The Grand Sophy Read online

  ‘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 it 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!’

  Two

  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’s sake, Cecilia, let us have no play-acting!’ he said.

  ‘How dare 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 the 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 have grown 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 tear-drops 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 praise-worthy 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 a unwelcome marriage you expressed your willingness to listen to what you have yourself described as Lord Charlbury’s very flattering offer?’

  Lady Ombersley leaned forward to take one of Cecilia’s hands in hers, and to squeeze it compassionately. ‘Well, you know, my dearest love, that is quite true!’ she said. ‘Indeed, I thought you liked him excessively! You must not imagine that Papa or I have the least notion of compelling you to marry anyone whom you hold in aversion, for I am sure that such a thing would be quite shocking! And Charles would not do so either, would you, dear Charles?’

  ‘No, certainly not. But neither would I consent to her marriage with any such frippery fellow as Augustus Fawnhope!’

  ‘Augustus,’ announced Cecelia, putting up her chin, ‘will be remembered long after you have sunk into oblivion!’

  ‘By his creditors? I don’t doubt it. Will that compensate you for a lifetime spent in dodging duns?’

  Lady Ombersley could not repress a shudder. ‘Alas, my love, it is too true! You cannot know the mortification –