The first speaker was Lady Betty, and her first remark seemed to be an answer to a question. "Well, 'tis as you like," she said. "But if you'll be guided by me you'll not tell her. Then, when you go, it will put the finishing touch to our--friendship"--with a sly laugh--"if that be your wish, sir. On the other hand, if you tell madam, who is beginning to be jealous, take my word for it, there's an end of that! And there's this besides. If you tell her, it's not to be said what she will do, I warn you."
"She might insist on going?" Sir Hervey's voice answered. "That's what you mean?"
"If she knew she would go! I think she would, at any rate. At the best there's danger. On the other hand, say nothing to her, and here's the opportunity you said you desired. Of course, if you are weakening," Lady Betty continued in the tone of one ready to take offence, "and don't desire it any longer, that's another matter, sir."
"My dear girl," Sir Hervey cried eagerly, "have I not done everything to show her that she is indifferent to me? Do you want any other proof? Have I omitted anything? Have not I"--and then his voice died abruptly. The two speakers had turned the corner of the house, and Sophia heard no more. But she had heard enough. She had heard too much!
It is sadly trite that that we cannot have we want. It is an old tale that it is for the sour grapes the mouth waters, and not for the bunch within reach. A thousand kindnesses, the hand ever waiting, the smile ever ready, gain no response; until a thousand rebuffs have earned their due, and the smile and the hand are another's. Then, on a sudden, the heart learns its own bitterness. Then we would give the world for the look we once flouted, for the kind word from lips grown silent. And it is too late. Too late!
In the gloom of the inner drawing-room, where she sat with fingers feverishly interlaced, Sophia remembered his longsuffering with her, his thoughtfulness for her, his watchfulness over her, proved by a hundred acts of kindness and consideration. By a word at a drum when she was strange to town, and knew few. By countenance and a jest when Madam Harrington snubbed her. By the recovery of a muff--of value and her sister's--before it was known that she had lost it. By the gift of a birthnight fan which she had never carried; and the arrangement of a party to which she had not gone. By a word of caution when her infatuation for the Irishman began to be noticed; by a second word and a third. Through all he had been patience, she had been scorn. Now, on a sudden, she was in the dust before him. The smile that had never failed her in a difficulty, nor been wanting in a strait, had its value at last; and she felt that to read it once more in those eyes she would give the world, herself, all!
But too late. She had lost his love as she deserved to lose it. It was her doing. She had but herself to thank that this was the end. Only, she whispered, if he had had a little, a very little more patience! A day even! If he had given her one day more. That, or left her to her fate!
Fearful at last of being found in that room, seated before his picture, she crept out into the hall, and stood, marking the silence that prevailed in the house; listening to the dull tick of the clock that stood in the corner; watching the motes that danced in the dusty bars of sunshine before the door. With pathetic self-pity she found in these things--and in the faint taste of dry rot that told of the generations that had walked the old floor--the echo of her thoughts. Such, so quiet, so still, so regular, so far removed from the joy of the world was her life to be henceforth. "And I am young! I am young!" she whispered.
If he had only, when he met her in Clarges Row, left her to her fate! Nothing worse could have happened to her than this which had happened; and he might have wedded Lady Betty in innocence and honour. The fault was hers, and yet it was his too. A wild infatuation had brought her to the brink of ruin; an impulse of chivalry, scarcely less foolish, had led him to save her. The end for both must be misery. For him God knew what! For her, loneliness and this silent, empty, ordered house with its faint dead perfume, its aroma of long-stored linen, its savour of the dead and the by-gone.
As she stood in the middle of the floor, thinking these thoughts, the shadow of a bird flitted across the patch of sunshine that lay within the doorway. It startled her, and she looked up, just as Lady Betty, swinging her hat by its strings, and humming a gay air, appeared on the threshold. The girl hung an instant as in doubt, and then, whether she espied Sophia standing in the shadow and did not want to meet her, or she changed her mind for another reason, she turned and left the doorway empty.
The sight was too much for Sophia's composure. That airy, laughing figure--youthful, almost infantine--poised in sunshine--that and her own brooding face, seen lately in the glass, suggested a comparison that filled her heart to bursting. She crept to the oak side table that stood in the bayed recess behind the door, and leaning her arms upon it, hid her face in them. She did not weep, but from time to time she shivered, as if the June air chilled her.
She had sat in this position some minutes when a faint sound roused her. Ashamed of being found in that posture, she looked up, and saw Lady Betty in the act of crossing the hall on tip-toe. Apparently the girl had just entered from the terrace and thought herself alone; for when she reached the middle of the floor, she stood weighing a letter in her hand, as if she doubted what to do with it. Her eyes travelled slowly from the long oak table to an almoner; and thence to a chest that stood beside the inner door. In the end she chose the chest, and, gliding to the door, placed the letter on it, arranging its position with peculiar care. Then she turned to go out again by the terrace door, but had not taken two steps before her eyes met Sophia's. She uttered a low cry, and stood, arrested.
Sophia did not speak, but she rose, crossed the hall, and as the other, with a rapid movement, recovered the letter from the chest, she extended her hand for it.
"Give it to me," she said.
For a moment Lady Betty confronted her, holding the letter hidden. Then, whether Sophia's pale set face cowed her, or she really had no choice, she held out the letter. "It is for you," she faltered. "But----"
"But," Sophia answered, taking her up with quiet scorn, "I was not to know the bearer! I am obliged to you."
Again for a moment the two women looked at one another. And Lady Betty's face grew slowly scarlet. "You have his confidence," Sophia continued in the same tone. "It's fitting you wait, miss, and take the answer."
"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 theGentleman'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 love that resentment had held at bay, returned in a flood and overwhelmed him. Sinking under remorse, feeling that he would now die for a glance from her eyes whom he had again and hopelessly offended, he rushed after her. Overtaking her at the foot of the steps, he implored her, with humble, incoherent prayers, to forgive him--to forgive him once more, only once more, and he would be her slave for ever!
"It's only one chance I ask," he panted. "Give me one more chance of--of showing that I am not the brute you think me. Oh, Lady Betty, forgive me, and--and forget what I said. You've cut me to the heart every hour for days past; you haven't looked at me; you've treated me as if I were something lower than a thief-taker. And--and when I was smarting under this, because I'd rather have a word from your lips than a kiss from another, you came to me, and I--I've misbehaved myself worse than before."
"No, not worse," Lady Betty said, in her cold, clear voice. "That was impossible."
"But as bad as I could," Tom confessed, not over-comforted. "Oh why, oh why," he continued, piteously, "am I always at my worst with you? For I think more of you than of any one. I'm always thinking of you. I can't sleep for thinking--what you are thinking of me, Lady Betty. I'd lie down in the dust, and let you walk over me if it would give you any pleasure. If it weren't for those d----d windows I'd kneel down now and ask your pardon."
"I don't see what difference the windows make," Lady Betty said, in her coldest tone. "They don't make your offence any less."
Tom might have answered that they made his punishment the greater; but, instead, he plumped down on the lowest step, careless who saw him if only Betty forgave him. "Oh, Lady Betty," he cried, "forgive me!"
"That is better," she said, judiciously.
"Oh, Lady Betty," he cried, "I humbly ask you to forgive me."
Lady Betty looked at him quietly from an upper step.
"You may get up," she said. "But I warn you, sir, you have yet to earn your pardon. You have promised much, I want but a little. Will you take a note from me to Lewes to-night?"
"If I live!" he cried, his eyes sparkling. "But that's a small thing."
"I trust in small things first," she answered.
"And great afterwards!"
She had much ado not to laugh, he looked at her so piteously, his hands clasped. "Perhaps," she said. "At any rate the future will show. Here is the note." She passed it to him quickly, with one eye on the windows. "You will tell no one, you will mention it to no one; but you will see that it reaches his hands to-night."
"It shall if I live," Tom answered fervently. "To whom am I to deliver it?"
"To Sir Hervey."
Tom swore outright, and turned crimson. They looked at one another, the man and the maid.
When Betty spoke again--after a long, strange pause, during which he stood holding the note loosely in his fingers as if he would drop it--it was in a tone of passion which she had not used before. "Listen!" she said. "Listen, sir, and understand if you can--for it behoves you! There is an offence that passes forgiveness. I believe that a moment ago you were on the point of committing it. If so, and if you have not yet repented, think, think before you do commit it. For there will be no place for repentance afterwards. It is not for me to defend my conduct, nor for you to suspect it," the young girl continued proudly. "That is my father's right, and my husband's when I have one. It imports no one else. But I will stoop to tell you this, sir. If you had said the words that were on your lips a moment ago, as surely as you stand there to-day, you would have come to me to-morrow to crave my pardon, and to crave it in shame, in comparison of which anything you have felt to-day is nothing. And you would have craved it in vain!" she continued vehemently. "I would rather the lowest servant here--soiled my lips--than you!"
Her passion had so much the better of her, when she came to the last words, that she could scarcely utter them. But she recovered herself with marvellous rapidity. "Do you take the note, sir," she said coldly, "or do you leave it?"
"I will take it, if it be to the devil!" he cried.
"No," she answered quickly; and she stayed him by a haughty gesture. "That will not do! Do you take it, thinking no evil? Do you take it, thinking me a good woman? Or do you take it thinking me something lower, infinitely lower, than the creatures you make your sport and pastime?"
"I do, I do believe!" Tom cried; and, dropping on his knees, he hid his face against her hoop-skirt, and pressed his lips to the stuff. And strange to say when he had risen and gone--without another word--there were tears in the girl's eyes. Tom had touched her.
It was five o'clock in the morning. The low sun shone athwart the cool, green sward of the park, leaving the dells and leafy retreats of the deer in shadow. In the window recess of the hall, whence the eye had that view, and could drink in the freshness of the early morning, the small oak table was laid for breakfast. Old plate that had escaped the melting-pot and the direful year of the new coinage, dragon china imported when Queen Anne was young, linen, white as sun and dew or D'Oyley could make it, gave back the pure light of early morning, and bade welcome a guest as dainty as themselves. Yet Lady Betty, for whom the table was prepared, and who stood beside it in an attitude of expectation, tapped the floor with her foot and looked but half pleased. "Is Lady Coke not coming?" she asked at last.
"No, my lady," Mrs. Stokes answered. "Her ladyship is taking her meal in her room."
"Oh!" Lady Betty rejoined drily. "She's not ailing, I hope?"
"No, my lady. She bade me say that the chariot would be at the door at half after five."
Betty grimaced, but took her seat in silence, and kept one eye on the clock. Had her messenger played her false? Or was Coke incredulous? Or what kept him? Even if he did not come before they set out, he might meet them on the hither side of Lewes; but that was a slender thread to which to trust, and Lady Betty had no mind to be packed home in error. As the finger of the clock in the corner moved slowly downwards, as the sun drank up the dew on leaf and bracken, and the day hardened, she listened, and more intently listened for the foot that was overdue. It wanted but five minutes of the half hour now! Now it wanted but three minutes! Two minutes! Now the rustle of my lady's skirts was on the stairs, the door was opened for her to enter and--and then at last, Betty caught the ring of spurred heels on the pavement of the terrace.
"He's come!" she cried, springing from her seat, and forgetting everything else in her relief. "He's come!"
Sophia from the inner threshold stared coldly. "Who?" she asked. It was the first time the two had met in the morning and had not kissed; but there are bounds to the generosity of woman, and Sophia could not stoop to kiss her rival. "Who?" she repeated, standing stiffly aloof, near the door by which she had entered.
"You will see!" Betty cried, with a bubble of laughter. "You will see."
The next moment Sir Hervey's figure darkened the open doorway, and Sophia saw him and understood. For an instant surprise drove the blood from her cheeks; then, as astonishment gave place to indignation, and to all the feelings which a wife--though a wife in name only--might be expected to experience in such a position, the tide returned in double volume. She, did not speak, she did not move; but she saw that they understood one another, she felt that this sudden return was concerted between them; and her eyes sparkled, her bosom rose. If she had never been beautiful before, Sophia was beautiful at that moment.
Sir Hervey smiled, as he looked at her. "Good morning, my dear," he said cheerily. "I'm of the earliest, or thought I was. But you had nearly stolen a march on me."
She did not answer him. "Lady Betty," she said, without turning her head or looking at the girl, "you had better leave us."
"Yes, Betty, away with you!" he cried, good humouredly. "You'll find Tom outside." And as Betty whisked away through the open door, "You'll pardon me, my dear," he continued quietly, but with dignity, "I have countermanded the carriage. When you have heard what I have to say you will agree with me, I am sure, that there is no necessity for our guest to leave us to-day." He laid his whip aside, as he spoke, and turned to the table from which Lady Betty had lately risen. "I have not broken my fast," he said. "Give me some tea, child."
A wild look, as of a creature caged and beating vain wings against bars, darkened Sophia's eyes. She was trembling with agitation, panting to resist, outraged in her pride if not in her love; and he asked for tea! Yet words did not come at once, his easy manner had its effect; as if she acknowledged that he had still a right to her service, she sat down at the little table in the window bay. He passed his legs over the bench on the other side, and sat waiting, the width of the table only--and it was narrow--between them. As she washed Betty's cup in the basin the china tinkled, and betrayed her agitation; but she managed to make his tea and pass it to him.
"Thank you," he said quietly. "And now for what I was saying. Lady Betty sent me a note last night, stating that she was to go to-day, unless I interceded for her. It was that brought me back this morning."
Sophia's eyes burned, but she forced herself to speak with calmness. "Did she tell you," she asked, "why she was to go?"
Sir Hervey shrugged his shoulders. "Well," he said, with a smile, "she hinted at the reason."
"Did she tell you what I had said to her?"
"I am afraid not," he said politely. "Probably space----"
"Or shame!" Sophia cried; and the next moment could have bitten her tongue. "Pardon me," she said in an altered tone, "I had no right to say that. But if she has not told you, 'tis I must tell you, myself. And it is more fitting. I am aware that you have discovered--all too soon, Sir Hervey--that our marriage, if it could be called a marriage, was a mistake. I cannot--I cannot," Sophia continued, trembling from head to foot, "take all the blame of that to myself, though I know that the first cause was my fault, and that it was I led you to commit the error. But I cannot take all the blame," she repeated, "I cannot! For you knew the world, you should have known yourself, and what was likely, what was certain to come of it! What has come of it!"
Sir Hervey drummed on the table with his fingers, and when he spoke, it was in a tone of apology. "The future is hard to read," he said. "It is easy, child, to be wise after the event."
Her next words seemed strangely ill-directed to the issue. "You never told me that you had been betrothed before," she said, "and that she died. If you had told me, and if I had seen her face--I should have been wiser. I should have foreseen what would happen. I do not wonder that such a face seen again has"--she paused, stammering and pale, "has recalled old times and your youth. I have no right to blame you. I do not blame you. At least, I--I try not to blame you," she repeated, her voice sinking lower and lower. "I have told her, and it is true, that if I could bear all the consequences of our error I would bear them. That if I could release you and set you free to marry the--the woman you have learned to love--I would, sir, willingly. That, at any rate, I would not raise a finger to prevent such a marriage."
"And did you--mean that," he asked in a low voice, his face averted.
"As God sees me, I did."
"You are in earnest, Sophia?" For an instant he turned his head and looked at her.
"I am."
"Yet--you were for sending her away," he said. "This morning? Before I could return? That I might not see her again."
She looked at him with astonishment, with indignation. "Cannot you understand," she cried, "that that was not on my account, but on hers?"
"It seems to have been rather on my account," he muttered doggedly, his fingers toying with the teaspoon, his eyes on the table. He seemed strangely changed. He did not seem to be himself.
She shuddered. "At any rate, it was not on my account," she said.
"And you are still fixed that she must go?"
"Yes."
"Then I'll tell you what it is," he answered with sudden determination, "I'll take you at your word!" He raised his cup, which was half full, and held it in front of his lips, looking at her across it as he spoke. "You said just now that if there was a way to--to give me the woman I loved--you would take it."
She started. For a moment she did not answer.
He waited. At last: "You didn't mean it?" he said, his tone cold.
The room, the high window with its stained escutcheons, the dark oak walls, the dark oak table, the leafage reflected cool and green in the tall mirror opposite the door, went round with her; she swallowed something that rose in her throat, and set her teeth hard, and at length she found her voice. "Yes," she said, "I meant it."
"Well, there is a way," he answered; and he rose from the table, and, moving to the door which led to the main hall and the staircase, he closed it. "There is a way of doing it. But it is not quite easy to explain it to you in a moment. 'Twas a hurried marriage, as you know, and informal, and a marriage only in name. And something has happened since then."
He paused there; she asked in a low tone, "What?"
"Well, it is what took me to Lewes yesterday," he answered. "I should have told you of it then, but I was in doubt how you would take it. And Betty persuaded me not to tell it. The man Hawkesworth----"
He paused, as she rose stiffly from the table. "Have they taken him?" she exclaimed.
"Yes," he said gently. "They took him in hiding near Chichester. But he was ill, dying, it was thought, when they surprised him."
She had a strange prevision. "Of the smallpox?" she asked.
"Yes," he answered. And then, "He died last night," he continued softly. "My dear, let me get you a little cordial."
"No, no! Did you see him?"
"I did. And I did what I could for him. I was with him when he died."
She sat down at the table, hiding her face in her hands. Presently she shuddered. "Heaven forgive him!" she whispered. "Heaven forgive him, as I do!" And again she was silent for some minutes, while he stood watching her. At last, "Was it about him," she asked in a low voice, "that Lady Betty was talking to you on the terrace yesterday?"
"Yes. I asked her advice. I did not know what you might do, if you knew. And I did not wish you to see him."
"But she had another reason," Sophia murmured, behind her hands. "There was another motive, which she urged for keeping it from me. What was it?"
He did not answer.
"What was it?" she repeated, and lowered her hands and looked at him, her lips parted.
He walked up the hall and back again under her eyes. "Well," he said, in a tone elaborately easy, "she is but a child, you know, and does not understand things. She knew a little of the circumstances of our marriage, and she thought she knew more. She fancied that a little jealousy might foster love; and so it may, perhaps, where a spark exists. But not otherwise. That was her mistake."
"But--but I do not understand!" Sophia cried, her hands shaking, her face bewildered. "You said--you told her that you were perfectly indifferent to me."
"Oh, pardon me," Sir Hervey answered lightly. "Never, I am sure. I said, perhaps, that I had done everything toshowthat I was indifferent to you. That was part of her foolish plan. But there is a distinction, you see?"
"Yes," Sophia faltered, her face growing slowly scarlet. "There is a distinction, I see."
She wanted to cry, and she wanted to think; and she wanted to hide her face from his eyes, but had not the will to do it while he looked at her. Her head was going round. If she had misinterpreted Betty's words on the terrace, and it seemed certain now that she had, what had she done? Or, rather, what had she not done? She had fallen into Betty's trap; she had proclaimed her own folly; she had misjudged her--and him! She had done them foul, dreadful wrong; she had insulted them horribly, horribly insulted them by her suspicions! She had proved the meanness and lowness of her mind! While he had been thinking of her, and for her, still shielding her, as he had shielded her from the beginning--she had been slandering him, accusing him, wronging him, and along with him this young girl, her guest, her friend, living under her roof! It was infamous! Infamous! What had so warped her?
And then, as she sat overwhelmed by shame, a ray of light pierced the darkness. She looked at him, feeling on a sudden cold and weak. "But you--you have not yet explained!" she muttered.
"What?"
"How I can help you to--to----" Her voice failed her.
She could not finish.
"To Betty," he said, seeing her stuck in a quagmire of perplexities. "I do not want Betty."
"Then what did you mean?" she stammered.
"I never said I wanted Betty," he answered, smiling.
"But you said----"
"I said that there was a way by which you could help me to the woman I loved. And there is a way. Betty, in her note to me, will have it that you can do it at slight cost to yourself. That is for you to decide. Only remember, Sophia," Sir Hervey continued gravely, "you are free, free as air. I have kept my word to the letter. I shall continue to keep it. If there is to be a change, if we are to come nearer to one another, it must come from you, not from me."
She turned to the window; and waiting for her answer--which did not come quickly--he saw that she was shaking. "You don't help me," she whispered at last.
"What, child?"
"You don't help me. You don't make it easy for me." And then she turned abruptly to him and he saw that the tears were running down her face. "Don't you know what you ought to do?" she cried, holding out her hands and lifting her face to him. "You ought to beat me, you ought to shake me, you ought to lock me in a dark room! You ought to tell me every hour of the day how mean, how ungrateful, how poor and despicable a thing I am--to take all and give nothing!"
"And that would help you?" he said. "'Tis a new way of making love, sweet."
"'Tis an old one," she cried impetuously. "You are too good to me. But if you will take me, such as I am--and--and I suppose you have not much choice," she continued, with an odd, shy laugh, "I shall be very much obliged to you, sir. And--and I shall thank you all my life."
He would have taken her in his arms, but she dropped, as she spoke, on the bench beside the table, and hiding her face in her hands, began to weep softly--in the same posture, and in the same place, in which she had sat the day before, but with feelings how different! Ah, how different!
Sir Hervey stood over her a moment, watching her. Her riding-cap had fallen off and lay on the table beside her. Her hair, clubbed for the journey, hung undressed and without powder on her neck. He touched it gently, almost reverently with his hand. It was the first caress he had ever given her.
p342HER HAIR ... HUNG UNDRESSED ON HER NECK. HE TOUCHED ITGENTLY ... IT WAS THE FIRST CARESS HE HAD EVER GIVEN HER
"Child," he whispered, "you are not unhappy?"
"Oh, no, no," she cried. "I am thankful, I am so thankful!"
* * * * *
"I said I would let you kiss me?" Lady Betty exclaimed with indignation. And her eyes scorched poor Tom. "It's quite sure, sir, I said nothing of the kind."
"But you said," Tom stammered, "that if I didn't do what you wanted, you wouldn't! And that meant that if I did, you would. Now, didn't it?"
Lady Betty shrugged her shoulders in utter disdain of such reasoning. "Oh, la, sir, you are too clever for me!" she cried. "I wasn't at college." And she turned from him contemptuously.
They were at the horseblock under the oak, whither Tom had followed her, with thoughts bent on bold emprise. And at the first he had put a good face on it; but the lesson of the day before, and of the day before that, had not been lost. The spirit had gone out of him. The pout of her lips silenced him, a glance from her eyes--if they were cold or distant, harsh or contemptuous--sent his heart into his boots. He grovelled before her; it may be that he was of a nature to benefit by the experience.
Having snubbed him, she was silent awhile, that the iron might enter into his soul. Then she looked to see if he was sullen; she found that he was not. He was only heartbroken, and her majesty relented. "I said, it is true," she continued, "that--that you might earn your pardon. Well, you are pardoned, sir; and we are where we were."
"May I call you Betty, then?"
Lady Betty's eyes fell modestly on her fan. "Well, you may," she said. "I think that is part of your pardon, if it gives you any pleasure to call me by my name. It seems vastly foolish to me."
He was foolish. "Betty!" he cried softly. "Betty! Betty! It'll be the only name for me as long as I live. Betty! Betty! Betty!"
"What nonsense!" Lady Betty answered; but her gaze fell before his.
"Do you remember," he ventured, "what it was I said of your eyes?"
"Of my eyes?" she cried, recovering herself. "No; of the maid's eyes, if you please. There was some nonsense said of them, I remember."
"It was all true of your eyes!" Tom said, gathering courage and fluency. "It's true of them now! And all I said to the maid, I say to you. And I wish, oh, I wish you were the maid again!"
"That you might be rude to me, I suppose?" she answered, tracing a figure with her fan on the horseblock.
"No," Tom cried. "That I might show you how much I love you. That I might get nothing by you but yourself. Oh, Betty, give me a little hope! Say that--that some day I shall--I shall kiss you again."
Betty, blushing and but half disdainful, studied the ground with a gravity that was not natural to her.
"Well, perhaps--in a year," she faltered. "Always supposing that you kiss no one in the meantime, sir."
"A year, a whole year, Betty!" Tom protested.
"Yes, a year, not a day less," she answered firmly. "You are only a boy. You don't know your own mind. I don't know yet whether you would treat me well. And for waiting, I'll have no one kiss me," Betty continued, steadfastly, "that cannot wait and wait, and doesn't think me worth the waiting. So, sir, if you wish to show that you are a man, you must show it by waiting."
"A year!" Tom moaned. "It's an age!"
"So it is to a boy," she retorted. "To a man it's a year. And as you don't wish to wait----"
"I will wait! I will indeed!" Tom cried.
"Remember you must kiss no one in the meantime," Betty continued, drawing patterns on the block, "nor write, nor speak, nor look a word of love. You will be on your honour, and--and you will wait till this day twelvemonth, sir."
"I will," Tom cried. "I will, and thankfully, if you on your side, Betty----"
She sprang up. "What?" she cried, on fire in an instant. "You would make terms with me, would you?"
Tom, the bold, the bully, cringed. "No," he said. "No, of course not. I beg your pardon, Betty."
She was silent for a full half minute, and he thought her hopelessly offended. But when she spoke again it was hurriedly, and in a tone of strange, new shyness. "Still, I--I don't ask what I won't give," she said. "You've kissed me, and you are not the same to me as--as others. I don't mind telling you that. And--and what is law for you shall be law for me. I suppose you understand," she added, her face naming more and more. And in her growing bashfulness she glanced at him angrily. "I never--I never have flirted, of course," she continued, despairing of making him understand; "but I--I won't flirt this year if you are in earnest."
Somehow Tom had got her hand, and was kissing it. And the two formed a pretty picture. But the time allowed them was short. Tom's ecstasy was interrupted by the sound of approaching footsteps. Sir Hervey and Sophia had descended the steps of the terrace followed by the old vicar, who looked little the worse for his fainting-fit. He bore on his arm a new gown, the gift of his patron, and the token of his own favour, if not of his wife's forgiveness. The three were so closely engaged in talk that until they came face to face with the other pair they were not conscious of their presence. Then for a moment Sophia faltered and hung back, shamed and conscience-stricken, reminded of the things she had said, and the worse things she had thought, of her friend. But in a breath the two girls were in one another's arms.
Tom looked and groaned. "Oh, Lord!" he said. "A year! A whole year!"