in London, or has been, and has she sent to you, has she met you as she promised?"

Yorke gazed at him with a half doubtful, half scornful expression.

"No," he said at last. "But – but there has been some mistake, blunder, on somebody's part. The telegram has miscarried. She may not have been able to send it. You know how closely she waits upon her father; she may not have been able to get out – ."

The duke shook his head.

"My dear Yorke, her last words to me were a distinct farewell to me and to you. I've not the least doubt in the world that the person who informed her that you were not the duke had also told her that you were heavily in debt, and in Queer Street generally, and that she saw how foolish it would be to throw herself away and ruin her whole life by making an imprudent marriage."

Yorke uttered an oath.

"By heaven, Dolph, if it were anybody else but you who talked of her like this I'd – I'd make him take his words back!"

The duke sighed.

"Even if I were your equal in strength, and we bashed each other, it wouldn't alter the truth a hair's breadth," he said sadly and wearily. "And the truth is as I prophesied weeks ago and state now. Leslie, learning that you were not the Duke of Rothbury, has thrown you over!"

"The truth! It's a foolish and cruel lie!" exclaimed Yorke, his eyes blazing, his hands clenched. "You always misjudged her, you were prejudiced against her, from the first – ."

The duke put his hand as if to stop him, but the passionately indignant voice rang out:

"From the first! She is as pure and high-minded as – as an angel, but you had made up your mind that she was a mercenary schemer, and not even the being with her, and knowing her, and seeing her every day, disabused your mind and opened your eyes to the wrong you were doing her! Yes, you were against her from the first. You'd made your mind up. That ridiculous idea of yours that all women are greedy and hungry for wealth and a title has become a monomania with you, and your mind has got as twisted as your body!"

He stopped aghast and breathless. The words – the cruel words – had slipped out on the torrent of his indignation before be scarcely knew or realized their cruel significance.

The duke sank back, and put his hand to his eyes, as if Yorke had dealt him a physical blow.

Yorke hung his head.

"Forgive me, Dolph," he said in a low voice. "I – I did not mean – ."

The duke dropped his hands from before his face.

"Let that pass," he said in a low voice. "You did not mean it. It is the first unkind word you have ever – . But no matter! You say that I was prejudiced, that I wronged her. Yorke, you have forced my hand, and to show you that you have wronged me, I must tell you all. Yorke – ," he paused, and his eyes dropped, then he raised them, and looked steadily into Yorke's – "I loved her!"

Yorke started.

"You!"

The duke plucked at the sable rug for a moment to silence, then he went on —

"Yes! I should not have told you, should never have confessed it, even to myself, but for – what you said. It is the truth. I loved her! What!" and he leant forward, his thin, wasted face flushed, his lips trembling. "Do you think that it is given to you only to appreciate such beauty and grace and sweetness as Leslie Lisle's? You remind me that I am crooked, twisted, deformed – ."

"Dolph!"

"But do you think, because I am what I am outwardly, that I have no heart? God, who sees below the surface, knows that there beats in my bosom a heart as tender, as hungry for love, as quick to love as yours! Ah, and quicker, hungrier! And I loved her! Loved her with a love as strong and passionate as yours!" He stopped for want of breath.

Yorke sank into a chair and turned his face away.

"And you did not guess it? Well, that is not surprising, for I strove hard to hide it from even myself. I knew that it was madness to hope that I might win her love! But I knew that if I had offered myself in my right colors she would have accepted me, bent, twisted, deformed, mockery of a man as I am!"

Yorke groaned.

"And – and – " he stopped, and seemed to be struggling with something – "and I was tempted! Yes, I was tempted the morning she came to me and told me that she knew, was tempted to tell her that she might still be a duchess, that I loved her and would marry her!"

Yorke sprang to his feet.

"Sit – sit down," said the duke hoarsely, and Yorke sank down again. "But I resisted the temptation. I left her without a word, without a look or sign by which she could know the truth. I had to bear it. It is a burden which crushes, which tortures me! Even since I left the cursed place the temptation has assailed me at intervals, and once or twice I have almost resolved to write – to go down to her – and offer her that upon which she has set her woman's heart – the ducal coronet – for which even a Leslie Lisle will sell herself!"

Yorke opened his lips, but the duke by a gesture stopped him again.

"Now you know the whole truth. If you have to suffer, so also have I. And my lot will be worse than yours. You – " he looked at him, not enviously, but with a sad admiration – "you will get over this – will forget her – ."

"No, no!"

"Yes. There are other women whose love you may win. There is one already." He paused. "Yes, if one nail drives out another, so one love may drive out, wipe out all remembrance of another. And so it is with you. But I!" He dropped back and covered his face with his hands. "For me there can be no such hope. The door of love, the gates of the earthly paradise are shut against me, and will remain shut while I live. To me the Fates say mockingly, 'Rank, wealth, station, we give you, but the love of woman, that supreme gift of the gods to man, thou shalt never know it!'"

There was silence for a moment, then he raised himself on his elbow.

"Yorke, you must bear your burden. Forget her. It will be hard. Don't I know how hard? To forget Leslie – those sweet gray eyes, with their melting tenderness, that low, musical voice! But you must forget her. As I said, there are others. There is one. Eleanor – ."

Yorke sprang to his feet.

"Forget her! Forget Leslie! What are you talking about? We must be mad, both of us; you to talk as you have done, and I to listen! She's as true as steel! I shall find a telegram waiting for me at the club, and – and all will turn out right."

The duke regarded him gravely.

"Go and see," he said quietly. "If you do not find a message from her, what will you do?"

Yorke looked at him.

"Though my body's twisted, my brain is straighter and more acute than yours," said the duke with a smile, "and I will tell you what to do. Wire to the landlady at the house they lived in, Sea View. What was the woman's name?"

"Merrick," said Yorke.

"Yes, Merrick. Ask if the Lisles are there, and if not, for their address. Pay for the return message and all charges. But I can tell you the result at once."

"The result? What?"

"You will not find her. She does not intend that you should. With all her beauty and grace and sweetness, she, even she, even Leslie! being a woman, is too worldly wise to marry Yorke Auchester now that he is a duke no longer."

Yorke caught up his hat and laughed hoarsely.

"I'll soon prove you wrong!" he said.

"And if you do not? If you prove that I am right?" asked the duke, looking at him steadily.

Yorke stopped at the door and looked over his shoulder.

"Then – then – " he stopped and swore – "then you may do what you like with me; marry me to whom you please, when you please, send me to the devil – ."

He strode through the marble hall and called a cab. He ran up the steps of the Dorchester and confronted the patient Stephens.

"There's a telegram for me now, Stephens. Name of 'Yorke,' you know.

"No, sir, nothing for you," was the reply.

He turned at once, and going straight to the telegraph office in Regent Street, sent the following telegram to Mrs. Merrick:

"If Miss Lisle is not at Portmaris, send her address to Yorke, Regent Street Post Office. Reply, paid, at once."

"I'll wait," he said.

"It may be an hour, sir," said the young lady clerk.

"I'll wait if it's ten hours," he said.

He waited for an hour and a half, and then they handed him this:

"Mr. and Miss Lisle have gone and left no address."

He walked from the post office to Grosvenor Square with the telegram crushed in his hand, and went straight to the duke's room. He was still lying on the couch, and he did not lift his head as Yorke entered.

"Well?" he said. "But I need not ask. You are convinced?"

Yorke flattened out the telegram and dropped it into the duke's hand.

"No address! Here in London, and I do not know where to look for her!" he said hoarsely.

"Convinced! No! No!"

Then his voice broke, and he sank into the chair by the table and dropped his head upon his arms.

The duke sighed.

"My poor Yorke! Oh, woman, woman! God sent you as a blessing, and you have proved a curse!"

CHAPTER XXVIII.

"I WOULD DO ANYTHING TO SAVE HIM."

Lady Eleanor reached Palace Gardens and went straight to her boudoir and flung herself on a couch.

To women of her class come very few such adventures as that which had happened to her this morning. From their cradles, through their girlhood, and indeed all through their lives, they are so hedged in and protected from the world outside the refined and exclusive circle in which they move, that there is little chance of their coming in contact with other than their own set.

She had seen Finetta on the stage of the Diadem, had heard of her, read of her, knew that Yorke Auchester's name was in some way connected with her, but she had never dreamed that a meeting with her would be even possible, much less probable.

And now she had not only met with her, but talked and listened to her.

The fact that she had done so filled her with shame and confusion. What would her friends and relatives think if they knew? What would Godolphin, the duke, say if he were told that she had not only engaged in conversation with this Finetta, but actually entered into a kind of compact and conspiracy with her.

But she soon dismissed this part of the case and allowed herself to think only of the information Finetta had given her.

Yorke going to be married!

She would almost as soon have heard that he was going to die. Indeed, death would not more completely remove him for her, would not set up a more surmountable barrier between them than a marriage. For if he were to die, she could still think and dream of him as hers; whereas, if he married, he would belong in this world and the next to another woman.

And such a woman! Finetta had spoken of this Leslie Lisle as if she were an uncultivated, half-educated country girl.

Lady Eleanor could imagine what she was like; some simpering, round-faced girl, just a step above a laborer's daughter. One of these girls who blushed with timidity and fright when they were spoken to, who spoke in a strong provincial dialect, who dressed like a dowdy and looked just respectable; something between a servant and a shop girl.

She was pretty, no doubt; but to think that Yorke, Yorke the fastidious, should be caught by a pretty face! Why, she, Lady Eleanor, was pretty! She looked at her pale, agitated face, and a kind of indignant rage consumed her for a moment. She was the acknowledged belle of many a ballroom. She might have been a professional beauty if she had cared to be one. She was accomplished, was in his own rank and class, a fitting mate – yes, she told herself with inward conviction, a fitting mate for him.

With her by his side, as his wife, he could have filled a conspicuous place in the world, their world, the upper ten thousand, the rulers and masters.

And he had passed her by and was going to marry a half-educated, uncivilized, uncultivated country girl, with pink cheeks and a simpering smile.

The thought drove her half mad. Finetta had said that she had tried to prevent it, and that it now rested with her, Lady Eleanor, to make an attempt.

Lady Eleanor shuddered and reddened with shame at the idea of being a conspirator with such a one as Finetta of the Diadem. And yet was not the object to be attained worthy of even such means?

She would not ask herself why Finetta desired to stop the marriage; she put that question away from her resolutely, and told herself that it was of Yorke and Yorke's welfare alone that she was thinking.

A servant came up to announce visitors, but Lady Eleanor answered through the locked door that she wasn't at home.

"I will only see Mr. Ralph Duncombe," she said, and she longed for his presence with a feverish impatience; though she had no fixed plan in her mind, nothing but a vague idea that Ralph Duncombe, the cute city man, might be able to help her.

About six o'clock the servant announced him, and she had him shown up to her boudoir. She had had time to collect herself and regain composure, to change her dress for a tea gown and do her hair; but her face was pale and still showed traces of the terrible agitation which she had suffered, and Ralph Duncombe as he took her hand looked at her inquiringly.

"I am afraid you have found the heat trying, Lady Eleanor. I hope you are well," he said, in his grave, sedate voice.

"Thank you, yes," she said; "I am well, quite well. But I am – what is the term you city men use when you want to say that you are worried? Pray sit down," and she pointed to a chair so placed that she could see his face while hers was against the light.

"We find 'worried' good enough for us, Lady Eleanor; but we are worried so often that we think little of it and take things very much as they come."

"Ah, then I envy you!" she said with a genuine sigh. "I am afraid you will think me very inconsiderate in sending for you, you who have so much to occupy your time and energies."

"I am always glad to be of some slight service to you," he said with grave courtesy, "and can always spare time to come to you when you send for me. Is anything the matter? Are you anxious about the Mining Company? You have no cause to be, for everything is going on remarkably well, and succeeding beyond my expectations. Some of the best men in the city have joined us, and, as I wrote to you, the shares already stand at a high premium. You have made a very large sum of money, Lady Eleanor, and are on the way to making a still larger."

"Money, money!" she exclaimed. "It is always money. You talk as if it were the one and only thing desirable and worth having! And, after all, what can it buy? Can it buy the one thing on which one's heart is set? Have you found it so all-powerful that you set such store by it?"

His face flushed and a singular look came into his eyes.

"I – I beg your pardon!" she said hurriedly and almost humbly. "I did not mean to be impertinent or obtrusive; but just now I am in trouble in which I think even the all-powerful money will be powerless."

"Tell me what it is," he said in a low voice, and rather absently, as if the hasty words she had just spoken were still haunting him. "That is, I suppose you sent to consult me about it?"

"Well – yes," said Lady Eleanor more calmly, but with her color coming and going. "I sent to you because you are the only friend I have whom I should care to consult about this – this trouble. Because I feel that you will understand, and, what is more important, not misunderstand me, or – or my motives."

"I will do my best to understand and sympathize, Lady Eleanor," he said, watching her, yet without seeming to do so.

"You remember," she said after a pause, during which she was seeking for some way of beginning the subject as if it were not of much importance after all. "You remember Yorke Auchester, Lord Yorke Auchester?"

He inclined his head, suppressing a look of surprise.

"Certainly," he said. "That is, I remember – I could not fail to do so – that I have purchased his debts, to a very large sum, on your behalf."

"Yes," she said nervously, "and I daresay – I know – that you have wondered why I have done so."

He kept silence, but raised his eyebrows slightly.

"Well," she went on, "it was to save him from trouble. He is a great friend of mine; his cousin, the duke, and I are great friends. But you know all this! And now I want to do something more for – for Lord Auchester."

He looked up. Her face was red one moment and pale the next, but she kept her eyes – the half-proud, half-appealing eyes – upon his.

"He is in great trouble and – and danger. A worse danger than a monetary one."

He smiled.

"Can there be worse?" he said with a city man's incredulity. "We live in a prosaic age, Lady Eleanor, from which we have dismissed the midnight assassin and all the other romantic perils which made life and history so interesting in the middle ages; and the only dangers we run now are from a railway or steamboat accident – ."

She tried to listen to him patiently.

"It is not that kind of danger I was thinking," she said. "Is it not possible for a man to – to ruin and wreck his life in – many ways, Mr. Duncombe?"

He looked at her still half smilingly.

"Oh, yes, a man may enlist as a common soldier, or forge a check, or marry his cook; but I do not imagine that there is any risk of Lord Auchester committing any of these – shall we say, follies?"

"Of all the things you have mentioned, it seems to me that the last is the worst," said Lady Eleanor bitterly.

"Yes?"

He raised his brows again.

"At any rate it is punished more severely than the others," she said.

"Yes," he assented thoughtfully. "But," and he smiled, "Lord Auchester does not contemplate marrying his cook, does he?"

"His cook? No; but he is in danger of marrying almost as far beneath him!" The retort flashed from her with hot hauteur. "Mr. Duncombe, when a man of Lord Auchester's station marries beneath him he is as utterly ruined, his life is as completely wrecked, as if he had committed forgery or enlisted as a common soldier."

He leaned back and listened with sedate politeness, wondering whither all this was leading, and what it was she would ask him to do.

"A man of Lord Auchester's rank has only one life – the social one. He has no business, no profession to fall back upon, to employ his thoughts, to engross and solace him. He must mix in the world to which he belongs, and he can only do so as an equal with his fellows. When he marries he is expected to take for a wife a lady of his own rank, or at any rate, a lady who is accepted as such in the circle to which he belongs. She must be one whom his friends can receive and visit, one of whom neither he nor they will be ashamed. His life may then continue in its old course; he will still have his friends and relatives round him, still have his place in the world, his niche, be it a high or a moderately high one, and all will be well with him."