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. Recreated by a long night’s rest, her youth set off, and her freshness heightened by the dainty Tuscan and chintz sacque she had put on that morning, she was not to be known for the draggled miss who had arrived in so grievous a plight the day before. From time to time she recalled her gaze to fix it dreamily on her left hand; now reviewing the fingers, bent or straight, now laying them palm downwards on the moss-stained coping. She was so employed when the meaning of her brother’s last words came tardily home to her and roused her from her reverie.
“Do you mean,” she cried, “that he will put them out of their farms?”
“I should rather think he would!” said Tom. “Wouldn’t you? And serve them right, the brutes!”
“But what will they do?”
“Starve for all I care!” Tom answered callously; and he flipped a pebble from the balustrade with his forefinger. He was not at his best a soft-hearted young gentleman. “And teach them to know better!” he added presently.
Sophia’s face betrayed her trouble. “I don’t think he would do that,” she said, slowly.
“Coke?” Tom answered. “He won’t have much choice, my dear. For the sake of your beaux yeux he will have to swinge them, and lustily. To let them off lightly would be to slight you; and ’twouldn’t look very well, and a fortnight married. No, no, my girl. And that reminds me. Where is he? And where has he been since yesterday?”
Sophia reddened. “He has some business,” she said, “which took him away at once.”
“I don’t think you know.”
Sophia blushed more warmly, but added nothing; and fortunately Tom caught sight of a certain petticoat disappearing down the steps at the end of the terrace. It is not impossible that he had been expecting it, for he rose on the instant, muttered an unintelligible word, and went in pursuit.
Sophia sat awhile, pondering on what he had said. 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?
She rose. She must go at once and seek him, intercede with him, convince him that it would not please her. But two steps taken she paused, her pride in arms. After she had changed her dress and repaired her disorder the day before, she had waited, expecting that he would come to her. But he had not done so, he had not come near her; at length she had asked for him. Then she had learned with astonishment, with humiliation, that immediately after her arrival he had left the house on business.
If he could slight her in that fashion, was there any danger that out of regard to her he would do injustice to others? She laughed at the thought — yet believed all the same that there was, for men were inconsistent. But the position made intercession difficult, and instead of calling a servant and asking if he had returned she wandered into the house. She remembered that the housekeeper had begged to know when her ladyship would see the drawing-rooms; and she sent for Mrs. Stokes.
That good lady found her young mistress waiting for her in the larger of the two rooms. It was scantily furnished after the fashion of the early part of the century, with heavy chairs and a table, set at wide intervals on a parquet floor, with a couple of box-like settees, and as many buhl tables, the latter bought by Sir Hervey’s mother on her wedding tour, and preserved as the apple of her eye. On either side of the open blue-tiled fire-place a roundheaded alcove exhibited shelves of Oriental china, and on the walls were half a dozen copies of Titians and Raphaels, large pictures at large intervals. All was stately, proper, a little out of fashion, but decently so. Sophia admired, yawned, said a pleasant word to Mrs. Stokes and passed into the smaller room.
There she stood, suddenly engrossed. On each side of the fireplace hung a full-length portrait. The one on the right hand, immediately before her, represented a girl in the first bloom of youth, lovely as a rose-bud, graceful as a spray of jessamine, with eyes that charmed and chained the spectator by their pure maidenliness. A great painter in his happiest vein had caught the beauty and innocence of a chosen model; as she smiled from the canvas, the dull room — for the windows were curtained — grew brighter and lighter. The visitor, as he entered, saw only that sweet face, and saw it ever more clearly; as the play-goer sees only the limited space above the footlights, and sees that grow larger the longer he looks.
It was with an effort and a sigh Sophia turned to the other picture; she looked at it and stood surprised, uncertain, faintly embarrassed. She turned to the housekeeper, “It is Sir Hervey, is it not?” she said.
“Yes, my lady,” the woman answered. “At the age of twenty-one. But he is not much changed to my eyes,” she added jealously.
“Of course, I did not know him then,” Sophia murmured apologetically; and after a long thoughtful look she went back to the other picture. “What a very, very lovely face!” she said. “I did not know that Sir Hervey had ever had a sister. She is dead, I suppose?”
“Yes, my lady, she is dead.”
“It is his sister?” with a look at the other.
The housekeeper gave back the look uncomfortably. “No, my lady,” she said at last.
“No!” Sophia exclaimed, raising her eyebrows. “Then who is it, pray?”
“Well, my lady, it — it should have been removed,” Mrs. Stokes explained, her embarrassment evident. “At one time it was to go to Sir Hervey’s library, but ’twas thought it might be particular there. And so nothing was done about it. Sir Hervey wouldn’t let it go anywhere else. But I was afraid that your ladyship might not be pleased.”
Sophia stared coldly at her. “I don’t understand,” she said stiffly. “You have not told me who it is.”
“It’s Lady Anne, my lady.”
“What Lady Anne?”
“Lady Anne Thoresby. I thought,” the housekeeper added in a faltering tone, “your ladyship would have heard of her.”
Sophia looked at the lovely young face, looked at the other portrait — of Sir Hervey in his gallant hunting-dress, gay, laughing, debonair — and she understood. “She was to have married Sir Hervey?” she said.
“Yes, my lady.”
“And she died?”
“Yes, my lady, two days before their wedding-day,” Mrs. Stokes answered, her garrulity beginning to get the better of her fears. “Sir Hervey was never the same again — that is to say, in old days, my lady,” she added hurriedly. “He grew that silent it was wonderful, and no gentleman more pleasant before. He went abroad, and ’tis said he lost twenty thousand pounds in one night in Paris. And before that he had played no more than a gentleman should.”
Sophia’s eyes were full of tears.
“How did she die?” she whispered.
“Of the smallpox, my lady. And that is why Sir Hervey is so particular about it.”
“How do you mean? Is he afraid of it?”
“Oh, no, my lady, far from it! He had it years ago himself. But wherever it is, he’s for giving help. That’s why we kept it from him that ’twas at Beamond’s Farm, thinking that as your ladyship was coming, he would not wish to be in the way of it. But he was wonderful angry when he learned about it, and went off as soon as news came from his reverence; who would have sent sooner, but he was took ill yesterday. I can pretty well guess what Sir Hervey’s gone about,” she added sagaciously.
“What?” S
ophia asked.
Mrs. Stokes hesitated, but decided to speak.
“Well, it happened once before, my lady,” she said, “that they could get no one to help bury; and Sir Hervey went and set the example. You may be sure there were plenty then, as had had it, and had no cause to fear, ready to come forward to do the work. And I’ve not much doubt, my lady, it’s for that he’s gone this time. He’d stay away a night at the keeper’s cottage, I expect,” Mrs. Stokes continued, nodding her head sagely, “just to see to his clothes being destroyed and the like. For there’s no one more careful to carry no risks, I will say that for his honour.”
Sophia stared.
“But do you mean,” she cried, her heart beating strangely, “that Sir Hervey would do the work with his own hands?”
“Well, it’s what he did once, I know, my lady,” the housekeeper answered apologetically. “It was not very becoming, to be sure, but he was not the less thought of about here, I assure your ladyship. You see, my lady, ’tis in the depth of the country, and the land is his own, and it’s not as if it was in London. Where I know things are very different,” Mrs. Stokes continued with pride, “for I have been there myself with the family. But about here I’m sure he was not the less considered, begging your ladyship’s pardon.”
“I can believe it,” Sophia said, in a voice suspiciously quiet and even. And then, “Thank you, Mrs. Stokes, you can leave me now,” she continued. “I shall sit here a little.”
But when Mrs. Stokes, feeling herself a trifle snubbed, had withdrawn and closed the door of the outer room upon her, Sophia’s eyes grew moist with tears, and the nosegay that filled the open bodice of her sacque rose and fell strangely. In that age philanthropy was not a fashion. Pope indeed had painted the Man of Ross, and there was a Charitable Corporation, lately in difficulties, and there was a Society of the Sons of the Clergy, and there were other societies of a like kind; and in the country infirmaries were beginning to be founded on the patterns of Winchester and Shrewsbury, and to subscribe to such objects after dining well and drinking deeply, was already, under the Walpoles and the Pelhams, a part of a fine gentleman’s life. 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? More sharply than any kindness shown to her in the long consistent course of his dealings with her, more keenly than his forethought for her brother, this stabbed her. This was the man she had flouted, the man whose generous, whose unselfish offer she had accepted to save her reputation; but whose love she had deemed a floor-clout, not worthy the picking up! Was it wonderful that cynical, taciturn, almost dull as the world thought him, he was not the less considered here?
At twenty-one he had been handsome, with wit and laughter and the gay insouciance of youth written on his face. Time, the lapse of thirteen years, had robbed his features of their bloom, his lips of their easy curve, his eyes of their sparkle. But something, surely, time had given in return. Something, Sophia could not say what. She could not remember; she could only recall a smile, kindly, long-suffering, a little quizzical, with which he had sometimes met her eyes. That she could recall; and as she did so, before his portrait in the stillness of this long-abandoned room, with the dead air of old pot-pourris in her nostrils, she grew frightened. What was it she had thrown away? And how would it fare with her if she could not recover it?
Twisting one hand in the other, she turned to the second portrait, and looked, and looked. At length she glanced round with a guilty air, perceived a tall, narrow mirror that stood framed between the windows, and went towards it. Furtively assuring herself that she was not watched from the terrace, she viewed herself in it.
She saw a pale grave face, barely redeemed from plainness by eloquent eyes and a wealth of hair; a face that looked sombrely into hers, and grew graver and more sombre as she looked. “He is more like his old self than I am like her,” she thought. “Why did he choose me! Why did he not choose Lady Betty? She is such another now as Lady Anne was then!”
She was still peering at herself when she heard his voice in the hall, and started guiltily. She would not for the world he caught her in that room, and she darted to the door, dragged it open, and was half-way across the long drawing-room when he entered. She felt that her face was on fire, but he did not seem to notice it.
“A thousand pardons that I was not with you before,” he cried pleasantly. “I’d business, and — no I must not touch you, my dear. I have been nearer than was pleasant to one of your friends with the smallpox.”
“You have run — no risk, I hope?” she asked faintly.
“Not a whit!” he answered, striking his boot with his whip and looking round the room as if he seldom entered it. “I’ve had it, you know. I’ve also had the whole story of your adventures from Betty, whom I met as I was going to my room.”
She was agitated; he was at his ease. “I am sorry that we managed so clumsily,” she murmured.
“So bravely, I think,” he answered lightly; and then, looking round, “This is your part of the house, you know, Sophia. You must make what changes you please here.”
“Thank you,” she said. “You are very good.”
“These rooms have been little used since my mother’s death,” he continued, again surveying them. “So I have no doubt they want refurnishing. You must talk it over with Lady Betty. And that reminds me, I saw your brother slipping away a few minutes ago, and he had something — the air of following her.” And Sir Hervey laughed and sat down on one of the stiff-backed chairs. “For my part, I think he ought to be told,” he continued, tapping the toe of his boot with his whip.
Sophia smiled faintly. “You think he is taken with her?”
“Who would not be?” Sir Hervey answered bluntly. “Maid or mistress, he’ll be head over ears in love with her before twenty-four hours are out!”
Sophia sat down. “It’s her fancy that he should not know,” she said languidly. “Of course, if you wish it I will tell him.”
“No, no, child, have it your own way,” he answered with good humour. “I suppose she is prepared to pay for her frolic.”
“Well — I think she likes him.”
“And ’twould do very well on both sides — in a year or two!”
“I suppose so.”
Sir Hervey rose. “Then let be,” he said. And he wandered across the room, taking up things and setting them down again as if he did not think it quite polite to leave her, yet had nothing more to say. Sophia watched him with growing soreness. Was it fancy, or was it the fact that she had never seen him so cold, so indifferent, so little concerned for her, so well satisfied with himself as now? A change, so subtle she could not define it, had come over him. Or was it that a change had come over her?
She wondered, and at length plunged desperately into speech. “Is it true,” she asked, “that the people who treated us so ill yesterday are coming to see you to-day?”
“Those of them who are householders are coming,” he answered soberly. “At four o’clock. But I do not wish you to see them.”
“You will not be — too severe with them?”
“I shall not be more severe, I hope, than the occasion requires,” he answered.
But his tone was hard, and she felt that what she had heard was true. “Will you grant me a favour?” she blurted out, her voice trembling a little.
“I would like to grant you many,” he answered, smiling at her.
“It’s only that you will not send them away,” she said.
“Send them away?”
“I mean, send them off their farms,” she explained hurriedly. “I was told — Tom told me tha
t you were going to do so; and that some had held the land for generations, and would be heartbroken as well as ruined.”
He did not answer at once, and his silence confirmed her in her fears. “I don’t say that they have not deserved to be punished,” she urged. “But — but I should not like my coming here to be remembered by this. And it seems out of proportion to the crime, since they did me no harm.”
“Whatever they intended?”
“Yes.”
He looked at her gravely. “What led you to think,” he said, “that I had it in my mind to punish them in that way?”
“Well, Tom told me,” she explained in growing confusion, “that you might do it to — that you might think it would please me. He said that any one in your place — I mean — —”
“Any one newly married?”
Sophia’s face flamed. “I suppose so,” she murmured” — would do it.”
“To please his bride? And you agreed with him, Sophia? You thought it was probable?”
“I thought it was possible,” she said.
He walked across the room, came back, and stood before her. He looked down at her. “My dear,” he said soberly — but she winced under the altered tone of his voice— “you will learn to know me better in a little while. Let me tell you at once that the purpose you have mentioned never entered my head, and that I am, I hope, incapable of it. There are people who might entertain it, and might carry it out to please a mistress or gratify a whim. There are, I know. But I am not one of that kind. I am too old to misuse power to please a woman, even the woman I have chosen. Nor,” he continued, stopping her as she tried to speak, “is that all. In the management of an estate we do not act so hurriedly as you appear to think, my dear. Old tenants, like old wine, are the best, and, where it is possible, we keep them. I have sent, it is true, for those who were guilty yesterday, and I shall see that they are made to smart for it. But not to the extent of loss of home and livelihood.”
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 363