IN CLARGES BOW
If Tom had been alone when he was thus ejected, it is probable
that his first impulse would have been either to press his forehead
against the wall and weep with rage, or to break the offender's
windows--eighteen being an age at which the emotions are masters of
the man. But the noise of the fracas within, though dulled by the
walls, had reached the street. A window here and a window there stood
open, and curious eyes, peering through the darkness, were on the two
who had been put out. Tom was too angry to heed these on his own
account, or care who was witness of his violence; but for Sophia's
sake, whose state as she clung to his arm began to appeal to his
manhood, he was willing to be gone without more.
After shaking his fist at the door, therefore, and uttering a furious
word or two, he pressed the weeping girl's hand to his side. "All
right," he said, "we'll go. It'll not be long before I'm back again,
and they'll be sorry! A houseful of cheats and bullies! There, there,
child, I'll come. Don't cry," he continued, patting her hand with an
air that, after the reverse he had suffered, was not without its
grandeur. "I'll take care of you, never fear. I've rooms a little way
round the corner, taken to-day, and you shall have my bed. It's too
late to go to Arlington Street to-night."
Sophia, sobbing and frightened, hung down her head, and did not
answer; and Tom, forgetting in his wrath against Hawkesworth the cause
he had to be angry with her, said nothing to increase her misery or
aggravate her sense of the folly she had committed. His lodgings were
in Clarges Row, a little north of Shepherd's Market, and almost
within a stone's throw of Mayfair Chapel. Four minutes' walking
brought the two to the house, where Tom rapped in a peculiar manner
at the window-shutter; when this had been twice repeated, the door
was opened grudgingly by a pale-faced, elderly man, bearing a lighted
candle-end in his fingers.
He muttered his surprise on seeing Tom, but made way for him,
grumbling something about the late hour. When he saw the girl about to
follow, however, he started, and seemed to be going to refuse her
entrance. But Tom was of those who carry off by sheer force of
arrogance a difficult situation. "My sister, Miss Maitland, is with
me," he said. "She'll have my room to-night. Don't stare, fellow, but
hold a light for the lady to go up."
The man's reluctance was evident; but he let them enter, and barred
the door after them. Then snuffing his candle with his fingers, he
held it up and surveyed them. "By gole," he said, chuckling, "you
don't look much like bride and bridegroom!"
Tom stormed at him, but he only continued to grin. "You've been
fighting!" he said.
"Well what's that to you, you rogue!" the lad answered sharply. "Light
the lady up, do you hear?"
"To be sure! To be sure! But you'll be wanting a light in each room,"
he continued with a cunning look, as he halted at the head of a narrow
boarded staircase, up which he had preceded them. "That's over and
above, you'll remember. Candles here and candles there, a man's soon
ruined!"
Tom bade him keep a civil tongue, and himself led the way into a
quaint little three-cornered parlour, boarded like the staircase;
beyond it was a bedroom of the same shape and size. The rooms had a
small window apiece looking on the Row, and wore an air of snugness
that would have appealed to Sophia had her eyes been open to anything
but her troubles. Against the longer wall of the little parlour stood
a couple of tall clocks; a third eked out the scanty furniture of the
bedroom, and others, ticking with stealthy industry in the lower part
of the house, whispered that it was a clock-maker's shop.
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; but when the blow has fallen, the
lot been drawn, the dulled sensibilities sink to rest in it as
naturally as a bird in the nest--and as quickly find repose.
She slept as one stunned, but weak is the anodyne of a single night.
She awoke in the morning, cured indeed of love by a radical operation,
but still bleeding; still in fancy under the cruel knife, still
writhing in remembered torture. To look forward, to avert her eyes
from the past, was her sole hope; and speedily her mind grew clear;
the future began to take shape. She would make use of Tom's good
offices, and through him she would negotiate terms with her sister.
She would not, could not, go back to Arlington Street! But any
penance, short of that, she would undergo. If it pleased them she
would go to Chalkhill; or in any other way that seemed good to them,
she would expiate the foolish, and worse than foolish escapade of
which she had been guilty. Life henceforth could be but a grey and
joyless thing; provided she escaped the sneers and gibes of Arlington
Street, she cared little where it was spent.
She was anxious to broach the subject at breakfast; but, through a
natural reluctance to open it, she postponed the discussion as long as
she dared. It was not like Tom to be over careful of her feelings; but
he, too, appeared to be equally unwilling to revert to past
unpleasantness. He fidgeted and seemed preoccupied; he rose frequently
and sat down again; more than once he went to the window and looked
out. At last he rose impulsively and disappeared in the bedroom.
By-and-by he returned. He was still in his morning cap and loose
wrapper, but he carried a shirt over each arm. "Which ruffles do you
like the better, Sophy?" he asked; and he displayed one after the
other before her eyes. "Of course I'd like to look my best to-day," he
added, shamefacedly.
She stared at him, in perplexity at first, not understanding him; then
in horror, as she discerned on a sudden what he meant. "To-day?" she
faltered. "Why to-day, Tom, more than on other days?"
His face fell. "Is't odd," he said, "to want to look one's best to be
married? At any rate, I never thought so. Until yesterday," he added
with a glance at her dress.
She was sitting on the narrow window-seat; she stood up, her back to
the window. "To be married?" she exclaimed. "Oh, Tom! It is
impossible--impossible you intend to go on with it, after all you have
heard!"
His face grew darker and more sullen. "At any rate I am not going
to marry Hawkesworth!" he sneered. And then as she winced under the
cruel stroke he repented of it. "I only mean," he said hurriedly,
"that--that I don't see what he and his villainy have to do with my
marriage."
"But, oh, Tom, it is all one!" Sophia cried, clasping her hands
nervously. "He was with--with her, when you met her. I heard you say
so last night. I heard you say that if it had not been for him you
would never have seen her, or known her."
"Weil!" Tom answered. "And what of that? If her chaise had not broken
down, I should never have seen her, or known her. That is true, too.
But what has that to do with it, I'd like to know?"
"He planned it!"
"He could not plan my falling in love," Tom answered, stroking his
chin fatuously.
"But if you had seen the book," Sophia retorted, "the book he snatched
from me, you would have seen it written there! His plan was to procure
you to be married first. You know you forfeit ten thousand pounds to
me, Tom, and ten to Anne, if you marry without your guardian's
consent?"
"Hang them and the ten thousand!" Tom cried grandly. "Lord, miss, I've
plenty left! You are welcome to it, and so is sister. As for their
consent, they'd not give it till I was Methuselah!"
"But surely you're not that yet!" she pleaded. "Nor near! You are only
eighteen."
"Well, and what are you?" he retorted. "And you were for being married
yesterday!"
"I was!" she cried, wringing her hands. "And to what a fate! I am
unhappy to-day, unhappy, indeed; but I shall be thankful all my life
that I escaped that! Oh, Tom, for my sake take care! Don't do it!
Don't do it! Wait, at least, until----"
"Till I am Methuselah?" he cried. "It's likely!"
"No, but until you have taken advice!" she answered. "Till you know
more about her. Tom, don't be angry," Sophia pleaded, as he turned
away with an impatient gesture. "Or if you will not be guided, tell
me, at least, who she is. I am your sister, surely I have the right to
know who is to be your wife?"
"I am sure I don't mind your knowing!"
"I have only your interests at heart," she cried.
"I have no reason to be ashamed of her, I am sure," he answered,
colouring. "Though I don't know that she is altogether one of your
sort. She is the most beautiful woman in the world that I know! And so
you will say when you see her!" he added, his eyes sparkling. "She has
as much wit in her little finger as I have in my head. And you'll find
that out, too. She don't look at most people, but she took to me at
once. It seems wonderful to me now," he continued rapturously.
"Wonderful! But you should see her! You must see her! You can't fancy
what she is until you see her!"
It was on the tip of Sophia's tongue to ask, "But is she good?" Like
a wise girl, however, she refrained; or rather she put the question
in another form. "Her name," she said timidly; "is it by any
chance--Oriana?"
Tom was pacing the room, his back to her, his thoughts occupied with
his mistress's charms. He whirled about so rapidly that the tassels of
his morning wrapper--at that period the only wear of a gentleman until
he dressed for the day--flew out level with the horizon. "How did you
know?" he cried, his face flushed, his eyes reading her suspiciously.
"Who told you?"
"Because I read that name in the book," Sophia answered, her worst
fears confirmed. "Because----"
"Did you see Oriana only, or her full name?"
"What is her full name?"
"You don't know? Then you cannot have seen it in the book!" Tom
retorted triumphantly. "But I am not ashamed of it. Her name is
Clark."
"Clark? Oriana Clark?" Sophia repeated. And she wondered where she had
heard the name. Why did it seem familiar to her?
"What does her name matter?" Tom answered irritably. "It will be Lady
Maitland by night."
"She's a widow?" Sophia asked. She did not know how she knew.
Tom scowled. "Well, and what if she is?" he cried. "What was her
husband, Tom? I suppose she had a husband?"
"Look here, take care what you are saying!" Tom returned, with an ugly
look. "Don't be too free with your tongue, miss. Her husband, if you
must know, was a--a Captain Clark of--of Sabine's foot, I think it
was. He was a man of the first fashion, so that's all you know about
it! But he treated her badly, spent all her money, you know, and--and
when he died," Tom added vaguely, "she had to look out for herself,
you understand."
"But she must be years and years older than you!" Sophia answered,
opening her eyes. "And a widow! Oh, Tom, think of it! Think of it
again! And be guided! Wait at least until you know more about it," she
pleaded earnestly, "and have learned what life she has led, and----"
But Tom would hear no more. "Wait?" he cried rudely. "You're a nice
person to give that advice! You were for waiting, of course, and doing
what you were told. And what life she has led? I tell you what it is,
miss; I kept my mouth shut last night, but I might have said a good
deal! Who got us into the trouble? What were you doing in his room?
The less you say and the quieter you keep, the better for all, I
think! A man's one thing but a girl's another, and she should do what
she's bid and take care of herself, and not run the risk of shaming
her family!"
"Oh, Tom!"
"Oh, ifs every word true!" the lad answered cruelly. "And less than
you deserve, ma'am! Wait till sister sees you, and you'll hear more.
Now, cry, cry, that's like a girl!" he continued contemptuously. "All
the same a little plain truth will do you good, miss, and teach you
not to meddle. But I suppose women will scratch women as long as the
world lasts!"
"Oh, Tom, it is not that!" Sophia cried between her sobs. "I've
behaved badly, if you please. As badly as you please! But take me for
a warning. I thought--I thought him all you think her!"
"Oh, d----n!" Tom cried, and flung away in a rage, went into the
bedroom and slammed the door. 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. Gone was the apathy, gone were the dulness
of soul and the greyness of outlook with which Sophia had risen from
her bed. Convinced of the villainy of the man who had nearly snared
her, she foresaw nothing but ruin in an alliance between her brother
and a person who was connected, ever so remotely, with him. Nor did
the case rest on this only; or on Tom's youth; or on the secrecy of
the marriage. Oriana was the name she had spelt in the book, the name
of one of the women suggested in Hawkesworth's sordid calculations. No
wonder Sophia shrank from thinking what manner of woman she was, or
what her qualifications for a part in the play. It was enough that she
knew Hawkesworth, and was known by him.
The cruel lesson which she had learned in her own person, the glimpse
she had had of the abyss into which her levity had all but cast her,
even the gratitude in which she held the brother who had protected
her, rendered her feelings trebly poignant now; her view of the case
trebly serious. To see the one relation she loved falling into the pit
which she had escaped, and to be unable to save him; to know him
committed to this fatal step, and to foresee that his whole life would
be blasted by it, these prospects awoke no less pity in her breast,
because her eyes were open to-day to her madness of yesterday.
Something, something must be done for him; something, but what?
Often through the gloom of reflections, alien from them, shoot strange
flashes of memory. "Oriana? Oriana Clark?" Sophia muttered, and she
stood still, remembered. Oriana Clark! Surely that was the name of the
woman in whose stead she had been arrested, the woman whose name the
bailiff had read from the writ in Lane's shop. Sophia had only heard
the name once, and the press of after events and crowding emotions had
driven it for the time into a side cell of the brain, whence it now as
suddenly emerged. Her eyes sparkled with hope. Here, at last, was a
fact, here was something on which she could go. She stepped to Tom's
door, and rapped sharply on it.
"Well?" he called sourly. "What is it?"
"Please, come out!" she cried eagerly. "I have something to tell you.
I have, indeed!"
"Can't come now," he answered. "I'm in a hurry."
It seemed he was; or he wished to avoid further discussion, for when
he appeared a few minutes later--long minutes to Sophia, waiting and
listening in the outer room--he snatched up his hat and malacca and
made for the door. "I can't stop now," he cried, and he waived her off
as he raised the latch. "I shall be back in an hour--in an hour, and
if you like to behave yourself, you--you may be at it. Though you re
not very fine, I'm bound to say!" he concluded with a grudging glance.
Doubtless he was comparing her draggled sacque and unpowdered hair
with the anticipated splendours of his bride. He was so fine himself,
he seemed to fill the little room with light.
"Oh, but, Tom, one minute!" she cried, following him and seizing his
arm. "Have a little patience, I only want to tell you one thing."
"Well, be quick about it," he answered, ungraciously, his hand still
on the latch. "And whatever you do, miss, keep your tongue off her, or
it will be the worse for you. I'll not have my wife miscalled," he
continued, looking grand, and a trifle sulky, "as you'll have to
learn, my lady."
"But she is not your wife yet," Sophia protested earnestly. "And, Tom,
she only wants you to pay her debts. She only wants a husband to pay
her debts. She was arrested yesterday."
"Arrested!" he exclaimed.
"Yes," Sophia answered; and then, beginning to flounder, "at least, I
mean," she stammered, "I was arrested--in her place. That is to say,
on a writ against her."
"You were arrested on a writ against her!" Tom cried again. "On a writ
against Oriana? You must be mad! Mad, girl! Why, you've never seen her
in your life. You did not know her name!" He had not heard, it will be
remembered, a word of her adventures on the way to Davies Street, and
the statement she had just made seemed to him the wanton falsehood of
a foolish girl bent on mischief. "Oh, this is too bad!" he continued,
shaking her off in a rage. "How dare you, you little vixen? You
cowardly little liar!" he added, pale with anger. And he raised his
hand as if he would strike her.
She recoiled. "Don't hurt me, Tom," she cried.
"I'll not! but--but you deserve it, you little snake!" he retorted.
"You are bad! You are bad right through!" he continued from a height
of righteous indignation. "What you did yesterday was nothing in
comparison to this! You let me hear another word against her, make up
another of your lies, and you are no sister of mine! That's all! So
now you know, and if you are wise you will not try it again!"
As he uttered the last word Tom jerked up the latch, and strode out;
but only to come into violent collision, at the head of the stairs,
with his landlord; who appeared to be getting up from his knees. "Hang
you, Grocott, what the deuce are you doing here?" the lad cried,
backing from him in a rage.
"Cleaning the stairs, your honour," the man pleaded.
"You rascal, I believe you were listening!" Tom retorted. "Is the room
below stairs ready? We go at noon, mark me, and shall be back to dine
at one."
"To be sure, sir, all will be ready. Does the lady come here first?"
"Yes. Have the cold meats come from the White Horse?"
"Yes, sir."
"And the Burgundy from Pontack's?"
"Yes, your honour."
Tom nodded his satisfaction, and, his temper a little improved,
stalked down the stairs. Sophia, who had heard every word, ran to the
window and saw him cross Clarges Row in the direction of Shepherd's
Market. Probably he was gone to assure himself that the clergyman was
at home, and ready to perform the ceremony.
The girl watched him out of sight; then she dried her tears. "I
mustn't cry!" she murmured. "I must do something! I must do
something!"
But there was only one thing she could do, and that was a thing that
would cost her dear. Only by returning to Arlington Street, at once,
that moment, and giving information, could she prevent the marriage.
Mr. Northey was Tom's guardian; he had the power, and though he had
shirked his duty while the thing was _in nubibus_, he would not dare
to stand by when time and place, the house and the hour were pointed
out to him. In less than ten minutes she could be with him; in half as
many the facts could be made known. Long before the hour elapsed Mr.
Northey might be in Clarges Row, or, if he preferred it, at Dr.
Keith's chapel, ready to forbid the marriage.
The thing was possible, nay it was easy; and it would withhold Tom
from a step which he must repent all his life. But it entailed the one
penance from which she was anxious to be saved, the one penalty from
which her wounded pride shrank, as the bleeding stump shrinks from the
cautery. To execute it she must return to Arlington Street; she must
return into her sister's power, to the domination of Mrs. Martha, and
the daily endurance, not only of many an ignoble slight, but of coarse
jests and gibes and worse insinuations. An hour earlier she had
conceived the hope of escaping this, either through Tom's mediation,
or by a voluntary retreat to Chalkhill. Now she had to choose this or
his ruin.
She did not hesitate. Even in her folly of the previous day, even in
her reckless self-abandonment to a silly passion, Sophia had not
lacked the qualities that make for sacrifice--courage, generosity,
staunchness. Here was room for their display in a better cause, and
without a moment's delay, undeterred by the reflection that far from
earning Tom's gratitude, she would alienate her only friend, she
hurried into the bedroom and donned Lady Betty's laced jacket and
Tuscan. With a moan on her own account, a pitiful smile on his, she
put them on; and then paused, remembering with horror that she must
pass through the streets in that guise. It had done well enough at
night, but in the day the misfit was frightful. Not even for Tom could
she walk through Berkeley Square and Portugal Street, the figure it
made her. She must have a chair.
She opened the door and was overjoyed to find that the landlord was
still on the stairs. "Will you please to get me a chair," she said
eagerly. "At once, without the loss of a minute."
The man looked at her stupidly, his heavy lower lip dropped and
flaccid; his fat, whitish face evinced a sort of consternation. "A
chair?" he repeated slowly. "Certainly. But if your ladyship is going
any distance, would not a coach be better?"
"No, I am only going as far as Arlington Street," Sophia answered, off
her guard for the moment. "Still, a coach will do if you cannot get a
chair. I have not a moment to lose."
"To be sure, ma'am, to be sure," he answered, staring at her heavily.
"A chair you'll have then?"
"Yes, and at once! At once, you understand."
"If you are in a hurry, maybe there is one below," he said, making as
if he would enter the room and look from the windows. "Sometimes there
is."
"If there were," she retorted, irritated by his slowness, "I should
not have asked you to get one. I suppose you know what a chair is?"
she continued. For the man stood looking at her so dully and strangely
that she began to think he was a natural.
"Oh, yes," he answered, his eyes twinkling with sudden intelligence,
as if at the notion. "I know a chair, and I'd have had one for you by
now. But, by gole, I've no one to leave with the child, in case it
awakes."
"The child?" Sophia cried, quite startled. The presence of a child in
a house is no secret as a rule.
"'Tis here," he said, indicating a door that stood ajar at his elbow.
"On the bed in the inner room, ma'am. I'm doing the stairs to be near
it."
"Is it a baby?" Sophia cried. "To be sure. What else?"
"I'll stay with it, then," she said. "May I look at it? And will you
get the chair for me, while I watch it?"
"To be sure, ma'am! 'Tis here," he continued, as he pushed the door
open, and led the way through a tiny room; the outer of two that,
looking to the back, corresponded with Tom's apartments at the front.
He pushed open the door of the inner room, the floor of which was a
step higher. "If you'll see to it while I am away, ma'am, and not be
out of hearing?"
"I will," Sophia said softly. "Is it yours?"
"No, my daughter's."
Sophia tip-toed across the floor to the bed side. The room was poorly
lighted by a window, which was partially blocked by a water-cistern;
the bed stood in the dark corner beside the window; Sophia, turning up
her nose at the close air of the room, hesitated for an instant to
touch the dirty, tumbled bed-clothes. She could not see the child.
"Where is it?" she asked, stooping to look more closely.
The answer was the dull jar of the door as it closed behind her; a
sound that was followed by the click of a bolt driven home in the
socket. She turned swiftly, her heart standing still, her brain
already apprised of treachery. The man was gone.
Sophia made but one bound to the threshold, lifted the latch, and
threw her weight against the door. It was fastened.
"Open!" she cried, enraged at the trick which had been played her. "Do
you hear me? Open the door this minute!" she repeated, striking it
furiously with her hands. "What do you mean? How dare you shut me in?"
This time the only response was the low chuckling laugh of the
clock-maker as he turned away. She heard the stealthy fall of his
footsteps as he went through the outer room; then the grating of the
key, as he locked the farther door behind him. Then--silence.
"Tom!" Sophia shrieked, kicking the door, and pounding it with her
little fists. "Tom, help! help, Tom!" And then, as she realised how
she had been trapped, "Oh, poor Tom!" she sobbed. "Poor Tom! I can do
nothing now!"
While Grocott, listening on the stairs, chuckled grimly. "You thought
you were going to stop my girl's marriage, did you?" he muttered,
shaking his fist in the direction of the sounds. "You thought you'd
stop her being my lady, did you? Stop her now if you can, my little
madam. I have you like a mouse in a trap; and when you are cooler, my
Lady Maitland shall let you out. My lady, ha! ha! What a sound it has.
My Lady Maitland!"
Then reflecting that Hawkesworth, whom he hated, and had cause to
hate, had placed this triumph in his grasp--and would now, as things
had turned out, get nothing by it--he shook with savage laughter.
"Lady Maitland!" he chuckled. "Ho! ho! And he gets--the shells! The
shells, ho! ho!"