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

the boy marry whom he pleases, and when he pleases. 'Tis no matter of ours."

"Still I wish this tutor had not written to us."

"If the knot was not tied yesterday, there are persons enough will tie it to-day for half a guinea!" she said. "It is not as if you were his only guardian. His father chose another elsewhere. Let him look to it. The girl is charge enough for us; and, for her, she benefits as much as we do if he's foolish. I wish that were the worst of it. But I scent danger, Mr. Northey. I am afraid of this great Teague of hers. He's no Irishman if he doesn't scent a fortune a mile off. And once let him learn that she is worth sixteen thousand pounds instead of six thousand, and he'll off with her from under our very noses."

"It's that Irish Register has done the mischief!" Mr. Northey cried, jumping up with an oath. "She's in there, in print!"

"Under her own name?"

"To be sure, as a fortune. And her address."

"Do you mean it, Mr. Northey? Printed in the book, is it?"

"It is; as I say."

"Hang their impudence!" his wife cried in astonishment. "They ought to be pilloried! But there is just this, we can show the entry to the girl. And if it don't open her eyes, nothing will. Do you get a copy of the book, Mr. Northey, and we'll show it to her to-morrow, and put her on the notion every Irishman has it by heart. And as soon as we can we must get her married to Coke. There'll be no certainty till she's wedded. 'Twould have been done this fortnight if he were not just such a mumchance fool as the girl herself. He may look very wise, and the town may think him so. But there's more than looking wanted with a woman, Mr. Northey; and for what I see he's as big a fool as many that never saw Pall Mall."

"I have never found him that," Mr. Northey answered with a dry cough. He spoke with reason, for he had more than once, as heir to a peerage, taken on himself to set Sir Hervey right; with so conspicuous a lack of success that he had begun to suspect that his brother member's silence was not dulness; nay, that he himself came late into that secret. Or why was Coke so well with that great wit and fashionable, Hanbury Williams? With Henry Fox, and my lord Chesterfield? With young Lord Lincoln, the wary quarry of match-making mothers, no less than with Tom Hervey, against whom no young virgin, embarking on life, failed of a warning? Mr. Northey knew that in the company of these, and their like, he was no favourite, whilst Coke was at home; and he hid with difficulty a sneaking fear of his colleague.

What a man so highly regarded and so well received saw in a girl who, in Mr. Northey's eyes, appeared every way inferior to her loud, easy, fashionable sister, it passed the honourable member to conceive. But the thing was so. Sir Hervey had spoken the three or four words beyond which he seldom went--the venture had been made; and now if there was one thing upon which Mr. Northey's dogged mind was firmly fixed, it was that an alliance so advantageous should not be lost to the family.

"But Sophia is prudent," he said, combating his own fears. "She has always been obedient and--and well-behaved. I am sure she's--she's a good girl, and will see what is right when it is explained to her."

"If she does not, she will see sorrow!" his wife answered truculently. She had neither forgotten nor forgiven the sneer about Methuselah. "I'll tell you what it is, Mr. Northey," madam continued, "she takes you in with her pale, peaky face and her round eyes. But if ever there was a nasty, obstinate little toad, she is one. And you'll find it out by-and-by. And so will Coke to his cost some day."

"Still you think--we can bend her this time?"

"Oh, she'll marry him!" Mrs. Northey retorted confidently. "I'll answer for that. But I would not be Coke afterwards."

CHAPTER II AT VAUXHALL

In a year when all the world was flocking to the new Rotunda in Ranelagh Gardens, Mrs. Northey would be particular, and have her evening party to Vauxhall. Open air was the fashion of the time, and it was from her seat at the open window in Arlington Street that she welcomed her guests. Thence, as each new-comer appeared she shouted her greeting, often in terms that convulsed the chairmen at the corner; or now and again, hanging far out, she turned her attention and wit to the carpenters working late on Sir Robert's house next door, and stated in good round phrases her opinion of the noise they made. When nearly all her company were assembled, and the room was full of women languishing and swimming, and of men mincing and prattling, and tapping their snuff-boxes, Sophia stole in, and, creeping into a corner, hid herself behind two jolly nymphs, who, with hoops six feet wide and cheeks as handsome as crimson could make them, were bandying jokes and horse-play with a tall admirer. In this retreat Sophia fancied that she might hide her sad looks until the party set out; and great was her dismay, when, venturing at last to raise her eyes, she discovered that she had placed herself beside, nay, almost touching the man whom of all others she wished to avoid, the detested Coke; who, singularly enough, had sought the same retirement a few moments earlier.

In the confusion of the moment she recoiled a step; the events of the day had shaken her nerves. Then, "I beg your pardon, sir, I did not see that you were there," she stammered.

"No," he said with a smile, "I know you did not, child. Or you would have gone to the other end of the room. Now, confess. Is it not so?"

She shrugged her shoulders. "As you please, sir," she said, "I would not venture to contradict you," and curtseying satirically she turned away her face. At any rate he should lie in no doubt of her feelings.

He did not answer. And, welcome as his silence was, something like contempt of a suitor who aspired to have without daring to speak took possession of her. Under the influence of this feeling, embittered by the rating she had received that morning, she fell to considering him out of the tail of her eye, but, in spite of herself, she could not deny that he was personable; that his features, if a trifle set and lacking vivacity, were good, and his bearing that of a gentleman at ease in his company. Before she had well weighed him, however, or done more than compare him with the fop who stood before her, and whose muff and quilted coat, long queue and black leather stock were in the extreme of the fashion, Sir Hervey spoke again.

"Why does it not please you?" he asked, almost listlessly.

"To do what, sir?"

"To be beside me."

"I did not say it did not," she answered, looking stiffly the other way.

"But it does not," he persisted. "I suppose, child, your sister has told you what my views are?"

"Yes, sir."

"And what do you say?" he murmured. "That--that I am much obliged to you, but they are not mine!" Sophia answered, with a rush of words and colour; and, punished as she had been that morning, it must be confessed, she cruelly enjoyed the stroke.

For a moment only. Then to her astonishment and dismay Sir Hervey laughed. "That is what you say now," he answered lightly. "What will you say if, by-and-by, when we know one another better, we get on as well together as--as Lady Sophia there, and----"

"And Lord Lincoln?" she cried, seeing that he hesitated. "Never!"

"Indeed!" he retorted. "But, pray, what do you know about Lord Lincoln?"

"I suppose you think I know no scandal?" she cried.

"I would prefer you to know as little as possible," he answered coolly; in the tone she fancied which he would have used had she been already his property. "And there is another thing I would also prefer you did not know," he continued.

"Pray, what is that?" she cried, openly scornful; and she flirted her fan a little faster.

"Mr. Hawkesworth."

The blood rushed to her cheeks. This was too much. "Are you jealous? or only impertinent?" she asked, her voice not less furious because it was low and guarded. "How noble, how chivalrous, to say behind a gentleman's back what you would not dare to say to his face!"

Sir Hervey shrugged his shoulders. "He is not a gentleman," he said. "He is not one of us, and he is not fit company for you. I do not know what story he has told you, nor what cards he has played, but I know that what I say is true. Be advised, child," he continued earnestly, "and look on him coldly when you see him next. Be sure if you do not----"

"You will speak to my sister?" she cried. "If you have not done it already? Lord, sir, I congratulate you. I'm sure you have discovered quite a new style of wooing. Next, I suppose, you will have me sent to my room, and put on bread and water for a week? Or buried in a parsonage in the country with Tillotson's Sermons and the 'Holy Living'?"

"I spoke to you as I should speak to my sister," Sir Hervey said, with something akin to apology in his tone.

"Say, rather, as you would speak to your daughter!" she replied, quick as lightning; and, trembling with rage, she drove home the shaft with a low curtsey. "To be sure, sir, now I think of it, the distance between us justifies you in giving me what advice you please."

He winced at last, and was even a trifle out of countenance. But he did not answer, and she, furiously angry, turned her back on him, and looked the other way. Young as she was, all the woman in her rose in revolt against the humiliation of being advised in such a matter by a man. She could have struck him. She hated him. And they were all in the same story. They were all against her and her dear Irishman, who alone understood her. Tears rose in Sophia's eyes as she pictured her present loneliness and her happiness in the past; as she recalled the old home looking down the long avenue of chestnut trees, the dogs, the horses, the boisterous twin brother, and the father who by turns had coarsely chidden and fondly indulged her. In her loss of all this, in a change of life as complete as it was sudden, she had found one only to comfort her, one only who had not thought the whirl of strange pleasures a sufficient compensation for a home and a father. One only who had read her silence, and pitied her inexperience. And him they would snatch from her! Him they would----

But at this point her thoughts were interrupted by a general movement towards the door. Bent on an evening's frolic the party issued into Arlington Street with loud laughter and louder voices, and in a moment were gaily descending St. James's Street. One or two of the elder ladies took chairs, but the greater part walked, the gentlemen with hats under their arms and canes dangling from their wrists, the more foppish with muffs. Passing down St. James's, where Betty, the fruit woman, with a couple of baskets of fruit, was added to the company, they crossed the end of Pall Mall, now