"That was a family arrangement made many years ago," he answered at last deliberately. "And I think it was a wise one. There is no reason why you should grow up in utter ignorance of your father. And I prefer you to come when you have arrived at something like a reasonable age, rather than when you were quite a child. As you _are_ at a reasonable age, Lesley," with a lightening of his tones, "I suppose you have some tastes, some inclinations, of your own? What are they?"
It must have been obstinacy that prompted Lesley"s answer. "I have no taste," she said, looking down. "No inclinations."
"Are you not fond of music?"
"I play a little--a very little."
"Oh." The tone was one of disappointment. "Art?
Drawing--carving--modelling--any of the fads young ladies are so fond of now-a-days?"
"No."
"Do you read much?"
"No."
"What do you do, then?"
"I can embroider a little," said Lesley, calmly. "The nuns taught me.
And I can dance."
She raised her eyes and studied the stormy expressions that flitted one after another across her father"s face. She knew that she had taken a delight in provoking him, and she wondered whether he was not going to retaliate by an angry word. But after a few moments" pause he only said--
"Would you like any lessons in singing or drawing now that you are in town?"
The offer was a temptation to Lesley. Yes, she would dearly have liked some good singing lessons; her mother even had suggested that she should take them while she was in London. She was the fortunate possessor of a voice that was worth cultivating, and she longed to make the best of her time. But she had come with the notion that her father was poor, and that she must not be an unnecessary expense to him; and this idea had not been counteracted by any appearance of luxury or lavish expenditure in her London home. The furniture, except in her own room, was heavy, old-fashioned, and decidedly shabby. Her father seemed to work very hard. He had already promised her a maid; and Lesley could not bear to ask him for anything else. So she answered--
"No, I think not, thank you."
There might be generosity, but there was also some resentment and hot temper at the bottom of Lesley"s reply. This was a fact, however, that her father did not discern. He merely paused for a moment, nodded his head once or twice, and seemed slightly disconcerted. Then he said--
"Very well; do just as you like. Your aunt has a Mudie subscription, I believe"--what this meant Lesley had not the faintest idea--"and you will find books in the library, and a piano in the drawing-room. You must ask for anything you want." As if that was likely, Lesley thought!
"I hope you will make friends and be comfortable. And--a--" he paused, and hesitated in his speech as he went on--"a--I hope--your mother--Lady Alice--was well when you left her?"
"Pretty well," Lesley answered, dropping her eyes.
"Was she going to Scotland for the winter?"
"I think so."
"Oh." He seemed satisfied with the answer. "By the way, Lesley, are you Catholic or Protestant?"
"Protestant. Mamma would not allow the Sisters to talk to me about religion. I always drove to the English Church on Sundays."
"Oh, very well. Do as you please. There are plenty of churches near us.
But you need not bring more clergy than you can help to the house," said Brooke, with a peculiar smile. "I am not very fond of the Blacks. I am more of a Red myself, you know."
"A Red?" Lesley asked, helplessly.
"A Red Republican--Radical--Socialist--anything you like," said Brooke, laughing outright. "You didn"t read the papers in your convent, I suppose. You had better begin to study them straight away. It will be a pleasant change from the Lives of the Saints. And now, if we have finished all that we have to say--I am rather busy, and----"
"Oh, I beg your pardon: I will go," said Lesley, rising at once. "I had no wish to intrude upon you," she added, with an attempt to be dignified and womanly, which she felt to be a miserable failure. Her father simply nodded in reply, took up his pen, and allowed her to leave the room.
But when she had gone, he put the pen down and sat back in his chair, musing. Lesley had surprised him a little. She had more force and fire in her composition than he had expected to find. She was, as he had said, very like her mother in face and figure; and the minute differences of line and contour that showed Lesley to be strong where Lady Alice had been weak, original where Lady Alice had been most conventional, intellectual where Lady Alice had been only intelligent, were not perceptible at first sight even to a practised observer of men and women like Caspar Brooke. But the flash of her brown eyes, so like his own, and an occasional intonation in her voice, had told him something. She was in arms against him, so much he felt; and she had more individuality than her mother, in spite of her ignorance. It was a pity that her education had been so much neglected! Manlike, Caspar Brooke took literally every word that she had uttered; and reproached himself for having allowed his foolish, frivolous wife to bring up his daughter in a place where she had been taught nothing but embroidery and dancing.
"It is a pity," he reflected; "but we cannot alter the matter now. The poor girl will feel herself sadly out of place in this house, I fear; but perhaps it won"t do her any harm. She may be a better woman all her life--the idle, selfish, self-indulgent life that she is bound by all her traditions and her upbringing to lead--for having seen for a few months what honest work is like. She is too handsome not to marry well: let us only hope that Alice won"t secure a duke for her. She will if she can; and I--well, I haven"t much opinion of dukes." And so with a laugh and a shrug, Caspar Brooke returned to his work.
Lesley went upstairs to the drawing-room with burning cheeks and a lump in her throat. She was offended by her father"s manner towards her, although she could not but acknowledge that in essentials he had seemed wishful to be kind. And she knew that she had seemed ungracious and had felt resentful. But the resentment, she a.s.sured herself, was all on her mother"s account. If he had treated Lady Alice as he had treated Lady Alice"s daughter--with hardly concealed contempt, with the scornful indifference of one looking down from a superior height--Lesley did not wonder that her mother had left him. It was a manner which had never been displayed to her before, and she said to herself that it was horribly discourteous. And the worst of it was that it did not seem to be directed to herself alone: it included her friends the nuns, her mother, her mother"s family, and all the circle of aristocratic relations to which she belonged. She was despised as part of the cla.s.s which he despised; and it was difficult for her to understand the situation.
It would have been easier if she could have set her father down as a mere boor, without refinement or intelligence; but there was one item in her impression of him which she could not reconcile with a want of culture. She was keenly sensitive to sound; and voices were important to her in her judgment of acquaintances. Now, Caspar Brooke had a delightful voice. It was low, musical, and finely modulated: his accent, moreover, was particularly delicate and refined. Lesley had, without knowing it, the same charmingly modulated intonation; and her father"s voice was instinctively familiar to her. People had often said that it was hard to dislike a man with a voice like Caspar Brooke"s; and Lesley was not insensible to its fascination. No, he could not be a mere insensate clod, with that pleasant and cultivated voice, she decided to herself; but he might be something worse--a heartless man of the world, who cared for nothing but himself and his own low ambitions: not a man who was worthy to be the husband of a gentle, loving, highly-organized woman like the daughter of Lord Courtleroy.
With a deep sigh, Lesley ceased at last to meditate, and began to look about her. The room was large and lofty, and had three windows, opening upon a balcony. There were more books than Lesley had usually seen in drawing-rooms, and there was a very handsome Broadwood grand piano. The furniture was mostly of the solid type, handsome enough, but very heavy.
Lesley, noticed, however, that the prints and paintings on the walls were really good, and that there was some valuable china on the mantlepiece. It was not an ugly room after all, and it displayed signs of culture on the part of its occupants; but Lesley turned from it with an impatient little shake of her head, expressive of deep disgust. And, indeed, it was sufficiently unlike the rooms to which she was accustomed to cause her considerable disappointment.
She drew aside the curtains which hung from the archway between the back room and the front; and here her brow cleared. The one wide window looked out on a s.p.a.ce of green gra.s.s and trees, inexpressibly refreshing to Lesley"s eye. The walls were lined with rows of books, from floor to ceiling; and some easy chairs and small tables gave a look of comfort and purpose to the room. It was Mr. Brooke"s library, though not the room in which he did his work. That was chiefly done in his little den downstairs, or at his office in the city.
Lesley looked at the books with great and increasing pleasure. Here, indeed, was a joy of which her father could not rob her. No one would take any notice of what she read. She could "browse undisturbed" over the whole field of English literature if she were so minded. And the prospect was a delight.
She sauntered back into the front room, and stood at one of the windows for a minute or two. Her attention was speedily attracted by a little pantomime at a window opposite her own--a drawing-room window, too, with a balcony before it, like the window at which she stood. A young lady in a white dress was talking to a black poodle, who was standing on his hind-legs, and a young man was balancing a bit of biscuit on the dog"s nose. That was all. But the young lady was so extremely pretty, and the young man looked so cheerful and bright, and the poodle was such an extremely fascinating dog, that Lesley sighed in very envy of the felicity of all three. And it never crossed her mind that the pretty girl in the white costume, who had such a simple and natural look, could possibly be Ethel Kenyon, the actress, of whom her father had been speaking half an hour before. Yet such was the case.
She was still observing the figures at the window when the door opened, and Sarah announced a visitor.
"Mrs. Romaine, please, ma"am."
Whereupon Lesley remembered the "very old friend" whom Mr. Brooke had mentioned. But was this the very old friend? This young and fashionably-dressed woman, with short, dark, curling hair, and a white veil to enhance the whiteness of her complexion. Mrs. Romaine was very handsome, without a doubt, but Lesley did not like her.
"Miss Brooke?" said the visitor, in a silvery, flute-like voice, which the girl could not but admire. "You will forgive me for calling so soon?
My old friendship with Mr. Brooke--whom I have known for years--made me anxious to see you, dear, as soon as possible. You will receive me also as a friend, I hope----"
There could be but one answer. Lesley was delighted.
"I have heard so much of you," murmured Mrs. Romaine, sitting down with the girl"s hand in hers and gazing into her face with liquid, dreamy eyes; "and I wanted to know if I could not be of use to you. Dear Miss Brooke is so much occupied. I may call you Lesley, may I not? Dear Lesley, it will be the greatest possible pleasure to me to a.s.sist you in any way."
"Thank you very much," said Lesley, rather lamely.
"Dear," said Mrs. Romaine, "may I speak to you frankly? I knew your dear mother many years ago----"
Lesley turned upon her with suddenly kindled eyes.
"You knew mamma?"
"I did, indeed, and I cannot express to you what my feeling was for her.
Love, admiration--these seem cold words: worship, Lesley, expresses more nearly what I felt! Can you wonder that I hasten to welcome her daughter to her home?"
Lesley"s innocent heart warmed to the new-comer at once. How unjust she had been, she thought, to shrink for a moment from the visitor because of her youthful and ultra-fashionable appearance. Had she not found a friend?--a woman who loved her mother?
Mrs. Romaine saw the impression that she had made, and did not try to deepen it just then. She went on more lightly:
"I am a widow, you know, and I live in Russell Square. I hope that you will come and see me sometimes. Drop in whenever you like, and if there is anything that I can do for you count on me. You will want to go shopping or making calls sometimes when Miss Brooke is too busy to take you; then you must come to me. And how was dear Lady Alice when you saw her last?"