Leonore Stubbs.
by L. B. Walford.
CHAPTER I.
"SHE HAS NO SETTLEMENT, d.a.m.n IT."
"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, a.s.sumed 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 a.s.sume.
"She has no settlement, d.a.m.n 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 antic.i.p.ated 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 G.o.dfrey had expected a _quid pro quo_. And he might--he very well might. A man of his cla.s.s 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 bra.s.s farthing to spare. I"ll say that for G.o.dfrey 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. G.o.dfrey 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.
G.o.dfrey 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. G.o.dfrey a.s.sented 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 circ.u.mstances 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."