Brooke's Daughter Part 19

Oliver drew himself up in his chair. Was _that_ the question? He did not believe it. But he answered her unsmilingly.

"Yes, Miss Brooke. They are the blocks of workmen's dwellings where your father has founded a Club."

"Has he?" said Lesley, her eyes dilating. "That is--very good of him, isn't it?"

"Oh, I suppose so," Oliver answered, with a little laugh. "Of course--but I must not insinuate worldly motives into his daughter's ears!"

"Oh, please, go on: I want to hear!"

"It is nothing wrong. Only if a man wants to stand well with the working-people--if he wants votes, for instance--it isn't at all a bad move to begin with a Working-Men's Club."

"Votes, Mr. Trent? What for?"

"School Board, or County Council, or Parliament," said Oliver, coolly.

"Or even Board of Guardians. I don't know what your father's ambitions are, exactly. But popularity is always a good thing."

Lesley pondered a little, the color rising in her cheeks. "Then," she said, "you think my father does good things from--from what people call 'interested motives?'"

"Good heavens, no, Miss Brooke, I never said anything of the kind,"

declared Oliver, somewhat alarmed by her straightforwardness. "I was only thinking of the general actions of man, not of your father in particular."

Lesley nodded. "I don't quite understand," she said. "But that doesn't matter for the present. I have another question to ask you, Mr. Trent.

Do you know anything about the poor?"

"I'm very poor myself," said Oliver, laughing. "Horribly poor. 'Pon my word, I don't know any one poorer."

"Oh, you are laughing at me now," said Lesley, almost petulantly. "And you said that you would not laugh."

She leaned back in her chair, with heightened color and brightening eyes: her breath came a little more quickly than usual, as if her pulses were quickened. There is nothing so catching as emotion. Oliver's sluggish pulses began to stir at the sight of her. That soft and tender face seemed more beautiful to him than the sparkle and vivacity of Ethel Kenyon's. If it had not been for Ethel's twenty thousand pounds, he did not know but what he would have preferred Lesley. Rosy had said that Lesley would suit him best.

"I am not laughing; I swear I am not," he said earnestly. "I know what you mean--you are thinking of the London poor. Your tender heart has been stirred by the sight of them in the streets--they are dreadful to look at, are they not? It is like you to feel their woes so acutely."

"I want to know," said Lesley, rather plaintively, "whether I cannot do anything for them?"

"You--do anything--for the poor?" repeated Oliver. Then he scanned her narrowly--scanned her s.h.i.+ning hair, delicate features, Paris-made gown, and dainty shoe--and laughed a little. "You can let them look at you--that ought to be enough," he said.

Lesley frowned. "Nonsense, Mr. Trent. What does my father do for his Club?"

"Smokes with the men, sometimes, I believe. You couldn't do that, you know----"

"Although----" and then Lesley stopped short and laughed.

"Although Aunt Sophy does. It's no secret, my dear Miss Brooke. Half the women in London smoke now-a-days, I believe. Even my sister indulges now and then."

Lesley gave her head a little toss. "What else does my father do?" she asked.

"Sings to them. Sunday afternoon, that is, you know. The wives are allowed to come to the Club-room then, and he has a sort of little concert for them--good music, sacred music, even, I believe. He gets professionals to come now and then; they will do anything to oblige your father, you know--and when they don't come, he sings himself. He really has a very good ba.s.s voice."

"Ladies don't sing, I suppose," said Lesley, after a little pause.

"Oh, yes, they do. He nearly always has a lady to sing. Why don't you go down on a Sunday afternoon? The club is open to friends of the founder, if not of the members, on Sunday afternoons. Don't Mr. Brooke and Miss Brooke always go?"

"I suppose they do--I never asked where they went," said Lesley, with burning cheeks. She remembered that they always did disappear on Sunday afternoons. No, she had not asked; she had not hitherto felt any curiosity as to their doings; and they had not asked her to accompany them. She began to resent their lack of readiness to invite her to the club.

"You might go down on Sunday afternoon," said Oliver, lazily. "I'm going: they have asked me to sing. Though you mayn't know it, Miss Brooke, I have a very decent tenor voice. Ethel is going with me. Won't you come?"

"I don't know," said Lesley, nervously. She bethought herself that she could not easily propose to accompany her father, and that Ethel and Oliver Trent would not want her. She would be one too many in either party. She could not go.

But Oliver read the reason of her scruples. "If you will allow me," he said, "I will ask my sister to come too. Then we shall be a compact little party of four, and we can start off without telling Mr. Brooke anything about it."

Lesley hesitated a little, but finally consented. She had a great desire to see what was going on in Macclesfield Buildings. But Oliver, it may be feared, believed in his heart that she went because he was going. And he resolved to bestow his society on her rather than on Ethel and Mrs.

Romaine on Sunday. It was decidedly more amusing to waken that still sweet face to animation than to engage in a war of wit with Ethel.

Lesley thought of Oliver very little. Once or twice he had startled her by an a.s.sumption of intimacy, a softening of his voice, and a look of tenderness in his eyes, which made her shrink into herself with an instinctive emotion of dislike. But she had then proceeded to scold herself for foolish shyness and prudery--the prudery of a French-school girl, who was not accustomed to the ways of men. She had begun to feel herself very ignorant of the world since she came to her father's house.

It would never do to offend one of her father's friends by seeming afraid of him. So she tried to smile and looked pleased when Oliver drew near, and she was all the more gracious to him because she had already quarrelled with Maurice Kenyon, who was even more her father's friend than Oliver himself. But what could she do? Mr. Kenyon had insulted her--the hot blood rose to her cheeks as she thought of some of the things that he had said. Insulted her by a.s.suming that she could not appreciate her father because she was too careless, too frivolous, too foolish to do so. That she was ignorant, Lesley was ready to acknowledge; but not that she was incapable of learning.

Oliver had no difficulty in persuading his sister to make one of the party on Sunday afternoon. Indeed, Mrs. Romaine made the expedition easier by inviting Lesley to lunch with her beforehand.

"I asked Maurice and Ethel Kenyon, too," she said to Lesley, "but they would not come. Mr. Kenyon had his patients to attend to; and Ethel would not leave him to lunch alone."

Lesley did not answer, but privately reflected that if the Kenyons had accepted the invitation she would have lunched at home.

She went to church by herself on Sunday morning, for Mr. Brooke was not up, and Doctor Sophy frequented some a.s.sembly of eclectic souls, of which Lesley had never heard before. So she went demurely to that ugliest of all Protestant temples, St. Pancras' Church, and was not very much surprised when she perceived that Oliver Trent was in the seat behind her, and that he sat so that he could see her face.

"I did not know that you went to St. Pancras'," she said, innocently, as they stood on the steps together outside when the service was over.

"Nor do I," he answered her. "It is the most hideous church I ever saw.

But there was an attraction this morning."

Lesley looked as if she did not understand. And indeed she did not.

"You are coming to lunch with us, are you not? Will you let me escort you?"

"Thank you, Mr. Trent. But--do you mind?--I shall have to call at my father's house on my way. Just to leave my prayer-book. It will not take me a minute."

Oliver could not object, although he was not altogether pleased. For Mr.

Brooke's house was immediately opposite the Kenyons', and Miss Ethel was as likely as not to be sitting at the drawing-room window. Her sharp eyes would espy him from afar, and she might ask Lesley if he had been to church with her. Not a very great difficulty, but Oliver had a far-seeing mind, and one question might lead to others of a more serious kind.

However, there was no help for it. He paused on the steps of number fifty, while Lesley rang the bell. She had been formally presented with a latch-key, but the use of it was so new to her, and the fear of losing it so great, that she usually left it on her dressing-table.

A maid opened the door and said something to Lesley in an under tone.

Oliver was looking across the street and neither heard the words nor saw the woman's face. But Lesley turned to him hastily.

"Oh, Mr. Trent, I am so sorry to keep you waiting, but I must run up to my aunt for a moment."

She disappeared into the house, and then Oliver turned and met the eyes of Lesley's waiting-maid. And at the same moment he was aware--as one is sometimes aware of what goes on behind one's back--that Ethel, in her pretty autumn dress of fawn-color and deep brown, had come out upon the balcony of her house and was observing him.

"_You_, Mary?" said Oliver, in a stifled whisper.