Leonore Stubbs Part 8

She and G.o.dfrey 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 alt.i.tude; 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 appet.i.te 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!" G.o.dfrey 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! G.o.dfrey 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 fl.u.s.tered 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. n.o.body'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 pa.s.s 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.