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

Northey replied with temper; and in spite of the warnings which his wife's contemptuous shrugs should have conveyed to him, he repeated the command.

"Then I will read it now," the girl answered, standing very upright, "if you order me to do so."

"I do order you," he said; and still holding the folded sheet a little from her, she opened it, and with a curling lip and half averted eye, began to read the contents. Suddenly Mrs. Northey took fright; Mr. Northey even was surprised by the change. For the girl's face grew red and redder; she stared at the letter, her lips parting widely, as in astonishment. At last, "What? What is this?" she cried, "Tom? Then it was--it was Tom I saw last night."

"Tom!" Mr. Northey exclaimed.

"Yes, it was Tom!" Sophia cried; "and--oh, but this is dreadful! This must be--must be stopped at once!" she continued, looking from the paper to them and back again with distended eyes. "He is mad to think of such a thing at his age; he is only a boy; he does not know what he is doing." Her voice shook with agitation.

"What the deuce do you mean, miss?" her brother-in-law thundered, rising furious from his chair. "Have you taken leave of your senses? What do you mean by this--this nonsense."

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"THIS MUST BE--MUST BE STOPPED AT ONCE!"

"Mean?" his wife answered with bitter emphasis. "She means that, instead of giving her Coke's letter, you have given her the Cambridge letter; the letter from Tom's tutor. You have done it, like the fool you always are, Northey."

Mr. Northey swore violently. "Give it me!" he cried harshly. "Do you hear, girl? Give it me!" And he stretched out his hand to recover the letter.

But something in the excess of his chagrin, or in the words of the reproach Mrs. Northey had flung at him roused suspicion in the girl's mind. She recoiled, holding the paper from him. "It is five days old!" she gasped; "you have had it four days--three at least; and you have said nothing about it. You have not told me! And you have done nothing!" she continued, her mind jumping instinctively to the truth, at which Mr. Northey's guilty face hinted not obscurely. "He is on the brink of ruining himself with this woman, and you stand by though you are told what she is, and were told three days ago. Why? Why?" Sophia cried, as Mr. Northey, with an oath, snatched the letter from her. "What does it mean?"

"Mean? Why, that one unruly child is enough to manage at a time!" Mrs. Northey answered, rising to the occasion. She spoke with venom, and no wonder; her hands tingled for her husband's ears. He had improved matters with a vengeance. "It's fine talking, you little toad," she continued, with a show of reason; "but if you don't listen to sense who are here, how are we to persuade him, and he not here? Tell me that, miss. A nice pattern of discretion and prudence you are to talk. Hang your impudence!"

"But you have done nothing," Sophia wailed, her affection for her brother keeping her to the point. "And I saw him last night; it was he whom I saw at Vauxhall. I could have spoken to him, and I am sure he would have listened to me."

"Listened to his grandmother!" Mrs. Northey retorted, with acrid contempt. "We have done what we think right, and that is enough for you, you baby. A nasty disobedient little toad, running into the very same folly yourself, and then prating of us, and what we should do! Hang your fine talking; I've no patience with you, and so I tell you, miss."

"But," Sophia said slowly, her voice grown timid, "I don't understand----"

"Who cares whether you understand!"

"Why--why you make so much of marrying me the way you wish, and yet let him go his way? If he does this, you'll get some of his money I know, but it cannot be that. It couldn't be that. And yet--and yet--" she cried, with a sudden flush of generous indignation, as conviction was borne in upon her by Mr. Northey's hang-dog face--"yes, it is that! Oh, for shame! for shame! Are you his sister, and will ruin him? Will ruin him for the sake of--of money!"

"Silence, you minx!" Mrs. Northey cried; and she rose, her face white with rage, and seizing her sister's arm, she shook her violently. "How dare you say such things? Do you hear? Be silent!"

But Sophia was beside herself with passion, she would not be silent. Neither the dead Northeys on the walls, nor the living sister should stifle the expression of her feelings.

"I take back my promise," she cried, panting with excitement; her words were scarcely coherent. "Do you hear? Do you understand? I promise nothing after this. You may beat me if you like; you may lock me up, it will be all the same. I'll go into the country to-morrow, but I'll make no promise. I shall see Hawkesworth if I can! I shall run away to him if I can! I'd rather do anything--anything in the world after this, than go on living with you."

"You'll not go on living with me!" Mrs. Northey answered through pinched lips, and her eyes glittered after an ugly fashion. "I'll see to that, you little scald-tongue! You'll go to Aunt Leah and feed pigs, and do plain-stitch; I hope it may agree with those dainty hands of yours. And you'll run away from there if you can. She'll see to that. I'll be bound she'll break some of that pretty spirit of yours, grand as you think yourself. So because your precious Tom chooses to take up with some drab or other, you put it on us, do you? Go, you little vixen," Mrs. Northey continued harshly, "go to your room before I do you a mischief! You'll not promise, but the key shall. Up, miss, up, we will have no more of your tantrums!"

Reduced to tears, and broken down by the violence of her emotions, Sophia asked nothing better than to escape, and be alone with her misery. She turned, and as quickly as she could she hurried from the room. Fast as she went, however, Mrs. Northey pushed after her, treading on her heels, and forcing her on. What passed between them Mr. Northey could not hear, but in no long time Mrs. Northey was down again, and flung a key on the table. "There," she cried, her nose twitching with the constraint she put upon her rage. "And what do you think of your management now, Mr. Imbecile?"

"I always said," he answered sullenly, "that we ought to tell her."

"You always said."

"Yes, I did."

"You always said!" his wife cried, her eyes flashing with the scorn she made no attempt to hide. "And was not that a very good reason for doing the other thing? Wasn't it, Mr. Northey? Wasn't it? Oh, Lord! why did God give me a fool for a husband?"

CHAPTER V THE WORLD WELL LOST

Mrs. Northey was no novice. She knew something of intrigue, something of her sex. Her first step was to discharge Sophia's woman, a village maid, who had come with her young mistress from the country. The key of the offender's chamber was then intrusted to madam's own woman, Mrs. Martha, a sour spinster, matured not by years only, but by an unfortunate experience of the other sex, which secured her from the danger of erring on the side of leniency where they were concerned. Mr. Northey could not immediately leave London, therefore it was necessary that arrangements for the culprit's transport to the surer custody of Aunt Leah at Chalkhill should be postponed, but all that Mrs. Northey could do short of this she did. And these dispositions made, she prepared to await events with a mind tolerably at ease.

In every net, however, there are meshes, and small is the mesh through which a large fish cannot escape. It is probable that poor blubbering Dolly, the dismissed maid, innocent as she declared herself, was in somebody's pay, and knew where information could be sold. For before Sophia had been confined to her room for four hours, before the first passionate tears were dried on her cheeks, a clock-maker, who had come in to regulate the tall clock on the stairs, made the odd mistake of mounting, when no one was looking, to the second floor. A moment later a fingernail scraped Sophia's door, a note was thrust under it, and deftly as he had come, the workman, a pale, fat, elderly man, crept down again. He made little noise, for, to save his honour's drugget, he had left his boots in the hall.

Sophia, recovering from a momentary astonishment, pounced on the note, opened it and read it; and, alas for her discretion, her eyes sparkled through her tears as she did so. Thus it ran:--

"Sweetest and Best Beloved of your Sex,--

"The raptures of my heart when my eyes dwell on yours cannot be hidden, and must have convinced you that on you depends the life or death, happiness or misery, of your Hector. If you will, you can plunge me into an abyss of hopelessness, in which I must spend the rest of my existence; or if you will, you can make me in possessing you the happiest, as I am already in aspiring to you the boldest, of mankind. Oh, my Sophia, dare I call you that? Can such bliss be reserved for me? Can it be my lot to spend existence in the worship of those charms, for which the adoration of the longest life passed in thinking of you and serving you were an inadequate price! May I dream that I shall one day be the most enviable of men? If so, there is but one course to be taken. Fly, dearest, fly, your cruel relatives, who have already immured you, and will presently sacrifice you, innocent and spotless, on the vile altar of their ambition. Hold a white handkerchief against your window at six this evening, and the rest is easy. At dusk the day after to-morrow--so much time I need--I will find means to remove you. A few minutes later, Dr. Keith, of Mayfair Chapel, a reverend divine, who will be in waiting at my lodging, will unite you in indissoluble bonds to one whose every thought thenceforth--not given to his King--will be consecrated to the happiness of his Sophia.

"Already my heart beats with rapture; I swoon at the thought. The pen falls from the hand of your humble, adoring lover,

"HECTOR (Count Plomer)."

Need we wonder that Sophia held the letter from her and held it to her, scanned it this way, and scanned it that way, kissed it, and kissed it again; finally, with a glance at the door, hid it jealously within her dress? She would have done these things had she been as much in the dark about Tom, and the machinations formed to rob him, as she had been when she rose that morning. But she would have halted there. She would have pardoned her lover his boldness, perhaps have liked him the better for it; but she would not have granted his prayer. Now, her one aspiration was for the moment when she might take the leap. Her one feeling was impatience for the hour when she might give the signal of surrender. The pillars of her house were shaken; her faith in her sister, in her friends, in her home was gone. Only her lover remained, and if he were not to be trusted she had no one. She did not tell herself that girls had done this thing before, maiden modesty notwithstanding, and had found no