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

"And Lewes--by two to-morrow?"

The servant was about to answer when the duchess and the two young ladies, followed by Lady Betty's woman, appeared at the duke's elbow. The duchess, holding a fan between her eyes and the sun, looked anxiously at the horses. "I don't like them to be on the road alone," she said. "Coke should have come for them. My dear," she continued, turning to Sophia, "your husband should have come for you instead of sending. I don't understand such manners, and a week married."

Sophia, blushing deeply, did not answer. She knew quite well why Sir Hervey had not come, and she was thankful when Lady Betty took the word.

"Oh ma'am," the child cried, "I am sure we shall do well enough; 'tis the charmingest thing in the world to be going a journey, and this morning the most delicious of all mornings. We are going to drive all day, and at night lie at an inn, and tell one another a world of secrets. I declare I could jump out of my skin! I never was so happy in my life!"

"And leaving us!" her Grace said in a tone of reproach.

Lady Betty looked a trifle dashed at that, but her father pinched her ear. "Leaving town, too, Bet," he said good-naturedly. "That's more serious, isn't it?"

"I am sure, sir, I--if my mother wishes me to stay!"

"No, go, child, and enjoy yourself," the duchess answered kindly. "And I hope Lady Coke may put some sense into that feather brain of yours. My dear," she continued, embracing Sophia, "you'll take care of her?"

"I will, I will indeed!" Sophia cried, clinging to her. "And thank you a thousand times, ma'am, for your kindness to me."

"Pooh, pooh, 'tis nothing," her Grace said. "But all the same," she added, her anxiety returning, "I wish Sir Hervey were with you, or you had not those jewels."

"Coke should have thought of it," the duke answered. "But there, kiss Bet, my love, and tell her to be a good puss. The sooner they are gone, the sooner they will be there."

"You have your cordial, Betty?" the duchess asked anxiously.

"Yes, ma'am."

"And the saffron drops, and your 'Holy Living'? Pettitt," to the woman; "you'll see her Ladyship uses the face wash every morning, and wears her warm night-rail. And see that the flowered chintz is aired before she puts it on."

"Yes, sure, your Grace."

"And I hope you'll come back safe, and won't be robbed!"

"Pooh, pooh!" the duke said. "Since Cook was hanged last year--and he was ten times out of eleven at Mimms and Finchley--there has been nothing done on the Lewes Road. And they are too strong to be stopped by one man. You have been reading Johnson's Lives, and are frightening yourself for nothing, my dear. There, let them go, and they'll be in Lewes two hours before nightfall. A good journey, my lady, and my service to Sir Hervey."

"I should not mind if it were not for the child's jewels," her Grace muttered in a low tone.

"Pooh, the carriage might be robbed twenty times," the duke answered, "and they would not be found--where they are. Good-bye, Bet. Good-bye! Be a good girl, and say your prayers!"

"And mind you use the almond wash," her Grace cried.

Lady Betty cried "yes," to everything, and, amid a fire of similar advices, the two were shut into the chariot. From the window Lady Betty continued to wave her handkerchief, until, Watkyns and the woman having taken their seats outside, the postboys cracked their whips and the heavy vehicle moved forward. A moment, and the house and the kind wistful faces on the steps disappeared, the travellers swung right-handed into Sutton Street, and, rolling briskly through St. Giles's and Holborn, were presently on London Bridge, at that time the only link connecting London and Southwark.

Lady Betty was in a humour that matched the sparkle of the bright May morning. She was leaving the delights of town, but she had a journey before her, a thing exhilarating in youth; and at the end of that she had a vision of lordlings, knights, and country squires, waiting in troops to be reduced to despair by her charms. The dazzling surface of the stream, as the tide running up from the pool sparkled and glittered in the sun, was not brighter than her eyes--that now were here, now there, now everywhere. Now she stuck her head out of one window, now out of the other; now she flashed a smile at a passing apprentice, and left him gasping, now she cast a flower at an astonished teamster, or tilted her pretty nose at the odours that pervaded the Borough. The grooms rode more briskly for her presence, the postboys looked grinning over their shoulders; even the gibbet that marked the turn to Tooting failed to depress her airy spirits.

And Sophia? Sophia sat fighting for contentment. By turns the better and the worse mood possessed her. In the better, she thought with gratitude of her lot--a lot happy in comparison of the fate which she had so narrowly escaped; happy, even in comparison of that fate which would have been hers, if, after escaping from Hawkesworth, she had been forced to return to her sister's house. If it was good-bye to love, if the glow of passion could never be hers, she was not alone. She had a friend from whose kindness she had all to expect that any save a lover could give; a firm and true friend whose generosity and thoughtfulness touched her every hour, and must have touched her more deeply, but for that other mood which in its turn possessed her.

In that mood she lived the past again, she thirsted for that which had not been hers. She regretted, not her dear Irishman--for he had never existed save in her fancy, and she knew it now--but the delicious thrill, the warm emotion which the thought of him, the sight of him, the sound even of his voice, had been wont to arouse. In this mood she could not patiently give up love; she could not willingly resign the woman's dream. In this mood she cried out on the prudence that, to save her from the talk of a week, had deprived her of love for a life. She saw in her husband's kindness, calculation; in his thoughtfulness, the wisdom of the serpent. She shook with resentment, and burnt with shame.

And then, even while she thought of him most harshly, her conscience pricked her, and in a moment she was in the melting temper; while Lady Betty chattered by her side, and town changed to country, and, leaving Brixton Causey, they rattled by the busy inns of Streatham, with the church on their right and the hills rolling upward leftwise to the blue.

Four and a half miles to Croydon and then dinner. "Now let me see them," Lady Betty urged. "Do, that's a dear creature! Here we are quite safe!"

Sophia pleaded that it was too near town. "Wait until we are through Croydon," she said. "They say, you know, the nearer town, the greater the danger!"

"Then, as soon as we are out of Croydon?" Lady Betty cried, hugging her. "You promise?"

"Yes, I promise."

"Oh, I know if they were mine I should be looking at them all day!" Lady Betty rejoined; and then shrieked and threw herself back in the carriage as they passed Croydon gibbet that stood at the ninth milestone, opposite the turn to Wellington. The empty irons swaying in the wind provided her with shudders until the carriage drew up in Croydon Street, where with recovered cheerfulness, the ladies alighted and dined at the Crown, under the eye and protection of Watkyns. After a stay of an hour, they took the road again up Banstead Downs, where they walked a little at the steeper part of the way, but presently outstripping the carriage above the turn to Reigate, grew frightened in that solitude, and were glad to step in again. So down and up, and down again through the woods about Coulsdon, where the rabbits peered at them through the bracken, and raising their white scuts, loped away at leisure to their burrows.

"Now!" Lady Betty cried, when they were again in the full glare of the afternoon sun. "Now is the time! There is no one within a mile of us. The grooms," she continued, after putting out her head and looking back, "are half a mile behind."

Sophia nodded reluctantly. "You must get up, then," she said.

Lady Betty did so, and Sophia, to whom the secret had been committed the day before, lifted the leather valance that hung before the seat. Touching a spring she drew from the apparently solid woodwork of the seat--which was no more than three inches thick, so that a mail could be placed beneath it--a shallow covered drawer about twenty inches wide. She held this until Lady Betty had dropped the valance, and the two could take their seats again. Then she inserted a tiny key which she took from her bodice, into a keyhole cunningly placed at the side of the drawer--so that when the latter was in its place the keyhole was invisible. She turned the key, but before she raised the lid, bade Lady Betty look out of the window again, and assure herself that the grooms were at a distance.

"You provoking creature!" Lady Betty cried. "They are where they were--a good half-mile behind. And--yes, one of them has dismounted, and is doing something to his saddle. Oh! let me look, I am dying to see them!"

Sophia raised the lid, and her companion gasped, then screamed with delight. Over the white Genoa of the jewel case shone, and rippled, and sparkled in rills of liquid fire, a necklace, tiara, and bracelet of perfect stones, perfectly matched. Lady Betty had expected much; her mother had told her that, at the coronation of '27, Lady Coke's jewels had taken the world by storm; and that no one under the rank of a peeress had worn any like them. But reality exceeded imagination; she could not control her delight, admiration, envy. She hung over the tray, her eyes bright as the stones they reflected, her cheeks catching the soft lustre of the jewels.

"Oh, ma'am, now I know you are married!" she cried. "Things like these are not for poor lambkins! I vow I grow afraid of you. My Lady Brook will have nothing like them, and couldn't carry them if she had! She'd sink under them, the wee thing! And my Lady Carteret won't do better, though she is naught but airs and graces, and he's fifty-five if he's a day! When you go to the Drawing-Room, they'll die of envy. And to think the dear things lie under that dingy valance! I declare, I wonder they don't shine through!"

"Sir Hervey's father planned the drawer," Sophia explained, "for the carriage he built for his wife's foreign tour. And when Sir Hervey had a new carriage about six years ago, the drawer was repeated as a matter of course. Once his mother was stopped and robbed when she had the diamonds with her, but they were not found."

"And had you never seen them until yesterday?"

"Never."

"And he'd never told you about them until they sent them from the bank, with that note?"

Sophia sighed as she glanced at the jewels. "He had not mentioned them," she said.

Lady Betty hugged her ecstatically: "The dear devoted man!" she cried. "I vow you are the luckiest woman in the world! There's not a girl in town would not give her two eyes for them! And mighty few would not be ready to sell themselves body and soul for them! And he sends them to you