Leonore Stubbs. Lucy Bethia Walford

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СКАЧАТЬ in the eyes of the man of business—but her own people would feel differently.

      Godfrey had always been treated well, indeed made rather a fuss about at Boldero Abbey. Her father would run down the steps to meet the carriage which brought the young couple from the station on a visit. His hearty, "Well, here you are!" would accompany the opening of the door by his own hand. Then there would be an embrace for herself, and the further greeting of a pleased and affectionate host for her husband.

      The pleasant bustle of welcome outside would be amply followed up within doors, where her sisters would cluster round, making as much of Godfrey as of herself—perhaps even a little more—remembering his tastes, his proclivities, his love of much sugar and plenty of cream in his tea, his partiality for warmth and the blaze of a roaring fire. "Ah, you Liverpool gentlemen, you know what comfort is!"—the general would jocularly exclaim, the while both hands pressed his son-in-law down into his own armchair. "I like to stand;" he would protest,—but Leonore had a suspicion that he did not like to stand for most people.

      Godfrey was a favourite; for Godfrey there would be horses and dogcarts at command, keepers and beaters in the shooting season, (when such visits annually took place), and elaborate luncheons and dinners. "We don't do much in the way of entertaining, you know," the general would explain casually, having delivered himself on the subject to Sue, beforehand—("Hang it all, he can't expect that—but he shall have everything else, everything that we can do for him ourselves")—"We don't go in for that sort of thing, except now and again,—but after all, a family gathering is more agreeable to us all, I take it, eh, Godfrey? That's what you and Leo come for, not to be bothered by a parcel of strangers you know nothing about?"

      But if strangers, i.e., old neighbours whom Leo remembered from her youth up, and whom she would have liked very well to meet again, if these did accidentally cross the path of the Bolderos and their guests, nothing could be handsomer than the way in which Godfrey Stubbs was presented by his father-in-law. Godfrey would tell his wife about his meeting with Lord Merivale or Sir Thomas Butts with an air of elation. "Nice fellows; so chatty and affable." Once he let fall the latter word in public, and nobody winced openly,—so that Leo, who had often heard it in her married home, and never dreamed of thinking it odd, listened and smiled in all innocence.

      It must be remembered that she had barely emerged from the schoolroom when Godfrey Stubbs carried her off as his bride, and that when the last blow fell, and there was a sudden demand on the forlorn little creature for qualities she either did not possess or was not conscious of possessing, she only felt with a kind of numb misery that it was all strange and terrible, and that if Godfrey had been there to help her—and a burst of tears would follow.

      But at least she was going home; she had never yet got quite over the feeling that Boldero Abbey was "home," and always spoke of it as such, even in the days when her stay there was limited to visits. How much more then now—now, when she had no foothold anywhere else, and when the past three years took in the retrospect the shadowy outlines of a dream.

      It was odd how distinctly behind the dream stood out the days of childhood. As the train bore her swiftly through the open country she knew so well, on the mellow, misty October afternoon, which came at last, Leonore's throbbing bosom was a jumble of emotions, partly, though of this she was unaware, pleasurable. Until now she had been dwelling in the past—the near past—the past which was all loss and sadness,—but as one familiar scene after another unfolded itself, involuntarily they awakened interest and a faint anticipation. Of a nature to be happy anywhere, and to cull blossoms off the most arid soil, the necessity for living in a villa among other villas on the outskirts of a great manufacturing town, had never called for lament and depreciation: no one had ever heard Boldero Abbey descanted upon,—indeed Leonore had sharply criticised the taste of a new arrival on the scene, a girl transplanted like herself by marriage, who was for ever telling her new associates what was done in B—shire.

      All this young lady's endeavours could not win an adherent in Mrs. Stubbs, who simply put on a wooden face, and said, "Indeed?" when the other threw out: "It's all so different here from what I am accustomed to. I have never lived in any place like this before."

      Leo moreover had her triumph which she kept for Godfrey's ear. "You know how that girl brags, and what an amount of side she puts on? Would you believe it, Godfrey, she's only a sort of stable-keeper's daughter! Well, I don't know what else you call it; her father is a trainer of race-horses, and that's how she knows about them; and the big people she quotes, of course they are all about such places—and—oh, I think it's sickening, even if it were no sham—that running down of nice James Bilson, who never sets up to be anything, and is a hundred thousand times too good for his wife."

      "You don't buck, anyway," said he.

      "I'd be ashamed," said Leonore proudly.

      Her father and sisters thought the villa with its luxurious, well-kept surroundings, met her every aspiration; they liked it very well themselves as a pied-à-terre,—and though of course the grounds might have been more extensive, and the smoke of tall chimneys farther off, the general was remarkably sensible on the point. "Land is valuable hereabouts, and a man must live where he can keep an eye on his business."

      "And our horses can go almost any distance;" Leonore was always anxious to impress this point. "We have lovely drives round by the Dee; you would almost think you were in the real country there."

      "Quite so, my dear," her father would respond urbanely.

      In his heart he spurned the idea. Country? Up went his chin, God bless his soul, the whole locality stank of docks and offices. The array of dogcarts daily drawn up outside the little station, in punctual awaiting of the five o'clock train, betrayed the business atmosphere. As Leonore did not see it, well, well. Nay, all the better–

      "Don't, for Heaven's sake, any of you unsettle her," ordered he, aside. "She's in precious snug quarters, and has the wit to know it."

      But now a strange and hitherto stifled sensation was stealing dimly into Leo's breast. How blue the mists were, how noble that range of forest in the distance—how broad and lonely and inviting that straight road with only a solitary cart upon it! There was the old red-roofed homestead she remembered so well at this point. There were the huge ricks and ample outbuildings. There were the smoking teams being unharnessed from the plough.

      It seemed to her that she had seen them there often and often before, doing the same—and as the thought arose, another followed; of course they were; it was at this hour, by the self-same train, that she and Godfrey had always passed that way.

      And she had always selected the same corner seat in the train, and gazed from the window—Godfrey being immersed in his paper, and indifferent to the view. At the thought of Godfrey she caught her breath and sighed,—but after a while the past drifted again into the present.

      Who would come to meet her? She had half expected an escort all the way, and been relieved when none was proposed, for to talk would have been an effort,—but of course one or perhaps two sisters would be on the platform when she stepped out? Or perhaps her father—she shrank with a sudden qualm.

      Not that she was precisely afraid of the general; he was too uniformly urbane and approving towards herself for that,—but was it possible that he was never quite natural? Had she not invariably the feeling of being treated by him as company? As some one towards whom he was bound to be agreeable and jocular? The quick, terse reply, and the occasional frowning undertone—the family undertone—were not for her, any more than for Godfrey; and whereas every one else in the house was liable to be snapped up and made to understand that an opinion was of no account, she, Leo, the youngest and presumably most insignificant of General Boldero's offspring, might say what she chose, unchecked.

      It had all been pleasant enough, СКАЧАТЬ