REPENTANCE AT LEISURE
The first speaker was Lady Betty, and her first remark seemed to be an
answer to a question. "Well, 'tis as you like," she said. "But if
you'll be guided by me you'll not tell her. Then, when you go, it will
put the finishing touch to our--friendship"--with a sly laugh--"if
that be your wish, sir. On the other hand, if you tell madam, who is
beginning to be jealous, take my word for it, there's an end of that!
And there's this besides. If you tell her, it's not to be said what
she will do, I warn you."
"She might insist on going?" Sir Hervey's voice answered. "That's what
you mean?"
"If she knew she would go! I think she would, at any rate. At the best
there's danger. On the other hand, say nothing to her, and here's the
opportunity you said you desired. Of course, if you are weakening,"
Lady Betty continued in the tone of one ready to take offence, "and
don't desire it any longer, that's another matter, sir."
"My dear girl," Sir Hervey cried eagerly, "have I not done everything
to show her that she is indifferent to me? Do you want any other
proof? Have I omitted anything? Have not I"--and then his voice died
abruptly. The two speakers had turned the corner of the house, and
Sophia heard no more. But she had heard enough. She had heard too
much!
It is sadly trite that that we cannot have we want. It is an old tale
that it is for the sour grapes the mouth waters, and not for the bunch
within reach. A thousand kindnesses, the hand ever waiting, the smile
ever ready, gain no response; until a thousand rebuffs have earned
their due, and the smile and the hand are another's. Then, on a
sudden, the heart learns its own bitterness. Then we would give the
world for the look we once flouted, for the kind word from lips grown
silent. And it is too late. Too late!
In the gloom of the inner drawing-room, where she sat with fingers
feverishly interlaced, Sophia remembered his longsuffering with her,
his thoughtfulness for her, his watchfulness over her, proved by a
hundred acts of kindness and consideration. By a word at a drum when
she was strange to town, and knew few. By countenance and a jest when
Madam Harrington snubbed her. By the recovery of a muff--of value and
her sister's--before it was known that she had lost it. By the gift of
a birthnight fan which she had never carried; and the arrangement of a
party to which she had not gone. By a word of caution when her
infatuation for the Irishman began to be noticed; by a second word and
a third. Through all he had been patience, she had been scorn. Now, on
a sudden, she was in the dust before him. The smile that had never
failed her in a difficulty, nor been wanting in a strait, had its
value at last; and she felt that to read it once more in those eyes
she would give the world, herself, all!
But too late. She had lost his love as she deserved to lose it. It was
her doing. She had but herself to thank that this was the end. Only,
she whispered, if he had had a little, a very little more patience! A
day even! If he had given her one day more. That, or left her to her
fate!
Fearful at last of being found in that room, seated before his
picture, she crept out into the hall, and stood, marking the silence
that prevailed in the house; listening to the dull tick of the clock
that stood in the corner; watching the motes that danced in the dusty
bars of sunshine before the door. With pathetic self-pity she found in
these things--and in the faint taste of dry rot that told of the
generations that had walked the old floor--the echo of her thoughts.
Such, so quiet, so still, so regular, so far removed from the joy of
the world was her life to be henceforth. "And I am young! I am young!"
she whispered.
If he had only, when he met her in Clarges Row, left her to her fate!
Nothing worse could have happened to her than this which had happened;
and he might have wedded Lady Betty in innocence and honour. The fault
was hers, and yet it was his too. A wild infatuation had brought her
to the brink of ruin; an impulse of chivalry, scarcely less foolish,
had led him to save her. The end for both must be misery. For him God
knew what! For her, loneliness and this silent, empty, ordered house
with its faint dead perfume, its aroma of long-stored linen, its
savour of the dead and the by-gone.
As she stood in the middle of the floor, thinking these thoughts, the
shadow of a bird flitted across the patch of sunshine that lay within
the doorway. It startled her, and she looked up, just as Lady Betty,
swinging her hat by its strings, and humming a gay air, appeared on
the threshold. The girl hung an instant as in doubt, and then, whether
she espied Sophia standing in the shadow and did not want to meet her,
or she changed her mind for another reason, she turned and left the
doorway empty.
The sight was too much for Sophia's composure. That airy, laughing
figure--youthful, almost infantine--poised in sunshine--that and her
own brooding face, seen lately in the glass, suggested a comparison
that filled her heart to bursting. She crept to the oak side table
that stood in the bayed recess behind the door, and leaning her arms
upon it, hid her face in them. She did not weep, but from time to time
she shivered, as if the June air chilled her.
She had sat in this position some minutes when a faint sound roused
her. Ashamed of being found in that posture, she looked up, and saw
Lady Betty in the act of crossing the hall on tip-toe. Apparently the
girl had just entered from the terrace and thought herself alone; for
when she reached the middle of the floor, she stood weighing a letter
in her hand, as if she doubted what to do with it. Her eyes travelled
slowly from the long oak table to an almoner; and thence to a chest
that stood beside the inner door. In the end she chose the chest, and,
gliding to the door, placed the letter on it, arranging its position
with peculiar care. Then she turned to go out again by the terrace
door, but had not taken two steps before her eyes met Sophia's. She
uttered a low cry, and stood, arrested.
Sophia did not speak, but she rose, crossed the hall, and as the
other, with a rapid movement, recovered the letter from the chest, she
extended her hand for it.
"Give it to me," she said.
For a moment Lady Betty confronted her, holding the letter hidden.
Then, whether Sophia's pale set face cowed her, or she really had no
choice, she held out the letter. "It is for you," she faltered.
"But----"
"But," Sophia answered, taking her up with quiet scorn, "I was not to
know the bearer! I am obliged to you."
Again for a moment the two women looked at one another. And Lady
Betty's face grew slowly scarlet. "You have his confidence," Sophia
continued in the same tone. "It's fitting you wait, miss, and take the
answer."
"But he's gone," Betty stammered.
"Then I do not think you will take the answer!" Sophia retorted. "But
you will wait, nevertheless! You will wait my pleasure." She broke the
seal as she spoke, and began to read the contents of the note. They
were short. A moment and she crumpled the paper in her hand and
dropped it on the floor. "A very proper letter," she said with a
sneer. "There's no fault to be found with it, I am sure. He is my
affectionate husband, I can be no less than his dutiful wife. 'Tis no
part of a dutiful wife to find fault with her husband's letter, I
suppose."
"I don't know what you would be at," Lady Betty muttered, looking more
and more frightened.
"No? That's what I'm going to explain--if you'll sit, miss? Sit,
girl!"
Lady Betty shrugged her shoulders, but obeyed, an uneasy look in her
eyes. Sophia sat also, on the farther side of the small oak table; but
for a full minute she did not speak. When she did her voice had lost
its bitterness, and was low and absent and passionless. "There are two
things to be talked about--you and I," she said, drumming slowly on
the table with her fingers. "And by your leave I'll speak of myself
first. If I could set him free I would! D'you hear me? D'you
understand? If the worst that could have befallen me in Clarges Row,
the worst that he had in his mind when he married me, were the price
to be paid, I would pay it to-day. He should be free to marry whom he
would; and if by raising my hand I could come between him and her I
would not! Nay, if by raising my hand I could bring them together I
would! And that though when he married me, he did me as great a wrong
as a man can do a woman!"
Suddenly, without warning, Lady Betty burst into irrepressible
sobbing. "Oh," she cried, "do you hate him so!"
"Hate him?" Sophia answered. "Hate him? No, fool, I love him so!" And
then in a strain of bitterness, the more intense as she spoke in a
tone little above a whisper. "You start, miss? You think me a fool,
I know, to tell you that! But see how proud I am! I will not keep
from the woman he loves the least bit of her triumph! Let her enjoy
it--though 'tis an empty one--for I cannot free him, do what I will!
Let her know, for her pleasure, that she is fairer than I, as I know
it! Let her know that she has won the heart that should be mine,
and--which will be sweetest of all to her--that I would fain have won
it myself and could not! Let her but you are crying, miss? And I'd
forgotten. What's all this to you?" with a change to quiet irony. "You
are too young to understand such things! And, of course, 'twas not of
this that I wished to speak to you; but of yourself, and of--Tom. Of
course--Tom," with a faint laugh. "I'm sorry that he misbehaved to you
in the park. I've had it on my mind ever since. There's but one thing
to be done, I am sure, and that is what your own judgment, Lady
Betty----"
"Sophy!"
But Sophia continued without heeding the remonstrance--"pointed out to
you! I mean, to return to your mother without loss of time. It is best
for you, and best for--Tom," with a crooked smile. "Best, indeed, for
all of us."
Lady Betty, her face held aloof, was busy drying her tears; her
position such that it was not possible to say what her sentiments
were, nor whether her emotion was real or assumed. But at that she
looked up, startled; she met the other's eyes. "Do you mean," she
muttered, "that I am to go home?"
"To be sure," Sophia answered coldly. "'Tis only what you wished
yourself, three days ago."
"But--but Sir Tom hasn't--hasn't troubled me again," Betty faltered.
"Tom?" Sophia answered, in a peculiar tone. "Ah, no. But--I doubt if
he's to be trusted. Meanwhile, I gather from the letter you gave me
that Sir Hervey will not return until to-morrow noon. We must act then
without him. You will start at daybreak to-morrow. I shall accompany
you as far as Lewes. Thence Mrs. Stokes, who has been in London, and
Watkyns, with sufficient attendance, will see you safe to her Grace's
house. You are in my care----"
"And you send me home in disgrace!"
"Not at all!" my lady answered, with coldness. "The fault is Tom's."
"And I suffer! Do you mean, do you really mean----" Betty protested,
in a tone of astonishment, "that I am to go back to-morrow--at
daybreak--by myself?"
"I do."
"Before Sir Hervey returns?"
"To be sure."
"But it is monstrous!" Betty cried, grown indignant; and in her
excitement she rose and stood opposite Sophia. "It is absurd! Why
should I go? In this haste, and like a thing disgraced? I've done
nothing! I don't understand."
Sophia rose also; her face still pale, a fire smouldering in her eyes.
"Don't you?" she said. "Don't you understand?"
"No."
"Think again, girl. Think again!"
"N-no," Betty repeated; but this time her voice quavered. Her eyes
sank before Sophia's, and a fresh wave of colour swept over her face.
There is an innocent shame as well as a guilty shame; a shame caused
by that which others think us, as well as by that which we are. Betty
sank under this, yet made a fight. "Why should I go?" she repeated
weakly.
"Not for my sake," Sophia answered gravely. "For your own. Because I
have more thought for you, more mercy for you, more compassion for you
than you have for yourself. You say you go in disgrace? It is not
true; but were you to stay, you would stay in disgrace! From that I
shall save you whether you will or no. Only----" and suddenly
stretching out her hand she seized Betty's shoulder and swayed the
slighter girl to and fro by it--"only," she cried, with sudden
vehemence, "don't think I do it to rid myself of you! To keep him, or
to hold him, or to glean after you! If I could give him the woman he
loves I would give her to him, though you were that woman! If I could
set her in my place, I would set her there, though her foot were on my
breast! But I cannot. I cannot, girl. And you must go."
She let her hand fall with the last word; but not so quickly that
Betty had not time to snatch it to her lips and kiss it--kiss it with
an odd strangled cry. The next instant the girl flung herself on the
bench beside the table, and hiding her head on her arms--as Sophia had
hidden hers a while before--she gave herself up to unrestrained
weeping. For a few seconds Sophia stood watching her with a cold,
grave face; then she shivered, and turning in silence, left the hall.
Strange to say, the door had barely fallen to behind her when a change
came over Lady Betty. She raised her head and looked round, her eyes
shining through her tears. As soon as she was certain that she was
alone, she sprang to her feet, and waving her hat by its ribands round
her head, spun round the table in a frantic dance of triumph, her hoop
sweeping the hall from end to end, yet finding it too small for the
exuberance of her joy. Pausing at last, breathless and dishevelled,
"Oh, you dear! Oh, you angel!" she cried. "You'd give him the woman he
loves, would you, ma'am--if you could! You'd set her foot on your
breast, if 'twould make him happy? Oh, it was better than the best
play that ever was, it was better than 'Goodman's Fields,' or 'Mr.
Quinn,' to hear her stab herself, and stab herself, and stab herself!
If he doesn't kiss her shoes, if he does not kneel in the dust to her,
I'll never believe in man again! I'll die a maid at forty and content!
I'll--but oh, la!" And Lady Betty broke off suddenly with a look of
consternation, "I'd forgotten! What am I to do? She's a dragon. She'll
not let me stay till he returns, no, not if I go on my knees to her!
And if I go, I lose all! Oh, la, sweet, what am I to do?"
She thought awhile with a face full of mischief. "Coke might meet us
in Lewes," she muttered, "and cut the knot, but that's a chance. Or I
might tell her--and that's to spoil sport. I must get a note to him
to-night. But she'll be giving her orders now, I expect; and it's odds
the men won't carry it. There's only Tom, and that's putting my hand
in very far!"
She thought awhile, then rubbed her lips with her handkerchief, and
laughing and blushing looked at it. "Well it leaves no mark," she
muttered with a grimace. "And if he's rude I can pay him as I paid him
before."
Apparently she would face the risk, for she set herself busily to
search among the dog-leashes and powder-horns, holsters, and tattered
volumes of farriery, that encumbered the great table. Presently she
unearthed a pewter ink-pot and an old swan-quill; and bearing these,
and a flyleaf ruthlessly torn from a number of the _Gentleman's
Magazine_, to a table in the bay window, she sat down and scrawled a
few lines. She folded the note into the shape of a cocked hat, bound
it deftly about with a floss of silk torn from her ribands; and having
succeeded so far, lacked only a postman. She had a good idea where he
was to be found, and having donned her hat and tied the strings more
nicely than usual, went on the terrace. There she was not long in
discovering him. He was kicking his heels on the horseblock under the
oak, between the terrace and the stables.
No one knew better than her ladyship how to play the innocent; but on
this occasion she had neither time nor mind to be taken by surprise.
She tripped down the steps, crossed the intervening turf, and pausing
before him opened her fire.
"Do you wish to earn your pardon, sir?" she asked. Her manner was as
cold and formal as it had been for the last three days.
Tom rose sheepishly, his mind in a whirl. For days she had avoided
him. She had drawn in her skirts if he passed near her; she had
ignored his hand at table; she had looked through him when he spoke.
Until she paused, until her voice sounded in his ears, he had thought
she would go by him; and for a moment he could not find his tongue to
answer her. Then "I don't understand," he muttered sullenly.
"I spoke plainly," Lady Betty answered, in a voice clear as a bell.
"But I will say it again. Do you wish, sir, to earn your pardon?"
Tom's face flamed. Unfortunately, his ill-conditioned side was
uppermost. "I don't want another slap in the face," he grumbled.
"And I do not want what I have found," Lady Betty retorted with
dignity, though the rebuff, which she had not expected, stung her. "I
came in search of a gentleman willing to do a lady a service, and I
have not found one. After this our acquaintance is at an end, sir. You
will oblige me by not speaking to me. Good evening." And she swept
away her head in the air.
Tom was not of the softest material, but at that, brute and boor were
the best names he gave himself. The love that resentment had held at
bay, returned in a flood and overwhelmed him. Sinking under remorse,
feeling that he would now die for a glance from her eyes whom he had
again and hopelessly offended, he rushed after her. Overtaking her at
the foot of the steps, he implored her, with humble, incoherent
prayers, to forgive him--to forgive him once more, only once more, and
he would be her slave for ever!
"It's only one chance I ask," he panted. "Give me one more chance
of--of showing that I am not the brute you think me. Oh, Lady Betty,
forgive me, and--and forget what I said. You've cut me to the heart
every hour for days past; you haven't looked at me; you've treated me
as if I were something lower than a thief-taker. And--and when I was
smarting under this, because I'd rather have a word from your lips
than a kiss from another, you came to me, and I--I've misbehaved
myself worse than before."
"No, not worse," Lady Betty said, in her cold, clear voice. "That was
impossible."
"But as bad as I could," Tom confessed, not over-comforted. "Oh why,
oh why," he continued, piteously, "am I always at my worst with you?
For I think more of you than of any one. I'm always thinking of you. I
can't sleep for thinking--what you are thinking of me, Lady Betty. I'd
lie down in the dust, and let you walk over me if it would give you
any pleasure. If it weren't for those d----d windows I'd kneel down
now and ask your pardon."
"I don't see what difference the windows make," Lady Betty said, in
her coldest tone. "They don't make your offence any less."
Tom might have answered that they made his punishment the greater;
but, instead, he plumped down on the lowest step, careless who saw him
if only Betty forgave him. "Oh, Lady Betty," he cried, "forgive me!"
"That is better," she said, judiciously.
"Oh, Lady Betty," he cried, "I humbly ask you to forgive me."
Lady Betty looked at him quietly from an upper step.
"You may get up," she said. "But I warn you, sir, you have yet to earn
your pardon. You have promised much, I want but a little. Will you
take a note from me to Lewes to-night?"
"If I live!" he cried, his eyes sparkling. "But that's a small thing."
"I trust in small things first," she answered.
"And great afterwards!"
She had much ado not to laugh, he looked at her so piteously, his
hands clasped. "Perhaps," she said. "At any rate the future will show.
Here is the note." She passed it to him quickly, with one eye on the
windows. "You will tell no one, you will mention it to no one; but you
will see that it reaches his hands to-night."
"It shall if I live," Tom answered fervently. "To whom am I to deliver
it?"
"To Sir Hervey."
Tom swore outright, and turned crimson. They looked at one another,
the man and the maid.
When Betty spoke again--after a long, strange pause, during which he
stood holding the note loosely in his fingers as if he would drop
it--it was in a tone of passion which she had not used before.
"Listen!" she said. "Listen, sir, and understand if you can--for it
behoves you! There is an offence that passes forgiveness. I believe
that a moment ago you were on the point of committing it. If so, and
if you have not yet repented, think, think before you do commit it.
For there will be no place for repentance afterwards. It is not for me
to defend my conduct, nor for you to suspect it," the young girl
continued proudly. "That is my father's right, and my husband's when I
have one. It imports no one else. But I will stoop to tell you this,
sir. If you had said the words that were on your lips a moment ago, as
surely as you stand there to-day, you would have come to me to-morrow
to crave my pardon, and to crave it in shame, in comparison of which
anything you have felt to-day is nothing. And you would have craved it
in vain!" she continued vehemently. "I would rather the lowest servant
here--soiled my lips--than you!"
Her passion had so much the better of her, when she came to the last
words, that she could scarcely utter them. But she recovered herself
with marvellous rapidity. "Do you take the note, sir," she said
coldly, "or do you leave it?"
"I will take it, if it be to the devil!" he cried.
"No," she answered quickly; and she stayed him by a haughty gesture.
"That will not do! Do you take it, thinking no evil? Do you take it,
thinking me a good woman? Or do you take it thinking me something
lower, infinitely lower, than the creatures you make your sport and
pastime?"
"I do, I do believe!" Tom cried; and, dropping on his knees, he hid
his face against her hoop-skirt, and pressed his lips to the stuff.
And strange to say when he had risen and gone--without another
word--there were tears in the girl's eyes. Tom had touched her.