But her father and sisters would most certainly not make her pleasure their chief aim and object; consequently it was as well perhaps—a sigh of relief—that she could not be ordered about and have the law laid down to her as of yore.
And yet, even this would be better, infinitely better, than to be kept at arm's-length, and made to feel that she had neither part nor lot in the home life she had returned to share. For instance, if she were late for breakfast–What? What was that? The clock below was striking the half-hour, and precisely at nine the breakfast gong would sound—what had she been thinking of?
"I hope, Leonore, you will be more punctual in future," said General Boldero, as his youngest daughter took her seat at the table, and having thus delivered himself, he did not again address her throughout the remainder of the meal.
It might have been that he was taken up with his letters, of which he always made the most—handling the envelope even of an advertisement as though it were of importance—but Leo, sitting silent beside him, wished her place were a little farther off. She was conscious of a chill, and she had forgotten what a chill was like.
Her sisters talked among themselves, obviously indifferent to anything but their own concerns; and since it was apparent that the present social atmosphere was its normal one, she tried to think it had no reference to herself, and not to draw comparisons between it and that she had been of late accustomed to.
She and Godfrey had always enjoyed their breakfast-hour. It had often had to be hurried through, and the good things set before them unceremoniously bolted—but cheerfulness and good-humour made even that drawback endurable,—and after seeing her husband drive away from the door, Leo would return to fill her cup afresh, with a smile on her lips. She peeped round the table now, to see if there were a smile anywhere.
Sue looked worried and prim—the worst Sue. Miss Boldero never gave way to temper, indeed she had a creditably equable temper—but when things were not well with her she stiffened; she remained upon an altitude; she addressed her sisters by their full Christian names. Leo, who had been "Leo" on the previous evening, was now "Leonore".
"The girls" also had merely nodded as the small creature, looking almost irritatingly young and childish in her widow's garb, took her seat among them. Neither Maud nor Sybil looked young for their years, and perhaps unconsciously resented Leo's doing so, as accentuating a gap already wide enough.
Further, Leo looked her best in the clear morning light, while her sisters' complexions suffered. They would not have slept as profoundly as she, nor risen with such a spring of elasticity in their veins. They would not have the appetite for breakfast that made everything taste good. They were inclined to be "Chippy" with each other.
For Leo a new-born day was a day full of pleasant possibilities, and the less she knew about it the better. She rather preferred to have nothing arranged for; it left so much the more margin for something nice to happen. As for dullness, she did not know what the word meant.
For though our heroine's abilities were not of a high order, there were plenty of things she could do, and do well; and being by nature industrious and creative, she took much delight in small achievements. "Busy little woman!" Godfrey would exclaim, when one of these was submitted for his approval; and if his praise were at times lacking in discrimination, he was humble enough to satisfy any one's vanity when this was pointed out.
Now, though there was no longer the untrammelled freedom to fill her days as she chose, no longer the allurement of adorning a home according to her own unfettered fancies, no longer, alas! Godfrey to surprise and delight—there was yet, on this first morning of her new life, a little new pulsation throbbing within poor Leo's breast.
She had been unhappy for three whole weeks, and sorrow was unnatural to her; so that although, as we have said, tears still lay near the surface, and there would be the quick sigh and swell of the heart at a chance recollection, there was also a tiny troublesome spark beginning to flicker afresh within, of which the poor little thing, a widow, and a pauper, and all that ought to have been crushed to earth, was desperately ashamed.
She looked around at the long solemn faces, and strove to bring hers into line with them. She fixed her eyes upon her plate, and was shocked to find it empty. How fast she must have eaten! How greedy and unfeeling she must have appeared! Her cheeks burned; and thereafter it was "No, thank you" to everything, though she could very well have done with another slice of toast and something sweet.
Jam and marmalade were both on the well-laden, old-fashioned board, but though Maud was helping herself to the latter, Leo resolutely declined. She was sure she was being watched; perhaps it was thought surprising that she could swallow food at all? Her hand trembled, and the spoon fell from the saucer of her cup. General Boldero looked up quickly, and the look was like a missile flung at her.
CHAPTER V.
OLD PLAYMATES MEET
"No, I haven't seen her yet."
Obedient to command, Valentine Purcell had called three times at Boldero Abbey during the month succeeding Leonore's arrival. Val had quite entered into the spirit of the thing. He was fond of making calls at all times, and only needed the slightest hint to betake himself to any house in the neighbourhood.
It is true that the veriest trifle would also throw him off the track; a fieldmouse in the path was a lion,—but given no fieldmouse, he might be trusted to reach his destination, and when reached, the only difficulty was to get him away from it. Wherever he was, there would he take root; and having no claims elsewhere, it did not occur to him that other people's time was more precious than his own.
Accordingly he had spent, satisfactorily to himself, the best part of three afternoons with the Boldero girls, and though Mrs. Stubbs had been invisible on each occasion, he had got on quite well without her—indeed rather chuckled at the reflection that it would in consequence be necessary for him to turn up again ere long at the Abbey.
Mrs. Purcell was not so complacent, however. "Dear me, how extraordinary, Val."
"Very extraordinary, ma'am." Val shook his head wisely, and looked for more. His grandmother was so clever she would be sure to think of something more to say, some explanation of the strangeness.
"They spoke of her, of course?"—she threw out, after a meditative pause. "You gathered that she was there, and–"
"Oh, aye, they spoke of her. That's to say I heard old Sue say something about 'Leonore,' and when Maud came in—she wasn't there at first—the others asked where she had been, and she said, 'We went somewhere or other'. 'We' couldn't have been any one else, you know; they never go out with the general. Besides—stop a bit—why, of course, the footman took away her tea on a tray."
"Three distinct and indisputable testimonies," observed Mrs. Purcell drily.
She was vexed, and had it been any other narrator who pieced his materials together in such a fashion, would have let loose a more palpable sarcasm.
Why could he not have asked directly after Leonore, upon the mention of her name? Why did he even wait for that? It would have been so simple, so natural, to have hoped she was well or hoped she was not ill—hoped something, anything, when the tea was openly sent her elsewhere. The opportunity was obvious; and as obviously the tiresome boy had missed it. She contented herself, however, with a grim smile.
"I expect Leo was somewhere out of sight." After a minute's reflection, Val advanced the above as its result. "They couldn't take her her tea if she wasn't there, you know."
"It seems improbable, certainly." Mrs. Purcell's lips twitched again.
"Improbable, ma'am?" He was flustered on the instant. "Why, ma'am, where would have been the sense of it? Unless there was some one to take tea to—bless me, grandmother—why should Sue have sent the poor footy off on a fool's errand? She rang for him, too," he summed up conclusively.
"Listen, Val; if you are not going to see Leonore when you call at her father's house, if she is to be kept in the background there, you must meet her elsewhere."
"But I don't think she goes elsewhere. Nobody's seen her, for I've asked."
"Oh, you have asked?" She looked pleased; she had not expected so much of him.
"Asked?—I've asked wherever I go, and not a soul has set eyes on her. I'll tell you how I do it. I say in an easy kind of way, not as if I cared, you know, but just like this, 'Any one seen Mrs. Stubbs yet?'—I call her 'Mrs. Stubbs' not to seem too familiar—and, what do you think? they laughed—Jimmy Tod and Merivale laughed—and Jimmy poked me with his whip, and said: 'If you haven't, old fellow, no one has'. Of course they know I'm intimate with the Bolderos,"—and he drew up his collar with an air.
"Why did you not mention this before, Val?"
Val looked foolish. For the life of him he could not think why, the truth being that he had forgotten, but never supposed he could forget.
"Well, never mind," pursued his grandmother; "what I mean is that you must meet your old playfellow out-of-doors, on her walks, or in the woods, or wherever she goes. She must go out: she must take the air somewhere,—and if you had had your wits about you, my dear boy, you could have found out where to-day."
"You ought to have told me if you meant me to do that."
"Then you must stop her—don't let her pass without speaking—and ask leave to join her—or them, if there are two,—but it would be better if you could catch Leonore alone. Somehow I feel sure the poor little thing is being kept away from us all," murmured the old lady pensively. "They are masterful people, the Bolderos. And Leo is so sweet and gentle–"
"She's a Boldero though," struck in he. "And though she's sweet enough, hang me if Leo can't stand up for herself! I used to die of laughing when she tackled old Sue. Sue was afraid of her. You bet she hasn't forgotten the time they all thought Leo lost, and she was found hiding in a ditch."
"Leonore? Hiding in a ditch?"
"With her face blacked, and prepared to run away to the gipsies—ha—ha—ha!"
"I never heard a word of it, Val."
"Not likely, ma'am; we were all sworn to secrecy. I believe it was even kept dark from the general, for Sue's a good sort really, and Leo was such a little thing. Though she tried to brave it out she couldn't; and when she blubbed, the tears and the muck—you never saw such a little goblin face in your life."
"And you were in her confidence? Talk about old days to her now."
"Trust me. I always wanted to talk about them, but—I say, why were we never invited to meet the Stubbses when they came to the Abbey? We never were. Never once."
"General Boldero was not proud of his son-in-law. No one was ever invited to meet him."
"They say it was he who made the match, though."
It certainly was difficult to keep Val to the point. The marriage now dissolved was nothing to him nor to any one, but since it kept Leonore as a topic of conversation, and since by means of the past the old lady could gradually work her way back to the present, she did not cut short her grandson's curiosity, and upon subsequent reflection was not displeased that he had evinced it.
A fine day coming soon after this, Val prepared for action.
First of all he prepared his mind; had he anything else he wished to do? Was there anything tempting in the way of sport to be had? He considered and shook his head. His grandmother's shooting was limited, and he had strained its capacity rather fully of late. The river was too full for fishing. The hounds were not running that day. Accordingly, hey! for the Abbey, and for what might come of it.
Thus much decided, what should he wear? No girl in her teens, no dandy in his first London season was more serious over the great affair of his clothes than this country fellow when occasion warranted. Worn and frayed and weather-stained his daily homespun might be, but he had a bill at the best tailor's in Bond Street which he never thought of paying, and which his grandmother never thought of grudging. She quietly annexed the bill, and Val heard no more of it.
He was thus well provided for emergencies like the present. He had thick and thin suits, dark and light, loose and slightly shaped—he had just received one of the last, of a delightful tawny brown colour, which he had not yet worn. It had arrived a few hours after his last call on the Bolderos, and the moment his eye fell upon it now, his mind was made up.
But though so prompt and decided on this, the most important point, there remained the question of the tie,—and how many ties were selected, tried, and found wanting before the first, which had been contemptuously discarded as lacking in dash and originality, was reconsidered, and eventually decided upon, it boots not to say.
Val had taste; and left to himself was nearly sure to come forth triumphant from an ordeal in which taste and a desire to be in the first fashion struggled for the mastery. Crimson and green and blue were famous colours, but a quiet beech-brown of a darker shade than the suit finished it off so harmoniously that he sighed consent, and stuck in a fox-head pin without further ado. Gloves, hat, and stick were below, and equipped with these he presented himself before his grandmother.
"Any commands, ma'am?"
"Commands?" said Mrs. Purcell, absently. "Commands, my dear?"
She would not make the mistake of appearing to understand too soon; if bothered, poor Val was so apt to tire of a subject, and turn rusty on its reiteration.
"I thought I might as well see what turns up," rejoined he, vaguely, "take the dogs for a run, you know; and as it's a nice morning, perhaps, I may meet people. I have made myself decent"—and he looked down complacently, and advanced within her line of vision.
"A new suit, Val? Turn round, and let me see you. Hum—quite nice. Are you going to the post-office? I have run out of stamps."
"I was going the other way, but—oh, I'll get them;" Val brightened. "I'll get them at Sutley" (Sutley was the Bolderos' village)—"and if any of those girls are about, I'll—I'll see what turns up."
"I shall know where you are if you don't come back for luncheon, then."
Now, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, an expedition planned on such hazy outlines would have come to grief, but strange as it may seem, no sooner did Mr. Valentine Purcell, swinging along at a high rate of speed—for he always walked as though furies were at his heels—enter the main street of Sutley village, than he espied a solitary, small, black figure advancing from the other end, and almost ere he could believe his eyes, Leonore herself was smiling into them. "Why, Val?" exclaimed she, "I am so glad to see you, Val."
"Well, you might have seen me before now." Suddenly Val felt aggrieved; it was a way he had; "I'm sure I've called often enough!"—and he shook hands rather coldly; not to be won over too soon.
"I am not supposed to be at home to people at present," said Leo, simply. "They think I ought not,—but I was sorry when I heard it was you the other day."
"Were you in the house?"—demanded he.
"Oh, yes; in the old schoolroom. I have my tea there when we are not by ourselves. I—I don't dislike it." But her face told another tale. Val, who had quite a brute instinct of sympathy, knew that she did dislike it very much.
Tea was the only really pleasant meal at the Abbey; it was relieved of the general's presence, and often of Sue's also—and during the last month Leo had learnt to look forward to it.
A little quiver of the lips accompanied the above assertion, for of late callers had been rather rife, and she had been banished so often that she had come to dread the sound of the door-bell.
"I do think I needn't be classed as 'people';" pursued her old playmate, but without the asperity of his former accents. "I've known you ever since you were so high,"—indicating—"and—and I'm awfully sorry about it all, you know."
It was only Val, Val whom nobody minded, but Leo, taken aback, flushed to her brow.
"Oh, I say, ought I not to have said that? I'm such a rotter, I blurt out with whatever comes first," stammered he, discomfited in his turn. "Leo, you know I didn't mean it. There now, I suppose I oughtn't to call you 'Leo'–" floundering afresh.
"Indeed you may, Val; and I know you meant nothing but what was kind; only I—I am so unaccustomed to hearing—they never talk about me, and I wish they would, oh, I wish they would," her voice broke, but she continued nevertheless: "Val, you don't know how hard it is—oh, what am I saying?"—she stopped confused and panting, terrified at what she had been led into.
"Look here," said Val, slowly, "you don't mind me, do you? You don't need to care what you say before me?—I shan't tell, of course I shan't. They always used to be down upon you at home, and I suppose they go on the same? Just you get it out to me, Leo," and he nodded encouragingly.
By the end of half-an-hour, during which the two had wandered away from the village street and the eyes of spectators, Leo had "got it out," and if the truth were told, pretty thoroughly. Recollect how young, and naturally frank, and in a sense absolutely friendless she was. And then it was only Val—she felt almost as though she were speaking to a dog.
Certainly there was, as we said before, an element of canine sympathy in the silent, solemn, appreciative air with which her companion listened. He never interrupted. When he spoke, it was to utter a brief ejaculation or to put a question, a leading question, one which gently turned the lock a little more on the opening side. Sometimes he merely said, "Well?"—but how comforting was that "Well"!
"You see Godfrey was so very good to me, and I do miss him so," sighed the speaker at last.
It was perhaps hardly the way in which a devoted wife would have spoken of a husband only six weeks dead, but it exactly expressed the truth. Godfrey Stubbs had never been idealised, but he had been readily accepted as a lover by a barely emancipated schoolgirl who did not know what love was; and three serene, unimaginative years had been contentedly passed under his fostering care.
Had he lived, and had children been born to the pair, it is easy to conjecture the sort of woman Leonore would have developed into; as it was, she had grown more mentally and spiritually in the past six weeks than in the whole course of her previous existence.
And then came the passionate desire for expression, the helpless sense of an inner burden too heavy to be borne alone. It was lucky it was Valentine Purcell who came in Leo's way: the dam must have burst somewhere.
"You won't tell any one, Val?"
"Rather not. I should think not. I should just say not, Leo." Fervour gathered with each assurance.
"They wouldn't understand, would they?" faltered she.
"Of course they wouldn't. People never do," asseverated he.
"And you mustn't be vexed if I am still shut up when you come to see us, because I know Sue means this to go on for ever so long. Sue thinks it only proper, you know. She is not in the least unkind, she believes she is doing just what I would wish, and she would be awfully ashamed of me if I wished anything else," continued Leo, jumping across a puddle with a freer and lighter step than she had come out with, or indeed trod with, since coming back to the Abbey. "Up the bank, Val. Go first, and I'll follow. Oh, no, we won't turn back; it is only here that the water lies; I often come along this path, and it is quite dry directly you are round the corner."
"You often come here? When? Do you come in the mornings, or afternoons?"—he threw over his shoulder, still leading the way.
"I don't know. Whenever it's fine. Stop a moment; I'm caught;" and she disengaged a sprawling bramble. "It's a pity I put on this skirt," continued Leo ruefully, examining an ugly cross-tear. "It's too good. I only meant to go to the village."
"Well, but if I don't know when you come, how can I meet you here?" persevered he, pursuing his own line of thought. "I can't hang about all the time."
"Meet me? Oh!" She pondered, for it was a new idea. "I wonder, I suppose you might meet me; but if they knew we had agreed beforehand–"
"Of course they're not to know. Sue would put a stopper on it at once."
Leo was silent.
"That needn't prevent us," continued her companion, holding out a hand for her to spring into the path again. "If I'm not to see you anywhere else, it's only fair–I say, you're a married woman, you can do as you please."
"If I did it, I should do it—but I shouldn't hide it. I'll never do anything I don't mean to tell about." It was a once familiar voice which rang the words out, and the speaker shook back a flying curl and tucked it in with a gesture of determination so absolutely that of the old Leo that Val burst out laughing.
"Oh, you funny little girl!"
Leo however was upon her dignity at this.
"I don't think you ought to speak to me like that," said she, "although you are to be my friend,"—for this had been agreed upon—"you must not call me a 'little girl,' and, Val, only the minute before, you reminded me that I was a married woman."
"You are such a queer mixture, Leo."
"I know. I can't help it." She was off her pedestal as fast as she had hopped on. "I do try to remember, and at Deeside it was quite easy; nobody thought of me as 'funny' or a 'girl' there—but here I seem to be back again just as I was when I left! All the places are the same, the places where we had our accidents and our happenings, and I can't feel different. Only, Val–" she hesitated.
"Well?" said he.
"There's Godfrey. I would not for worlds, not for worlds—it would be horrible to seem to forget Godfrey. I don't forget him, you know; I don't really. It is just that my spirits get up on a morning like this, what with meeting you, and talking, and all,"—she stumbled on incoherently,—"and you are so kind, and seem just to know what it is like. Only you mustn't take advantage, Val,"—and she shook her head at him with an air of gentle exhortation, "you mustn't encroach. And I don't think I can meet you out-of-doors—no I can't"—(as he emitted an expostulatory "Oh, I say!") "I have made up my mind. You always called me your tyrant, don't you remember? Well, it's no use fighting against your tyrant now."
"All right." A happy idea occurred, and Val made shift to acquiesce indifferently. "Very glad to have had the pleasure of meeting you to-day, and so forth; and now I must go back to grandmother, and I daresay we shan't see each other again for months."
"Not—for—months?"
"Perhaps not this winter. I may be going away from home. I daresay I shall. It's beastly dull at our place, and there's nothing going on anywhere hereabouts."
"But, Val?"—the shot had told; she was plainly disconcerted. "Going away?"—she faltered.
"Very likely I shall. I haven't made up my mind where, but–"
"But you never do go. What should you go for now?"
"A fellow must have change. Many fellows go abroad regularly. I know a fellow who is going to hunt in Spain."
"What on earth should you do hunting in Spain, Val?"
She could not help it, she laughed outright at the idea. Val in Spain? Val, who knew no country, no sport, no language but his own? A glimmering of the truth dawned on Leo.
"I should think Spain was a very nice place to go to," observed she, regaining her composure, "a very nice place indeed."
But their eyes met, and the farce could be kept up no longer.
"You want to make me feel that I should miss you, and I should miss you," cried Leo, finding her tongue first. "I should be very, very sorry, now that we've met and met as old friends, and understand each other so well, to think that all through the long winter months you were to be far away,—so don't think of it, Val; you can't, you simply mustn't. And though I can't and won't do anything secret, I shall tell them at home straight out that I met you to-day—accidentally, for it was accidentally—and that we had a talk—they can't be angry with me for that,—and then, whether any one looks at me or not, I'll say boldly: 'So in future there will be no need for me to get out of Val Purcell's way'. There, that's settled. Here's your short cut, and I'll run home across these fields. Good-bye, and—and thank you, Val."
She was off, and though for a moment he thought of running after her, a glance at his watch stopped him.
It was already past one o'clock and though for himself he had nothing to fear if late for luncheon, since his grandmother was accustomed to unpunctuality, and would be only too ready to pardon it on the present occasion, with Leo it was different.
Luckily she was nearer home than he was. Flying along as she was doing, she might get in by a side door before the general stalked into the dining-room, and he sincerely hoped she would. He watched till she was out of sight. There was no one on earth whom Val disliked and feared as much as Leo's father.
The latter could not indeed snub him and snap at him, as when he was a boy—but it was almost worse to be looked at as though he were an offensive object, and to be heard in sneering silence if he ventured upon a remark. For all his witlessness Val, poor fellow, knew when he was happy and comfortable and when he was not, and he did not need his grandmother to tell him that he was no favourite with General Boldero.
"I only hope the old beast doesn't bully Leo," he muttered, as at last he turned into the short cut, and all the way home he was sunk in thought.
But he burst into Mrs. Purcell's presence hilariously. "I've had a jolly good time, ma'am. Sorry to be late, but I was walking with Leonore."
"With Leonore? You really did?—how odd that you should happen to meet!" The old lady, who had begun excitedly, checked herself, and assumed a cheerful, every-day air. "You fell in with the sisters on the road, I suppose?"
"Not the sisters. Only Leo. I ran into her in the middle of the village, and she was awfully nice and friendly; so then we went off for a walk together."
"How nice! Just the morning for a pleasant walk."
"Beastly wet and dirty underfoot though. Look at my boots"—and he looked himself. "We got into a regular bog once."
"You left the high road? You should not have done that." (Delighted that he had.)
"Went along the lane to Prickett's Green, and got into the woods there," said he, helping himself to cold pheasant, and looking about for adjuncts. "I knew you wanted me to do the civil, so I told her I had nothing else on hand, and we might as well have a good tramp. But we didn't really get very far, though we pottered on and on, and she had to skurry at the last to be home in time."
"Did you—did she—does Leo seem changed? Or did you find your old playmate what she always was?"
"Should never have known she had been away. She doesn't look a day older."
"But altered otherwise, perhaps? Marriage does sometimes—" and she paused suggestively.
"Oh, hang it, yes; Leo's quite the married woman," supplied he, decidedly. He knew it was a lie, but told himself he meant to say it. "I suppose they're always a bit pompous, aren't they?"
"Pompous? Do you mean that that dear little innocent-faced thing has grown pompous? Impossible, Val."
"It's the correct thing, I suppose, ma'am. Once when she thought I was rather presuming—I'm sure I meant no harm—she regularly jumped upon me!"
"Be careful, my dear, if Leo is like that. Being left rich and independent while yet so young, may have turned her head a little. Did she—ahem! talk about her affairs at all?"
"Affairs?" ("Now, what the deuce does she mean by 'affairs'?" thought he.)
"Did she speak of what she meant to do? Is she thinking of remaining in these parts? Or has she any other plans?"
"If she has, she didn't tell them me." Val considered and shook his head. "No, I don't believe she said a word of the kind. Besides what plans could she have, poor little–"
"Not 'poor'". Mrs. Purcell smiled significantly. "You don't seem to understand, my dear. Leonore Stubbs is a very rich widow, and will be immensely sought after. It would be a great pity if she could not settle in the neighbourhood, and—and join the hunt, as you said yourself."
"Aye, to be sure. I forgot about that; but you told me not to spring it upon her too soon."
"True. But you might have discovered if she was—however, apparently she has no immediate intention of flying away."
Reassured on the point, Mrs. Purcell let well alone. She had no conception that anything could be hid from her, and thought she divined that while all had gone well, even beyond her hopes so far, the two whom she would fain have seen made one, had restricted their tête-à-tête to the discussion of conventional and superficial topics. Val had even called Leonore "pompous". That meant the young lady was aware of her own value, and if so–?
There remained however this comfort; in her present situation the youthful widow could not go into society, and Val, being first in the field, might, to borrow his own phraseology, catch the hare before the other hounds were on the scent.
Val on his part chuckled likewise. Secretive as the grave could Val be when he chose; and one thing was clear to him: Leonore was trying to play the part required of her by her family and the world, and he alone knew that it was a part.
He would not betray her. Not all his grandmother's wiles should draw from him a picture of that confiding little face—sorrowful enough at times certainly, and yet not sorrowful in the approved fashion, not hopeless, not utterly cast down. "Just looking as if she needed some one to be kind to her," ruminated he; "and when she laughed—" he paused and wagged his head, "Lord, it was a good thing nobody but me heard Leo laugh!"