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

"There's a detainer," he muttered. "It's no good, Bess. If s no good, I tell you!"

"Well, pay the detainer! Pay that, too!" she retorted. "Pay it, you old skinflint, or I'll swear to you for gold clipping! and you'll hang at Tyburn, as your friend Jonathan Thomas did! Have a care, will you, or I'll do it, so help me!"

The old man screamed a palsied curse at her. Sir Hervey touched the lad's arm. "Come," he said sternly. And he turned to the door.

Tom shuddered, but followed at his heels as a beaten hound follows. The woman saw her last chance passing from her, sprang forward, and tried to seize his arm; tried to detain him, tried to gain his ear for a final appeal. But the bailiff interfered. "Softly, mistress, softly," he said. "You know the rules. Get the old 'un to pay, and you may do as you please."

He held her while Tom was got out, dizzy and shaking, his eyes opened to the abyss from which he had been plucked back. But, though Coke closed the door behind them, the woman's voice still followed them, and shocked and horrified them with its shrill clamour. Tom shuddered at the dreadful sound; yet lingered.

"I must get something," he muttered, avoiding his companion's eyes. "It is upstairs."

"What is it?" Coke answered impatiently. And, anxious to get the lad out of hearing, he took his arm, and urged him towards the street. "Whatever it is, I'll send my man for it."

But Tom hung back. "No," he said. "It's money. I must get it."

"For goodness' sake don't stay now," Sir Hervey protested.

But Tom, instead of complying, averted his face. "I want to pay this," he muttered. "I shall never see her again. But I would rather she--she were not taken now. That's all."

Coke stared. "Oh Lord!" he said; and he wondered. But he let Tom go upstairs; and he waited himself in the passage to cover his retreat. He heard the lad go up and push open the door of the little three-cornered room, which had been his abode for a week; the little room where he had tasted to the full of anticipation, and whence he had gone aglow with fire and joy an hour before. Coke heard him no farther, but continued to listen, and "What is that?" he muttered presently. A moment, and he followed his companion up the stairs; at the head of the flight he caught again the sound he had heard below; the sound of a muffled cry deadened by distance and obstacles, but still almost articulate. He looked after Tom; but the door of the room in which he had disappeared was half open. The sound did not issue thence. Then he thought it came from the room below; and he was on the point of turning when he saw a door close beside him in the angle of the stairs, and he listened at that. For the moment all was silent, yet Sir Hervey had his doubts. The key was in the lock, he turned it softly, and stepped into an untidy little bedroom, sordid and dull; the same, in fact, through which Sophia had been decoyed. He noticed the door at the farther end, and was crossing the floor towards it, with an unpleasant light in his eyes--for he began to guess what he should find--when the door of the room below opened, and a man came out, and came heavily up the stairs. Sir Hervey paused and looked back; another moment and Grocott reaching the open door stood glaring in.

Sir Hervey spoke only one word. "Open!" he said; and he pointed with his cane to the door of the inner room. The key was not in the lock.

The clock-maker, cringing almost to the boards, crept across the floor, and producing the key from his pocket, set it in the lock. As he did so Coke gripped him on a sudden by the nape of the neck, and irresistibly but silently forced him to his knees. And that was what Sophia saw when the door opened. Grocott kneeling, his dirty, flabby face quivering with fear, and Sir Hervey standing over him.

"Oh!" she exclaimed, and stepped back in amazement; but, so much thought given to herself, her next was for Tom. She had been a prisoner nearly two hours, in fear as well as in suspense, assailed at one time by the fancy that those who had snared her had left her to starve, at another by the dread of ill-treatment if they returned. But the affection for her brother, which had roused her from her own troubles, was still strong, and her second thought was of Tom.

She seized Sir Hervey's arm, "Thank Heaven you have come!" she cried. "Did he send you? Where is he?"

"Tom?" Coke answered cheerily. "He is all right. He is here."

"Here? And he is not married?"

"No, he is not married," Sir Hervey answered; "nor is he going to be yet awhile."

"Thank God!" she exclaimed. And then, as their eyes met, she remembered herself, and quailed, the blushes burning in her cheeks. She had not seen him since the evening at Vauxhall, when he had laboured to open her eyes to Hawkesworth's true character. The things that had happened, the things she had done since that evening crowded into her mind; she could have sunk into the floor for very shame. She did not know how much he knew or how much worse than she was he might be thinking her; and in an agony of recollection she covered her face and shrank from him.

"Come, child, come, you are safe now," he said hurriedly; he understood her feelings. "I suppose they locked you here that you might not interfere? Eh, was that it?" he continued, seizing Grocott's ear and twisting it until the old rogue grovelled on the floor. "Eh, was that it?"

"Oh, yes, yes," the clock-maker cried. "That was it! I'll beg the lady's pardon. I'll do anything! I'll----"

"You'll hang--some day!" Sir Hervey answered, releasing him with a final twist. "Begone for this time, and thank your stars I don't haul you to the nearest justice! And do you, child, come to your brother. He is in the next room."

But when Sophia had so far conquered her agitation as to be able to comply, they found no Tom there; only a scrap of paper, bearing a line or two of writing, lay on the table.

"I'm gone to enlist, or something, I don't care what. It doesn't matter," it ran. "Don't come after me, for I shan't come back. Let Sophy have my setter pup, it's at the hall. I see it now; it was a trap. If I meet H. I shall kill him.--T. M."

"He has found her out, then?" Sophia said tearfully.

"Yes," Sir Hervey answered, standing at the table and drumming on it with his fingers, while he looked at her and wondered what was to be done next. "He has found her out. In a year he will be none the worse and a little wiser."

"But if he enlists?" she murmured.

"We shall hear of it," Coke answered, "and can buy him out." And then there was silence again. And he wondered again what was to be done next.

Below, the house was quiet. Either the bailiffs had removed their prisoner, or she had been released, and she and they had gone their ways. Even Grocott, it would seem, terrified by the position in which he found himself, had taken himself off for a while, for not a sound save the measured ticking of clocks broke the silence of the house, above stairs or below. After a time, as Sophia said nothing, Sir Hervey moved to the window and looked into the Row. The coach that had waited so long was gone. A thin rain was beginning to fall, and through it a pastrycook's boy with a tray on his head was approaching the next house. Otherwise the street was empty.

"Did--did my sister send you?" she faltered at last.

"No."

"How did you find me?"

"I heard from your brother-in-law," he answered, his face still averted.

"What?"

"That you had gone to Davies Street."

"He knew?" she muttered.

"Yes."

She caught her breath. "Is it public?" she whispered. "I suppose everybody--knows."

"Well, some do, I've no doubt," he answered bluntly. "Women will worry something, and, of course, there is a--sort of a bone in it."

She shivered, humiliated by the necessity that lay upon her. She must clear herself. It had come to this, she had brought it to this, that she must clear herself even in his eyes. "My brother was there," she said indistinctly, her face covered from his gaze.

"I know," he answered.

"Do they know?"

He understood that she meant the Northeys. "No," he answered. "Not yet."

She was silent a moment. Then--"What am I to do?" she asked faintly.

She had gone through so many strange things in the last twenty-four hours that this which should have seemed the strangest of all--that she should consult him--passed with her for ordinary. But not with Coke. It showed him more clearly than before her friendlessness, her isolation, her forlornness, and these things moved him. He knew what the world would think of her escapade, what sharp-tongued gossips like Lady Harrington would make of it, what easy dames like Lady Walpole and Lady Townshend would proclaim her; and his heart was full of pity for her. He knew her innocent; he had the word of that other innocent, Tom, for it; but who would believe it? The Northeys had cast her off; perhaps when they knew all they would still cast her off. Her brother, her only witness, had taken himself away, and was a boy at most. Had he been older, he might have given the gossips the lie and forced the world to believe him, at the point of the small sword. As it was she had no one. Her aunt's misfortune was being repeated in a later generation. The penalty must be the same.

Must it? In the silence Sir Hervey heard her sigh, and his heart beat quickly. Was there no way to save her? Yes, there was one. He saw it, and with the coolness of the old gamester he took it.

"What are you to do?" he repeated thoughtfully; and turning, he sat down, and looked at her across the table, his face, voice, manner all business-like. "Well, it depends, child. I suppose you have no feeling left for--for that person?"

She shook her head, her face hidden.

"None at all?" he persisted, toying with his snuff-box, while he looked at her keenly. "Pardon me, I wish to have this clear because--because it's important."

"I would rather die," she cried passionately, "than be his wife."

He nodded. "Good," he said. "It was to be expected. Well, we must make that clear, quite clear, and--and I can hardly think your sister will still refuse to receive you."

Sophia started; her face flamed. "Has she said anything?" she muttered.

"Nothing," Coke answered. "But you left her yesterday--to join him; and you return to-day. Still--still, child, I think if we make all clear to her, quite clear, and to your brother Northey, they will be willing to overlook the matter and find you a home."

She shuddered. "You speak very plainly," she murmured faintly.

"I fear," he said, "you will hear plainer things from her. But," he continued, speaking slowly now, and in a different tone, "there is another way, child, if you are willing to take it. One other way. That way you need not see her unless you choose, you need see none of them, you need hear no plain truths. That way you may laugh at them, and what they say will