Sophia: A Romance. Weyman Stanley John

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СКАЧАТЬ bottom and almost fell, lost a precious instant, and lost Tom. When she reached the spot where she had last seen him, and looked round, her brother was not to be seen.

      Or yes, there he was, in the act of vanishing down one of the dim alleys that led into the grove. Half laughing, half crying, innocently anticipating his surprise when he should see her, Sophia sped after him. He turned a corner-the place was a maze and dimly lighted-she followed him; she thought he met some one, she hurried on, and the next moment was all but in the arms of Hawkesworth.

      "Sophia!" the Irishman cried, pressing his hat to his heart as he bowed before her. "Oh, my angel, that I should be so blest! This is indeed a happy meeting."

      But she was far at the moment from thinking of him. Her brother occupied her whole mind. "Where is he," she cried, looking every way. "Where is Tom? Mr. Hawkesworth, you must have seen him. He must have passed you."

      "Seen whom, ma'am?" her admirer asked with eager devotion. He was tall, with a certain florid grace of carriage; and ready, for his hand was on his heart, and his eyes expressed the joy he felt, almost before she knew who stood before her. "If it is any one I know, make me happy by commanding me. If he be at the ends of the earth, I will bring him back."

      "It is my brother!"

      "Your brother?"

      "Yes-but you would not know him," she cried, stamping her foot with impatience. "How annoying!"

      "Not know him?" he answered gallantly. "Oh, ma'am, how little you know me!" And Hawkesworth extended his arm with a gesture half despairing, half reproachful. "How little you enter into my feelings if you think that I should not know your brother! My tongue I know is clumsy, and says little, but my eyes" – and certainly they dwelt boldly enough on her blushing face, "my eyes must inform you more correctly of my feelings."

      "Please, please do not talk like that!" she cried in a low voice, and she wrung her hands in distress. "I saw my brother, and I came down to overtake him, and-and somehow I have missed him."

      "But I thought that he was at Cambridge?" he said.

      "He should be," she replied. "But it was he. It was he indeed. I ran to catch him, and I have missed him, and I must go back at once. If you please, I must go back at once."

      "In one moment you shall!" he cried, barring the road, but with so eloquent a look and a tone so full of admiration that she could not resent the movement. "In one moment you shall. But, my angel, heaven has sent you to my side, heaven has taken pity on my passion, and given me this moment of delight-will you be more cruel and snatch it from me? Nay, but, sweet," he continued with ardour, making as if he would kneel, and take possession of her hand, "sweetest one, say that you, too, are glad! Say-"

      "Mr. Hawkesworth, I am glad," she murmured, trembling; while her face burned with blushes. "For it gives me an opportunity I might otherwise have lacked of-of-oh, I don't know how I can say it!"

      "Say what, madam?"

      "How I can take-take leave of you," she murmured, turning away her head.

      "Take leave of me?" he cried. "Take leave of me?"

      "Yes, oh, yes! Believe me, Mr. Hawkesworth," Sophia continued, beginning to stammer in her confusion, "I am not ungrateful for your attentions, I am not, indeed, ungrateful, but we-we must part."

      "Never!" he cried, rising and looking down at her. "Never! It is not your heart that speaks now, or it speaks but a lesson it has learned."

      Sophia was silent.

      "It is your friends who would part us," he continued, with stern and bitter emphasis. "It is your cold-blooded, politic brother-in-law; it is your proud sister-"

      "Stay, sir," Sophia said unsteadily. "She is my sister."

      "She is; but she would part us!" he retorted. "Do you think that I do not understand that? Do you think that I do not know why, too? They see in me only a poor gentleman. I cannot go to them, and tell them what I have told you! I cannot," he continued, with a gesture that in the daylight might have seemed a little theatrical, but in the dusk of the alley and to a girl's romantic perceptions commended itself gallantly enough, "put my life in their hands as I have put it in yours! I cannot tell them that the day will come when Plomer Hawkesworth will stand on the steps of a throne and enjoy all that a king's gratitude can confer. When he who now runs daily, nightly, hourly the risk of Layer's fate, whose head may any morning rot on Temple Bar and his limbs on York Gates-"

      Sophia interrupted him; she could bear no more. "Oh, no, no!" she cried, shuddering and covering her eyes. "God forbid! God forbid, sir! Rather-"

      "Rather what, sweet?" he cried, and he caught her hand in rapture.

      "Rather give up this-this dangerous life," she sobbed, overcome by the horror of the things his words had conjured up. "Let others tread such dangerous ways and run such risks. Give up the Jacobite cause, Mr. Hawkesworth, if you love me as you say you do, and I-"

      "Yes? Yes?" he cried; and across his handsome face, momentarily turned from her as if he would resist her pleading, there crept a look half of derision, half of triumph. "What of you, sweet?"

      But her reply was never spoken, for as he uttered the word the fireworks died down with startling abruptness, plunging the alley in which they stood into gloom. The change recalled the girl to a full and sudden sense of her position; to its risks and to its consequences, should her absence, even for a moment, be discovered. Wringing her hands in distress, in place of the words that had been on her lips, "Oh, I must go!" she cried. "I must get back at once!" And she looked for help to her lover.

      He did not answer her, and she turned from him, fearing he might try to detain her. But she had not taken three steps before she paused in agitation, uncertain in the darkness which way she had come. A giggling, squealing girl ran by her into the grove, followed by a man; at the same moment a distant fanfare of French horns, with the confused noise of a multitude of feet trampling the earth at once, announced that the entertainment was over, and that the assembly was beginning to leave the gardens.

      Sophia's heart stood still. What if she were missed? Worse still, what if she were left behind? "Oh," she cried, turning again to him, her hands outstretched, "which is the way? Mr. Hawkesworth, please, please show me the way! Please take me to them!"

      But the Irishman did not move.

      CHAPTER III

      THE CLOCK-MAKER

      It even seemed to Sophia that his face, as he stood watching her, took on a smirk of satisfaction, faint, but odious; and in that moment, and for the moment, she came near to hating him. She knew that in the set in which she moved much might be overlooked, and daily and hourly was overlooked, in the right people. But to be lost at Vauxhall at midnight, in the company of an unauthorised lover-this had a horribly clandestine sound; this should be sufficient to blacken the fame of a poor maid-or her country education was at fault. And knowing this, and hearing the confused sounds of departure rise each moment louder and more importunate, the girl grew frantic with impatience.

      "Which way? Which way?" she cried. "Do you hear me? Which way are the boxes, Mr. Hawkesworth? You know which way I came. Am I to think you a dolt, sir, or-or what?"

      "Or what?" he repeated, grinning feebly. To be candid, the occasion had not been foreseen, and the Irishman, though of readiest wit, could not on the instant make up his mind how he would act.

      "Or a villain?" she cried, with a furious glance. And in СКАЧАТЬ