Sophia: A Romance

Sophia was brave, but there was something in the sure and stealthy approach of this danger that sapped her will, and robbed her limbs of strength. Unable to think, unable to act, she crouched panic-stricken where she was; as the hare surprised in her form awaits the hunter's hand. Until only a minute remained; then with a groan she shook off the spell. To run, even to be caught running, was better than to be taken so. But whither could they run with the least chance of escape? She turned her head to see, and her eyes, despairing, climbed the slope behind her until they rested on the faint yellow spark that, solemn and unchanged, shone from the window of the dark house on the crest.

That way lay some chance, a desperate chance. She warned Lady Betty by a touch. "We must run!" she breathed in the girl's ear. "Look at the fence, and when I tap your shoulder, climb over, and run to the house!"

Lady Betty disengaged herself softly and nodded. Then, as if she was granted some new insight into the character of the woman whose arms were round her, as if she saw more clearly than before the other's courage, and understood the self-denial that gave her the first and better chance, she drew Sophia's face to her, and clinging to her, kissed it. Then she crouched, waiting, waiting, her eyes on the fence.

Very, very gently Sophia lifted her head, saw that Hawkesworth was looking the other way, and gave the signal. Betty, nimble and active, was over in a moment unseen, unheard. Sophia followed, but the fence creaked under her, and Hawkesworth heard it and turned. He saw her poised on the fence, in the full moonlight, so that not a line of her figure escaped him; with a yell of triumph he darted towards her. But directly in his path lay a low gorse-bush, still in shadow. He did not see it, tripped over it, and fell all his length on the grass. By the time he was up again, the two were dim flying shadows, all but lost in the darkness that lay beyond the fence.

All but lost; not quite. In three seconds he was at the fence, he was over it, he was beginning to gain on them. They strained every nerve, but they had to breast the steep side of the hill, and though fear and the horror of his hand upon their shoulders gave them wings, breath was lacking. Then Betty fell, and lost a precious yard; and though she was up again, and panting onwards gallantly, for a few seconds he thought that he would catch them with ease. Then the ascent began to tell on him also. The fall had shaken him. He began to pant and labour; he saw that he was not gaining on them, but rather losing ground, and he slackened his pace, and shouted to the man on guard in the road above, bidding him stop them.

The man with an answering shout reined back his horse to the narrow pass where the road ran between the house and the cottages. There, peering forward, he made ready to intercept them. Fortunately, the moon, above and a little behind him, showed his figure in silhouette in the gap; and Sophia clutching Betty's hand, dragged her back at the moment she was stepping into the moonlit road. An instant the two listened, trembling, palpitating, staring, like game driven into the middle of the field. But behind them Hawkesworth's scrambling footsteps and heavy breathing still came on; they could not wait. A moment's sickening doubt, and Sophia pressed Betty's hand, and the two darted together across the road, and took cover in a space still dark, between the two cottages that flanked it on the farther side.

The man in the gap gave the alarm, shouting that they had crossed the road; and Hawkesworth, coming up out of breath, asked with a volley of curses why he had not stopped them.

"Because they did not come my way!" the fellow answered bluntly. "Why didn't you catch 'em, captain?"

"Where are they?" Hawkesworth panted fiercely.

"Straight over they went. No! Between the hovels here!"

But Hawkesworth had a little recovered his breath, and with it his cunning. Instead of following his prey into the dark space between the buildings, he darted round the other side of the lower cottage, and in a twinkling was on the open slope beyond. Here the moonlight fell evenly, the hillside was clear of gorse, he could see a hundred yards. But he caught no glimpse of fleeing figures, he heard no sound of retiring footsteps; and quick as thought he turned up the hill, and learned the reason.

A high wall ran from cottage to cottage, rendering exit that way impossible. Sophia had trapped herself and her companion; they were in a cul de sac! With a cry of triumph he turned to go back; as he ran he heard the horseman he had left call to him. Opportunely, as he gained the road, he was joined by the third of the band, the rogue he had left at the stepping stones.

"Have you nabbed them?" the fellow panted.

"They're here!" Hawkesworth answered. "I think he's got them."

"And the sparklers?"

Hawkesworth nodded; but the next instant swore and stood. The man on the horse, who should have been guarding the mouth of the dark entry, where the girls lay trapped, was a dozen yards farther up the road, his back to the cottages, and his face to the house with the gable end.

"What the devil are you doing?" Hawkesworth roared. "They are here, man!"

"They have bolted!" the fellow answered sullenly. "Or one of them has. She shook a shawl in this brute's face, and he reared. Before I could get him round-"

"She got off?" the Irishman shrieked.

"No! She's here, in the house! Burn her, when I get hold of her I'll make her smart for it!"

"She? Then where's the other?"

"She's where she was, for all I know," the man answered. "I've seen nothing of her."

But he lied in that. While he had been marking down the woman who had frightened his horse with her shawl-and who then had glided coolly into the house, the door of which stood ajar-he had seen with the tail of his eye a flying skirt vanish down the road behind him. He had a notion that one had got clear, but he was not sure; and if he said anything he would be blamed. So he stood while Hawkesworth and the other searched the dark space between the cottages.

A few seconds sufficed to show that there was no one there, and Hawkesworth turned and swore at him.

"Well, there's one left!" the offender answered sulkily. "We've got her in the house, and there's no back door. Take your change out of her."

"Aye, but who's going in to fetch her?" Hawkesworth snarled. "I've not had the smallpox. Perhaps you have. In that case, in you go, man. You run no risk, or but little."

The rogue's face fell. "Oh Lord!" he said. "I'd not thought of that! What a vixen it is!"

"In you go, man, and have her out!"

"I'm hanged if I do!" was the answer; and the fellow reined back his horse in a hurry. "Faugh! I can smell the vinegar from here!" he cried. And he spat on the ground.

"Will you go, Clipper? Come, man, you're not afraid?"

But Clipper, the third of the band, so called because he had once lain in the condemned hold for the offence of reducing His Majesty's gold coin, declined in terms not doubtful; and for a few seconds the three glared at one another, rage in the greater villain's eyes, a dogged resolution, not unmingled with shame, in his hirelings'. To be baffled, and by a girl! To have her at bay, and fear the encounter! To be outwitted, outdared, and by a woman! The moonlight that lay on the lonely country side, the night wind that stirred the willows by the stream, the height of blue above them with its myriad watching eyes, these things had no awe for them, touched no chord in their dulled consciences; but the smoky yellow gleam that shone from the window of the dark gable, and was visible where two of them stood-that and the dread terror that lay behind it scared even these hardened men.

"Will you let all go?" Hawkesworth cried in rage. "We have the girl, and not a soul within four miles to interfere! We've jewels to the tune of thousands! And you'll let them go when it's only to pick them up!"

"Aye, and the smallpox with them!" Clipper retorted grimly. "I've seen a man that died of that," with a shudder, "and I don't want to see another. Go yourself, captain," he sneered, "it's your business."

The thrust went home. "So I will, by-!" the Irishman cried passionately. "I'll have her out, and the stuff! But I'll think twice before I pay you, you lily-livers! You chicken hearts. Give me a light!"

"There's light enough upstairs!" the Clipper answered mockingly. But the other man, more amenable, produced a flint and steel and a candle end, and lighting the one from the other handed it to Hawkesworth. "Likely enough you'll find her behind the door, captain," he said civilly. "'Twon't be much risk after all."

"Then go yourself, you cur," Hawkesworth answered brutally. He was torn this way and that; between fear and rage, cupidity and cowardice. The ardour of the chase grew cool in this atmosphere of disease; the courage of the man failed before this house given up to the fell plague, that in those days took pitiless toll of rich and poor, of old and young, of withered cheeks and bright eyes, of kings and joiners' daughters. His gorge rose at the sharp scent of vinegar, at the duller odour of burnt rags with which the air was laden; they were the rough disinfectants of the time, used before the panic-stricken survivors fled the place. In face of the danger he had to confront, women have ever been bolder than men, though they have more to lose. He was no exception.

Yet he would go. To flinch was to be lessened for ever in the eyes of the meaner villains, his hirelings; to dare was to confirm the evil pre-eminence he claimed. Bitter black rage in his heart-rage in especial against the woman who laid this necessity upon him-he thrust the door wide open, and shielding the candle, of which the light but feebly irradiated the black cavern before him, he crossed the threshold.

The place he entered seemed all dark to eyes fresh from the moonbeams; but some light there was beside that which he carried. From the open door of a narrow staircase that led to the upper rooms a faint reflection of the candles that burned above issued; by aid of which he saw that he stood in the great kitchen of the farm. But the black pot that tenanted the vast gloomy recess of the fireplace, hung over dead, white ashes-cold relics of the cheer that had once reigned there. The cradle in the corner was still and shrouded. In the middle of the stone floor a bench, a mere slab on four-straddling legs, lay overturned, upset by the panic-stricken survivors in their hurried flight; and beside it, stiff and grinning, sprawled the body of a black cat, killed in some frenzy of fear or superstition ere the living left the house to the care of the dead. A brooding odour of disease filled the gaunt, wide-raftered room, infected the shadowy hanging flitches, and grew stronger and more sickly towards the staircase at the farther end.

Yet it was there he saw her, as he paused uncertain, his heart like water. She was standing on the lowest step of the stairs as if she had retreated thither on his entrance. Her one hand held her skirt a little from the floor, and close to her; the other hung by her side. Her eyes shone large in her white face; and in her look and in her attitude was something solemn and unearthly, that for a moment awed him.

He stared spell-bound. She was the first to speak. "What do you want?" she whispered-as if the dead in the room above could hear her.

"The jewels!" he muttered, his voice subdued to the pitch of hers. "The jewels! Give me the jewels, and I will go!"

"They are not here," she said. "They are far away. Here is only death. Death is here, death is above," she continued solemnly. "The air is full of death. If you would not die, go! Go before it be too late."

He battled with the dark fear which her words fluttered before him; the fear that was in the air of the room, the fear that made his light burn more dimly than was natural. He battled with it, and hated her for it, and for his cowardice. "You she-devil!" he cried, "where are the jewels?"

"Gone," she answered solemnly.

"Where?"

"Where you will never find them."

"And you think to get off with that?" he hissed; and advanced a step towards her. "You lie!" he cried furiously. "You have them. And if you do not give them up-"

"I have them not!" she answered firmly; and little did he suspect how wildly her heart was leaping behind the bold front she showed him. Little did he suspect, the deadly terror she had had to surmount before she penetrated so far into this loathsome house. "I have them not," she repeated. "Nor have I any fear of you. There is that here that is your master and mine. Come up, come up," she continued, a touch of wildness in her manner, and she mounted a step or two of the narrow staircase, and beckoned him to follow her. "Come up and you will see him."

"You drab!" he cried, "do you come down, or it will be the worse for you! Do you hear me? Come down, you slut, or when I fetch you I will have no mercy. You don't know what I shall do to you; I do, and-"

He stood, he was silent, he choked with rage; for as if he had not spoken, her figure first and then her feet, mounting without pause or hesitation, vanished from sight. He was left, scared and baffled, alone in the great desolate kitchen where his light shone a mere spark, making visible the darkness that canopied him. A rat moving in the dim fringe between light and shadow startled him. A rope of onions swayed by the draught of air that blew through the open door, brought the sweat to his brow. He took two steps forward and one backward; the shroud on the cradle fluttered, and but for the men waiting outside, he would have fled at once and given up woman and booty. But fear of ridicule still conquered fear of death; conquered even the superstition that lay dormant in his Irish blood; he forced himself onward. His eyes fixed balefully, his hands withheld from contact with the wall-as if he had been a woman with skirts-he crept upwards till his gaze rose above the level of the upper floor; then for a moment the light of two thick candles, half-burned, gave him back his courage. His brow relaxed, he sprang with a cry up the upper stairs, set his foot in the room and stood!

On the huge low wooden bed from which the coarse blue and white bedding protruded, two bodies lay sheeted. At their feet the candles burned dull before the window that should have been open, but was shut; as the thick noisome air of the room, that turned him sick and faint, told him. Near the bed, on the farther side, stood that he sought; Sophia, her eyes burning, her face like paper. His prey then was there, there, within his reach; but she had not spoken without reason. Death, death in its most loathsome aspect lay between them; and the man's heart was as water, his feet like lead.

"If you come near me," she whispered, "if you come a step nearer, I will snatch this sheet from them, and I will wrap you in it! And you will die! In eight days you will be dead! Will you see them? Will you see what you will be?" And she lowered her hand to raise the sheet.

He stepped back a pace, livid and shaking. "You she-devil!" he muttered. "You witch!"

"Go!" she answered, in the same low tone. "Go! Or I will bring your death to you! And you will die! As you have lived, foul, noisome, corrupt, you will die! In eight days you will die-if you come one step nearer!"

She took a step forward herself. The man turned and fled.

CHAPTER XIX

LADY BETTY'S FATE

Lady Betty had left the house on the hill a mile behind, her breath came in heavy gasps, her heart seemed to be bursting through her bodice; still she panted bravely along the road that stretched before her, white under the moonbeams. Sophia had bidden her run, the moment the man's back was turned. "Give the alarm, get help," she had whispered as she thrust the diamonds into the child's hand; and acting on that instinct of obedience, prompt and unquestioning, which the imminence of peril teaches, Betty had fled on the word. She had slipped behind the man's back, passed between the houses, and escaped into the open, unseen, as she fancied.

For a time she had sped along the road, looking this way and that, expecting at each turn to discover a house, a light, the help she sought. At length, coming on none of these, she began to suspect the truth, and that Sophia had saved her at her own cost; and she paused and turned, and even in her distraction made as if she would go back. But in the end, with a sob of grief, she hurried on, seeing in this their only chance.

At length her strength began to fail. Presently she could go no farther, and with a cry of anguish came to a stand in a dark part of the road. She was alone, in an unknown country, with the night before her, with the sounds of the night round her; and commonly she was afraid of the night. But now all the child's thought was for Sophia; her heart was breaking for her friend. And by-and-by she pressed on again, her breath fluttering between sobs and exhaustion. She turned a corner-and oh, sweet, she saw a light before her!

She struggled towards it. The spark grew larger and larger; finally it became the open doorway of an alehouse, from which the company were departing. The goodman and two or three topers were on their feet having a last crack, the goodwife from her bed above was demanding lustily why they lingered, when the girl, breathless and dishevelled, her hair hanging about her face, appeared on the threshold. For a moment she could not speak; her face was white, her eyes stared wildly. The men fell back from her, as a flock of sheep crowd away from the dog.

"What beest 'ee?" the landlord bleated faintly. "Lord save us and help us! Be 'ee mortal?"

"Help!" she muttered, as she leaned almost swooning, against the doorpost. "Help! Come quickly! They'll-they'll murder her-if you don't!" And she stretched out her hands to them.

But the men only shuddered. "Lord save us!" one of them stammered. "It's mostly for murder they come."

She saw that no one moved, and she could have screamed with impatience. "Don't you hear me?" she cried hoarsely. "Come, or they'll kill her! They'll kill her! I've left her with them. Come, if you are men!"

They began to see that the girl was flesh and blood; but their minds were rustic, and none of the quickest, and they might have continued to gape at her for some time longer, if the goodwife, who had heard every word, had not looked through the trap in the ceiling. She saw the girl. "Lord sake!" she cried, struck with amazement. "What is it?"

"Help!" Betty answered, clasping her hands, and turning her eyes in that direction. "For pity's sake send them with me! There's murder being done on the road! Tell them to come with me."

"What is it? Footpads?" the woman asked sharply.

"Yes, oh yes! They have stopped Lady Coke's carriage"

The woman waited to hear no more. "Quick, you fools!" she cried. "Get sticks, and go! Lady Coke's carriage, eh? You'll be her woman, I expect. They'll come, they'll come. But where is't? Speak up, and don't be afraid!"

"At a house on a hill," Lady Betty answered rapidly. "She's there, hiding from them. And oh, be quick! be quick, if you please!"

But at that word the goodman, who had snatched up a thatching stake, paused on the threshold. "A house on a hill?" he said. "Do you mean Beamond's farm?"

"I don't know," she answered. "It's on a hill about a mile or more-oh, more from here-on the way I came! You must know it!"

"This side of a ford?"

"Yes, yes."

"They've the smallpox there?"

"Yes, I think so!"

The man flung down the stake. "No," he said. "It's no! I don't go there. Devil take me if I do. And she don't come here. If you are of my mind," he continued, looking darkly at his fellows, "you'll leave this alone!"

The men were evidently of that mind; they threw down their weapons, some with a curse, some with a shiver. Betty saw, and frantic, could not believe her eyes. "Cowards!" she cried. "You cowards!"

The woman alone looked at her uncertainly. "I've children, you see," she said. "I've to think of them. But there's Crabbe could go. He's neither chick nor child."

But the lout she named backed into a corner, sullen and resolute; as if he feared they would force him to go. "Not I," he said. "I don't go near it, neither. There's three there dead and stiff, and three's enough."

"You cowards!" Betty repeated, sobbing with passion.

The woman, too, looked at them with no great favour. "Will none of you go?" she said. "Mind you, if you go I'll be bound you'll be paid! Or perhaps the young sir there will go!"

She turned as she spoke, and Betty, looking in the same direction, saw a young man seated on the side of a box bed in the darkest part of the kitchen. Apparently her entrance had roused him from sleep, for his hair was rough, and he was in his shirt and breeches. His boots, clay-stained to the knees, stood beside the bed; his coat and cravat, which were drying in the chimney corner, showed that he had been out in bad weather. The clothes he retained bore traces of wear and usage; but, though plain, they seemed to denote a higher station than that of the rustics in his company. As his eyes met Lady Betty's, "I'll come," he said gruffly. And he reached for his boots and began to put them on; but with a yawn.

Still she was thankful. "Oh, will you!" she cried. "You're a man. And the only one here!"

"He won't be one long!" the nearest boor cried spitefully.

But the lad, dropping for a moment his listless manner, took a step in the speaker's direction; and the clown recoiled. The young fellow laughed, and, snatching up a stout stick that rested against his truckle bed, said he was ready. "You know the way?" he said; and then, as he read exhaustion written on her face, "Quick, mother," he cried in an altered tone, "have you naught you can give her? She will drop before she has gone a mile!"

The woman hurried up the ladder and fetched a little spirit in a mug. She handed it to the girl at arm's length, telling her to drink it, it would do her good. Then, cutting a slice from a loaf of coarse bread that lay on the table, she pushed it over to her. "Take that in your hand," she said, "and God keep you."

Betty did as she was bidden, though she was nearly sick with suspense. Then she thanked the woman, turned, and, deaf to the boors' gibes, passed into the road with her new protector. She showed him the way she had come, and the two set off walking at the top of her pace.

She swallowed a morsel of bread, then ran a little, the tears rising in her eyes as she thought of Sophia. A moment of this feverish haste, and the lad bade her walk. "If we've a mile to go," he said wisely, "you cannot run all the way. Slow and steady kills the hare, my dear. How many are there of these gentry?"

"Three," she answered; and as she pictured Sophia and those three a lump rose in her throat.

"Any servants? I mean had your mistress any men with her?"

Betty told him, but incoherently. The postboys, the grooms, Watkyns, Pettitt, all were mixed up in her narrative. He tried to follow it, then gave up the attempt. "Anyway, they have all fled," he said. "It comes to that."

She admitted with a sob that it was so; that Sophia was alone.

The moonlight lay on the road; as she tripped by his side, he turned and scanned her. He took her for my lady's woman, as the mistress at the alehouse had taken her. He had caught the name of Coke, but he knew no Lady Coke; he had not heard of Sir Hervey's marriage, and, to be truthful, his mind was more concerned for the maid than the mistress. Through the disorder of Betty's hair and dress, her youth and something of her beauty peeped out; it struck him how brave she had been to come for help, through the night, alone; how much more brave she was to be willing to return, seeing that he was but one to three, and there was smallpox to face. As he considered this he felt a warmth at his heart which he had not felt for days. And he sighed.

Presently her steps began to lag; she stood. "Where are we?" she cried, fear in her voice. "We should be there!"

"We've come about a mile," he said, peering forward through the moonlight. "Is it on a hill, did you say?"

"Yes, and I see no hill."

"No," he answered, "but perhaps the fall this way is gentle."

She muttered a word of relief. "That is so," she said. "It's above the water, on the farther side, that it is steep. Come on, please come on! I think I see a house."