Sophia, Stanley J. Weyman [new ebook reader TXT] 📗

turned instinctively down stream, in the direction of the road and the houses. The rider's movement up the road therefore tended to cut off their farther retreat; while the distance they had been able to put between themselves and the stepping-stones was so short that they dared not move again, much less make the attempt to repass their landing-place, and go up stream. For the moment, close as they were to their enemies, the darkness shielded them; but Sophia's heart beat thickly, and she crouched lower against the wattle as she heard Hawkesworth step into the stream and splash his way across, swearing at the coldness of the water.

CHAPTER XVIII KING SMALLPOX

He drew himself out on their side and shook himself; then for a time it seemed that the earth had swallowed him, so still was he. But Sophia knew that he was listening, standing in the dark a few paces from them, in the hope of hearing the rustle of their skirts or their footsteps as they stole away. Disappointed in this he began to move to and fro, beating the bushes this way and that; now loudly threatening them with horrid penalties if they did not show themselves, now asserting that he saw them, and now calling to his fellow who kept guard on the farther bank to know if he heard them. It was clear that he knew, probably from Pettitt, that they had not had time to go far from the carriage.

Fortunately the trend of his search was from them, and as he receded up stream they breathed more freely. But when the sound of his movements was beginning to grow faint, and Sophia to think of continuing their flight, he turned, and she heard him come back on his tracks. This time, if the ear could be trusted, he was making directly for the place where they cowered beside the wattle fence.

Yes, he was drawing nearer--and nearer; now a stick snapped under his foot, now he stumbled and swore, as he recovered himself. Sophia felt the younger girl shake under her hand, and instinctively drew the child's face against her shoulder that she might not see. Presently she could make out his head and shoulders dark against the sky; and still she watched him, fascinated. Three more steps and he would be on them! Two more--the impulse to shriek, to spring up and fly at all risks was scarcely to be controlled. One more--there was a sudden rustle, a fathom below them, he sprang that way, something whisked from a gorse-bush, and he stood.

"What was it?" cried the man on the other side.

"A rabbit!" he answered with an oath. "So they're not this way. I don't believe they crossed. Are you sure they're not in that thorn tree behind you? One of them might hide in it."

Apparently the man went to see, for half a minute later, a shriek, followed by a thud, as of a heavy body brought hurriedly to earth, proved the success of his search. Hawkesworth sprang towards the stepping-stones.

"Which is it?" he cried.

"Neither," the fellow answered. "It's the whippersnapper you sent for a decoy."

"D----n it!" Hawkesworth exclaimed, and he came to a stand. "But if you've got him, they are not far off. We'll wring his neck if he does not say where they are! Prick him, man, prick him with your knife."

But the poor fop's squeals showed that little cruelty would be needed to draw from him all he knew. "Don't! Don't!" he screamed. "They're on the other side! I swear they are!"

"None of your lies now, or I'll slit your throat!" the ruffian growled. He appeared to be kneeling on Lane's breast.

"It's the truth! I swear it is! They were just across when you came!" Lane cried. "They can't be fifty yards from the bank! If they'd moved I should have seen them. Let me up, and I'll help you to find them."

"Tie him up," Hawkesworth cried. "Tie him up. And if he's lied to us, we shall soon know. If we don't find them, we'll drop him in the water. Tell him that, and ask him again."

"They're by yon!" Lane cried. "I swear they are!"

Sophia felt, she could not see, that Hawkesworth was peering round him. Even now he was not more than ten or twelve paces from them; but the gorse-bush, from which the rabbit had darted, formed a black blurr against the fence, and deepened the obscurity in which they lay. Unless he came on them they were safe; but at any moment he might discover the fence, and guess it had brought them up, and beat along it. And--and while she thought of this she heard him chuckle.

"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