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

"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----"

"I have them not!" she answered firmly; and little did he suspect how wildly her heart was leaping behind the bold front she showed him. Little did he suspect, the deadly terror she had had to surmount before she penetrated so far into this loathsome house. "I have them not," she repeated. "Nor have I any fear of you. There is that here that is your master and mine. Come up, come up," she continued, a touch of wildness in her manner, and she mounted a step or two of the narrow staircase, and beckoned him to follow her. "Come up and you will see him."

"You drab!" he cried, "do you come down, or it will be the worse for you! Do you hear me? Come down, you slut, or when I fetch you I will have no mercy. You don't know what I shall do to you; I do, and----"

He stood, he was silent, he choked with rage; for as if he had not spoken, her figure first and then her feet, mounting without pause or hesitation, vanished from sight. He was left, scared and baffled, alone in the great desolate kitchen where his light shone a mere spark, making visible the darkness that canopied him. A rat moving in the dim fringe between light and shadow startled him. A rope of onions swayed by the draught of air that blew through the open door, brought the sweat to his brow. He took two steps forward and one backward; the shroud on the cradle fluttered, and but for the men waiting outside, he would have fled at once and given up woman and booty. But fear of ridicule still conquered fear of death; conquered even the superstition that lay dormant in his Irish blood; he forced himself onward. His eyes fixed balefully, his hands withheld from contact with the wall--as if he had been a woman with skirts--he crept upwards till his gaze rose above the level of the upper floor; then for a moment the light of two thick candles, half-burned, gave him back his courage. His brow relaxed, he sprang with a cry up the upper stairs, set his foot in the room and stood!

On the huge low wooden bed from which the coarse blue and white bedding protruded, two bodies lay sheeted. At their feet the candles burned dull before the window that should have been open, but was shut; as the thick noisome air of the room, that turned him sick and faint, told him. Near the bed, on the farther side, stood that he sought; Sophia, her eyes burning, her face like paper. His prey then was there, there, within his reach; but she had not spoken without reason. Death, death in its most loathsome aspect lay between them; and the man's heart was as water, his feet like lead.

"If you come near me," she whispered, "if you come a step nearer, I will snatch this sheet from them, and I will wrap you in it! And you will die! In eight days you will be dead! Will you see them? Will you see what you will be?" And she lowered her hand to raise the sheet.

He stepped back a pace, livid and shaking. "You she-devil!" he muttered. "You witch!"

"Go!" she answered, in the same low tone. "Go! Or I will bring your death to you! And you will die! As you have lived, foul, noisome, corrupt, you will die! In eight days you will die--if you come one step nearer!"

She took a step forward herself. The man turned and fled.

Lady Betty had left the house on the hill a mile behind, her breath came in heavy gasps, her heart seemed to be bursting through her bodice; still she panted bravely along the road that stretched before her, white under the moonbeams. Sophia had bidden her run, the moment the man's back was turned. "Give the alarm, get help," she had whispered as she thrust the diamonds into the child's hand; and acting on that instinct of obedience, prompt and unquestioning,