CHAPTER XXI.
"IT IS FALSE – I WILL NOT BELIEVE IT."
It was Yorke!
Leslie gazed down at the locket lying in the palm of her hand, for the moment too benumbed by the sudden shock to feel anything.
Yes, it was his face, the handsome face whose every line, every expression, were engraved on her heart. For a second or two the portrait, as it smiled up at her with Yorke's characteristic devil-may-care look in its eyes, gave her a kind of pleasure; then she began to realize where she had found it, lying on the bosom of this woman!
She dropped the locket as if it had suddenly burnt her, and shrank back as far as she could without displacing the woman's head from her knee.
Yorke's portrait in a locket in the possession of another woman! How could it be! There must be some mistake, some hideous mistake. It could not be his face, but that of someone, some relation closely resembling him.
She took the locket up again, and as she did so remembered that the woman had murmured Yorke's name. Yes, it was Yorke. She laid the locket down again – gently this time – and bent over the white face of the woman with a strange confusing throbbing in her heart, a loud singing in her ears. The earth seemed to rock beneath her, the sky to be falling.
She was faint with physical exhaustion, with the terrible struggle for life, and this discovery coming so closely upon all she had endured almost crushed her.
Was she really awake, or asleep and dreaming? Delirious, perhaps? Yorke, her Yorke's face lying there on this woman's heart! It was incredible.
All this had passed through her mind, her heart, in a few seconds; one can crowd an awful amount of misery, anguish, joy, into a minute; and by this time the woman had recovered.
"Where am I?" she breathed, staring up at Leslie.
Leslie did not answer, but continued to gaze at her with wide open eyes, in which a horror was growing more intense each moment.
"Where am I? Have I been ill – ah – ." She drew a deep breath. "I remember. Are we safe? Why don't we go? What are we staying for?"
She raised herself on her elbow, and half sat up, pushing the black hair from her face and passing her hand across her eyes. Then she looked down and saw the locket, and her hand flew to it.
Leslie's eyes followed the hand.
"Whose – whose portrait is that?" she asked almost inaudibly.
The woman looked at her, and a dull red stole into her face.
"What's that to you?" she retorted, half defiantly. "You've looked at it, haven't you?"
Leslie moistened her lips; they were so hot and dry that she could scarcely speak.
"Yes, I have looked at it," she said. "I know – ."
"You know who it is?" As she spoke she closed the locket hurriedly, and buttoned her dress over it. "You know – . Who are you? What is your name?" And the dark eyes scanned Leslie's pale face with suspicious scrutiny.
"My name is Leslie, Leslie Lisle," said Leslie slowly.
"Leslie – ," the woman sprang to her feet. "What! You are the girl he left me for," she breathed.
Leslie shuddered and her lips quivered.
"Oh, there must be some mistake!" she almost wailed. "It cannot be he – And yet you spoke his name – Yorke – ."
"Yorke! Yes, that's his name! And this is his portrait," was the sharp response. "And you are the girl he's fallen in love with! And I never guessed it! I must have been a fool not to have thought of it, jumped at it! It's lucky for you that I didn't," she added between her teeth. "I'd have killed you down there!"
Leslie shrank back, and instinctively put out her hand as if to ward off an attack.
"What – what is your name?" she asked.
"My name?" The full lips curled with bitter contempt. "You must have been out of the world not to know it," she said. "My name's Finetta; I'm Finetta of the Diadem."
"Finetta – Finetta of the Diadem," Leslie repeated mechanically.
Was it all a hideous dream? Who was Finetta of the Diadem? And how could she talk of Yorke as if he belonged to her – how did it happen that she wore his portrait on her heart?
"Yes, Finetta of the Diadem," said Finetta defiantly. "I should have thought everybody knew me. But I suppose he hasn't told you about me. No, that wasn't likely!" and she laughed hoarsely. "What are you staring at me like that for, as if I was a – a wild animal?"
Leslie put her hand to her brow with a piteous little gesture.
"I – I – . It is all so sudden. Give me time. I do not wish to anger you. I only want to ask you a – a question – one or two questions. Why do you wear that portrait in that locket?"
Finetta looked at her a moment in silence, then with a flash of her eyes and a discordant laugh she replied —
"That's a question to ask me, if you like. What do you think I wear it for?" The red deepened on her face, then left it pale. "What does a woman usually wear a man's portrait for? I'll be bound you've got one of his, too?"
Leslie's hand went to her bosom, to the sparkling pendant, and she shook her head with a strange feeling of injury; he had sent her diamonds, but he had given this woman something far more precious!
"No!" she breathed almost unconsciously. "Did he give it to you? Oh, answer me quickly, and – and truthfully! I will tell you why I ask. I will tell you all. I – I am to be his wife – I was to be his wife – ."
At the change from "Am to be" to "was to be" Finetta's eyes flashed, and she lowered her lids.
"Sit down," she said, pointing to a piece of rock.
Leslie sank down upon it, and waited with averted face; she could not bear to look upon the dark defiant face, beautiful with the beauty of a fallen angel at this moment, a face distorted and lined by conflicting passions.
"You were to be his wife, were you?" said Finetta slowly, with a breath between each word. "So was I!"
"You!"
The word dropped from Leslie's white lips unconsciously; it seemed to sting Finetta.
"Yes, me!" she flamed out. "Why not? You speak and you look at me as if – as if I was some monster! I'm – I'm as young and as good looking as you – ."
Leslie put up her hand deprecatingly.
"Yes, yes," she murmured. "I did not mean to anger you. Go on! Oh, go on!"
"Why shouldn't he marry me as much as you!" continued Finetta. "I've known him longer than you have! I've been more to him than you have – ."
Leslie shuddered.
"I'm as good as you are. Who are you? You're no more of a swell than I am! And you're poor, too, ain't you? And I'm not poor. I can earn thousands a year – ." She stopped, panting.
Leslie glanced at her shrinkingly.
"And if it comes to caring for him, I reckon I care for him quite as much as you do! You know that, for you heard me talk down there, when I thought it was all over with us. And as for him – well, I'd wager everything I've got that in his heart he likes me as well as he likes you, or anyone else!"
She laughed bitterly, and with self scorn and contempt.
"No, no," broke from Leslie's quivering lips.
"But I say yes, yes," retorted Finetta. "He's just like the rest. None of 'em could stick to one of us alone to save his life. You must have lived with your head buried in the sand not to know that! What! You think that you're the only one he has made love to; or that I'm the only other one!" She laughed again. "Ask him whether he knows Lady Eleanor Dallas! See how he looks when he hears her name, and hear what he says!"
Leslie looked at her with half dazed eyes, and listened with ears in which the wild sea seemed roaring.
"It is false, false!" she cried hoarsely. "I will not believe – ." And she put up her hands as if to cover her ears.
Finetta laughed.
"Well!" she said with a sneer. "He's deceived you easily enough, anyone could see! And if I wasn't so sorry for myself I could find it in my heart to be sorry for you!"
Leslie shuddered. To be pitied by this woman, this terrible woman!
"Look here," said Finetta after a pause. "Don't mind my hard words; it's my way, when I'm put out. I can see you don't believe half I say, and that's only natural; I shouldn't if I were in your place, and didn't know him so well. If you doubt that we are both talking of the same man, take this locket and look at it again." And she held it out.
Leslie turned her head from it.
"No, you don't want to look at it again. I daresay you knew his face directly you saw it. Now, do you think he'd have given it to me if he hadn't cared for me? Answer that!"
Leslie looked at her, a sudden wild hope springing into her bosom.
"It – it was a long while ago!" she breathed, "a long while ago – ."
Finetta broke in with a discordant laugh.
"Not a bit of it! It was three days ago. He sent it after spending an evening with me, as he's spent many a score – ."
She saw a look of unbelief crossing Leslie's face, and, snatching a letter from her pocket, thrust it under Leslie's face.
"Read that, and believe!" she said.
Leslie took the note and looked at it. The lines swam before her eyes, but she saw a word here and there, and with a low cry, which broke from her notwithstanding all the efforts to suppress it, she held out the note from her.
Finetta took it and restored it to her pocket, then stood and looked down at the motionless figure in silence for a moment or two.
"You believe now," she said in a low, harsh voice. "You see I am telling you the truth, and not a pack of lies. And now, what are you going to do? Wait a minute. Let's see how the land lies. Here am I who've – who've cared for him for years, who would have been his wife if – if he hadn't happened to have seen you; and, mind, I'm just as fit to be his wife as you are. Why, come to that, he'll tire of you ever so much sooner than he would of me, because you haven't any money and I have, and can go on earning enough to keep him amused. Don't you see? We've been fond of each other for ever so long. Why, there's been scarcely a day for months past that we haven't been together! And even when he's smitten by you he doesn't throw me over, you see. He sends me his portrait and a sweetheart's note with it; yes, and just after he's left you, too! Now, that's how I stand; and now, where are you? You've only known him a few days; you can't care for him half – half? no, not one-tenth as much as I do! That's only natural. And it's only natural and right that you should give him up. Think it over. After all, Miss Lisle," she went on, with a kind of sullen insinuation, "he's behaved very badly to you; he has indeed. He never meant to throw me quite over; he'd have come back to me sooner or later."
Leslie half rose from the rock and put out her hand as if to put the words, the insinuation, from her, then sank back and covered her face with her hands.
"He'd have come back to me, and then you'd have been a good deal worse off than you are now."
Leslie did not move, and Finetta, watching her closely, allowed a minute to pass in silence that her words might sink in.
"Come, now, Miss Lisle; there's no occasion for you and me to quarrel. Why, when you think of it, you and me have saved each other's lives, haven't we? And we ought, we really ought, to act square and straight by one another. I'm the one that's been badly treated, because he loved me first, and would have married me but for you. Just think of that! From what I've seen of you, I should say that you were a kind-hearted lady and one that wouldn't injure a fellow woman. I should say you were too proud to rob a poor girl of the man she's loved."
Leslie sprang up panting, and for a moment breathless.
The horror, the humiliation, were driving her mad.
"Oh, be silent, be silent! Let me think!" she breathed. "Every word you speak stabs me." She put her hand to her bosom with a passionate gesture that awed Finetta. "It is all so sudden that – that I cannot realize it; can scarcely believe – oh, do not speak! I believe all you say. You have shown me the note, the portrait is his, and I cannot but believe. And I trusted him! Ah, how I trusted him!" Her voice broke for a moment and her eyes swam with tears; but she dashed them away with her hand and hurried on, with every now and then a break between the words. "But what you say is true. He – he belongs to you more than to me! He has wronged us both; but he has wronged you the more cruelly. And – " she stopped and put her hand to her throat as if she were suffocating – "and I – I give him back to you. Yes, I give him back to you!"
The blood rushed to Finetta's face, then left it pale to the lips.
"You – you throw him up?" she said, as if she could scarcely believe her ears.
Leslie raised her head and looked at her steadily, with a look that would have melted the heart of anyone but a rival.
"He belongs to you, not to me," she said in a low voice, as if every word cost her a heart pang. "I – I will never see him again if I can help it. Do not – " she paused, and a sigh broke from her white lips – "do not let him know; do not tell him that I have seen you. I – I have loved him, and would spare him the shame – ."
There was silence for a second, Finetta gazing on the ground with set face and hidden eyes.
"If – if he should ever know that we met, and that you told me what you have told me, tell him that I – yes, that I forgive him. That I have forgiven and forgotten him. That is all."
Her head sank for a moment, then she raised it again and looked at the dark face with a shrinking kind of reluctance.
"You – you say that you care for him?"
Finetta's lips moved.
"Yes, and I know that you do. Be good to him. Do not let the thought that he deceived himself into thinking he cared for me come between you. He must love you very much to give you his portrait, to write you that note; try – try and make him happy."
Her voice broke, and she turned her head away.
Finetta stood with clenched hands, her teeth gnawing at her under lip; then she sprang to Leslie's side and took her hand.
"Miss Lisle – ."
Leslie shook her hand off with a little cry, a shudder.
"Don't – don't touch me, please."
Finetta froze instantly.
"I – I beg your pardon," panted Leslie. "But I cannot bear any more. If you would go now. That road leads to Portmaris."
She sank on the stone, and sat with her head erect and face set hard as the stone itself.
Finetta drew her jacket round her and fumbled with her gloves.
"I understand," she said in a low voice. "You've done the right thing, and you won't be sorry for it."
"It is nearly two miles to Portmaris," said Leslie in a dry, expressionless voice. "There is an evening train; you can catch it if you walk quickly."
"I'm going," said Finetta, biting her lips. "Good-by, Miss Leslie. I'm sorry – well, good-by."
Leslie sat motionless and with averted face until the graceful figure of the dancing girl of the Diadem had disappeared below the hill; then with a cry she rose, her arms above her head, and fell full length upon the turf.
CHAPTER XXII.
"FAME HAS COME TO ME AT LAST."
Leslie lay unconscious while the sun sank below the horizon, and the delicious summer gloaming came softly upon the moor; lay like a flower struck down by some rude hand, and the evening star shone pale in the sky before she came back to life and her great sorrow.
For a while it seemed to her that the whole scene through which she had passed was a hideous dream, and when its reality came crushing down upon her she uttered a low cry and shivered as if with cold. The sudden destruction of her joy and happiness left her stunned and bewildered. A few short hours ago and she and Yorke had been sitting hand in hand, heart to heart, talking of their marriage, and now – . Now he was hers no longer. In a sense he had never been hers, but all the time he had been wooing her, forcing her to love him, he had been in honor bound to this other woman.
As she thought of her, this Finetta, this woman with the bold eyes, a feeling of shame and humiliation was added to the misery of Leslie's loss. That he, Yorke, her idol, her king, should ever have stooped to love such a woman seemed to her unspeakably base and terrible. She had set him on so lofty a pedestal, had regarded him as so noble and high-minded, that the knowledge of his falseness – to both of them! – hurt her like a physical blow.
She sat for some time, waiting for strength to enable her to reach home; and as she sat and looked round it seemed as if something had gone out of her life, as if a weight which no power nor time could lift had fallen upon her heart.
Before her she saw stretching in a dull grey, hopeless vista, the many years she would probably have to live; the long life without Yorke, and haunted by the memory of these few happy days.
"If I had never seen him! If I had not loved him so dearly!" was the burden of her heart's wail; "or if I had only died down there before I saw the locket or heard the woman's story!"
She had fought Death hard enough a little while ago, now she would have welcomed him.
She rose at last, and went slowly and draggingly towards Portmaris. Her dress was still heavy with the salt water, she was weak with physical and mental weariness, and the two miles across the moor were surely the longest that ever woman journeyed.
When she reached the villa and entered the parlor, she found her father pacing up and down in the dusk before his easel.
He looked up, but fortunately for her, did not see her white weary face, or notice how she held the door as if to support herself.
"Where have you been, Leslie?" he asked in a kind of irritable excitement. "I have been wanting you. Mr. Temple has sent the notes for the picture, the fifty pounds."
She leant against the door, and drew a long breath as she thought of this added humiliation.
"He is going to-morrow, it seems, and wished to – er – pay for the picture before he left. His departure is rather sudden, I think, but I fancy he is erratic in his movements. I want you to send him a receipt, and – er – to ask him to allow the picture to be exhibited."
"Yes; to-morrow, papa," she said faintly.
"Why not to-night?" he asked testily.
"I – I am tired, very tired," she said, going to him and leaning her head on his shoulder.
"You've walked too far," he said in a tone of complaint. "You'd better go to bed at once. The receipt and the letter must wait till to-morrow, I suppose. Oh, there was something – oh, yes; did you see the duke? He came up to me on the beach and inquired for you."
She turned away from him, a lump rising in her throat and threatening to suffocate her.
"Yes."
"Did he say anything about that sketch of St. Martin's?"
St. Martin's! How the name brought back the memory of that happy, happy day.
"I don't quite know about that sketch," he went on with an air of importance. "I may be too much engaged on important pictures to – er – spare any time for small sketches. However, that matter can rest for the present. The duke has gone back to London to-night, they tell me. By the way, I wish you would prepare a fresh canvas for me."
"Not to-night, oh, not to-night, dear!" she said in a low voice. "I will go to bed as you said, for I am very, very tired. To-morrow – ."
She left the sentence unfinished, and crept up to her own room.
To-morrow! What an awful line of dreary to-morrows stretched before her, was her thought. As she took off her dress the diamond pendant flashed in the candlelight, each gem seeming to glitter mockingly in derision of her love and faith and trust. She covered the sparkling thing with her hand and bowed her head over it. The very day he had sent it to her, he had given his portrait – his portrait – to that other woman! She took the pendant off the ribbon, and wrapped it in a piece of soft paper and put it away out of sight in a small box, and as she did so she saw Ralph Duncombe's ring.
One's own misery recalls to us that of other people, and in this the hour of her trouble Leslie remembered Ralph Duncombe, and for the first time she realized something of what he had suffered. With a rush his passionate avowal came back upon her, and she took the ring in her hand and looked at it with a double misery. He had sworn to help her if she ever should be in trouble, had sworn to help her if ever she suffered wrong. How feeble had been his vow! Neither he nor anyone else could help her in this strait; and as to vengeance, she wanted none. Alas, alas! false as he had been, she loved Yorke still.
She fell asleep at last from sheer exhaustion, and did not awake until past nine. Then it all came throbbing, crowding back upon her, in that first awful moment of waking. Surely to the wretched and unhappy, there is no more awful hour in the twenty-four than that which follows the morning awakening. Sorrow seems to have had time to sharpen her arrows during the night, and plunges them with fresh vigor into our aching hearts.
While she was dressing, Leslie went over the whole of the incidents of the previous day, bit by bit, and suddenly, with the sharpness of a flash of lightning, a gleam of hope shot across the darkness of her misery. Suppose this woman had lied! Such women as she would find no difficulty in stooping to untruth and deception. Suppose she had got possession of Yorke's portrait, had forged the letter, had concocted the whole story? The supposition seemed far-fetched and improbable, but it sent a thrill of hope through her, and she finished dressing with feverish haste, and hurried downstairs.
All through the breakfast she felt like one in a dream, as if she were suspended between life and death, and waiting for the verdict. Her father talked of his picture, of all he meant to do, now that he was on the high road to Fame, and his voice sounded in her ears like that of someone speaking afar off.
Yorke, her Yorke, might prove to be hers still! Oh, blessed hope. How mad, how wicked, how foolish she had been to put any trust in the woman who had slandered him!
The revulsion of feeling was so great that it sent a hectic flush to her face, and a feverish light to her eyes.
"That receipt and note, Leslie," said her father. "Tell Mr. Temple that I would rather not sell the picture, that I would rather return his money than forego the right of exhibiting the picture."
"Yes, yes, papa," she said at random. "Yes, it will all come right. It was wicked, foolish, to doubt him, to believe her."
He stared at her with irritable impatience.
"What are you talking of, Leslie?" he said peevishly. "You seem very strange this morning, and so you were last night."
"I know, I know, dear!" she broke in with something between a sigh and a sob. "Don't mind me. I am not very well. You want the receipt?" she sprang to the writing table. "There it is, and the note. Yes, yes! It will come right. I know it will; and – and – oh, how hot it is! I must have air, air!"
She caught up her hat, and with the receipt and note in her hand, ran to the door.
"I shall see Mr. Temple, papa, and I will give him these."
"And tell him," he called after her, "that I make it a condition that the picture shall be exhibited; mind that, Leslie!"
"Yes, yes!" she responded, and ran out.
She drew her breath hard as she paused for a moment on the doorstep, then she hurried to the quay.
A fisherman was drying his net in the sun, but there was no one else there, and she walked up and down, the note in her hand, repeating to herself the formula of hope; the woman, Finetta, had lied to her and deceived her. All would be well. Yorke would be her Yorke still!
She had not been walking thus very long before the bath chair, wheeled by Grey, was seen coming on to the quay.
She hurried toward it, and the duke motioned to Grey to stop.
"Good morning, Miss Leslie," he said, peering up at her. "It is a fine morning, isn't it." Then he paused and scanned her face curiously and earnestly. "Is anything the matter?"
"The matter?" she repeated with a laugh that sounded in her ears hollow and unnatural. "What should be the matter? I have brought you my father's receipt and a note, Mr. Temple."
He took it and glanced at it.
"Humph," he said. "Oh, yes, I'll do anything your father wishes. And there is nothing the matter, Miss Leslie?" and he peered up at her curiously from under his thick brows.
"Nothing, nothing," she responded feverishly. "But I wanted to ask you – the duke, the Duke of Rothbury – ."
His pale face flushed, and he motioned to Grey to withdraw out of hearing.
"I thought so!" he said. "Miss Leslie, sick men, like me, acquire a kind of second sight. Directly I saw you just now, I knew that you had learnt the truth."
She looked down at him, and her face, which had been flushed feverishly, paled.
"The truth?" she faltered.
"Yes," he said in a tone that suggested remorse. "You have been cruelly deceived!"
"Deceived!" she echoed the word as if its significance were lost upon her. "Deceived!"
"Yes. Cruelly. But you must not blame him altogether.
"Blame him. Whom?" she said slowly.
"Yorke, Yorke," he said in a low voice. "It was as much my fault as his. I ought to have told you. We have both deceived you wickedly, inexcusably."
Leslie put out her hand and caught the chair, and stood looking down at him.
"Blame me more than him," he went on. "Blame us both. We ought to have told you, at any rate, however we kept other people in the dark. But he was not free, and I – well, I held my tongue."
"He was not free?" she murmured mechanically.
"No! I don't ask you to forgive us; you'd find it too hard. I don't expect you even to understand the motive."
She put out her hand to him.
"Wait – stop! Let me think. He has deceived me, then?"
"He has, and I have, yes," he said, averting his eyes from the misery in her face. "Is it so hard and bitter a blow, Leslie?" he said after a pause.
"Yes," she responded almost unconsciously. "I hoped that – that – . But it does not matter. Nothing matters, now."
He fidgeted in his chair, and peered up at her curiously, strangely.
"Anyway, you know the truth now."
"Yes! I know the truth now," she echoed faintly. "Why," hoarsely, "why did he do it?"
The duke bit his lip.
"It was more my fault than his. I ought to have told you. I did not know – did not know that you would take it so much to heart. For God's sake don't look so wretched, so heartbroken," he burst forth. "Leslie, you make me feel like a criminal!"
She turned her white face to him.
"You let me – love him, go on loving him, knowing all the while – ."
He hung his head and plucked at the edge of the shawl across his knees.
"I did!" he said in a low voice. "I tell you so."
"God forgive you!" she panted. "God forgive you – and him!"
She stood a moment as if struggling for breath, and turned and walked swiftly away.
The duke sat for a full five minutes, staring at the front wheel of his chair; then he jerked his hand up and called to Grey.
"Take me home!" he snapped. "What the devil are you waiting for? Take me home and back to London as soon as possible."
Leslie sped along the quay, and staggered rather than walked into the sitting room, and a moment afterward her father hurried in.
"Leslie, Leslie!" he cried. "Where are you?"
She lifted her head from the sofa cushion with dull, blinded eyes.
"Here's a telegram! A telegram from one of the large dealers. He wants to see me in London at once! At once, do you hear? Why do you stare at me like that? There is no time to lose. We must go up to London at once. At once! Run upstairs and pack our things!"
She rose and staggered to her feet.
"No, no! It is – it is – ," she paused and clutched his arm, laughing hysterically. "Don't believe it, papa. It is not true. I can explain!"
"Explain? Not true? What are you talking about, Leslie! I tell you it is from one of the first dealers in London. Fame, fame, has come to me at last! Get ready at once! We will go by the first train we can catch!"