Читать книгу Leonore Stubbs - Lucy Bethia Walford - Страница 1

"She can't come."

"But, father–"

"She shan't come, then—if you like that better."

"But, father–"

"Aye, of course, it's 'But father'—I might have known it would be that. However, you may 'But father' me to the end of my time, you don't move me. I tell you, Sukey, you're a fool. You know no more than an unhatched chicken—and if you think I'm going to give in to their imposition—for it's nothing else—you are mistaken."

"I was only going to say–"

"Say what you will, say what you will; my mind's made up; and the sooner you understand that, and Leonore understands that, the better. You can write and tell her so."

"What am I to tell her?"

"What I say. That she has made her own bed and must lie upon it."

"But you gave your consent to her marriage, and never till now–"

"I tell you, girl, you're a fool. Consent? Of course I gave my consent. I was cheated—swindled. I married my daughter to a rich man, and he dies and leaves her a pauper! Never knew such a trick in my life. And you to stand up for it!"

General Boldero and his eldest daughter were alone, as may have been gathered, and the latter held in her hand, a black-edged letter at which she glanced from time to time, it being obviously the apple of discord between them.

It had come by the afternoon post; and the general, having met the postman in the avenue, and himself relieved him of the old-fashioned leathern postbag with which he was hastening on, and having further, according to established precedent, unlocked the same and distributed the contents, there had been no chance of putting off the present evil hour.

Instead there had been an instant demand: "What says Leonore? What's the figure, eh? She must know by this time. Eh, what? A hundred and fifty? Two hundred? What? Two hundred thousand would be nothing out of the way in these days. Poor Goff wasn't a millionaire, but money sticks to money and he had no expensive tastes. He must have been quietly rolling up,—all the better for his widow, poor child. Little Leonore will scarcely know what to do with a princely income, and we must see to it that she doesn't get into the hands of sharpers and fortune-hunters–" and so on, and so on.

Then the bolt fell. The "princely income" vanished into the air. The problematic two hundred thousand was neither here nor there, nor anywhere. As for "Poor Goff," General Boldero was never heard to speak of his defunct son-in-law in those terms again.

In his rage and disappointment at finding himself, as he chose to consider it, outwitted by a man upon whom he had always secretly looked down, the true feelings wherewith he had regarded an alliance welcomed by his cupidity, but resented by his pride, escaped without let or hindrance.

"What did we want with a person called Stubbs? What the deuce could we want with him or any of his kind but their money?" demanded he, pacing the room, black with wrath. "I never should have let the fellow set foot within these doors if I had dreamed of this happening. I took him for an honest man. What? What d'ye say? Humph! Don't believe a word of it; he must have known; and as for his expecting to pull things round, that's all very fine. It's a swindle, the whole thing." Then suddenly the speaker stopped short and his large lips shot out as he faced his daughter: "Does Leonore say she hasn't a penny?"

"She says she will have to give up everything to the creditors. I suppose," said Susan, hesitating, "everything may not mean—I thought marriage settlements could not be touched by creditors?"

"No more they can, that's the deuce of it."

"Then–?" She looked inquiringly, and strange to say, the fierce countenance before her coloured beneath the look.

If he could have evaded it, General Boldero would have let the question remain unanswered, although it was only Sue, Sue who knew her parent as no one else knew him—before whom he made no pretences, assumed no disguises—who had now to learn an ugly truth;—as it was, he shot it at her with as good an air as he could assume.

"She has no settlement, damn it."

"No settlement?" In her amazement the open letter fell from the listener's hands. She recollected, she could never forget, the glee with which her father had rubbed his hands over the "clinking settlement" he had anticipated from Leonore's wealthy suitor, nor the manner in which it had insinuated itself into every announcement of the match. No settlement? She simply stared in silence.

"If you will have it, it was my doing," owned General Boldero reluctantly; "and I could bite my tongue off now to think of it! But what with four of you on my hands, and the rents going down and everything else going up, I had nothing to settle—that is, I had nothing I could conveniently settle, and it might have been awkward, uncommonly awkward. I could hardly have got out of it if Godfrey had expected a quid pro quo. And he might—he very well might. A man of his class can't be expected to understand how a man of ours has to live decently and keep up appearances while yet he hasn't a brass farthing to spare. I'll say that for Godfrey Stubbs, he seemed sensible on the point when I tried to explain; and—and somehow I was taken in and thought: 'You may be a bounder, but you are a very worthy fellow'."

He paused, and continued. "Then he suggested—it was his own idea, I give you my word for it—that we should have no greedy lawyers lining their pockets out of either of our purses. What he said was—I've as clear a recollection of it as though it were yesterday—'Oh, bother the settlement, I'll make a will leaving everything I possess to Leonore,'—and I, like a numskull, jumped at the notion. It never occurred to me that the will of a business man may be so much waste paper. His creditors can snap their fingers at any will. That's what Leonore means. She's found it out, and flies post haste to her desk to write that she must come back here."

"So she must."

"So she must not. I won't have it. The whole neighbourhood would ring with it."

"By your own showing," said Sue quietly, "in order to free yourself from the necessity of making any provision on your part when the marriage took place, you precluded–" but she got no further.

"Provision on my part?" burst forth her father, who was now himself again, and ready to browbeat anybody; "what need had the girl of any provision on my part? She was marrying a fellow with tenfold my income. The little I could have contrived to spare would have been a mere drop in the bucket to him, and I should have been ashamed to mention it. I can tell you I felt monstrous uncomfortable having to approach the subject at all; and never was more thankful than when the young man, like the decent fellow I took him then to be, pitchforked the whole business overboard."

"All the same, it is quite plain," persevered she, "that it was with your consent and approbation that Leonore had no money settled on her, so that it could not be taken from her now;—and that being the case, you have no choice but to provide for her in the future."

"You mean to say that it's due to me your sister's left a pauper on our hands?"

"That's exactly what I do mean. And you must either give her enough to enable her to live properly elsewhere, or receive her back among us, as she herself suggests. Besides which, you must make her the same allowance you make the rest of us," and the speaker rose, closing the controversy.

Only she could have carried it on to such a close, indeed only General Boldero's eldest daughter—and only daughter by his first marriage—would have engaged in it at all. The younger girls, of whom there were still two unmarried and living at home, never, in common parlance, stood up to their father—though, if he had not been as blind as such an autocrat is wont to be, he would have easily detected that they had their own ways of rendering his tyrannical rule tolerable, and that while he fancied himself the sole dictator of his house, he had in fact neither part nor lot in its real existence.

What is more easily satisfied than the vanity of stupid importance always upon its perch? The general's habits and hours were known, also the few points upon which he was really adamant. He was proud, and he was mean. He liked to live pompously, and fare luxuriously,—he made it his business to cut off every expense that did not affect his own comfort, or dignity. But that done, other matters could go on as they chose for him.

So that while it was not to be thought of that Boldero Abbey should exist without a full staff of retainers without and within, it was all that his eldest daughter—the family manager—could do to get her own and her sisters' allowances paid with any regularity—and whereas the stables were well supplied with horses, and a new carriage was no uncommon purchase, it was as much as any one's place was worth to hire a fly from the station on an unexpectedly wet day.

When, exactly three years before the date on which our story opens, there had appeared on the scene a suitor for the hand of the youngest Miss Boldero, in the shape of a rich young Liverpool gentleman—General Boldero always talked of young Stubbs as "a Liverpool gentleman," and his hearers knew what he meant—he was accorded a free hand in reality, though demur was strewn on the surface like cream on a pudding.

"I have had to give in," quoth the general with a rueful countenance—but he spread the news right and left, and Leonore was kissed and bidden make the "Liverpool gentleman" a good wife.

Whereupon Leonore laughed and promised. Godfrey Stubbs was her very first admirer, and she thought him as nice as he could be. At first the Boldero girls had been somewhat surprised at the encouragement shown a stranger to come freely among them, but when it became clear that Mr. Godfrey Stubbs was a privileged person, they found it wonderfully pleasant to have a man about the place, where a pair of trousers was a rare sight—and the inevitable happened.

The engagement concluded, Leonore trod on air. She who had never been anywhere, who was never supposed to have a wish or thought of her own, was all at once a queen. Godfrey assented to everything, and of himself drew up the plan—oh, glorious! of a prolonged wedding tour. His little bride was to go wherever she chose, see the sights she selected, and—shop in Paris. She was actually to stay a whole fortnight in Paris to buy clothes.

"Very right, very proper;" nodded her father to this.

He was so smiling and genial over everything at this juncture that Leonore's tongue wagged freely in his presence, and on hearing the above she turned to him with a saucy air, which under the circumstances he found quite pretty and pleasant:—

"So you see, there will be no need to dive deep into your pocket, father, and my things will be ever so much smarter and more up-to-date besides."

"Ha, ha, ha!"—laughed the general.

It all came back to him now—all that rainbow period, which had just dissolved into the grim blackness of night. He could see the merry little chit—(as he called her then)—rustling in her new-found state like a puffed-out Jenny Wren; he could hear her calling to Godfrey over the stairs, and after him across the lawn; most distinctly of all, there rose before his mind's eye the wedding day, and the round baby face solemnised for the occasion, with its large eyes and pursed-up lips, whence emanated the bold "I will" which startled him by its loudness and clearness,—and yet again his own sigh of satisfaction as the well-known march pealed out, and the pair walked down the aisle, and the thing was done.

The thing was done, and could not be undone—he was in spirits to play his part gloriously.

"Terrible business this, Lady St. Emeraud. Poor little girl, to have to be called 'Mrs. Stubbs,' eh, what? Oh, bless you, yes; it's her own doing, entirely her own doing—quite a love match,—but, well–" and there was a shrug of the shoulders, which, however, neither took in Lady St. Emeraud nor any one else.

"The horrid old wretch is simply gloating, and all the other girls may follow Leonore's example with his blessing;" was her ladyship's comment. "Stubbs—Tubbs—or Ubbs—if there is money enough, come one, come all to the Abbey." But the speaker turned with a more kindly air to the white-robed figure of the youthful bride, and wished her well with a kiss—and even that kiss added to the sting of General Boldero's present ruminations.

He had woven it into his remarks on many subsequent occasions. He called Leonore "Lady St. Emeraud's pet". And he would put himself in her ladyship's way when he had news of her "Pet," and tell the news with an air of its being of special interest. "Hang it all, her ladyship ought to have been the child's godmother, if we had had our wits about us;" he had exclaimed within the home circle.

What would Lady St. Emeraud say now? She was a woman of the world, and although she might choose to take up a girl after a fashion—(even he could not magnify the passing notice bestowed into more, since it never led to anything further)—she certainly would not care to—"I wish we could keep this fiasco from her knowledge," he muttered.

Had it been possible, he would have dropped the hapless young widow out of sight and ken, like a pebble in a pond. Her name should never have been mentioned by him or his,—and if by others, he would have replied curtly and conclusively that she had gone to live with her husband's people.

Confound it all, there must be some people to hang on to? It had of course been a great point at the beginning of the connection that young Stubbs stood alone in the world, and his not having a soul belonging to him had been emphasised as one of the assets of the match,—but with the new change of affairs, surely some vulgar old uncle or cousin could be unearthed to be made use of?

His auditor, however, had steadily shaken her head. She did not repudiate the suggestion on any ground other than that of its impossibility—but on this she took her stand with that accurate knowledge of her father which provided her influence over him.

He had just yielded the point, and she had mooted the idea of receiving her sister back to the home of her childhood, when we are admitted to hear the explosive "She can't come," with which our chapter opens.

We know how the battle went, and to what was due the victory, if such it could be called, on the part of Miss Boldero. She had discovered a secret—a shabby secret which the general had hitherto been careful to lock tight within his own breast—and armed with this she could do as she chose about Leonore—but her triumph cost her dear.

No one would have believed how dear. No one would have supposed that the person who of all others knew the ill-conditioned old soldier best, who knew him in and out and through and through, could retain for so poor a creature a spark of feeling other than that engendered by the tie of blood. To Maud and Sybil their father was simply "He,"—and to catch him out, or catch him tripping on any occasion, the best fun imaginable—but their half-sister suffered from every exposure, and when possible hid the offence out of that charity which is love.

She was not a clever woman, she was in some respects a fool. People would exclaim, "Oh, that Miss Boldero!" on finding which of the three it was who had been met and talked with. There was nothing worth hearing to be got out of poor old Sue. No gossip, no chatter—not even sly details of the general's "latest" wherewith her sisters were willing to regale their friends. Sue was dull as ditch-water and silent as the grave where family affairs were concerned.

She was not ill-looking, nay, she was handsome, as were all the Bolderos; and, curiously, she was better turned-out than the younger ones, for she had the knack of suiting herself in her clothes, which they had not,—but with it all, with her good appearance and respectable air, she belonged to the ranks of the uninteresting, and the weight she carried with her father was voted unaccountable.

No one, however, disputed it; and when the two withdrew together no one followed.

"Well, what does Leo say?" demanded Maud, who with Sybil had been lying in wait for their half-sister while the conversation above narrated was going on in the library. "What a time you have been! You might have known Syb and I were on thorns to hear what was in that great fat letter? Where is she going to live? Or is she going to travel? And is she going to invite one of us to go with her? If she does–"

"It ought to be me," struck in Sybil eagerly. "I am nearest her age, and Leo and I were always pals. I shouldn't at all mind going with her."

"Which of us would? It would be splendid. Can't you speak?" to Sue. "You are such a slow coach,—and surely you might have broken loose before, when you knew we were waiting."

"You have been nearly an hour;" Sybil glanced at the clock.

"We thought you might have called us in," added Maud.

"Anyhow, do for heaven's sake let us have it out now," continued Sybil impetuously. She had been giving little tweaks at the letter in her sister's hand, and a faint apprehension crept into her accents as she found it firmly withheld; "and don't look so owl-like. There is nothing to be owl-like about, I suppose?"

Hitherto neither had noted Sue's expression; now for the first time they simultaneously paused long enough to enable her to open her lips.

"I am afraid you will be disappointed," she said slowly. "I am so sorry to tell you, but—but things are not as you suppose. Poor Godfrey–" she paused.

"Poor Godfrey, well, poor Godfrey?"

Both exclaimed at once, and each alike made a movement of impatience.

"He had been very unfortunate of late. He had—speculated. He–"

"We don't care twopence about him, get on."

"He has been unable to leave Leonore–"

"Never mind what he has been unable to do—what has he been able?"

"He was ruined," said Sue at last, in a dull, matter-of-fact tone. "It appears he did not himself know it, for which Leonore is very thankful—but though he died in the belief that he was going to be richer than ever, when his affairs came to be looked into–"

"Oh, how long you are in telling it. You do love to harangue;" with a sudden petulance Sybil shook her sister's shoulder and seized the letter, whose perusal was the work of a minute.

"So that's how the cat jumps!" quoth she, suddenly as cool as she had been warm before. "Poor brat! Well, it will be nice to have her here."

"Here?" ejaculated Maud. "Is she coming here? To live?"

"Even so. Isn't she, Sue? Of course she is. She can't help it. Though, I say—no wonder you were ages in the library—how does he take it? Oh, you need not pretend, my dear, we can imagine the scene. Our revered parent is not given to mincing matters, and to have Godfrey Stubbs, his dear bloated son-in-law, collapse like a pricked balloon is rough on him. He was so pleased—that's to say he took poor Goff's death so very philosophically, that one knew perfectly how he felt. The money and not the man—it was an ideal consummation. He would have condoled with his poor little Leo, and petted and pampered her—and grinned whenever he was alone. She might have come to live with us then——"

"A nice jumble you are making of it." It was Maud who interposed, with a vexed face. "It is nothing but a huge joke to you—but upon my word, I don't see a pleasant time ahead for any of us. The bare sight of Leo will be a perpetual grievance, and we shall all reap the benefit."

By the evening's post, however, Leo was bidden to come.