Leonore Stubbs Part 36

Mr. Anthony Boldero thought not. The general had been as c.o.c.k-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 unenc.u.mbered, 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 s.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+elded 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 e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns 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 pa.s.sage." 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.