Sophia

“ Four years ago, in the Restaurant Sylvain, the ingenuous and ignorant Sophia had shyly sat in awe of the resplendent courtesan, with her haughty stare, her large, easy gestures, and her imperturbable contempt for the man who was paying. And now Sophia knew that she, Sophia, knew all that was to be known about human nature. She had not merely youth, beauty, and virtue, but knowledge--knowledge enough to reconcile her to her own misery. She had a vigorous, clear mind, and a clean conscience. She could look any one in the face, and judge every one too as a woman of the world. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And now, the menacing Gerald Scales having reappeared, Sophia's form lay mysterious and affrightening on the sofa; and she and Lily Holl, a girl whom she had not met till that day, were staring at Sophia side by side, intimately sharing the same alarm. Constance rose to the crisis. She no longer had Sophia's energy and decisive peremptoriness to depend on, and the Baines in her was awakened. All her daily troubles sank away to their proper scale of unimportance. Neither the young woman nor the old one knew what to do. ”

“ Sophia looked at the door through which the lady had disappeared, and bursting into tears, exclaimed: 'Oh my poor wreath!'
'Sophia, Sophia, you are an angel,' said Edoardo. 'Once more I owe you my life.'
'Since she is yours,' replied Sophia mournfully, and sitting down faint and exhausted on her trunk—'since she is yours, ought I to bring death to her mind, the death that I feel already in my poor heart? No one knows, no one can know what is suffering, but those who suffer; oh, no woman ever endured what I endure at this moment! Go—go, Edoardo ”

“ Sophia, blushing deeply, did not answer. She knew quite well why Sir Hervey had not come, and she was thankful when Lady Betty took the word.
"Oh ma'am," the child cried, "I am sure we shall do well enough; 'tis the charmingest thing in the world to be going a journey, and this morning the most delicious of all mornings. We are going to drive all day, and at night lie at an inn, and tell one another a world of secrets. I declare I could jump out of my skin! I never was so happy in my life!" ”

“ Pride swelled the heart of Sophia, as she stepped, to the sound of soft music, into the throne saloon, and saw all those cavaliers, covered with stars and orders—all those beautiful and richly-dressed women bowing humbly before her. ”

“ Miss Judy looked at him with undisguised pride in Miss Sophia, shining in her flax-flower eyes, turning again as pink as the sweetest of the blush roses, with delight in the firm promptness with which Miss Sophia responded. ”

“ Motorists have not yet spoiled the population of Sant' Ambrogio, and, unmolested by any clamour for alms, Sophia passed along the shady street, where the black-haired, kerchiefed women, with their fine, rock-hewn faces and deep-set eyes, were knitting at their house doors. In the big, cool church, whose walls of banded black and white marble were quieted by the dim light, which just showed the dark gargoyles writhing like things of a dream over cornice and capital, Sophia knelt down, more to wrap herself in the peace of it than to pray. ”

“ Baines had no intention of discussing Constance’s love-affairs with Sophia. The less said to Sophia about love, the better! Sophia was excitable enough already!
They sat opposite to each other, on either side of the fire—the monumental matron whose black bodice heavily overhung the table, whose large rounded face was creased and wrinkled by what seemed countless years of joy and disillusion; and the young, slim girl, so fresh, so virginal, so ignorant, with all the pathos of an unsuspecting victim about to be sacrificed to the minotaur of Time! ”

“ To her Prince Petros, in a moment of unguarded confidence, had hinted at the upshot of this night’s work, and when she saw Sophia her voluminous bodice remained expanded with a quick-taken breath, and the two for a moment looked at each other in silence. Sophia recovered herself first.
‘Oh, I am even as delighted and surprised to see you, dear Princess,’ she cried, ‘as you are to see me. I appear like the man in the moon, do I not? It is ages since we met. Where is Petros, you ask me? ”

“ His smile, to Sophia, was one of those natural phenomena which are so lovely that they make you want to shed tears. There is no hyperbole in this description of Sophia's sensations, but rather an under-statement of them. She was utterly obsessed by the unique qualities of Mr. Scales. Nothing would have persuaded her that the peer of Mr. Scales existed among men, or could possibly exist. And it was her intense and profound conviction of his complete pre-eminence that gave him, as he sat there in the rocking-chair in her mother's parlour, that air of the unreal and the incredible. ”

“ No face could have made a more provocative contrast to the women's faces in those screened rooms than the face of Sophia, so childlike between the baby's bonnet and the huge bow of ribbon, so candid, so charmingly conscious of its own pure beauty and of the fact that she was no longer a virgin, but the equal in knowledge of any woman alive. ”

“ There were days when Sophia was the old Sophia—the forbidding, difficult, waspish, and even hedgehog Sophia. But there were other days on which Sophia seemed to be drawing joy and gaiety and goodwill from some secret source, from some fount whose nature and origin none could divine. It was on these days that the uneasiness of Mrs. Baines waxed. She had the wildest suspicions; she was almost capable of accusing Sophia of carrying on a clandestine correspondence; she saw Sophia and Gerald Scales deeply and wickedly in love ”

“ Princess Sophia, while the moles were at work under the feet of her throne, had much enjoyed herself at Monte Carlo. During the early days there she had been the victim of a run of extreme ill-luck, but the second half of August saw her more than quits. She had begun her little outing with unwonted soberness, never staking on one number, often backing a dozen, and occasionally even so far demeaning herself as to bet by the hour on the colour. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But the reappearance of Gerald Scales! That involved the possibility of consequences which could not even be named, so afflictive was the mere prospect to them. Constance was speechless, and she saw that Sophia was also speechless.
Of course the event had been bound to happen. People do not vanish never to be heard of again. The time surely arrives when the secret is revealed. So Sophia said to herself--now! ”

“ Sophia stood there silent; the burden of what she had to say took from her the power of initiating trivialities; but her father went on, rasping like a file.
‘When a thing is done, it is done, and things for the most part do not produce any consequences at all, though people who have addled their brains with trivial thinking tell us that they do. Moralists and philosophers are the most shallow people in the world, for argument is ever less sound than conviction. This morning, Sophia, you look as if you were inclined to argue. ”

“ This idea of Sophia’s wasted and sterile life, and of the far-reaching importance of adhering to principles, recurred to her again and again. “Why did she run away with him? If only she had not run away!” she would repeat. And yet there had been something so fine about Sophia! Which made Sophia’s case all the more pitiable! Constance never pitied herself. She did not consider that Fate had treated her very badly. She was not very discontented with herself. The invincible commonsense of a sound nature prevented her, in her best moments, from feebly dissolving in self-pity. ”

“ Sophia soon returned to his imagination, and allayed the joy of his triumph with no less bitter pangs than a good-natured general must feel, when he surveys the bleeding heaps, at the price of whose blood he hath purchased his laurels; for thousands of tender ideas lay murdered before our conqueror. ”

“ Sophia was brave, but there was something in the sure and stealthy approach of this danger that sapped her will, and robbed her limbs of strength. Unable to think, unable to act, she crouched panic-stricken where she was; as the hare surprised in her form awaits the hunter's hand. Until only a minute remained; then with a groan she shook off the spell. To run, even to be caught running, was better than to be taken so. ”

“ Sophia understood, and her small spirit was up in indignant revolt. Already she had had nearly enough, and the cigarette was yet only half consumed. Each puff became a more palpable pang. Meantime Mademoiselle Fifine had approached.
‘Oh, sir,’ she said tremulously, ‘Princess Sophia has been very naughty, and I could not stop her. But make her stop; perhaps she will obey you. If she smokes any more, she will die of it, for already she is growing very pale.’
The Prince turned to the distressed governess with a malign light in his eye. ”

“ When nearly all her company were assembled, and the room was full of women languishing and swimming, and of men mincing and prattling, and tapping their snuff-boxes, Sophia stole in, and, creeping into a corner, hid herself behind two jolly nymphs, who, with hoops six feet wide and cheeks as handsome as crimson could make them, were bandying jokes and horse-play with a tall admirer. ”

“ For the third in the room, the lady to whom Grocott's words were addressed, was not Sophia, but a stranger; a tall, handsome woman, with big black eyes, fashionably dressed and fashionably painted. The surprise drew from her a hasty exclamation; she rose, her eyes sparkling with anger. Then, as Sir Hervey, recovering from his astonishment, bowed politely, she sat down again with an assumption of fineness and languor. And, taking a fan, she began to fan herself. ”

“ Scales was ill, and Dick, putting his lips together, replied that he meant to be in King Street at nine-thirty at the latest. From time to time Lily surreptitiously glanced at Sophia--a glance of apprehensive inspection, or smiled at her silently; and Sophia vaguely responded to the smile.
In half an hour they had escaped from the ring of Manchester and were on the county roads of Cheshire, polished, flat, sinuous. It was the season of the year when there is no night--only daylight and twilight; when the last silver of dusk remains obstinately visible for hours. ”

“ But before long Sophia made him feel his own man again. She grew up with the foot of the roe-deer and the eye of the hawk, and her imperative craving for excitement in some form or other kept her father on incessant tenterhooks as to what she might choose to do next. By no means the earliest of her escapades was at the age of ten, when he found her sitting with the grooms in the stable-yard, cross-legged on the horse-block, and smoking a cigarette. ”

“ Sophia got up from the table, and went indoors to the nursery to see the adorable Leonard, the four-months-old baby. Petros’s arrangement seemed to her to be in every way admirable. Apart from the convenience of getting away when she wanted, it gave her the opportunity of getting away alone. She was fond of her husband, but constantly irritated by him. She had no idea of letting herself be schooled by him into dependence, to be taught the duty of royalty by him, and she never forgot that she was Princess of Rhodopé, and he her husband. ”

“ She schemed through all the virtues for the apotheosis of Lady Sophia, and she called her scheming the vindication of truth, which she held to be a Romish monopoly. She would have made me a nun, as part of it, and taken all the credit with Heaven. I can hardly regret that she was foiled. I love truth as well as any woman, only, being a woman, à contre-cœur, and not a saint, for me it must be coloured, and in the newest shades. To ask me to love it for its own sake is to ask me to be a dowd; and, for all my respect for Lady Sophia, I have never fancied a heaven of dowds. ”

“ With her fine person and her talent for silence and repose, she was like a handsome wall, on which the magic lantern of his thoughts could disport itself in the gayest hues of imagination, and, for the present, with far more comfort and delight than had the Sophia of his worship been a real person, liable to be found wanting, and falling short of expectation. Being an ideal creature altogether, it wanted but a little more make-believe in a new place to fit her exactly to each varying mood. ”

“ The sisters looked at each other, their faces gravely troubled, aghast, as though they had glimpsed the end of civilized society, as though they felt that they had lived too long into an age of decadence and open shame. Constance's face showed despair--she might have been about to be pitched into the gutter without a friend and without a shilling--but Sophia's had the reckless courage that disaster breeds. ”