A KNIGHT TO THE RESCUE.
"No, you don't--and don't you think it."
Somebody, and that a formidable personage, had been a witness of the
scene just narrated.
We would not for a moment call poor Val Purcell an eavesdropper _au
naturel_, but he certainly had a talent for picking up by the wayside
things which did not exactly belong to him.
Val, as we know, was not quite like other people.
It was only now and then that he showed this; in the ordinary give and
take of society he passed muster well enough, and no one would more
readily have spurned the notion of doing what others did not do--that
being the poor boy's code of conduct,--yet he is not to be hardly judged
if occasionally it failed him at a pinch. Wherefore if when passing
through the Abbey woods on the afternoon in question, he heard voices
and crept near to peep and listen, let it be believed that the feeling
which arrested his footsteps was in its way innocent. His curiosity was
roused, and he had a hearty sympathy with sylvan lovers; so if Jack and
Jill were courting, there was no reason why he should not see which Jack
and Jill it was? He would not tell tales, not he.
But when, instead of the expected rustic figures, his starting eyes
beheld Paul Foster and--not Paul's betrothed--not the girl with whom
alone he had a right to wander in that dim solitude at that mystic
hour--but Leonore, Leonore who was nothing, or should have been nothing
to her sister's lover, curiosity gave place to another feeling.
So how? He would spy if he chose.
He would jolly well discover what the devil those two were about? They
were up to no good hiding away by themselves in the woods, and,
damnation! holding each other's hands.
That beast Paul--he had always thought him a beast--no, he hadn't, but
he did now--so he was playing a double game, was he? Engaged to Maud,
and flirting with Leo under the rose?
Leo could flirt, of course; she had made a fool of himself once,--but he
had got it into his head that she rather disliked Paul;--she had never
cracked him up as the rest did,--oh, she was a cunning, crafty little
jade, and he would put a spoke in her wheel, be hanged if he didn't!
The undergrowth was so thick at the point to which Paul had half led,
half dragged his trembling companion at this juncture, that it was easy
for a third person to draw very near unperceived,--and though much that
now passed was unintelligible to one not possessed of the key of the
mystery, Val heard enough.
He did not indeed hear any love-making,--but instinct guided him
straight to the mark which another by reasoning might have failed to
reach. He was as fully convinced that Maud had been supplanted as if he
had heard the fact avowed a hundred times; and though he stole off,
afraid to linger, before Paul's final adjuration which might have
puzzled and mystified him, he had got as much as his brain could carry,
and got it in very good order.
The next day he presented himself at Boldero Abbey. His plan of
campaign, conned over and over with ever-increasing wrath and valour,
was not confided to gran. Gran had never liked Maud, and in old days he
would often affect a hopeless passion for the latter for the sake of
getting amusement out of the old lady. Then an argument would ensue, and
he very nearly felt the passion. He could not see that one Boldero was
not as good as another; and as he could not be bluntly told that Leonore
had money while her sister had not, he held to it that gran was
prejudiced to the point of injustice. Accordingly he kept his own
counsel now, and plumed himself thereon mightily.
And Fortune favoured him; for though all the ladies were at home, the
one he sought was by herself in the drawing-room, when he was ushered
in.
"I say, it's you I want," said Val, immediately. "Look here, Maud, I
want to see you alone, and without any one's knowing. Where are the
others?"
"Sue and Sybil are out----"
"But I was told they were in!"
"That's Grier's laziness. He has grown intolerably lazy of late. As he
is under notice to go, he won't put himself out of his way for any one
of us, and says 'At Home' or 'Not at Home,' just as it suits him,
without taking the trouble of finding out."
"Where are they gone?" demanded Val, as usual diverted from his course
by any chance observation. Despite the purpose with which he was big, he
could not help feeling inquisitive as to which house in the
neighbourhood was being honoured.
"Only to the rectory," said Maud, indifferently; "but they are there,
and there they will stay for ages. It is a sort of farewell visit. What
do you want to see me about?"
"Stop a bit. There's Leo. Is she--where is she?"
"In bed. She caught a chill yesterday going out in the damp."
"You are sure she is not out in the damp again, to-day?" said Val,
significantly, and gave his companion what he considered a meaning look.
"Hey? Are you sure of that, Maud?"
"As I was with her five minutes ago, I think I may be," retorted Maud,
and convinced by this preamble that Leo, not herself, was the real
object of the visit, she was less gracious than before. "I thought you
said it was me you wanted?"--she threw out, however.
"So it is. I don't want Leo--not a bit. I don't want her ever again,
that's more. You'd say the same if you'd seen what I saw. Give me time,
and I'll tell you all about it. That's what I came for."
"Really, Val, I--it's not the thing, you know, to come to one of us with
complaints of the other. If you have any fault to find with Leo, you
must say so to herself."
"You wait till you hear. You won't be so keen for me to go to Leo----"
"But I really can't," said Maud, rising. Her pride revolted at the idea
of being the confidant of some silly quarrel, which did not concern her
in the slightest. "I don't know anything about it, and I don't want to
know. Do talk of other things."
"What? When I came here on purpose----?"
"Hush,--you needn't be excited. Of course if you are determined to
speak, you had better speak and be done with it; but I warn you I shan't
take your part, or any one's part----"
"As long as you don't take Paul's part," cried he, with a flash of
inspiration, "the rest doesn't matter."
"Paul's part?" For very amazement Maud fell into her chair again, and
stared at the speaker as though he had struck her a blow. "What--what
did you say? Did you say 'Paul's part'?"
"Yes, I did--I did say just that. I told you you'd jolly well better
hear me out instead of being so infernally supercilious. Oh, I say, I'm
sorry I said that, Maud; I'm--I'm sorry for you altogether."
"You speak in enigmas, Val,"--but her laugh was a little forced; his
earnestness and persistency told; and then there was "Paul's part"?
"He is--but look here, you needn't mind what he is. Don't you take it to
heart----"
"I know what Paul is, thank you," haughtily.
"That's just what you don't----"
"Excuse me, Val----"
"Excuse me, Maud----"
"You are impertinent now, I shall listen no longer."
"Listen no longer? You haven't even _begun_ to listen. Confound it, you
shouldn't treat a fellow like this, when a fellow is doing all he can
for you, and feels for you as--as I do. You know I've always been fond
of you, Maud," softening, "and I've come to say that if you'll marry me
instead----"
"Have you gone crazy, Val?" But vanity whispered a flattering solution
of the problem, and his ear detected an opening. To the same suggestion
Leo had cried "Nonsense!" and although affronted at first, he had
ultimately accepted the "Nonsense!" with philosophy,--but he had weapons
in reserve now, and would soon show that he was not "crazy". No, damn
it, he was not "crazy". The idea!
With the rush of a torrent he told his tale.
"And you saw this--and you heard this?" said Maud, at last. "You did not
dream it? You--you are sure you did not dream it?"
"I'll take my solemn Davy I saw it all, and heard it all. Leo is a
little cat; and as for Paul, to think that he should dare--but I say,
Maud, you will checkmate him, won't you?"
"Hush;" she waved him back, for he had pressed forward. "Let me
think--let me think. If this is true--but it isn't, it can't be
true,--" and she pressed her hands upon her forehead. A thousand
trifles, insignificant in themselves, which had secretly perplexed and
chafed her spirit of late, rushed back upon her memory. Paul had lost
the air of a happy lover. He had become moody, silent, solitary in
his habits. He had, it is true, obeyed to the strictest extent the
dictates of custom, but there were moments which in the retrospect
maddeningly bore out Val's accusation. He had played--he was still
playing her false? She was, or would be, a laughing-stock? She quailed
and faltered.
"Take me," urged Val. "It's not--not only for your own sake, though of
course that's what I'm thinking of most, but----"
"I must know first. I must make sure of the truth first."
"If you do, you'll give the show away. You ought never to let out that
you know anything, and throw him over before he throws you. Then--there
you are!"
"You mean that I must not unveil Paul's treachery? That he is to go
unpunished?"
"You can't cut off your nose to spite your face, you know. Once you have
a row with Paul the fat is in the fire, and it will be all over the
place that he's jilted you."
"And for my own sister;" said she, bitterly.
She longed to rush to Leo, to Paul, to both severally or together, and
denounce them. She could scarce restrain herself from proclaiming her
wrongs upon the housetops, but--she paused and looked thoughtfully at
Val. There was no doubt about Val's integrity. Up to his lights he was
universally accounted "straight," and she need never fear being tricked
and cheated a second time. He had acted well by her at this crisis, and
to reward him? The idea grew in favour.
On the other hand, how terrible would be her position if she
refused--and Position was a god she worshipped. She would be talked
about, pointed at, and worst of all, pitied. Her ignominy--she could not
face it.
"I say, Maud, you know I am fond of you?"
Yes, poor boy, he was fond of her; she had always felt complacently
secure of his fondness, though occasionally nettled of late by
misgivings as to his having transferred his first allegiance elsewhere.
Leo had been bidden to Claymount oftener than she; and gran had made
much of the younger sister, whereas she had always been cool and
distant to the elder.
Maud, in her slow way, had resented this, and given herself considerable
airs towards the old lady after her engagement. To triumph over
her--over everybody--vindicate her own charms, and prove to the world
the unswerving devotion of her old admirer would be something, would at
any rate be better than nothing.
She sighed gently, and emboldened, he pressed his suit. A long interview
closed with this decision. If satisfied as to the truth of his
statements--but satisfied she must be--she would send for him next day,
and--and do whatever he asked her.
"That's right, that's all I want;" his face shone with satisfaction. "Of
course you wouldn't have wanted me if you had had Paul--not that Paul is
any shakes now, (and whatever he is, he's not for you," in parenthesis,)
"and--and I'm your man. I'll see you through, Maud; trust me."
"You will make all the arrangements?--that is, if I send for you?"
"Won't I? I had the whole thing in my head when I came here, and I'll
work it out again going home. I'm a bit flustered just now, but you'll
see if I don't do the square thing. We'll be off by the first train for
London town and a registry office--but don't I just wish it was Gretna
Green, and a gallop through the night! I have often thought what a jolly
skidaddle one might have behind four horses to Gretna Green."
"Go, now;" said Maud, authoritatively. "But if I send word to come,
Come."
And the message went, "Come".
* * * * *
Mr. Anthony Boldero and Mr. John Purcell were putting their heads
together in the window of a Pall Mall club. The two gentlemen had a
subject in common to discuss; and as old acquaintances, who had recently
become new neighbours, they had a great deal to say and said it freely.
"A most disgraceful business;" the one bald head wagged, and the other
responded. "'Pon my soul," asserted Mr. Purcell, vivaciously, "it is no
wonder it killed the old lady. She might have hung on long enough, but
for that. Although she was seventy-seven. Seventy-seven. A ripe age,
Boldero."
He was only a little over sixty himself, and had often wondered how long
his step-mother was going to keep him out of the property? It had for
years been a secret grievance that a second wife should have had its
tenancy for life, and made her descendant, a poor creature like Val,
its master in appearance if not in fact. He could not therefore affect
to be inconsolable.
Was it possible that the "disgraceful business" had had anything to do
with General Boldero's demise?--he queried next. Could he have known, or
suspected anything?
Mr. Anthony Boldero thought not. The general had been as cock-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 unencumbered, 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 ship 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
shielded 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
ejaculations 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
passage." 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_".