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

be no concern of yours, nor need trouble you. But 'tisn't to be supposed that with all this you will take it."

"You mean I may go to Chalkhill?" she cried, rising impetuously. "I will, I will go gladly, I will go thankfully! I will indeed!"

"No," he said, rising also, so that only the table stood between them. "I did not mean that. There is still another way. But you are young, child, and it isn't to be supposed that you will take it."

"Young!" she exclaimed in bitter self-contempt. And then, "What way is it?" she asked. "And why should I not take it, take it gladly if I can escape--all that?"

"Because--I am not very young," he said grimly.

"You?" she exclaimed in astonishment. And then, as her eyes met his across the table, the colour rose in her cheeks. She began to understand; and she began to tremble.

"Yes," he said bluntly, "I. It shocks you, does it? But, courage, child; you understand a little, you do not understand all. Suppose for a moment that you return to Arlington Street to-day as Lady Coke; the demands of the most exacting will be satisfied. Lady Harrington herself will have nothing to say. You left yesterday, you return to-day--my wife. Those who have borne my mother's name have been wont to meet with respect; and, I doubt not, will continue to meet with it."

"And you--would do that?" she cried aghast

"I would."

"You would marry me?"

"I would."

"After all that has passed? Here? To-day?"

"Here, to-day."

For a moment she was silent. Then, "And you imagine I could consent?" she cried. "You imagine I could do that? Never! Never! I think you good, I think you noble, I thank you for your offer, Sir Hervey; I believe it to be one the world would deem you mad to make, and me mad to refuse! But," and suddenly she covered her face with her hands, as if his eyes burned her, "from what a height you must look down on me."

"I look down?" he said lamely. "Not at all. I don't understand you."

"You do not understand?" she cried, dropping her hands and meeting his eyes as suddenly as she had avoided them. "You think it possible, then, that I, who yesterday left my home, poor fool that I was, to marry one man, can give myself a few hours later to another man? You think I hold love so light a thing I can take it and give it again as I take or give a kerchief or a riband? You think I put so small a price on myself--and on you? Oh, no, no, I do not. I see, if you do not, or will not, that your offer, noble, generous, magnanimous as it is, is the sharpest taunt of all that you have it in your power to fling at me."

"That," Sir Hervey said, placidly, "is because you don't understand."

"It is impossible!" she repeated. "It is impossible!"

"What you have in your mind may be impossible," he retorted; "but not what I have in mine. I should have thought, child, that on your side, also, you had had enough of romance."

She looked at him in astonishment.

"While I," he continued, raising his eyebrows, "have outgrown it. There is no question, at least, in my offer there was no question, of love. For one thing it is out of fashion, my dear; for another, at the age I have reached, not quite the age of Methuselah, perhaps," with a smile, "but an age, as you once reminded me, at which I might be your father, I need only a lady to sit at the head of my table, to see that the maids don't rob me, or burn the Hall, and to show a pretty face to my guests when they come from town. My wife will have her own wing of the house, I mine; we need meet only at meals. To the world we shall be husband and wife; to one another, I hope, good friends. Of course," Sir Hervey continued, with a slight yawn, "there was a time when I should not have thought this an ideal marriage; when I might have looked for more. Nor should I then have--you might almost call it--insulted you, ma chère, by proposing it. But I am old enough to be content with it; and you are in an awkward position from which my name may extricate you; while you have probably had enough of what children call love. So, in fine, what do you say?"

After a long pause, "Do you mean," she asked in a low voice, "that we should be only--friends?"

"Precisely," he said. "That is just what I do mean. And nothing more."

"But have you considered," she asked, her tone still low, her voice trembling with agitation. "Have you thought of--of yourself? Why should you be sacrificed to save me from the punishment of my folly? Why should you do out of pity what you may repent all your life? Oh, it cannot, it cannot be!" she continued more rapidly and with growing excitement. "I thank you, I thank you from my heart, Sir Hervey, I believe you mean it generously, nobly, but----"

"Let us consider the question--without fudge!" he retorted, stolidly forestalling her. "Pity has little to do with it. Your folly, child, has much; because apart from that I should not have made the suggestion. For the rest, put me out of the question. The point is, will it suit you? Of course you might wish to marry some one else. You might wish to marry in fact and not in name----"

"Oh, no, no!" she cried, shuddering; and, shaken by the cruel awakening through which she had gone, she fancied that she spoke the truth.

"You are sure?"

"Quite, quite sure."

"Then I think it lies between Chalkhill and Coke Hall," he said, cheerfully. "Read that, child." And drawing from his pocket the letter in which Mr. Northey had announced her flight, he laid it before her. "If I thought you were returning to your sister I would not show it to you," he continued, watching her as she read. And then, after an interval, "Well, shall it be Coke Hall?" he asked.

"Yes," she said, shivering under the cruel, heartless phrases of the letter as under a douche of cold water. "If you really are in earnest, if you mean what you say?"

"I do."

"And you will be satisfied with--that?" she murmured, averting her eyes. "With my friendship?"

"I will," he answered. "You have my word for it."

"Then, I thank you," she muttered faintly.

And that was all, absolutely all. He opened the door, and in her sacque and Lady Betty's Tuscan, as she stood--for she had no change to make--she passed down the stairs before him, and walked beside him through the rain across a corner of Shepherd's Market. Thence they passed along Curzon Street in the direction of the little chapel with the country church porch--over against Mayfair Chapel, and conveniently near the Hercules Pillars--in which the Rev. Alexander Keith held himself ready to marry all comers, at all hours, without notice or licence.

It was the common dinner time, and the streets were quiet; they met no one whom they knew. Sophia, dazed and shaken, had scarcely power to think; she walked beside him mechanically, as in a dream, and could never remember in after days the way she went to be married, or whether she travelled the route on foot or in a chair. The famous Dr. Keith, baulked of one couple and one guinea--for that was his fee, and it included the clerk and a stamped certificate--welcomed the pair with effusion. Accustomed to unite at one hour a peer of the realm to a reigning toast, at another an apprentice to his master's daughter, he betrayed no surprise even when he recognised Sir Hervey Coke; but at once he led the way to the chapel, set the kneelers, called the witnesses, and did his part. He wondered a little, it is true, when he noticed Sophia's pallor and strange dress; but the reasons people had for marrying were nothing to him; the fee was everything, and in ten minutes the tie was tied.

Then only, as they stood waiting in the parlour while the certificate was being written, fear seized her, and a great horror, and she knew what she had done. She turned to Sir Hervey and held out her shaking hands to him, her face white and piteous. "You will be good to me?" she cried. "You will be good to me? You will keep your word?"

"While I live," he said quietly. "Why not, child?"

But, calmly as he spoke, his face, as they went out together, wore the look it wore at White's when he played deep; when, round the shaded candles, oaks, noted in Domesday, crashed down, and long-descended halls shook, and the honour of great names hung on the turn of a die. For, deep as he had played, much as he had risked, even to his home, even to his line, he had made to-day the maddest bet of all. And he knew it.

CHAPTER XIII THE WELCOME HOME

"Your Grace is very good to call," Mrs. Northey said, working her fan with a violence that betrayed something of the restraint which she was putting on her feelings. "But, of course, the mischief is done now, the girl is gone, and----"

"I know, my dear, I know," the duchess answered soothingly. "Believe me, I am almost as sorry as if she were one of my own daughters."

"La, for the matter of that, it may be yet!" Mrs. Northey answered, unable to behave herself longer. "Begging your Grace's pardon. Of course, I hope not," she continued sourly, "but, indeed, and in truth, young ladies who show the road are very apt to follow it themselves."

"Indeed, I fear that is so; too often," her Grace answered patiently. "Too often!" She had come prepared to eat humble pie, and was not going to refuse the dish.

"I hope, at any rate, that the young lady will take the lesson to heart!" Mrs. Northey continued, with a venomous glance at Lady Betty; who, much subdued, sat half-sullen and half-frightened on a stool beside and a little behind her mother. "I hope so for her own sake."

"It is for that reason I brought her," the duchess said with dignity. "She has behaved naughtily, very naughtily. His Grace is so angry that he will not see her. To-morrow she goes into the country, where she will return to the schoolroom until we leave town. I hope that that and the scandal she has brought upon us may teach her to be more discreet in future."

"And more steady! I trust it may," Mrs. Northey said, biting her lip and looking daggers at the culprit. "I am sure she has done mischief enough. But it is easier to do than to undo, as she would find to her sorrow if it were her own case."

"Very true! Very true, indeed! Do you hear, miss?" the duchess asked, turning and sharply addressing her daughter.

"Yes, ma'am," Lady Betty whispered meekly. Quick of fence as she was with men, or with girls of her own age, she knew better than to contradict her mother.

"Go, and sit in the window, then. No, miss, with your back to it. And now," the duchess continued, when Lady Betty had withdrawn out of earshot, "tell me what you wish to be known, my dear. Anything I can do for the foolish child--she is very young, you know--I will do. And, if I make the best of it, I have friends, and they will also make the best of it."

But Mrs. Northey's face was