Leonore Stubbs Part 37

"There's a wild strain in the Bolderos somewhere," continued the doctor, crossing his legs, and settling down for a chat. "Those la.s.sies 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 peac.o.c.k--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 a.s.sistant 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 p.u.s.s.ycat'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 la.s.ses, 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 a.s.sured 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 ame a 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."

"Yes--yes, he did."

"Now I want to say something," Leo changed the subject, which each felt to be a sad one. "Sue, what really--what I shall never forget, is, that when the worst moment of all came, when Paul and I were together, all alone, and I was ready--oh, I _was_ ready to fall into his arms if he had held out his little finger--he didn't hold it. He stood there like a statue. And I know, I _know_ what held him back. If all the world had called Paul a good man, and he had preached goodness from morning to night, it wouldn't have had the least effect, but when he said '_L'honneur pour moi_'"--her tears overflowed, and Sue wept likewise....

They often wondered how much and how little had been suspected by Maud, inducing her own line of action. In the light of her subsequent att.i.tude it seemed more than probable that she had either learnt or divined that all was not as it appeared, but so cleverly had she kept up a show of being in good spirits up to the close of the day which was to Leo like the day of judgment, that nothing could be certain.

Sue could recall that after Leo had been seen to bed, obviously ill, on her return to the house before dinner, Maud had expressed a sort of satisfaction, pointing out that this accounted for the peculiarities of her sister's behaviour throughout the day. "Really one is glad to know it was _that_," she had exclaimed more than once.

She had also rallied Paul for his indifference on the subject. It appeared he had been out with Leo, and on such a raw evening he might have seen that it was rash and foolish of her not to keep within doors.

"But I suppose you thought as it wasn't _me_----?" she had wound up; and Sue, conscious that Sybil was watching also, owned that the triumphant smile by which the words were accompanied, made her strangely uncomfortable.

"And the next morning she pored over a new set of ill.u.s.trated papers,"

continued she; "it is odd that I should remember it all so clearly, but I do. What happened afterwards stamped it on my memory, no doubt. I racked my brains to think if Paul could have offended her in any way, and if a sudden angry impulse--you know poor Maud was apt to get angry, and to be very implacable too--but they seemed quite as friendly as usual. We had grown to think, Sybil and I, that Paul had not--not perhaps found Maud _all_ that he expected, and that sometimes he looked a little grave after they had been together. Sybil spoke to me about it, but we kept it to ourselves, as we fancied you saw nothing."

"Well?" said Leo, slowly. "Well?" She was drinking in every word.

"The next evening--the evening you were in bed--stop, let me consider: no, I don't think there was any palpable difference; nothing to attract attention, of _that_ I am sure. Maud had great command over herself. She told us as if it were an ordinary piece of news, that she had had a long visit from Val--but whether she intended Paul to take any notice of that, or not, I cannot tell. I cannot tell anything about that evening, because my own thoughts were rather taken up with you, and I was up in your room a good deal, you may remember?"