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

"But he's gone," Betty stammered.

"Then I do not think you will take the answer!" Sophia retorted. "But you will wait, nevertheless! You will wait my pleasure." She broke the seal as she spoke, and began to read the contents of the note. They were short. A moment and she crumpled the paper in her hand and dropped it on the floor. "A very proper letter," she said with a sneer. "There's no fault to be found with it, I am sure. He is my affectionate husband, I can be no less than his dutiful wife. 'Tis no part of a dutiful wife to find fault with her husband's letter, I suppose."

"I don't know what you would be at," Lady Betty muttered, looking more and more frightened.

"No? That's what I'm going to explain--if you'll sit, miss? Sit, girl!"

Lady Betty shrugged her shoulders, but obeyed, an uneasy look in her eyes. Sophia sat also, on the farther side of the small oak table; but for a full minute she did not speak. When she did her voice had lost its bitterness, and was low and absent and passionless. "There are two things to be talked about--you and I," she said, drumming slowly on the table with her fingers. "And by your leave I'll speak of myself first. If I could set him free I would! D'you hear me? D'you understand? If the worst that could have befallen me in Clarges Row, the worst that he had in his mind when he married me, were the price to be paid, I would pay it to-day. He should be free to marry whom he would; and if by raising my hand I could come between him and her I would not! Nay, if by raising my hand I could bring them together I would! And that though when he married me, he did me as great a wrong as a man can do a woman!"

Suddenly, without warning, Lady Betty burst into irrepressible sobbing. "Oh," she cried, "do you hate him so!"

"Hate him?" Sophia answered. "Hate him? No, fool, I love him so!" And then in a strain of bitterness, the more intense as she spoke in a tone little above a whisper. "You start, miss? You think me a fool, I know, to tell you that! But see how proud I am! I will not keep from the woman he loves the least bit of her triumph! Let her enjoy it--though 'tis an empty one--for I cannot free him, do what I will! Let her know, for her pleasure, that she is fairer than I, as I know it! Let her know that she has won the heart that should be mine, and--which will be sweetest of all to her--that I would fain have won it myself and could not! Let her but you are crying, miss? And I'd forgotten. What's all this to you?" with a change to quiet irony. "You are too young to understand such things! And, of course, 'twas not of this that I wished to speak to you; but of yourself, and of--Tom. Of course--Tom," with a faint laugh. "I'm sorry that he misbehaved to you in the park. I've had it on my mind ever since. There's but one thing to be done, I am sure, and that is what your own judgment, Lady Betty----"

"Sophy!"

But Sophia continued without heeding the remonstrance--"pointed out to you! I mean, to return to your mother without loss of time. It is best for you, and best for--Tom," with a crooked smile. "Best, indeed, for all of us."

Lady Betty, her face held aloof, was busy drying her tears; her position such that it was not possible to say what her sentiments were, nor whether her emotion was real or assumed. But at that she looked up, startled; she met the other's eyes. "Do you mean," she muttered, "that I am to go home?"

"To be sure," Sophia answered coldly. "'Tis only what you wished yourself, three days ago."

"But--but Sir Tom hasn't--hasn't troubled me again," Betty faltered.

"Tom?" Sophia answered, in a peculiar tone. "Ah, no. But--I doubt if he's to be trusted. Meanwhile, I gather from the letter you gave me that Sir Hervey will not return until to-morrow noon. We must act then without him. You will start at daybreak to-morrow. I shall accompany you as far as Lewes. Thence Mrs. Stokes, who has been in London, and Watkyns, with sufficient attendance, will see you safe to her Grace's house. You are in my care----"

"And you send me home in disgrace!"

"Not at all!" my lady answered, with coldness. "The fault is Tom's."

"And I suffer! Do you mean, do you really mean----" Betty protested, in a tone of astonishment, "that I am to go back to-morrow--at daybreak--by myself?"

"I do."

"Before Sir Hervey returns?"

"To be sure."

"But it is monstrous!" Betty cried, grown indignant; and in her excitement she rose and stood opposite Sophia. "It is absurd! Why should I go? In this haste, and like a thing disgraced? I've done nothing! I don't understand."

Sophia rose also; her face still pale, a fire smouldering in her eyes. "Don't you?" she said. "Don't you understand?"

"No."

"Think again, girl. Think again!"

"N-no," Betty repeated; but this time her voice quavered. Her eyes sank before Sophia's, and a fresh wave of colour swept over her face. There is an innocent shame as well as a guilty shame; a shame caused by that which others think us, as well as by that which we are. Betty sank under this, yet made a fight. "Why should I go?" she repeated weakly.

"Not for my sake," Sophia answered gravely. "For your own. Because I have more thought for you, more mercy for you, more compassion for you than you have for yourself. You say you go in disgrace? It is not true; but were you to stay, you would stay in disgrace! From that I shall save you whether you will or no. Only----" and suddenly stretching out her hand she seized Betty's shoulder and swayed the slighter girl to and fro by it--"only," she cried, with sudden vehemence, "don't think I do it to rid myself of you! To keep him, or to hold him, or to glean after you! If I could give him the woman he loves I would give her to him, though you were that woman! If I could set her in my place, I would set her there, though her foot were on my breast! But I cannot. I cannot, girl. And you must go."

She let her hand fall with the last word; but not so quickly that Betty had not time to snatch it to her lips and kiss it--kiss it with an odd strangled cry. The next instant the girl flung herself on the bench beside the table, and hiding her head on her arms--as Sophia had hidden hers a while before--she gave herself up to unrestrained weeping. For a few seconds Sophia stood watching her with a cold, grave face; then she shivered, and turning in silence, left the hall.

Strange to say, the door had barely fallen to behind her when a change came over Lady Betty. She raised her head and looked round, her eyes shining through her tears. As soon as she was certain that she was alone, she sprang to her feet, and waving her hat by its ribands round her head, spun round the table in a frantic dance of triumph, her hoop sweeping the hall from end to end, yet finding it too small for the exuberance of her joy. Pausing at last, breathless and dishevelled, "Oh, you dear! Oh, you angel!" she cried. "You'd give him the woman he loves, would you, ma'am--if you could! You'd set her foot on your breast, if 'twould make him happy? Oh, it was better than the best play that ever was, it was better than 'Goodman's Fields,' or 'Mr. Quinn,' to hear her stab herself, and stab herself, and stab herself! If he doesn't kiss her shoes, if he does not kneel in the dust to her, I'll never believe in man again! I'll die a maid at forty and content! I'll--but oh, la!" And Lady Betty broke off suddenly with a look of consternation, "I'd forgotten! What am I to do? She's a dragon. She'll not let me stay till he returns, no, not if I go on my knees to her! And if I go, I lose all! Oh, la, sweet, what am I to do?"

She thought awhile with a face full of mischief. "Coke might meet us in Lewes," she muttered, "and cut the knot, but that's a chance. Or I might tell her--and that's to spoil sport. I must get a note to him to-night. But she'll be giving her orders now, I expect; and it's odds the men won't carry it. There's only Tom, and that's putting my hand in very far!"

She thought awhile, then rubbed her lips with her handkerchief, and laughing and blushing looked at it. "Well it leaves no mark," she muttered with a grimace. "And if he's rude I can pay him as I paid him before."

Apparently she would face the risk, for she set herself busily to search among the dog-leashes and powder-horns, holsters, and tattered volumes of farriery, that encumbered the great table. Presently she unearthed a pewter ink-pot and an old swan-quill; and bearing these, and a flyleaf ruthlessly torn from a number of the Gentleman's Magazine, to a table in the bay window, she sat down and scrawled a few lines. She folded the note into the shape of a cocked hat, bound it deftly about with a floss of silk torn from her ribands; and having succeeded so far, lacked only a postman. She had a good idea where he was to be found, and having donned her hat and tied the strings more nicely than usual, went on the terrace. There she was not long in discovering him. He was kicking his heels on the horseblock under the oak, between the terrace and the stables.

No one knew better than her ladyship how to play the innocent; but on this occasion she had neither time nor mind to be taken by surprise. She tripped down the steps, crossed the intervening turf, and pausing before him opened her fire.

"Do you wish to earn your pardon, sir?" she asked. Her manner was as cold and formal as it had been for the last three days.

Tom rose sheepishly, his mind in a whirl. For days she had avoided him. She had drawn in her skirts if he passed near her; she had ignored his hand at table; she had looked through him when he spoke. Until she paused, until her voice sounded in his ears, he had thought she would go by him; and for a moment he could not find his tongue to answer her. Then "I don't understand," he muttered sullenly.

"I spoke plainly," Lady Betty answered, in a voice clear as a bell. "But I will say it again. Do you wish, sir, to earn your pardon?"

Tom's face flamed. Unfortunately, his ill-conditioned side was uppermost. "I don't want another slap in the face," he grumbled.

"And I do not want what I have found," Lady Betty retorted with dignity, though the rebuff, which she had not expected, stung her. "I came in search of a gentleman willing to do a lady a service, and I have not found one. After this our acquaintance is at an end, sir. You will oblige me by not speaking to me. Good evening." And she swept away her head in the air.

Tom was not of the softest material, but at that, brute and boor were the best names he gave himself. The