Leslie Tyrrell

Part I

CIIA1TER PAGE I. Leslie Tyrrell's Kingdom . . . 1 II. An Impracticable Woman .... 43 HI. In the Small Hours 76 IV. Mr. Arnold's Imprisonment . . .101 V. Leslie's Scheme 146 VT. Leslie's Success 169 VTI. Sinking Deeper 224 VHI. Leslie appears in a New Light . . .

PART I CHAPTER

I. LESLIE TYRRELL'S KINGDOM. rPHE month was May, and the lilacs were all in bloom. There was a whole hedge of them running along one side of the lawn, and behind the lilacs, and well out of sight of the house, sat Elsie and Fred Tyrrell, busily making mud pies. Now the making of mud pies was a forbidden delight to Fred and Elsie, and of this they were perfectly well aware, and they had retired to this shady and secluded spot for the express purpose of hiding them selves and their proceedings from all or any VOL. I. B of those inquisitive eyes which were too often in the habit of peering out upon them in their hours of ease from one or another of the house's windows. Eminent success had crowned their effort. They had been at work for half an hour, and not a soul had yet caught sight of them ; and now, waxing bold under a false sense of security, they were beginning (they were a pair of twins, only three years old, and could not yet speak plainly) to raise the two little childish voices, that had at first been cautiously subdued, to their naturally high and shrill treble.

They had provided themselves with a couple of large oyster shells for pie dishes, with another to hold water, and with a broken leaden spoon — this last a treasure which the cook had presented only that Ljeslie TyrreWs Kingdom. 3 very morning to Elsie, thereby arousing in Fred's bosom feelings of deep but silent jealousy ; for Fred had nothing to mix his pies with but a two-inch-long knife and fork of tin, and a more aggravating pair of implements for the purpose it would have been hard to find ; for with almost every sturdy dig that Fred gave into his pie both the prongs of the fork and the blade of the knife would give way in such an unaccountable manner that Fred's chubby little fists were coming down perpetually into the middle of the compound, with re sults to those tender members that were distressing to look upon.

It was in the highest degree trying to Fred's temper, and as he looked askance at Elsie, composedly pound ing away with her leaden spoon in a state of the most perfect ease and contentment, b2 darker and darker thoughts came into his mind. " Ou do det some more water ! " said Fred at length, fiercely, feeling that the time had come when he could bear it no longer. " Water all done ?" asked Elsie, cheerify, and scrambling up upon her feet, which it took some moments to do, for she was so fat that she was very nearly as broad as she was long, she took the oyster shell and waddled away to the kitchen pump quite unsuspiciously. No sooner was her back turned than Fred seized the spoon. To pluck it out of Elsie's pie and plunge it into his own was the work of a moment ; but having, with prompt decision, accomplished this feat, Fred suddenly paused, irresolute.

A new temptation had assailed him. So surely does the first step upon a crooked path lead to the taking of a second, that scarcely had he got possession of the spoon when he was seized with a fierce and vehement desire to take in addition the pie itself. It was so very nice a pie ! — so neatly made ! — so thick, and smooth, and compact ; whereas Fred's, owing mainly to those singular proceedings of his knife and fork, was all mauled and fingered, and about as messy and disreputable-looking a composition as could well be seen. For a few moments Fred deliberated. To exchange his pie for Elsie's, he was quite aware, would be a base and indefensible act ; but then he had already committed himself to a mean and dishonest line of conduct, and, being thus in for it, he naturally felt that there was little, morally, to gain, and much, in a worldly sense, to lose, by halting half way.

So, brought to a hurried decision by the sound of Elsie's returning footsteps, Fred put forth his hand and took the pie. As Elsie deposited her new-filled oyster shell upon the ground and squatted herself down once more beside it, Fred was si lently stirring away with all his might, with a face of inscrutable stolidity. But of course, for all that, Fred very well knew what was coming, and he had only a moment or two to wait for it. Elsie looked into her pie-dish, looked all round her pie dish, finally looked across to Fred's, and, dis covering there what she sought, cried out in sudden anguish. " Ou dot my 'poon !" shouted Elsie. "Not ou 'poon," answered Fred, dog gedly, pounding away with guilty energy. " Is my 'poon ! " reiterated Elsie ; " and — and — oh ! dat my pie !" cried the poor little damsel.

And this appalling discovery, following on the heels of the other, was so overwhelming that for a few moments Elsie's very breath was taken away. Of course, as soon as she had recovered it, she began to make a prodigious clamour. " Dive me my pie and my 'poon ! Oh ! ou witted boy, dive me my pie and my 'poon !" she called out passionately ; and when Fred, by a dogged silence, declined to accede to this reasonable request, Elsie, with feminine screams, precipitated herself upon him, and seized her property. For half a dozen seconds they fought like little furies; then all at once the struggle ceased, for suddenly (and the shock it gave them was so great that Fred let go his hold of the pie-dish, and all the contents emptied them selves into the midst of Elsie's lap) there came a terrible voice from the other side of the hedge of lilac bushes.

" Children !" cried the voice in a tone of indignant command; and in a second more a figure walked round by the last lilac tree, and confronted the two culprits like an avenging Fate. " Elsie and Fred ! " said the new-comer ; and Elsie and Fred, conscience-stricken, were bowed to the earth with humiliation. " You have been making mud pies again .'" said the stern apparition, with a terrible stress upon the last word. " Fred, what did I tell you I would do to you the next time you made mud pies ? " A pair of flashing eyes were looking down upon Fred; but Fred, in trembling silence, hung his diminished head. " Tell me what I said, Fred ; you re member it ! " persisted his keen-eyed ques tioner, and she tapped her foot upon the ground, not loudly, but with a quick, business-like decision and impatience that had a distressing effect on Fred.

He began uncom fortably to shift from one foot to the other; then put his thumb into his mouth, and slowly, and with guilty indistinctness, unbur dened himself of this terrific reply : "Ou said ou'd bwoil me." " Over — " prompted his inexorable task mistress — " Over — Go on, Fred ! " and she tapped her foot again. " Over a sow fire," added Fred, quite spirit-broken. " Yes, I would broil you both over a slow fire — that is what I said. And now tell me how, in spite of knowing that, you dared to come here again and make mud pies?" But Fred was utterly unable to answer this question ; to do him justice, he could not conceive at this moment how he had dared to do anything of the sort. So he stood silent, merely quaking in his shoes; and the lady, seeing she was likely to get no farther response from him, turned sharply upon Elsie.

Now, the whole contents of one of the oyster-shells had tumbled, as has been said, into Elsie's lap, with such consequences as may be conceived ; and poor little Elsie, having been robbed, and beaten, and be daubed, and now looking up and finding those sharp bright eyes upon her, the bound less power of whose possessor she well knew, felt that the measure of her misfortunes was about full. "Elsie, is this your clean frock?" said the pitiless voice. Upon which Elsie gave a bitter cry, and humbled herself in the dust. "Oh! Aunt 'Eslie, I touldn't help it!" cried poor Elsie. " You couldn't help making mud-pies !" ex claimed Aunt Leslie. And then Elsie was quenched utterly, There were several moments of solemn silence, during which the children stood look ing on the ground, and the lady stood looking at them; then, at the end of that time, " Children !

" she said, once more, and the two pair of guilty eyes looked up to her, trembling. "Children," she said, severely, " it unfortunately happens that there is no fire in the house just now except the kitchen fire, and that would broil you too fast ; therefore, for this one time more," she cried, "for this one time more, Fred and Elsie, I will forgive you. But now, listen to me ! If I ever catch you making a mess like this again," — the lady paused for a moment, and there was such terrific meaning in her face that both the children gasped for breath — "I won't broil you," said Aunt Leslie, slowly, " but — you shall be hanged and quartered. And now off with you to the nursery, and get yourselves washed; and tell Nurse that you are a pair of incorrigible scamps. Do you hear ? — a pair of incorrigible scamps !"

She clapped her hands with this parting Leslie TyrrelFs Kingdom. 13 compliment, much as she might have done to scare away a couple of birds ; and then, turning round in the same moment, she perceived that a stranger was standing half a dozen steps behind her, listening to what had been passing, with a very visible smile upon his lips. If the stranger thought that Miss Tyrrell, on seeing him, would either smile upon him in return, or look embarrassed at dis covering that her terrible threats had been overheard, he was altogether mistaken. She was taken by surprise, indeed, for a moment; but, that moment past, she turned to him with as self-possessed and serious a demeanour as though no extravagant words had ever crossed her lips ; and he instantly found himself bowing to her with a face as free from laughter as her own.

He was standing on the path (it was not broad enough to be dignified with the name of a carriage-drive) that wound from the garden gate up to the house, and, as it was close to this path, only a little sheltered by shrubs, that the children had been playing, he had come upon them unavoidably on his way towards the house-door ; the only thing that he had done which was not unavoidable was that he had stood still to watch them, whereas he might have passed on, unnoticed by them, to such business as he had come about. It had pleased him, however, not to do this, and so now he and Miss Tyrrell stood bowing to one another across the strip of intervening grass. Having bowed, Miss Tyrrell remained standing, waiting for the stranger's further address ; and very handsome she looked as she so stood, with the hedge behind her of fresh green lilac bushes, making a bright background for her tall, erect figure, and the sunshine on her head bringing out the gold of her auburn hair.

The stranger took a step nearer her, and said, "I was on my way to the house, in the hope of finding Mr. Tyrrell. If I have, as I suppose, the pleasure of speaking to Miss Tyrrell ? " — he looked an inquiry, and Miss Tyrrel bowed assent — "perhaps I may be allowed to introduce myself." And with that he stepped across the grass and gave a card to her, on which she read the name of "Mr. Frank Arnold." As soon as she had read it she put out her hand to him with a very cordial wel come. "My brother will be so happy to find you here," she said. "I am expecting him in immediately. He did not know that you had come home." "I only got back two days ago," Mr. Ar nold answered. And then they began to walk towards the house. He was a young man, of seven or eight and twenty, with a pleasant fair Saxon face, and sunny hair, but with a certain air of indolence about him, both in face and figure, which made him a curious contrast to Miss Tyrrell as he walked beside her.

"A nice-looking creature, but he seems terribly in want of something or somebody to stir him up," was her criticism upon him. "A handsome girl, but she looks as if she were a terrible shrew," he soliloquised, at the same moment. " Hugh was talking of you only yesterday," Miss Tyrrell said aloud, " and of trying to find out if you had returned; but he has been so very busy since we came here. We are scarcely settled yet." " Oh ! I suppose not. What a charming little place you have got, though," he exclaimed. " Why, you are quite in the country !" "Yes, quite. I had no idea before we came that Old Brompton was such a pretty place." For it was in the days when Old Bromp ton teas a pretty place, — twenty years ago, before the march of modern improvements had made of that quaintest, greenest, quietest of London suburbs a wide-spread wilderness of brick and mortar; and the Tyrrells' house VOL. I. C lay nestled amongst gardens, so hidden in the midst of the foliage of old trees, which no heart was ever hard enough to lay an axe to, that the discovering of it at all was, in summer, not an easy matter.

" I had some difficulty in finding my way to you," Mr. Arnold said, and Miss Tyrrell laughed. She had only been a couple of months at Brompton, but in that short time this remark had been so often made to her that she had come to regard it much in the light of as orthodox a commencement to a conversation as a criticism on the weather is supposed to be in other places. It was an unpretending house, he saw, when they had reached it — merely a cottage ; but it was picturesque outside, and bright and pretty within. Mr. Arnold, as he entered Miss Tyrrell's drawing-room, thought that he never in his life had seen a prettier room. "Is the house an old one? Surely this part of it, at least, is not old?" he asked her, as she ushered him in. "Yes, every part of it is old, from the attic to the cellars — or to the single cellar, I should rather say, for we have only one.

You would not have doubted its age if you had seen it three months ago," Miss Tyrrell said. "When we went over it first it looked so dilapidated, that if Hugh had been left to himself he never would have had the courage to take it." "There seems to be no signs of dilapi dation about it now," Mr. Arnold said, looking, with a little hesitation, around the C2 walls, as if he half-expected to see them tottering. " Oh ! no ; we have had everything put in repair ; but what between a refractory landlord and unpunctual workmen, it has been anything but a simple business to accomplish. My main occupation for six weeks was scolding everybody, right and left," Miss Tyrrell said, with perfect com posure. " Dear me !" Mr. Arnold ejaculated, shud dering visibly. A momentary gleam of laughter came into Miss Tyrrell's eyes; but she went on in a tone of unaltered gravity.

" In such cases nothing can be done without scolding," she said. " Some land lords, indeed, can be brought round by coaxing, but the majority of them are moved by nothing but downright, pertina cious rating. Had you ever much to do with a troublesome landlord, Mr. Arnold ?" "I!" Mr. Arnold exclaimed, with almost unconcealed horror — " Never ! Oh ! no," he said, " I have never been a householder. It seems often to be a — a terribly trouble some sort of thing ? " " Oh ! very " — carelessly ; " but, of course, the trouble is nothing if in the end one secures a satisfactory result. Ah ! there is Hugh," said Miss Tyrrell, and rose up to go out and meet him. Mr. Arnold gave a deep breath of relief as she left the room. " God bless me ! what an awful woman !" he ejaculated to himself. Miss Tyrrell had closed the drawing-room door, and Mr. Arnold could not hear, nor was he intended to hear, the short colloquy that took place between the brother and sister in the hall.

" Hugh, I have got Frank Arnold here," Miss Tyrrell said. " But don't start off in that impetuous way," she added, detaining him as, with an exclamation of pleasure, he was about to hurry past her. " He is quite tame ; he won't escape. Wait a moment — I want to speak to you. He will stay to dinner, you know." "Of course he will." "Well, then, you won't get any dinner for half an hour." "Why not, Leslie?" "Because there is nothing whatever in the house but a beefsteak, and not enough of that." They both laughed. "Let him have what there is of it, and he shall make up with bread and cheese," Mr. Tyrrell said. " No, no, I will do better for him than that. I will provide something. I only wanted to warn you to hold your tongue till it came. Now, in with you," she said. And Mr. Tyrrell hastened in to his friend.

They had been very intimate for a number of years. They had been at Ox ford together, and, both intending to follow the same profession, they had lived together, after having been called to the bar, in chambers in Gray's Inn for a couple of years, waiting for briefs that never came. At the end of that time Mr. Tyrrell's father had died, and his son, who was beginning to discover that he had no special genius for the law, was glad to give it up, and succeed him as one of the partners in the large Liverpool merchant's house of Pickering and Coulson. Mr. Arnold, too, of late, had re signed most of the hope he had ever had of becoming a practising barrister, and, in stead of law, had been devoting himself for a year or two past to literature — pursu ing his new mistress, however, in a very dilettante kind of way, for unfortunately he was not obliged to earn his bread by his labours.

He led a very pleasant, lazy, unambitious life. He was clever enough to write very readable magazine articles, when he was in the mood for them, with very little trouble, and a small amount of easy work of that sort satisfied his conscience. Occasionally he meditated writing a book; but he had never begun one yet, being very much in the dark as to the subject he should prefer to write about, and frankly acknowledging that he felt little ability in himself to instruct other people about any thing. A few months ago some change in Hugh's house of business had resulted in the transfer of himself to London, and thither accordingly the brother and sister (who since their father's death had lived together) had removed, bringing with them also the other two small members of their household, Fred and Elsie Tyrrell, the children of an elder brother who had died two years ago, and who, having been left motherless before that, had lived with Hugh and Leslie ever since.

A lively household altogether, though a small one. A pleasant, neat, well-ordered establishment, too, as — little though Miss Tyrrell had as yet impressed him in her favour — Mr. Arnold could not help acknow edging frankly to himself before this first visit of his was more than half ended. The prettiness, the propriety, and the re finement, indeed, of everything about him had so agreeably impressed him by the time that dinner was over, that he abruptly burst in upon Hugh in the very midst of a detailed account which he was giving him of the London business of Messrs. Pickering and Coulson, after Miss Tyrrell had left them to their wine, with an ex clamation, uttered in a tone of far more than his usual vivacity — "How extremely comfortable you must be here!" he said. "I beg your pardon," he added, immediately, "for interrupting you; but I was just thinking of it.

The whole thing is so very nice. And — of course — it must be a great pleasure to you to have your sister with you?" " Oh ! I could never do without Leslie. With the children, — and all that, — you know, it would be impossible," Mr. Tyrrell answered. "Yes, I think we shall be very comfort able. It is a pretty little place, isn't it? — at least, for summer. Leslie is quite taken with it." " She is very handsome," Frank said, "Leslie? Yes; I always told you that she was. And she's a dear girl, too. She keeps us in order, though," Mr. Tyrrell added with a laugh. "Ah! I can imagine that." Mr. Arnold's answer came perhaps a little too readily, for his friend said quickly, "Oh! we like it, you know. She has everything her own way, certainly; but then when you live with a clever woman, you must let her have her way.

You will like her amazingly, Frank, when you know her." " I admire her amazingly, at any rate, already," Mr. Arnold answered rather eva sively. And then they began to talk again about Pickering and Coulson. " Are your children both in bed, Leslie ?" Mr. Tyrrell asked his sister, when he and Mr. Arnold came into the drawing room. "Yes, — and fast asleep," Miss Tyrrell said. "It is a great relief to my mind, for they have had a terrific day of it." "Poor little imps!" Hugh exclaimed with a laugh. " You must see our monkeys the next time you come, Frank," he said. " Oh ! I have seen them already," Mr. Arnold answered ; " I found Miss Tyrrell conducting their education in the garden when I arrived." "Yes; and you did what you could to interfere with my system," Miss Tyrrell said quickly. " Pray, Mr. Arnold, will you allow me to ask what you were laughing at when I turned round first and saw you ?"

"I am afraid," he said, not quitesure what tone to assume, "that I must confess I was laughing at the tremendous threats which you were uttering." "And did you not consider what irre parable injury to me such laughter would have done if the children had chanced to turn round and see you ? How should I ever keep up any authority over them if they saw other people laughing at me?" Miss Tyrrell demanded ; then, without waiting for an answer, and leaving Mr. Arnold half uncertain whether she had been speaking in jest or earnest, "Hugh, I have been next door to-day," she said turning to her brother, "to see the doctor's little daughter." "Oh! have you? Well, and what do you think of her?" " She is a pretty little thing, very nice and very gentle. She is seventeen, and has long ringlets and blue eyes, and the softest little voice — like a dove.

I think Mr. Arnold would like her," Miss Tyrrell said coolly. Mr. . Arnold winced a little, having a strong suspicion that Miss Tyrrell meant to be sarcastic; and Hugh laughed outright. "What do you mean by that, Leslie?" he asked. "I think he would admire her. Should you not like to see her, Mr. Arnold?" she said. "I think I should," Frank answered boldly. Leslie looked up in his face with some thing not quite grave about her lips, but the half smile was not unkindly. "She shall come here and meet you some day," she said; "and Hugh must see her too. She is rather interested about you, Hugh, so you will have to be very civil to her." "But you have not told me who she is yet," Mr. Arnold said. " Oh ! she is the daughter of a Dr. Noel, a very nice fellow, who lives in the next house," Hugh answered.

"We made ac quaintance one day over the garden wall (we do things, you know, quite in a rural way here), and we have seen a little of him since. The daughter has just finished going to school, has she not, Leslie? He is a widower, with this one girl." " And a medical man ?" "Yes. He comes over and sees the mon keys when they come to grief. He doctored Fred for a great bruise on one of his shins the other day. I suppose we shall end by installing him as family physician." " Oh ! we have installed him already. Mr. Arnold, shall I give you tea or coffee?" Miss Tyrrell said. They drew their chairs round the tea table, and fell presently into rather an animated talk. Mr. Arnold had just returned from a three months' run through France and the north of Italy, and, as the Tyrrells were tolerably familiar, from former journey ings of their own, with the ground that he had passed over, they found a common interest in comparing notes about the va rious places and objects he had seen.

Be fore this work had proceeded far, however, it began to be very evident that Mr. Ar nold, in his lazy circuit, had missed seeing a prodigious number of things that Hugh and Leslie Tyrrell, with their more observ ing eyes and more energetic natures, had made themselves acquainted with ; and in the course of a quarter of an hour, he had been driven so often to reply to their questions with such answers as, "No, I heard nothing about that;" "Oh! I didn't VOL. I. D know there was anything of that sort to be seen;" "Yes, there is a curious church there, I believe, but I didn't look after it;" and so on, that at last Mr. Tyrrell broke out with a laugh, "Why, bless me, my good fellow, what did you see, then? You seem to me to have gone through half these places with your eyes shut." "What is the use of working like a dray horse when you go for a holiday?"

Mr. Arnold answered composedly, with perfect good temper. " I am content when I get a general idea of a place. Depend upon it, it is a much pleasanter thing to lie on a hill side and smoke a cigar, than to go poking your head into half a dozen old churches or picture-galleries, not one of which you would know from another a fortnight afterwards. If you do it, it is merely for the sake of public opinion. I am speaking about men, not women," he said, turning half-apologetically to Miss Tyrrell. " As ladies don't smoke cigars, I suppose, when they go abroad, there is no resource for them but sight-seeing." " I beg your pardon, Mr. Arnold : women have many resources," Miss Tyrrell responded, quietly. "Even when they are travelling? I can't conceive what they can be, then, — unless they go about with a crochet-bag and a note book.

Such things I know are done ; but, heaven preserve me," Mr. Arnold exclaimed, " from a woman who takes notes !" " Don't get into a dispute with him, Leslie," Mr. Tyrrell interposed, with a laugh ; "he isn't worth it. He has all his life D2 been a lazy, good-for-nothing fellow." " Well, I never pretended to be good for anything," Mr. Arnold answered with placid frankness. "And as far as I can see, it is a very common case." " And one with which Mr. Arnold seems to be perfectly contented?" Miss Tyrrell said. " What is the use of being discontented with it?" Frank answered, half in jest. " What object should I have in leading a different sort of life, Miss Tyrrell? If I were to begin to amend to-morrow, who would be the better for it? I have nei ther father nor mother, brother nor sister, to care for me.

I have a maiden aunt somewhere, but I am afraid the ties of blood are scarcely strong enough to induce me to alter my ways for her sake, — especially as I have no conception how she would be benefited by it if I did," he added, with a momentary laugh as he rose from his seat. He took his leave a few minutes after wards, and Hugh went out with him to put him on his way. On Mr. Tyrrell's return he found his sister still in the drawing-room, and they sat down together by the fire. " Well, Leslie," he said almost imme diately, " what do you think of him ?" "I think it is a mysterious dispensation that makes one man care for another," she answered instantly. " Now, Leslie, why do you take up that tone? He is a very fine fellow." "He is very nice-looking. Pretty grey eyes he has; and I always have a weakness for that coloured hair.