Anthony Hope

“ Pharos made an answer, grave and serious in tone, in purpose and effect malignantly nonsensical: "When the person whom it is sought to subject to this particular influence (he touched the pocket where his precious disk now lay) has the Evil Eye."
An appeal to a superstition old as the hills and widespread as the human race—would it ever fail to hit some mark in a company of a dozen? Casimir laughed in hearty contempt, Sophy laughed in mischievous mockery. But two of the dowagers crossed themselves, Lady Meg started and glowered—and little Madame Zerkovitch marked, recorded, and remembered. ”

“ A sword—a crown—the nimbus of a saint: imagination might play untrammelled. Still some prophecy was made; Lady Meg built on it, and Sophy (for all her apparent indifference) remembered it, and in after-days thought it worthy of recall. That is as far as we can go; and with that passing glimpse, Sophy Grouch (of course the mention of the wafer-like mark puts her identity beyond question) passes out of sight for the time; indeed, as Sophy Grouch, in the position in which we have seen her and in the name under which we have known her, she passes out of sight forever. ”

“ Paris was full of men who in the next few years were to make or lose fame, to rise with a bound or fall with a crash. Into such society Lady Meg's name, rank, and parentage would have carried her, had she cared to go; she could have shown Sophy the Emperor of the French at close quarters instead of contenting herself with a literal fulfilment of her promise by pointing him out as he drove in the streets. But Lady Meg was rabid against the Empire ”

“ She has candor—and that, working with the dramatic sense in her, forbids her to warp the scene. In the earlier parts of the story she shows keen appreciation of its lighter aspects; as times grow graver, her records, too, change in mood, working up to the ense excitement, the keen struggle, the burning emotions of her last days in Kravonia. Yet even then she always finds time for a laugh and a touch of gayety. When Sophy herself ceases to be our guide, Lord Dunstanbury's notes become the main authority. ”

“ BEAUTIFUL JULIA AND MY LORD
"IT seemed somehow impossible, me going to be cook there all my days." So writes Sophy at a later date in regard to her life at Morpingham Hall. To many of us in our youth it has seemed impossible that we should pass all our days in the humdrum occupations and the mediocre positions in which we have in fact spent them. Young ambitions are chronicled only when they have been fulfilled—unless where a born autobiographer makes fame out of his failures. ”

“ You're going to be a cook?"
"The cook," she amended. "The cook at the Hall."
"I'll come and eat your dinners." He laughed, yet looked a trifle compassionate. Sophy's quick eyes tracked his feelings.
"You don't think it's nice to be a cook, either?" she asked.
"Oh yes, splendid! The cook's a sort of queen," said he.
"The cook a sort of queen? Is she?" Sophy's eyes were profoundly thoughtful.
"And I should be very proud to kiss a queen—a sort of queen. Because I shall be only a poor sawbones." ”

“ I'm to be an actress! Fancy mother consenting at last! An actress instead of a governess! Isn't it glorious?" She paused a moment, then added, with a self-conscious laugh: "Basil's awfully angry, though."
"Why. should he be angry?" asked Sophy. Her own anger was gone; she was plucking daisies and sticking them here and there in her friend's golden hair. They were great friends, this pair, and Sophy was very proud of the friendship. Julia was grown up, the beauty of the village, and—a lady! Now Sophy was by no means any one of these things. ”

“ Sophy's mark was ruddy indeed as the Rector went on his blameless way, and Julia was squeezing her friend's arm very hard. But Sophy said nothing, except to murmur—just once—"The little one!"
Julia smiled at the tone.
They turned and walked back towards the road. Now silence reigned; Julia was understanding, pitying, wondering whether a little reasonable remonstrance would be accepted by her fiery and very unreasonable little friend; scullery - maids must not arraign social institutions nor quarrel with the way of the world. ”

“ A single star sombrely announced the coming pageant.
"And his daughter high as the hopes that beckon me to my career!"
"You've a wonderful way of talking," smiled Sophy Grouch—simple Essex in contact with Paris at that instant.
"You'll be my wife, Sophie?"
"I don't think Lady Meg will keep me long. Pharos is working hard so Marie Zerkovitch declares. I should bring you a dot of two thousand five hundred francs!"
"Do you love me?"
The old question rang clear in the still air. Who has not heard it of women—or uttered it of men? Often so easy, sometimes so hard. ”

“ The only sound was of Lorenzo's worrying the last tough scrap of bone. The lad, gentleman as he was, was good flesh and blood, too—and the blood was moving. He felt a little tightness in his throat; he was new to it. New, too, was Sophy Grouch to what his eyes said to her, but she took it with head erect and a glance steadily levelled at his. ”

“ But what could I do? She would not return to England; she could not stay alone in Paris. I was the only friend she had in the world. She asked no more than to travel with me. 'When once I am there, I can look after myself,' she said."
The pair—a little fragment of a great throng, escaping or thrust forth—left Paris together on the 13th or 14th of August, en route for Kravonia. With Sophy went the bullet-pierced picture and the little bundle of letters. She did not forget. With a sore wound in her heart she turned to face a future dark, uncertain, empty of all she had loved. ”

“ I live for you always so long as I live. If I die, it will be in the thought of you, and they will kill no prouder man than Sophie's lover. To have won your love (ah, by to-morrow night, yes!) and to die for France—would it be ill done for a short life? By my faith, no! I'll make my bow to my ancestors without shame. 'I, too, have done my part, messieurs!' say I, as I sit down with my fore-fathers. Sophie, adieu! You won't forget? I don't think you can quite forget. Your picture rides with me, your star shines ahead. ”

“ She had bidden Casimir not fight thinking of her. Thinking of her, he had fought and died. All she ever wrote about her departure is one sentence—"I went to Kravonia in sheer despair of the old life; I had to have something new."
Stricken she went forth from the stricken city, where hundreds of men were cutting down the trees beneath whose shade she had often walked and ridden with her lover. ”

“ When all is right save one thing—or when all is wrong save one thing—then it is hard to answer, and may have been hard to ask. With Casimir there was no doubt, save the doubt of the answer. Sophy stood poised on a hesitation. ”

“ The air of the household was stormy that day at Morpingham—an incentive to the expedition, not a deterrent, for Lady Meg, had she known it. Sophy was in sore disgrace—accused, tried, and convicted of insubordination and unseemly demeanor towards Mrs. Smilker. The truth seems to be that this good woman (Rest her soul! She has a neat tombstone in Morpingham church-yard) loved like many another good creature—good ale sometimes a trifle too well; and the orders she gave when ale had been plentiful did not always consort with her less-mellow injunctions. ”

“ Pharos and Mantis held sway, and I dared not look round for fear of my ancestors being there to see me in the Emperor's uniform! Tell me when there will be no ancestors living or dead, nor dowagers nor devils, that I may come and see you. If dear Lady Meg (Laidee Maig!) [1] should be pursuing one or the other in other places, yet forbid me not to come. She has whims, we know, but not, thank Heaven, many principles; or, if she has our principles, at least she scorns our etiquette. Moreover, queens make etiquette, and are not ruled by what they make. ”

“ Pharos could make nothing of it; he, too, thought Mademoiselle Sophie—he advanced to that pleasant informality of description—quite ravishing and entirely devoted to Lady Meg, only, unhappily, so irresponsive to the Unseen—a trifle unsympathetic, it might be. But what would you? The young had no need to think of death or the dead. ”

“ Casimir had found time and opportunity to send Sophy some half-dozen notes (assuming she preserved all she received) . On the 5th of August, the eve of Worth, he wrote at somewhat greater length:
"It is night. I am off duty for an hour. I have been in the saddle full twelve hours, and I believe that, except the sentries and the outposts, I am the only man awake. We need to sleep. The Red Star, which shines everywhere for me, shines for all of us over our bivouac to-night. It must be that we fight to-morrow. ”

“ She set her little friend free with a last kiss and a playful pinch.
Neither caress nor pinch disturbed Sophy's composure. She sat down on the grass.
"Something's happened to me, too, to-day," she announced.
"Has it, Tots? What is it?" asked Julia, smiling indulgently; the great events in other lives are thus sufficiently acknowledged.
"I've left school, and I'm going to leave Mrs. James's and go and live at the Hall, and be taught to help cook; and when I'm grown up I'm going to be cook." She spoke slowly and weightily, her eyes fixed on Julia's face. ”

“ An agreeable talker, an accomplished singer, and a kind-hearted woman, she was an acquaintance to be welcomed. Whatever strange notions she harbored about Sophy in after-days, she conceived from the beginning, and never lost, a strong affection for her, and their friendship ripened quickly from their first meeting at Lady Meg's, where Marie Zerkovitch was a frequent visitor, and much interested in Pharos's hocus-pocus. ”

“ Sophy had learned to talk French perfectly and to write it fairly well. She had not learned to write English well or even decently; the letters are, in fact, a charnel-house of murdered grammar and broken-backed sentences. Still there emerge from it all a shrewdness and a rural vigor and raciness which show that the child of the little Essex farm-house survived in the writer.
But for this Kravonian period—the great period—the diary is the thing. Yet it is one of the most unconscientious diaries ever written. It is full of gaps; it is often posted up very unpunctually ”

“ The annals of a little maid-servant may be left in vagueness without much loss. Enough remains to show both the manner of child Sophy was and how it fell out that she spread her wings and left the Essex village far behind her. It is a different affair when we come to the French period. The years spent in and near Paris, in the care and under the roof of Lady Margaret Duddington, were of crucial moment in Sophy's development. They changed her from what she had been and made her what she was to be. Without Paris, Kravonia, still extraordinary, would have been impossible. ”

“ Mrs Brownlow followed the procession, Sophy still in her arms. At the end of the avenue she spoke to the boy and girl:
"Go home, Basil; tell your father, and ask him to come to the Hall. Good-night, Julia. Tell your mother—and don't cry any more. The poor man is with God, and I sha'n't let this mite come to harm."
She was a childless woman, with a motherly heart, and as she spoke she kissed Sophy's wounded forehead. Then she went into the Hall grounds, and the boy and girl were left together in the road. Basil shook his fist at the avenue of elms—his favorite playground. ”

“ Left alone in the fast-darkening night, with nobody in sight, with no sound save the ceaseless voice of the angry wind essaying new mischief in the tops of the elm-trees, he stood for a moment listening fearfully. Then he laid his sturdy legs to the ground and fled for home, looking neither to right nor left till he reached the hospitable light of his father's study. The lad had been brave in face of the visible horror; fear struck him in the moment of Julia's talk about the mark on the child's cheek. ”

“ If Lady Meg had given her only what one spares for a dog—a kind word before he is banished, a friendly lament at parting!
Suddenly through the window came a boy's shrill voice: "Vive la guerre!"
Sophy sprang to her feet, caught up the dirty note, and thrust it inside her glove. Without delay, seemingly without hesitation, she left the house, passed swiftly along the street, and made for the Pont Royal. She was bound for the other bank and for the Boulevard des Italiens, where Casimir de Savres had his lodging. The stream of traffic set with her.She heeded it not. ”