Sophia: A Romance

"Well, there's impudence!" Tom exclaimed. "Hang me if I know why she should go first!" And then, as a joyful cry rang through the trees, he looked at the vicar.

But Michieson looked elsewhere. He was listening, he was shivering with anticipation. If that cry reached her! Tom, however, failed to notice this; innocent and unconscious, he opened the gate and passed through; and, thinking of his sister and his last parting from her, went slowly across the sunlit grass until the low-hanging boughs of the apple-trees hid him.

The parson looked up and down the road with a hunted eye. The position was terrible. Should he go to his wife, confess and prepare her? Or should he wait until his unwelcome guests returned to share the brunt. Or-or should he go? Go about his business-was there not sad, pressing business at Beamond's farm? – until the storm was overpast.

He was a good man, but he was weak. A few seconds of hesitation, and he skulked down the road, his head bent, his eyes glancing backwards. He fancied that he heard his wife's voice, and hurried faster and faster from the dreaded sound. At length he reached the main road and stood, his face hot with shame. He considered what he should do.

Beamond's? Yes, he must go about that. He must, to save his self-respect, go about business of some kind. At a large farm two miles away his churchwarden lived; there he could get help. The farmer and his wife had had the disease, and were in less terror of it than some. At any rate he could consult them: in a Christian parish people could not lie unburied. In vital matters he was no coward, and he knew that if no one would help him-which was possible, so great was the panic-he would do all himself, if his strength held out.

In turning this over he tried to forget the foolish imbroglio of the morning; yet now and again he winced, pricked in his conscience and his manhood. After all, they had come to him for help, for food and shelter; and who so proper to afford these as God's minister in that place. At worst he should have sent them to one of the farms, and allowed it out of the tithe, and taken the chance when Easter came, and Peg discovered it. Passing the branch-road on his left, which Tom and Betty had taken in the night, he had a distant view of a horseman riding that way at speed: and he wondered a little, the sight being unusual. Three minutes later he came to the roadside ale-house which Betty had visited. The goodwife was at the door, and watched him come up. As he passed she cried out, to learn if his reverence had news.

"None that's good, Nanny," he answered; never doubting but she had the illness at Beamond's on her mind. And declining her offer of a mug of ale he went on, and half a mile farther turned off the road by a lane that led to the churchwarden's farm. He crossed the farmyard, and found Mrs. Benacre sitting within the kitchen door, picking over gooseberries. He begged her not to move, and asked if the goodman was at home.

"No, your reverence, he's at the Hall," she answered. "He was leaving hay in the Furlongs, and was fetched all in a minute this hour past, and took the team with him. The little lad came home and told me."

The vicar started, and looked a little odd. "I wanted to see him about poor Beamond," he said.

"'Tis true, then, your reverence?"

"Too true. There's nothing like it happened in the parish in my time."

"Dear, dear, it gives one the creeps! After all, when you've got a good husband, what's a little marking, and be safe? There should be something done, your reverence. 'Tis these gipsies bring it about."

The vicar set back the fine gooseberry he had selected. "What time did her ladyship arrive yesterday?" he asked.

Mrs. Benacre lifted up her hands in astonishment. "La, didn't you hear?" she cried. "But to be sure, you're off the road a good bit, and all your people so taken up with they poor Beamonds too? No time at all, your reverence! She didn't come. I take it, it's about that, Sir Hervey has sent for Benacre. He thinks a deal of him, as his father before him did of the old gaffer! I remember a cocking was at the Hall," Mrs. Benacre continued, "when I was a girl-'twas a match between the gentlemen of Sussex and the gentlemen of Essex-and the old squire would have Benacre's father to dine with them, and made so much of him as never was!"

The vicar had listened without hearing. "She stopped the night in Lewes, I suppose?" he said, his eyes on the gooseberries, his heart bumping.

"'Twasn't known, the squire being at Lewes to meet her. And to-day I've had more to do than to go fetching and carrying, and never a soul to speak to but they two hussies and the lad, since Benacre went on the land. There, your reverence, there's a berry should take a prize so far away as Croydon."

"Very fine," the parson muttered. "But I think I'll walk to the Hall and inquire."

"'Twould be very becoming," Mrs. Benacre allowed; and made him promise he would bring back the news.

As he went down the lane, he saw two horsemen pass the end of it at a quick trot. When he reached the road, the riders were out of sight; but his heart misgave him at this sign of unusual bustle. A quarter of an hour's walking along a hot road brought him to the park gate; it was open, and in the road was the lodge-keeper's wife, a child clinging to her skirts. Before he could speak, "Has your reverence any news?" she cried.

He shook his head.

"Well, was ever such a thing?" she exclaimed, lifting up her hands. "They're gone to be sure, as if the ground had swallowed them. It's that, or the rogues ha' drowned them in the Ouse!"

He felt himself shrinking in his clothes. "How-how did it happen?" he muttered faintly. What had he done? What had he done?

"The postboys left them in the carriage the other side of Beamond's," the woman answered, delighted to gain a listener. "And went back with fresh horses, I suppose it would be about seven this morning; they could not get them in the night. They found the carriage gone, and tracked it back so far almost as Chayley, and there found it, and the woman and the two grooms with it; but not one of them could give any account, except that their ladyships had been carried off by a gang of men, and they three had harnessed up and escaped. The postboys came back with the news, and about the same time Mr. Watkyns came by the main road through Lewes, and knew naught till he was here! He was fit to kill himself when he found her ladyship was gone," the woman continued with zest; "and Sir Hervey was lit to kill 'em all, and serve 'em right; and now they are searching the country, and a score with them; but it's tolerable sure the villains ha' got away with my lady, some think by Newhaven and foreign parts! What? Isn't your reverence going to the house?"

"No," his reverence muttered, with a sickly smile. "No." And he turned from the cool shadows of the chestnut avenue, that led to the Hall, and setting his face the way he had come, hastened through the heat. He might still prevent the worst! He might still-but he must get home. He must get home. He had walked three miles in forty minutes in old days; he must do it now. True, the sun was midsummer high, the time an hour after noon, the road straight and hot, and unshaded, his throat was parched, and he was fasting. But he must press on. He must press on, though his legs began to tremble under him-and he was not so young as he had been. There was the end of Benacre's Lane! He had done a mile; but his knees were shaky, he must sit a moment on the bank. He did so, and found the trees begin to dance before his eyes, his thoughts to grow confused; frightened he tried to rise, but instead he sank in a swoon, and lay inert at the foot of the bank.

CHAPTER XXII

'TIS GO OR SWIM

It was a strange meeting between brother and sister. Tom, mindful how they had parted in Clarges Row, and with what loyalty she had striven to save him from himself-at a time when he stood in the utmost need of such efforts-was softened and touched beyond the ordinary. While Sophia, laughing and crying at once in the joy of a meeting as unexpected as it was welcome, experienced as she held Tom in her arms something nearer akin to happiness than had been hers since her marriage. The gratitude she owed to Providence for preservation amid the dangers of the night strengthened this feeling; the sunshine that flooded the orchard, the verdure under foot, the laden sprays of blossom overhead, the songs of the birds, the very strangeness of the retreat in which they met, all spoke to a heart peculiarly open at that moment to receive impressions. Tom recovered, Tom kind, formed part of the world which welcomed her back, and shamed her repining; while her brother, sheepish and affectionate, marvelled to see the little sister whom he had patronised all his life, suddenly and wonderfully transmogrified into Lady Coke.

He asked how she came to be so oddly dressed, learned that she also had fallen in with the vicar; and, when he had heard: "Well," he exclaimed, "'tis the luckiest thing your woman met me I ever knew!"

"You might have been in any part of England!" she answered, smiling through her tears. "Where were you going, Tom?"

"Why, to Coke's to be sure," he replied; "and wanted only two or three miles of it!"

"Not-not knowing?" she asked. And she blushed.

"Not the least in life! I was on the point of enlisting," he explained, colouring in his turn, "at Reading, in Tatton's foot, when a man he had sent in search of me, found me and gave me a note."

"From Sir Hervey?"

"Of course," Tom answered, "telling me I could stay at the Hall until things blew over. And-and not to make a fool of myself," he added ingenuously. "'Twas like him and I knew it was best to come, but when I was nearly there-that was last night, you know-I thought I would wait until morning and hear who were in the house before I showed myself. That is why Mistress Betty found me where she did."

Sophia could not hide her feelings on learning what Sir Hervey had done for Tom and for her; what he had done silently, without boasting, without telling her. Tom saw her tremble, saw that for some reason she was on the verge of tears, and he wondered.

"Why," he said, "what is the matter, Sophy? What is it now?"

"It's nothing, nothing," she answered hurriedly.

"I know what it is!" he replied. "You've been up all night, and had nothing to eat. You will be all right when you have had a meal. The old parson said he'd give us bacon and eggs. It should be ready by this time."

Sophia laughed hysterically. "I fear it doesn't lie with him," she said. "His wife would not let me into the house. She's afraid of the smallpox."

"Pooh!" Tom said contemptuously. "When she knows who we are she'll sing another tune."

"She won't believe," Sophia answered.

"She'll believe me," Tom said. "So let us go."

"Do you go first, sir, if you please," Lady Betty cried pertly, intervening for the first time. She had stood a little apart to allow the brother and sister to be private. "I'm sure her ladyship's not fit to be seen. And I'm not much better," she added; and then, a sudden bubble of laughter rising to the surface, she buried her face in Sophia's skirts, and affected to be engaged in repairing the disorder. Tom saw his sister's face relax in a smile, and he eyed the maid suspiciously; but before he could speak, Sophia also begged him to go, and see what reception the old clergyman had secured for them. He turned and went.

At the gate he looked back, but a wealth of apple blossom intervened; he did not see that the girls had flown into one another's arms, nor did he hear them laughing, crying, asking, answering, all at once, and out of the fulness of thankful hearts. Tom's wholesome appetite began to cry cupboard. He turned briskly up the road, discovered the wicket-gate of the parsonage, and marching to it, found to his surprise that it was locked. The obstacle was not formidable to youth, but the welcome was cold at best; and where was his friend the parson? In wonder he rattled the gate, thinking some one would come; but no one came, and out of patience he vaulted over the post, and passing round a mass of rose bushes that grew in a tangle about the pot-herb garden, he saw the door of the house standing ajar before him.

One moment; the next and before he could reach it, a boy about twelve years old, with a shock of hair and sullen eyes, looked out, saw him, and hastened to slam the door in his face. The action was unmistakable, the meaning plain; Sir Tom stood, stared, and after a moment swore. Then in a rage he advanced and kicked the door. "What do you mean?" he cried. "Open, sirrah, do you hear? Are these your manners?"

For a few seconds there was silence in the sunny herb garden with its laden air and perfumed hedges. Then a casement above creaked open, and two heads peered cautiously over the window-ledge. "Do you hear?" Tom cried, quickly espying them. "Come down and open the door, or you'll get a whipping."

But the boys, the one he had seen at the door, and another, a year or two older, preserved a sulky silence; eyeing him with evident dread and at the same time with a kind of morbid curiosity. Tom threatened, stormed, even took up a stone; they answered nothing and it was only when he had begun to retreat, fuming, towards the gate that one of them found his voice.

"You'd better be gone!" he cried shrilly. "They are coming for you."

Sir Tom turned at the sound, and went back at a white heat. "What do you mean, you young cubs?" he cried, looking up. "Who are coming for me?"

But they were dumb again, staring at him over the ledge with sombre interest. Tom repeated his question, scolded, even raised his stone, but without effect. At last he turned his back on them, and in a rage flung out of the garden.

He went out as he had entered, by vaulting the gate. As he did so, he heard a woman's shrill voice raised in anger; and he looked in the direction whence it came. He saw a knot of people coming down the road. It consisted of three or four women, and a rough-looking labourer; but while he stood eyeing them a second party, largely made up of men and boys, came in sight, following the other; and tailing behind these again came a couple of women and last of all two or three lads. The women speaking loudly, with excited gestures, appeared to be scolding the men; those on the outside of each rank hurrying a step in advance of the others, and addressing them with turned heads. Tom watched them a moment, thinking that they might be a search party sent by Coke; then he reflected that the noise would alarm his sister, and turning in at the gate he crossed the orchard.

Sophia came to meet him. "What is it?" she asked anxiously. "What is the matter, Tom?" The clamour of strident voices, the scolding of the women had preceded him. "Have you seen the clergyman? Why, they are coming here!"

"The deuce they are!" Tom answered. He looked back, and seeing through the trees that the man with the first gang had opened the gate of the orchard, he went to meet him.

"What is it?" he asked. "What are you doing here? Has Sir Hervey sent you?"

"We want no sending!" one of the women cried sharply. "'Tis enough to send us of ourselves."

"Aye, so it is!" a second chimed in with violence. "And do you keep your distance if you be one of them! Let's have no nonsense, master, for we won't stand it!"

"No, no nonsense!" cried another, as the larger party arrived and raised the number to something like a score. "She's got to go, and you with her if you be one of her company! Ain't that so?" the speaker continued, turning to her backers.

"Aye, she must go!" cried one. "We'll ha' no smallpox here!" cried another. "She'll go or swim! Out of the parish, I say!" shrieked a third.

Tom looked along the line of excited faces, faces stupid or cruel; at the best of a low type, and now brutalised by selfish panic. And his heart sank. But for the present he neither blenched nor lost his temper.

"Why, you fools," he said, thinking to reason with them, "don't you know who the lady is?"

"No, nor care!" was the shrill retort. "Nor care, do you understand that?"

And then a man stepped forward. "She's got to go," he said, "whoever she be. That's all."

"I tell you, you don't know who she is," Tom answered stubbornly. "Whose tenant are you, my man?"

"Sir Hervey's, to be sure," the fellow answered, surprised at the question.

"Well, she's his wife," Tom answered. "Do you hear? Do you understand?" he repeated, with growing indignation. "She is Lady Coke, Sir Hervey's wife. Lady Coke, Sir Hervey's wife! Get that into your heads, will you! His wife, I tell you. And if you raise a finger or wag a tongue against her, you'll repent it all your lives."

The man stared, doubting, hesitating, in part daunted. But a woman behind him-a lean vixen, her shoulders barely covered by a meagre kerchief, pushed herself to the front, and snapped her fingers in Tom's face. "That, my lady?" she cried. "That for the lie. You be a liar, my lad, that's what you be! A liar, and ought to swim with her. Neighbours," the shrew continued volubly, "she be no more my lady than I be. Madam told me she faked for to be it, but was a gipsy wench as had laid the night at Beamond's, and now was for 'fecting us."

"Anyway she don't go another step into this parish," pronounced an elderly man, something better off than the others. "We don't want to swim her, and we don't want to stone her, but she must go, or worse come of it. And you, my lad, if you be with her, and the other." For Lady Betty had crept timidly out of the garden-shed and joined the pair.

Tom was bursting with passion. "I!" he cried. "You clod, do you know who I am? I am Sir Thomas Maitland, of Cuckfield."

"Sir, or no sir, you'll ha' to go," the man retorted stubbornly. He was a dull fellow, and an unknown Sir Thomas was no more to him than plain Tom or Dick. "And 'tis best, with no more words," he continued heavily.

Tom, enraged, was for answering in the same strain, but Sophia plucked his sleeve, and took the word herself. "I am quite willing to go," she said, holding her head up bravely. "If you let me pass safely to the Hall, that is all I ask."

"To the Hall?"

"Yes, to my husband."

"To the Hall indeed! No! No! That's likely," cried the crowd; and were not to be silenced till the elderly farmer who had spoken before raised his hand for a hearing.

"'Tis no wonder they shout," he said, with a smile half-cunning, half-stupid. "The Hall? No, no. Back by Beamond's and over the water, my girl, you'll go, same as Beamond's folk did. There's few live the other side, and so the fewer to take it, d'ye see. Besides, 'tis every one for himself."

"Aye! aye!" the crowd cried. "He's right; that way, no other! Hall indeed?" And at the back they began to jeer.

"You've no law for this?" Tom cried, furious and panting.

"Then we'll make a law," they answered, and jeered again, with some words that were not very fit for the ladies to hear.

Tom, at that, would have sprung at the nearest and punished him; but Sophia held him back. "No, no," she said in a low tone. "We had better go. Sir Hervey is surely searching for us. We may meet him, and they will learn their mistake. Please let us go. Let us go quickly, or they may-I do not know what they may do."

Tom suffered himself to be convinced; but he made the mistake of doing with a bad grace that which he had to do whether he would or no.

"Out of the way, you clods!" he cried, advancing on them with his stick raised. "You'll sing another tune before night! Do you hear, I say? Out of the way!"

Moving sullenly, they left his front open; and he marched proudly through the gate of the orchard, Sophia and Betty beside him. But his challenge had raised the devil that lies dormant in the most peaceful crowd. He had no sooner passed than the women closed in upon his rear, and followed him with taunts and laughter. And presently a boy threw a stone.

It fell short of the mark; but another stone followed, and another; and the third struck Tom on the leg. He wheeled round in a towering passion, caught sight of the offender, and made for him. The boy tripped in trying to escape, and fell, shrieking. Tom got home two cuts; then a virago, her tongue spitting venom, her nails in the air, confronted him over the body of the fallen, and he returned sullenly to his charges, and resumed his retreat.

But the boy's screams had exasperated the rabble. Groans took the place of laughter, curses succeeded jeers. The bolder threw dirt, the more timid hooted and booed, while all pressed more and more closely on his heels, threatening every moment to jostle him. Tom had to turn and brandish his stick to drive them back, and finding that even so he could scarcely secure the briefest respite, he began to grow hot and confused, and looked about for a way of escape in something between rage and terror.

To run, he knew, would only precipitate the disaster. To defend himself was scarcely possible, for Sophia, fearing he would attempt reprisals, hampered him on one side, while Betty, in pure fear, clung to him on the other. Both were sinking with apprehension, while his ears tingled under the coarse jeers and coarser epithets that were hurled at them. Yet he dared not suffer them to move a pace from him. Cries of "Roll them! Duck them! To the pond!" began to be heard; and once he barely checked an ugly rush by facing about at the last moment. At last he espied a little before him the turning into the main road, and whispering to the women to keep up their courage, he pressed sullenly towards it.

He had as good as reached it, when a stone more weighty and better aimed than those which had preceded it, struck Lady Betty fairly between the shoulders. The girl stumbled forward with a gasp, and Sophia, horror-stricken and uncertain how much she was hurt, sprang to her side to hold her up. The movement freed Tom's arm; his sister's furious cry, "You cowards! Oh, you cowards!" burned up the last shred of his self-control.

In a tempest of rage he rushed on the nearest hobbledehoy, and felling him with his stick, rained blows upon him. In an instant he was engaged, hand to hand, with half a dozen combatants.

Unfortunately the charge had carried him a dozen yards from his companions; the more timid of the rascals, who were not eager to encounter him or his stick, saw their opportunity. In a twinkling they cut off the two girls, and hemmed them in. Beginning with pushing and jostling them they would soon have gone on to further insults if Sophia had not flown at them in her turn, and repelled them with a rage that for a few seconds daunted them. Tom, too, heard the girls' cries, and turned to relieve them; but as he sprang forward a boy tripped him up, and he fell prone on the road.

That gave the last impulse to the evil instincts of the crowd. The louts darted on him with a savage yell, and began to pommel him; and ill it must have gone with Tom as well as with his womenfolk if the crowd had had their way with them for many seconds.

But at that critical instant, without warning, or any at least that the victors regarded, the long lash of a hunting-whip flickered in the air, and fell as by magic between the girls and their assailants; it seared, as with a red-hot iron, the hand which a sturdy young clown, half-boy, half-man, was brandishing under Sophia's nose; it stung with the sharpness of a dozen wasps the mocking face that menaced Betty on the other side. The lads who had flung themselves on Tom, awoke with yells of pain to find the same whip curling about their shoulders, and to see behind it, set in grim rage, the face of their landlord.

That instant, the harpies, who had been hounding them on, vanished as by magic, scuttling all ways like frightened hens. And Sir Hervey let them go-for the time; but behind the lads and louts, fleeing and panting and racing and sweating down the road, and aiming fruitlessly at gates and gaps, the lash fell ever and mercilessly on sturdy backs and fleshy legs. The horse he rode was an old hunter, known in the district, quick and cunning, broken to all turns of the hare; and that day it carried fate, and punishment with no halting foot followed hard upon the sin!

Sobbing with exhaustion, with labouring chests that at intervals shot forth cries of pain, as the flickering thong licked their hams, and they bounded like deer under the sting, the bullies came at last to the vicarage gate. There Sir Hervey left them, free at last to rub their weals and curse their folly; sorer, but it is to be hoped wiser men.