Sophia: A Romance

Mr. Northey was less clear-sighted than his wife. He saw no change; he thought in all innocence that the matter was where he had left it. After clearing his throat, therefore, "Sophia," he said with much majesty, "I hope you have recovered your senses, and that conduct such as that of which you were guilty last night will not be repeated while you are in our charge. Understand me; it must not be repeated. You are country bred, and do not understand that what you did is a very serious matter, and quite enough to compromise a young girl."

Sophia, disdaining to answer, spent her gaze on the picture above his head. The withered flower was in her bosom; the heart that beat against it was full of wondering pity for her sister, who had been compelled to marry this man-this man, ugly, cold, stiff, with no romance in his life, no secret-this man, at the touch of whose hand she, Sophia, shuddered.

"I consider it so-so serious a transgression," Mr. Northey resumed pompously-little did he dream what she was thinking of him-"that the only condition on which I can consent to overlook it is that you at once, Sophia, do your duty by accepting the husband on whom we have fixed for you."

"No," Sophia said, in a low but determined tone, "I cannot do that!"

Mr. Northey fancied that he had not heard aright. "Eh," he said, "you-"

"I cannot do that, sir; my mind is quite made up," she repeated.

From her chair Mrs. Northey laughed scornfully at her husband's consternation. "Are you blind?" she said. "Cannot you see that the Irishman has turned the girl's head?"

"Impossible!" Mr. Northey said.

"Don't you hear her say that her mind is made up?" Mrs. Northey continued contemptuously. "You may talk till you are hoarse, Northey, you'll get nothing; I know that. She's a pig when she likes."

Mr. Northey glowered at the girl as if she had already broken all bounds. "But does she understand," he said, breathing hard, "that marriage with a person of-of that class, is impossible? And surely no modest girl would continue to encourage a person whom she cannot marry?"

Still Sophia remained silent, her eyes steadily fixed on the picture above his head.

"Speak, Sophia!" he cried imperatively. "This is impertinence."

"If I cannot marry him," she said in a low voice, "I shall marry no one!"

"If you cannot marry that-that Irish footman?" he gasped, bursting into rage. "A penniless adventurer, who has not even asked you."

"He has asked me," she retorted.

"Oh, by Gad, ma'am, I've done with you," Mr. Northey cried, striking his fist on the table; and he added an expletive or two. "I hand you over to madam, there. Perhaps she can bring you to your senses. I might have known it," he continued bitterly, addressing his wife. "Like and like, madam! It's bred in the bone, I see!"

"I don't know what you mean, Northey," his wife answered with a sneer of easy contempt. "If you had left the matter to me from the beginning, 'twould have been done by now. Listen to me, Miss Obstinate. Is that the last word you'll give us?"

"Yes," Sophia said, pluming herself a little on her victory.

"Then you'll go into the country to-morrow! That's all!" was Mrs. Northey's reply. "We'll see how you like that!"

The blow was unexpected. The girl's lips parted, and she looked wildly at her sister. "Into the country?" she stammered.

"Ay, sure."

"To-to Cuckfield?" she asked desperately. After all, were she sent to her old home all was not lost. He had heard her speak of it; he knew where it was; he could easily trace her thither.

"No, miss, not to Cuckfield," her sister replied, triumphing cruelly, for she read the girl's thoughts. "You'll go to Aunt Leah at Chalkhill, and I wish you joy of her tantrums and her scraping. You'll go early to-morrow; Mr. Northey will take you; and until you are away from here I'll answer there shall be no note-palming. When you are in a better mind, and your Teague's in Bridewell, you may come back. I fancy you'll be tamed by that time. It will need mighty little persuasion, I'm thinking, to bring you to marry Sir Hervey when you've been at Aunt Leah's for three months."

Sophia's lip began to tremble; her eyes roved piteously. Well might the prospect terrify her, for it meant not only exile from her lover, but an exile which she saw might be permanent. For how was he to find her? To Cuckfield, the family seat, he might trace her easily; but in the poor hamlet on the Sussex coast, where her aunt, who had tripped in her time and paid the penalty, dragged on a penurious existence as the widow of a hedge-parson, not so easily. There a poor girl might eat out her heart, even as her aunt had eaten out hers, and no redress and no chance of rescue. Even had she the opportunity of writing to her lover she did not-unhappy thought-know where he lived.

Mrs. Northey read her dismay, saw the colour fade in her cheek, and the tears gather in her eyes, and with remorseless determination, with cruel enjoyment, drove the nail home.

"There'll be no Vauxhall there," she sneered, "and mighty few drums or routs, my dear! It's likely your first masquerade will be your last; and for the wine-merchant actor that you were to see at Goodman's Fields tomorrow, you may whistle for him; and for your dear Amorevoli. It's to be hoped, Miss Lucy, you'll find your Thomas worth it," she continued, alluding to the farce that held the town, "when you get him." And then, changing her ground, with no little skill, "See here, child," she said, in the tone of one willing to argue, "are you going on with this silliness? Think, my dear, think, while it is time, for 'twill be too late at Chalkhill. You don't want to go and be buried in that hole till your brother comes of age?"

Sophia, resentful but terrified, subdued both by the prospect and by the appeal to her reasonableness, had hard work to refrain from tears as she uttered her negative. "No, I-I don't want to go," she stammered.

"I thought not; then you shall have one more chance," Mrs. Northey answered, with a fair show of good nature. "If you'll give me your word not to write to him, you shall have a week to think of it before you go. But you'll keep your room-on that I must insist; there you'll have time to think, and I hope by the end of the week you'll have come to your senses, my dear. If not, you'll go to Aunt Leah."

The mixture of severity and kindness was clever, and it had its effect upon poor Sophia, who stood weighing the alternatives with a rueful face. While she remained in town, if she might not see him, she was still near him, and he near her. She would not be lost to him nor he to her; and then, what might not happen in a week? "I will promise," she murmured, in a low uncertain tone.

"Good," Mrs. Northey answered; "then you may go to your room."

And to her room Sophia would have gone, in a mood fairly open to the influence of reason and solitude. But in an evil moment for himself Mr. Northey, smarting under a defeat which his wife's victory rendered the more humiliating, thought he espied an opportunity of restoring his dignity.

"Yes, you may go," he said sourly; "but take this with you. You will see there," he continued, fussily selecting a letter from a pile on the table, and handing it to her, "what are the terms in which a gentleman seeks an alliance with a lady. It is from Sir Hervey, and I shall be much surprised if it does not produce a very different impression on you from that which that person has made."

"I do not want it," Sophia answered; and held out the letter between her finger and thumb, as if it had an evil odour.

"But I insist on your taking it," Mr. Northey replied with temper; and in spite of the warnings which his wife's contemptuous shrugs should have conveyed to him, he repeated the command.

"Then I will read it now," the girl answered, standing very upright, "if you order me to do so."

"I do order you," he said; and still holding the folded sheet a little from her, she opened it, and with a curling lip and half averted eye, began to read the contents. Suddenly Mrs. Northey took fright; Mr. Northey even was surprised by the change. For the girl's face grew red and redder; she stared at the letter, her lips parting widely, as in astonishment. At last, "What? What is this?" she cried, "Tom? Then it was-it was Tom I saw last night."

"Tom!" Mr. Northey exclaimed.

"Yes, it was Tom!" Sophia cried; "and-oh, but this is dreadful! This must be-must be stopped at once!" she continued, looking from the paper to them and back again with distended eyes. "He is mad to think of such a thing at his age; he is only a boy; he does not know what he is doing." Her voice shook with agitation.

"What the deuce do you mean, miss?" her brother-in-law thundered, rising furious from his chair. "Have you taken leave of your senses? What do you mean by this-this nonsense."

"Mean?" his wife answered with bitter emphasis. "She means that, instead of giving her Coke's letter, you have given her the Cambridge letter; the letter from Tom's tutor. You have done it, like the fool you always are, Northey."

Mr. Northey swore violently. "Give it me!" he cried harshly. "Do you hear, girl? Give it me!" And he stretched out his hand to recover the letter.

But something in the excess of his chagrin, or in the words of the reproach Mrs. Northey had flung at him roused suspicion in the girl's mind. She recoiled, holding the paper from him. "It is five days old!" she gasped; "you have had it four days-three at least; and you have said nothing about it. You have not told me! And you have done nothing!" she continued, her mind jumping instinctively to the truth, at which Mr. Northey's guilty face hinted not obscurely. "He is on the brink of ruining himself with this woman, and you stand by though you are told what she is, and were told three days ago. Why? Why?" Sophia cried, as Mr. Northey, with an oath, snatched the letter from her. "What does it mean?"

"Mean? Why, that one unruly child is enough to manage at a time!" Mrs. Northey answered, rising to the occasion. She spoke with venom, and no wonder; her hands tingled for her husband's ears. He had improved matters with a vengeance. "It's fine talking, you little toad," she continued, with a show of reason; "but if you don't listen to sense who are here, how are we to persuade him, and he not here? Tell me that, miss. A nice pattern of discretion and prudence you are to talk. Hang your impudence!"

"But you have done nothing," Sophia wailed, her affection for her brother keeping her to the point. "And I saw him last night; it was he whom I saw at Vauxhall. I could have spoken to him, and I am sure he would have listened to me."

"Listened to his grandmother!" Mrs. Northey retorted, with acrid contempt. "We have done what we think right, and that is enough for you, you baby. A nasty disobedient little toad, running into the very same folly yourself, and then prating of us, and what we should do! Hang your fine talking; I've no patience with you, and so I tell you, miss."

"But," Sophia said slowly, her voice grown timid, "I don't understand-"

"Who cares whether you understand!"

"Why-why you make so much of marrying me the way you wish, and yet let him go his way? If he does this, you'll get some of his money I know, but it cannot be that. It couldn't be that. And yet-and yet-" she cried, with a sudden flush of generous indignation, as conviction was borne in upon her by Mr. Northey's hang-dog face-"yes, it is that! Oh, for shame! for shame! Are you his sister, and will ruin him? Will ruin him for the sake of-of money!"

"Silence, you minx!" Mrs. Northey cried; and she rose, her face white with rage, and seizing her sister's arm, she shook her violently. "How dare you say such things? Do you hear? Be silent!"

But Sophia was beside herself with passion, she would not be silent. Neither the dead Northeys on the walls, nor the living sister should stifle the expression of her feelings.