Stanley John Weyman

“ Sophia, flustered and softened, her heart beating quick with a delicious emotion, half hope, half fear, sat down on the chair by the door and gazed at them.
He was more to her now, while she sat in his room and looked at these things, than he had ever been; and though the moment was at hand when his reception of her must tell her all, her distrust of him had never been less. If he did not love her with the love she pictured, why had he chosen her? He whose career promised so much, who under the cloak of frivolity pursued aims so high, amid perils so real. He must love her! He must love her! ”

“ 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." ”

“ There in the darkness they could hide; there--if only they could find the stepping-stones which Watkyns had said were upstream.
Quick as thought she had Lady Betty out, and seizing her woman by the shoulder, shook her impatiently. "Come," she cried, "come, we must run. We must run! Come, or we shall leave you."
But Pettitt only grovelled lower on the floor, deaf to prayers, orders, threats. At last, "We must leave her," Sophia cried, when she had wasted a precious minute in vain appeals. "Come! We must find the stepping-stones. It is the only chance." ”

“ Mick cried.
"They've a fare," the coachman explained, leaning down anew.
"The fare can take my coach," the voice answered imperiously; and in a twinkling, a smartly dressed woman, wearing red and white and plenty of both, yet handsome after a fashion, had pushed, first her hoop and then herself out of the coach. "See here, ma'am," she cried, seeing Sophia's scared face, "the coach is paid, and will take you anywhere in reason. 'Twill make no difference to you and all to me, and a mite of good nature is never thrown away! I've to go where a coach cannot go. Up a court, you understand." ”

“ 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." ”

“ The solemnity of the night, as it wore slowly to morning, the depth of silence--as of death--that preceded the dawn, the stir of thanksgiving that greeted the birth of another day, these working on a nature stirred by strange experiences and now subject to a strange solitude, awoke in her thoughts deeper than ordinary. She saw in Betty's recklessness the mirror of her own; she shuddered at Hawkesworth, disclosed to her in his true colours; and considered Sir Hervey's patience with new wonder. Near neighbour to death, she viewed life as a thing detached and whole ”

“ Lady Betty cried, with a fresh peal of laughter. "Oh, you dear, silly old thing, I would not be your daughter for something!"
"Lady Betty?"
"You dear, don't you Lady Betty me! A highwayman? Oh, it is too delicious! Too diverting! Are you sure it isn't Turpin come to life again? Or Cook of Barnet? Or the gallant Macheath from the Opera? Why, you old dear, the man is nothing better nor worse than a--lover!"
"A lover?" Sophia cried. ”

“ Sophia cared not. She felt no curiosity. She put no questions, but accepted in silence the dispositions her brother made for her comfort. Bruised and broken, fatigued in body, with a sorely aching heart she took the room he gave her, sleep offering all she could now hope for or look for, sleep bounding all her ambitions. In sleep--and at that moment the girl would fain have lain down not to rise again--she hoped to find a refuge from trouble, a shelter from thought, a haven where shame could not enter. To one in suspense, in doubt, in expectation, bed is a rack, a place of torture ”

“ 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! ”

“ If Lady Betty's sprightliness ever deserted her, it returned with the morning as regularly as the light. But by Sophia the depressing influence of a strange place, viewed through sheets of rain, was felt to the full next day. The mind must be strong that does not tinge the future with the colours which the eye presents at the moment; and her's was nowise superior to the temptation. Her spirits, as she rose amid the discomforts of a Sussex inn--and Sussex inns and Sussex roads were then reputed among the worst in England--and prepared to continue the journey, were at their lowest ebb. ”

“ We count by months, then by days; at length, when hours only remain, the last meal is an epoch on the hither side of which we sit almost content. It was so with Sophia when she had once started. They were to dine at Lewes; until Lewes was reached she put away the future, and strove to enjoy the hours that intervened.
The weather was so foul that at starting they took Lady Betty's maid into the carriage, and pitied Watkyns, who had no choice but to sit outside, with his hat pulled down to his collar, and the rain running out of his pockets. ”

“ A yard farther, and Lady Betty stumbled over something that lay in the shadow of the trees. She recoiled with a cry. "It's a man!" she murmured.
"The grooms!" Sophia answered, her wits sharpened by necessity; and she felt for and shook one of the sleepers, tugged at his clothes, even buffeted him in a frenzy of impatience. "George! George!" she muttered; and again she shook him. But in vain; and as quickly as she had knelt she was on foot again, and had drawn the child on. "Drugged!" she muttered. "They are drugged! We must cross! We must cross! It's our one chance!" ”

“ Lane cried. "I swear they are!"
Sophia felt, she could not see, that Hawkesworth was peering round him. Even now he was not more than ten or twelve paces from them; but the gorse-bush, from which the rabbit had darted, formed a black blurr against the fence, and deepened the obscurity in which they lay. Unless he came on them they were safe; but at any moment he might discover the fence, and guess it had brought them up, and beat along it. And--and while she thought of this she heard him chuckle.
"Be still, man," he cried to the other, "and keep your ears open. ”

“ It was in vain Sophia fretted, in vain Lady Betty ceased to jest, that Pettitt cast eyes to heaven in token of speechless misery, Watkyns swore and sweated to think what Sir Hervey would say of it. There was no place where the carriage could be turned; and if there had been, to go back seemed as bad as to go forward.
By way of compensation the sky had grown clear; a flood of pale evening sunshine gilded the western slopes of the hills. The clumps that here and there crowned the summits rose black against an evening sky, calm and serene. But far as the eye could reach not a sign of man appeared ”

“ Sophia felt all a woman's rage against a woman, and wasted no further time on thought. She had courage and to spare, her fears for the jewels notwithstanding. In a twinkling she was at the door, had flung it open, and, burning with indignation, had bounced into the middle of the room, prepared to annihilate the offender. Yet not prepared for what she saw. In the room was only Lady Betty; who, as she entered, sprang from the window and stood confronting her with crimson cheeks. ”

“ Men like Lord Lincoln would treat her with the easy familiarity she had seen them extend to Lady Vane, or Miss Edwards. Women she respected, Lady Pomfret, the duchess, would freeze her with a look. Girls, good girls like Lady Sophia, or little Miss Hamilton--no longer would these be her company.
No, she had gone too far; it was too late to turn back; yet she felt, as she crossed the threshold, it was the one thing she longed to do. Though Mrs. Wollenhope hastened to light two candles that stood on a table, the parlour and the shapes of the furniture swam before Sophia's eyes. ”

“ It even seemed to Sophia that his face, as he stood watching her, took on a smirk of satisfaction, faint, but odious; and in that moment, and for the moment, she came near to hating him. She knew that in the set in which she moved much might be overlooked, and daily and hourly was overlooked, in the right people. But to be lost at Vauxhall at midnight, in the company of an unauthorised lover--this had a horribly clandestine sound; this should be sufficient to blacken the fame of a poor maid--or her country education was at fault. ”

“ It was not impossible that as she executed them she had a person in her eye and meant him to profit by them; for by-and-by she repeated the performance at a point where two paths diverged, and where it put the fitting close to a very pretty pause of indecision. Tom was so hard on her heels that ordinary ears must have detected his tread; but that my lady heard nothing was proved by the fact that she chose the more retired track and tripped along it, humming and darting from flower to flower like some dainty insect let loose among the bracken. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Naturally, Lady Betty found her anxiety excessive; and at supper, seeing her start at every sound, rallied her on her timidity. Their bedroom was at the back of the house, and looked through one window on the inn-yard and the door of the chaise-house. "I see clearly you would have been happier supping upstairs," Lady Betty whispered, taking advantage of an instant when the servants were out of earshot. "You do nothing but listen. Shall I go up, as if for my handkerchief, and see that all is right?"
"Oh, no, no!" Sophia cried. ”

“ But for a man of condition to play the Borromeo--to stoop to give practical help and run risks among the vulgar, was still enough to earn for him a character as eccentric as that of the famous nobleman who had seen more kings and more postilions than any of his contemporaries.
In the eyes of the world, but not in Sophia's, or why this dimness of vision, as she gazed at Sir Hervey's picture? Why the unrest of the bodice that threatened to find vent in sobs? Why the sudden rush of self-reproach? ”

“ The rest of his features were lost in the depths of a fierce black riding wig; but his great holsters, and long swinging sword, seemed to show that his errand was anything but peaceful.
The moment his one eye met Lady Betty's gaze, he fell back; and that instant Sophia used to close the jewel case, and turn the key. To lower the drawer to the floor of the carriage, and cover it with her skirts was the work of a second, then still trembling, she put out her head, and looked back along the road. The man had pulled his horse into a walk, and was now a hundred paces behind them. ”

“ It was right that the offenders of yesterday should be punished; their conduct had been cruel, inhuman, barbarous. But that her home-coming should mean to any man the loss of home, shocked her. Yet she thought it possible that her brother was right; that pride, if not love, the wish to do his duty by her, if not the desire to commend himself to her, would move Sir Hervey to especial severity. What bridegroom indeed, what lover could afford to neglect so obvious a flattery? And if in her case Coke counted neither for lover nor bridegroom, what husband? ”

“ Coke will swinge them," he continued with zest. "He must swinge them, like it or not! It'll be go, bag and baggage, for most of them, and some, I'm told, have been on the land time out of mind!"
He had seated himself on the broad balustrade of the terrace, with his back to the park, and his eyes on the windows of the house. Sophia, on a stone bench not far from him, gazed thoughtfully over the park as if she found refreshment merely in contemplating the far stretch of fern and sward, that, set with huge oak trees, fell away into half-seen dells of bracken and fox-gloves. ”

“ There is nothing more terrifying than a silent alarm ill-understood.
The next moment she saw--and understood. Beside Sophia's window, riding abreast of the carriage, in such a position that only his horse's head, by forging an instant to the front, had betrayed his presence, was a cloaked stranger. Lady Betty caught no more than a glimpse of him, but that was enough. Apart from the doubt how long he had ridden there, inspecting the jewels at his leisure, his appearance was calculated to scare less nervous travellers. ”

“ The words came from behind Sir Tom, who forthwith sprang a yard from the settle, and stood gaping; while Hawkesworth, his glass going to shivers on the floor, clutched the table as he rose. Both stood staring, both stood amazed, and scarce believed their eyes, when Sophia, stepping from the shelter of the settle, stood before them.
"He cannot!" she repeated, with a gesture, a look, an accent that should have withered the man. "He cannot! For he does not know what a gentleman feels about anything. He does not know what a gentleman is. ”

“ Sophia heard him turn the key, and a minute later, when she had a little recovered herself, she heard him moving to and fro in the room. He was dressing. He had not, then, changed his mind.
She waited awhile, trying to believe that her words might still produce some effect. But he made no sign, he did not emerge. Presently she caught the rustle of his garments as he changed his clothes; and in a fever of anxiety she began to pace the room. Nature has provided no cure for trouble more wholesome or more powerful than a generous interest in another's fate. ”