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 flustered 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. Nobody'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 pass 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.
A fine day coming soon after this, Val prepared for action.
First of all he prepared his mind; had he anything else he wished to do?
Was there anything tempting in the way of sport to be had? He considered
and shook his head. His grandmother's shooting was limited, and he had
strained its capacity rather fully of late. The river was too full for
fishing. The hounds were not running that day. Accordingly, hey! for the
Abbey, and for what might come of it.
Thus much decided, what should he wear? No girl in her teens, no dandy
in his first London season was more serious over the great affair of his
clothes than this country fellow when occasion warranted. Worn and
frayed and weather-stained his daily homespun might be, but he had a
bill at the best tailor's in Bond Street which he never thought of
paying, and which his grandmother never thought of grudging. She quietly
annexed the bill, and Val heard no more of it.
He was thus well provided for emergencies like the present. He had thick
and thin suits, dark and light, loose and slightly shaped--he had just
received one of the last, of a delightful tawny brown colour, which he
had not yet worn. It had arrived a few hours after his last call on the
Bolderos, and the moment his eye fell upon it now, his mind was made up.
But though so prompt and decided on this, the most important point,
there remained the question of the tie,--and how many ties were
selected, tried, and found wanting before the first, which had been
contemptuously discarded as lacking in dash and originality, was
reconsidered, and eventually decided upon, it boots not to say.
Val had taste; and left to himself was nearly sure to come forth
triumphant from an ordeal in which taste and a desire to be in the first
fashion struggled for the mastery. Crimson and green and blue were
famous colours, but a quiet beech-brown of a darker shade than the suit
finished it off so harmoniously that he sighed consent, and stuck in a
fox-head pin without further ado. Gloves, hat, and stick were below, and
equipped with these he presented himself before his grandmother.
"Any commands, ma'am?"
"Commands?" said Mrs. Purcell, absently. "Commands, my dear?"
She would not make the mistake of appearing to understand too soon; if
bothered, poor Val was so apt to tire of a subject, and turn rusty on
its reiteration.
"I thought I might as well see what turns up," rejoined he, vaguely,
"take the dogs for a run, you know; and as it's a nice morning, perhaps,
I may meet people. I have made myself decent"--and he looked down
complacently, and advanced within her line of vision.
"A new suit, Val? Turn round, and let me see you. Hum--quite nice. Are
you going to the post-office? I have run out of stamps."
"I _was_ going the other way, but--oh, I'll get them;" Val brightened.
"I'll get them at Sutley" (Sutley was the Bolderos' village)--"and if
any of those girls are about, I'll--I'll see what turns up."
"I shall know where you are if you don't come back for luncheon, then."
Now, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, an expedition planned on
such hazy outlines would have come to grief, but strange as it may seem,
no sooner did Mr. Valentine Purcell, swinging along at a high rate of
speed--for he always walked as though furies were at his heels--enter
the main street of Sutley village, than he espied a solitary, small,
black figure advancing from the other end, and almost ere he could
believe his eyes, Leonore herself was smiling into them. "Why, Val?"
exclaimed she, "I am so glad to see you, Val."
"Well, you might have seen me before now." Suddenly Val felt aggrieved;
it was a way he had; "I'm sure I've called often enough!"--and he shook
hands rather coldly; not to be won over too soon.
"I am not supposed to be at home to people at present," said Leo,
simply. "They think I ought not,--but I was sorry when I heard it was
you the other day."
"Were you in the house?"--demanded he.
"Oh, yes; in the old schoolroom. I have my tea there when we are not by
ourselves. I--I don't dislike it." But her face told another tale. Val,
who had quite a brute instinct of sympathy, knew that she did dislike it
very much.
Tea was the only really pleasant meal at the Abbey; it was relieved of
the general's presence, and often of Sue's also--and during the last
month Leo had learnt to look forward to it.
A little quiver of the lips accompanied the above assertion, for of late
callers had been rather rife, and she had been banished so often that
she had come to dread the sound of the door-bell.
"I do think I needn't be classed as 'people';" pursued her old playmate,
but without the asperity of his former accents. "I've known you ever
since you were so high,"--indicating--"and--and I'm awfully sorry about
it all, you know."
It was only Val, Val whom nobody minded, but Leo, taken aback, flushed
to her brow.
"Oh, I say, ought I not to have said that? I'm such a rotter, I blurt
out with whatever comes first," stammered he, discomfited in his turn.
"Leo, you know I didn't mean it. There now, I suppose I oughtn't to call
you 'Leo'----" floundering afresh.
"Indeed you may, Val; and I know you meant nothing but what was kind;
only I--I am so unaccustomed to hearing--they never talk about me, and I
wish they would, oh, I _wish_ they would," her voice broke, but she
continued nevertheless: "Val, you don't know how hard it is--oh, what am
I saying?"--she stopped confused and panting, terrified at what she had
been led into.
"Look here," said Val, slowly, "you don't mind me, do you? You don't
need to care what you say before me?--_I_ shan't tell, of course I
shan't. They always used to be down upon you at home, and I suppose they
go on the same? Just you get it out to me, Leo," and he nodded
encouragingly.
By the end of half-an-hour, during which the two had wandered away from
the village street and the eyes of spectators, Leo had "got it out," and
if the truth were told, pretty thoroughly. Recollect how young, and
naturally frank, and in a sense absolutely friendless she was. And then
it was only Val--she felt almost as though she were speaking to a dog.
Certainly there was, as we said before, an element of canine sympathy in
the silent, solemn, appreciative air with which her companion listened.
He never interrupted. When he spoke, it was to utter a brief ejaculation
or to put a question, a leading question, one which gently turned the
lock a little more on the opening side. Sometimes he merely said,
"Well?"--but how comforting was that "Well"!
"You see Godfrey was so very good to me, and I do miss him so," sighed
the speaker at last.
It was perhaps hardly the way in which a devoted wife would have spoken
of a husband only six weeks dead, but it exactly expressed the truth.
Godfrey Stubbs had never been idealised, but he had been readily
accepted as a lover by a barely emancipated schoolgirl who did not know
what love was; and three serene, unimaginative years had been
contentedly passed under his fostering care.
Had he lived, and had children been born to the pair, it is easy to
conjecture the sort of woman Leonore would have developed into; as it
was, she had grown more mentally and spiritually in the past six weeks
than in the whole course of her previous existence.
And then came the passionate desire for expression, the helpless sense
of an inner burden too heavy to be borne alone. It was lucky it was
Valentine Purcell who came in Leo's way: the dam must have burst
somewhere.
"You won't tell any one, Val?"
"Rather not. I should think not. I should just say not, Leo." Fervour
gathered with each assurance.
"They wouldn't understand, would they?" faltered she.
"Of course they wouldn't. People never do," asseverated he.
"And you mustn't be vexed if I am still shut up when you come to see us,
because I know Sue means this to go on for ever so long. Sue thinks it
only proper, you know. She is not in the least unkind, she believes she
is doing just what I would wish, and she would be awfully ashamed of me
if I wished anything else," continued Leo, jumping across a puddle with
a freer and lighter step than she had come out with, or indeed trod
with, since coming back to the Abbey. "Up the bank, Val. Go first, and
I'll follow. Oh, no, we won't turn back; it is only here that the water
lies; I often come along this path, and it is quite dry directly you are
round the corner."
"You often come here? When? Do you come in the mornings, or
afternoons?"--he threw over his shoulder, still leading the way.
"I don't know. Whenever it's fine. Stop a moment; I'm caught;" and she
disengaged a sprawling bramble. "It's a pity I put on this skirt,"
continued Leo ruefully, examining an ugly cross-tear. "It's too good. I
only meant to go to the village."
"Well, but if I don't know when you come, how can I meet you here?"
persevered he, pursuing his own line of thought. "I can't hang about all
the time."
"Meet me? Oh!" She pondered, for it was a new idea. "I wonder, I suppose
you might meet me; but if they knew we had agreed beforehand----"
"Of course they're not to know. Sue would put a stopper on it at once."
Leo was silent.
"That needn't prevent us," continued her companion, holding out a hand
for her to spring into the path again. "If I'm not to see you anywhere
else, it's only fair----I say, you're a married woman, you can do as you
please."
"If I did it, I should _do_ it--but I shouldn't _hide_ it. I'll never do
anything I don't mean to tell about." It was a once familiar voice which
rang the words out, and the speaker shook back a flying curl and tucked
it in with a gesture of determination so absolutely that of the old Leo
that Val burst out laughing.
"Oh, you funny little girl!"
Leo however was upon her dignity at this.
"I don't think you ought to speak to me like that," said she, "although
you are to be my friend,"--for this had been agreed upon--"you must not
call me a 'little girl,' and, Val, only the minute before, you reminded
me that I was a married woman."
"You are such a queer mixture, Leo."
"I know. I can't help it." She was off her pedestal as fast as she had
hopped on. "I do try to remember, and at Deeside it was quite easy;
nobody thought of me as 'funny' or a 'girl' there--but here I seem to be
back again just as I was when I left! All the places are the same, the
places where we had our accidents and our happenings, and I _can't_ feel
different. Only, Val----" she hesitated.
"Well?" said he.
"There's Godfrey. I would not for worlds, not for _worlds_--it would be
horrible to seem to forget Godfrey. I don't forget him, you know; I
don't really. It is just that my spirits get up on a morning like this,
what with meeting you, and talking, and all,"--she stumbled on
incoherently,--"and you are so kind, and seem just to know what it is
like. Only you mustn't take advantage, Val,"--and she shook her head at
him with an air of gentle exhortation, "you mustn't encroach. And I
don't think I can meet you out-of-doors--no I can't"--(as he emitted an
expostulatory "Oh, I say!") "I have made up my mind. You always called
me your tyrant, don't you remember? Well, it's no use fighting against
your tyrant now."
"All right." A happy idea occurred, and Val made shift to acquiesce
indifferently. "Very glad to have had the pleasure of meeting you
to-day, and so forth; and now I must go back to grandmother, and I
daresay we shan't see each other again for months."
"Not--for--months?"
"Perhaps not this winter. I may be going away from home. I daresay I
shall. It's beastly dull at our place, and there's nothing going on
anywhere hereabouts."
"But, Val?"--the shot had told; she was plainly disconcerted. "Going
away?"--she faltered.
"Very likely I shall. I haven't made up my mind where, but----"
"But you never do go. What should you go for now?"
"A fellow must have change. Many fellows go abroad regularly. I know a
fellow who is going to hunt in Spain."
"What on earth should you do hunting in Spain, Val?"
She could not help it, she laughed outright at the idea. Val in Spain?
Val, who knew no country, no sport, no language but his own? A
glimmering of the truth dawned on Leo.
"I should think Spain was a very nice place to go to," observed she,
regaining her composure, "a very nice place indeed."
But their eyes met, and the farce could be kept up no longer.
"You want to make me feel that I should miss you, and I _should_ miss
you," cried Leo, finding her tongue first. "I should be very, very
sorry, now that we've met and met as old friends, and understand each
other so well, to think that all through the long winter months you were
to be far away,--so don't think of it, Val; you can't, you simply
mustn't. And though I can't and won't do anything secret, I shall tell
them at home straight out that I met you to-day--accidentally, for it
was accidentally--and that we had a talk--they can't be angry with me
for that,--and then, whether any one looks at me or not, I'll say
boldly: 'So in future there will be no need for me to get out of Val
Purcell's way'. There, that's settled. Here's your short cut, and I'll
run home across these fields. Good-bye, and--and thank you, Val."
She was off, and though for a moment he thought of running after her, a
glance at his watch stopped him.
It was already past one o'clock and though for himself he had nothing to
fear if late for luncheon, since his grandmother was accustomed to
unpunctuality, and would be only too ready to pardon it on the present
occasion, with Leo it was different.
Luckily she was nearer home than he was. Flying along as she was doing,
she might get in by a side door before the general stalked into the
dining-room, and he sincerely hoped she would. He watched till she was
out of sight. There was no one on earth whom Val disliked and feared as
much as Leo's father.
The latter could not indeed snub him and snap at him, as when he was a
boy--but it was almost worse to be looked at as though he were an
offensive object, and to be heard in sneering silence if he ventured
upon a remark. For all his witlessness Val, poor fellow, knew when he
was happy and comfortable and when he was not, and he did not need his
grandmother to tell him that he was no favourite with General Boldero.
"I only hope the old beast doesn't bully Leo," he muttered, as at last
he turned into the short cut, and all the way home he was sunk in
thought.
But he burst into Mrs. Purcell's presence hilariously. "I've had a jolly
good time, ma'am. Sorry to be late, but I was walking with Leonore."
"With Leonore? You really did?--how odd that you should happen to meet!"
The old lady, who had begun excitedly, checked herself, and assumed a
cheerful, every-day air. "You fell in with the sisters on the road, I
suppose?"
"Not the sisters. Only Leo. I ran into her in the middle of the village,
and she was awfully nice and friendly; so then we went off for a walk
together."
"How nice! Just the morning for a pleasant walk."
"Beastly wet and dirty underfoot though. Look at my boots"--and he
looked himself. "We got into a regular bog once."
"You left the high road? You should not have done that." (Delighted that
he had.)
"Went along the lane to Prickett's Green, and got into the woods there,"
said he, helping himself to cold pheasant, and looking about for
adjuncts. "I knew you wanted me to do the civil, so I told her I had
nothing else on hand, and we might as well have a good tramp. But we
didn't really get very far, though we pottered on and on, and she had to
skurry at the last to be home in time."
"Did you--did she--does Leo seem changed? Or did you find your old
playmate what she always was?"
"Should never have known she had been away. She doesn't look a day
older."
"But altered otherwise, perhaps? Marriage does sometimes--" and she
paused suggestively.
"Oh, hang it, yes; Leo's quite the married woman," supplied he,
decidedly. He knew it was a lie, but told himself he meant to say it. "I
suppose they're always a bit pompous, aren't they?"
"Pompous? Do you mean that that dear little innocent-faced thing has
grown pompous? Impossible, Val."
"It's the correct thing, I suppose, ma'am. Once when she thought I was
rather presuming--I'm sure I meant no harm--she regularly jumped upon
me!"
"Be careful, my dear, if Leo is like that. Being left rich and
independent while yet so young, may have turned her head a little. Did
she--ahem! talk about her affairs at all?"
"Affairs?" ("Now, what the deuce does she mean by 'affairs'?" thought
he.)
"Did she speak of what she meant to do? Is she thinking of remaining in
these parts? Or has she any other plans?"
"If she has, she didn't tell them me." Val considered and shook his
head. "No, I don't believe she said a word of the kind. Besides what
plans could she have, poor little----"
"Not 'poor'". Mrs. Purcell smiled significantly. "You don't seem to
understand, my dear. Leonore Stubbs is a very rich widow, and will be
immensely sought after. It would be a great pity if she could not settle
in the neighbourhood, and--and join the hunt, as you said yourself."
"Aye, to be sure. I forgot about that; but you told me not to spring it
upon her too soon."
"True. But you might have discovered if she was--however, apparently she
has no immediate intention of flying away."
Reassured on the point, Mrs. Purcell let well alone. She had no
conception that anything could be hid from her, and thought she divined
that while all had gone well, even beyond her hopes so far, the two whom
she would fain have seen made one, had restricted their _tete-a-tete_ to
the discussion of conventional and superficial topics. Val had even
called Leonore "pompous". That meant the young lady was aware of her own
value, and if so----?
There remained however this comfort; in her present situation the
youthful widow could not go into society, and Val, being first in the
field, might, to borrow his own phraseology, catch the hare before the
other hounds were on the scent.
Val on his part chuckled likewise. Secretive as the grave could Val be
when he chose; and one thing was clear to him: Leonore was trying to
play the part required of her by her family and the world, and he alone
knew that it was a part.
He would not betray her. Not all his grandmother's wiles should draw
from him a picture of that confiding little face--sorrowful enough at
times certainly, and yet not sorrowful in the approved fashion, not
hopeless, not utterly cast down. "Just looking as if she needed some one
to be kind to her," ruminated he; "and when she laughed--" he paused and
wagged his head, "Lord, it was a good thing nobody but me heard Leo
laugh!"