V
THE VISION OF "SOMETHING BRIGHT"
WITH that scene in the avenue of elm-trees at Morpingham there comes a falling of the veil. Letters passed between Sophy and Julia Robins, but they have not been preserved. The diary was not yet begun. Basil Williamson did not move in the same world with Lady Meg and her entourage: Dunstanbury was in Ireland, where his regiment was then stationed. For the next twelve months there is only one glimpse of Sophy—that a passing and accidental one, although not without its significance as throwing a light on Lady Meg's adoption of Sophy (while it lasted it amounted to that), and on the strange use to which she hoped to be able to turn her protégée. The reference is, however, tantalizingly vague just where explicitness would have been of curious interest, though hardly of any real importance to a sensible mind.
The reference occurs in a privately printed volume of reminiscences by the late Captain Hans Fleming, R.N., a sailor of some distinction, but better known as a naturalist. Writing in the winter of 1865–66 (he gives no precise date), he describes in a letter a meeting with Lady Meg—whom, it will be noticed, he calls "old Lady Meg," although at that time she was but forty-nine. She had so early in life taken up an attitude of resolute spinsterhood that there was a tendency to exaggerate her years.
40
