Brooke's Daughter Part 8

"Yes, this is the house, and this is his daughter, I suppose?" said Miss Brooke, coming forward, and taking Lesley's limp hand in hers. Miss Brooke had a keen, clever, honest face, but she was undeniably plain, and Lesley was not in a condition to appreciate the kindness of her glance.

"I must see Mr. Brooke himself before I leave my young lady," Dayman announced.

"Run and fetch your master, Sarah," said Miss Brooke, quickly. "He cannot have heard the cab."

The white-ap.r.o.ned servant disappeared into the back premises, and thence, in a moment or two, issued Mr. Caspar Brooke himself, at the sight of whom Miss Brooke involuntarily frowned and bit her lip. She saw at one glance that Caspar was in his "study-coat," that his hair was dishevelled, and that he had just laid down his pipe. These were small details in themselves, but they meant a good deal. They meant that Caspar Brooke would not do a single thing, would not go a single step out of his way, to conciliate the affections of Lady Alice's daughter.

He had never in his life looked more of a Bohemian than he did just then. And Miss Brooke suspected him of wilful perversity.

The lights swam before Lesley's eyes. The vision of a big, brown-bearded man, bigger and broader, it seemed to her, than any man she had ever spoken to before, took away her senses. As he came up to her she involuntarily shrank back; and when he stooped to kiss her, the novel sensation of his bristly beard against her face, the strong scent of tobacco, and the sense that she was unwelcome, all contributed towards complete self-betrayal. Dizzy from her voyage; faint, sick, and unhinged, she almost pushed him away from her and sank down on a hall-chair with a burst of sobbing which she could not control. She was terribly ashamed of herself next moment; but the next moment was too late. She had made as bad a beginning as she had it in her power to make, and no after-apology could alter what was done.

For a moment a dead silence fell on the little group. Miss Brooke heard her brother mutter something beneath his breath in a very angry tone.

She wondered whether his daughter heard it too. The faithful and officious Dayman immediately pressed forward with soothing words and offers of help.

"There, there, my dear young lady, don't take on so. It won't be for long, remember; and I'll come for you again to take you back to your mamma----"

"You had better leave her alone, Dayman," said Mr. Brooke, coldly. "She will probably be more reasonable by and bye."

Lesley was on her feet again in a moment. "I am not unreasonable," she said distinctly, but with a little catch in her voice; "it is only that I am tired and upset with the journey--and the sudden light was too much for me. Give mamma my love, Dayman, and say that I am very well."

"Are the boxes all in?" asked Mr. Brooke. "We need not detain you, Mrs.

Dayman."

Dayman turned and dropped him a mocking curtsey. "I have my orders from my mistress, sir. Having seen the young lady safe into your hands, I will go back to my lady at the railway station, where she now is, and tell her how she was received."

Miss Brooke, glancing anxiously at her brother, saw him bite his lip and frown. He did not speak, but he pointed to the door in a manner which Dayman did not see fit to disobey.

"Good-bye, Miss Lesley--and I'll look forward to the day when I see you back again," said the maid, in a tone of profound commiseration.

"Good-bye, Dayman, give my love to mamma," said Lesley. She would dearly have liked to add, "Don't tell her that I cried;" but with that circle of unsympathetic faces round her, she did not dare. She pressed her lips together, dashed the tears from her eyes, and managed to smile, however, as Dayman took her departure.

Meanwhile, Miss Brooke had quietly sent the maid for a gla.s.s of wine, which she administered to the girl without further ado. Lesley drank it obediently, and felt reinvigorated: but although her courage rose, her spirit remained sadly low as she looked at her father's face, and saw that it wore an uncompromising frown.

"You had better have these boxes carried upstairs as soon as possible,"

he remarked to his sister. "I will say good-night now: I have to go out."

He turned away rather brusquely, and went back into his study, which was situated behind the dining-room, on the ground-floor. Lesley looked after him helplessly, with a mingled feeling of offence and relief. She did not see him again, but was conveyed to her room by Miss Brooke, who spoke to her kindly indeed, but with a matter-of-fact directness which seemed hard and cold to the convent-bred girl, whose teachers and guardians had vied with one another in sugared sweetness and a tutored amiability of demeanor.

Lesley was taken up two flights of stairs to a room which seemed close and stuffy to her, although in English eyes it might be deemed comfortable and even luxurious. But padded arm-chairs and couch, eider-down silken-covered quilts, cus.h.i.+ons, curtains, and carpets, were things of which she had as yet no great appreciation. The room seemed to her altogether too full of furniture, and she longed to run to the window for a breath of fresh air. Miss Brooke, observing how white she looked, asked her if she felt faint.

"No, thank, you; I am only tired," said Lesley.

"You would like some tea, perhaps?"

"Thank you," said the girl, rather hesitatingly. n.o.body drank tea at the convent, and in her visits to Lady Alice she had not cultivated a taste for it. "I think I would rather go to bed."

"You must have something to eat before you go," said Miss Brooke, drily.

"Here, let me feel your pulse. Yes, you need food, and I'll send you up a soothing draught as well. You need not look so astonished, my dear: don't you know that I'm a doctor?"

"A doctor! _You!_" Lesley looked round the room as if seeking for some place in which to hide from such a monstrosity.

"Yes, a doctor--a lady doctor," said Miss Brooke, with grim but not unmirthful emphasis. "You never saw me before, did you? Well, I'm not in general practice just now; my health would not stand it, so I am keeping my brother's house instead; but I am fully qualified, my dear, I a.s.sure you, and can prescribe for you if you are ill as well as any physician in the land."

She laughed as she spoke, and there was a humorous twinkle in her shrewd, kindly eyes, which Lesley did not understand. As a matter of fact, her innocent horror and amaze tickled Miss Brooke immensely. It was evident that this girl, with her foreign, aristocratic, and Catholic training knew nothing at all of the strides that have of late been made in the direction of female emanc.i.p.ation; and her ignorance was amusing to Miss Brooke, who was one of the foremost champions of the woman's cause. Miss Sophia Brooke, whose name was on every committee under the sun, who spoke at meetings and wrote half a dozen letters after her name, to have a niece who had never met a lady doctor in her life before, and probably did not know anything at all about women's franchise! It was quite too funny, and Miss Brooke--or Doctor Brooke, as she liked better to be called--was genuinely amused. But it was not an amusing matter to Lesley, who felt as if the foundations of the solid world were shaking underneath her.

If she had heard of women doctors at all it was in terms of bitterest reprobation: she had been told that they were not persons of respectability, that they were "without the pale," and she had believed all she was told. And here she was, shut up for a year with a woman of the very cla.s.s that she had been taught to reprobate--a woman, too, who, although no longer young, had a face which was pleasant to look upon, because it expressed refinement and kindliness as well as intellectual power, and whose dress, though plain, was severely neat, well-fitting, and of rich material. In fact, Miss Brooke was so unlike anything in the shape of womankind that Lesley had ever encountered, that the girl could only gaze at her in speechless amazement, and wonder whether _she_ was expected to develop into something of the same sort!

She could not deny, however, that her aunt was very good-natured. Miss Brooke helped her to undress, put her to bed, unpacked her boxes in about half the time that a maid would have taken to do the work; then she brought her something to eat and drink, and waited on her with the care of a woman with a truly kindly heart. Lesley began to take courage and to ask questions.

"I suppose I shall see my father again to-morrow morning," she said.

"About mid-day you may see him," Miss Brooke answered, cheerfully. "He will be out till two or three in the morning, you know; and of course he can't be disturbed very early. You must remember that we keep the house very quiet until eleven or twelve, when he generally comes down. He breakfasts then, and goes out."

Lesley was mystified. Why did her father keep such extraordinary hours?

She had not the slightest notion that these were the usual arrangements of a journalist's life. She thought that he must be very thoughtless, very self-indulgent, even very wicked. Surely her mother had been more than justified in leaving him. She laid her head upon the pillow, feeling rather inclined to cry.

Miss Brooke had not much of a clue to her emotions; but she was trying hard to fathom what was pa.s.sing in the girl's mind, and she came very near the mark. She stooped down and kissed her affectionately.

"I daresay you feel lonely and strange, my dear," she said; "but you must remember that you have come to your own home, and that we belong to you, and you to us. So you must put up with us for a time, and you may--eventually--come to like us, you know. Stranger things than that have happened before now."

Lesley put one arm round her aunt's neck, undeterred by Miss Brooke's laugh and the little struggle she made to get away.

"Thank you," she said, "for being so kind. I am sorry I cried when I came in."

"You were hysterical and overwrought. I shall tell your father so."

"You think he was vexed?"

"I suppose," said Miss Brooke, "that a man hardly likes to see his daughter burst out crying and shrink away when she first looks at him."

"Oh, I was very stupid!" cried Lesley, remorsefully. "It must have looked so bad, and I did not mean anything--at least, I meant only----"

"I understand all about it," said her aunt, "and I shall tell your father what I think if he alludes to the matter. In the meantime you had better go to sleep, and wake up fresh and bright in the morning.

Good-night, my dear."

And Lesley was left to her own reflections.

Although she went early to bed she did not sleep soon or soundly. There was not much traffic along the street in which her father lived, but the bells of St. Pancras rang out the hours and the quarters with painful tunelessness, and an occasional rumble of wheels would startle her into wakeful terror. At half-past two in the morning she heard the opening and shutting of the front door, and her father's footsteps on the stairs as he came up to bed. There seemed to her something uncanny in these nocturnal habits. The life of a journalist, of a literary man, of anybody who did any definite work in the world at all, was quite unknown to her.

She came down to breakfast at nine o'clock, feeling weary and depressed.

Miss Brooke was kind but preoccupied; she had a committee at twelve, she said, and another at four, so she would be obliged to leave Lesley for the greater part of the day. "But you will have your own little arrangements to make you know," she said, "and Sarah will show you or tell you anything you want. You might as well fall into our ways as soon as you can."

"Oh, yes," said Lesley. "I only want to be no trouble."

"You'll be no trouble to anybody," said Miss Brooke, cheerfully, "so long as you find something to do, and do it. There's a good library of books in the house, and a piano in the drawing-room; and you ought to go out for an hour or two every day. I daresay you will be able to occupy yourself."

"Is there any one to go out with me?" queried Lesley, timidly. She had never been out alone in the whole course of her life.

"Go out with you?" repeated Miss Brooke, rather rudely, though with kind intent. "An able-bodied young woman of eighteen or nineteen surely can take care of herself! You are not in Paris now, my dear, you are in London; and girls in London have to be independent and courageous."