Sophia: A Romance

"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.

Sophia, supporting herself by a gate, and now laughing hysterically, now repressing with difficulty the inclination to weep, watched him return. She saw him through a mist of smiles and tears. For the moment she forgot that he was her husband, forgot that this was the meeting so long and greatly dreaded.

He sprang from his horse.

"You're not hurt?" he cried. "Child-" and then, with astonishment she saw that he was speechless.

Her own words came easily; even her manner was eager and unembarrassed. "No," she cried, "nor Lady Betty! You came just in time, Sir Hervey."

"Thank God, I did," he answered; "thank God! And you are sure, child, you are none the worse? You are not hurt?"

"No," she answered, laughing, as people laugh in moments of agitation. "Not a bit! You are looking at my dress? Oh, we have had adventures, a vast lot of adventures, Sir Hervey! It would take a day to tell them, wouldn't it, Betty? Betty's my maid, Sir Hervey." She was above herself. She spoke gaily and archly, as Betty might have spoken.

"Lady Betty your maid?" he exclaimed, turning to Betty, who blushed and laughed. "What do you mean?"

"Mean? Why only-hush, where is Tom? Oh, repairing himself! Why, only a frolic, Sir Hervey! Tom took her for my woman, and we want to keep him in it! So not a word, if you please. This is Betty the maid, you'll remember?"

"I obey," Sir Hervey answered. "But to tell the truth," he continued soberly, "my head turns. Where did you meet Tom, my dear? What has happened to you? And why are you wearing-that queer cloak? And where are your shoes?"

"It's not very becoming, is it?" she cried, and she looked at him. Never before in her life had she played the coquette, never; now in this moment of unrestrained feeling, her eyes, provocative as Lady Betty's, challenged the compliment. And she wondered at herself.

"You are always-the same to me," he said simply. And then: "You are really all of you unhurt? Well, thank God for it! And, Tom, my lad, you know, I suppose, how you came to be in this? I am sure I don't; but I thought it was you when I came up."

"I hope you flayed them!" Tom growled, as they gripped hands. "See, she's barefoot! They hunted us half a mile, I should think."

Sir Hervey looked and grew red. "I did!" he answered. "I think they have learned a lesson. And they have not heard the last of it!" Then the post-chaise, which he had escorted to Beamond's Farm on a fruitless search, came up, and behind it a couple of mounted servants, whose training scarce enabled them to conceal their surprise, when they saw the condition of their new mistress.

Sir Hervey postponed further inquiry. He hurried the two ladies into the carriage, set Tom on a servant's horse, and gave the word. A moment later the party were travelling rapidly in the direction of the Hall. Coke rode on the side next his wife, Tom by Lady Betty. But the noise of the wheels made conversation difficult, and no one spoke.