Of High Descent Part 102

"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 dispa.s.sionate 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 pa.s.sionate 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. Tras.h.!.+ 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 suns.h.i.+ne, 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-a.s.surance 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 appet.i.te, 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.