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

nor care. And I don't want to know, that's more."

"You'll smart for this!" Tom cried, getting in a word at last. He was almost bursting with chagrin and indignation. "I'd have you know, my fine fellow, I am Sir----"

"I don't want to know," Wollenhope retorted, stubbornly. "I don't care who you are; and for smarting, perhaps I may. When you are sober, sir, we'll talk about it. In the meantime, this is my house, and you'll go, unless you want me to fetch the constable. And that mayn't be best for the young lady, who seems a young lady. I don't suppose she'll like to be taken to the Round house, nor run the risk of it. Take my advice, young sir, take my advice; and go quietly while you can."

Tom, half-choked with rage, was for retorting, but Sophia, who had quite broken down and was weeping hysterically, clutched his arm. "Oh, come," she cried piteously, "please come!" And she tried to draw him towards the door.

But the lad resisted. "You'll answer to me for this," he said, scowling at Hawkesworth, who remained in an attitude, eyeing the two with a smile of disdain. "You know where to find me, and I shall be at your service until to-morrow at noon."

"I'll find you when you are grown up," the Irishman answered, with a mocking laugh. "Back to your books, boy, and be whipped for playing truant!"

The taunt stung Tom to fresh fury. With a scream of rage he sprang forward, and, shaking off Wollenhope's grasp, tried to close with his enemy. But Sophia hung on him bravely, imploring him to be calm; and Wollenhope seized him again and held him back, while Mrs. Wollenhope supplied, for assistance, a chorus of shrieks. Between the three he was partly led and partly dragged to the door, and got outside. From the landing he hurled a last threat at the smiling Hawkesworth, now left master of the field; and then, with a little rough persuasion, he was induced to descend.

In the passage he had a fresh fit of stubbornness, and wished to state his wrongs and who he was. But Sophia's heart was pitifully set on escaping from the house--to her a house of bitter shame and humiliation--and the landlord's desire was to see the last of them; and in a moment the two were outside. Wollenhope lost not a moment, but slammed the door on them; they heard the chain put up, and, an instant later, the man's retreating footsteps as he went back to his lodger.

CHAPTER IX IN CLARGES BOW

If Tom had been alone when he was thus ejected, it is probable that his first impulse would have been either to press his forehead against the wall and weep with rage, or to break the offender's windows--eighteen being an age at which the emotions are masters of the man. But the noise of the fracas within, though dulled by the walls, had reached the street. A window here and a window there stood open, and curious eyes, peering through the darkness, were on the two who had been put out. Tom was too angry to heed these on his own account, or care who was witness of his violence; but for Sophia's sake, whose state as she clung to his arm began to appeal to his manhood, he was willing to be gone without more.

After shaking his fist at the door, therefore, and uttering a furious word or two, he pressed the weeping girl's hand to his side. "All right," he said, "we'll go. It'll not be long before I'm back again, and they'll be sorry! A houseful of cheats and bullies! There, there, child, I'll come. Don't cry," he continued, patting her hand with an air that, after the reverse he had suffered, was not without its grandeur. "I'll take care of you, never fear. I've rooms a little way round the corner, taken to-day, and you shall have my bed. It's too late to go to Arlington Street to-night."

Sophia, sobbing and frightened, hung down her head, and did not answer; and Tom, forgetting in his wrath against Hawkesworth the cause he had to be angry with her, said nothing to increase her misery or aggravate her sense of the folly she had committed. His lodgings were in Clarges Row, a little north of Shepherd's Market, and almost within a stone's throw of Mayfair Chapel. Four minutes' walking brought the two to the house, where Tom rapped in a peculiar manner at the window-shutter; when this had been twice repeated, the door was opened grudgingly by a pale-faced, elderly man, bearing a lighted candle-end in his fingers.

He muttered his surprise on seeing Tom, but made way for him, grumbling something about the late hour. When he saw the girl about to follow, however, he started, and seemed to be going to refuse her entrance. But Tom was of those who carry off by sheer force of arrogance a difficult situation. "My sister, Miss Maitland, is with me," he said. "She'll have my room to-night. Don't stare, fellow, but hold a light for the lady to go up."

The man's reluctance was evident; but he let them enter, and barred the door after them. Then snuffing his candle with his fingers, he held it up and surveyed them. "By gole," he said, chuckling, "you don't look much like bride and bridegroom!"

Tom stormed at him, but he only continued to grin. "You've been fighting!" he said.

"Well what's that to you, you rogue!" the lad answered sharply. "Light the lady up, do you hear?"

"To be sure! To be sure! But you'll be wanting a light in each room," he continued with a cunning look, as he halted at the head of a narrow boarded staircase, up which he had preceded them. "That's over and above, you'll remember. Candles here and candles there, a man's soon ruined!"

Tom bade him keep a civil tongue, and himself led the way into a quaint little three-cornered parlour, boarded like the staircase; beyond it was a bedroom of the same shape and size. The rooms had a small window apiece looking on the Row, and wore an air of snugness that would have appealed to Sophia had her eyes been open to anything but her troubles. Against the longer wall of the little parlour stood a couple of tall clocks; a third eked out the scanty furniture of the bedroom, and others, ticking with stealthy industry in the lower part of the house, whispered that it was a clock-maker's shop.

Sophia cared not. She felt no curiosity. She put no questions, but accepted in silence the dispositions her brother made for her comfort. Bruised and broken, fatigued in body, with a sorely aching heart she took the room he gave her, sleep offering all she could now hope for or look for, sleep bounding all her ambitions. In sleep--and at that moment the girl would fain have lain down not to rise again--she hoped to find a refuge from trouble, a shelter from thought, a haven where shame could not enter. To one in suspense, in doubt, in expectation, bed is a rack, a place of torture; but when the blow has fallen, the lot been drawn, the dulled sensibilities sink to rest in it as naturally as a bird in the nest--and as quickly find repose.

She slept as one stunned, but weak is the anodyne of a single night. She awoke in the morning, cured indeed of love by a radical operation, but still bleeding; still in fancy under the cruel knife, still writhing in remembered torture. To look forward, to avert her eyes from the past, was her sole hope; and speedily her mind grew clear; the future began to take shape. She would make use of Tom's good offices, and through him she would negotiate terms with her sister. She would not, could not, go back to Arlington Street! But any penance, short of that, she would undergo. If it pleased them she would go to Chalkhill; or in any other way that seemed good to them, she would expiate the foolish, and worse than foolish escapade of which she had been guilty. Life henceforth could be but a grey and joyless thing; provided she escaped the sneers and gibes of Arlington Street, she cared little where it was spent.

She was anxious to broach the subject at breakfast; but, through a natural reluctance to open it, she postponed the discussion as long as she dared. It was not like Tom to be over careful of her feelings; but he, too, appeared to be equally unwilling to revert to past unpleasantness. He fidgeted and seemed preoccupied; he rose frequently and sat down again; more than once he went to the window and looked out. At last he rose impulsively and disappeared in the bedroom.

By-and-by he returned. He was still in his morning cap and loose wrapper, but he carried a shirt over each arm. "Which ruffles do you like the better, Sophy?" he asked; and he displayed one after the other before her eyes. "Of course I'd like to look my best to-day," he added, shamefacedly.

She stared at him, in perplexity at first, not understanding him; then in horror, as she discerned on a sudden what he meant. "To-day?" she faltered. "Why to-day, Tom, more than on other days?"

His face fell. "Is't odd," he said, "to want to look one's best to be married? At any rate, I never thought so. Until yesterday," he added with a glance at her dress.

She was sitting on the narrow window-seat; she stood up, her back to the window. "To be married?" she exclaimed. "Oh, Tom! It is impossible--impossible you intend to go on with it, after all you have heard!"

His face grew darker and more sullen. "At any rate I am not going to marry Hawkesworth!" he sneered. And then as she winced under the cruel stroke he repented of it. "I only mean," he said hurriedly, "that--that I don't see what he and his villainy have to do with my marriage."

"But, oh, Tom, it is all one!" Sophia cried, clasping her hands nervously. "He was with--with her, when you met her. I heard you say so last night. I heard you say that if it had not been for him you would never have seen her, or known her."

"Weil!" Tom answered. "And what of that? If her chaise had not broken down, I should never have seen her, or known her. That is true, too. But what has that to do with it, I'd like to know?"

"He planned it!"

"He could not plan my falling in love," Tom answered, stroking his chin fatuously.

"But if you had seen the book," Sophia retorted, "the book he snatched from me, you would have seen it written there! His plan was to procure you to be married first. You know you forfeit ten thousand pounds to me, Tom, and ten to Anne, if you marry without your guardian's consent?"

"Hang them and the ten thousand!" Tom cried grandly. "Lord, miss, I've plenty left! You are welcome to it, and so is sister. As for their consent, they'd not give it till I was Methuselah!"

"But surely you're not that yet!" she pleaded. "Nor near! You are only eighteen."

"Well, and what are you?" he retorted. "And you were for being married yesterday!"

"I was!" she cried, wringing her hands. "And to what a fate! I am unhappy to-day, unhappy, indeed; but I shall be thankful all my life that I escaped that! Oh, Tom, for my sake take care! Don't do it! Don't do it! Wait, at least, until----"

"Till I am Methuselah?" he cried. "It's likely!"

"No, but until you have taken advice!" she answered. "Till you know more about