The Grand Sophy Read online

  ‘She won’t think of that. Do you recall that I told you only the other day that she must be made to pity you instead of Augustus? Besides that, I am persuaded she will suffer perfect torments of jealousy. Only fancy! I was quite at a stand until I remembered what I had once heard pronounced by a most distinguished soldier! “Surprise is the essence of attack!” The most fortunate circumstance!’

  ‘Was it not?’ he said sarcastically. ‘I have a very good mind to get down at the next pike!’

  ‘You will ruin all if you do.’

  ‘It is abominable, Sophy!’

  ‘Yes, if the motive were not pure!’

  He said nothing, and she too remained silent for several minutes. At last, having turned it over in his mind, he said: ‘You had better tell me the whole. That I have only heard half I have no doubt at all! Where does Charles Rivenhall stand in all this?’

  She folded her hands on Tina’s back. ‘Alas! I have quarrelled so dreadfully with Charles that I am obliged to seek refuge at Lacy Manor!’ she said mournfully.

  ‘And have doubtless left a note behind you to inform him of this!’

  ‘Of course!’

  ‘I foresee a happy meeting!’ he commented bitterly.

  ‘That,’ she acknowledged, ‘was the difficulty! But I think I can overcome it. I promise you, Charlbury, you shall come out of this with a whole skin – well, no, perhaps not quite that, but very nearly!’

  ‘You do not know how much you relieve my mind! I daresay I may not be a match for Rivenhall, either with pistols or with my fists, but give me credit for not being quite so great a poltroon as to fear a meeting with him!’

  ‘I do,’ she assured him. ‘But it can serve no good purpose for Charles to mill you down – have I that correctly?’

  ‘Quite correctly!’

  ‘– or to put a bullet through you,’ she ended, her serenity unshaken.

  He was obliged to laugh. ‘I see that Rivenhall is more to be pitied than I am! Why did you quarrel with him?’

  ‘I had to make an excuse for flying from Berkeley Square! You must perceive that! I could not think of nothing else to do but to take out that young chestnut he has bought lately. A beautiful creature! Such grand, sloping shoulders! Such an action! But quite unbroke to London traffic, and by far too strong for any female to hold!’

  ‘I have seen the horse. Do you tell me seriously, Sophy, that you took him out?’

  ‘I did – shocking, was not it? I assure you, I suffered a real qualm in my conscience! No harm, however! He did not bolt with me, and Charles came to the rescue before I found myself in real difficulty. The things he said to me – ! I have never seen him in such a fury! If only I could remember the half of the insults he flung at my head! It is no matter, however: they gave me all the cause I needed to fly from his vicinity.’

  He closed his eyes for an anguished moment. ‘Informing him, no doubt, that you had sought my protection?’

  ‘No, there was no need: Cecy will tell him that!’

  ‘What a fortunate circumstance, to be sure! I hope you mean to contribute a handsome wreath to my obsequies?’

  ‘Certainly! In the nature of things, it is likely that you will predecease me.’

  ‘If I survive this adventure there can be no question of that. Your fate is writ clear: you will be murdered. I cannot conceive how it comes about that you were not murdered long since!’

  ‘How odd! Charles himself once said that to me, or something like it!’

  ‘There is nothing odd in it: any sensible man must say it!’

  She laughed, but said: ‘No, you are unjust! I have never yet done the least harm to anyone! It may be that with regard to Charles my stratagems may not succeed: in your case I am convinced they must! That may well content us. Poor Cecy! Only conceive how dreadful to be obliged to marry Augustus, and to spend the rest of one’s life listening to his poems!’

  This aspect of the situation struck Lord Charlbury so forcibly that he was smitten to silence. He said nothing of deserting Sophy when they stopped at the next pike, but appeared to be resigned to his fate.

  Lacy Manor, which lay a little way off the turnpike road, was an Elizabethan house, considerably added to in succeeding generations, but still retaining much of its original beauty. It was reached by an avenue of noble trees, and had once been set amongst well-tended formal gardens. These, through the circumstance of Sir Horace’s being not only an absentee but also a careless landlord, had become overgrown of late years, so that the shrubbery was indistinguishable from the wilderness, and unpruned rose bushes rioted at will in unweeded flower-beds. The sky had become overcast all day, but a fitful ray of sunlight, penetrating the lowering clouds, showed the mullioned windows of the house much in need of cleaning. A trail of smoke issued from one chimney, the only observable sign that the house was still inhabited. Sophy, alighting from the chaise, looked about her critically, while Charlbury tugged at the iron bell-pull beside the front-door.

  ‘Everything seems to be in shocking disorder!’ she observed. ‘I must tell Sir Horace that it will not do! He should not neglect the house in this way. There is work here for an army of gardeners! He never liked the place, you know. I have sometimes wondered if it was because my mother died here.’ Lord Charlbury made a sympathetic sound in his throat, but Sophy continued cheerfully: ‘But I daresay it is only because he is shockingly indolent! Ring the bell again, Charlbury!’

  After a prolonged interval, they heard the sound of footsteps within the house, to be followed immediately by the scrape of bolts being drawn back, and the clank of a chain removed from the door.

  ‘I am reconciled, Sophy!’ announced Charlbury. ‘Never did I hope to find myself existing between the covers of a library novel! Will there be cobwebs, and a skeleton under the stairs?’

  ‘I fear not, but only think how delightful if there should be!’ she retorted. She added, as the door was opened, and a surprised face appeared in the aperture: ‘Good-day, Clavering! Yes, it is I indeed, and I have come home to see how you and Mathilda go on!’

  The retainer, a spare man with grizzled locks and a bent back, peered at her for a moment before gasping: ‘Miss Sophy! Lor’, miss, if we’d thought you was coming – ! Such a turn as it give me, to hear the bell a-pealing! Here, Matty! Matty, I say! It’s Miss Sophy!’

  A female form, as stout as he was lean, appeared in the background, uttering distressful sounds, and trying to untie the strings of a grimy apron. Much flustered, Mrs Clavering begged her young mistress to step into the house, and to excuse the disorder everywhere. They had had no warning of her advent: the master had said he would take order when he returned from foreign parts: she doubted whether there was as much as a pinch of tea in the house: if she had but known of Miss Sophy’s intention to visit them she would have had the chimneys swept, and the best parlour cleaned and taken out of Holland covers.

  Sophy soothed her agitation with the assurance that she had come prepared to find the house in disarray, and stepped into the hall. This was a large apartment, panelled and low-pitched, from which, at one end, a handsome staircase of oak rose in easy flights to the upper floors of the house. The chairs were all shrouded in Holland covers, and a film of dust lay over the gate-legged table in the centre of the room. The air struck unpleasantly dank, and a large patch of damp on one wall made this circumstance easily understandable.

  ‘We must open all the windows, and light fires!’ Sophy said briskly. ‘Has the Marquesa – has a Spanish lady arrived yet?’

  She was assured that no Spanish lady had been seen at the Manor, a circumstance in which the Claverings seemed to think they deserved to be congratulated.

  ‘Good!’ said Sophy. ‘She will be here presently, and we must strive to make things a little more comfortable before we admit her. Bring some wood, and kindling for this fire, Clavering, and do you, Matty, pull off these covers! If there is no tea in the house, I am sure there is some ale! Bring some for Lord Charlbury, if you please! Charlbury, I
beg your pardon for inviting you to so derelict a house! Wait, Clavering! Are the stables in decent order? I don’t wish the chaise to drive away, and the horses must be baited, and rubbed down, and the post-boys refreshed!’

  Lord Charlbury, abandoning his scruples to enjoyment of this situation, said: ‘Will you permit me to attend to that matter for you? If Clavering will show me the way to your stables – ?’

  ‘Yes, pray do so!’ said Sophy gratefully. ‘I must see which rooms are most fit to be used, and until we have a fire lit here it will be most uncomfortable for you.’

  His lordship, correctly interpreting this to mean that he would be very much in the way if he stayed in the house, went off with Clavering to lead the post-boys to the stables – happily still water-tight, and under the charge of an aged pensioner, whose rheumy eye perceptibly brightened at the sight of even such cattle as job-horses. A stout cob, and a couple of farm-horses, were the only occupants of the commodious stables, but the pensioner assured him that there was both bedding and fodder enough, and further undertook to regale the post-boys in his own cottage, which adjoined the stables.

  Lord Charlbury then strolled about the gardens until some heavy drops of rain drove him back to the house. There he found that the covers had been taken off the chairs in the hall, a duster employed, and a fire lit in the gigantic hearth.

  ‘It is not really cold,’ said Sophy, ‘but it will make everything appear more cheerful!’

  His lordship, dubiously eyeing the puffs of smoke issuing from the fireplace into the room, agreed to this meekly enough, and even made a show of warming his hands at the small blue flame showing amidst the coals. A more violent gust of smoke caused him to retreat, seized by a fit of coughing. Sophy knelt to thrust a poker under the black mass, raising it to let the draught through. ‘It’s my belief there may be a starling’s nest in the chimney,’ she observed dispassionately. ‘Mathilda, however, says fires always smoke for a while when the chimneys are cold. We shall see! I found some tea in one of the cupboards in the pantry, and Mathilda is bringing it to us directly. She had no notion it was there: I wonder how long it has lain hidden in the cupboard?’

  ‘I wonder?’ echoed his lordship, fascinated by the thought of this relic of forgotten days, at Lacy Manor.

  ‘Fortunately, tea does not turn bad with keeping,’ said Sophy. ‘At least – does it?’

  ‘I have no idea, but that we shall also see,’ returned Charlbury. He began to walk about the hall, inspecting the pictures and the ornaments. ‘What a shame it is that this place should be left to go to ruin!’ he remarked. ‘That is a charming Dresden group, and I have quite lost my heart to that Harlequin over there. I wonder your father would not rather prefer to hire his house to some respectable people while he is employed abroad than let it rot!’

  ‘Well, for a great many years he allowed my aunt Clara to live here,’ exclaimed Sophy. ‘She was most eccentric, and kept cats, and died two years ago.’

  ‘I don’t think she took very good care of the house,’ said Charlbury, putting up his glass to inspect a landscape in a heavy gilded frame.

  ‘No, I fear she cannot have. Never mind! Sir Horace will soon put it to rights. Meanwhile, Mathilda is to set the breakfast parlour in order, and we may sit there, and be cosy presently.’ She frowned slightly. ‘The only thing that troubles me a little is dinner,’ she confided. ‘It does not appear to me that Mathilda has the least notion of cookery, and I must confess that I have not either. You may say that this is a trifling circumstance, but –’

  ‘No,’ interrupted his lordship, with great firmness. ‘I shall say nothing of the sort! Are we dining here? Must we?’

  ‘Oh, yes, I am sure we must make up our minds to that!’ she replied. ‘I am not quite certain when we may expect to see Cecilia, but I hardly think she will reach us before seven o’clock, for she was gone to Richmond with my aunt, you know, and they will very likely spend the afternoon there. Are you interested in pictures? Shall I take you to show you the Long Gallery? The best ones are hung there, I think.’

  ‘Thank you, I should like to see them. Are you expecting Rivenhall to accompany his sister?’

  ‘Well, I imagine he will. After all, she will hardly set forth alone, and he must surely be the person she would turn to in such a predicament. There is no saying, of course, but you may depend upon it that if Charles does not come with Cecy he will follow her swiftly. Let us go up to the Gallery until tea is ready for us!’

  She led the way to the staircase, pausing by a chair to pick up from it her large travelling-reticule. The Gallery, which ran along the north side of the house, was in sepulchral darkness, heavy curtains having been drawn across its several tall windows. Sophy began to fling these back, saying: ‘There are two Vandykes, and something that is said to be a Holbein, though Sir Horace doubts it, and that is my mother’s portrait, done by Hoppner. I don’t remember her myself, but Sir Horace never cared for this likeness: he says it makes her simper, which she never did.’

  ‘You are not very like her,’ Charlbury remarked, looking up at the portrait.

  ‘Oh, no! She was thought a great beauty!’ Sophy said.

  He smiled, but made no comment. They passed on to the next picture, and so the length of the Gallery, when Sophy supposed that Mathilda would have set the tea-tray for them. She thought the curtains should be drawn again, so Charlbury went to the windows to perform this duty for her. He had shut the light out from two of them, and had stretched out his hand to grasp one of the curtains of the third when Sophy, from behind him, said: ‘Stay just as you are for an instant, Charlbury. Can you see the summer-house from where you stand?’

  He stood still, his arm across the window, and had just begun to say: ‘I can see something through the trees which might be –’ when there was a loud report, and he sprang aside, clutching his forearm, which felt as though a red-hot wire had seared it. For a moment, his senses were entirely bewildered by the shock; then he became aware that his sleeve was singed and rent, that blood was welling up between his fingers, and that Sophy was laying down an elegant little pistol.

  She was looking a trifle pale, but she smiled reassuringly at him, and said, as she came towards him: ‘I do beg your pardon! An infamous thing to have done, but I thought it would very likely make it worse for you if I warned you!’

  ‘Sophy, have you run mad?’ he demanded furiously, beginning to twist his handkerchief round his arm. ‘What the devil do you mean by it?’

  ‘Come into one of the bedchambers, and let me bind it up! I have everything ready. I was afraid you might be a little cross, for I am sure it must have hurt you abominably. It took the greatest resolution to make me do it,’ she said, gently propelling him towards the door.

  ‘But why? In God’s name, what have I done that you must needs put a bullet through me?’

  ‘Oh, nothing in the world! That door, if you please, and take off your coat. My dread was that my aim might falter, and I should break your arm, but I am sure I have not, have I?’

  ‘No, of course you have not! It is hardly more than a graze, but I still don’t perceive why –’

  She helped him to take off his coat, and to roll up his sleeve. ‘No, it is only a slight flesh wound: I am so thankful!’

  ‘So am I!’ said his lordship grimly. ‘I may think myself fortunate not to be dead, I suppose!’

  She laughed. ‘What nonsense! At that range? However, I do think Sir Horace would have been proud of me, for my aim was as steady as though I were shooting at a wafer, and it would not have been wonderful, you know, if my hand had trembled. Sit down, so that I may bathe it!’

  He obeyed, holding his arm over the bowl of water she had so thoughtfully provided. He had a very lively sense of humour, and now that the first shock was over, he could not prevent his lip quivering. ‘Yes, indeed!’ he retorted. ‘One can readily imagine a parent’s pleasure at such an exploit! Resolution is scarcely the word for it, Sophy! Don’t you even mean to fall into a swoon at
the sight of the blood?’

  She looked quickly up from her task of sponging the wound. ‘Good God, no! I am not missish, you know!’

  At that he flung back his head and broke into a shout of laughter. ‘No, no, Sophy! You’re not missish!’ he gasped, when he could speak at all. ‘The Grand Sophy!’

  ‘I wish you will keep still!’ she said severely, patting his arm with a soft cloth. ‘See, it is scarcely bleeding now! I will dust it with basilicum powder, and bind it up for you, and you may be comfortable again.’

  ‘I am not in the least comfortable, and shall very likely be in a high fever presently. Why did you do it, Sophy?’

  ‘Well,’ she said, quite seriously, ‘Mr Wychbold said that Charles would either call you out for this escapade, or knock you down, and I don’t at all wish anything of that nature to befall you.’

  This effectually put a period to his amusement. Grasping her wrist with his sound hand, he exclaimed. ‘Is this true? By God, I have a very good mind to box your ears! Do you imagine that I am afraid of Charles Rivenhall?’

  ‘No, I daresay you are not, but only conceive how shocking it would be if Charles perhaps killed you, all through my fault!’

  ‘Nonsense!’ he said angrily. ‘And if either of us were crazy enough to let it come to that, which, I assure you, we are not – !’

  ‘No, I feel you are right, but also I think Mr Wychbold was right in thinking that Charles would – what does he call it? – plant you a facer?’

  ‘Very likely, but although I may be no match for Rivenhall, I might still give quite a tolerable account of myself !’

  She began to wind a length of lint round his forearm. ‘It could not answer,’ she said. ‘If you were to floor Charles, Cecy would not like it above half; and if you imagine, my dear Charlbury, that a back eye and a bleeding nose will help your cause with her, you must be a great gaby!’

  ‘I thought,’ he said sarcastically, ‘that she was to be made to pity me?’

  ‘Exactly so! And that is the circumstance which decided me to shoot you!’ said Sophy triumphantly.