Leonore Stubbs

"Take me," urged Val. "It's not—not only for your own sake, though of course that's what I'm thinking of most, but–"

"I must know first. I must make sure of the truth first."

"If you do, you'll give the show away. You ought never to let out that you know anything, and throw him over before he throws you. Then—there you are!"

"You mean that I must not unveil Paul's treachery? That he is to go unpunished?"

"You can't cut off your nose to spite your face, you know. Once you have a row with Paul the fat is in the fire, and it will be all over the place that he's jilted you."

"And for my own sister;" said she, bitterly.

She longed to rush to Leo, to Paul, to both severally or together, and denounce them. She could scarce restrain herself from proclaiming her wrongs upon the housetops, but—she paused and looked thoughtfully at Val. There was no doubt about Val's integrity. Up to his lights he was universally accounted "straight," and she need never fear being tricked and cheated a second time. He had acted well by her at this crisis, and to reward him? The idea grew in favour.

On the other hand, how terrible would be her position if she refused—and Position was a god she worshipped. She would be talked about, pointed at, and worst of all, pitied. Her ignominy—she could not face it.

"I say, Maud, you know I am fond of you?"

Yes, poor boy, he was fond of her; she had always felt complacently secure of his fondness, though occasionally nettled of late by misgivings as to his having transferred his first allegiance elsewhere. Leo had been bidden to Claymount oftener than she; and gran had made much of the younger sister, whereas she had always been cool and distant to the elder.

Maud, in her slow way, had resented this, and given herself considerable airs towards the old lady after her engagement. To triumph over her—over everybody—vindicate her own charms, and prove to the world the unswerving devotion of her old admirer would be something, would at any rate be better than nothing.

She sighed gently, and emboldened, he pressed his suit. A long interview closed with this decision. If satisfied as to the truth of his statements—but satisfied she must be—she would send for him next day, and—and do whatever he asked her.

"That's right, that's all I want;" his face shone with satisfaction. "Of course you wouldn't have wanted me if you had had Paul—not that Paul is any shakes now, (and whatever he is, he's not for you," in parenthesis,) "and—and I'm your man. I'll see you through, Maud; trust me."

"You will make all the arrangements?—that is, if I send for you?"

"Won't I? I had the whole thing in my head when I came here, and I'll work it out again going home. I'm a bit flustered just now, but you'll see if I don't do the square thing. We'll be off by the first train for London town and a registry office—but don't I just wish it was Gretna Green, and a gallop through the night! I have often thought what a jolly skidaddle one might have behind four horses to Gretna Green."

"Go, now;" said Maud, authoritatively. "But if I send word to come, Come."

And the message went, "Come".

Mr. Anthony Boldero and Mr. John Purcell were putting their heads together in the window of a Pall Mall club. The two gentlemen had a subject in common to discuss; and as old acquaintances, who had recently become new neighbours, they had a great deal to say and said it freely.

"A most disgraceful business;" the one bald head wagged, and the other responded. "'Pon my soul," asserted Mr. Purcell, vivaciously, "it is no wonder it killed the old lady. She might have hung on long enough, but for that. Although she was seventy-seven. Seventy-seven. A ripe age, Boldero."

He was only a little over sixty himself, and had often wondered how long his step-mother was going to keep him out of the property? It had for years been a secret grievance that a second wife should have had its tenancy for life, and made her descendant, a poor creature like Val, its master in appearance if not in fact. He could not therefore affect to be inconsolable.

Was it possible that the "disgraceful business" had had anything to do with General Boldero's demise?—he queried next. Could he have known, or suspected anything?

Mr. Anthony Boldero thought not. The general had been as cock-a-hoop as possible over his daughter's engagement; as insufferably patronising and condescending as over the first affair.

"And it turned out a fiasco, of course," observed his friend. "While he lived, Boldero contrived to keep going his own version, I'm told; and they sealed up the girl as tight as wax to prevent her telling tales—but every one knows now. So you think he was crowing over Maud's marriage too? Well, well, what would he have said to this?"

They then talked of Major Foster. Major Foster had behaved like a gentleman, taken himself quietly out of the way, and made no fuss. Mr. Anthony Boldero thought he was probably well out of the connection; the Boldero girls were too big for their boots, and Maud was the worst of them. All the same, no man likes to be jilted.

"Is it the case that your nephew has had nothing left him by his grandmother?—" he suddenly demanded, having disposed of Paul.

"He's not my full nephew, you know; he's only my half-brother's son. And, fact is, the old lady had nothing, or next to nothing to leave. Her money was all jointure, and reverts to the estate."

"And you have come in for Claymount free and unencumbered, as I have for the Boldero property? Ah!" said his companion, thoughtfully.

Presently he looked up. "Suppose between us we do something for those two lunatics, Purcell? We can't let them starve, eh? Suppose we make a bit of a purse, and ship them off to the colonies? British Columbia, eh? That's the only place for them and their sort; and if they can be put on a decent footing there, they won't be in a hurry to come back again. Eh? What d'ye say? I'm willing, if you are. I have no great affection for these relatives of mine, but after all, they are relatives, and blood is thicker than water."

"Well—yes;" said Mr. Purcell, dubiously. He had been mentally putting off this evil day, uneasily conscious that it was bound to come.

"The general was the worst of the lot," proceeded his companion; "the most arrogant, conceited, humbugging, old swelled-head I ever came across. But he's gone, and the poor girls—well, I'm sorry for them. Sue is a good creature. I hardly know the younger ones,—but none of them have given me any trouble since I had to deal with them. Except for this scandal of Maud's of course—and anyhow that doesn't affect me. Well, what about her and her precious husband? You are bound to do something for him, I suppose?"

And it ended in Mr. Purcell's doing it.

Before Maud sailed, it was necessary for her to take leave of her sisters, and this was Leonore's worst time. Till then she had been shielded from the outer world by the illness which was impending when Maud described it as a chill contracted by going out in the damp, and the event which followed was generally accredited with developing the chill into something more serious,—but although Sue was obliged to ask a month's grace from Mr. Anthony Boldero, in order that her sister might be sufficiently recovered to run no risk from moving—(a request which he had sufficient goodness of heart to ignore when alleging that he had had no trouble about family arrangements)—Leo was now well enough to have no excuse for evading a farewell scene.

In respect to Maud she knew not what to think. Had any hint or rumour of the truth ever reached her, or could it have been mere coincidence that caused her flight to follow Paul's confession almost on the instant?

Had Paul's vaunted inflexibility broken down? Had he reconsidered his resolution?

Yet, if so, this must have become known; it was impossible that it should have been kept secret; and he, not Maud would have been accounted guilty.

"Where is Paul? What is Paul doing?" The faint bleat of a weak and wounded creature came incessantly from Leonore's pillow, all through the first long day that followed the esclandre. They hid it from her that Paul had gone.

Sue and Sybil would fain have kept him, yearning to breathe forth contrition and sympathy every hour, every moment—but he could not be prevailed upon. They thought he was too deeply hurt, too cruelly affronted,—and they thought they would not tell Leo.

It was all so inexplicable that even the very servants who know us, their masters and mistresses, better than we know each other, could draw no conclusions, and the prevailing amazement downstairs found vent in ejaculations of "Miss Maud! Miss Maud of all people! Now if it had been Leonore"—but the speaker, a pert young thing, was sharply called to order for impudence—"'Mrs. Stubbs' then,—the name ain't so pretty she need have it always tagged on to her"—with a giggle—"she's got it in her to run away with any number of 'em, she has. And Val was her one, Mary and me thought. But, Lor, it's looks that tells: and pretty as she is, Leonore—Mrs. Stubbs," giggling again, "can't stand up to her that's Mrs. Val now. See her in her weddin' dress—my! We little thought she wasn't never to put it on in earnest, when we was let to have a sight of her that day it come home. A real treat it was!"

Maud's first letter was a triumph of equivocal diplomacy. She did not utter a single verbal falsehood, and without such contrived to blindfold every one. Her feelings towards her affianced husband had changed of late—("of late" is an elastic term)—she had "learnt to value the lifelong devotion of her dear Val,"—(when learned was again left to the imagination)—and "seeing no course left but to break with Paul before it was too late," she had fled to avoid a scene which would have only given him pain, and not altered her resolution.

"Had you any sort of premonition of this, Paul?" Sue inquired in tremulous accents, an hour having elapsed since the letter came.

"She put one or two rather strange questions to me yesterday;" hesitated he.

"Might I ask—could you tell me what they were?"

"I think I would rather not. It can do no good now." He spoke gently, but she could not press the point.

"She knows;" said Paul, to himself. "How she knows I cannot fathom; but all this about the change in her feelings is only a blind. She knows; and though she has given me my release, I can never avail myself of it."

He left the Abbey within the hour.

And this was now a story three months old, and Maud was coming to say "Good-bye" before beginning a new life in another land.

Heretofore she had obstinately rejected the olive branch held out by Sue. Sue, acting as mouthpiece for the three, had written time and again, begging that for all their sakes no estrangement should take place; entreating the delinquents to believe that they would only meet with kindness and affection in Eaton Place, where the sisters were established, and where room was plentiful. Would not Val and Maud come and make their home also there for the present?

But though the offer, delicately worded, might have been presumed tempting enough to two almost penniless people, it was coldly declined.

"And she seems as if she were angry with us!" cried Sybil, "she who dragged the whole family through the mud, and left us to bear the brunt!"

"Certainly she does write as if she bore us a grudge," owned Sue, "and yet, how can she? What have we done? What has any one of us done that Maud should refuse to be one with us again? I am sorry, but of course if that is the spirit in which poor Maud receives overtures of peace, I really—really I do not think I can go on thrusting them upon her." For Sue also had her pride, though it was a poor, weak, back-boneless pride, which would have melted at the first soft word from her sister.

The emigration concocted in the club window, however, effected what all besides had failed to do. By the time the final arrangements were complete and the tickets taken, Maud, on the eve of departure, was won upon to come to Eaton Place, though she still declined to take up her abode there.

Nor would she come alone.

"Val's with her," announced Sybil, having peeped from the balcony; "she might have left him behind, I think. I did want to find out if I could, what Maud really means by all this? Why we are in disgrace, because she has behaved like an idiot?"

"We shall never discover that now;" said Sue,—and the event proved her right.

Maud had taken the best and surest precaution against conversation of an intimate nature. She had put on one of the smartest dresses of her elaborate trousseau—having left it unpacked on purpose,—and her step as she entered was that of a stranger on a foreign soil. She was studiously polite; she inquired with a becoming air of solicitude after their healths, and she looked kindly at Sue:—but a jest of Sybil's fell flat, and Leo was conscious that her sister's lips never actually touched her cheek.

Leo herself was trembling from head to foot.

"We have been rather anxious about dear Leo," said Sue, with a tender glance towards the shrinking figure in the background.

"Indeed? There is a good deal of influenza about;" replied Maud carelessly. Before anyone could rejoin she changed the subject. "They tell us the weather look-out is favourable, and we ought to have a good passage." She never once looked at Leo, nor spoke to her.

And she rose to go as soon as decency permitted. But though a good deal was said about future home-comings, and Val declared that he for one would never rest till he was back in Old England again, there was a general feeling that the impending separation would prove if not absolutely final, at least of long duration. Maud was evidently longing to be off. Her voice as she hurried to the door was sharp and impatient. She could scarcely wait for Val to make his adieux properly, and sprang into the hansom while he was still in the hall.

Then she leaned forward and beckoned, and Leo ran out. Leo was yearning for one little word, one kind look to prove her dreadful fears unfounded, but, "It was not you I wanted," said Maud, rearing her chin; "send my husband to me."

She turned her face aside, and Leonore, like Paul, cried within herself, "She knows".

CHAPTER XVIII.

"A TURN OF THE WHEEL."

"Hoots, it's in the blood," said Dr. Craig, briefly.

An old friend had come to visit him, and started the topic which had ceased to be a nine days' wonder in the neighbourhood.

"There's a wild strain in the Bolderos somewhere," continued the doctor, crossing his legs, and settling down for a chat. "Those lassies have had a gay lady among their forebears at some time or other, for they didn't get their pranks from old Brown-boots. To do Brown-boots justice, he was respectable—I'm thinking it was his one virtue. Proud as Lucifer, and vain as a peacock—they say you can't be both, but he was—and so was Maud—and it was just her vanity that got the whip hand of her pride at the last. It must have been," musing; "nothing else could account for her throwing over a nice fellow like Foster, and a good match too, for poor loony Val without a sixpence. She didn't know he hadn't a sixpence, mind you; she meant to come back and queen it at Claymount,—where I doubt not she would soon have ruled the roost, if she hadn't had the ill-luck to kill the old lady instead. She wanted to show she had two strings to her bow, d'ye see?" He smoked and nodded, then started afresh:—

"Aye, aye, and there was Leonore—Leonore Stubbs—the widow. Her that played the mischief with that poor lad of mine, Tommy Andrews, and lost me the best assistant I ever had. I tried to get Tommy back after the Bolderos left, but no; he scunnered the place; she had just eaten the heart out of him, Leonore had. My word, she was a jaunty bit creature. I fair weakened to her myself, when she would stand by the road-side looking up at me in the gig, with those big, laughing eyes of hers—and her wee bit moothie, it was the prettiest bit thing—though mind you, I ran her down to Tommy. Poor Tommy!"

"He wouldn't take a telling," resumed the speaker, after a pause. "They never will, you know—those dour, close, machine-like lads; they'll make no resistance; they'll let you talk and talk and think you've convinced them—and it just rolls like water off a duck's back. Tommy garred me believe it was all over and done with. He went about his work, and kept out of little pussycat's way, and then, phew! all at once the murder was out! It was simply bottled up; and one fine day—I don't know what happened, for cart-ropes wouldn't drag it out of him—but something did, and he came in, looking battle and murder and sudden death. He was off at crack of dawn,—and that was just a few days before Maud's fine elopement took place. We had never had such an excitement before in these humdrum parts, and we never shall again."

To all of this the friend, also a Scot, hearkened without emitting a syllable.

When, however, his ear detected the accents of finality, he shook the ashes from his pipe and opened his lips: "I fell in with the rejected gentleman the other day".

"Foster? No? Did you? Did you really? How was that?" In an instant the doctor was on the alert.

"I was on my holiday, doing a bit of fishing in an out-of-the-way part of Sutherland, and there were only two or three of us in the hotel. Foster was one."

"A tall, thin man, with a lantern-jawed face?"

"That's him. One of the others had got wind of this tale, and told me. We were talking of you, I fancy; and he had been down here a whiley ago, when the affair was fresh."

"What was Foster doing there?"

"Fishing like the rest of us—but always by himself. He wasn't uncivil, only unsociable. I had a walk with him one day, and he talked about India. A good part of his life had been spent in India, and he could tell a lot about it, but when the talk came round home, he shut up like a knife, and I kind of jaloused there was something wrong. That was before I knew what it was."

"He looked—how did he look?"

"How? I can't tell you how. He just looked. That was enough for me."

"Well, you saw the sort of chap he was, just the one to take a woman's fancy,—and to think that Maud Boldero could be so blind daft as to throw him over for that poor Val, whom she could have picked up at any time!"

"What has become of the others? Do you ever hear anything of them?"

"Sybil has married. She married pretty quickly after they left. A London man; a barrister, I think. Sybil is good-looking enough, they are all good-looking; though Maud's the pick of the bunch. Stop a bit, I'm not sure that the little rascal Leonore—but no, no; she hadn't the air, the style; it was just a way she had,—eh, she was a bit beguiling thing. There's that new boy of mine, he has twice the go that poor Tommy had, though nothing like the brains—but he's all over the place among the lasses, and when I hear him whistling here and whistling there, with his nose in at every open door, thinks I to myself, 'Thank the Lord, Leonore Stubbs is out of Jock's way'."

Leonore was out of everybody's way, it seemed,—or it might have been that she had ceased to be beguiling. People who met her during the next year of her life, found a quiet young girl—she still looked very young—with rather an interesting countenance; but if drawn thereby to prosecute her acquaintance, they tried to engage her in their pursuits and pleasures, they were disappointed. She did not respond to buoyant propositions; games and pastimes did not attract her; they thought she did not know how to flirt.

In short she was dull, and rather tiresomely devoted to her half-sister, whom no one thought of inviting to join in youthful escapades—so after a time Leo was not invited either.

This was a trouble to Sue, and one day she made a suggestion. Was there any use in remaining in London, if the life there was not in accordance with either of their tastes? If Leo no longer cared for society—though she owned she thought that a pity at her age—and here the speaker paused.

"I don't—at present," owned Leo, frankly. "I may again—some time,"—but to herself she wondered, would that some time ever come?

Then news came from America, sad news, which put all other thoughts aside for the moment. A child had been born, but its birth had cost the mother her life, and the next cable announced that poor Val had lost his little son also. He was begged to return home, and assured of welcome and maintenance there,—but to the surprise of all replied evasively. He would see how matters were by-and-by; he could not bring himself to move just yet.

The next letter expatiated on the wonderful beauty and climate of California, and the kindness and hospitality of friends, who had carried him off for a trip, to distract his thoughts.

Again another letter was full of nothing but these friends. Poor simple Val had not the art of concealment, and long before he knew himself, the sisters knew what to expect. He had been "most awfully sad and lonely," and he "would never forget Maud,"—but he had found a dear girl who reminded him of her, and (here the pen had raced) by the time dear Sue and Leo received the letter, he would be married to the richest heiress in California. A newspaper followed, announcing that the ceremony had actually taken place.

"So we need not go out to Val," said Leo, with a smile.

She and Sue were wandering hither and thither with no particular reason for being anywhere, and it had been in contemplation to cross the Atlantic. Sue's investments had prospered of late, and there would have been no difficulty about funds—yet each sister was conscious of a sense of relief when the expedition was abandoned. Sue was timorous and a bad traveller,—while Leo, from whom the suggestion had emanated, no sooner found it taking shape than she repented. What was she going for? What could the new country yield that the old could not? Could it heal her sore heart? Could it banish remembrance? Could it give her news of Paul? Paul, who had vanished from the face of the earth?

Rather she would be turning her back upon any possibility of either hearing of or seeing him again; and though, of course, she could not wish that they should meet, and in the natural sequence of events, they were most unlikely to meet, it would be something only to—oh, anything would be better than that bitter blank, that desolation of ignorance which was so impenetrable, so insurmountable.

Sue knew now about Paul. When Maud died there was no further reason for concealment, and albeit the shock was great, it was a consolation to both sisters to drop the veil between them.

"But you do understand, don't you, that he never—never even when I almost forced it from him, said that it was I?" murmured Leo. "I knew it; I felt it; but he did not, he would not say it. Oh, I did so long for him to say it just once—but he never did. Sue, you know that little old jug I have upstairs?" suddenly she broke off, as it appeared inconsequently.

"Little old jug?" Sue reflected, but could not remember. And she wondered somewhat. What could "a little old jug" have to do with the present conversation?

"The one with the French soldier's motto. It used to be on the anteroom mantelpiece at Boldero. Oh, you must remember it, Sue."

"We had so much china, dear–"

"But this was the one I asked you to give me for my own—however, listen. The motto was:—

"Mon âme â Dieu,Ma vie au Roi,Mon coeur aux Dames,L'honneur pour moi."

"Paul noticed it one day, and turned round and said, 'That's splendid,'—and read it again. That was when he first came. And afterwards, when things were getting very bad, I came upon him standing in front of the mantelpiece, staring at the jug. I rather liked it myself, but I didn't see it as he did, for on that dreadful day," she looked down, even when it was only Sue, she looked down—"when Paul saved me from myself–"

"When you were too ill to know what you were doing, darling."

"He looked at me and said with a sort of smile, 'L'honneur pour moi.' Sue?"

Sue looked attention.

"You know how poor Maud bored us—I mean how she insisted on Paul's religion as if it were something which gave him a sort of cachet—something quite over our heads?—and how father—oh, Sue, I must say it—do you remember how father once shut her up by declaring that Paul was too much of a gentleman to introduce unpleasant subjects? It was only father's way, you know. He didn't mean any harm, and I do think, don't you, that father was changed a little, that he was different those last few weeks? He said to me once: 'There's more in it than you think'. Anyway, Sue, he did like and admire Paul."