AT VAUXHALL
In a year when all the world was flocking to the new Rotunda in
Ranelagh Gardens, Mrs. Northey would be particular, and have her
evening party to Vauxhall. Open air was the fashion of the time, and
it was from her seat at the open window in Arlington Street that she
welcomed her guests. Thence, as each new-comer appeared she shouted
her greeting, often in terms that convulsed the chairmen at the
corner; or now and again, hanging far out, she turned her attention
and wit to the carpenters working late on Sir Robert's house next
door, and stated in good round phrases her opinion of the noise they
made. 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. In this
retreat Sophia fancied that she might hide her sad looks until the
party set out; and great was her dismay, when, venturing at last to
raise her eyes, she discovered that she had placed herself beside,
nay, almost touching the man whom of all others she wished to avoid,
the detested Coke; who, singularly enough, had sought the same
retirement a few moments earlier.
In the confusion of the moment she recoiled a step; the events of the
day had shaken her nerves. Then, "I beg your pardon, sir, I did not
see that you were there," she stammered.
"No," he said with a smile, "I know you did not, child. Or you would
have gone to the other end of the room. Now, confess. Is it not so?"
She shrugged her shoulders. "As you please, sir," she said, "I would
not venture to contradict you," and curtseying satirically she turned
away her face. At any rate he should lie in no doubt of her feelings.
He did not answer. And, welcome as his silence was, something like
contempt of a suitor who aspired to have without daring to speak took
possession of her. Under the influence of this feeling, embittered by
the rating she had received that morning, she fell to considering him
out of the tail of her eye, but, in spite of herself, she could not
deny that he was personable; that his features, if a trifle set and
lacking vivacity, were good, and his bearing that of a gentleman at
ease in his company. Before she had well weighed him, however, or done
more than compare him with the fop who stood before her, and whose
muff and quilted coat, long queue and black leather stock were in the
extreme of the fashion, Sir Hervey spoke again.
"Why does it not please you?" he asked, almost listlessly.
"To do what, sir?"
"To be beside me."
"I did not say it did not," she answered, looking stiffly the other
way.
"But it does not," he persisted. "I suppose, child, your sister has
told you what my views are?"
"Yes, sir."
"And what do you say?" he murmured. "That--that I am much obliged to
you, but they are not mine!" Sophia answered, with a rush of words and
colour; and, punished as she had been that morning, it must be
confessed, she cruelly enjoyed the stroke.
For a moment only. Then to her astonishment and dismay Sir Hervey
laughed. "That is what you say now," he answered lightly. "What will
you say if, by-and-by, when we know one another better, we get on as
well together as--as Lady Sophia there, and----"
"And Lord Lincoln?" she cried, seeing that he hesitated. "Never!"
"Indeed!" he retorted. "But, pray, what do you know about Lord
Lincoln?"
"I suppose you think I know no scandal?" she cried.
"I would prefer you to know as little as possible," he answered
coolly; in the tone she fancied which he would have used had she been
already his property. "And there is another thing I would also prefer
you did not know," he continued.
"Pray, what is that?" she cried, openly scornful; and she flirted her
fan a little faster.
"Mr. Hawkesworth."
The blood rushed to her cheeks. This was too much. "Are you jealous?
or only impertinent?" she asked, her voice not less furious because it
was low and guarded. "How noble, how chivalrous, to say behind a
gentleman's back what you would not dare to say to his face!"
Sir Hervey shrugged his shoulders. "He is not a gentleman," he said.
"He is not one of us, and he is not fit company for you. I do not know
what story he has told you, nor what cards he has played, but I know
that what I say is true. Be advised, child," he continued earnestly,
"and look on him coldly when you see him next. Be sure if you do
not----"
"You will speak to my sister?" she cried. "If you have not done it
already? Lord, sir, I congratulate you. I'm sure you have discovered
quite a new style of wooing. Next, I suppose, you will have me sent to
my room, and put on bread and water for a week? Or buried in a
parsonage in the country with Tillotson's Sermons and the 'Holy
Living'?"
"I spoke to you as I should speak to my sister," Sir Hervey said, with
something akin to apology in his tone.
"Say, rather, as you would speak to your daughter!" she replied, quick
as lightning; and, trembling with rage, she drove home the shaft with
a low curtsey. "To be sure, sir, now I think of it, the distance
between us justifies you in giving me what advice you please."
He winced at last, and was even a trifle out of countenance. But he
did not answer, and she, furiously angry, turned her back on him, and
looked the other way. Young as she was, all the woman in her rose in
revolt against the humiliation of being advised in such a matter by a
man. She could have struck him. She hated him. And they were all in
the same story. They were all against her and her dear Irishman, who
alone understood her. Tears rose in Sophia's eyes as she pictured her
present loneliness and her happiness in the past; as she recalled the
old home looking down the long avenue of chestnut trees, the dogs, the
horses, the boisterous twin brother, and the father who by turns had
coarsely chidden and fondly indulged her. In her loss of all this, in
a change of life as complete as it was sudden, she had found one only
to comfort her, one only who had not thought the whirl of strange
pleasures a sufficient compensation for a home and a father. One only
who had read her silence, and pitied her inexperience. And him they
would snatch from her! Him they would----
But at this point her thoughts were interrupted by a general movement
towards the door. Bent on an evening's frolic the party issued into
Arlington Street with loud laughter and louder voices, and in a moment
were gaily descending St. James's Street. One or two of the elder
ladies took chairs, but the greater part walked, the gentlemen with
hats under their arms and canes dangling from their wrists, the more
foppish with muffs. Passing down St. James's, where Betty, the fruit
woman, with a couple of baskets of fruit, was added to the company,
they crossed the end of Pall Mall, now inviting a recruit, after the
easy fashion of the day, and now hailing a friend on the farther side
of the street. Thence, by the Mall and the Horse Guards, and so to the
Whitehall Stairs, where boats were waiting for them on the grey
evening surface of the broad river.
Sophia found herself compelled to go in the same boat with Sir Hervey,
but she took good heed to ensconce herself at a distance from him;
and, successful in this, sat at her end, moody, and careless of
appearances. There was singing and a little romping in the stern of
the boat, where the ladies principally sat, and where their hoops
called for some arrangement. Presently a pert girl, Lady Betty
Cochrane, out at sixteen, and bent on a husband before she was
seventeen, marked Sophia's silence, nudged those about her, and took
on herself to rally the girl.
"La, miss, you must have been at a Quakers' meeting!" she cried,
simpering. "It is easy to see where your thoughts are."
"Where?" Sophia murmured, abashed by this public notice.
"I believe there is very good acting in--_Doblin!_" the provoking
creature answered, with her head on one side, and a sentimental air;
and the ladies tittered and the gentlemen smiled. "Have you ever been
to--Doblin, miss?" she continued, with a look that winged the
innuendo.
Sophia, her face on fire, did not answer.
"Oh, la, miss, you are not offended, I hope!" the tormentor cried
politely. "Sure, I thought the gentleman had spoken, and all was
arranged. To be sure--
"O'Rourke's noble fare
Will ne'er be forgot
By those who were there,
And those who were not!
_And those who were not!_" she hummed again, with a wink that drove
the ladies to hide their mirth in their handkerchiefs. "A fine man,
O'Rourke, and I have heard that he was an actor in--Doblin!" the
little tease continued.
Sophia, choking with rage, and no match for her town-bred antagonist,
could find not a word to answer; and worse still, she knew not where
to look. Another moment and she might even have burst into tears, a
mishap which would have disgraced her for ever in that company. But at
the critical instant a quiet voice at the stern was heard, quoting--
"Whom Simplicetta loves the town would know,
Mark well her knots, and name the happy beau!"
On which it was seen that it is one thing to tease and another to be
teased. Lady Betty swung round in a rage, and without a word attacked
Sir Hervey with her fan with a violence that came very near to
upsetting the boat. "How dare you, you horrid man?" she cried, when
she thought she had beaten him enough. "I wish there were no men in
the world, I declare I do! It's a great story, you ugly thing! If Mr.
Hesketh says I gave him a knot, he is just a----"
A shout of laughter cut her short. Too late she saw that she had
betrayed herself, and she stamped furiously on the bottom of the boat.
"He cut it off!" she shrieked, raising her voice above the laughter.
"He cut it off! He would cut it off! 'Tis a shame you will not believe
me. I say----"
A fresh peal of laughter drowned her voice, and brought the boat to
the landing-place.
"All the same, Lady Betty," the nearest girl said as they prepared to
step out, "you'd better not let your mother hear, or you'll go milk
cows, my dear, in the country! Lord, you little fool, the boy's not
worth a groat, and should be at school by rights!"
Miss Betty did not answer, but cocking her chin with disdain, which
made her look prettier than ever, stepped out, sulking. Sophia
followed, her cheeks a trifle cooler than they had been; and the
party, once more united, proceeded on foot from the river to the
much-praised groves of Pleasure; where ten thousand lamps twinkled and
glanced among the trees, or outlined the narrowing avenue that led to
the glittering pavilion. In the wide and open space before this Palace
of Aladdin a hundred gay and lively groups were moving to and fro to
the strains of the band, or were standing to gaze at the occupants of
the boxes; who, sheltered from the elements, and divided from the
humbler visitors by little gardens, supped _al fresco_, their ears
charmed by music, and their eyes entertained by the ever-changing
crowd that moved below them.
Two of the best boxes had been retained for Mrs. Northey's party, but
before they proceeded to them her company chose to stroll up and down
a time or two, diverting themselves with the humours of the place and
the evening. More than once Sophia's heart stood still as they walked.
She fancied that she saw Hawkesworth approaching, that she
distinguished his form, his height, his face amid the crowd; and
conscious of the observant eyes around her, as well as of her sister's
displeasure, she knew not where to look for embarrassment. On each
occasion it turned out that she was mistaken, and to delicious tremors
succeeded the chill of a disappointment almost worse to bear. After
all, she reflected, if she must dismiss him, here were a hundred
opportunities of doing so in greater freedom than she could command
elsewhere. The turmoil of the press through which they moved, now in
light and now in shadow, now on the skirts of the romantic, twilit
grove, and now under the blaze of the pavilion lamps, favoured the
stolen word, the kind glance, the quick-breathed sigh. But though he
knew that she was to be there, though of late he had seldom failed her
in such public resorts as this, he did not appear; and by-and-by her
company left the parade, and, entering the boxes, fell to mincing
chickens in china bowls, and cooking them with butter and water over a
lamp, all with much romping and scolding, and some kissing and
snatching of white fingers, and such a fire of jests and laughter as
soon drew a crowd to the front of the box, and filled the little
gardens on either side of them with staring groups.
Gayest, pertest, most reckless of all, Lady Betty was in her glory.
Never was such a rattle as she showed herself. Her childish treble and
shrill laugh, her pretty flushed face and tumbled hair were
everywhere. Apparently bent on punishing Coke for his interference she
never let him rest, with the result that Sophia, whose resentment
still smouldered, was free to withdraw to the back of the box, and
witness rather than share the sport that went forward. To this a new
zest was given when Lord P----, who had been dining at a tavern on the
river, arrived very drunk, and proceeded to harangue the crowd from
the front of the box.
Sophia's seat at the back was beside the head of the half-dozen stairs
that descended to the gardens. The door at her elbow was open. On a
sudden, while the hubbub was at its height, and a good half of the
party were on their feet before her--some encouraging his lordship to
fresh vagaries, and others striving to soothe him--she heard a
stealthy hist! hist! in the doorway beside her, as if some one sought
to gain her attention. With Hawkesworth in her mind she peered that
way in trembling apprehension; immediately a little white note dropped
lightly at her feet, and she had a glimpse of a head and shoulders,
withdrawn as soon as seen.
With a tumultuous feeling between shame and joy, Sophia, who, up to
this moment, had had nothing clandestine on her conscience, slipped
her foot over the note? and glanced round to see if any one had seen
her. That moment an eager childish voice cried in her ear, "Give me
that! Give it me!" And then, more urgently, "Do you hear? It is mine!
Please give it me!"
The voice was Lady Betty's; and her flushed pleading face backed the
appeal. At which, and all it meant, it is not to be denied that a
little malice stirred in Sophia's breast. The chit had so tormented
her an hour earlier, had so held her up to ridicule, so shamed her. It
was no wonder she was inclined to punish her now. "Yours, child," she
said, looking coldly at her. "Impossible."
"Yes, miss. Please--please give it me--at once, please, before it is
too late."
"I do not know that I shall," Sophia answered virtuously, from the
height of her eighteen years. "Children have no right to receive
notes. I ought to give it to your mother." Then, with an unexpected
movement, she stooped and possessed herself of the folded scrap of
paper. "I am not sure that I shall not," she continued.
Lady Betty's face was piteous. "If you do, I--I shall be sent into the
country," she panted. "I--I don't know what they'll do to me. Oh,
please, please, will you give it me!"
Sophia had a kindly nature, and the girl's distress appealed to her.
But it appealed in two ways.
"No, I shall not give it you," she answered firmly. "But I shall not
tell your mother, either. I shall tear it up. You are too young, you
little baby, to do this!" And suiting the action to the word, she tore
the note into a dozen pieces and dropped them.
Lady Betty glared at her between relief and rage. At last "Cat! Cat!"
she whispered with childish spite. "Thank you for nothing, ma'am. I'll
pay you by-and-by, see if I don't!" And with a spring, she was back at
the front of the box, her laugh the loudest, her voice the freshest,
her wit the boldest and most impertinent of all. Sophia, who fancied
that she had made an enemy, did not notice that more than once this
madcap looked her way; nor that in the midst of the wildest outbursts
she had an eye for what happened in her direction.
Sophia, indeed, had food for thought more important than Lady Betty,
for the girl had scarcely left her side when Mrs. Northey came to her,
shook her roughly by the shoulder--they had direct ways in those
days--and asked her in a fierce whisper if she were going to sulk
there all the evening. Thus adjured, Sophia moved reluctantly to a
front seat at the right-hand corner of the box. Lord P---- had been
suppressed, but broken knots of people still lingered before the
garden of the box expecting a new escapade. To the right, in the open,
fireworks were being let off, and the grounds in that direction were
as light as in the day. Suddenly, Sophia's eyes, roving moodily hither
and thither, became fixed. She rose to her feet with a cry of
surprise, which must have been heard by her companions had they not
been taken up at that moment with the arrest of a cutpurse by two
thief-takers, a drama which was going forward on the left.
"There's--there's Tom!" she cried, her astonishment extreme, since Tom
should have been at Cambridge. And raising her voice she shouted "Tom!
Tom!"
Her brother did not hear. He was moving across the open lighted space,
some fifteen paces from the box; a handsome boy, foppishly dressed,
moving with the affected indifference of a very young dandy. Sophia
glanced round in an agony of impatience, and found that no one was
paying any attention to her; there was no one she could send to call
him. She saw that in a twinkling he would be lost in the crowd, and,
acting on the impulse of the moment, she darted to the stairs, which
were only two paces from her, and flew down them to overtake him.
Unfortunately, she tripped at the bottom and almost fell, lost a
precious instant, and lost Tom. When she reached the spot where she
had last seen him, and looked round, her brother was not to be seen.
Or yes, there he was, in the act of vanishing down one of the dim
alleys that led into the grove. Half laughing, half crying, innocently
anticipating his surprise when he should see her, Sophia sped after
him. He turned a corner--the place was a maze and dimly lighted--she
followed him; she thought he met some one, she hurried on, and the
next moment was all but in the arms of Hawkesworth.
"Sophia!" the Irishman cried, pressing his hat to his heart as he
bowed before her. "Oh, my angel, that I should be so blest! This is
indeed a happy meeting."
But she was far at the moment from thinking of him. Her brother
occupied her whole mind. "Where is he," she cried, looking every way.
"Where is Tom? Mr. Hawkesworth, you must have seen him. He must have
passed you."
"Seen whom, ma'am?" her admirer asked with eager devotion. He was
tall, with a certain florid grace of carriage; and ready, for his hand
was on his heart, and his eyes expressed the joy he felt, almost
before she knew who stood before her. "If it is any one I know, make
me happy by commanding me. If he be at the ends of the earth, I will
bring him back."
"It is my brother!"
"Your brother?"
"Yes--but you would not know him," she cried, stamping her foot with
impatience. "How annoying!"
"Not know him?" he answered gallantly. "Oh, ma'am, how little you know
me!" And Hawkesworth extended his arm with a gesture half despairing,
half reproachful. "How little you enter into my feelings if you think
that I should not know _your_ brother! My tongue I know is clumsy, and
says little, but my eyes"--and certainly they dwelt boldly enough on
her blushing face, "my eyes must inform you more correctly of my
feelings."
"Please, please do not talk like that!" she cried in a low voice, and
she wrung her hands in distress. "I saw my brother, and I came down to
overtake him, and--and somehow I have missed him."
"But I thought that he was at Cambridge?" he said.
"He should be," she replied. "But it was he. It was he indeed. I ran
to catch him, and I have missed him, and I must go back at once. If
you please, I must go back at once."
"In one moment you shall!" he cried, barring the road, but with so
eloquent a look and a tone so full of admiration that she could not
resent the movement. "In one moment you shall. But, my angel, heaven
has sent you to my side, heaven has taken pity on my passion, and
given me this moment of delight--will you be more cruel and snatch it
from me? Nay, but, sweet," he continued with ardour, making as if he
would kneel, and take possession of her hand, "sweetest one, say that
you, too, are glad! Say----"
"Mr. Hawkesworth, I am glad," she murmured, trembling; while her face
burned with blushes. "For it gives me an opportunity I might otherwise
have lacked of--of--oh, I don't know how I can say it!"
"Say what, madam?"
"How I can take--take leave of you," she murmured, turning away her
head.
"Take leave of me?" he cried. "Take leave of me?"
"Yes, oh, yes! Believe me, Mr. Hawkesworth," Sophia continued,
beginning to stammer in her confusion, "I am not ungrateful for your
attentions, I am not, indeed, ungrateful, but we--we must part."
"Never!" he cried, rising and looking down at her. "Never! It is not
your heart that speaks now, or it speaks but a lesson it has learned."
Sophia was silent.
"It is your friends who would part us," he continued, with stern and
bitter emphasis. "It is your cold-blooded, politic brother-in-law; it
is your proud sister----"
"Stay, sir," Sophia said unsteadily. "She _is_ my sister."
"She is; but she would part us!" he retorted. "Do you think that I do
not understand that? Do you think that I do not know why, too? They
see in me only a poor gentleman. I cannot go to them, and tell them
what I have told you! I cannot," he continued, with a gesture that in
the daylight might have seemed a little theatrical, but in the dusk of
the alley and to a girl's romantic perceptions commended itself
gallantly enough, "put my life in their hands as I have put it in
yours! I cannot tell them that the day will come when Plomer
Hawkesworth will stand on the steps of a throne and enjoy all that a
king's gratitude can confer. When he who now runs daily, nightly,
hourly the risk of Layer's fate, whose head may any morning rot on
Temple Bar and his limbs on York Gates----"
Sophia interrupted him; she could bear no more. "Oh, no, no!" she
cried, shuddering and covering her eyes. "God forbid! God forbid, sir!
Rather----"
"Rather what, sweet?" he cried, and he caught her hand in rapture.
"Rather give up this--this dangerous life," she sobbed, overcome by
the horror of the things his words had conjured up. "Let others tread
such dangerous ways and run such risks. Give up the Jacobite cause,
Mr. Hawkesworth, if you love me as you say you do, and I----"
"Yes? Yes?" he cried; and across his handsome face, momentarily turned
from her as if he would resist her pleading, there crept a look half
of derision, half of triumph. "What of you, sweet?"
But her reply was never spoken, for as he uttered the word the
fireworks died down with startling abruptness, plunging the alley in
which they stood into gloom. The change recalled the girl to a full
and sudden sense of her position; to its risks and to its
consequences, should her absence, even for a moment, be discovered.
Wringing her hands in distress, in place of the words that had been on
her lips, "Oh, I must go!" she cried. "I must get back at once!" And
she looked for help to her lover.
He did not answer her, and she turned from him, fearing he might try
to detain her. But she had not taken three steps before she paused in
agitation, uncertain in the darkness which way she had come. A
giggling, squealing girl ran by her into the grove, followed by a man;
at the same moment a distant fanfare of French horns, with the
confused noise of a multitude of feet trampling the earth at once,
announced that the entertainment was over, and that the assembly was
beginning to leave the gardens.
Sophia's heart stood still. What if she were missed? Worse still, what
if she were left behind? "Oh," she cried, turning again to him, her
hands outstretched, "which is the way? Mr. Hawkesworth, please, please
show me the way! Please take me to them!"
But the Irishman did not move.