TWO PORTRAITS
Tom rubbed his hands in cruel anticipation. "They are coming to the
Hall at four o'clock," he said. "And I wouldn't be in their shoes for
a mug and a crust. Coke will swinge them," he continued with zest. "He
must swinge them, like it or not! It'll be go, bag and baggage, for
most of them, and some, I'm told, have been on the land time out of
mind!"
He had seated himself on the broad balustrade of the terrace, with his
back to the park, and his eyes on the windows of the house. Sophia, on
a stone bench not far from him, gazed thoughtfully over the park as if
she found refreshment merely in contemplating the far stretch of fern
and sward, that, set with huge oak trees, fell away into half-seen
dells of bracken and fox-gloves. Recreated by a long night's rest, her
youth set off, and her freshness heightened by the dainty Tuscan and
chintz sacque she had put on that morning, she was not to be known for
the draggled miss who had arrived in so grievous a plight the day
before. From time to time she recalled her gaze to fix it dreamily on
her left hand; now reviewing the fingers, bent or straight, now laying
them palm downwards on the moss-stained coping. She was so employed
when the meaning of her brother's last words came tardily home to her
and roused her from her reverie.
"Do you mean," she cried, "that he will put them out of their farms?"
"I should rather think he would!" said Tom. "Wouldn't you? And serve
them right, the brutes!"
"But what will they do?"
"Starve for all I care!" Tom answered callously; and he flipped a
pebble from the balustrade with his forefinger. He was not at his best
a soft-hearted young gentleman. "And teach them to know better!" he
added presently.
Sophia's face betrayed her trouble. "I don't think he would do that,"
she said, slowly.
"Coke?" Tom answered. "He won't have much choice, my dear. For the
sake of your _beaux yeux_ he will have to swinge them, and lustily. To
let them off lightly would be to slight you; and 'twouldn't look very
well, and a fortnight married. No, no, my girl. And that reminds me.
Where is he? And where has he been since yesterday?"
Sophia reddened. "He has some business," she said, "which took him
away at once."
"I don't think you know."
Sophia blushed more warmly, but added nothing; and fortunately Tom
caught sight of a certain petticoat disappearing down the steps at the
end of the terrace. It is not impossible that he had been expecting
it, for he rose on the instant, muttered an unintelligible word, and
went in pursuit.
Sophia sat awhile, pondering on what he had said. It was right that
the offenders of yesterday should be punished; their conduct had been
cruel, inhuman, barbarous. But that her home-coming should mean to any
man the loss of home, shocked her. Yet she thought it possible that
her brother was right; that pride, if not love, the wish to do his
duty by her, if not the desire to commend himself to her, would move
Sir Hervey to especial severity. What bridegroom indeed, what lover
could afford to neglect so obvious a flattery? And if in her case Coke
counted neither for lover nor bridegroom, what husband?
She rose. She must go at once and seek him, intercede with him,
convince him that it would not please her. But two steps taken she
paused, her pride in arms. After she had changed her dress and
repaired her disorder the day before, she had waited, expecting that
he would come to her. But he had not done so, he had not come near
her; at length she had asked for him. Then she had learned with
astonishment, with humiliation, that immediately after her arrival he
had left the house on business.
If he could slight her in that fashion, was there any danger that out
of regard to her he would do injustice to others? She laughed at the
thought--yet believed all the same that there was, for men were
inconsistent. But the position made intercession difficult, and
instead of calling a servant and asking if he had returned she
wandered into the house. She remembered that the housekeeper had
begged to know when her ladyship would see the drawing-rooms; and she
sent for Mrs. Stokes.
That good lady found her young mistress waiting for her in the larger
of the two rooms. It was scantily furnished after the fashion of the
early part of the century, with heavy chairs and a table, set at wide
intervals on a parquet floor, with a couple of box-like settees, and
as many buhl tables, the latter bought by Sir Hervey's mother on her
wedding tour, and preserved as the apple of her eye. On either side of
the open blue-tiled fire-place a roundheaded alcove exhibited shelves
of Oriental china, and on the walls were half a dozen copies of
Titians and Raphaels, large pictures at large intervals. All was
stately, proper, a little out of fashion, but decently so. Sophia
admired, yawned, said a pleasant word to Mrs. Stokes and passed into
the smaller room.
There she stood, suddenly engrossed. On each side of the fireplace
hung a full-length portrait. The one on the right hand, immediately
before her, represented a girl in the first bloom of youth, lovely as
a rose-bud, graceful as a spray of jessamine, with eyes that charmed
and chained the spectator by their pure maidenliness. A great painter
in his happiest vein had caught the beauty and innocence of a chosen
model; as she smiled from the canvas, the dull room--for the windows
were curtained--grew brighter and lighter. The visitor, as he entered,
saw only that sweet face, and saw it ever more clearly; as the
play-goer sees only the limited space above the footlights, and sees
that grow larger the longer he looks.
It was with an effort and a sigh Sophia turned to the other picture;
she looked at it and stood surprised, uncertain, faintly embarrassed.
She turned to the housekeeper, "It is Sir Hervey, is it not?" she
said.
"Yes, my lady," the woman answered. "At the age of twenty-one. But he
is not much changed to my eyes," she added jealously.
"Of course, I did not know him then," Sophia murmured apologetically;
and after a long thoughtful look she went back to the other picture.
"What a very, very lovely face!" she said. "I did not know that Sir
Hervey had ever had a sister. She is dead, I suppose?"
"Yes, my lady, she is dead."
"It is his sister?" with a look at the other.
The housekeeper gave back the look uncomfortably. "No, my lady," she
said at last.
"No!" Sophia exclaimed, raising her eyebrows. "Then who is it, pray?"
"Well, my lady, it--it should have been removed," Mrs. Stokes
explained, her embarrassment evident. "At one time it was to go to Sir
Hervey's library, but 'twas thought it might be particular there. And
so nothing was done about it. Sir Hervey wouldn't let it go anywhere
else. But I was afraid that your ladyship might not be pleased."
Sophia stared coldly at her. "I don't understand," she said stiffly.
"You have not told me who it is."
"It's Lady Anne, my lady."
"What Lady Anne?"
"Lady Anne Thoresby. I thought," the housekeeper added in a faltering
tone, "your ladyship would have heard of her."
Sophia looked at the lovely young face, looked at the other
portrait--of Sir Hervey in his gallant hunting-dress, gay, laughing,
debonair--and she understood. "She was to have married Sir Hervey?"
she said.
"Yes, my lady."
"And she died?"
"Yes, my lady, two days before their wedding-day," Mrs. Stokes
answered, her garrulity beginning to get the better of her fears. "Sir
Hervey was never the same again--that is to say, in old days, my
lady," she added hurriedly. "He grew that silent it was wonderful, and
no gentleman more pleasant before. He went abroad, and 'tis said he
lost twenty thousand pounds in one night in Paris. And before that he
had played no more than a gentleman should."
Sophia's eyes were full of tears.
"How did she die?" she whispered.
"Of the smallpox, my lady. And that is why Sir Hervey is so particular
about it."
"How do you mean? Is he afraid of it?"
"Oh, no, my lady, far from it! He had it years ago himself. But
wherever it is, he's for giving help. That's why we kept it from him
that 'twas at Beamond's Farm, thinking that as your ladyship was
coming, he would not wish to be in the way of it. But he was wonderful
angry when he learned about it, and went off as soon as news came from
his reverence; who would have sent sooner, but he was took ill
yesterday. I can pretty well guess what Sir Hervey's gone about," she
added sagaciously.
"What?" Sophia asked.
Mrs. Stokes hesitated, but decided to speak.
"Well, it happened once before, my lady," she said, "that they could
get no one to help bury; and Sir Hervey went and set the example. You
may be sure there were plenty then, as had had it, and had no cause to
fear, ready to come forward to do the work. And I've not much doubt,
my lady, it's for that he's gone this time. He'd stay away a night at
the keeper's cottage, I expect," Mrs. Stokes continued, nodding her
head sagely, "just to see to his clothes being destroyed and the like.
For there's no one more careful to carry no risks, I will say that for
his honour."
Sophia stared.
"But do you mean," she cried, her heart beating strangely, "that Sir
Hervey would do the work with his own hands?"
"Well, it's what he did once, I know, my lady," the housekeeper
answered apologetically. "It was not very becoming, to be sure, but he
was not the less thought of about here, I assure your ladyship. You
see, my lady, 'tis in the depth of the country, and the land is his
own, and it's not as if it was in London. Where I know things are very
different," Mrs. Stokes continued with pride, "for I have been there
myself with the family. But about here I'm sure he was not the less
considered, begging your ladyship's pardon."
"I can believe it," Sophia said, in a voice suspiciously quiet and
even. And then, "Thank you, Mrs. Stokes, you can leave me now," she
continued. "I shall sit here a little."
But when Mrs. Stokes, feeling herself a trifle snubbed, had withdrawn
and closed the door of the outer room upon her, Sophia's eyes grew
moist with tears, and the nosegay that filled the open bodice of her
sacque rose and fell strangely. In that age philanthropy was not a
fashion. Pope indeed had painted the Man of Ross, and there was a
Charitable Corporation, lately in difficulties, and there was a
Society of the Sons of the Clergy, and there were other societies of a
like kind; and in the country infirmaries were beginning to be founded
on the patterns of Winchester and Shrewsbury, and to subscribe to such
objects after dining well and drinking deeply, was already, under the
Walpoles and the Pelhams, a part of a fine gentleman's life. But for a
man of condition to play the Borromeo--to stoop to give practical help
and run risks among the vulgar, was still enough to earn for him a
character as eccentric as that of the famous nobleman who had seen
more kings and more postilions than any of his contemporaries.
In the eyes of the world, but not in Sophia's, or why this dimness of
vision, as she gazed at Sir Hervey's picture? Why the unrest of the
bodice that threatened to find vent in sobs? Why the sudden rush of
self-reproach? More sharply than any kindness shown to her in the long
consistent course of his dealings with her, more keenly than his
forethought for her brother, this stabbed her. This was the man she
had flouted, the man whose generous, whose unselfish offer she had
accepted to save her reputation; but whose love she had deemed a
floor-clout, not worthy the picking up! Was it wonderful that cynical,
taciturn, almost dull as the world thought him, he was not the less
considered here?
At twenty-one he had been handsome, with wit and laughter and the gay
insouciance of youth written on his face. Time, the lapse of thirteen
years, had robbed his features of their bloom, his lips of their easy
curve, his eyes of their sparkle. But something, surely, time had
given in return. Something, Sophia could not say what. She could not
remember; she could only recall a smile, kindly, long-suffering, a
little quizzical, with which he had sometimes met her eyes. That she
could recall; and as she did so, before his portrait in the stillness
of this long-abandoned room, with the dead air of old pot-pourris in
her nostrils, she grew frightened. What was it she had thrown away?
And how would it fare with her if she could not recover it?
Twisting one hand in the other, she turned to the second portrait, and
looked, and looked. At length she glanced round with a guilty air,
perceived a tall, narrow mirror that stood framed between the windows,
and went towards it. Furtively assuring herself that she was not
watched from the terrace, she viewed herself in it.
She saw a pale grave face, barely redeemed from plainness by eloquent
eyes and a wealth of hair; a face that looked sombrely into hers, and
grew graver and more sombre as she looked. "He is more like his old
self than I am like her," she thought. "Why did he choose me! Why did
he not choose Lady Betty? She is such another now as Lady Anne was
then!"
She was still peering at herself when she heard his voice in the hall,
and started guiltily. She would not for the world he caught her in
that room, and she darted to the door, dragged it open, and was
half-way across the long drawing-room when he entered. She felt that
her face was on fire, but he did not seem to notice it.
"A thousand pardons that I was not with you before," he cried
pleasantly. "I'd business, and--no I must not touch you, my dear. I
have been nearer than was pleasant to one of your friends with the
smallpox."
"You have run--no risk, I hope?" she asked faintly.
"Not a whit!" he answered, striking his boot with his whip and looking
round the room as if he seldom entered it. "I've had it, you know.
I've also had the whole story of your adventures from Betty, whom I
met as I was going to my room."
She was agitated; he was at his ease. "I am sorry that we managed so
clumsily," she murmured.
"So bravely, I think," he answered lightly; and then, looking round,
"This is your part of the house, you know, Sophia. You must make what
changes you please here."
"Thank you," she said. "You are very good."
"These rooms have been little used since my mother's death," he
continued, again surveying them. "So I have no doubt they want
refurnishing. You must talk it over with Lady Betty. And that reminds
me, I saw your brother slipping away a few minutes ago, and he had
something--the air of following her." And Sir Hervey laughed and sat
down on one of the stiff-backed chairs. "For my part, I think he ought
to be told," he continued, tapping the toe of his boot with his whip.
Sophia smiled faintly. "You think he is taken with her?"
"Who would not be?" Sir Hervey answered bluntly. "Maid or mistress,
he'll be head over ears in love with her before twenty-four hours are
out!"
Sophia sat down. "It's her fancy that he should not know," she said
languidly. "Of course, if you wish it I will tell him."
"No, no, child, have it your own way," he answered with good humour.
"I suppose she is prepared to pay for her frolic."
"Well--I think she likes him."
"And 'twould do very well on both sides--in a year or two!"
"I suppose so."
Sir Hervey rose. "Then let be," he said. And he wandered across the
room, taking up things and setting them down again as if he did not
think it quite polite to leave her, yet had nothing more to say.
Sophia watched him with growing soreness. Was it fancy, or was it the
fact that she had never seen him so cold, so indifferent, so little
concerned for her, so well satisfied with himself as now? A change, so
subtle she could not define it, had come over him. Or was it that a
change had come over her?
She wondered, and at length plunged desperately into speech. "Is it
true," she asked, "that the people who treated us so ill yesterday are
coming to see you to-day?"
"Those of them who are householders are coming," he answered soberly.
"At four o'clock. But I do not wish you to see them."
"You will not be--too severe with them?"
"I shall not be more severe, I hope, than the occasion requires," he
answered.
But his tone was hard, and she felt that what she had heard was true.
"Will you grant me a favour?" she blurted out, her voice trembling a
little.
"I would like to grant you many," he answered, smiling at her.
"It's only that you will not send them away," she said.
"Send them away?"
"I mean, send them off their farms," she explained hurriedly. "I was
told--Tom told me that you were going to do so; and that some had held
the land for generations, and would be heartbroken as well as ruined."
He did not answer at once, and his silence confirmed her in her fears.
"I don't say that they have not deserved to be punished," she urged.
"But--but I should not like my coming here to be remembered by this.
And it seems out of proportion to the crime, since they did me no
harm."
"Whatever they intended?"
"Yes."
He looked at her gravely. "What led you to think," he said, "that I
had it in my mind to punish them in that way?"
"Well, Tom told me," she explained in growing confusion, "that you
might do it to--that you might think it would please me. He said that
any one in your place--I mean----"
"Any one newly married?"
Sophia's face flamed. "I suppose so," she murmured"--would do it."
"To please his bride? And you agreed with him, Sophia? You thought it
was probable?"
"I thought it was possible," she said.
He walked across the room, came back, and stood before her. He looked
down at her. "My dear," he said soberly--but she winced under the
altered tone of his voice--"you will learn to know me better in a
little while. Let me tell you at once that the purpose you have
mentioned never entered my head, and that I am, I hope, incapable of
it. There are people who might entertain it, and might carry it out to
please a mistress or gratify a whim. There are, I know. But I am not
one of that kind. I am too old to misuse power to please a woman, even
the woman I have chosen. Nor," he continued, stopping her as she tried
to speak, "is that all. In the management of an estate we do not act
so hurriedly as you appear to think, my dear. Old tenants, like old
wine, are the best, and, where it is possible, we keep them. I have
sent, it is true, for those who were guilty yesterday, and I shall see
that they are made to smart for it. But not to the extent of loss of
home and livelihood."
"I am sorry," she muttered.
"There is no need, child," he answered. "And while we are on this,
I may as well deal with another matter. I found your note and the
jewel case on my table, and as you wish, so it shall be. I might
prefer--indeed, I should prefer," he continued prosaically, "to see my
wife properly equipped when she goes into the world. But that's a
small matter. Lady Coke will always be Lady Coke, and if you will feel
more free and more happy without them----"
"I shall," she muttered hurriedly, "if you please."
"So be it. They shall be returned to my goldsmith's as soon as a safe
conveyance can be found. I wish, my dear," he added good-naturedly, "I
could rid you of all troubles as easily."
"I am much obliged to you," she muttered, and could have shrunk into
the floor with shame. For on a sudden she saw herself a horrid
creature, imposing all, taking nothing, casting all the burden and all
the stress, and all the inconvenience of their strange relations on
him. In town and on the road she had fancied that there was something
fine, something of the nature of abnegation and dignity in the return
of the jewels, and in her determination that she would not go decked
in them. But the simplicity with which he had accepted her whim and
waived his own wishes, tore away the veil of self-deception, and
showed Sophia the childishness of her conduct. She would not wear his
jewels; but his name and his title, his freedom and his home she had
not scrupled to take from him with scarce a word of gratitude, with
scarce one thought for him!
The very distress she was feeling gave her, she knew, a sullen air,
and must set her in a worse light than ever. Yet she was tongue-tied.
He yielded freely, handsomely, generously; and that bare, that cold "I
am much obliged to you" was all she could force her tongue to utter.
She was beginning to feel that she was growing afraid of him; and then
he spoke.
"There is one other matter," he said, "I wish to name. It touches Mrs.
Stokes. She has been here a number of years, and I dare say like this
room, smacks a little of good Queen Anne. If you think it necessary to
discharge her----"
Sophia started.
"I?" she said.
[Illustration: "WHY, BETTY," SOPHIA CRIED IN ASTONISHMENT, "WHAT IS
IT?"]
"To be sure. I should at the worse pension her. But she has served us
faithfully, I believe--beginning, I think," Sir Hervey continued with
a slight touch of constraint, "by whipping me when I needed it; and
she would be distressed, I fear, if she had to go. If you could
contrive to do with her for a while, therefore, I should be much
obliged to you."
Sophia had risen and moved a little way from him.
"Did you think I should discharge her?" she said, without turning her
head.
"Well," he answered, "I did not know, my dear. Young housekeepers----"
"Why did you think I should discharge her?" she cried, interrupting
him sharply; and then, "Pray forgive me," she continued hurriedly, yet
stiffly, "I--you hurt me a little in what you said of--the tenants. I
only ask you to believe that I am as incapable of dismissing an old
servant for a trifle as you are of behaving unjustly to your tenants!"
He did not appear to notice her emotion.
"Thank you," he said. "Then we understand one another. Of course, I
don't wish you to feel this an obligation. Mrs. Stokes is growing
old----"
"It is no obligation," she said coldly. And then, "I think it will be
more pleasant on the terrace," she continued; and she moved towards
the door.
He held it open that she might pass through; and he followed her into
the hall. He little dreamt that, as she walked before him, she was
wondering, almost with terror, whether he would go out with her or
leave her; whether this was all she was to see of him, day by day. The
doubt was not solved; for they were interrupted. As they entered the
shady hall by one door Lady Betty darted into it from the terrace, her
face scarlet, her hat crushed, her eyes sparkling with rage. They were
so near her she could not escape them; nor could she hide her
disorder. "Why, Betty," Sophia cried in astonishment, "what is it?
What in the world is the matter?"
"Don't ask me," Betty cried, almost weeping. "You ought to be ashamed
of yourself. You--your brother has insulted me! He has held me and
kissed me against my will! And he laughed at me! He laughed at me! Oh,
I could kill him!"