Sophy of Kravonia Part 5

"Why not? Every reason why she should be," he answered with his lips.

His eyes answered more, but he refrained his tongue. He was scrupulously a gentleman--more so perhaps than, had s.e.xes and places been reversed, Sophy herself would have been. But his eyes told her. "Only," he went on, "if so, why did you hide?"

That bit of chaff did not anger Sophy. But it went home to a different purpose--far deeper, far truer home than the young man had meant. Not the mark only reddened--even the cheeks flushed. She said no word. With a fling-out of her arms--a gesture strangely, prophetically foreign as it seemed to him in after-days--she exhibited herself--the print frock, the soiled ap.r.o.n, the bare arms, red hands, the ugly knot of her hair, the sc.r.a.p of cap she wore. For a moment her lips quivered, while the mark--the Red Star of future days and future fame--grew redder still.

The only sound was of Lorenzo's worrying the last tough sc.r.a.p of bone.

The lad, gentleman as he was, was good flesh and blood, too--and the blood was moving. He felt a little tightness in his throat; he was new to it. New, too, was Sophy Grouch to what his eyes said to her, but she took it with head erect and a glance steadily levelled at his.

"Yes," he said. "But I shouldn't have looked at any of that--and I shouldn't have looked at her either."

Brightly the mark glowed; subtly the eyes glowed. There was silence again.

Almost a start marked Dunstanbury's awakening. "Come, Lorenzo!" he cried; he raised his hat and turned away, followed by his dog, Lorenzo the Magnificent.

Sophy took up her lettuces and carried them into the kitchen.

"There you are, at last! And what's put you in a temper now?" asked Mrs.

Smilker. She had learned the signs of the mark.

Sophy smiled. "It's not temper this time, Mrs. Smilker. I--I'm very happy to-day," she said. "Oh, I do hope the salad will be good!"

For he who was to eat of the salad--had he not forgotten print frock and soiled ap.r.o.n, bare arms, red hands, ugly knot, and execrable cap? He would not have looked at them--no, nor at beautiful many-tinted Julia Robins in her pride! He had forgotten all these to look at the stained cheek and the eyes of subtle glow. She had glanced in the mirror of love and sipped from the cup of power.

Such was her first meeting with Lord Dunstanbury. If it were ever forgotten, it was not Dunstanbury who forgot.

The day had wrought much in her eyes; it had wrought more than she dreamed of. Her foot was near the ladder now, though she could not yet see the lowest rung.

IV

FATE'S WAY--OR LADY MEG'S

The scene is at Hazleby, Lord Dunstanbury's Ess.e.x seat. His lords.h.i.+p is striking the top off his breakfast egg.

"I say, Cousin Meg, old Brownlow's got a deuced pretty kitchen-maid."

"There you go! There you go! Just like your father, and your grandfather, and all of them! If the English people had any spirit, they'd have swept the Dunstanburys and all the wicked Whig gang into the sea long ago."

"Before you could turn round they'd have bought it up, enclosed it, and won an election by opening it to s.h.i.+ps at a small fee on Sundays," said Mr. Pindar.

"Why are Whigs worse than Tories?" inquired Mr. Pikes, with an air of patient inquiry.

"The will of Heaven, I suppose," sniffed Lady Margaret Duddington.

"To display Divine Omnipotence in that line," suggested Mr. Pindar.

"A deuced pretty girl!" said Dunstanbury, in reflective tones. He was doing his best to reproduce the impression he had received at Morpingham Hall, but obviously with no great success.

"On some pretext, frivolous though it be, let us drive over and see this miracle," Pindar suggested.

"How could we better employ this last day of our visit? You'll drive us over, Percival?"

"No, thank you, Mr. Pindar," said the young man, resolute in wisdom.

"I'll send you over, if you like."

"I'll come with you," said Pikes. "But how account for ourselves? Old Brownlow is unknown to us."

"If Percival had been going, I'd have had nothing to do with it, but I don't mind taking you two old sillies," said Lady Margaret. "I wanted to pay a call on Elizabeth Brownlow anyhow. We were at school together once. But I won't guarantee you a sight of the kitchen-maid."

"It's a pretty drive--for this part of the country," observed Dunstanbury.

"It may well become your favorite road," smiled Mr. Pindar, benevolently.

"And since Lady Meg goes with us, it's already ours," added Mr. Pikes, gallantly.

So they used to go on--for hours at a time, as Dunstanbury has declared--both at Hazleby when they were there, and at Lady Meg's house in Berkeley Square, where they almost always were. They were pleased to consider themselves politicians--Pikes a Whig, twenty years behind date, Pindar a Tory, two hundred. It was all an affectation--a.s.sumed for the purpose, but with the very doubtful result of amusing Lady Meg. To Dunstanbury the two old waifs--for waifs of the sea of society they were, for all that each had a sufficient income to his name and a reputable life behind him--were sheerly tiresome--and there seems little ground to differ from his opinion. But they were old family friends, and he endured with his usual graciousness.

Their patroness--they would hardly have gibed at the word--was a more notable person. Lady Meg--the world generally, and Sophy always, spoke of her by that style, and we may take the same liberty--was only child of the great Earl of Dunstanbury. The t.i.tle and estates pa.s.sed to his grandnephew, but half a million or so of money came to her. She took the money, but vowed, with an outspoken thankfulness, that from the Dunstanbury family she had taken nothing else. If the boast were true, there must have been a powerful strain of eccentricity and perversity derived from elsewhere. All the Dunstanbury blood was Whig; Lady Meg counted the country ruined in 1688. Even Dunstanbury had been a man of sensibility; Lady Meg declared war on emotion--especially on the greatest of all emotions. The Dunstanbury att.i.tude in thought had always been free, even tending to the materialistic; Lady Meg would believe in anything--so long as she couldn't see it. A queer woman, choosing to go to war with the world and infinitely enjoying the gratuitous conflict which she had herself provoked! With half a million pounds and the Duddington blood one can afford these recondite luxuries--and to have a Pindar and a Pikes before whom to exhibit their rare flavor. She was aggressive, capricious, hard to live with. Fancies instead of purposes, whims instead of interests, and not, as it seems, much affection for anybody--she makes rather a melancholy picture; but in her time she made a bit of a figure, too.

The air of the household was stormy that day at Morpingham--an incentive to the expedition, not a deterrent, for Lady Meg, had she known it.

Sophy was in sore disgrace--accused, tried, and convicted of insubordination and unseemly demeanor towards Mrs. Smilker. The truth seems to be that this good woman (Rest her soul! She has a neat tombstone in Morpingham church-yard) loved--like many another good creature--good ale sometimes a trifle too well; and the orders she gave when ale had been plentiful did not always consort with her less-mellow injunctions. In no vulgar directness, but with a sarcasm which Mrs.

Smilker felt without understanding, Sophy would point out these inconsistencies. Angered and humiliated, fearful too, perhaps, that her subordinate would let the secret out, Mrs. Smilker made haste to have the first word with the powers; and against the word of the cook the word of the cook-maid weighed as naught. After smaller troubles of this origin there had come a sort of crisis to-day. The longest of long lectures had been read to Sophy by mistress and repeated (slightly condensed) by master; then she was sent away to think it over; an abject apology to outraged Mrs. Smilker must be forthcoming, or banishment was the decree. Informed of this ultimatum, Sophy went out and hung about the avenue, hoping for Julia to appear. Soon Julia came and heard the story. She had indignation in readiness, and--what was more to the purpose--a plan. Soon Sophy's eyes grew bright.

Into this storm-tossed house came Lady Meg and her spaniels. This unkind name, derived at first from the size and shape of Mr. Pindar's ears (they were large, and hung over at the top), had been stretched to include Mr. Pikes also, with small loss of propriety. Both gentlemen were low of stature, plump of figure, hairy on the face; both followed obediently at the heels of commanding Lady Meg. The amenities of the luncheon-table opened hearts. Very soon the tale of Sophy's iniquities was revealed; incidentally, and unavoidably if Sophy's heinous fault were to appear in its true measure, the tally of the Brownlows'

benevolence was reckoned. But Mrs. Brownlow won small comfort from Lady Meg: she got a stiff touch of the truth.

"Ran in and out of the drawing-room!" she said. "Did she? The truth is, Lizzie, you've spoiled her, and now you're angry with her for being spoiled."

"What is she now, Mrs. Brownlow?" asked Pindar, with a sly intention.

Was this Percival's deuced pretty girl?

"She works in the kitchen, Mr. Pindar."

"The girl!" his eyes signalled to Mr. Pikes. "Let Lady Meg see her," he urged, insinuatingly. "She has a wonderful way with girls."

"I don't want to see her; and I know your game, Pindar," said Lady Meg.

"I'm afraid she must go," sighed Mrs. Brownlow. Her husband said, more robustly, that such an event would be a good riddance--a saying repeated, with the rest of the conversation, by the butler (one William Byles, still living) to the gratified ears of Mrs. Smilker in the kitchen.

"But I'm not easy about her future. She's an odd child, and looks it."

"Pretty?" This from Mr. Pindar.

"Well, I don't know. Striking-looking, you'd rather say, perhaps, Mr.

Pindar."

"Let her go her own way. We've talked quite enough about her." Lady Meg sounded decisive--and not a little bored.