“Alas! my dear kind friends!” she said, “I trust that in hearing what I am going to say, you will do me the justice to believe that I have no wish to exaggerate the sufferings I have undergone.... But indeed, I am very wretched!” Here she paused, and here of course flowed in a tide of tender sympathy from right and left, for the fair speaker had the brother on one side and the sister on the other.
“Oh! tell me, tell me all,” cried Mr. Brandenberry, almost losing every species of self-control, and kissing again and again the hand of the supposed heiress, who to all appearance was herself too much agitated to observe what he was about.
“But indeed you must be calmer, dear Mr. Brandenberry, resumed Sophia, “or you will never understand what I have to tell; and at this moment I am so greatly in need of your advice, that it is most important you should listen to me with composure.”
Thus gently corrected, the lover did resume his tranquillity γ and excepting by a few expletives, too rapidly uttered to occasion-much delay, the narrative of Sophia proceeded to its close without interruption.
“You remember,” she said, “the resolution I was driven to take by the infamous conduct of the Heathcotes towards me? —
You remember the letter which I wrote to Sir Charles Temple announcing my intention of separating myself from them?.... That letter, as you are aware, has brought home Sir Charles, but instead of finding any relief from his interference, I now find myself in danger of being sacrificed to one of the most infamous plots that ever roan conceived. At first everything seemed to be going smoothly, after his return, and I was weak enough to entertain a hope that I might be able to endure, to the end of my minority, the presence of these odious people.... in short, I was ready to submit to almost anything, rather than encounter the disgraceful éclat of a public quarrel with my guardians. But now their persecution has taken a shape which I cannot bear... nor will I longer remain to be made to listen, almost by force, to proposals I so heartily detest. It seems to be perfectly settled, between the two, that I am immediately to marry Sir Charles Temple; and when this plan was first disclosed to me, and that
I rejected his proposals, Major Heathcote had the audacity to tell me, that if I refused to put myself under the honourable protection of a husband, he should immediately reduce my allowance to one hundred pounds for three months, in order, as he insolently told me, to prevent my being able to keep house for the pleasure of receiving visits from my bachelor neighbours to whom I furnished keys to pass through my shrubberies.... This, dear Miss Brandenberry! was more than I could bear.... I flew to my own chamber, and collecting my jewels (which I would not trust with them), hastened hither alone, and almost in darkness, to ask for your advice.”
In mentioning her “bachelor neighbours,” Sophia naturally betrayed some little confusion, and turning away her face from the brother, suffered her head to drop for a moment on the shoulder of the sister. The ready Margaret seized this moment to give her brother so expressive a look as must have infallibly marshalled him the way he had to go had he himself felt any doubt about it; but he felt none, and the very instant Sophia had pronounced the word “advice,” he dropped on his two knees before her, and once again poured out with extraordinary fervour and vehemence an acknowledgment of the passion which consumed, as he said, his very vitals.
Sophia seemed entirely overpowered by her feelings. “Margaret! What can I say to him?” she exclaimed with a touching mixture of confusion and delicacy. “I have not thought of marriage.... it has been my fixed determination not to think of it till.... till.... I had tried the experiment of living alone. But now!.... Oh! Mr. Brandenberry, can you not read my heart?.... Can you not divine how dear to me your well-known attachment must become when put in competition with the so-evidently mercenary views of Sir Charles Temple?”
“Be mine, then, at once and forever!” exclaimed Mr. Brandenberry, with the most flattering vehemence. “Let me snatch you from the calculating wretches who would sacrifice your angelic sweetness to their infernal avarice! Yes, adored Sophia! I do believe that you must feel the contrast between love such as mine, and that professed by the presumptuous man who, secure in his power as your guardian, has dared to make the most open love before your face to your contemptible cousin Florence.... Show, then, most lovely and beloved!.... show, then, that your noble nature cannot be enslaved by tyranny like theirs! Be mine, be mine at once!”
“Alas!” cried Sophia plaintively, and yielding her hand with exceedingly little resistance to the grasp of her lover.... “Alas! Mr. Brandenberry!.... what is it you ask?.... They will pursue me, seize me, and drag me back again!.... They know their power too well to quit their hold upon me.... I feel certain that before mid-day to-morrow, I shall be forcibly carried back to my own house.... thenceforth my hated prison.”
Here the poor young lady seemed to weep violently, for she pressed her handkerchief to her eyes and sobbed quite audibly.
“Know they where you are?” demanded Mr. Brandenberry, hastily.
“Oh, no,” replied Sophia. “I have neither spoken to, nor seen, any human being in the family since left the drawing-room to avoid the hateful importunity of Sir Charles.... I have no doubt that they will think I have retired for the night, and will agree to postpone their farther persecutions till to-morrow.”
“Then, at least, this night is ours,” exclaimed the lover, starting upon his feet,.... “and, dearest, we must profit by it!.... Of course you know that, being a minor, no alternative is open to you but elopement?”
“Alas!.. I fear so,” replied Sophia, once more hiding her blushes upon the shoulder of the sympathising Margaret.
“Bewitching delicacy!” exclaimed the lover, throwing his arms around her.... “Nothing, not even the fervour of my ardent love, should induce me to press for this decisive step, were there any possibility of avoiding it.... Both the case is plain, sweetest Sophia!.... You must be mine, at once, or never!”
“If I am to blame in yielding to you,” she replied, “the guilt, Heaven knows!.... is theirs, not mine. I would have wished for farther time.... for longer knowledge of you... but as it is....”
“As it is, my lovely girl, we must set off for the kind friendly border.... for Gretna Green, Sophia, the moment a postchaise can’ be procured.... But, gracious Heaven!” he added, suddenly striking his forehead with great vehemence, “I have not ready money by me sufficient to perform the journey! By the most cruel ill-luck we have not yet drawn upon our London banker for the last half year’s rents, which are always deposited with him.... What can be done in this tremendous difficulty?.... Probably, dearest love!... you have not sufficient with you to supply this exigence?”
“I know not....” said Sophia, with an air of charming innocence, “if I have enough. Here is my purse.” But ere she drew it out she stopped herself, and added, “No, no, on second thoughts, I am sure the little money I have in my pocket could not go far towards it. But if we can contrive to pass through Hereford just as the bank there is open, I could draw for above five hundred pounds which still remain of my last quarter —
This will suffice us. And it is this we must procure.”
“Charming creature!” ejaculated the adoring Brandenberry, his heart leaping as he listened to the easy tone in which his promised bride talked of drawing out this pretty little sum, surpassing by one-fifth part his own and his mother’s annual income. “Charming creature! What admirable presence of mind she displays, Margaret!.... Even under circumstances thus trying she is still the same!.... Still everything that angels must envy and mankind adore! No difficulty whatever now remains, my Sophia. Your spotless purity shall be preserved from every breath of slander by my leaving my house this night. I will share with you the little light repast we take for supper; then mount my horse, and gallop to Hereford; from whence to-morrow morning I will bring a chaise and four, my lovely fugitive, that shall carry us to the bank by ten o’clock. I trust it is not likely that any of your persecutors will discover us in time to throw
any impediment in our way.... So near the possession of celestial bliss, the loss, or even the delay of it would, I am certain, make me blow my brains out.”
Sophia smiled very gently at his passionate impetuosity; and comforted him by the assurance that she felt quite sure they should escape beyond all danger of pursuit if they exactly followed the plan he had laid down.
The “little light repast,” then followed; and perhaps, excepting the first blow which conveyed to her the frightful news that Cornelius Thorpe still existed, the sight of it caused her a greater pang than any other circumstance of that eventful evening. But she remembered her diamonds and she remembered her pearls, and she remembered, too, that as neither her adoring Richard nor her devoted Margaret knew that the pearls existed, nor exactly how many diamonds were in her pocket, she might, if she managed well, contrive to spend a good portion of their value on herself. This thought enabled her to endure the littleness and the lightness of the repast with greater equanimity than anything else could have done.
CHAPTER XXXV.
Seeing that our heroine is thus snugly disposed of, we may now return with a safe conscience to those whom she left in her quondam drawing-room.
“Poor soul!” cried Mrs. Heathcote, looking pitifully after her as she disappeared. “Poor soul!.... I can’t help feeling for her.... Though to be sure she did not bear her prosperity well.”
My good Mrs. Heathcote!” said Mr. Thorpe coming towards her, and seating himself nearly in the centre of the whole party, “your kind-hearted sympathy would never have been called for by the scene you have just witnessed, if my cousin Sophy Martin had borne her prosperity well.... if she had borne ft even decently. The wealth I have left behind me in the East would have rendered it quite unnecessary for me to have interfered with my poor father’s secondary bequest, had I not found reason to believe, that he would himself have reserved it, with equal promptitude and indignation, had he lived long enough to know the truth, concerning the object of it. My Lord Broughton can bear witness, that when I accompanied his family to the ball at Hereford, my only object was to make acquaintance with the young heiress, for the purpose of confirming to her the property which she then held only by conditions which were forfeited.... We had agreed too, that if the young Lord Thelwell found the young lady to his taste, he should have all my influence to assist his own in obtaining her hand. I learnt, however, that this part of my project was not likely to succeed, even before we left the ball-room; but this was a mere secondary idea, and giving it up without expressing any feeling of disappointment, I fixed all my thoughts on the hope of entering the house I had so rashly left, with the power of confirming the wishes of my lamented father, and of proving to my young cousin that I was come as a friend, not as an enemy. It is needless.... perhaps it would be ungenerous.... were I to recapitulate all the reasons I have had for changing my purpose; and it is the less necessary to do so, because I can hardly doubt but that many of those now present must be aware, why it is that, professing to desire, before all things, to do what I believe my father would have wished to do had he lived longer, I should decide upon using the power given me, by the first disposition of his property, in reversing the second. But fully convinced as I am, that of all the relatives he has left, this unlucky girl is the last, had he really known her, that he would have fixed upon to supply his place in the mansion where he was born, I hold it to be a matter of right, and of most imperative justice, to act as I have done, and as I intend to do. Had a multitude of other circumstances not existed, either of which would have justified me in doing as I have done, the one fact that she sought to work upon the feeling of my too-forgiving father, by apeing the dress and air of this portrait, would be sufficient, not only to have led to the decision against her, but to have rendered it righteous in the eyes of all.... Dear old man!”.... continued the too late repentant son, “shall I let his place be taken and held by one who dared palter with his precious love, and swindle him out of his property by a sly mimicking of the erring child of his affection?... No, by heaven. I would rather abandon for ever the climate and the soil to which I have attached myself, and shiver out the remnant of my frail existence under this northern sun, — myself holding the place he held, — than leave another in it so utterly unworthy of bearing his name, and so utterly incapable of following his example.”
“Perfectly right,” said the eldest Miss Wilkyns.
“I am not the least surprised,” said the second.
“I am sure it serves her quite right,” observed the third.
* * * * *
The scene seemed completely to have exhausted the strength of Mr. Thorpe; and making an apology to the whole party for leaving them, he prepared to retire, telling Mrs. Heathcote that he should be much obliged if she would have the kindness to consider the house as her own as long as she remained in it, and do the honours of it to the guests he had assembled.
The erring but now well-intentioned man then retired to his coffee and the smoke of rose-leaves, leaving his company to comment, as might best please them, upon the extraordinary events of the evening, It is hardly possible to conceive a set of people more completely in the way, than were the Welsh Squire and his three co-heiresses upon this occasion. The Heathcotes, and their friend Sir Charles, were naturally longing to discuss what had happened and was likely to happen; but there had ever been a sort of civil disunion established between them and their Llanwellyn-Lodge cousins, arising from the abundant presence of all sorts of pretension on the one side and the total absence of it on the other, which rendered anything like unreserved communion between them impossible. The evening therefore was passed, as long, at least, as they remained together, in the most unmeaning observations which it was possible for a set of people, all deeply interested in the subject-matter, to utter.
Fortunately, however, for the rest of the party, as well as for themselves, the three sisters found it utterly impossible to remain beyond nine o’clock without relieving themselves of the observations they wished to make to each other, concerning the events of the evening.
“I hope I may be excused,” said Elfreda, addressing the apology to no one in particular, “but I have so dreadful a headache that I really feel quite unable to sit up.”
“I don’t feel well, either said Eldruda, pressing her hand upon her chest.
“Don’t you think it will be better for us all to go to bed?” subjoined pretty Miss Winifred in a very languid voice.
No opposition of any kind being offered, the bell was rung, candles brought, and the trio bowed and curtsied out of the room... their mighty father having retired to the study, there to meet his tobacco and his beer, without having given any decisive indication of his having heard, or not heard, anything which had passed.
Thus, at length, peaceably left to themselves, the two guardians, Mrs. Heathcote, Florence, and Algernon, drew their sofas and chairs together, and began to exchange commentaries on the marvellous discovery which had taken place; and then it was that Florence ventured to say— “Do you not think, mamma, that cousin Sophy might take it kind if I went up to her?... I am afraid she is very unhappy.”
“Indeed I think so, Florence,” said Mrs. Heathcote, “and I would go with you; only that I think, perhaps, she might suffer less, by seeing you alone at first.... One thing, however, I feel sore of, though I suppose we have no right to tell her so till we have been commissioned to do it.... but I feel perfectly certain in my own mind, that Mr. Thorpe will not leave her unprovided for, though he may not think it right to make her his heiress.”
“I agree with you perfectly, Mrs. Heathcote,” said Sir Charles, “and if our Florence finds the poor girl suffering from the idea that she is to be reduced to absolute want, having so little reason, poor thing, to reckon upon the affection of any one, I think that she might venture to bint, like an angel of peace as she is, that any such fear must be utterly groundless.”
“Shall Florence mention the three Misses Wilkyns as among the subscribers to the fund
that is to prevent it?” demanded Algernon.
“There is no occasion to mention any fund, Florence, beyond what supported her before this most unfortunate adventure befell her,” said Major Heathcote. “Tell her, if she says anything about fears for the future, that my house and home will still be open to her, as formerly, and that there is not one of us, from the oldest to the youngest, who would not rejoice in making her forget that any sorrow has fallen upon her.”
“Do not think me a brute, papa, for making a joke about it,” said Algernon, endeavouring to look penitent, “for I have leave and licence to tell Florence that she may be the bearer of better tidings than any promise of kindness from us could afford. Mr. Thorpe told me in a whisper before he quitted the room, that if either of you saw the disappointed young lady to-night, you might tell her that though he thought it his duty to redeem his own estate, he should take care to bestow such a fortune on her as the favourite niece of his father might have a right to hope for.... I suspect he thought that Florence would visit her, for it was towards her he looked, as he said this.”
Sir Charles Temple thought he had never seen his betrothed look more decidedly like an angel than she did as she stood listening to these credentials for her mission; and most truly it was with a lightened heart, and no lingering step, that Florence now for the first time sought her cousin Sophia in her boudoir.
On reaching the door, she knocked gently, but received no reply. She waited patiently for a minute or two, and then knocked again more loudly; but as there was still no answer she ventured to go in. There was nothing to give notice of the young lady’s elopement in the sitting-room, except its being empty; but on proceeding across it to the sleeping-apartment, the door of which was wide open, she perceived various indications of what had occurred. Many of the drawers had been drawn out, and remained so; the receptacle of bonnets and shawls was also open; more than one of the latter had been pulled out, rejected and left on the floor; and, lastly, a Leghorn walking bonnet, known by sight to Florence, had left its unoccupied stand, to show where it had been. It was impossible to doubt for a moment that Sophia had left the house, and Florence hastened back to the drawings room with the intelligence.
Collected Works of Frances Trollope Page 326
