A DULL BREAKFAST-TABLE.
To her surprise, Leonore slept soon and soundly on her first night in
the vast, gloomy bedchamber wherein it was her father's pleasure that
she should be installed.
She had not expected to do so.
The room was known as the "Blue Room"; but years had faded the blue,
which now only stood out with any clearness in creases of the curtains,
or remote patches of carpet on which the light never fell. Otherwise a
dull grey prevailed.
Nevertheless Leo had been fond of the "Blue Room" in early days;
revelling in its mysterious depths, hiding in its capacious
hiding-holes, and, finest fun of all, making hay in its huge four-poster
with some little friend of her own age. It was an apartment so seldom
used, and its furniture was so shabby and out-of-date, that Sue would
readily accede to the little girls' petition to be despatched
thither--only exacting a promise that there should be no climbing of
window-sills, which promise had been broken, and confessed
honourably--whereupon Sue, who was herself a woman of honour, never once
mentioned window-sills again. The windows, deepset and high up in the
wall, with broad sills inviting to perch upon, only existed as roofs for
the cupboards beneath, once Leo had succumbed to temptation and gone
unpunished. "No, dear, there is no need for any more punishment," Sue
had said in her kindest accents,--and when Sue spoke like that, the
little saucy upstart Leonore, whom usually nothing could repress, would
be good for days.
Consequently the apartment had its associations; and under other
circumstances its new occupant would have found it pleasant enough to
look upon it as her own. But weary and dejected, with all the world in
shadow around her, it is scarcely to be wondered at that she should
shrink into herself, and look piteously up into Sue's face, as Sue
turned the handle of the door.
"Am I--am I to be here, Sue?"
"Father says so, dear."
"But, Sue, couldn't I--some little room--?"
"Oh, I think you will be very comfortable here, Leo; you will have
plenty of space for your belongings," she glanced at the array of
trunks,--"and you can always remain in undisturbed possession," summed
up Sue cheerfully. "The other spare rooms----"
"I never thought of _them_. My own little old room----" faltered Leo.
She had settled this with herself beforehand. Although it was on the top
storey, and in a somewhat despised quarter, she had loved her small
domain because it was hers and she might pull it about as she
chose,--most girls feel the same, and Leo was a very girl, and youthful
instincts were warm within her.
Sue, however, had received her orders on the point, and though they were
distasteful, she recognised in them an element of reasonableness.
"I am sorry, dear, but that would never do. You know what father's
wishes are. That you should be given a dignified position in the family;
and--and I think he explained why. He had thought the matter carefully
out before he fixed on this room for you. He does not like to be argued
with, Leo."
Leo resigned herself. She knew the tone of old, it conveyed, "I am
sorry, but I shall be firm"--it was the formal, precise, elder sister,
the general's mouthpiece, not the good, old, motherly Sue, who spoke.
Further resistance would be useless.
And now, alone, sitting on the great square sofa, with great square
chairs and massive receptacles on every side, the forlorn little figure
gazed about her with a heart that sank lower and lower. She was to
occupy a "dignified position in the family"? Did that mean that she was
still to be treated ceremoniously as in Godfrey's life-time? That she
was still to have that uneasy sense of being _company_ which had then
haunted her? Sue alone had led the way to her new abode--Maud and Sybil
having vanished elsewhere--and this in itself forboded ill. She sat
motionless, pondering.
In childhood the gap between herself and her elders had always been too
wide to be bridged even at its nearest point, which was Sybil--but she
had looked to her marriage hopefully. Then somehow, she could never
quite tell how, but although she could manage to play the hostess to her
sisters on apparently equal terms at Deeside, the old position remained
intact at Boldero Abbey. For all her gay outward bearing, Leo was of a
sensitive nature, and the girls--to herself she always called them "the
girls"--had only to take a matter for granted, for her to follow their
lead.
So that while it would have been joy untold to perceive the barriers
withdrawn, and to have been allowed to run in and out of Maud's room
and Sybil's room--she did not covet Sue's--in dressing-gown and
slippers, to have brushed her hair of nights along with them and talked
the talk that goes with that time-honoured procedure, Mrs. Godfrey
Stubbs had no more been accorded this privilege, for which she had
hungered ever since she could remember, than the little out-cast Leonore
had been. Indeed, she was kept even more steadily at bay--and we will
for a moment lift the veil for our readers and disclose why.
"It _isn't_ unkind," quoth Maud, on one occasion. "I wouldn't be unkind
for worlds, but it simply can't be done. Leo is no longer one of us; she
belongs to the Stubby people among whom she lives,--and if we were to
begin talking about them, we couldn't help letting out what we think--at
least, perhaps I could, but you couldn't." It was to Syb she spoke, and
Syb lifted her eyebrows.
"I daresay; I can't see any harm if I did. I should rather like to hear
about the Stubby people and their queerities."
"Not from Leo's point of view. She would not see what you call their
'queerities'. She takes them all _au serieux_."
"Are you sure she does? She must see they are different from the people
here, at all events; and----"
"How is she to see?" interrupted Maud quickly. "She never went anywhere
before her marriage. She had only been to one ball, and a few cricket
matches. Actually she had never once dined at a house in the
neighbourhood."
"If she had, she might not have been so ready to take Godfrey. I
couldn't have stood Godfrey as a husband myself, though I really don't
mind him as a brother-in-law; and I think it a little hard that Leo
should be tabooed."
"I tell you she isn't tabooed. It is for her own sake that it would be a
pity her eyes should be opened. She has got to mix in inferior society,
and why make her discontented with it?"
"All right, you needn't be excited. I am only rather sorry sometimes
when the child looks disappointed.--I say, I do think father ought not
to have been in such a hurry to marry her off," cried Sybil, with sudden
energy. "I _do_ think it. What good did it do? She's rich, and that's
all--for I don't count Godfrey. I don't believe she cares for him more
than she would for any other tolerably nice man who went for her as he
did. I don't believe----"
"Bother what you believe!" Maud arrested the flow; "the thing is that
we can't talk familiarly with Leo, as Leo now is. We can't let ourselves
go. You must see this for yourself? Why, only to-night when she and
Godfrey were so elated over the civility of their new 'Chairman,' and
seemed to expect us all to be astonished and impressed, because he is
such a bigwig and it was such a terrific condescension, I didn't dare to
look at father. I knew the unutterable contempt that filled his soul.
Condescension from an absolute nobody to one of us!"
"That's it. When you are at Deeside you are breathing a weird
atmosphere, and Leo thrives in it. She knows all her neighbours, and
expects you to know them. She took me once to an enormous reception at
the opening of some building or other and it was beyond words--the most
appalling women in the most appalling clothes--I told you about
them--don't you remember the apple-green satin hat with six feathers?
Well, I could hardly contain myself, but Leo saw nothing to laugh at.
She ran about all over the place, chattering to everybody, and could
hardly be got away, she was enjoying herself so much."
"I don't blame her," said Maud indulgently. "I really don't blame her.
How should she know any better, poor child?"
At the close of the discussion Leo's doom was sealed.
True, it was now reopened, and Maud conceded that by-and-by, perhaps,
when by degrees the recalcitrant had been weaned from her ways, and
taught to tread the paths of righteousness according to Boldero ideas,
her case might be reconsidered,--but as, for decency's sake, the
teaching could not be begun just yet, it was agreed that Leo should
receive her lighted candle and good-night kiss in the hall, as before.
It was due to accident, however, not to design, that the sisters for
whose fellowship our poor little heroine yearned, permitted her to be
escorted by Sue only to take possession of her new domain. A milliner's
box had arrived from London, and been brought up with Mrs. Stubbs'
luggage. Leo could not compete with that box. It was all important that
the new assortment of hats despatched by the Maison du Cram should be
smarter and more becoming than the first batch which had been
uncompromisingly rejected; and Maud, slipping out by one door, was
quickly followed by Sybil through the other--whereupon Sue also rose,
and said, "Come, Leo".
Here then was Leo, small, white-faced, black-robed, the most pitiable
little object, almost a parody on the name of widow, dumped down in the
"Blue Room" to rattle like a pea in a pod in its capacious depths.
She was indeed accustomed to a luxurious bedchamber, but then it was a
different kind of bedchamber. At Deeside the morning sun poured in
through large, single-paned windows, lightly curtained; and its rays
were reflected by white woodwork clamped by shining brass, and wallpaper
that glistened.
Into her new abode neither sun could enter, nor would have met with any
response had it done so. She looked dolorously round and round, and
tears stood in her eyes. Poor little girl, tears were never very far off
in those days.
And she must have thus sat for some time, and perhaps dozed off for a
minute or two, for a brisk tap at the door, and the bustling entrance of
a housemaid, admitted also the sound of the dressing gong, and both
seemed to follow close upon Sue's departing heels.
Dressing was an easy matter when there was no choice of attire and
adornments, and Leo's curly hair only needed to be combed through to
look as though it had been freshly arranged--so that though she had to
open her trunks, and had a moment's flurry before she could be certain
into which of these her solitary evening robe had been packed, she was
ready and downstairs before any one else.
The evening was got through somehow, and then there was the return march
through the long dim corridor to the antiquated apartment, and the
conviction that she should never be able to sleep in it, and then--? No
sooner had the weary little figure sunk down among the pillows and drawn
up the coverlid, than the sound, sweet slumber of youth and innocence
prevailed; and the mists were off the land and melting in the blue
October sky, long before Leo unclosed her eyes. Eventually she was
roused by the stable-clock striking eight beneath her window, and woke
to find the night was gone.
Have we said that Leo had a happy disposition? She had not merely that,
but a buoyant, recuperative, physical nature, which threw off every
adverse circumstance as a foreign element.
Even an ailment could not make her ill, even misfortune could not make
her miserable.
Experiencing either the one or the other she bent before it, but there
was a fount of bubbling vitality within, which it was impossible wholly
to repress.
So that when the little girl sat up in bed, and blinked her drowsy
eyes--still drowsy for all the long hours of dreamless, healthy
slumber--and when next she yawned and caught back a yawn in sudden
recognition of a familiar object unobserved before--and when again she
shook across her shoulders the thick plaits of hair on either side, and
pulled out the crumpled lace upon her nightgown cuffs, and finally
jumped up and ran to look what the day was like, it was perhaps as well
that nobody was there to spy upon the newly-made widow.
She actually laughed the next moment. Yes, she laughed as she sprang
upon the erst forbidden window-sill, and out of pure daring sat there.
Albeit a little creature, she was tall enough to have seen out without
even rising on tip-toe,--it was the sheer pleasure of doing what no one
could now stop her doing which prompted the action.
And then again she sighed. The immediate past rose before her, frowning,
though the old past tittered. She hung her head, ashamed of her
levity--and next her reflection in an opposite mirror kindled it afresh.
How comical she looked perched aloft with bare feet hanging down, like a
small white bird upon a rail! What a nice roost she had found--and it
would be nicer still if she sat sideways, with her back to the
shutters,--so, and her feet against the opposite shutters--so! The
broad, smooth seat would be an ideal reading place for summer evenings,
when the sun crept round to that side of the house, and began to
descend, as she could remember it did, over the ridge of beech trees
which belted the park below.
She could lock her door, of course. The room was her own, and even Sue
could not expect to dominate over what went on within her own room.
Besides--besides, she had almost forgotten that she was no longer under
Sue's thrall, and that yesterday Sue had observed a gentle deference
towards her.
That might pass--she hoped it would. If only she could be on the old
terms,--and yet not on the old terms! If only she might be Leo, and yet
not Leo! She tried to puzzle out the situation.
She knew indeed what she did not want, but could not define with any
exactitude what she did. Three years of affluence and independence had
to a certain extent left their mark, and she could not but own that it
would be unpalateable to find herself again in leading-strings. At
Deeside when a matter came under discussion, as often as not, Godfrey
would say, "Please yourself, little wife,"--or, if not, the little wife
was sure to be charmed with his decision. He was so much older and
wiser, that whatever he decreed was safe to be satisfactory in the long
run.
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.