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

stand forward the friend of Cecil, the agent of Ormonde, and the town would recognise in the obscurity in which he now draped himself and at which they scoffed, the cloak of the most daring and loyal conspirator that ever wrought for the rightful king!

For this was the secret he had whispered in Sophia's ear; this was the explanation he had given of the cold looks men cast on him in public. Nor was it too incredible for the belief of a romantic girl. In that year, 1742, the air in London was full of such rumours, and London, rumour said, was full of such men. The close of Sir Robert Walpole's long and peaceful administration, and the imminence of war with France, had raised the hopes of the Jacobites to the highest pitch. Though the storm did not break in open war until three years later, it already darkened the sky, and filled the capital with its rumblings. Alike in the Cabinet, where changes were frequent and great men few, and in the country where people looked for something, they hardly knew what, unrest and uneasiness prevailed. Many a sturdy squire in Lancashire and Shropshire, many a member at Westminster, from Shippon and Sir Watkyn downwards, passed his glass over the water-jug as he drank the King; and if Sophia, as she drew her withered flower from its hiding-place, that it might lie beneath her pillow through the night, prayed for King James and his cause, she did only what many a pretty Jacobite, and some who passed for Whigs, were doing at the same hour.

In the meantime, and pending the triumph for which she longed so passionately, her dear hero's pretensions helped her not a whit; on the contrary, were they known, or suspected, they would sink him lower than ever in the estimation of her family. This thought it was that, as she lay revolving matters, raised in her mind an increasing barrier between her and her sister. The Northeys were firm Whigs, pledged not less by interest than by tradition to the White Horse of Hanover. They had deserted Sir Robert at his utmost need, but merely to serve their own turn; because his faction was drooping, and another, equally Whiggish, was in the ascendant, certainly with no view to a Stuart Restoration. Her Hawkesworth's success, therefore, meant their defeat and downfall; his triumph must cost them dear. To abide by them, and abide by him, were as inconsistent as to serve God and Mammon.

Sophia, drawn to her lover by the strength of maiden fancy, saw this; she felt the interval between her and her family increase the longer she dwelt on the course to which her mind was being slowly moved. The consciousness that no compromise was possible had its effect upon her. When she was summoned to the parlour next day, a change had come over her; she went not shyly and shamefacedly, open to cajolery and kindness, as she had gone the previous day, when her opinion of her lover's merit had fallen short of the wrapt assurance that this morning uplifted her. On the contrary, she went armed with determination as solemn in her own sight as it was provoking in the eyes of older and more sagacious persons.

Mrs. Northey discerned the change the moment Sophia entered the room; and she was proportionately exasperated. "Oh, miss, so you'll follow Miss Howe, will you?" she sneered, alluding to a tale of scandal that still furnished the text for many a sermon to the young and flighty. "You'll take no advice!"

"I hope I shall know how to conduct myself better, ma'am," Sophia said proudly.

Mr. Northey was less clear-sighted than his wife. He saw no change; he thought in all innocence that the matter was where he had left it. After clearing his throat, therefore, "Sophia," he said with much majesty, "I hope you have recovered your senses, and that conduct such as that of which you were guilty last night will not be repeated while you are in our charge. Understand me; it must not be repeated. You are country bred, and do not understand that what you did is a very serious matter, and quite enough to compromise a young girl."

Sophia, disdaining to answer, spent her gaze on the picture above his head. The withered flower was in her bosom; the heart that beat against it was full of wondering pity for her sister, who had been compelled to marry this man--this man, ugly, cold, stiff, with no romance in his life, no secret--this man, at the touch of whose hand she, Sophia, shuddered.

"I consider it so--so serious a transgression," Mr. Northey resumed pompously--little did he dream what she was thinking of him--"that the only condition on which I can consent to overlook it is that you at once, Sophia, do your duty by accepting the husband on whom we have fixed for you."

"No," Sophia said, in a low but determined tone, "I cannot do that!"

Mr. Northey fancied that he had not heard aright. "Eh," he said, "you----"

"I cannot do that, sir; my mind is quite made up," she repeated.

From her chair Mrs. Northey laughed scornfully at her husband's consternation. "Are you blind?" she said. "Cannot you see that the Irishman has turned the girl's head?"

"Impossible!" Mr. Northey said.

"Don't you hear her say that her mind is made up?" Mrs. Northey continued contemptuously. "You may talk till you are hoarse, Northey, you'll get nothing; I know that. She's a pig when she likes."

Mr. Northey glowered at the girl as if she had already broken all bounds. "But does she understand," he said, breathing hard, "that marriage with a person of--of that class, is impossible? And surely no modest girl would continue to encourage a person whom she cannot marry?"

Still Sophia remained silent, her eyes steadily fixed on the picture above his head.

"Speak, Sophia!" he cried imperatively. "This is impertinence."

"If I cannot marry him," she said in a low voice, "I shall marry no one!"

"If you cannot marry that--that Irish footman?" he gasped, bursting into rage. "A penniless adventurer, who has not even asked you."

"He has asked me," she retorted.

"Oh, by Gad, ma'am, I've done with you," Mr. Northey cried, striking his fist on the table; and he added an expletive or two. "I hand you over to madam, there. Perhaps she can bring you to your senses. I might have known it," he continued bitterly, addressing his wife. "Like and like, madam! It's bred in the bone, I see!"

"I don't know what you mean, Northey," his wife answered with a sneer of easy contempt. "If you had left the matter to me from the beginning, 'twould have been done by now. Listen to me, Miss Obstinate. Is that the last word you'll give us?"

"Yes," Sophia said, pluming herself a little on her victory.

"Then you'll go into the country to-morrow! That's all!" was Mrs. Northey's reply. "We'll see how you like that!"

The blow was unexpected. The girl's lips parted, and she looked wildly at her sister. "Into the country?" she stammered.

"Ay, sure."

"To--to Cuckfield?" she asked desperately. After all, were she sent to her old home all was not lost. He had heard her speak of it; he knew where it was; he could easily trace her thither.

"No, miss, not to Cuckfield," her sister replied, triumphing cruelly, for she read the girl's thoughts. "You'll go to Aunt Leah at Chalkhill, and I wish you joy of her tantrums and her scraping. You'll go early to-morrow; Mr. Northey will take you; and until you are away from here I'll answer there shall be no note-palming. When you are in a better mind, and your Teague's in Bridewell, you may come back. I fancy you'll be tamed by that time. It will need mighty little persuasion, I'm thinking, to bring you to marry Sir Hervey when you've been at Aunt Leah's for three months."

Sophia's lip began to tremble; her eyes roved piteously. Well might the prospect terrify her, for it meant not only exile from her lover, but an exile which she saw might be permanent. For how was he to find her? To Cuckfield, the family seat, he might trace her easily; but in the poor hamlet on the Sussex coast, where her aunt, who had tripped in her time and paid the penalty, dragged on a penurious existence as the widow of a hedge-parson, not so easily. There a poor girl might eat out her heart, even as her aunt had eaten out hers, and no redress and no chance of rescue. Even had she the opportunity of writing to her lover she did not--unhappy thought--know where he lived.

Mrs. Northey read her dismay, saw the colour fade in her cheek, and the tears gather in her eyes, and with remorseless determination, with cruel enjoyment, drove the nail home.

"There'll be no Vauxhall there," she sneered, "and mighty few drums or routs, my dear! It's likely your first masquerade will be your last; and for the wine-merchant actor that you were to see at Goodman's Fields tomorrow, you may whistle for him; and for your dear Amorevoli. It's to be hoped, Miss Lucy, you'll find your Thomas worth it," she continued, alluding to the farce that held the town, "when you get him." And then, changing her ground, with no little skill, "See here, child," she said, in the tone of one willing to argue, "are you going on with this silliness? Think, my dear, think, while it is time, for 'twill be too late at Chalkhill. You don't want to go and be buried in that hole till your brother comes of age?"

Sophia, resentful but terrified, subdued both by the prospect and by the appeal to her reasonableness, had hard work to refrain from tears as she uttered her negative. "No, I--I don't want to go," she stammered.

"I thought not; then you shall have one more chance," Mrs. Northey answered, with a fair show of good nature. "If you'll give me your word not to write to him, you shall have a week to think of it before you go. But you'll keep your room--on that I must insist; there you'll have time to think, and I hope by the end of the week you'll have come to your senses, my dear. If not, you'll go to Aunt Leah."

The mixture of severity and kindness was clever, and it had its effect upon poor Sophia, who stood weighing the alternatives with a rueful face. While she remained in town, if she might not see him, she was still near him, and he near her. She would not be lost to him nor he to her; and then, what might not happen in a week? "I will promise," she murmured, in a low uncertain tone.

"Good," Mrs. Northey answered; "then you may go to your room."

And to her room Sophia would have gone, in a mood fairly open to the influence of reason and solitude. But in an evil moment for himself Mr. Northey, smarting under a defeat which his wife's victory rendered the more humiliating, thought he espied an opportunity of restoring his dignity.

"Yes, you may go," he said sourly; "but take this with you. You will see there," he continued, fussily selecting a letter from a pile on the table, and handing it to her, "what are the terms in which a gentleman seeks an alliance with a lady. It is from Sir Hervey, and I shall be much surprised if it does not produce a very different impression on you from that which that person has made."

"I do not want it," Sophia answered; and held out the letter between her finger and thumb, as if it had an evil odour.

"But I insist on your taking it," Mr.