Sophia by Stanley J. Weyman (romantic books to read .TXT) 📕

guardian; he had the power, and though he had shirked his duty while the thing was in nubibus, he would not dare to stand by when time and place, the house and the hour were pointed out to him. In less than ten minutes she could be with him; in half as many the facts could be made known. Long before the hour elapsed Mr. Northey might be in Clarges Row, or, if he preferred it, at Dr. Keith's chapel, ready to forbid the marriage.

The thing was possible, nay it was easy; and it would withhold Tom from a step which he must repent all his life. But it entailed the one penance from which she was anxious to be saved, the one penalty from which her wounded pride shrank, as the bleeding stump shrinks from the cautery. To execute it she must return to Arlington Street; she must return into her sister's power, to the domination of Mrs. Martha, and the daily endurance, not only of many an ignoble slight, but of coarse jests and gibes and worse insinuations. An hour earlier she had conceived the hope of escaping this, either through Tom's mediation, or by a voluntary retreat to Chalkhill. Now she had to choose this or his ruin.

She did not hesitate. Even in her folly of the previous day, even in her reckless self-abandonment to a silly passion, Sophia had not lacked the qualities that make for sacrifice--courage, generosity, staunchness. Here was room for their display in a better cause, and without a moment's delay, undeterred by the reflection that far from earning Tom's gratitude, she would alienate her only friend, she hurried into the bedroom and donned Lady Betty's laced jacket and Tuscan. With a moan on her own account, a pitiful smile on his, she put them on; and then paused, remembering with horror that she must pass through the streets in that guise. It had done well enough at night, but in the day the misfit was frightful. Not even for Tom could she walk through Berkeley Square and Portugal Street, the figure it made her. She must have a chair.

She opened the door and was overjoyed to find that the landlord was still on the stairs. "Will you please to get me a chair," she said eagerly. "At once, without the loss of a minute."

The man looked at her stupidly, his heavy lower lip dropped and flaccid; his fat, whitish face evinced a sort of consternation. "A chair?" he repeated slowly. "Certainly. But if your ladyship is going any distance, would not a coach be better?"

"No, I am only going as far as Arlington Street," Sophia answered, off her guard for the moment. "Still, a coach will do if you cannot get a chair. I have not a moment to lose."

"To be sure, ma'am, to be sure," he answered, staring at her heavily. "A chair you'll have then?"

"Yes, and at once! At once, you understand."

"If you are in a hurry, maybe there is one below," he said, making as if he would enter the room and look from the windows. "Sometimes there is."

"If there were," she retorted, irritated by his slowness, "I should not have asked you to get one. I suppose you know what a chair is?" she continued. For the man stood looking at her so dully and strangely that she began to think he was a natural.

"Oh, yes," he answered, his eyes twinkling with sudden intelligence, as if at the notion. "I know a chair, and I'd have had one for you by now. But, by gole, I've no one to leave with the child, in case it awakes."

"The child?" Sophia cried, quite startled. The presence of a child in a house is no secret as a rule.

"'Tis here," he said, indicating a door that stood ajar at his elbow. "On the bed in the inner room, ma'am. I'm doing the stairs to be near it."

"Is it a baby?" Sophia cried. "To be sure. What else?"

"I'll stay with it, then," she said. "May I look at it? And will you get the chair for me, while I watch it?"

"To be sure, ma'am! 'Tis here," he continued, as he pushed the door open, and led the way through a tiny room; the outer of two that, looking to the back, corresponded with Tom's apartments at the front. He pushed open the door of the inner room, the floor of which was a step higher. "If you'll see to it while I am away, ma'am, and not be out of hearing?"

"I will," Sophia said softly. "Is it yours?"

"No, my daughter's."

Sophia tip-toed across the floor to the bed side. The room was poorly lighted by a window, which was partially blocked by a water-cistern; the bed stood in the dark corner beside the window; Sophia, turning up her nose at the close air of the room, hesitated for an instant to touch the dirty, tumbled bed-clothes. She could not see the child. "Where is it?" she asked, stooping to look more closely.

The answer was the dull jar of the door as it closed behind her; a sound that was followed by the click of a bolt driven home in the socket. She turned swiftly, her heart standing still, her brain already apprised of treachery. The man was gone.

Sophia made but one bound to the threshold, lifted the latch, and threw her weight against the door. It was fastened.

"Open!" she cried, enraged at the trick which had been played her. "Do you hear me? Open the door this minute!" she repeated, striking it furiously with her hands. "What do you mean? How dare you shut me in?"

This time the only response was the low chuckling laugh of the clock-maker as he turned away. She heard the stealthy fall of his footsteps as he went through the outer room; then the grating of the key, as he locked the farther door behind him. Then--silence.

"Tom!" Sophia shrieked, kicking the door, and pounding it with her little fists. "Tom, help! help, Tom!" And then, as she realised how she had been trapped, "Oh, poor Tom!" she sobbed. "Poor Tom! I can do nothing now!"

While Grocott, listening on the stairs, chuckled grimly. "You thought you were going to stop my girl's marriage, did you?" he muttered, shaking his fist in the direction of the sounds. "You thought you'd stop her being my lady, did you? Stop her now if you can, my little madam. I have you like a mouse in a trap; and when you are cooler, my Lady Maitland shall let you out. My lady, ha! ha! What a sound it has. My Lady Maitland!"

Then reflecting that Hawkesworth, whom he hated, and had cause to hate, had placed this triumph in his grasp--and would now, as things had turned out, get nothing by it--he shook with savage laughter. "Lady Maitland!" he chuckled. "Ho! ho! And he gets--the shells! The shells, ho! ho!"

CHAPTER X SIR HERVEY TAKES THE FIELD

In his rooms at the corner house between Portugal Street and Bolton Street, so placed that by glancing a trifle on one side of the oval mirror before him he could see the Queen's Walk and the sloping pastures of the Green Park, Sir Hervey Coke was being shaved. A pile of loose gold which lay on the dressing-table indicated that the evening at White's had not been unpropitious. An empty chocolate cup and half-eaten roll stood beside the money, and, with Sir Hervey's turban-cap and embroidered gown, indicated that the baronet, who in the country broke his fast on beef and small beer, and began the day booted, followed, in town, town fashions. To-day, however, early as it was--barely ten--his wig hung freshly curled on the stand, and a snuff-coloured coat and long-flapped waistcoat, plainly laced, were airing at the fire; signs that he intended to be abroad betimes, and on business.

Perhaps the business had to do with an open letter in his lap, at which the man who was shaving him cocked his eye inquisitively between strokes. Or perhaps not, for Sir Hervey did not seem to heed this curiosity; but the valet had before had reason--and was presently to have fresh reason--to know that his taciturn master saw more than he had the air of seeing.

Suddenly Sir Hervey raised his hand. Watkyns, the valet, stood back. "Bring it me!" Coke said.

The man had heard without hearing, as he now understood without explanation. He went softly to the door, received a note, and brought it to his master.

"An answer?"

"No, sir."

"Then finish."

The valet did so. When he had removed the napkin, Sir Hervey broke the seal, and, after reading three or four lines of the letter, raised his eyes to the mirror. He met the servant's prying gaze, and abruptly crumpled the paper in his hand. Then, "Watkyns," he said, in his quietest tone.

"Sir?"

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"ABOUT THE TWO GUINEAS--YOU STOLE THIS MORNING ..."

"About the two guineas you--stole this morning. For this time you may keep them; but in the future kindly remember two things."

The razor the man was cleaning fell to the floor. His face was a sickly white; his knees shook under him. He tried to frame words, to deny, to say something, but in vain. He was speechless.

"Firstly," Coke continued blandly, "that I count the money I bring home--at irregular intervals. Secondly, that two guineas is a larger sum than forty shillings. Another time, Watkyns, I would take less than forty shillings. You will understand why. That is all."

The man, still pale and trembling, found his tongue. "Oh, sir!" he cried, "I swear, if you'll--if you'll forgive me----"

Coke stopped him. "That is all," he said, "that is all. The matter is at an end. Pick that up, go downstairs, and return in five minutes."

When the man was gone, Sir Hervey smoothed the paper, and, with a face that grew darker and darker as he proceeded, read the contents of the letter from beginning to end. They were these:--

"Dear Sir,

"The honour you intended my family by an alliance with a person so nearly related to us as Miss Maitland renders it incumbent on me to inform you with the least possible delay of the unfortunate event which has happened in our household, an event which, I need not say, I regret on no account more than because it must deprive us of the advantage we rightly looked to derive from that connection. At a late hour last evening the misguided (and I fear I must call her the unfortunate) girl, whom you distinguished by so particular a mark of your esteem, left the shelter of her home, it is now certain, to seek the protection of a lover.

"While the least doubt on this point remained, I believed myself justified in keeping the matter even from you, but I have this morning learned from a sure source--Lane, the mercer, in Piccadilly--that she was set down about nine o'clock last night at a house in Davies Street, kept by a man of the name of Wollenhope, and the residence--alas, that I should have to say it!--of the infamous Irishman whose attentions to her at one time attracted your notice.

"You will readily understand that from the moment we were certified of this we ceased to regard her as a part of our family; a choice so ill-regulated can proceed only from a mind naturally inclined to vice. Resentment on your account no less than a proper care of our household, dictates this course, nor will any repentance on her part, nor any of those misfortunes to which as I apprehend her misconduct will surely expose her, prevail on us to depart from it.

"Forgive me, dear sir, if, under