Sophia: A Romance

"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."

But the house she saw proved to be only a deserted barn, at the junction of two roads; and they stood dismayed. "Did you pass this?" he asked.

"I don't know," she cried. "Yes, I think so."

"On your right or your left?"

She wrung her hands. "I think it was on my right," she said.

He took the right-hand turn without more ado, and they hurried along the road for some minutes. At length her steps began to flag. "I must be wrong," she faltered. "I must be wrong! Oh, why," she cried, "why did I leave her?" And she stood.

"Courage!" he answered. "I see a rising ground on the left. And there's a house on it. We ought to have taken the other turning. Now we are here we had better cross the open. Shall I lift you over the ditch, child? Or shall I leave you and go on?"

But she scrambled into the ditch and out again; on the other side the two set off running with one accord, across an open field, dim and shadowy, that stretched away to the foot of the ascent. Soon he outpaced her, and she fell to walking. "Go on!" she panted bravely. "On, on, I will follow!"

He nodded, and clutching his stick by the middle, he lengthened his stride. She saw him come to a blurred line at the foot of the hill, and heard him break through the fence. Then the darkness that lay on the hither slope of the hill-for the moon was beginning to decline-swallowed him, and she walked on more slowly. Each moment she expected to hear a cry, an oath, the sudden clash of arms would break the silence of the night.

But the silence held; and still silence. And now the fence brought her up also; and she stood waiting, trembling, listening, in a prolongation of suspense almost intolerable. At length, unable to bear it longer, she pushed her way into the hedge, and struggled, panting through it; and was starting to clamber up the ascent on the other side when a dark form loomed beside her.

It was her companion. What had happened?

"We are wrong," he muttered. "It's a clump of trees, not a house. And there are clouds coming up to cover the moon. Let us return to the road while we can, my girl."

But this was too much. At this, the last of many disappointments, the girl's courage snapped, as a rush snaps. With a wild outburst of weeping, she flung herself down on the sloping ground, and rubbed her face in the grass, and tore the soil with her fingers in an agony of abandonment. "Oh, I left her! I left her!" she wailed, when sobs allowed words to pass. "I left her, and saved myself. And she's dead! Oh, why didn't I stay with her? Why didn't I stay with her?"

The young man listened awhile, awkward, perturbed; when he spoke his voice was husky. "'Tis no use," he said peevishly. "No use, child! Don't-don't go on like this! See here, you'll have a fever, if you lie there. You will, I know," he repeated.

"I wish I had!" she cried with passion, and beat her hands on the ground. "Oh why did I leave her?"

He cleared his throat. "It's folly this!" he urged. "It's-it's of no use to any one. No good! And there, now it's dark. I told you so-and we shall have fine work getting to the road again!"

She did not answer, but little by little his meaning reached her brain, and after a minute or two she sat up, her crying less violent. "That's better," he said. "But you are too tired to go farther. Let me help you to climb the fence. There's a log the other side-I stumbled over it. You can sit on it until you are rested."

She did not assent, but she suffered him to help her through the hedge and seat her on the fallen tree. The tide of grief had ebbed; she was regaining her self-control, though now and again a sob shook her. But he saw that an interval must pass before she could travel, and he stood, shy and silent, seeing her dimly by the light which the moon still shed through a flying wrack of clouds. Round and below them lay the country, still, shadowy, mysterious; stretching away into unknown infinities, framing them in a solitude perfect and complete. They might have been the only persons in the world.

By-and-by, whether he was tired, or really had a desire to comfort her at closer quarters, he sat down on the tree; and by chance his hand touched her hand. She sprang a foot away, and uttered a cry. He laughed softly.

"You need not be afraid," he said. "I've seen enough of women to last me my life. If you were the only woman in the world, and the most beautiful, you would be safe enough for me. You may be quite easy, my dear."

She ceased to sob, but her voice was a little broken and husky when she spoke. "I'm very sorry," she said humbly. "I am afraid I have given you a vast deal of trouble, sir."

"Not so much as a woman has given me before this," he answered.

She looked at him furtively out of the tail of her eye, as a woman at that would be likely to look. And if the truth be told she felt, amid all her grief, an inclination to laugh. But with feminine tact she suppressed this. "And yet-and yet you came to help me?" she muttered.

He shrugged his shoulders. "One has to do certain things," he said.

"I am afraid somebody has-has behaved badly to you," she murmured; and she sighed.

Somehow the sigh flattered him. "As women generally behave," he replied with a sneer. "She lied to me, she cheated me, she robbed me, and she would have ruined me."

"And men don't do those things," she answered meekly, "to women." And she sighed again.

He started. It could not be that she was laughing at him. "Anyway, I have done with women," he said brusquely.

"And you'll never marry, sir?"

"Marry? Oh, I say nothing as to that," he answered contemptuously. "Marry I may, but it won't be for love. And 'twill be a lady anyway; I'll see to that. I'll know her father and her mother, and her grandfather and her grandmother," Tom continued. For poor Tom it was, much battered and weathered by a week spent on the verge of 'listing. "I'll have her pedigree by heart, and she shall bring her old nurse with her to speak for her, if marry I must. But no more ladies in distress for me. No more ladies picked up off the road, I thank you. That's all."

"You are frank, sir, at any rate," she said; and she laughed in a sort of wonder, taking it to herself.

At the sound, Tom, who had meant nothing personal, felt ashamed of himself. "I beg your pardon, my dear," he answered. "But-but I wished to put you at your ease. I wished to show you, you were safe with me; as your mistress would be."

"Oh, thank you," Betty answered. "For the matter of that, sir, I've had a lover myself, and said no to him, as well as my betters. But it wasn't before he asked me," she continued ironically. And she tossed her head again.

"I didn't mean-I mean I thought you were afraid of me," Tom stammered, wondering she took it so ill.

"No more than my mistress would be," she retorted sharply. "And I'm just as particular as she is-in one thing."

"What's that?" he asked.

"I don't take gentlemen off the road, either."

He laughed, seeing himself hit; and as if that recalled her to herself, she sprang up with a sob of remorse. "Oh," she said, wringing her hands, "we sit here and play, while she suffers! We don't think of her! Do something! do something if you are a man!"

"But we don't know where we are, or where she is."

"Then let us find her," she cried; "let us find her!"

"We can do nothing in the dark," he urged. "It is dark as the pit now. If we can find our way to the road again, it will be as much as we can do."

"Let us try! let us try!" she answered, growing frantic. "I shall go mad if I stay here."

He gave way at that, and consented to try. But they had not gone fifty yards before she tripped and fell, and he heard her gasp for breath.

"Are you hurt?" he asked, stooping anxiously over her.

"No," she said. But she rose with difficulty, and he knew by her voice that she was shaken.

"It's of no use to go on," he said. "I told you so. We must stay here. It is after midnight now. In an hour, or a little more, dawn will appear. If we find the road now we can do no good."

She shivered. "Take me back," she said miserably. "I-I don't know where we are."

He took her hand, and with a little judgment found the tree again. "If you could sleep awhile," he said, "the time would pass."