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

with my mistress in calling her by her name, and I--I had to account for it, and didn't tell quite the truth."

Tom was melted, yet his eye twinkled. "Last night or to-day?" he said.

"Both, sir," she whispered demurely. "And I'm afraid, sir, I took a liberty with you, too, talking nonsense and such like. But I'm sure, sir--I am very sorry, and I hope you won't tell my mistress."

The girl looked so pretty, so absurdly pretty in her penitence, and there was something so captivating in her manner, that Tom was seized with an inordinate desire to reassure her. "Tell, child? Not I!" he cried generously. "But I'll have a kiss for a forfeit. You owe me that," he continued, with one eye on the vicar, who had gone on while she tied her shoe. "Will you pay it now, my dear, or to-morrow with interest?"

"A kiss? Oh, fie, sir!"

"Why, what is the harm in a kiss?" Tom asked; and the rogue drew a little nearer.

"Oh, fie, sir!" Betty retorted, tossing her head, and moving farther from him. "What harm indeed? And you told me last night I should be as safe with you as my mistress need be!"

"Well?" Tom exclaimed triumphantly. "And shouldn't I kiss your mistress? Isn't she my sister? And--pooh, child, don't be silly. Was ever waiting-maid afraid of a kiss? And in daylight?"

But Betty continued to give him a wide berth. "No, sir, I'll not suffer it!" she cried tartly. "It's you who are taking the liberty now! And you told me last night you had seen enough of women to last you your life!"

"That was before I saw you, my dear!" Tom answered with impudence. But he desisted from the pursuit, and resuming a sober course along the middle of the road, became thoughtful almost to moodiness; as if he were not quite so sure of some things as he had been. At intervals he glanced at Betty; who walked by his side primly conscious of his regards, and now blushing a little, and now pouting, and now when he was not looking, with a laughing imp dancing in her eyes that must have effected his downfall in a moment, if he had met her gaze. As it was he lost himself in thinking how pretty she was, and how fresh; how sweet her voice, and how dainty her walk; how trim her figure, and----

And then he groaned; calling himself a fool, a double, treble, deepest-dyed fool! After the lesson he had learned, after the experience through which he had passed, was he really, really going to fall in love again? And with his sister's maid? With a girl picked up--his vows, his oaths, his resolutions notwithstanding--in the road! It was too much!

And Lady Betty walking beside him, knowing all and telling nothing, Betty the flirt? "He put his coat on me; I have worn his coat. He said he would tie me to the gate, and he would have tied me," with a furtive look at him out of the tail of her eye--that was the air that ran in her mind as she walked in the sunshine. A kiss? Well, perhaps; sometime. Who knew? And Lady Betty blushed at her thoughts. And they came to a corner where the garden house lay off the road. The vicarage was not yet in sight.

At the gate of the orchard the poor parson waited for them, smiling feebly, but not meeting their eyes. He was in a state of piteous embarrassment. Persuaded that they were cheats and adventurers, hedge-players, if nothing worse, he knew that another man in his place would have told them as much, and sent them about their business. But in the kindness of his heart he could no more do this than he could fly. On the other hand, his hair rose on end when he pictured his wife, and what she would say when he presented them to her. What she would do were he to demand the good fare they expected, he failed to conceive; but at the thought, the dense holly hedge that screened the house seemed all too thin. Alas, the thickest hedge is pervious to a woman's tongue!

In the others' ease and unconsciousness he found something pitiful; or he would have done so, if their doom had not involved his own punishment. "She is here, is she?" Tom said, his hand on the gate.

The vicar nodded, speechless; he pointed in the direction of the garden house.

Betty slipped through deftly. "Then, if you please, sir, I'll go first," she said. "Her ladyship may need something before she sees you--by your leave, sir?" And dropping a smiling curtsey, she coolly closed the gate on them, and flew down the path in the direction the vicar had indicated.

"Well, there's impudence!" Tom exclaimed. "Hang me if I know why she should go first!" And then, as a joyful cry rang through the trees, he looked at the vicar.

But Michieson looked elsewhere. He was listening, he was shivering with anticipation. If that cry reached her! Tom, however, failed to notice this; innocent and unconscious, he opened the gate and passed through; and, thinking of his sister and his last parting from her, went slowly across the sunlit grass until the low-hanging boughs of the apple-trees hid him.

The parson looked up and down the road with a hunted eye. The position was terrible. Should he go to his wife, confess and prepare her? Or should he wait until his unwelcome guests returned to share the brunt. Or--or should he go? Go about his business--was there not sad, pressing business at Beamond's farm?--until the storm was overpast.

He was a good man, but he was weak. A few seconds of hesitation, and he skulked down the road, his head bent, his eyes glancing backwards. He fancied that he heard his wife's voice, and hurried faster and faster from the dreaded sound. At length he reached the main road and stood, his face hot with shame. He considered what he should do.

Beamond's? Yes, he must go about that. He must, to save his self-respect, go about business of some kind. At a large farm two miles away his churchwarden lived; there he could get help. The farmer and his wife had had the disease, and were in less terror of it than some. At any rate he could consult them: in a Christian parish people could not lie unburied. In vital matters he was no coward, and he knew that if no one would help him--which was possible, so great was the panic--he would do all himself, if his strength held out.

In turning this over he tried to forget the foolish imbroglio of the morning; yet now and again he winced, pricked in his conscience and his manhood. After all, they had come to him for help, for food and shelter; and who so proper to afford these as God's minister in that place. At worst he should have sent them to one of the farms, and allowed it out of the tithe, and taken the chance when Easter came, and Peg discovered it. Passing the branch-road on his left, which Tom and Betty had taken in the night, he had a distant view of a horseman riding that way at speed: and he wondered a little, the sight being unusual. Three minutes later he came to the roadside ale-house which Betty had visited. The goodwife was at the door, and watched him come up. As he passed she cried out, to learn if his reverence had news.

"None that's good, Nanny," he answered; never doubting but she had the illness at Beamond's on her mind. And declining her offer of a mug of ale he went on, and half a mile farther turned off the road by a lane that led to the churchwarden's farm. He crossed the farmyard, and found Mrs. Benacre sitting within the kitchen door, picking over gooseberries. He begged her not to move, and asked if the goodman was at home.

"No, your reverence, he's at the Hall," she answered. "He was leaving hay in the Furlongs, and was fetched all in a minute this hour past, and took the team with him. The little lad came home and told me."

The vicar started, and looked a little odd. "I wanted to see him about poor Beamond," he said.

"'Tis true, then, your reverence?"

"Too true. There's nothing like it happened in the parish in my time."

"Dear, dear, it gives one the creeps! After all, when you've got a good husband, what's a little marking, and be safe? There should be something done, your reverence. 'Tis these gipsies bring it about."

The vicar set back the fine gooseberry he had selected. "What time did her ladyship arrive yesterday?" he asked.

Mrs. Benacre lifted up her hands in astonishment. "La, didn't you hear?" she cried. "But to be sure, you're off the road a good bit, and all your people so taken up with they poor Beamonds too? No time at all, your reverence! She didn't come. I take it, it's about that, Sir Hervey has sent for Benacre. He thinks a deal of him, as his father before him did of the old gaffer! I remember a cocking was at the Hall," Mrs. Benacre continued, "when I was a girl--'twas a match between the gentlemen of Sussex and the gentlemen of Essex--and the old squire would have Benacre's father to dine with them, and made so much of him as never was!"

The vicar had listened without hearing. "She stopped the night in Lewes, I suppose?" he said, his eyes on the gooseberries, his heart bumping.

"'Twasn't known, the squire being at Lewes to meet her. And to-day I've had more to do than to go fetching and carrying, and never a soul to speak to but they two hussies and the lad, since Benacre went on the land. There, your reverence, there's a berry should take a prize so far away as Croydon."

"Very fine," the parson muttered. "But I think I'll walk to the Hall and inquire."

"'Twould be very becoming," Mrs. Benacre allowed; and made him promise he would bring back the news.

As he went down the lane, he saw two horsemen pass the end of it at a quick trot. When he reached the road, the riders were out of sight; but his heart misgave him at this sign of unusual bustle. A quarter of an hour's walking along a hot road brought him to the park gate; it was open, and in the road was the lodge-keeper's wife, a child clinging to her skirts. Before he could speak, "Has your reverence any news?" she cried.

He shook his head.

"Well, was ever such a thing?" she exclaimed, lifting up her hands. "They're gone to be sure, as if the ground had swallowed them. It's that, or the rogues ha' drowned them in the Ouse!"

He felt himself shrinking in his clothes. "How--how did it happen?" he muttered faintly. What had he done? What had he done?

"The postboys left them in the carriage the other side of Beamond's," the woman answered, delighted to gain a listener. "And went back with fresh horses, I suppose it would be about seven this morning; they could not get them in the night. They found the carriage gone, and tracked it back so far almost as Chayley, and there found it, and the woman and the two grooms with it; but not one of them could give any account, except that their ladyships had been carried off by a gang of men, and they three had harnessed up and escaped. The postboys came back with the news, and about the same time Mr. Watkyns came by the main road through Lewes, and knew naught till he was