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

it back. Again she listened, wondering how long she had waited. No, that was not a step on the stairs; and thereat her heart began to sink. The reaction of hope deferred began to be felt. What if he did not come? What if she waited, and nine found her still waiting--waiting vainly in this quiet room where the lights twinkled in the polished panels, and now and again the ash of the coal fell softly to the hearth? It might--it might be almost nine already!

She began to succumb to a new fever of suspense, and looked about for something to divert her thoughts. Her eyes fell on the book that lay open on the seat of the settle. Thinking, "He has read this to-day--his was the last hand that touched it--on this page his eyes rested," Sophia stooped for it, and holding it carefully that she might keep the place for him, reverently, for it was his, she carried it to the light. The title at the head of the page was The Irish Register. The name smacked so little of diversion, she thought it a political tract--for the book was thin, no more than fifty pages or so; and she was setting it back on the table when her eye, in the very act of leaving the page, caught the glint, as it were, of a name. Beside the name, on the margin, were a few pencilled words and figures; but these, faintly scrawled, she did not heed at the moment.

"Cochrane, the Lady Elizabeth?" she muttered, repeating the name that had caught her eye, "How strange! What can the book have to do with Lady Betty? It must be some kind of peerage. But she is not Irish!"

To settle the question, she raised the book anew to the light, and saw that it consisted of a list of persons' names arranged in order of rank. Only--which seemed odd--all the names were ladies' names. Above Cochrane, the Lady Elizabeth, appeared Cochrane, the Lady Anne; below came Coke, the Lady Catherine, and after each name the address of the lady followed if she were a widow, of her parents or guardians if she were unmarried.

Sophia wondered idly what it meant, and with half her mind bent on the matter, the other half intent on the coming of a footstep, she turned back to the title-page of the book. She found that the fuller description there printed ran The Irish Register, or a list of the Duchess Dowagers, Countesses, Widow Ladies, Maiden Ladies, Widows, and Misses of Great Fortunes in England, as registered by the Dublin Society.

Even then she was very, very far from understanding. But the baldness of the description sent a chill through her. Misses of large fortunes in England! As fortunes went, she was a miss of large fortune. Perhaps that was why the words grated upon her; why her heart sank, and the room seemed to grow darker. Turning to look at the cover of the book, she saw a slip of paper inserted towards the end to keep a place. It projected only an eighth of an inch, but she marked it, and turned to it; something or other--it may have been only the position of the paper in that part of the book, it may have been the presence of the book in her lover's room--forewarning her; for in the act of turning the leaves, and before she came to the marker, she knew what she would find.

And she found it. First, her name, "Maitland, Miss Sophia, at the Hon. Mr. Northey's in Arlington Street". Then--yes, then, for that was not all or the worst--down the narrow margin, starting at her name, ran a note, written faintly, in a hand she knew; the same hand that had penned her one love letter, the hand from which the quill had fallen in the rapture of anticipation, the hand of her "humble, adoring lover, Hector, Count Plomer"!

She knew that the note would tell her all, and for a moment her courage failed her; she dared not read it. Her averted eyes sought instead the cupboard in the lower wainscot, which she had fancied the hiding place of the Jacobite cipher, the muniment chest where lay, intrusted to his honour, the lives and fortunes of the Beauforts and Ormondes, the Wynns and Cottons and Cecils. Was the cupboard that indeed? Or--what was it? The light reflected from the surface of the panels told her nothing, and she lowered the book and stood pondering. If the note proved to be that which she still shrank from believing it, what had she done? Or rather, what had she not done? What warnings had she not despised, what knowledge had she not slighted, what experience had she not overridden? How madly, how viciously, in the face of advice, in the face of remonstrance, in modesty's own despite, had she wrought her confusion, had she flung herself into the arms of this man! This man who--but that was the question!

She asked herself trembling, was he what this book seemed to indicate, or was he what she had thought him? Was he villain, or hero? Fortune-hunter, or her true lover? The meanest of tricksters, or the high-spirited, chivalrous gentleman, laughing at danger and smiling at death, in whom great names and a great cause were content to place their trust?

At last she nerved herself to learn the answer to the question. The wicks of the candles were burning long; she snuffed them anew, and holding the book close to the light, read the words that were delicately traced beside her name.

"Has 6000 guineas charged on T. M.'s estate. If T. M. marries without consent of guardians has £10,000 more. Mrs. N. the same. T. is at Cambridge, aged eighteen. To make all sure, T. must be married first--query Oriana, if she can be found? Or Lucy Slee--but boys like riper women. Not clinch with S. M. until T. is mated, nor at all if the little Cochrane romp (page 7) can be brought to hand. But I doubt it, but S. M. is an easy miss, and swallows all. A perfect goose."

Sophia sat awhile in a chair and shivered, her face white, her head burning. The words were so clear that, the initials notwithstanding, it was not possible to misinterpret them; or to set on them any construction save one. They cut her as the lash of a whip cuts the bare flesh. It was for this--thing that she had laid aside her maiden pride, had risked her good name, had scorned her nearest, had thrown away all in life that was worth keeping! It was for this creature, this thing in the shape of man, that she had over-leapt the bounds, had left her home, had risked the perils of the streets, and the greater perils of his company. For this--but she had not words adequate to the loathing of her soul. Outraged womanhood, wounded pride, contemned affection--which she had fancied love--seared her very soul. She could have seen him killed, she could have killed him with her own hand--or she thought she could; so completely in a moment was her liking changed to hatred, so completely destroyed on the instant was the trust she had placed in him.

"And S. M. is an easy miss, and swallows all. A perfect goose!" Those words cut more deeply than all into her vanity. She winced, nay, she writhed under them. Nor was that all. They had a clever, dreadful smartness that told her they were no mere memorandum, but had served in a letter, and tickled at once a man's conceit and a woman's ears. Her own ears burned at the thought. "S. M. is an easy miss, and swallows all. A perfect goose!" Oh, she would never recover it! She would never regain her self-respect!

The last embers had grown grey behind the bars; the last ash had fallen from the grate while she sat. The room was silent save for her breathing, that now came in quick spasms as she thought of the false lover, and now was slow and deep as she sat sunk in a shamed reverie. On a sudden the cooling fireplace cracked. The sound roused her. She sprang up and gazed about her in affright, remembering that she had no longer any business there, nay, that in no room in the world had she less business.

In the terror of the moment she flew to the door; she must go, but whither? More than ever, now that she recognised her folly, she shrank from her sister's scornful eyes, from Mr. Northey's disapproving stare, from the grins of the servants, the witticisms of her friends. The part she had played, seen as she now saw it, would make her the laughing-stock of the town. It was the silliest, the most romantic; a school-girl would cry fie on it. Sophia's cheek burned at the thought of facing a single person who had ever known her; much more at the thought of meeting her sister or Mrs. Martha, or the laced bumpkins past whom she had flitted in that ill-omened hour. She could not go back to Arlington Street. But then--whither could she go?

Whither indeed? It was nine o'clock; night had fallen. At such an hour the streets were unsafe for a woman without escort, much more for a girl of gentility. Drunken roysterers on their way from tavern to tavern, ripe for any frolic, formed a peril worse than footpads; and she had neither chair nor link-boys, servants nor coach, without one or other of which she had never passed through the streets in her life. Yet she could not stay where she was; rather would she lie without covering in the wildest corner of the adjacent parks, or on the lonely edge of Rosamond's pond! The mere thought that she lingered there was enough; she shuddered with loathing, grew hot with rage. And the impulse that had hastened her to the door returning, she hurried out and was half-way down the stairs, when the sound of a man's voice, uplifted in the passage below, brought her up short where she stood.

An instant only she heard it clearly. Then the tramp of feet along the passage, masked the voice. But she had heard enough--it was Hawkesworth's--and her eyes grew wide with terror. She should die of shame if he found her there! If he learned, not by hearsay, but eye to eye, that she had come of her own motion, poor, silly dupe of his blandishments, to throw herself into his arms! That were too much; she turned to fly.

Her first thought was to take refuge on the upper floor until he had gone into his room and closed the door; two bounds carried her to the landing she had left. But here she found an unexpected obstacle in a wicket, set at the foot of the upper flight of stairs; one of those wickets that are still to be seen in old houses, in the neighbourhood of the nursery. By the light that issued from the half-open doorway of the room, Sophia tugged at it furiously, but seeking the latch at the end of the gate where the hinges were, she lost a precious moment. When she found the fastening, the steps of the man she had fancied she loved, and now knew she hated, were on the stairs. And the gate would not yield! Penned on the narrow landing, with discovery tapping her on the shoulder, she fumbled desperately with the latch, even, in despair, flung her weight against the wicket. It held; in another second, if she persisted, she would be seen.

With a moan of anguish she turned and darted into Hawkesworth's room, and sprang to the table where the candles stood. Her thought was to blow them out, then to