Sophia: A Romance

"I'm afraid," Sir Hervey said, with a touch of sternness, "you were rough with her."

Tom's momentary jubilation died away. His face was gloomy.

"I'll say anything you like," he muttered doggedly, "except that I'm sorry, for I'm not. But I'll beg her pardon humbly. Of course, I should not have done it if I'd known who she was."

"She won't see you," Sophia answered.

"You might try her again," Sir Hervey suggested, beginning to take the culprit's part. "Why not? She need not see Tom or speak to him unless she wishes."

"I'll try," Sophia answered; and she went and presently came back. Lady Betty would stay, and, of course, "she couldn't forbid Sir Thomas Maitland his sister's house." But she desired that all intercourse between them should be restricted to the barest formalities.

Tom looked glum. "Look here," he said, "if she'll see me alone I'll beg her pardon, and let us have done with it!"

"She won't see you alone! It is particularly that she wishes to avoid."

"All right," Tom answered sulkily. But he made up his mind that before many hours elapsed he would catch my lady and make her come to terms with him.

He was mistaken, however; as he was also in his expectation that when they met she would be covered with shame and confusion of face. When the time came it was he who was embarrassed. The young lady appeared, and was an icicle; stiff, pale and reserved, she made it clear that she did not desire to speak to him, did not wish to look at him, and much preferred to take things at table from any hand but his. Beyond this she did not avoid his eyes, and in hers was no shadow of consciousness. Tom's face grew hot where she had slapped it, he chafed, fretted, raged, but he got no word with her. He was shut out, he was not of the party, she made him feel that; and at the end of twenty-four hours he was her serf, her slave, watching her eye, consumed with a desire to throw himself at her feet, ready to anticipate her wishes, as a dog those of his master, anxious to abase himself no matter how low, if she would give him a word or a look.

Even Sir Hervey marvelled at her coldness and perfect self-control. "I suppose she likes him," he said, as he and Sophia walked on the terrace that evening.

"She did, I fancy," Sophia answered, "before this happened."

"And now?"

"She does not like him. I'm sure of that."

"But she may love him, you mean?" Sir Hervey said, interpreting her tone rather than her words.

"Yes, or hate him," she answered. "It is the one or the other."

"Since he kissed her?"

"Yes, I think so," and then on a sudden Sophia faltered. She felt the blood begin to rise to her cheeks in one of those blushes, the most trying of all, that commence uncertainly, mount slowly, but persist, and at length deepen into pain. She remembered that the man walking beside her, talking of these others' love affairs, had never kissed her! He must think, he could not but think, of their own case. He might even fancy that she meant her words for a hint.

He saw her distress, understood it, and took pity on her. But the abruptness with which he changed the conversation, and by-and-by withdrew, persuaded her that he had read her thoughts, and long after he had left her, her face burned.

The whole matter, Tom's misbehaviour and the rest, had upset her; she told herself that this was what ailed her and made her restless. Nor was she quick to regain her balance. She found the house, new as all things in it were to her, dull and over-quiet; she found Lady Betty, once so lively, no company; she found Tom snappish and ill-tempered. And she blamed Tom for all; or told herself that town and the opera and the masquerade had spoiled her for a country life. She did not lay the blame elsewhere. Even to herself she did not admit that Sir Hervey, polite and considerate as he was, to the point of leaving her much to herself, would have pleased her better had he left her less. But she did think-and with soreness-that he would have been wiser had he given her more frequent opportunities of learning to be at ease with him.

She did not go further than this even in her thoughts until three days after Tom's escapade. Then, feeling dull herself, she came on Tom moping on the terrace, and undertook to rally him on his humour. "If you would really be in her good graces again, 'tis not the way to do it, Tom; I can tell you that," she said. "Laugh and talk, and she'll wish you. Pluck up a spirit, and 'twill win more on her than a million sighs."

"What's the good?" he muttered sourly.

"Well, at any rate, you do no good by moping."

Tom sat silent awhile, his head buried between his hands, his elbows resting on the balustrade. "I don't see that anything's any good," he muttered at last. "We're both in one case, I think. You know your own business, I suppose. You know, I take it, what you were doing when you married in such a hurry; but I'm d-d," with sudden violence, "if I understand it. Three weeks married, and put on one side for another!"

"Tom!"

"Oh, you may Tom me, you don't alter it," he answered roughly. "I am hanged if I understand or know what's a-foot. Here are you and I sitting at home like sick cats, and my lord and my lady up and down and in and out, as thick as thieves. That is what it comes to. 'Tis vastly pretty, isn't it?" Tom continued with a cynical laugh. "I think you said she was under your protection. Oh, Lord."

Hitherto, astonishment had robbed Sophia of speech. But with Tom's last word her sense of her duty to herself and to her husband awoke, and found her words.

"You wicked boy!" she cried with indignation. "You wicked, miserable boy! How dare you even think such things, much more say them, and say them to me! Never hint at such things again if you wish to-to keep your sister. Sir Hervey and I understand one another, you may be sure of that."

"Well, I am glad you do," Tom muttered. "For I don't!" But he spoke shamefacedly, and only to cover his discomfiture.

"We understand one another perfectly," Sophia replied with pride, and drew herself to her full height. "For my friend, she is above your suspicions, as far above them as, I thank God, is my husband. No, not another word, I have heard too much already. I don't wish to speak to you again until you are in a better mind, sir."

She turned from him, crossed the terrace with her proudest step, and entered the house. But underneath she was panting with excitement, her head was in a whirl. She dared not think; and to avoid thought-thought that might lower her in her own eyes, thought that might wrong her husband-she hastened through the hall to the still-room; and finding that the ash-keys which she had ordered to be done with green whey had been boiled with white, was sharp with the maid, and tart with Mrs. Stokes. Thence she flew in a bustle up the wide staircase, and along the corridor under portraits of dead Cokes, to her room; but there, thought seemed inevitable, it was in vain she paced the floor. And feverishly tying the strings of her hat she hurried down again, her face burning. She would walk.

At the outer door she paused. She saw that Tom was still there, and she was unwilling to pass him, lest he read in this sudden activity the sign of disturbance. The pause was fatal. A moment she stood irresolute, fighting with herself and her cowardly impulses. Then she opened the door of the grand drawing-room, and gliding like a culprit down its shadowy length, opened the door of the smaller' room, and closed that too behind her. This inner room was little used in the daytime, and though the windows were open the curtains were drawn across them. Stealthily, fearing to be observed, she raised the corner of the nearest curtain and turned to look at Lady Anne's picture; the lodestone that had drawn her hither as the candle draws the moth. But she never looked; for as she turned she met her own face, pale, anxious, plain-yes plain-staring from the mirror at her shoulder, and what use to look after that? To look would not make Lady Anne less comely or herself more fair. She let the curtain fall.

But she stood. Some one was passing the open window. A voice she knew spoke, a second voice answered. And from where she stood Sophia heard their words as if they had spoken in the room.

CHAPTER XXV

REPENTANCE AT LEISURE

The first speaker was Lady Betty, and her first remark seemed to be an answer to a question. "Well, 'tis as you like," she said. "But if you'll be guided by me you'll not tell her. Then, when you go, it will put the finishing touch to our-friendship" – with a sly laugh-"if that be your wish, sir. On the other hand, if you tell madam, who is beginning to be jealous, take my word for it, there's an end of that! And there's this besides. If you tell her, it's not to be said what she will do, I warn you."

"She might insist on going?" Sir Hervey's voice answered. "That's what you mean?"

"If she knew she would go! I think she would, at any rate. At the best there's danger. On the other hand, say nothing to her, and here's the opportunity you said you desired. Of course, if you are weakening," Lady Betty continued in the tone of one ready to take offence, "and don't desire it any longer, that's another matter, sir."

"My dear girl," Sir Hervey cried eagerly, "have I not done everything to show her that she is indifferent to me? Do you want any other proof? Have I omitted anything? Have not I" – and then his voice died abruptly. The two speakers had turned the corner of the house, and Sophia heard no more. But she had heard enough. She had heard too much!

It is sadly trite that that we cannot have we want. It is an old tale that it is for the sour grapes the mouth waters, and not for the bunch within reach. A thousand kindnesses, the hand ever waiting, the smile ever ready, gain no response; until a thousand rebuffs have earned their due, and the smile and the hand are another's. Then, on a sudden, the heart learns its own bitterness. Then we would give the world for the look we once flouted, for the kind word from lips grown silent. And it is too late. Too late!

In the gloom of the inner drawing-room, where she sat with fingers feverishly interlaced, Sophia remembered his longsuffering with her, his thoughtfulness for her, his watchfulness over her, proved by a hundred acts of kindness and consideration. By a word at a drum when she was strange to town, and knew few. By countenance and a jest when Madam Harrington snubbed her. By the recovery of a muff-of value and her sister's-before it was known that she had lost it. By the gift of a birthnight fan which she had never carried; and the arrangement of a party to which she had not gone. By a word of caution when her infatuation for the Irishman began to be noticed; by a second word and a third. Through all he had been patience, she had been scorn. Now, on a sudden, she was in the dust before him. The smile that had never failed her in a difficulty, nor been wanting in a strait, had its value at last; and she felt that to read it once more in those eyes she would give the world, herself, all!

But too late. She had lost his love as she deserved to lose it. It was her doing. She had but herself to thank that this was the end. Only, she whispered, if he had had a little, a very little more patience! A day even! If he had given her one day more. That, or left her to her fate!

Fearful at last of being found in that room, seated before his picture, she crept out into the hall, and stood, marking the silence that prevailed in the house; listening to the dull tick of the clock that stood in the corner; watching the motes that danced in the dusty bars of sunshine before the door. With pathetic self-pity she found in these things-and in the faint taste of dry rot that told of the generations that had walked the old floor-the echo of her thoughts. Such, so quiet, so still, so regular, so far removed from the joy of the world was her life to be henceforth. "And I am young! I am young!" she whispered.

If he had only, when he met her in Clarges Row, left her to her fate! Nothing worse could have happened to her than this which had happened; and he might have wedded Lady Betty in innocence and honour. The fault was hers, and yet it was his too. A wild infatuation had brought her to the brink of ruin; an impulse of chivalry, scarcely less foolish, had led him to save her. The end for both must be misery. For him God knew what! For her, loneliness and this silent, empty, ordered house with its faint dead perfume, its aroma of long-stored linen, its savour of the dead and the by-gone.

As she stood in the middle of the floor, thinking these thoughts, the shadow of a bird flitted across the patch of sunshine that lay within the doorway. It startled her, and she looked up, just as Lady Betty, swinging her hat by its strings, and humming a gay air, appeared on the threshold. The girl hung an instant as in doubt, and then, whether she espied Sophia standing in the shadow and did not want to meet her, or she changed her mind for another reason, she turned and left the doorway empty.

The sight was too much for Sophia's composure. That airy, laughing figure-youthful, almost infantine-poised in sunshine-that and her own brooding face, seen lately in the glass, suggested a comparison that filled her heart to bursting. She crept to the oak side table that stood in the bayed recess behind the door, and leaning her arms upon it, hid her face in them. She did not weep, but from time to time she shivered, as if the June air chilled her.

She had sat in this position some minutes when a faint sound roused her. Ashamed of being found in that posture, she looked up, and saw Lady Betty in the act of crossing the hall on tip-toe. Apparently the girl had just entered from the terrace and thought herself alone; for when she reached the middle of the floor, she stood weighing a letter in her hand, as if she doubted what to do with it. Her eyes travelled slowly from the long oak table to an almoner; and thence to a chest that stood beside the inner door. In the end she chose the chest, and, gliding to the door, placed the letter on it, arranging its position with peculiar care. Then she turned to go out again by the terrace door, but had not taken two steps before her eyes met Sophia's. She uttered a low cry, and stood, arrested.

Sophia did not speak, but she rose, crossed the hall, and as the other, with a rapid movement, recovered the letter from the chest, she extended her hand for it.

"Give it to me," she said.

For a moment Lady Betty confronted her, holding the letter hidden. Then, whether Sophia's pale set face cowed her, or she really had no choice, she held out the letter. "It is for you," she faltered. "But-"