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 a.s.sertion, 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 cla.s.sed 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 n.o.body 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 e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n 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 G.o.dfrey 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.
G.o.dfrey Stubbs had never been idealised, but he had been readily accepted as a lover by a barely emanc.i.p.ated schoolgirl who did not know what love was; and three serene, unimaginative years had been contentedly pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sionate 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 a.s.surance.
"They wouldn"t understand, would they?" faltered she.
"Of course they wouldn"t. People never do," a.s.severated 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.