DON QUIXOTE
Coke had spent a dozen seasons in London; and naturally to those who
lived about town his figure was almost as familiar as that of Sir
Hanbury Williams, the beau of the last generation, or that of Lord
Lincoln, the pride and hope of the golden youth of '42. The chairman
who had never left the rank in St. James's Street in obedience to his
nod was as likely as not to ask the way to Mrs. Cornely's rooms; the
hackney-coachman who did not know his face and liveries was a stranger
also to the front of White's, and to the cry of "Who goes home?" that
on foggy evenings drew a hundred link-boys to New Palace Yard. In his
present difficulty his principal, and almost his only hope of escaping
from a degrading scuffle lay in this notoriety.
It bade fair to be justified. The two men who slouched into the room
in obedience to Mrs. Clark's excited cry had scarcely crossed the
threshold when they turned to him and grinned, and the foremost
made him a sort of bow. Sir Hervey stared, and wondered where he had
seen the men before; but in a twinkling his doubt, as well as the
half-smothered cry that at the same instant burst from madam's lips,
were explained.
"Mrs. Oriana Clark, otherwise Grocott?" the elder man muttered, and,
stepping forward briskly, he laid a slip of paper on the table before
her. "At suit of Margam's, of Paul's Churchyard, for forty-seven, six,
eight, debt and costs. Here's the _capias_. And there's a detainer
lodged." So much said, he seemed to feel the official part of his duty
accomplished, and he turned with a wink to Grocott. "Much obliged to
the old gentleman for letting us in. As pretty a capture as I ever
made! Trigg, mind the door."
The miser who sees his hoarded all sink beneath the waves; the leader
who, in the flush of victory, falls into the deadly ambush and knows
all lost; the bride widowed on her wedding morn--these may in some
degree serve to image madam at that moment. White to the lips, her
eyes staring, she plucked at the front of her dress with one hand,
and, leaning with the other against the wall, seemed to struggle for
speech.
It was Tom who stepped forward, Tom who instinctively, like the brave
soul he was, screened her from their eyes. "What is it?" he said
hoarsely. "Have a care, man, whom you speak to! What do you mean, and
who are you?"
"Easy asked and soon answered," the fellow replied, civilly enough.
"I'm a sworn bailiff, it's a _capias_ forty-seven, six, eight, debt
and costs--that's what it is. And there's a detainer lodged, so it's
no use to pay till you know where you are. The lady is here, and I am
bound to take her."
"It's a mistake," Tom muttered, his voice indistinct. "There's some
mistake, man. What is the name?"
"Well, it's Clark, _alias_ Grocott on the writ; and it's Clark,
_alias_ Hawkesworth----"
"Hawkesworth?"
"Yes, Hawkesworth, on the detainer," the bailiff answered, smiling. "I
don't take on myself to say which is right, but the old gentleman here
should know."
At that word the unhappy woman, thwarted in the moment of success,
roused herself from the first stunning effects of the blow. With a cry
she tore her handkerchief into two or three pieces, and, thrusting one
end into her mouth, bit on it. Then, "Silence!" she shrieked.
"Silence, you dirty dog!" she continued coarsely. "How dare you lay
your tongue to me? Do you hear me?"
But Tom interfered. "No, one moment," he said grimly. That word,
Hawkesworth, had chilled his blood. "Let us hear what he has to say.
Listen to me, man. Why should the old gentleman know?"
The man hesitated, looking from one to the other. "Well, they say he's
her father," he answered at last. "At any rate he brought her up; that
is, until--well, I suppose you know."
She shrieked out a denial; but Tom, without taking his eyes from the
bailiff's face, put out his hand, and, gripping her arm, held her
back. "Yes, man, until what?" he said hoarsely. "Speak out. Until
what?"
"Well, until she went to live with Hawkesworth, your honour."
"Ah!" Tom said, his face white; only that word. But, dropping his hand
from her arm, he stood back.
She should have known that all was lost then; that the game was played
out. But, womanlike, she could not accept defeat. "It's a lie!" she
shrieked. "A dirty, cowardly lie! It's not true! I swear it is not
true! It's not true!" And breathless, panting, furious, she turned
first to one and then to another, stretching out her hands, heaping
senseless denial on denial. At last, when she read no relenting in the
boy's face, but only the quivering of pain as he winced under the
lash of her loosened tongue, she cast the mask--that had already
slipped--completely away, and, turning on the old man, "You fool! oh,
you fool!" she cried. "Have you nothing to say now that you have
ruined me? Pay the beast, do you hear? Pay him, or I'll ruin you!"
But the clock-maker, terrified as he was, clung sullenly to his money.
"There's a detainer," he muttered. "It's no good, Bess. If s no good,
I tell you!"
"Well, pay the detainer! Pay that, too!" she retorted. "Pay it, you
old skinflint, or I'll swear to you for gold clipping! and you'll hang
at Tyburn, as your friend Jonathan Thomas did! Have a care, will you,
or I'll do it, so help me!"
The old man screamed a palsied curse at her. Sir Hervey touched the
lad's arm. "Come," he said sternly. And he turned to the door.
Tom shuddered, but followed at his heels as a beaten hound follows.
The woman saw her last chance passing from her, sprang forward, and
tried to seize his arm; tried to detain him, tried to gain his ear for
a final appeal. But the bailiff interfered. "Softly, mistress,
softly," he said. "You know the rules. Get the old 'un to pay, and you
may do as you please."
He held her while Tom was got out, dizzy and shaking, his eyes opened
to the abyss from which he had been plucked back. But, though Coke
closed the door behind them, the woman's voice still followed them,
and shocked and horrified them with its shrill clamour. Tom shuddered
at the dreadful sound; yet lingered.
"I must get something," he muttered, avoiding his companion's eyes.
"It is upstairs."
"What is it?" Coke answered impatiently. And, anxious to get the lad
out of hearing, he took his arm, and urged him towards the street.
"Whatever it is, I'll send my man for it."
But Tom hung back. "No," he said. "It's money. I must get it."
"For goodness' sake don't stay now," Sir Hervey protested.
But Tom, instead of complying, averted his face. "I want to pay this,"
he muttered. "I shall never see her again. But I would rather she--she
were not taken now. That's all."
Coke stared. "Oh Lord!" he said; and he wondered. But he let Tom go
upstairs; and he waited himself in the passage to cover his retreat.
He heard the lad go up and push open the door of the little
three-cornered room, which had been his abode for a week; the little
room where he had tasted to the full of anticipation, and whence he
had gone aglow with fire and joy an hour before. Coke heard him no
farther, but continued to listen, and "What is that?" he muttered
presently. A moment, and he followed his companion up the stairs; at
the head of the flight he caught again the sound he had heard below;
the sound of a muffled cry deadened by distance and obstacles, but
still almost articulate. He looked after Tom; but the door of the room
in which he had disappeared was half open. The sound did not issue
thence. Then he thought it came from the room below; and he was on the
point of turning when he saw a door close beside him in the angle of
the stairs, and he listened at that. For the moment all was silent,
yet Sir Hervey had his doubts. The key was in the lock, he turned it
softly, and stepped into an untidy little bedroom, sordid and dull;
the same, in fact, through which Sophia had been decoyed. He noticed
the door at the farther end, and was crossing the floor towards it,
with an unpleasant light in his eyes--for he began to guess what he
should find--when the door of the room below opened, and a man came
out, and came heavily up the stairs. Sir Hervey paused and looked
back; another moment and Grocott reaching the open door stood glaring
in.
Sir Hervey spoke only one word. "Open!" he said; and he pointed with
his cane to the door of the inner room. The key was not in the lock.
The clock-maker, cringing almost to the boards, crept across the
floor, and producing the key from his pocket, set it in the lock. As
he did so Coke gripped him on a sudden by the nape of the neck, and
irresistibly but silently forced him to his knees. And that was what
Sophia saw when the door opened. Grocott kneeling, his dirty, flabby
face quivering with fear, and Sir Hervey standing over him.
"Oh!" she exclaimed, and stepped back in amazement; but, so much
thought given to herself, her next was for Tom. She had been a
prisoner nearly two hours, in fear as well as in suspense, assailed at
one time by the fancy that those who had snared her had left her to
starve, at another by the dread of ill-treatment if they returned. But
the affection for her brother, which had roused her from her own
troubles, was still strong, and her second thought was of Tom.
She seized Sir Hervey's arm, "Thank Heaven you have come!" she cried.
"Did he send you? Where is he?"
"Tom?" Coke answered cheerily. "He is all right. He is here."
"Here? And he is not married?"
"No, he is not married," Sir Hervey answered; "nor is he going to be
yet awhile."
"Thank God!" she exclaimed. And then, as their eyes met, she
remembered herself, and quailed, the blushes burning in her cheeks.
She had not seen him since the evening at Vauxhall, when he had
laboured to open her eyes to Hawkesworth's true character. The things
that had happened, the things she had done since that evening crowded
into her mind; she could have sunk into the floor for very shame. She
did not know how much he knew or how much worse than she was he might
be thinking her; and in an agony of recollection she covered her face
and shrank from him.
"Come, child, come, you are safe now," he said hurriedly; he
understood her feelings. "I suppose they locked you here that you
might not interfere? Eh, was that it?" he continued, seizing Grocott's
ear and twisting it until the old rogue grovelled on the floor. "Eh,
was that it?"
"Oh, yes, yes," the clock-maker cried. "That was it! I'll beg the
lady's pardon. I'll do anything! I'll----"
"You'll hang--some day!" Sir Hervey answered, releasing him with a
final twist. "Begone for this time, and thank your stars I don't haul
you to the nearest justice! And do you, child, come to your brother.
He is in the next room."
But when Sophia had so far conquered her agitation as to be able to
comply, they found no Tom there; only a scrap of paper, bearing a line
or two of writing, lay on the table.
"I'm gone to enlist, or something, I don't care what. It doesn't
matter," it ran. "Don't come after me, for I shan't come back. Let
Sophy have my setter pup, it's at the hall. I see it now; it was a
trap. If I meet H. I shall kill him.--T. M."
"He has found her out, then?" Sophia said tearfully.
"Yes," Sir Hervey answered, standing at the table and drumming on it
with his fingers, while he looked at her and wondered what was to be
done next. "He has found her out. In a year he will be none the worse
and a little wiser."
"But if he enlists?" she murmured.
"We shall hear of it," Coke answered, "and can buy him out." And then
there was silence again. And he wondered again what was to be done
next.
Below, the house was quiet. Either the bailiffs had removed their
prisoner, or she had been released, and she and they had gone their
ways. Even Grocott, it would seem, terrified by the position in which
he found himself, had taken himself off for a while, for not a sound
save the measured ticking of clocks broke the silence of the house,
above stairs or below. After a time, as Sophia said nothing, Sir
Hervey moved to the window and looked into the Row. The coach that had
waited so long was gone. A thin rain was beginning to fall, and
through it a pastrycook's boy with a tray on his head was approaching
the next house. Otherwise the street was empty.
"Did--did my sister send you?" she faltered at last.
"No."
"How did you find me?"
"I heard from your brother-in-law," he answered, his face still
averted.
"What?"
"That you had gone to Davies Street."
"He knew?" she muttered.
"Yes."
She caught her breath. "Is it public?" she whispered. "I suppose
everybody--knows."
"Well, some do, I've no doubt," he answered bluntly. "Women will worry
something, and, of course, there is a--sort of a bone in it."
She shivered, humiliated by the necessity that lay upon her. She must
clear herself. It had come to this, she had brought it to this, that
she must clear herself even in his eyes. "My brother was there," she
said indistinctly, her face covered from his gaze.
"I know," he answered.
"Do they know?"
He understood that she meant the Northeys. "No," he answered. "Not
yet."
She was silent a moment. Then--"What am I to do?" she asked faintly.
She had gone through so many strange things in the last twenty-four
hours that this which should have seemed the strangest of all--that
she should consult him--passed with her for ordinary. But not with
Coke. It showed him more clearly than before her friendlessness, her
isolation, her forlornness, and these things moved him. He knew what
the world would think of her escapade, what sharp-tongued gossips like
Lady Harrington would make of it, what easy dames like Lady Walpole
and Lady Townshend would proclaim her; and his heart was full of pity
for her. He knew her innocent; he had the word of that other innocent,
Tom, for it; but who would believe it? The Northeys had cast her off;
perhaps when they knew all they would still cast her off. Her brother,
her only witness, had taken himself away, and was a boy at most. Had
he been older, he might have given the gossips the lie and forced the
world to believe him, at the point of the small sword. As it was she
had no one. Her aunt's misfortune was being repeated in a later
generation. The penalty must be the same.
Must it? In the silence Sir Hervey heard her sigh, and his heart beat
quickly. Was there no way to save her? Yes, there was one. He saw it,
and with the coolness of the old gamester he took it.
"What are you to do?" he repeated thoughtfully; and turning, he sat
down, and looked at her across the table, his face, voice, manner all
business-like. "Well, it depends, child. I suppose you have no feeling
left for--for that person?"
She shook her head, her face hidden.
"None at all?" he persisted, toying with his snuff-box, while he
looked at her keenly. "Pardon me, I wish to have this clear
because--because it's important."
"I would rather die," she cried passionately, "than be his wife."
He nodded. "Good," he said. "It was to be expected. Well, we must make
that clear, quite clear, and--and I can hardly think your sister will
still refuse to receive you."
Sophia started; her face flamed. "Has she said anything?" she
muttered.
"Nothing," Coke answered. "But you left her yesterday--to join him;
and you return to-day. Still--still, child, I think if we make all
clear to her, quite clear, and to your brother Northey, they will be
willing to overlook the matter and find you a home."
She shuddered. "You speak very plainly," she murmured faintly.
"I fear," he said, "you will hear plainer things from her. But," he
continued, speaking slowly now, and in a different tone, "there is
another way, child, if you are willing to take it. One other way. That
way you need not see her unless you choose, you need see none of them,
you need hear no plain truths. That way you may laugh at them, and
what they say will be no concern of yours, nor need trouble you. But
'tisn't to be supposed that with all this you will take it."
"You mean I may go to Chalkhill?" she cried, rising impetuously. "I
will, I will go gladly, I will go thankfully! I will indeed!"
"No," he said, rising also, so that only the table stood between them.
"I did not mean that. There is still another way. But you are young,
child, and it isn't to be supposed that you will take it."
"Young!" she exclaimed in bitter self-contempt. And then, "What way is
it?" she asked. "And why should I not take it, take it gladly if I can
escape--all that?"
"Because--I am not very young," he said grimly.
"You?" she exclaimed in astonishment. And then, as her eyes met his
across the table, the colour rose in her cheeks. She began to
understand; and she began to tremble.
"Yes," he said bluntly, "I. It shocks you, does it? But, courage,
child; you understand a little, you do not understand all. Suppose for
a moment that you return to Arlington Street to-day as Lady Coke; the
demands of the most exacting will be satisfied. Lady Harrington
herself will have nothing to say. You left yesterday, you return
to-day--my wife. Those who have borne my mother's name have been wont
to meet with respect; and, I doubt not, will continue to meet with
it."
"And you--would do that?" she cried aghast
"I would."
"You would marry me?"
"I would."
"After all that has passed? Here? To-day?"
"Here, to-day."
For a moment she was silent. Then, "And you imagine I could consent?"
she cried. "You imagine I could do that? Never! Never! I think you
good, I think you noble, I thank you for your offer, Sir Hervey; I
believe it to be one the world would deem you mad to make, and me mad
to refuse! But," and suddenly she covered her face with her hands, as
if his eyes burned her, "from what a height you must look down on me."
"I look down?" he said lamely. "Not at all. I don't understand you."
"You do not understand?" she cried, dropping her hands and meeting his
eyes as suddenly as she had avoided them. "You think it possible,
then, that I, who yesterday left my home, poor fool that I was, to
marry one man, can give myself a few hours later to another man? You
think I hold love so light a thing I can take it and give it again as
I take or give a kerchief or a riband? You think I put so small a
price on myself--and on you? Oh, no, no, I do not. I see, if you do
not, or will not, that your offer, noble, generous, magnanimous as it
is, is the sharpest taunt of all that you have it in your power to
fling at me."
"That," Sir Hervey said, placidly, "is because you don't understand."
"It is impossible!" she repeated. "It is impossible!"
"What you have in your mind may be impossible," he retorted; "but not
what I have in mine. I should have thought, child, that on your side,
also, you had had enough of romance."
She looked at him in astonishment.
"While I," he continued, raising his eyebrows, "have outgrown it.
There is no question, at least, in my offer there was no question, of
love. For one thing it is out of fashion, my dear; for another, at the
age I have reached, not quite the age of Methuselah, perhaps," with a
smile, "but an age, as you once reminded me, at which I might be your
father, I need only a lady to sit at the head of my table, to see that
the maids don't rob me, or burn the Hall, and to show a pretty face to
my guests when they come from town. My wife will have her own wing of
the house, I mine; we need meet only at meals. To the world we shall
be husband and wife; to one another, I hope, good friends. Of course,"
Sir Hervey continued, with a slight yawn, "there was a time when I
should not have thought this an ideal marriage; when I might have
looked for more. Nor should I then have--you might almost call
it--insulted you, _ma chere_, by proposing it. But I am old enough to
be content with it; and you are in an awkward position from which my
name may extricate you; while you have probably had enough of what
children call love. So, in fine, what do you say?"
After a long pause, "Do you mean," she asked in a low voice, "that we
should be only--friends?"
"Precisely," he said. "That is just what I do mean. And nothing more."
"But have you considered," she asked, her tone still low, her voice
trembling with agitation. "Have you thought of--of yourself? Why
should you be sacrificed to save me from the punishment of my folly?
Why should you do out of pity what you may repent all your life? Oh,
it cannot, it cannot be!" she continued more rapidly and with growing
excitement. "I thank you, I thank you from my heart, Sir Hervey, I
believe you mean it generously, nobly, but----"
"Let us consider the question--without fudge!" he retorted, stolidly
forestalling her. "Pity has little to do with it. Your folly, child,
has much; because apart from that I should not have made the
suggestion. For the rest, put me out of the question. The point is,
will it suit you? Of course you might wish to marry some one else. You
might wish to marry in fact and not in name----"
"Oh, no, no!" she cried, shuddering; and, shaken by the cruel
awakening through which she had gone, she fancied that she spoke the
truth.
"You are sure?"
"Quite, quite sure."
"Then I think it lies between Chalkhill and Coke Hall," he said,
cheerfully. "Read that, child." And drawing from his pocket the letter
in which Mr. Northey had announced her flight, he laid it before her.
"If I thought you were returning to your sister I would not show it to
you," he continued, watching her as she read. And then, after an
interval, "Well, shall it be Coke Hall?" he asked.
"Yes," she said, shivering under the cruel, heartless phrases of the
letter as under a douche of cold water. "If you really are in earnest,
if you mean what you say?"
"I do."
"And you will be satisfied with--that?" she murmured, averting her
eyes. "With my friendship?"
"I will," he answered. "You have my word for it."
"Then, I thank you," she muttered faintly.
And that was all, absolutely all. He opened the door, and in her
sacque and Lady Betty's Tuscan, as she stood--for she had no change to
make--she passed down the stairs before him, and walked beside him
through the rain across a corner of Shepherd's Market. Thence they
passed along Curzon Street in the direction of the little chapel with
the country church porch--over against Mayfair Chapel, and
conveniently near the Hercules Pillars--in which the Rev. Alexander
Keith held himself ready to marry all comers, at all hours, without
notice or licence.
It was the common dinner time, and the streets were quiet; they met no
one whom they knew. Sophia, dazed and shaken, had scarcely power to
think; she walked beside him mechanically, as in a dream, and could
never remember in after days the way she went to be married, or
whether she travelled the route on foot or in a chair. The famous Dr.
Keith, baulked of one couple and one guinea--for that was his fee, and
it included the clerk and a stamped certificate--welcomed the pair
with effusion. Accustomed to unite at one hour a peer of the realm to
a reigning toast, at another an apprentice to his master's daughter,
he betrayed no surprise even when he recognised Sir Hervey Coke; but
at once he led the way to the chapel, set the kneelers, called the
witnesses, and did his part. He wondered a little, it is true, when he
noticed Sophia's pallor and strange dress; but the reasons people had
for marrying were nothing to him; the fee was everything, and in ten
minutes the tie was tied.
Then only, as they stood waiting in the parlour while the certificate
was being written, fear seized her, and a great horror, and she knew
what she had done. She turned to Sir Hervey and held out her shaking
hands to him, her face white and piteous. "You will be good to me?"
she cried. "You will be good to me? You will keep your word?"
"While I live," he said quietly. "Why not, child?"
But, calmly as he spoke, his face, as they went out together, wore the
look it wore at White's when he played deep; when, round the shaded
candles, oaks, noted in Domesday, crashed down, and long-descended
halls shook, and the honour of great names hung on the turn of a die.
For, deep as he had played, much as he had risked, even to his home,
even to his line, he had made to-day the maddest bet of all. And he
knew it.