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

which the imminence of peril teaches, Betty had fled on the word. She had slipped behind the man's back, passed between the houses, and escaped into the open, unseen, as she fancied.

For a time she had sped along the road, looking this way and that, expecting at each turn to discover a house, a light, the help she sought. At length, coming on none of these, she began to suspect the truth, and that Sophia had saved her at her own cost; and she paused and turned, and even in her distraction made as if she would go back. But in the end, with a sob of grief, she hurried on, seeing in this their only chance.

At length her strength began to fail. Presently she could go no farther, and with a cry of anguish came to a stand in a dark part of the road. She was alone, in an unknown country, with the night before her, with the sounds of the night round her; and commonly she was afraid of the night. But now all the child's thought was for Sophia; her heart was breaking for her friend. And by-and-by she pressed on again, her breath fluttering between sobs and exhaustion. She turned a corner--and oh, sweet, she saw a light before her!

She struggled towards it. The spark grew larger and larger; finally it became the open doorway of an alehouse, from which the company were departing. The goodman and two or three topers were on their feet having a last crack, the goodwife from her bed above was demanding lustily why they lingered, when the girl, breathless and dishevelled, her hair hanging about her face, appeared on the threshold. For a moment she could not speak; her face was white, her eyes stared wildly. The men fell back from her, as a flock of sheep crowd away from the dog.

"What beest 'ee?" the landlord bleated faintly. "Lord save us and help us! Be 'ee mortal?"

"Help!" she muttered, as she leaned almost swooning, against the doorpost. "Help! Come quickly! They'll--they'll murder her--if you don't!" And she stretched out her hands to them.

But the men only shuddered. "Lord save us!" one of them stammered. "It's mostly for murder they come."

She saw that no one moved, and she could have screamed with impatience. "Don't you hear me?" she cried hoarsely. "Come, or they'll kill her! They'll kill her! I've left her with them. Come, if you are men!"

They began to see that the girl was flesh and blood; but their minds were rustic, and none of the quickest, and they might have continued to gape at her for some time longer, if the goodwife, who had heard every word, had not looked through the trap in the ceiling. She saw the girl. "Lord sake!" she cried, struck with amazement. "What is it?"

"Help!" Betty answered, clasping her hands, and turning her eyes in that direction. "For pity's sake send them with me! There's murder being done on the road! Tell them to come with me."

"What is it? Footpads?" the woman asked sharply.

"Yes, oh yes! They have stopped Lady Coke's carriage"

The woman waited to hear no more. "Quick, you fools!" she cried. "Get sticks, and go! Lady Coke's carriage, eh? You'll be her woman, I expect. They'll come, they'll come. But where is't? Speak up, and don't be afraid!"

"At a house on a hill," Lady Betty answered rapidly. "She's there, hiding from them. And oh, be quick! be quick, if you please!"

But at that word the goodman, who had snatched up a thatching stake, paused on the threshold. "A house on a hill?" he said. "Do you mean Beamond's farm?"

"I don't know," she answered. "It's on a hill about a mile or more--oh, more from here--on the way I came! You must know it!"

"This side of a ford?"

"Yes, yes."

"They've the smallpox there?"

"Yes, I think so!"

The man flung down the stake. "No," he said. "It's no! I don't go there. Devil take me if I do. And she don't come here. If you are of my mind," he continued, looking darkly at his fellows, "you'll leave this alone!"

The men were evidently of that mind; they threw down their weapons, some with a curse, some with a shiver. Betty saw, and frantic, could not believe her eyes. "Cowards!" she cried. "You cowards!"

The woman alone looked at her uncertainly. "I've children, you see," she said. "I've to think of them. But there's Crabbe could go. He's neither chick nor child."

But the lout she named backed into a corner, sullen and resolute; as if he feared they would force him to go. "Not I," he said. "I don't go near it, neither. There's three there dead and stiff, and three's enough."

"You cowards!" Betty repeated, sobbing with passion.

The woman, too, looked at them with no great favour. "Will none of you go?" she said. "Mind you, if you go I'll be bound you'll be paid! Or perhaps the young sir there will go!"

She turned as she spoke, and Betty, looking in the same direction, saw a young man seated on the side of a box bed in the darkest part of the kitchen. Apparently her entrance had roused him from sleep, for his hair was rough, and he was in his shirt and breeches. His boots, clay-stained to the knees, stood beside the bed; his coat and cravat, which were drying in the chimney corner, showed that he had been out in bad weather. The clothes he retained bore traces of wear and usage; but, though plain, they seemed to denote a higher station than that of the rustics in his company. As his eyes met Lady Betty's, "I'll come," he said gruffly. And he reached for his boots and began to put them on; but with a yawn.

Still she was thankful. "Oh, will you!" she cried. "You're a man. And the only one here!"

"He won't be one long!" the nearest boor cried spitefully.

But the lad, dropping for a moment his listless manner, took a step in the speaker's direction; and the clown recoiled. The young fellow laughed, and, snatching up a stout stick that rested against his truckle bed, said he was ready. "You know the way?" he said; and then, as he read exhaustion written on her face, "Quick, mother," he cried in an altered tone, "have you naught you can give her? She will drop before she has gone a mile!"

The woman hurried up the ladder and fetched a little spirit in a mug. She handed it to the girl at arm's length, telling her to drink it, it would do her good. Then, cutting a slice from a loaf of coarse bread that lay on the table, she pushed it over to her. "Take that in your hand," she said, "and God keep you."

Betty did as she was bidden, though she was nearly sick with suspense. Then she thanked the woman, turned, and, deaf to the boors' gibes, passed into the road with her new protector. She showed him the way she had come, and the two set off walking at the top of her pace.

She swallowed a morsel of bread, then ran a little, the tears rising in her eyes as she thought of Sophia. A moment of this feverish haste, and the lad bade her walk. "If we've a mile to go," he said wisely, "you cannot run all the way. Slow and steady kills the hare, my dear. How many are there of these gentry?"

"Three," she answered; and as she pictured Sophia and those three a lump rose in her throat.

"Any servants? I mean had your mistress any men with her?"

Betty told him, but incoherently. The postboys, the grooms, Watkyns, Pettitt, all were mixed up in her narrative. He tried to follow it, then gave up the attempt. "Anyway, they have all fled," he said. "It comes to that."

She admitted with a sob that it was so; that Sophia was alone.

The moonlight lay on the road; as she tripped by his side, he turned and scanned her. He took her for my lady's woman, as the mistress at the alehouse had taken her. He had caught the name of Coke, but he knew no Lady Coke; he had not heard of Sir Hervey's marriage, and, to be truthful, his mind was more concerned for the maid than the mistress. Through the disorder of Betty's hair and dress, her youth and something of her beauty peeped out; it struck him how brave she had been to come for help, through the night, alone; how much more brave she was to be willing to return, seeing that he was but one to three, and there was smallpox to face. As he considered this he felt a warmth at his heart which he had not felt for days. And he sighed.

Presently her steps began to lag; she stood. "Where are we?" she cried, fear in her voice. "We should be there!"

"We've come about a mile," he said, peering forward through the moonlight. "Is it on a hill, did you say?"

"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