THE FIRST STAGE
A week later the sun of a bright May morning shone on King's Square,
once known as Monmouth, now as Soho, Square. Before the duke's town
house on the east side of the Square--on the left of the King's Statue
which then, and for many years to come, faced Monmouth House--a
travelling carriage waited, attended by a pair of mounted grooms, and
watched at a respectful distance by a half-circle of idle loungers. It
was in readiness to convey Lady Coke and Lady Betty Cochrane into
Sussex. On the steps of the house lounged no less a person than the
duke himself; who, unlike his proud Grace of Petworth, was at no pains
to play a part. On the contrary, he sunned himself where he pleased,
nor thought it beneath him to display the anxiety on his daughter's
account which would have become a meaner man. He knew, too, what he
was about in the present matter; neither the four sturdy big-boned
horses, tossing their tasselled heads, nor the pair of armed
outriders, nor Watkyns, Sir Hervey's valet, waiting hat in hand at the
door of the chariot, escaped his scrutiny. He had the tongue of a
buckle secured here, and a horse's hoof lifted there--and his Grace
was right, there was a stone in it. He inquired if the relay at
Croydon was ordered, he demanded whether it was certain that Sir
Hervey's horses would meet them at Lewes. Finally--for he knew that
part of the country--he asked what was the state of the roads beyond
Grinstead, and whether the Ouse was out.
"Not to hurt, your Grace," Watkyns who had come up with the carriage
answered. "The roads will be good if no more rain falls, if your Grace
pleases."
"You will make East Grinstead about five, my man?"
"'Tween four and five, your Grace, we should."
"And Lewes--by two to-morrow?"
The servant was about to answer when the duchess and the two young
ladies, followed by Lady Betty's woman, appeared at the duke's elbow.
The duchess, holding a fan between her eyes and the sun, looked
anxiously at the horses. "I don't like them to be on the road alone,"
she said. "Coke should have come for them. My dear," she continued,
turning to Sophia, "your husband should have come for you instead of
sending. I don't understand such manners, and a week married."
Sophia, blushing deeply, did not answer. She knew quite well why Sir
Hervey had not come, and she was thankful when Lady Betty took the
word.
"Oh ma'am," the child cried, "I am sure we shall do well enough; 'tis
the charmingest thing in the world to be going a journey, and this
morning the most delicious of all mornings. We are going to drive all
day, and at night lie at an inn, and tell one another a world of
secrets. I declare I could jump out of my skin! I never was so happy
in my life!"
"And leaving us!" her Grace said in a tone of reproach.
Lady Betty looked a trifle dashed at that, but her father pinched her
ear. "Leaving town, too, Bet," he said good-naturedly. "That's more
serious, isn't it?"
"I am sure, sir, I--if my mother wishes me to stay!"
"No, go, child, and enjoy yourself," the duchess answered kindly. "And
I hope Lady Coke may put some sense into that feather brain of yours.
My dear," she continued, embracing Sophia, "you'll take care of her?"
"I will, I will indeed!" Sophia cried, clinging to her. "And thank you
a thousand times, ma'am, for your kindness to me."
"Pooh, pooh, 'tis nothing," her Grace said. "But all the same," she
added, her anxiety returning, "I wish Sir Hervey were with you, or you
had not those jewels."
"Coke should have thought of it," the duke answered. "But there, kiss
Bet, my love, and tell her to be a good puss. The sooner they are
gone, the sooner they will be there."
"You have your cordial, Betty?" the duchess asked anxiously.
"Yes, ma'am."
"And the saffron drops, and your 'Holy Living'? Pettitt," to the
woman; "you'll see her Ladyship uses the face wash every morning, and
wears her warm night-rail. And see that the flowered chintz is aired
before she puts it on."
"Yes, sure, your Grace."
"And I hope you'll come back safe, and won't be robbed!"
"Pooh, pooh!" the duke said. "Since Cook was hanged last year--and he
was ten times out of eleven at Mimms and Finchley--there has been
nothing done on the Lewes Road. And they are too strong to be stopped
by one man. You have been reading Johnson's _Lives_, and are
frightening yourself for nothing, my dear. There, let them go, and
they'll be in Lewes two hours before nightfall. A good journey, my
lady, and my service to Sir Hervey."
"I should not mind if it were not for the child's jewels," her Grace
muttered in a low tone.
"Pooh, the carriage might be robbed twenty times," the duke answered,
"and they would not be found--where they are. Good-bye, Bet. Good-bye!
Be a good girl, and say your prayers!"
"And mind you use the almond wash," her Grace cried.
Lady Betty cried "yes," to everything, and, amid a fire of similar
advices, the two were shut into the chariot. From the window Lady
Betty continued to wave her handkerchief, until, Watkyns and the woman
having taken their seats outside, the postboys cracked their whips
and the heavy vehicle moved forward. A moment, and the house and the
kind wistful faces on the steps disappeared, the travellers swung
right-handed into Sutton Street, and, rolling briskly through St.
Giles's and Holborn, were presently on London Bridge, at that time the
only link connecting London and Southwark.
Lady Betty was in a humour that matched the sparkle of the bright May
morning. She was leaving the delights of town, but she had a journey
before her, a thing exhilarating in youth; and at the end of that she
had a vision of lordlings, knights, and country squires, waiting in
troops to be reduced to despair by her charms. The dazzling surface of
the stream, as the tide running up from the pool sparkled and
glittered in the sun, was not brighter than her eyes--that now were
here, now there, now everywhere. Now she stuck her head out of one
window, now out of the other; now she flashed a smile at a passing
apprentice, and left him gasping, now she cast a flower at an
astonished teamster, or tilted her pretty nose at the odours that
pervaded the Borough. The grooms rode more briskly for her presence,
the postboys looked grinning over their shoulders; even the gibbet
that marked the turn to Tooting failed to depress her airy spirits.
And Sophia? Sophia sat fighting for contentment. By turns the better
and the worse mood possessed her. In the better, she thought with
gratitude of her lot--a lot happy in comparison of the fate which she
had so narrowly escaped; happy, even in comparison of that fate which
would have been hers, if, after escaping from Hawkesworth, she had
been forced to return to her sister's house. If it was good-bye to
love, if the glow of passion could never be hers, she was not alone.
She had a friend from whose kindness she had all to expect that any
save a lover could give; a firm and true friend whose generosity and
thoughtfulness touched her every hour, and must have touched her more
deeply, but for that other mood which in its turn possessed her.
In that mood she lived the past again, she thirsted for that which had
not been hers. She regretted, not her dear Irishman--for he had never
existed save in her fancy, and she knew it now--but the delicious
thrill, the warm emotion which the thought of him, the sight of him,
the sound even of his voice, had been wont to arouse. In this mood she
could not patiently give up love; she could not willingly resign the
woman's dream. In this mood she cried out on the prudence that, to
save her from the talk of a week, had deprived her of love for a life.
She saw in her husband's kindness, calculation; in his thoughtfulness,
the wisdom of the serpent. She shook with resentment, and burnt with
shame.
And then, even while she thought of him most harshly, her conscience
pricked her, and in a moment she was in the melting temper; while Lady
Betty chattered by her side, and town changed to country, and, leaving
Brixton Causey, they rattled by the busy inns of Streatham, with the
church on their right and the hills rolling upward leftwise to the
blue.
Four and a half miles to Croydon and then dinner. "Now let me see
them," Lady Betty urged. "Do, that's a dear creature! Here we are
quite safe!"
Sophia pleaded that it was too near town. "Wait until we are through
Croydon," she said. "They say, you know, the nearer town, the greater
the danger!"
"Then, as soon as we are out of Croydon?" Lady Betty cried, hugging
her. "You promise?"
"Yes, I promise."
"Oh, I know if they were mine I should be looking at them all day!"
Lady Betty rejoined; and then shrieked and threw herself back in the
carriage as they passed Croydon gibbet that stood at the ninth
milestone, opposite the turn to Wellington. The empty irons swaying in
the wind provided her with shudders until the carriage drew up in
Croydon Street, where with recovered cheerfulness, the ladies alighted
and dined at the Crown, under the eye and protection of Watkyns. After
a stay of an hour, they took the road again up Banstead Downs, where
they walked a little at the steeper part of the way, but presently
outstripping the carriage above the turn to Reigate, grew frightened
in that solitude, and were glad to step in again. So down and up, and
down again through the woods about Coulsdon, where the rabbits peered
at them through the bracken, and raising their white scuts, loped away
at leisure to their burrows.
"Now!" Lady Betty cried, when they were again in the full glare of the
afternoon sun. "Now is the time! There is no one within a mile of us.
The grooms," she continued, after putting out her head and looking
back, "are half a mile behind."
Sophia nodded reluctantly. "You must get up, then," she said.
Lady Betty did so, and Sophia, to whom the secret had been committed
the day before, lifted the leather valance that hung before the seat.
Touching a spring she drew from the apparently solid woodwork of the
seat--which was no more than three inches thick, so that a mail could
be placed beneath it--a shallow covered drawer about twenty inches
wide. She held this until Lady Betty had dropped the valance, and the
two could take their seats again. Then she inserted a tiny key which
she took from her bodice, into a keyhole cunningly placed at the side
of the drawer--so that when the latter was in its place the keyhole
was invisible. She turned the key, but before she raised the lid, bade
Lady Betty look out of the window again, and assure herself that the
grooms were at a distance.
"You provoking creature!" Lady Betty cried. "They are where they
were--a good half-mile behind. And--yes, one of them has dismounted,
and is doing something to his saddle. Oh! let me look, I am dying to
see them!"
Sophia raised the lid, and her companion gasped, then screamed with
delight. Over the white Genoa of the jewel case shone, and rippled,
and sparkled in rills of liquid fire, a necklace, tiara, and bracelet
of perfect stones, perfectly matched. Lady Betty had expected much;
her mother had told her that, at the coronation of '27, Lady Coke's
jewels had taken the world by storm; and that no one under the rank of
a peeress had worn any like them. But reality exceeded imagination;
she could not control her delight, admiration, envy. She hung over the
tray, her eyes bright as the stones they reflected, her cheeks
catching the soft lustre of the jewels.
"Oh, ma'am, now I know you are married!" she cried. "Things like these
are not for poor lambkins! I vow I grow afraid of you. My Lady Brook
will have nothing like them, and couldn't carry them if she had! She'd
sink under them, the wee thing! And my Lady Carteret won't do better,
though she is naught but airs and graces, and he's fifty-five if he's
a day! When you go to the Drawing-Room, they'll die of envy. And to
think the dear things lie under that dingy valance! I declare, I
wonder they don't shine through!"
"Sir Hervey's father planned the drawer," Sophia explained, "for the
carriage he built for his wife's foreign tour. And when Sir Hervey had
a new carriage about six years ago, the drawer was repeated as a
matter of course. Once his mother was stopped and robbed when she had
the diamonds with her, but they were not found."
"And had you never seen them until yesterday?"
"Never."
"And he'd never told you about them until they sent them from the
bank, with that note?"
Sophia sighed as she glanced at the jewels. "He had not mentioned
them," she said.
Lady Betty hugged her ecstatically: "The dear devoted man!" she cried.
"I vow you are the luckiest woman in the world! There's not a girl in
town would not give her two eyes for them! And mighty few would not be
ready to sell themselves body and soul for them! And he sends them to
you with scarce a word, but 'Lady Coke from her husband!'--and where
they are to be hidden to travel. I vow," Lady Betty continued gaily,
"if I were in your shoes, my dear, I should jump out of my skin with
joy! I--why what's the matter, are you ill?"
For Sophia had suddenly burst into violent weeping; and now, with the
diamonds lying in her lap, was sobbing on the other's shoulder as if
her heart would break. "If you knew!" was all she could say: "If you
knew!"
The young girl, amazed and frightened, patted her shoulder, tried to
soothe her, asked her again and again: What? If she only knew what?
"The sight of them kills me!" Sophia cried, struggling in vain with
her emotion. "They are not mine! I have no--no right to them!"
Lady Betty raised her pretty eyebrows in despair. "But they are
yours," she said. "Your husband has given them to you."
"I would rather he killed me!" Sophia cried; her feelings, overwrought
for a week past, finding sudden vent.
Lady Betty gasped. "Oh!" she said. "I don't understand, I am afraid.
Doesn't he"--in an awestruck tone--"doesn't he love you, then?"
"He?" Sophia cried bitterly. "Oh yes, I suppose he does. He pities me
at any rate. It's I----"
"You don't love him?"
Sophia shook her head.
The younger girl shivered. "That must be--horrible," she whispered.
Her tone was so grave that Sophia raised her head, and smiled drearily
through her tears. "You don't understand yet," she said. "It's only a
form, our marriage. He offered to marry me to save me from scandal.
And I agreed. But since he gave me the jewels that were his mother's,
I--I am frightened, child. I know now that I have done wrong. I should
not have let him persuade me."
"Why did you?" Lady Betty asked softly.
Sophia told her, with all the circumstances of Hawkesworth's villainy,
Tom's infatuation, her own dilemma, Sir Hervey's offer, and the terms
of it.
After a brief silence, "It was generous," Lady Betty said, her eyes
shining. "I think I should--I think I could love him, my Lady Coke.
And since that, you have only seen him one day?"
"That is all."
"And he kept his word? I mean--he wasn't silly?"
"No."
"He has been kind too. There is no denying that?"
"It is that which is killing me!" Sophia cried with returning
excitement. "It is his kindness kills me, girl! Cannot you understand
that?"
Lady Betty declined to say she could. And for quite a long time she
was silent. She sat gazing from the carriage, her eyes busied, to all
appearance, with the distant view of Godstone Church; but a person
watching her closely might have detected a gleam of mischief, a sudden
flash of amusement that leapt into them as she looked; and that could
scarcely have had to do with this church. She seemed at a loss,
however, for matter of comfort; or she was singularly unfortunate in
the choice of it. For when she spoke again she could hit on no better
topic to compose Sophia's mind than a long story, which the naughty
girl had no right to know, of Sir Hervey's dealings with his old
flames. It is true, nods and winks formed so large a part of the tale,
and the rest was so involved, that Sophia could not even arrive at the
ladies' names. "But," as Lady Betty concluded mysteriously, "it may
serve to ease your mind, my dear. You may be sure he won't trouble you
long. La! child, the things I've heard of him--but there, I mustn't
tell you."
"No," Sophia answered primly. "Certainly not, if you please."
"Of course not. But you may take it from me, the first pretty face he
sees----why, Sophy! what is it! What is it?"
No wonder she screamed. Sophia had gripped her arm with one hand; with
the other she was striving to cover the treasure that lay forgotten on
her lap. "What is it?" Betty repeated frantically. There is nothing
more terrifying than a silent alarm ill-understood.
The next moment she saw--and understood. Beside Sophia's window,
riding abreast of the carriage, in such a position that only his
horse's head, by forging an instant to the front, had betrayed his
presence, was a cloaked stranger. Lady Betty caught no more than a
glimpse of him, but that was enough. Apart from the doubt how long he
had ridden there, inspecting the jewels at his leisure, his appearance
was calculated to scare less nervous travellers. Though the day was
mild, he wore a heavy riding cloak, the collar of which rose to the
height of his cheek bone, where it very nearly met the uncocked leaf
of his hat. Between the two, an eye bright and threatening gleamed
forth. The rest of his features were lost in the depths of a fierce
black riding wig; but his great holsters, and long swinging sword,
seemed to show that his errand was anything but peaceful.
The moment his one eye met Lady Betty's gaze, he fell back; and that
instant Sophia used to close the jewel case, and turn the key. To
lower the drawer to the floor of the carriage, and cover it with her
skirts was the work of a second, then still trembling, she put out her
head, and looked back along the road. The man had pulled his horse
into a walk, and was now a hundred paces behind them. Even at that
distance, his cloaked figure as he lounged along the turf beside the
track, loomed a dark blot on the road.
Sophia drew in her head. "Quick!" she cried. "Do you stand up and
watch him, Betty, while I put the case away. Tell me in a moment if he
comes on or is likely to overtake us."
Lady Betty complied. "He is walking still," she said, her head out
on one side. "Now the grooms--lazy beasts, they should have been
here--are passing him, La, what a turn it gave me. He had an eye--I
hope to goodness we shall never meet the wretch again."
"I hope we may never meet him after nightfall," Sophia answered with a
shudder. And she clicked the drawer home, dropped the valance in front
of the seat, and rose from her knees.
"I noticed one thing, the left hand corner of his cloak was patched,"
Lady Betty said, as she drew in her head. "And I should know his horse
among a hundred: chestnut, with white forelegs and a scarred knee."
"He saw them, he must have seen them!" Sophia cried in great distress.
"Oh, why did I take them out!"
"But if he meant mischief he would have stopped us then," Lady Betty
replied. "The grooms were half a mile behind, and I'll be bound
Watkyns was asleep."
"He dared not here, because of these houses," Sophia moaned, as they
rolled by a small inn, the outpost of the little hamlet of New Chapel
Green, between Lingfield and Turner's Heath. "He will wait until we
are in some lonely spot, in a wood, or crossing a common, or----"
"Sho!" Lady Betty cried contemptuously--the jewels were not hers, and
weighed less heavily on her mind. "We are only five miles from
Grinstead, see, there is the milestone, and it is early in the
afternoon. He'll not rob us here if he be Turpin himself."
"All the same," Sophia cried, "I wish the diamonds were safe at
Lewes."
"Why, child, they are your own!" Lady Betty answered. "If you lose
them, whose is the loss?"
But Sophia, whether she agreed or had her own views of the fact,
appeared to draw little comfort from it. As the horses slowly climbed
the hill and again descended the slope to Felbridge, her head was more
often out of the window than in the carriage. She beckoned to the
grooms to come on; she prayed Watkyns, who, sure enough, was asleep,
to be on the alert; she bade the post-boys whip on. Nor did she show
herself at ease, or heave a sigh of relief, until the gibbet at the
twenty-ninth milestone was safely passed, and the carriage rattled
over the pavement of East Grinstead.