Leslie's Loyalty. Garvice Charles
assented Leslie; "and quiet. There is no prettier place on the coast than Portmaris."
"So I should think," he said, looking round, then returning to the beautiful face. "I am a stranger, and only arrived an hour or two ago." He looked down, trying to think of something else to say, anything that would keep her; but could think of nothing.
Leslie stood for a moment, silent, too, then she said:
"Will you not go and change your things now? Dick would be very sorry if you were to catch cold on his account."
It was on the tip of Yorke's tongue to ask, "Only Dick?" but once more he checked himself. The retort would have come naturally enough if he had been addressing a London belle; but there was something in the beautiful gray eyes, an indescribable expression of maidenly dignity and reserve, which, sweet as it was, warned him that such conversational small change would not be acceptable to Miss Lisle, so instead he said, with a smile:
"Oh, Dick won't mind. Besides, he knows I am almost as dry as he is by this time."
Leslie shook her head as if in contradiction of his assertion, and with Dick still pressed to her bosom, said:
"Good-morning, and – and thank you very much," she added, with a faint color coming into her face.
Yorke arose, raised his hat, and watched her graceful figure as it lightly stepped up the beach to the quay; then he collected his various soaked articles from the breakwater, and followed at a respectful distance.
"Leslie Lisle," he murmured to himself. "The name's music, and she – ."
Apparently he could not hit upon any set of terms which would describe her even to his own mind, and, pressing the water from his trousers, he climbed the beach, still looking at her.
As he did so he saw a tall, thin gentleman coming toward her. He held a canvas in his hands, gingerly, as if it were wet, and was followed by a small boy carrying a portable easel and other artistic impedimenta, and, as Leslie spoke to the artist and took the easel from the boy, Yorke muttered:
"Her father! Now, if I go up to them she'll feel it incumbent upon her to tell him of my 'heroic act,' and he'll be bored to death trying to find something suitable to say; and she'll be embarrassed and upset, and hate the sight of me. She looks like a girl who can't endure a fuss. No, I'll go round the other way – if there is another way, as the cookery books say."
He looked round, and was on the point of diving into a narrow street opposite him when an invalid chair came round the corner, driven by Grey, and the occupant, whose eyes were as sharp as his body was frail and crooked, caught sight of the stalwart figure, and held up a hand beckoningly.
Yorke looked very much as if he meant making a run for it; then, with a muttered, "Oh, confound it!" he stuck his hands in his pockets, tried to look as if nothing had happened, and sauntered with a careless, leisurely air up the quay.
By this time Francis Lisle had stuck up his easel right in the center of the narrow pavement, and arranged his canvas, and Grey was in the act of dragging the invalid chair round it, when Leslie, bending down, said, in a whisper:
"Papa, I must move the easel; they cannot pass."
"Eh?" said Francis Lisle, looking round nervously. "I beg your pardon, I will move; yes, I will move."
"Do not, please," said the duke, his thin voice softening as it always did in the presence of a lady. "There is plenty of room. You can go round, Grey?"
"Yes, your – yes, sir," said Grey.
His master shot a warning glance at him.
"There is not room," said Leslie, in a low voice, but the duke held up his hand.
"Please do not trouble," he said; "I am not going any further. I only want to speak to this gentleman coming along. I beg you will not trouble to move the easel. Artists must not be disturbed, or the inspiration may desert them," he added to Francis Lisle, with a pleasant smile.
"Thank you, thank you," said Lisle, still clutching the easel; but Grey had turned the chair with its front to the sea, and the duke called to Yorke, who had come upon them at this juncture.
"What a pretty place, Yorke!" he said. "Have you had your stroll? Shall we go back?"
Yorke had discreetly kept behind the chair, and out of sight of his cousin's sharp eyes.
"All right," he assented.
"Will you give me a cigar?" said the duke.
Yorke came up to the chair and put his hand in his pocket, and thoughtlessly extended the cigar case.
"Thanks. Good gracious! Why, it is soaking wet! Hallo, Yorke," and the duke screwed his head round. "Why, where have you been? What have you been doing?"
Yorke flushed, and cast an appealing glance at Leslie's downcast face. To be made the center of an astonished and absurdly admiring group, to be made a cheap twopenny-halfpenny hero of, was more than he could stand.
"Oh it's nothing," he growled. "Had an accident – tumbled into the sea."
"An accident!" exclaimed the duke, staring at him. "Tumbled in the sea! How did you manage that, in the name of goodness?"
Yorke got red, and looked very much like an impatient schoolboy caught playing truant or breaking windows.
"What's it matter!" he said. "Fell off breakwater. Go and get the cigars, Grey; I'll look after his – ."
The duke cut in quickly before the word "grace."
"Nothing of the sort," he said. "You get home and change your things. Fell off the breakwater!" He stared at him incredulously.
Mr. Lisle, too, gazed at him with blank astonishment, as if he were surprised to find that it was a man and not a little boy in knickerbockers, who might not unnaturally be expected to tumble off the breakwater.
Leslie meanwhile stood with downcast eyes, then suddenly she said, addressing her father and carefully avoiding the other two:
"This gentleman swam in to save Dick, papa; that is why he is wet."
The duke scanned her face keenly, and smiled curiously.
"That sounds more probable than your account, Yorke. It is a strange thing," he turned his head to Lisle, "that a man is more often ashamed of committing a good or generous action than a bad one. How do you account for it?"
Mr. Lisle looked at him helplessly, as if he had been asked a conundrum which no one could be expected to answer.
"Because there is always such a thundering fuss about it," said Yorke, stalking off.
The duke looked after him for a minute or two, apparently lost in thought, then he turned to Lisle again.
"You are an artist, sir?" he said.
Mr. Lisle flushed.
"I am, at least, an humble worshiper at the throne," he replied, in the low, nervous voice with which he always addressed strangers, and he resumed his painting.
The duke signed to Grey to help him to get out of the chair, which was so placed that he could not see the canvas.
Grey came round, and in opening the apron let the duke's stick fall. Leslie hesitated a moment, then stepped forward and picked it up. The duke took it from her with a faint flush on his pale, hollow cheeks.
"Thank you," he said. "I am afraid I could not get on without it. At one time I could not walk even with its aid. Please don't say you are sorry or pity me," he added, with an air of levity that barely concealed his sensitive dread of any expression of sympathy. "Everybody says that, you know."
"I was not going to say so," said Leslie, looking him full in the face, and with a sweet, gentle smile.
He looked at her with his unnaturally keen eyes.
"No," he said, quietly. "I don't think you were. And this is the picture – ." He stopped as he looked at the awful monstrosity, then caught Leslie's eyes gazing at him with anxious, pleading deprecation, and went on, "Singular effect. You have taken great pains with your subject, Mr. – ."
"Lisle