Brooke's Daughter Part 58

"Love is not enough, though it is a great deal: do you trust me?"

"Implicitly--now that I have looked at you again."

Caspar gave a little laugh.

"Then I must never let you go away from me, or you will begin to disbelieve in me," he said.

CHAPTER x.x.xIX.

TWELVE SILVER SPOONS.

Lady Alice was not long in finding out that Maurice Kenyon, her husband's chief friend, was the man of whom Lesley had spoken in her letters, and also the doctor who had interested her at the hospital. She did not speak to Lesley about him: she took a little time to accustom herself to her husband's circle before she made any remarks upon its members. But she was shrewd enough to see very quickly that Mr. Kenyon took even more interest in her daughter than in her husband, and from Lesley's shy looks she fancied that the interest was reciprocated. She had a twinge of regret for her favorite, Harry d.u.c.h.esne, and then consoled herself by saying that after all Lesley was too young to know her own mind, and that probably she would change before she was twenty-one.

She did not come particularly into contact with Maurice, however, until the Sunday after she had taken up her abode in Woburn Place. And then she saw a good deal of him. For Lesley went to sit with Ethel as was her wont, and Maurice came to dine at Mr. Brooke's. After the early dinner, Lady Alice noticed that there was some parleying between the guest and his host.

"I am going," said Maurice in an urgent undertone. To which Caspar returned a cheerful answer.

"All right, old man; but I am going too." And then Mr. Kenyon knitted his brows and looked vexed.

Caspar at once noted his wife's glance of inquiry. "Has Lesley told you nothing about our Sunday meetings at the Club? We generally betake ourselves to North London on a Sunday afternoon. Mr. Kenyon thinks I had better stay with you, and--I don't."

From Maurice's uncomfortable looks, Lady Alice gathered that there was something doubtful in the proceeding. "Will you let me go with you?" she said, by way of experiment.

There was an exchange of astonished and rather embarra.s.sed looks all round. Caspar elevated his eyebrows and clutched his beard: Miss Brooke made a curious sound, something like a snort; and Maurice flushed a deep and dusky red; indications which all annoyed Lady Alice, although she did not quite know what they signified. She rose from her chair and took the matter into her own hands; but all without the slightest change in the manner of graceful indifference which had grown natural to her of late years.

"That is the place where Lesley used to go," she said. "She tells me she sings to the people sometimes. I cannot sing, but I can play the piano a little, if that is any good. Sophy is going, is she not? And I should like to go too."

"There is no reason why you should not," said Mr. Brooke rather abruptly. But the gleam in his eye told of pleasure. "There are some very rough characters at the club sometimes, you know. And perhaps the reception they give me to-day will not be of the pleasantest."

Lady Alice looked at her husband with a mixture of wonder and admiration. The calm way in which he sometimes alluded to his present circ.u.mstances, without a trace of bitterness or fretfulness, amazed her.

In old days she would have put it down to "good breeding--good manners,"

some superficial veneer of good society of which she thoroughly approved; but she had seen too much of the seamy side of "good society"

now to be able to accept this explanation of his calmness. It was not want of sensitiveness, she was sure of that: he was by no means obtuse: it was simply that his large, strong nature rose above the pettiness of resentment and complaint. The suspicion under which he labored was a grave thing--a trouble, a blow; but it had not made him sour, nor borne him to the earth with a conviction of the injustice of mankind.

His wife looked and marveled, but recollected herself in time to say after only a minute's hesitation:

"I know a little more about rough characters than I once did. We saw a good many at the East End hospital, did we not, Mr. Kenyon?"

It was the first time that she had shown that she remembered Maurice's face. Caspar p.r.i.c.ked up his ears.

"_You_ at a hospital, Alice? Why, what were you doing there?"

"Visiting some of the patients," she answered, with a little blush.

"Visits which were much appreciated," put in Maurice, "although we found that Lady Alice was too generous."

"Until I was warned by one of the patients that the others abused my kindness and traded on it," said Lady Alice, laughing rather nervously, "and then I drew in a little."

"What patient was that?"

"The name I think was Smith--the man who lost his memory in that curious way."

"Ah yes, I remember." And then Maurice knitted his brows and became very thoughtful: he looked as if a thoroughly new idea had been suggested to him.

Miss Brooke remarked that it was almost time to set out if they were to go to the club that afternoon, and Lady Alice went to her room for her cloak. She was before the looking-gla.s.s, apparently studying the reflection of her own face, when a knock at the door, to which she absently said "Come in," was followed by Caspar's entrance. She, thinking that it was her maid, did not look round, and he came behind her without being perceived. The first token of his presence was received by her when his arm was slipped round her waist, and his voice said caressingly and almost playfully in her ear, "I don't know that I want my dainty piece of china carried down into the slums."

"Am I nothing more to you than that?" said Lady Alice reproachfully.

He made no answer, but as he looked at the fair face in the gla.s.s, and as their eyes met, she thought that she read a reply in his glance.

"I have been nothing more--I know," she said, with sudden humbleness, "but if it is not too late--if I can make up now for the time I have lost----"

The tears trembled in her eyes, but he kissed them away with new tenderness, saying in a soothing tone--

"We will see, my dear, we will see. I was only in jest."

And she felt that he was thinking not only of the lost years, but of the possible gulf before him--that horror of darkness and disgrace which they might yet have to face.

She went downstairs to the cab that was waiting, with a new and subduing sensation very present to her mind: a sense of something missed out of her own life, a sense of having failed in the duty that had once been given her to do. Hitherto she had been buoyed up by a certain confidence in her own conscientiousness and power of judgment, as most rather narrow-minded women are; but it now occurred to her that she might have been wrong--not only in a few details, as she had consented to admit--but wrong from beginning to end. She had marred not only her own life but the lives of her husband and her child.

This consciousness kept her very quiet during the drive to Macclesfield Buildings. But n.o.body spoke much, except Doctor Sophy, who made interjectional remarks, half lost in the rattling of the cab, by way of trying to keep up everybody's spirits. Caspar sitting opposite his wife, with his arms folded and his long legs carefully tucked out of the way, had an unusually serious and even anxious expression. Indeed it struck Lady Alice for the first time that he was looking haggard and ill. The burden was weighing upon him even more than he knew. Maurice, too, seemed absorbed in thought, so that the drive was not a particularly lively one.

They got out at the block of buildings which had once struck Lesley as so particularly ugly. Perhaps their ugliness did not impress Lady Alice so much. At any rate she made no remark upon it. Her fingers were lightly pressed upon Caspar's arm: her thoughts were occupied by him.

At the door of the block in which the club-rooms were situated, a little group of men were standing in somewhat aimless fas.h.i.+on, smoking and talking among themselves. Caspar recognized several of the club members in this group. "Ah," he said quietly to his wife, "they thought that I should not come." She made no answer: as a matter of fact she began to feel a trifle frightened. These rough-looking men, with their pipes, who nudged each other and laughed as she pa.s.sed, were of a kind unknown to her. But Caspar walked through them easily, nodding here and there, with a cheery "Good-afternoon."

Lady Alice did not know it, but the room presented an unusual sight to her husband's eyes that afternoon. The fire was burning, and the gas was lighted, for the day was cold and damp: the comfortable red-seated chairs were as inviting as ever, and the magazines and newspapers lay in rows upon the scarlet table-cloth. There were flowers in the vases, and a piece of music on the open piano. Lady Alice exclaimed in her pleasure, "How pretty it is! how cosy!" and wondered at the gloom that sat upon her husband's brow.

The room was cosy and pretty enough--but it was empty.

Caspar looked round mutely, then glanced at his companions. Miss Brooke paused in the act of taking off one woollen glove, and opened her mouth and forgot to shut it again. Maurice stood frowning, twitching his brows and biting his lips in the effort to subdue a torrent of rage that was surging up in his heart. He would have sworn, he said afterwards, if Lady Alice had not been there--he did not mind Doctor Sophy so much. All that he did now, however, was to mutter "Ungrateful rascals," and make as if he would turn to flee.

But he was stopped by Caspar's clutch at his arm. Maurice saw that his purpose--that of haranguing the men outside--had been divined and arrested. He turned to his friend and saw for the first time on Caspar's face that the shaft had gone home. He had shown scarcely any sign of suffering before.

"I don't deserve this from them," said Brooke quietly, and Maurice could tell that he had gone rather white about the lips. Then in a still lower voice, "Don't let her know. You were right, Maurice; I had better not have come."

"I'll just go and look outside: I won't speak to them, don't be afraid--you talk to Lady Alice," said Maurice breaking from him. But when he got into the dark little entry, he did not look outside for anything or anybody: he only relieved himself by exclaiming. "Oh, d--n the fools!" and shaking his first in a very reprehensible way at some imaginary crowd of auditors. For Maurice was half an Irishman, and his blood was up, and on his friend's behalf he was, as he would just then have expressed it, "in a devil of a rage." While he was executing a sort of mad war-dance on the jute mat in the pa.s.sage, relieving his mind by some wild gesticulation and still wilder objurgation of the world, Mr.

Brooke had turned back to his wife with a pleasant word and smile.

"I must show you the photographs," he said. "We are very proud of them.

There will be plenty of time, for the members seem to be a little late in getting together to-day. Possibly they thought I was not coming."

"It is scarcely time yet," said Miss Brooke heroically. She knew it was ten minutes past, but she was quite prepared to sacrifice truth for the maintenance of her brother's dignity.

"That's a good one of the Parthenon," said Caspar negligently, putting his hand within his wife's arm, and leading her from one picture to another. "The Coliseum you see: not quite so clear as it might be. These frames were made by one of the men in the buildings--given as a present to the club. Not bad taste, are they? And this statuette----".