Sophia: A Romance

"Be still, man," he cried to the other, "and keep your ears open. The moon will be over the hill in five minutes, and we'll have them safe, if they are here. Meantime, stand and listen, will you? or they may creep off."

Sophia swallowed a sob. It seemed so hard-so hard after all they had done to escape-that nature itself should turn against them. Yet, it was so; the man was right. Already the moonlight touched the crest of a gorse-bush that grew a little higher than its neighbours; and overhead the sky was growing bright where the ridge line cut it. In five minutes the disc of the moon, sailing high, would rise above that spot, and all the hill side, that now lay veiled in shadow, would be flooded with light. Then-

She shuddered, watching paralysed the oncoming of this new and inexorable foe. Slowly the light was creeping down the gorse-bush. Minute by minute, sure as the tide that surges to the lips of the stranded mariner, the pale rays silvered this spray and that spray, dark before; touched the fence, and now lay a narrow streak along the nearer margin of the stream. And the streak widened; not slowly now but quickly. Even while she watched it, from the shelter of the fence, feeling her heart beat sickening bumps against her side, the light crept nearer and nearer. In three or four minutes it would be upon them.

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-"