The Grand Sophy (3 page)

As he shut the door behind him, his mother looked up, started slightly, and said with a nervous inflection which annoyed her brother: “Oh! Charles! Only fancy! Your uncle Horace!”

“So Dassett informed me,” responded Mr. Rivenhall. “How do you do, sir?”

He shook hands with his uncle, drew up a chair, and sat down, civilly engaging Sir Horace in conversation. His mother, fidgeting first with the fringe of her shawl and then with her handkerchief, presently broke in on this interchange to say, “Charles, you remember Sophia? Your little cousin!”

Mr. Rivenhall did not present the appearance of one who remembered his little cousin, but he said in his cool way, “Certainly. I hope she is well, sir?”

“Never had a day’s illness in her life, barring the measles,” said Sir Horace. “You’ll see her for yourself soon; your mother is going to take charge of her while I’m in Brazil.”

It was plain that this way of breaking the news did not recommend itself to Lady Ombersley, who at once hurried into speech. “Well, of course it is not quite decided yet, though I am sure there is nothing I should like better than to have my dear brother’s daughter to stay with me. I was thinking, too, Charles, that it would be so pleasant for Cecilia. Sophia and she are nearly the same age, you know.”

“Brazil?” said Mr. Rivenhall. “That should be very interesting, I daresay. Do you make a long stay there, sir?”

“Oh, no!” replied Sir Horace vaguely. “Probably not. It will depend upon circumstance. I have been telling your mother that I shall be much in her debt if she can find an eligible husband for my Sophy. It’s time she was married, and your mother seems, from what I hear, to be quite a dab in that line. I understand I have to offer you my felicitations, my boy?”

“Thank you, yes,” said Mr. Rivenhall, with a slight bow.

“If you should not dislike it, Charles, I own I should be very happy to have Sophia,” said Lady Ombersley placatingly.

He cast her an impatient glance, and replied, “I beg you will do precisely as you wish, ma’am. I cannot conceive what business it is of mine.”

“Of course I have explained to your uncle that we lead very quiet lives.”

“She won’t give a fig for that,” said Sir Horace comfortably. “She’s a good little thing, never at a loss for something to occupy herself with. Just as happy in a Spanish village as in Vienna, or Brussels.”

At this, Lady Ombersley sat up with a jerk. “Do not tell me you dragged the child to Brussels last year!”

“Of course she was in Brussels! Where the devil should she have been?” replied Sir Horace testily. “You wouldn’t have had me leave her in, Vienna, would you? Besides, she enjoyed it. We met a great many old friends there.”

“The danger!”

“Oh, pooh! Nonsense! Precious little of that with Wellington in command!”

“When, sir, may we have the pleasure of expecting my cousin?” interposed Mr. Rivenhall. “We must hope that she will not find life in London too humdrum after the superior excitements of the Continent.”

“Not she!” said Sir Horace. “I never knew Sophy when she wasn’t busy with some ploy or another. Give her her head! I always do, and she never comes to any harm. Don’t quite know when she’ll be with you. She’s bound to want to see the last of me, but she’ll post up to London as soon as I’ve sailed.”

“Post up to London as soon as—Horace, surely you will bring her to me!” gasped his sister, quite scandalized. “A girl of her age, traveling alone! I never heard of such a thing!”

“Won’t be alone. She’ll have her maid with her—dragon of a woman, she is; journeyed all over Europe with us—and John Potton as well.” He caught sight of his nephew’s raised brows, and felt himself impelled to add: “Groom, courier, general factotum! Looked after Sophy since she was a baby.” He drew out his watch, and consulted it. “Well, now that we’ve settled everything, I must be off, Lizzie. I shall rely upon you to take care of Sophy, and look about you for a match. It’s important, because—but I’ve no time to explain that now! She’ll tell you all about it, I expect.”

“But, Horace, we have not settled everything!” protested his sister. “And Ombersley will be disappointed not to see you! hoped you would dine with us!”

“No, I can’t do that,” he replied. “I’m dining at Carlton House. You may give my respects to Ombersley; daresay I shall see him again one of these days!”

He then kissed her in a perfunctory style, bestowed another of his hearty pats upon her shoulder, and took himself off, followed by his nephew. “Just as if I had nothing more to wish for!” Lady Ombersley said indignantly, when Charles came back into the room. “And I have not the least notion when that child is to come to me!”

“It doesn’t signify,” said Charles, with an indifference she found exasperating. “You will give orders for a room to be prepared for her, I suppose, and she may come when she pleases. It’s to be hoped Cecilia likes her, since I imagine she will be obliged to see the most of her.”

“Poor little thing!” sighed Lady Ombersley. “I declare I quite long to mother her, Charles! What a strange, lonely life she must lead!”

“Strange certainly; hardly lonely, if she has been acting hostess for my uncle. I must suppose that she has had some elder lady to live with her—a governess, or some such thing.”

“Indeed, one would think it must have been so, but your uncle distinctly told me that the governess died when they were in Vienna! I do not like to say such a thing of my only brother, but really it seems as though Horace is quite unfit to have the care of a daughter!”

“Extremely unfit,” he said dryly. “I trust you will not have cause to regret your kindness, Mama.”

“Oh, no, I am sure I shall not!” she said. “Your uncle spoke of her in such a way that gave me the greatest desire to welcome her! Poor child, I fear she has not been used to have her wishes or her comfort much considered! I could almost have been angry with Horace when he would keep on telling me that she is a good little thing, and had never been a worry to him! I daresay he has never allowed anyone to be a worry to him, for a more selfish man I believe you could hardly meet! Sophia must have her poor mother’s sweet disposition. I have no doubt of her being a charming companion for Cecilia.”

“I hope so,” said Charles. “And that reminds me, Mama! I have just intercepted another of that puppy’s floral offerings to my sister. This billet was attached to it.”

Lady Ombersley took the proffered missive, and looked at it in dismay. “What shall I do with it?” she asked. “Put it on the fire,” he recommended.

“Oh, no, I could not, Charles! It might be quite unexceptionable! Besides—why, it might even contain a message from his mother for me!”

“Highly unlikely, but if you think that, you had better read it.”

“Of course, I know it is my duty to do so,” she agreed unhappily.

He looked rather contemptuous, but said nothing, and after a moment’s indecision she broke the seal, and spread open the single sheet. “Oh, dear, it is a poem!” she announced. “I must say, it is very pretty. Listen, Charles! ‘Nymph, when thy mild cerulean gaze Upon my restless spirit casts its beam—’”

“I thank you, I have no taste for verse!” interrupted Mr. Rivenhall harshly. “Put it on the fire, ma’am, and tell Cecilia she is not to be receiving letters without your sanction!”

“Yes, but do you think I should burn it, Charles? Only think if this were the only copy of the poem! Perhaps he wants to have it printed!”

“He is not going to print such stuff about any sister of mine!” said Mr. Rivenhall grimly, holding out an imperative hand.

Lady Ombersley, always overborne by a stronger will, was just about to give the paper to him when a trembling voice from the doorway arrested her, “Mama! Do not!”

II

LADY OMBERSLEY’S hand dropped; Mr. Rivenhall turned sharply, a frown on his brow. His sister, casting him a look of burning reproach, ran across the room to her mother, and said, “Give it to me, Mama! What right has Charles to burn my letters?”

Lady Ombersley looked helplessly at her son, but he said nothing. Cecilia twitched the open sheet of paper from her mother’s fingers, and clasped it to her palpitating bosom. This did goad Mr. Rivenhall into speech. “For God sake, Cecilia, let us have no play acting!” he said.

“How dared you read my letter?” she retorted.

“I did not read your letter ! I gave it to Mama, and you will scarcely say that she had no right to read it!”

Her soft blue eyes swam with tears; she said in a low voice, “It is all your fault! Mama would never—I hate you, Charles, I hate you!”

He shrugged, and turned away. Lady Ombersley said feebly, “You should not talk so, Cecilia! You know it is quite improper in you to be receiving letters without my knowledge! I do not know what your papa would say if he heard of it.”

“Papa!” exclaimed Cecilia scornfully. “No! It is Charles who delights in making me unhappy!”

He glanced over his shoulder at her. “It would be useless, I collect, to say that my earnest wish is that you should not be made unhappy.”

She returned no answer, but folded her letter with shaking hands, and bestowed it in her bosom, throwing a defiant look at him as she did so. It was met with one of contempt; Mr. Rivenhall propped his shoulders against the mantelshelf, dug his hands into his breeches pockets, and waited sardonically for what she might say next.

She dried her eyes instead, catching her breath on little sobs. She was a very lovely girl, with pale golden locks arranged in ringlets about an exquisitely shaped face, whose delicate complexion was at the moment heightened, not unbecomingly, by an angry flush. In general, her expression was one of sweet pensiveness, but the agitation of the moment had kindled a martial spark in her eyes, and she was gripping her underlip between her teeth in a way that made her look quite vicious. Her brother, cynically observing this, said that she should make a practice of losing her temper, since it improved her, lending animation to a countenance well enough in its way but a trifle insipid.

This unkind remark left Cecilia unmoved. She could hardly fail to know that she was much admired, but she was a very modest girl quite unappreciative of her own beauty, and would much have preferred to have been fashionably dark. She sighed, released her lip, and sat down on a low chair beside her Mama’s sofa, saying in a more moderate tone: “You cannot deny, Charles, that it is your doing that Mama has taken this—this unaccountable dislike to Augustus!”

“Now, there,” said Lady Ombersley earnestly, “you are at fault, dearest, for I do not dislike him at all! Only I cannot think him an eligible husband!”

“I don’t care for that!” declared Cecilia. “He is the only man for whom I could ever feel that degree of attachment which—In short, I beg you will abandon any notion you may have that I could ever entertain Lord Charlbury’s extremely flattering proposal, for I never shall!”

Lady Ombersley uttered a distressful but incoherent protest; Mr. Rivenhall said in his prosaic way, “Yet you were not, I fancy, so much averse from Charlbury’s proposal when it was first told you.”

Cecilia turned her lambent gaze upon him, and answered, “I had not then met Augustus.”

Lady Ombersley appeared to be a good deal struck by the logic of this pronouncement, but her son was less impressionable. He said, “Don’t waste these high flights on me, I beg of you! You have been acquainted with young Fawnhope any time these nineteen years!”

“It was not the same,” said Cecilia simply.

“That,” said Lady Ombersley, in a judicial way, “is perfectly true, Charles. I am sure he was the most ordinary little boy, and when he was up at Oxford he had the most dreadful spots, so that no one would have supposed he would grow into such an excessively handsome young man! But the time he spent in Brussels with Sir Charles Stuart improved him out of all knowledge! I own, I never should have known him for the same man!”

“I have sometimes wondered,” retorted Mr. Rivenhall, “whether Sir Charles will ever be the same man again either! How Lady Lutterworth can have reconciled it with her conscience to have foisted upon a public man such a nincompoop to be his secretary I must leave it to herself to decide! All
we
are privileged to know is that your precious Augustus no longer fills that office! Or any other!” he added trenchantly.

“Augustus,” said Cecilia loftily, “is a poet. He is quite unfitted for the—the humdrum business of an ambassador’s secretary.”

“I do not deny it,” said Mr. Rivenhall. “He is equally unfitted to support a wife, my dear sister. Do not imagine that
I
will frank you in this folly, for I tell you now I will not! And do not delude yourself into believing that you will obtain my father’s consent to this most imprudent match, for while I have anything to say you will not!”

“I know well that it is only you who have anything to say in this house!” cried Cecilia, large teardrops welling over her eyelids. “I hope that when you have driven me to desperation you may be satisfied!”

From the tightening of the muscles about his mouth it was to be seen that Mr. Rivenhall was making a praiseworthy effort to keep his none too amiable temper in check. His mother glanced anxiously up at him, but the voice in which he answered Cecilia was almost alarmingly even. “Will you, my dear sister, have the goodness to reserve these Cheltenham tragedies for some moment when I am not within hearing? And before you carry Mama away upon the tide of all this rodomontade, may I be permitted to remind you that so far from being forced into an unwelcome marriage you expressed your willingness to listen to what you have yourself described as Lord Charlbury’s very flattering offer?”