Sophia: A Romance

"I cannot," she cried, "I cannot." And then, "Oh Sophy! Sophy!" she wailed, "why did I leave you? Why did I leave you?"

He let her weep a minute or two, and then as much to distract her as for any other reason, he asked her if she had been brought up with her mistress.

She ceased to sob. "Why?" she asked, startled.

"Because-you called her by her name," he said. "I noticed because I've a sister of that name."

"Sophia?"

"Yes. If I had listened to her-but there, what is the use of talking?" And he broke off brusquely.

Lady Betty was silent awhile, only betraying her impatience by sighing or beating the trunk with her heels. By-and-by, the hour before the dawn came, and it grew cold. He heard her teeth chatter, and after fumbling with his coat, he took it off, and, in spite of her remonstrances, wrapped her in it.

"Don't!" she said, feebly struggling with him. "Don't! You're a gentleman, and I am only-"

"You're a woman as much as your mistress," he answered roughly.

"But-you hate women!" she cried.

"You don't belong to me," he answered with disdain, "and you'll not die on my hands! Do as you are bidden, child!"

After that he walked up and down before the tree; until at last the day broke, and the grey light, spreading and growing stronger, showed them a sea of mist, covering the whole world-save the little eminence on which they sat-and flowing to their very feet. It showed them also two haggard faces-his weary, hers beautiful in spite of its pallor and her long vigil. For in some mysterious way she had knotted up her hair and tied her kerchief. As she gave him back his coat, and their eyes met, he started and grew red.

"Good heavens, child!" he cried, "you are too handsome to be wandering the country alone; and too young."

She had nothing to say to that, but her cheeks flamed, and she begged him to come quickly-quickly; and together they went down into the mist. At that hour the birds sing in chorus as they never sing in the day; and, by the time the two reached the road the sun was up and the world round them was joyous with warmth and light and beauty. The dew besprinkled every bush with jewels as bright as those which Betty carried in her bosom-for she had thrown away the case-and from the pines on the hill came the perfume of a hundred Arabys. Tom wondered why his heart beat so lightly, why he felt an exhilaration to which he had been long a stranger. Heartbroken, a woman-hater, a cynic, it could not be because a pair of beautiful eyes had looked kindly into his? because a waiting-maid had for a moment smiled on him? That was absurd.

For her, left to herself, she would have pursued the old plan, and gone wildly, frantically up and down, seeking at random the place where she had left Sophia. But he would not suffer it. He led her to the nearest cottage, and learning from the staring inhabitants the exact position of Beamond's Farm, got his companion milk and bread, and saw her eat it. Then he announced his purpose.

"I shall leave you here," he said. "In two hours at the most I shall be back with news."

"And you think I'll stay?" she cried.

"I think you will, for I shall not take you," he answered coolly. "Do you want the smallpox, silly child? Do you think your ladies will be as ready to hire you when you have lost your looks? Stay here, and in two hours I shall be back."

She cried that she would not stay; she would not stay! "I shall not!" she cried a third time. "Do you hear me? I shall go with you!"

"You will not!" Tom said. "And for a good reason, my girl. You heard that woman ask us whether we came from Beamond's, and you saw the way she looked at us. If it's known we've been there, there's not a house within ten miles will take us in, nor a coach will give us a lift. You have had one night out, you'll not bear another. Now, with me it is different."

"It is not," she cried. "I shall go."

"You will not," he said; and their eyes met. And presently hers dropped. "You will not," he repeated masterfully; "because I am the stronger, and I will tie you to a gate before you shall go. And you, little fool, will be thankful to me to-morrow. It's for your own good."

She gave way at that, crying feebly, for the night had shaken her. "Sit here in sight of the cottage," he continued, thrusting aside the brambles and making a place for her beside a tree, "and if you can sleep a little, so much the better. In two hours at the farthest I will be back."

She obeyed, watched him go, and saw his figure grow smaller and smaller, until it vanished at a turn of the road. She watched the woman of the cottage pass in and out with pail and pattens, and by-and-by she had to parry her questions. She saw the sun climb higher and higher in the sky, and heard the hum of the bees grow loud and louder, and felt the heat of the day take hold; and yet he did not return. And while she watched for him most keenly, as she imagined, she fell asleep.

When she awoke he was standing over her, and his face told her all. She sprang up. "You've not found her!" she cried, clasping her hands, and holding them out to him.

"No," he said. "There's no one in the house. No one but the dead."

CHAPTER XX

A FRIEND IN NEED

Sophia's knees shook under her, her flesh shuddered in revolt, but she held her ground until Hawkesworth's footsteps and the murmur of his companions' jeering voices sank and died in the distance. Then, with eyes averted from the bed, she crept to the head of the stairs and descended, her skirts gathered jealously about her. She reached the kitchen. Here, in the twilight that veiled the shrouded cradle, and mercifully hid worse things, she listened awhile; peering with scared eyes into the corners, and prepared to flee at the least alarm. Satisfied at last that those she feared had really withdrawn, she passed out into the open, and under the night sky, with the fresh breeze cooling her fevered face, she drank in with ecstasy a first deep breath of relief. Oh, the pureness of that draught! Oh, the freedom and the immensity of the vault above her-after that charnel-house!

She felt sure that the men had retired the way they had come, and after a moment's hesitation she turned in the other direction, and venturing into the moonlight, took the road that Betty had taken. Now she paused to listen, now on some alarm effaced herself in the shadow cast by a tree. By-and-by, when she had left the plague-stricken house two or three hundred paces behind her, her ear caught the pleasant ripple of water. Her throat was parched, and she stopped, and traced the sound to a spring that, bubbling from a rock, filled a mossy caldron sunk in the earth, then ran to waste in a tiny rill beside the road. The hint was enough; in a second she had dragged off her outer garment, a green riding-coat, and shuddering, flung it from her; in another she had thrown off her shoes and loosened her hair. A moment she listened; then, having assured herself that she was not pursued, she plunged head and hair and hands in the fountain, let the cool water run over her fevered arms and neck, revelled in the purifying touch that promised to remove from her the loathsome infection of the house. She was a woman, she had not only death, but disfigurement to fear. One of the happy few who, under the early Georges, when even inoculation was in its infancy, had escaped the disease, she clung to her immunity with a nervous dread.

When she had done all she could, she rose to her feet and knotted up her hair. She had Betty on her mind; she must follow the girl. But midnight was some time past, the moon was declining, and her strength, sapped by the intense excitement under which she had laboured, was nearly spent. The chances that she would alight on Betty were slight, while it was certain that the girl would eventually return, or would send to the place where they had parted company. Sophia determined to remain where she was; and with the music of the rill for company, and a large stone that stood beside it for a seat, hard but dry, the worst discomfort which she had to fear was cold; and this, in her fervent gratitude for rescue from greater perils, she bore without complaint.

The solemnity of the night, as it wore slowly to morning, the depth of silence-as of death-that preceded the dawn, the stir of thanksgiving that greeted the birth of another day, these working on a nature stirred by strange experiences and now subject to a strange solitude, awoke in her thoughts deeper than ordinary. She saw in Betty's recklessness the mirror of her own; she shuddered at Hawkesworth, disclosed to her in his true colours; and considered Sir Hervey's patience with new wonder. Near neighbour to death, she viewed life as a thing detached and whole; with its end as well as its beginning. And she formed resolutions, humble at the least.

By-and-by she had to rise and be walking to keep herself warm; for she would not resume her riding-coat, and her arms were bare. A little later, however, the sun rose high enough to reach her. In the great oak that overhung the spring, the birds began to flit like moving shadows; a squirrel ran down the bark and looked at her. And in her veins a strange exhilaration began to stir. She was alive! She was safe! And then, on a sudden, she heard a footstep close at hand.

She cowered low, seized with terror. It might be Hawkesworth! The villain might have repented of his fears, have gathered courage with the light, have returned more ruthless than he had gone. Fortunately, the panic which the thought bred in her was short-lived. An asthmatic cough, followed by the noise of heavy breathing, put an end to her suspense. Next moment an elderly man wearing a rusty gown and a shabby hat decked with a rosette, came in sight. He leant on a stout stick, and carried a cloak on his arm. He had white hair and a benevolent aspect, with features that seemed formed by nature for mirth, and compelled by circumstance to soberer uses.

Aware of the oddity of her appearance-bare-armed and in her stocking feet-Sophia hung back, hesitating to address him; he was quite close to her when he lifted his eyes and saw her. The good man's surprise could scarcely have been greater had he come upon the nymph of the spring. He started, dropped his stick and cloak, and stared, his jaw fallen; it even seemed to her that a little of the colour left his face.

At last, "My child," he cried, "what are you doing here, of all places? D'you come from the house above?"

"I have been there," she answered.

He stared. "But they have the smallpox!" he exclaimed. "Did you know it?"

"I went there to avoid worse things," she cried; and fell to trembling. "Do you live here, sir?"

"Here? No; but I live in the valley below," he answered, still contemplating her with astonishment. "I am only here," he continued, with a touch of sternness which she did not understand, "because my duty leads me here. I am told-God grant it be not true-that there are three dead at the farm, and that the living are fled."

"It is true," she answered briefly. And against the verdure, framed in the beauty of this morning world, with its freshness, its dancing sunlight, and its flitting birds, she saw the death-room, the fœtid mist about the smoking guttering candles, the sheeted form. She shuddered.

"You are sure?" he said.

"I have seen them," she answered.

"Then I need go no farther now," he replied in a tone of relief. "I can do no good. I must return and get help to bury them. It will be no easy task; my parishioners are stricken with panic, they think only of their wives and families. Even in my own household-but I am forgetting, child. You are a stranger here? And, Lord bless me, what has become of your gown?"

She pointed to the place where it lay a little apart, in a heap on the ground. "I've taken it off," she explained, colouring slightly. "I fear it carries the infection. I was attacked in my carriage on the other side of the ford. And robbed. And to avoid worse things I took refuge in the house above."

"Lord save us!" he cried, lifting his hands in astonishment. "I never heard of such a thing! Never! We have had no such doings in these parts these twenty years!"

"Perhaps you could lend me your cloak, sir?" she said. "Until I can get something."

He handed it to her. "To be sure, to be sure," he answered. And then, "In your carriage?" he continued. "Dear, dear, and had you any one with you, ma'am?"

"My friend escaped," she explained, "with-with some jewels I had. The postboys had been sent ahead to Lewes to get fresh horses. Watkyns, one of the servants, had returned towards Fletching, to see if he could get help in that quarter. My woman was so frightened that she was useless, and the two grooms had been made drunk on the road, and were useless also!"

She did not notice, that with each item in her catalogue, the old clergyman's eyes grew wider and wider; nor that towards the end surprise began to give place to incredulity. This talk of horses, and grooms, and servants, and maids, and postboys in the mouth of a girl found hatless and shoeless by the roadside-a creature with tumbled hair, without a gown, and in petticoats soaked with water, and stained with dust and dirt, over-stepped the bounds of reason. Unfortunately, a little before this a young woman had appeared in a town not far off, in the guise of a countess; and with all the apparatus of the rank had taken in no less worshipful a body than the mayor and corporation of the place, who in the issue had been left to bewail their credulity. The tale was rife along the country-side; the old clergyman knew it, and being by nature a simple soul-as his wife often told him-had the cunning of simplicity. He bade himself be cautious-be cautious; and as he listened bethought him of a test. "Your carriage should be there, then?" he said. "Where you left it, ma'am?"