Leslie's Loyalty. Garvice Charles
if she knew, if I told her? With all her sweet, childlike ways, and all her innocence and purity, she is a woman, and the very goodness for which I love her would fight against me! She looked and spoke like an angel when she was telling me that story about the hermit. An angel! I'm a nice kind of man to fall in love with an angel, and want to marry her! I might as well fall in love with one of those stars." And he looks up despairingly at the diamond lights that are peering through the rift in the clouds.
"Besides," he mutters, "even if – if that other woman weren't in the question," and he sets his teeth, "how could I ask her to marry me? Even if she'd have me – and why should I dare to think that I could win her love? I'm a pauper and worse. And she thinks me a duke! That's another thing! I forgot that idiotic business! Oh, I've tied myself up in every way, and haven't a chance! And yet I love her – I love her! Leslie!" he repeats the name, as Romeo might have repeated Juliet's, finding a torturing joy in its music. "No, there's no hope! Yorke, my boy, you are badly hit. You've laughed at this kind of thing often enough, but your turn has come. And as there is no hope for you, you have got to bear it. The best thing you can do is to clear out in the morning, and blot Portmaris out of the map of England. I mustn't see her again – never again!"
All his nature protests against this resolve, and his heart aches badly, very badly; but he squares his shoulders and sets his teeth hard.
"Yes, that's the only thing to do; to cut and run. There's one comfort, she won't mind. She won't miss me. God knows what I said when I felt her face against my breast; but whatever it was, I've offended her past forgiveness. She wouldn't see me again, I dare say, if I stayed, and so – ." He heaves a sigh, which is very much like a groan, and turns homeward.
He finds Grey alone in the room when he enters; the dinner things are still on the table, and Grey looks at him with a rather grave and startled expression.
"I've saved some dinner, your grace," he says.
"'Your grace' be da – hanged!" says Yorke, almost fiercely.
"Yes, my lord," murmurs Grey. "The duke waited for over an hour, and he has gone to bed; I was afraid of a chill, my lord. And your lordship is wet, very wet, still – ."
"All right," says Yorke, as politely as he can. "Never mind. Go and see after the duke, and dinner – oh, yes. Thanks, you need not wait."
He tries to eat, but for once his faithful appetite fails him, and he pushes his plate away and gets his pipe, that great consoler in all times of trouble; and this is the worst trouble Yorke Auchester has ever had.
It is well on into the small hours when weary, but oppressed by a ghastly wakefulness, he goes to bed, and there he lies, open-eyed and thoughtful, until the sun floods the room.
He gets up, and as he looks in the glass after his bath, he smiles grimly.
"Only one night of it!" he says. "And a great many similar ones lie before me before I get over this! I wonder whether she has been thinking of me? Why should she? And if she should have been they wouldn't be pleasant thoughts."
He pulls the blinds aside and looks at the house opposite, wondering which is her window; and as he does so, the lover's heart-hunger for a sight of his loved one assails him.
It has still strong possession of him when he goes down the stairs and into the street; but he fights against it. The best thing he can do is not to see Leslie Lisle, but to drive Vinson's horses back to Northcliffe, and take the train from there to London, and – stop there; stop there till in a round of the folly which has suddenly grown so senseless and worthless in his eyes, he has dulled the pain of this, his first real love.
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