CHAPTER VI. SOPHY’S LETTER.
IN something over a week the post brought two letters for the fellow-travellers. Loyd’s was from his mother—a very homely affair, full of affection and love, and overflowing with those little details of domestic matters so dear to those who live in the small world of home and its attachments.
Calvert’s was from his Cousin Sophy, much briefer, and very different in style. It ran thus:
“Dear Henry—”
“I used to be Harry,” muttered he.
“Dear Henry,—It was not without surprise I saw your
handwriting again. A letter from you is indeed an event at
Rocksley.
“The Miss Grainger, if her name be Adelaide (for there were
two sisters) was our nursery governess long ago. Cary liked,
I hated her. She left us to take charge of some one’s
children—relatives of her own, I suspect—and though she
made some move about coming to see us, and presenting ‘her
charge,’ as she called it, there was no response to the
suggestion, and it dropped. I never heard more of her.
“As to any hopes of assistance from papa, I can scarcely
speak encouragingly. Indeed, he made no inquiry as to the
contents of your letter, and only remarked afterwards to
Cary that he trusted the correspondence was not to continue.
“Lastly, as to myself, I really am at a loss to see how my
marriage can be a subject of joy or grief, of pleasure or
pain, to you. We are as much separated from each other in
all the relations of life, as we shall soon be by long miles
of distance. Mr. Wentworth Graham is fully aware of the
relations which once subsisted between us,—he has even
read your letters—and it is at his instance I request that
the tone of our former intimacy shall cease from this day,
and that there may not again be any reference to the past
between us. I am sure in this I am merely anticipating what
your own sense of honourable propriety would dictate, and
that I only express a sentiment your own judgment has
already ratified.
“Believe me to be, very sincerely yours,
“Sophia Calvert.”
“Oh dear! When we were Sophy and Harry, the world went very differently from now, when it has come to Henry and Sophia. Not but she is right—right in everything but one. She ought not to have shown the letters. There was no need of it, and it was unfair! There is a roguery in it too, which, if I were Mr. Wentworth Graham, I’d not like. It is only your most accomplished sharper that ever plays ‘cartes sur table.’ I’d sorely suspect the woman who would conciliate the new love by a treachery to the old one. However, happily, this is his affair, not mine. Though I could make it mine, too, if I were so disposed, by simply reminding her that Mr. W. G. has only seen one half, and, by long odds, the least interesting half, of our correspondence, and that for the other he must address himself to me. Husbands have occasionally to learn that a small sealed packet of old letters would be a more acceptable present to the bride on her wedding morning than the prettiest trinket from the Rue de la Paix. Should like to throw this shell into the midst of the orange-flowers and the wedding favours, and I’d do it too, only that I could never accurately hear of the tumult and dismay it caused. I should be left to mere imagination for the mischief and imagination no longer satisfies me.”
While he thus mused, he saw Loyd preparing for one of his daily excursions with the photographic apparatus, and could not help a contemptuous pity for a fellow so easily amused and interested, and so easily diverted from the great business of life—which he deemed “getting on”—to a pastime which cost labour and returned no profit.
“Come and see ‘I Grangeri’ (the name by which the Italians designated the English family at the villa), it’s far better fun than hunting out rocky bits, or ruined fragments of masonry. Come, and I’ll promise you something prettier to look at than all your feathery ferns or drooping foxgloves.”
Loyd tried to excuse himself. He was always shy and timid with strangers. His bashfulness repelled intimacy and so he frankly owned that he would only be a bar to his friend’s happiness, and throw a cloud over this pleasant intercourse.