Sophia: A Romance

"Thank you," Sir Hervey said; and having got what he wanted he did not stay to waste time with the man, but made the best of his way to Charles Street, into which the north end of Clarges Row, now Clarges Street, opened at that date. Deeply engaged with the paramount question in his mind, the identity of the young man in whose company Sophia had left Hawkesworth's lodgings, he forgot the bailiffs; and it was with some annoyance that, on reaching the Row, he espied one of them lurking in a doorway in Charles Street. It was so plain that they were watching him that Sir Hervey lost patience, turned, and made towards the man to question him. But the fellow also turned on his heel, and retreating with an eye over his shoulder, disappeared in the square. To follow was to be led from the scent; Coke wheeled again, therefore, and meeting a potboy who knew the street, he was directed to Grocott's. The house the lad pointed out was one of the oldest in the Row; a small house of brick, the last on the east side going north. Sir Hervey scanned the five windows that faced the street, but they told him nothing. He knocked-and waited. And presently, getting no answer, he knocked again. And again-the pot-boy looking on from a little distance.

After that Coke stood back, saw that the windows were still without sign of life, and would have gone away-thinking to return in an hour or two-but a woman came to the door of the next house, and told him, "the old man is at home, your honour; it is not ten minutes since he was at the door." On which he knocked again more loudly and insistently. Suspicions were taking shape in his mind. The house seemed too quiet to be innocent.

He had his hand raised to repeat the summons once more, when he heard a dragging, pottering step moving along the passage towards him. A chain was put up, a key turned, the door was opened a little, a very little way. A pale, fat face, with small, cunning eyes, peered out at him. Unless he was mistaken, it was the face of a frightened man.

"I want to see Miss Maitland," Sir Hervey said.

"To be sure, sir," the man answered, while his small eyes scanned the visitor sharply. "Is it about a clock?"

"No," Coke answered. "Are you deaf, man? I wish to see the young lady who is here; who came last night."

"You're very welcome, I am sure, but there is no young lady here, your honour."

Sir Hervey did not believe it. The man's sly face, masking fear under a smirk, inspired no confidence; this talking over a chain, at that hour, in the daylight, of itself imported something strange. Apparently Grocott-for he it was-read the last thought in his visitor's eyes, for he dropped the chain and opened the door. "Was it about a clock," he asked, the hand that held the door trembling visibly, "that the lady came?"

"No," Sir Hervey answered curtly; he was not deceived by this apparent obtuseness. "I wish, I tell you, to see the young lady who came here with a gentleman last night. She came here from Davies Street."

"There is a lady here," the clock-maker answered, slowly. "But I don't know that she will see any one."

"She will see me," Coke replied with decision. "You don't want me to summon her friends, and cause a scandal, I suppose?"

"Well, sir, for her friends," Grocott answered, smiling unpleasantly, "I know nothing about them, begging your honour's pardon. And, it is all one to me whom she sees. If you'll give me your name, sir, I'll take it to her."

"Sir Hervey Coke."

"Dear, dear, I beg your honour's pardon, I am sure," Grocott exclaimed, bowing and wriggling obsequiously. "It's not to be thought that she'll not see a gentleman of your honour's condition. But I'll take her pleasure if you'll be so good as to wait a minute."

He left Coke standing on the threshold, and retreated up the passage to the door of a room on the left. Here he went in, closing the door after him. Sir Hervey waited until he was out of sight, then in three strides he reached the same door, lifted the latch, and entered.

"'Twill take him finely, Sal!"

The words were in the air-they were all he caught, then silence; and he stood staring. Abrupt as had been his entrance, he was the most completely surprised of the three. For the third in the room, the lady to whom Grocott's words were addressed, was not Sophia, but a stranger; a tall, handsome woman, with big black eyes, fashionably dressed and fashionably painted. The surprise drew from her a hasty exclamation; she rose, her eyes sparkling with anger. Then, as Sir Hervey, recovering from his astonishment, bowed politely, she sat down again with an assumption of fineness and languor. And, taking a fan, she began to fan herself.

"A thousand pardons, madam," Coke said. "I owe you every apology. I came in under a misapprehension. I expected to find a friend here."

"That's very evident, I think, sir!" madam replied, tossing her head. "And one you were in a hurry to see, I should fancy."

"Yes," Sir Hervey answered. He noted that the table, laid with more elegance than was to be expected from Grocott's appearance, displayed a couple of chickens, pigeons, and a galantine, besides a pretty supply of bottles and flasks. "I trust you will pardon my mistake. I was informed that a young lady came here last evening with a gentleman."

Madam flamed up. "And what, sir, is it to you if I did!" she cried. And she rose sharply.

"Your pardon! I did not mean-"

"I say, sir, what is it to you if I did?" she repeated in a tone of the utmost resentment. "If I did come from Davies Street, and come here? I don't remember to have met you before, and I fail to see what ground you had for following me or for watching my movements. I am sure I never gave you any, and I am not used to impertinence. For the rest, I am expecting some friends-Grocott?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Show this gentleman out. Or-or perhaps I am hasty," she continued, in a lower tone and with an abrupt return of good nature. "The last thing I should wish to be to any gentleman," with a glance from a pair of handsome eyes. "If I have met you at any time-at my Lady Bellamy's perhaps, sir?"

"No, ma'am, I think not."

"Or at that good-natured creature, Conyers'-dear delightful woman; you know her, I am sure?"

"No," Coke said, bluntly, "I have not the honour of her ladyship's acquaintance; and I don't think I need trouble you farther. If there is no one else in the house, it is evident I have made a mistake. I offer my apologies, ma'am, regretting extremely that I trespassed on you."

"I occupy the only rooms," she answered drily. "And-Grocott, if the gentleman is quite satisfied-the door please! And send my woman to me."

Sir Hervey bowed, muttered a last word of apology, and with a look round the room, which brought to light nothing new except a handsome mail that stood packed and strapped in a corner, he passed out. After all, his discovery explained the appearance of the bailiffs outside Wollenhope's. The over-dressed air and easy manners of the lady he had seen were those of one not given to economy, nor, probably, too particular as to ways and means. It accounted, also, for the lady's departure from Davies Street immediately after her arrival. Clearly Lane had misinformed the Northeys. It was not Sophia who had gone to the house in Davies Street; nor Sophia who had left that house in a gentleman's company. Then where was she?

As he paused in the passage revolving the question and seeking half a crown to give to the man whom he had suspected without reason, a dull sound as of a muffled hammer beating wood caught his ear. He had heard it indistinctly in the parlour-it appeared to come from the upper floor; but he had given no heed to it. "What's that?" he asked, idly, as he drew out a coin.

"That noise, your honour?"

"Yes."

"My journeyman. Perhaps you'd like to see him," Grocott continued with a malicious grin. "May be he's the young lady you're looking for. Oh, make yourself at home, sir," he added bitterly. "A poor man mustn't grumble if his house isn't his own and his lodgers are insulted."

"Here," Coke said, and dropping the half-crown into the dirty hand extended for it, he passed out. Instantly the door clanged behind him, the chain was put up, a bolt was shot; but although Sir Hervey stood a moment uncertain which way he should go, or what he should do next, he did not notice these extreme precautions, nor the pale, ugly face of triumph that watched him from the window as he turned south to go to Arlington Street.

CHAPTER XI

THE TUG OF WAR

At the corner of Bolton Row Sir Hervey paused. He felt, to be candid, a trifle awkward in the rôle of knight-errant, a part reserved in those days for Lord Peterborough. The Northeys' heartless cynicism, and their instant and cruel desertion of the girl, had stirred the chivalry that underlay his cold exterior. But from the first he had been aware that his status in the matter was ill-defined; he now began to see it in a worse, an absurd light. He had taken the field in the belief that Sophia had not stayed in Davies Street; that Hawkesworth, therefore, was beside the question; and that whatever folly she had committed, she had not altogether compromised herself; he now found the data on which he had acted painfully erroneous. She had not stayed in Davies Street, because she had not gone to Davies Street. But she might have joined Hawkesworth elsewhere; she might by this time be his wife; she might be gone with him never to return!

In that event Coke began to see that his part in the matter would prove to be worse than ridiculous; and he paused at the corner of Bolton Row, uncertain whether he should not go home and erase with a sore heart a foolish child's face from his memory. His was a day of coarse things; of duchesses who talked as fishwives talk now, of madcap maids of honour, such as she-

Who, as down the stairs she jumps,
Sings over the hills and far away,
Despising doleful dumps!

of bishops seen at strange levées, of clergy bribed with livings to take strange wives; of hoyden lady Kitties, whose talk was a jumble of homely saws and taproom mock-modesties; of old men still swearing as they had sworn in Flanders in their youth. At the best it was not an age of ideals; but neither was it an age of hypocrisy, and women were plentiful. Why, then, all this trouble for one? And for one who had showed him plainly what she thought of him.

For a moment, at the corner of Bolton Row, Sophia's fate hung in the balance. Hung so nicely, that if Coke had not paused there, but had proceeded straight through Bolton Street, to Piccadilly, and so to Arlington Street, her lot would have been very different. But the debate kept him standing long enough to bring to a point-not many yards from the corner-two figures, which had just detached themselves from the crowd about Shepherd's Market. In the act of stepping across the gutter, he saw them, glanced carelessly at them, and stood. As the two, one behind the other, came up, almost brushing him, and turned to enter Clarges Row, he reached out his cane and touched the foremost.

"Why, Tom!" he cried. "Is it you, lad? Well met!"

Tom-for it was he-turned at the sound of his name, and seeing who it was recoiled, as if the cane that touched him had been red hot. The colour mounted to his wig; he stood, grinning in his finery, unable to say a word. "Why, Tom!" Sir Hervey repeated, as he held out his hand, "What is it, lad? Have you bad news? You are on the same business as I am, I take it?"

Tom blushed redder and redder, and shifted his feet uneasily. "I don't know, Sir Hervey," he stammered. "I don't know what your business is, you see."

"Well, you can easily guess," Coke answered, never doubting that Tom had heard what was forward, and had posted from Cambridge in pursuit of his sister. "Have you news? That's the point."

Tom had only his own affair in his mind. He wondered how much the other knew, and more than half suspected that he was being roasted. So "News?" he faltered. "What sort of news, sir?" He had known Sir Hervey all his life, and still felt for him the respect which a lad feels for the man of experience and fashion.

Coke stared at him. "What sort of news?" he exclaimed. "It isn't possible you don't know what has happened, boy?" Then, seeing that the person who had come up with Tom was at his elbow, listening, "Is this fellow with you?" he cried angrily. "If so, bid him stand back a little."

"Yes, he's with me," Tom answered, sheepishly; and turning to the lad, who was laden with a great nosegay of flowers as well as a paper parcel from which some white Spitalfields ribbons protruded, he bade him go on. "Go on," he said, "I'll follow you. The last house on the right."