The Haute Noblesse: A Novel

“What is the meaning of these inquiries?” she said sternly. “Where is Louise?”

“Ask your own heart, woman,” cried Uncle Luke, furiously. “Gone – gone with some wretched French impostor of your introduction here.”

Aunt Marguerite gazed at him angrily.

“I say where is Louise?” she cried excitedly.

“Mr Leslie,” said George Vine, after drawing a long breath, his sister’s shrill voice having seemed to rouse him; “you will forgive a weak, trusting old man for what he said just now?”

“Forgive you, Mr Vine!”

“I was sure of it. Thank you. I am very weak.”

“But Louise?” cried Aunt Marguerite.

“Read her letter. Gone!” cried Uncle Luke fiercely, as he thrust the note in the old woman’s face.

“Gone!” said George Vine, staring straight before him with the curious look in his eyes intensified, as was the stony aspect of his face. “Gone! Thank God – thank God!”

“George, what are you saying?” cried Uncle Luke excitedly.

“I say thank God that my dear wife was not spared to me to see the blow that has fallen upon my home to-night.”

Brother, sister, Duncan Leslie stood gazing at the silvered head, dimly-seen above the shaded lamp. The face was unnaturally calm and strange; and weak as he was, Duncan Leslie sprang forward. He had seen what was coming, and strove vainly to save the stricken man, for George Vine seemed to have been robbed of all power, and fell with a weary moan senseless at his brother’s feet.

Chapter Fifty One

Broken with the Fight

“Better stop where you are, man,” said Uncle Luke.

“No,” said Leslie, as he stood gazing straight before him, as one who tries to see right on into the future along the vista of one’s own life.

“But it is nearly one o’clock. Sit down there and get a nap.”

“No. I must go home,” said Leslie slowly, and in a measured way, as if he were trying to frame his sentences correctly in carrying on the conversation while thinking of something else.

“Well, you are your own master.”

“Yes,” said Leslie. “How is he?”

“Calmer now. He was half mad when he came to, and Knatchbull was afraid of brain fever, but he gave him something to quiet the excitement. Better have given you something too.”

“What are you going to do?” said Leslie, turning upon the old man suddenly, and with a wild look in his eyes.

“Do nothing rashly,” said Uncle Luke.

“But time is flying, man.”

“Yes. Always is,” said Uncle Luke, coolly, as he watched his companion with half-closed eyes.

“But – ”

“That will do. I cannot discuss the matter to-night, my head’s in a whirl. Do nothing rashly is a capital maxim.”

“But we are wasting time.”

“Look here, young man,” said Uncle Luke, taking Leslie by the lappet of the coat. “I’m not blind. I daresay I can see as far through you as most people can. I am an old man, and at my time of life I can be calm and dispassionate, and look on at things judicially.”

“Judicially?” said Leslie bitterly; “any child could judge here.”

“Oh, no,” said the old man; “big child as you are, you can’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“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.’”

“Ah!” 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 hot-headed 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 dispassionate 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 Louy; 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, Louy 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 hot-headed, mad, and passionate 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. Trash! bolt with some French adventurer? Our Louy! 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 sunshine 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-assurance 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 appetite, 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.

He dwelt upon one particular day when he had come down from the mine to find Louise seated where he then was; and as he recalled the whole scene, he uttered a groan of misery, and swept it away by the interposition of that of the previous evening; and here his wrath once more grew hot against the man who had come between them, for without vanity he could feel that Louise had turned toward him at one time, and that after a while the memory of the trouble which had come upon them would have grown more faint, and then she would once more have listened to his suit.

But for that man – He ground his teeth as he recalled Aunt Marguerite’s hints and smiles; the allusions to the member of the French haute noblesse; their own connection with the blue blood of Gaul, and his own plebeian descent in Aunt Marguerite’s eyes. And now that the French noble had arrived, how noble he was in presence and in act! Stealing clandestinely into the house during the father’s absence, forcing the woman he professed to love into obedience by threats, till she knelt at his feet as one who pleads for mercy.

“And this is the haute noblesse!” cried Leslie, with a mocking laugh. “Thank heaven, I am only a commoner after all.”

He sat trying to compress his head with his hands, for it ached as if it would split apart. The cool night breeze came off the sea, moist and bearing refreshment on its wings; but Duncan Leslie found no comfort in the deep draught he drank. His head burned, his heart felt on fire, and he gazed straight before him into the blackness trying to make out his path. What should he do? Act like a man and cast her off as unworthy of a second thought, or rouse himself to the manly and forgiving part of seeking her out, dragging her from this scoundrel, and placing her back in her stricken father’s arms?

It was a hard fight, fought through the darkness of that terrible night, as he sat there on the rock, with the wind sighing from off the sea, and the dull, low boom of the waves as they broke at the foot of the cliff far below.

It was a fight between love and despair, between love and hate, between the spirit of a true, honest man who loved once in his life, and the cruel spirits of suspicion, jealousy, and malignity, which tortured him with their suggestions of Louise’s love for one who had tempted her to leave her father’s home.

As the day approached the air grew colder, but Duncan Leslie’s brow still burned, and his heart seemed on fire. The darkness grew more dense, and the fight still raged.

What should he do? The worse side of his fallible human nature was growing the stronger; and as he felt himself yielding, the greater grew his misery and despair.

“My darling!” he groaned aloud, “I loved you – I loved you with all my heart.”

He started, alarmed at his own words, and gazed wildly round as if expecting that some one might have heard. But he was quite alone, and all was so dark right away ahead. Was there no such thing as hope for one stricken as he? The answer to his wild, mental appeal seemed to come from the far east, for he suddenly became conscious of a pale, pearly light which came from far down where sea and sky were mingled to the sight. That pale, soft light grew and grew, seeming to slowly suffuse the eastern sky, till all at once he caught sight of a fiery flake far on high, of another, and another, till the whole arc of heaven was ablaze with splendour from which the sea borrowed glistening dyes.

And as he gazed the tears rose to his eyes, and seemed to quench the burning fire in his brain, as a fragment which he had read floated through his memory: —

“Joy cometh in the morning – joy cometh in the morning.”

Could joy ever again come to such a one as he? He asked the question half-bitterly, as he confessed that the dense blackness had passed away, and that hope might still rise upon his life, as he now saw that glittering orb of light rise slowly above the sea, and transform the glorious world with its golden touch.

“No, no,” he groaned, as he rose to go on at last to his desolate home. “I am broken with the fight. I can do no more, and there is no cure for such a blow as mine. Where could I look for help?”

“Yes; there,” he said resignedly. “I’ll bear it like a man,” and as he turned he rested his hand upon the rough granite wall to gaze down the path, and drew back with a curious catching of the breath, as he saw the light garments of a woman pass a great patch of the black shaley rock.

Madelaine Van Heldre was hurrying up the cliff path towards where he had passed those long hours of despair.

Chapter Fifty Two

A Strange Summons

Madelaine Van Heldre closed the book and sat by the little table gazing towards her father’s bed.

Since he had been sufficiently recovered she had taken her father’s task, and read the chapter and prayers night and morning in his bedroom – a little later on this night, for George Vine had stayed longer than usual.

Madelaine sat looking across the chamber at where her father lay back on his pillow with his eyes closed, and her mother seated by the bed’s head holding his hand, the hand she had kept in hers during the time she knelt and ever since she had risen from her knees.

Incongruous thoughts come at the best of times, and, with the tears standing in her eyes, Madelaine thought of her many encounters with Aunt Marguerite, and of the spiteful words. She did not see why a Dutchman should not be as good as a Frenchman, but all the same there was a little of the love of descent in her heart, and as she gazed at the fine manly countenance on the pillow, with its closely-cut grey hair displaying the broad forehead, and at the clipped and pointed beard and moustache, turned quite white, she thought to herself that if Aunt Marguerite could see her father now she would not dare to argue about his descent.

The veil of tears grew thicker in her eyes, and one great drop fell with a faint pat upon the cover of the prayer-book as she thought of the past, and that the love in her heart would not be divided now. It would be all for those before her, and help to make their path happier to the end.

“‘And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us,’” said Van Heldre thoughtfully. “Grand words, wife – grand words. Hah! I feel wonderfully better to-night. George Vine acted like a tonic. I’ve lain here hours thinking that our old companionship would end, but I feel at rest now. His manner seemed to say that the old brotherly feeling would grow stronger, and that the past was to be forgotten.”

He stopped short, and a faint flush came into his pale checks, for on opening his eyes they had encountered the wistful look in Madelaine’s. He had not thought of her sufferings, but now with a rush came the memories of her confession to him of her love for Harry, on that day when she had asked him to take the young man into his office.

“My darling!” he said softly as he held out his arms; and the next moment she was folded sobbing to his heart.

No word was spoken till the nightly parting; no word could have been spoken that would have been more touching and soothing than that embrace.

Then “Good night!” and Madelaine sought the solitude of her own chamber, to sit by the open window listening to the faintly heard beat of the waves upon the bar at the mouth of the harbour. Her spirit was low, and the hidden sorrow that she had fought hard to keep down all through the past trouble had its way for the time, till, at last wearied out, she closed her window and went to bed. Still for long enough it was not to sleep, but to think of the old boy-and-girl days, when Harry was merely thoughtless, and the better part of his nature, his frank kindness and generosity, had impressed her so that she had grown to love him with increasing years, and in spite of his follies that love still lay hidden in her heart.

“And always will be there,” she said softly, as she felt that the terrible end had been the expiation, and with the thought that in the future Harry Vine, forgiven, purified – the Harry of the past – would always be now the frank, manly youth she idealised, she dropped off to sleep – a deep, restful slumber, from which she started with the impression full upon her that she had only just closed her eyes. There must have been some noise to awaken her, and she sat up listening, to see that it was day.

“Yes? Did any one knock?” she said aloud, for the terror was upon her now, one which had often haunted her during the unnerving past days – that her father had been taken worse.

All silent.

Then a sharp pattering noise at her window, as if some one had thrown up some shot or pebbles. She hurried out of bed, and ran to the window to peep through the slit beside the blind, to see below in the street Liza, the Vines’ maid, staring up.

“Louise – ill? or Mr Vine?” thought Madelaine, as she quickly unfastened and opened the window.

“Yes, Liza. Quick! what is it?”

“Oh, miss, I’ve been awake all night, and, not knowing what to do, and so I come on.”

“Is Mr Vine ill?”

“No, ’m; Miss Louise.”

“Ill? I’ll come on at once.”

“No, miss; gone,” whispered Liza hoarsely; and in a blundering way she whispered all she knew.

“I’ll come on and see Mr Vine,” said Madelaine hastily, and Liza ran back while her blundering narrative, hastily delivered, had naturally a confusing effect upon one just awakened from sleep.

Louise gone, Mr Leslie found bleeding, Mr Vine sitting alone in his room busy over the molluscs in his aquaria! It seemed impossible. Aunt Marguerite hysterical. Everything so strange.

No mention had been made of Uncle Luke by the girl, nor yet of Leslie’s departure.

“Am I still dreaming?” Madelaine asked herself as she hastily dressed, “or has some fresh terrible disaster come upon us?”

“Upon us,” she said, for the two families seemed so drawn together that one could not suffer without thrilling the other’s nerves.

“Louise gone! It is impossible!”

She said that again and again, trying all the while to be cool and think out what were best to be done. She felt that it would be better not to alarm her father by waking him at that early hour, and that she could not arouse her mother without his knowing.

She was not long in deciding.

Uncle Luke had shown during the troubles of the past how he could throw aside his eccentricity and become a useful, helpful counsellor, and it seemed the natural thing to send a message up to him, and beg him to come down. Better still, to save time, she would run up there first.

Liza had not been gone a quarter of an hour before Madelaine was well on her way, after stealing silently out of the house.

The effort to be calm was unavailing, for a wild fit of excitement was growing upon her, and instead of walking up the steep cliff path, she nearly ran.

Would Uncle Luke be at home? He was eccentric and strange in his habits, and perhaps by that time out and away fishing off some rocky point.

She scanned the rough pier by the harbour, and shuddered as the scene of that horrible night came back. But there was no sign of the old man there, neither could she see him farther away, and feeling hopeful that perhaps she would be in time to catch him, she hurried on, panting. As she turned a corner of the devious way, and came in sight of the cottage, with Leslie’s house and mine chimney far up at the back, she stopped short, breathless and wondering, and with a strange reaction at work, suggesting that after all, this was some mythical invention on the part of the servant, for there, stood Duncan Leslie outside Uncle Luke’s cottage awaiting her coming.

Chapter Fifty Three

Her Defender

“Miss Van Heldre!”

“Mr Leslie! That woman came to our house this morning to say – Oh, then, it is not true?”

“Yes,” he said slowly; “it is all true.”

“True that – that you were hurt – that – that – Oh, pray speak! Louise – Louise!”

“Gone!” said Leslie hoarsely, and, sick at heart and suffering, he leaned back against the wall.

“Gone? Louise gone? Gone where?”

Leslie shook his head mournfully, and gazed out to sea.

“Why do you not speak?” cried Madelaine. “Can you not see how your silence troubles me? Mr Leslie, what is the matter? You were found hurt – and Louise – gone! What does it mean?”

He shook his head again.

“Where is Mr Luke Vine?” cried Madelaine, turning from him quickly.

“At the house.”

“Then I have come here for nothing,” she cried agitatedly. “Mr Leslie, pray, pray speak.”

He looked at her wistfully for a few moments.

“What am I to say?” he said at last.

“Tell me – everything.”

He still remained retentive; but there was a grim smile full of pity and contempt for himself upon his lips as he said coldly —

“Monsieur de Ligny has been.”

“Monsieur de Ligny?”

“The French gentleman, the member of the haute noblesse who was to marry Miss Vine.”

Madelaine looked at him wonderingly.

“Mr Leslie,” she said, laying her hand upon his arm, and believing that she saw delirium in his eyes, consequent upon his injury, her late experience having made her prone to anticipate such a sequel. “Mr Leslie, do you know what you are saying?”