The Grand Sophy (44 page)

“Providence must have led me to it. I could not imagine what brought me here, but it doesn’t signify. When I saw Sophy standing in the open doorway, holding aloft the lamp, the scales fell from my eyes, and all doubts were resolved. I am engaged to dine somewhere or other, but I shan’t regard it.”

“You don’t feel that you should perhaps ride back to town to keep your engagement?” suggested his lordship.

“No,” replied Mr. Fawnhope simply. “I prefer to be here. There is also a
Galatea
, but not an original copy.” He then sat down at the table and opened the book, poring over it until interrupted by Sophy, who came in with a bundle of candles tucked under one arm and a shallow wooden box held carefully between her hands. Beside her, a mixture of curiosity and jealousy, pranced her little greyhound, from time to time springing up to reach the box.

Mr. Fawnhope leaped to his feet and held out his hands to take the box from her. “Give it to me! An urn you might bear but not a sordid box!”

She relinquished it, saying practically, “Mrs. Clavering will bring that presently, but it is not yet time for the tea tray, you know. We have not dined! Careful! Poor little things, they have no mother!”

“Sophy, what in the
world
—?” exclaimed Charlbury, perceiving that the box contained a brood of yellow ducklings. “You do not mean to cook these for dinner, I do trust?”

“Good gracious, no! Only Mrs. Clavering has been rearing them in the warmth of the kitchen, and Sancia complains that they will run under her feet. Set the box down in this corner, Augustus. Tina will not harm them!”

He obeyed her, and the ducklings, all vigorously cheeping, at once struggled out of the box, one of them, more venturesome than the rest, setting forth on an exploratory expedition. Sophy caught it and held it cupped in her hands, while Tina, quite disgusted, jumped onto a chair, and lay down with her head pointedly averted. Mr. Fawnhope’s smile swept across his face, and he quoted, “ ‘Lo, as a careful housewife runs to catch One of her feathered creatures broke away!’ “

“Yes, but I think that if we were to spread something over the top of the box they will not break away,” said Sophy. “Charlbury’s driving coat will answer famously! You do not object, Charlbury?”

“Yes, Sophy, I do object!” he said firmly, removing the garment from her hands.

“Very well, then—” She stopped, for Tina had lifted her head, her ears on the prick, and had uttered a sharp bark. The sound of horses and of carriage wheels was heard. Sophy turned to Mr. Fawnhope, saying quickly, “Augustus, pray will you step into the kitchen—you will find it at the end of the passage at the back there—and desire Mrs. Clavering to give you a cloth, or a blanket, or some such thing? You need not make haste to return, for I daresay Sancia would like you to pluck a chicken!”

“Is the Marquesa in the kitchen?” said Mr. Fawnhope. “What is she doing there? I wish her to see this book I have found in the library!”

Sophy picked it up from the table and gave it to him. “Yes, pray show it to her! She will like it excessively! Pay no heed if you should chance to hear the doorbell. I will open the door!”

She fairly thrust him toward the door at the back of the hall, and, having seen him safely through it, shut it, and said in a conspiratorial voice, “Cecilia! Take care of the ducklings!”

She was still holding the one she had picked up, when she set the front door wide. The rain had stopped, and the moonlight showed through a break in the clouds. Hardly had Sophy opened the door than her cousin almost fell upon her neck. “Sophy! Oh, my dearest Sophy— No, it was too shocking of you! You must have known I could not wish— Sophy, Sophy, how could you do such a thing?”

“Cecy, pray take care! This poor little duckling! Oh, good God! Miss Wraxton!”

“Yes, Miss Stanton-Lacy, I!” said Miss Wraxton, joining the group in the porch. “You did not, I fancy, expect to see me!”

“No, and you will be very much in the way!” replied Sophy frankly. “Go in, Cecy!”

She gave her cousin a gentle push across the threshold as she spoke. Cecilia stood transfixed, as Charlbury, rising from his chair by the fire, stepped forward, his left arm interestingly reposing in its sling. Cecilia was carrying both a reticule and a feather muff, but she let both fall to the floor in her consternation. “Oh!” she exclaimed faintly. “You are hurt! Oh, Charlbury!”

She moved toward him with both hands held out, and his lordship, acting with great presence of mind, hurriedly disengaged his arm from the sling and received her in a comprehensive embrace. “No, no, dearest Cecilia! The merest scratch!” he assured her.

Such heroism caused Cecilia to shed tears. “It is all my fault! My wretched folly! I can never cease to blame myself! Charlbury, only tell me you forgive me!”

“Never, for wearing a hat which prevents my kissing you!” he said, with a shaken laugh.

She raised her head at that, smiling through her tears, and he contrived to kiss her in spite of the hat. Sophy, effectually blocking the entrance, observed this passage with all the air of one well satisfied with her labors.

“Will you be good enough to allow us to enter?” said Miss Wraxton, in frozen accents.

“Us?” said Sophy, quickly looking round. She perceived a stout figure behind Miss Wraxton, in a soaked coat and a sodden beaver, and, after peering incredulously for a moment, exclaimed, “Good God! Lord Bromford? Now, what the deuce does this mean?”

Cecilia, who had cast off her hat to join her muff on the floor raised her head from the broad shoulder that was supporting it, to say huskily, “Oh, Sophy, pray do not be cross with me! Indeed, it was not my doing! Charlbury, what happened? How do you come to be hurt?”

His lordship, still clasping her to his bosom, rolled an anguished eye at Sophy. She came promptly to his rescue. “Only a flesh wound, dearest Cecy! Footpads—or do I mean highwaymen?—yes, highwaymen! Just a flurry of shots, you know, and poor Charlbury had the misfortune to be hit! But they were driven off, and we took no other hurt. Charlbury behaved with the greatest presence of mind imaginable— perfectly cool, and
more
than a match for such rascals!”

“Oh,
Charlbury
!” sighed Cecilia, overcome by the thought of such intrepid conduct.

His lordship, soothingly patting her shoulder, could not resist asking, “How many of the desperate ruffians did I vanquish, Sophy?”

“That,” said Sophy, quelling him with a frown, “we shall never know!”

Miss Wraxton’s cool voice broke in on this. However glad she might be to see Cecilia’s difference with Charlbury made up, her sense of propriety was really lacerated by the spectacle of Cecilia nestling within his lordship’s arm. “My dear Cecilia, pray recollect yourself!” she said, blushing, and averting her gaze.

“I do not know what I should do!” suddenly announced Lord Bromford, in lamentable accents. “I came with the purpose of calling that fellow to book, but I have caught a cold!”

“If that is to my address,” said Charlbury, “a cold may well be the least of the ills that will shortly befall you! Don’t tread on the ducklings!”

“No, indeed!” said Sophy, swooping on one that had narrowly escaped death under Bromford’s foot. “What a clumsy creature you are! Do, pray, take heed where you are stepping!”

“I should not be amazed if already I have a fever,” said Bromford, uneasily eying the ducklings. “Miss Wraxton, these birds! One does not keep birds in the house! I do not understand why they are running all over the floor. There is another! I do not like it. It is not what I have been used to.”

“I hope, dear Lord Bromford, that nothing that has occurred this day is what either you or I has been used to,” responded Miss Wraxton. “Do let me beg of you to take off that greatcoat! Believe that it was no wish of mine that you were compelled to ride through such a downpour! If you have done your constitution any lasting injury I can never forgive myself for having accepted your escort! Your boots are wet through! Nothing can be more fatal than chilled feet! Miss Stanton-Lacy, is it too much to request that a servant—I presume there is a servant here?—should be sent for to remove Lord Bromford’s boots?”

“Yes, because he has gone out to kill chickens,” replied Sophy. “Cecy, help me to collect the ducklings, and put them back into the box! If we were to place your muff on top of them they will very likely believe it to, be their mother, and settle down!”

Cecilia having no fault to find with this scheme, it was at once put into execution. Miss Wraxton, who had coaxed Lord Bromford into a deep chair by the fire, said, “This levity will not serve, Miss Stanton-Lacy! Even you will allow that your conduct demands some explanation! Are you aware of the terrible consequences which must have followed on this— this escapade, had your cousin and I not come to rescue you from the disgrace you appear to regard so lightly?”

Lord Bromford sneezed.

“Oh, hush, Eugenia!” begged Cecilia. “How can you talk so? All’s well that ends well!”

“You must be lost to every scruple of female delicacy, Cecilia, if you can think it well for your cousin to show such a brazen face, when she has lost both character and reputation!”

The door at the back of the hall opened to admit the Marquesa, a sacking apron tied round her waist and a large ladle in her hand. “Eggs I must instantly have!” she announced. “And Lope de Vega I will not have, though in general a fine poet, but not in the kitchen! Someone must go to the chicken house, and tell Vincent to bring me eggs. Who are these people?”

It might have been supposed that the appearance on the scene of the Marquesa would have filled Miss Wraxton’s Christian soul with relief, but no such emotion was visible in her countenance, which, on the contrary, froze into an expression of such chagrin as to be almost ludicrous. She could find not a word to say and was unable to command herself enough even to shake hands with the Marquesa.

Lord Bromford, always punctilious, rose from his chair and bowed. Sophy presented him, and he begged pardon for having contracted what he feared would prove to be a dangerous cold. The Marquesa held him off with the ladle, saying, “If you have a cold, do not approach me! Now I see that it is Miss Rivenhall whose beauty is entirely English, and that other one, also in the English
estilo
, but less beautiful. I do not think two chickens will be enough, so that man with the cold must eat the pig’s cheek. But eggs I must have!”

Having delivered herself of this ultimatum, she withdrew, paying not the smallest heed to Lord Bromford’s agitated protest that all forms of pork were poison to him, and that a bowl of thin gruel was all that he felt himself able to swallow. He seemed to feel that Miss Wraxton was the only person among those present who was likely to sympathize with him, for he looked piteously at her. She responded at once, assuring him that he should not be asked to eat the pig’s cheek. “If it were possible to remove you from this draughty hall!” she said, casting an angry glance at Sophy. “Had I known that I was coming to an establishment which appears to be something between a fowlyard and bedlam, I would never have set forth from town!”

“Well, I must say I wish you had known it, then,” said Sophy candidly. “We could have been comfortable enough, if only you and Lord Bromford had minded your own business, and now I suppose we must make gruel, and mustard foot baths!”

“A mustard foot bath,” said Lord Bromford eagerly, “would be the very thing! I do not say that it will entirely arrest the chill; we must not raise our hopes too high! But if we can prevent its descending upon the lungs it will be a great thing! Thank you! I am very much obliged to you!”

“Good gracious, you absurd creature, I did not mean it!” Sophy cried, breaking into laughter.

“No!” said Miss Wraxton. “We may readily believe you have not a grain of womanly compassion, Miss Stanton-Lacy! Do not be uneasy, Lord Bromford! If any efforts of
mine
can save you from illness they shall not be spared!”

He pressed her hand in a speaking way and allowed her to press him gently down again into his chair.

“Meanwhile,” said Charlbury, “let us not forget that eggs the Marquesa must have! I had better try to find Talgarth and the hen house.”

Sophy, who was looking thoughtful, said slowly, “Yes. And I
think
— Charlbury, bring a candle into the breakfast parlor, and let us see if it is warm enough yet for Lord Bromford to sit in!”

He went with her into this apartment and had no sooner passed the doorway than she clasped his wrist, and said in an urgent under voice, “Never mind the eggs! Go to the stables, and direct the Ombersley servants to pole up the horses again! You may change them at the inn in the village, or, if not there, at Epsom! Take Cecilia back to London! Only think how embarrassing for her to be obliged to meet Augustus now! She would dislike it excessively! Besides, it is quite ridiculous for so many people to be crowded into the house, and not at all what I bargained for!”

He grimaced, but said, “If I do it, will you go with us?”

“What, to sit bodkin between you! No, I thank you!”

“But I cannot leave you here!”

“Nonsense! It would not suit me at all to be going to London yet!”

He set the candlestick down, and took her hands in his, and held them firmly. “Sophy, I owe you a debt of gratitude. Thank you, my dear! You may command me in anything. Shall I remove Miss Wraxton?”

“No, for I have had a capital notion about her. She shall stay to nurse Bromford, and very likely they will make a match of it!”