Sophia, Stanley J. Weyman [new ebook reader TXT] 📗

You'll not receive a second?"

"La, no, I promise you," Lady Betty cried, volubly insistent. "He's--well, he's a nobody, but he writes such dear, darling, charming notes! There, now you know. Oh, yes, it was horrid of me. But I hate him. So that's enough."

"You promise?" Sophia said, almost severely.

"I vow I do," Lady Betty cried, hugging her. "The creature's a wretch. Now tell me, you poor thing, all about him. I've told you my affair."

Here was indeed a blind leader of the blind, but after a little hesitation Sophia told her story. She was too proud to plead the justification her sister's treatment of Tom supplied; nor was there need of this. Even in the bud, Lady Betty found the story beautiful; and when Sophia went on to her lover's letter, and blushing and faltering owned that he had pressed her to elope, the listener could contain herself no longer. "Elope!" she cried, springing up with sparkling eyes. "Oh, the dear bold man! Oh, how I envy you!"

"Envy me?"

"Yes! To be locked in your room and starved--I hope they starve you--and scolded and threatened and perhaps carried into the country. And all the time to be begged and prayed and entreated to elope, and the dear creature wailing and sighing and consuming below. Oh, you lucky, lucky, lucky, girl!" And Lady Betty flung herself on Sophia's neck and embraced her again and again. "You lucky thing! And then perhaps to be forced to escape down a ladder----"

"Escape?" Sophia said, shaking her head piteously. And she explained how far she was from escaping. "By this time to-morrow," she continued, choked by the bitter feelings the thought of to-morrow begot, "I shall be at Chalkhill!"

"No, you will not!" Lady Betty cried, her eyes sparkling. "You will not!" she repeated. "By good luck 'tis between lights. Put on your hoop and sacque. Take my hat and laced jacket. Bend your knees as you go down the stairs, you gawk, and no one will be a bit the wiser."

Sophia stared at her. "What do you mean?" she said.

"Northey's at the House, your sister's at Lady Paget's," the girl explained breathlessly. "There is only the old fright outside, and she's had a taste of my tongue and won't want another. You may walk straight out before they bring candles. I shall wait ten minutes until you are clear, and then, though they'll know it's a bite, they won't dare to stop my ladyship, and--oh, you darling, it will be the purest, purest fun. It will be all over the town to-morrow, and I shall be part of it!"

Sophia shuddered. "Fun?" she said. "Do you call it fun?"

"Why, of course it will be the purest, purest fun!" the other cried. "The prettiest trick that ever was played! You darling, we shall be the talk of the town!" And in the gaiety of her heart, Lady Betty lifted her sacque, and danced two or three steps of a minuet. "We shall--but how you look, miss! You are not going to disappoint me?"

Sophia stood silent. "I am afraid," she muttered.

"Afraid? Afraid of what?"

"I am afraid."

"But you were going to him to-morrow?"

Sophia blushed deeply. "He was coming for me," she murmured.

"Well, and what is the difference?"

The elder girl did not answer, but her cheeks grew hotter and hotter. "There is a difference," she said.

"Then you'll go to Chalkhill!" Lady Betty cried in derision, her voice betraying her chagrin. "La, miss, I vow I thought you'd more spirit! or I would not have troubled you!"

Sophia did not retort; indeed, she did not hear. In her heart was passing a struggle, the issue of which must decide her lot. And she knew this. She was young, but she knew that as her lover showed himself worthy or unworthy of her trust so must her fate be happy or most miserable, if she went to him. And she trembled under the knowledge. Chalkhill, even Chalkhill and Aunt Leah's stinging tongue and meagre commons seemed preferable to a risk so great. But then she thought of Tom, and of the home that had grown cold; of the compensations for home in which others seemed to find pleasure, the flippant existence of drums and routs, the card-table and the masquerade. And in dread, not of Chalkhill, but of a loveless life, in hope, not of her lover, but of love, she wrung her hands. "I don't know!" she cried, the burden of decision forcing the words from her as from one in pain. "I don't know!"

"What?"

"Whether I dare go!"

"Why," Lady Betty asked eagerly, "there is no risk."

"Child! child, you don't understand," poor Sophia wailed. "Oh, what, oh, what am I to do? If I go it is for life. Don't you understand?" she added feverishly. "Cannot you see that? It is for life!"

Lady Betty, startled by the other's passion, could only answer, "But you were going to-morrow, miss? If you were not afraid to go to-morrow----"

"Why to-day?" Sophia asked bitterly. "If I could trust him to-morrow, why not to-day? Because--because--oh, I cannot tell you!" And she covered her face with her hands.

The other saw that she was shaking from head to foot, and reluctantly accepted a situation she only partly understood. "Then you won't go?" she said.

The word "No" trembled on Sophia's lips. But then she saw as in a glass the life to which she condemned herself if she pronounced it; the coldness, the worldliness, the lovelessness, the solitude in a crowd, all depicted, not with the compensating lights and shadows which experience finds in them, but in crude lines such as they wear in a young girl's fancy. In the past was nothing to retain her; in the future her lover beckoned; only maiden modesty and dread of she knew not what withstood a natural impulse. She would and she would not. Painfully she twisted and untwisted her fingers, while Lady Betty waited and looked.

On a sudden in Arlington Street a small-coalman raised his shrill cry; she had heard it a score of times in the last two days; now she felt that she could not bear to hear it again. It was a small thing, but her gorge rose against it. "I will go!" she cried hoarsely. "Give me the clothes."

Lady Betty clapped her hands like a child at play. "You will? Oh, brave!" she cried. "Then there's not a minute to be lost, miss. Take my laced jacket and hat. But stay--you must put on your sacque and hoop. Where are they? Let me help you. And won't you want to take some--la, you'll have nothing but what you stand up in!"

Sophia winced, but pursued her preparations as if she had not heard. In feverish haste she dragged out what she wanted, and in five minutes stood in the middle of the room, arrayed in Lady Betty's jacket and hat, which, notwithstanding the difference in height, gave her such a passing resemblance to the younger girl as might deceive a person in a half light.

"You'll do!" Lady Betty cried; all to her was sport. "And you'll just take my chair: it's a hack, but they know me. Mutter 'home,' and stop 'em where you like--and take another! D'you see?"

The two girls--their united ages barely made up thirty-four--flung themselves into one another's arms. Held thus, the younger felt the wild beating of Sophia's heart, and put her from her and looked at her with a sudden qualm of doubt and fear and perception.

"Oh," she cried, "if he is not good to you! If he--don't! don't!" she continued, trembling herself in every limb. "Let me take off your things. Let me! Don't go!"

But Sophia's mind was now made up. "No," she said firmly; and then, looking into the other's eyes, "Only speak of me kindly, child, if--if they say things."

And before Lady Betty, left standing in the middle of the darkening room--where the reflection of the oil lamps in the street below was beginning to dance and flicker on the ceiling--had found words to answer, Sophia was half-way down the stairs. The staircase was darker than the room, and detection, as Lady Betty had foreseen, was almost impossible. Mrs. Martha, waiting spitefully outside her mistress's door on the first floor landing, saw as she thought, "that little baggage of a ladyship" go down; and she followed her muttering, but with no intention of intercepting her. John in the hall, too, saw her coming, and threw wide the door, then flew to open the waiting chair. "Home, my lady?" he asked obsequiously, and passed the word; finally, when the chair moved off, he looked up and down, and came in slowly, whistling. Another second, and the door of the house in Arlington Street slammed on Sophia.

"And a good riddance!" muttered Mrs. Martha, looking over the balusters. "I never could abear her!"

CHAPTER VI A CHAIR AND A COACH

The glasses of the chair, which had been standing some time at the door, were dimmed by moisture, and in the dusk of the evening its trembling occupant had no cause to fear recognition. But as the men lifted and bore her from the door, every blurred light that peeped in on her, and in an instant was gone, every smoking shop-lamp that glimmered a moment through the mist, and betrayed the moving forms that walked the sideway, was, to Sophia, an eye noting and condemning her. As the chairmen swung into Portugal Street, and, turning eastwards, skirted the long stand of coaches and the group of link-men that waited before Burlington House, she felt that all eyes were upon her, and she shrank farther and farther into the recesses of the chair.

A bare-footed orange girl, who ran beside the window waving ballads or bills of the play, a coach rattling up behind and bespattering the glass as it passed, a link-boy peering in and whining to be hired, caused her a succession of panics. On top of these, the fluttering alarms of the moment, pressed the consciousness of a step taken that could never be retraced; nor was it until the chairmen, leaving Piccadilly behind them, had entered the comparative quiet of Air Street, and a real difficulty rose before her, that she rallied her faculties.

The men were making for Soho, and if left to take their course, would, in a quarter of an hour set her down at the door of Lady Betty's home in King's Square. That would not do. But to stay them, and to vary the order from "Home" to Mr. Wollenhope's house in Davies Street, where her lover lodged, did not now seem the simple and easy step it had appeared a few minutes earlier, when the immediate difficulty was to escape from the house. Lady Betty had said that the men knew her. In that case, as soon as Sophia spoke to them they would scent something wrong, and, apprised of the change of fares, might wish to know more. They might even decline to take her whither she bade them!

The difficulty was real, but for that very reason Sophia's courage rose to meet it. At present she knew where she was; a minute or two later she might not know. The sooner she took the route into her own hands, therefore, the better it would be; and as the men turned from the narrow street of Air into Brewer Street and swung to the right towards Soho, she tapped the glass. The chair moved on. With impatience, natural in the circumstances, Sophia tapped again and more sharply. This time the front bearer heard, and gave the word. The chair was set down, and the man, wiping his brow, raised the lid.

"What is it, my lady?" he said, with a rich Irish