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 the Gentleman’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.
CHAPTER XXVI
A DRAGON DISARMED
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.
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 366