He turned by-and-by, thinking in his honest cunning to resolve that doubt. He found Tom in a sort of maze staring at the ground, and the girl watching him with a strange smile. For the first time the good vicar had recourse to the wisdom of the serpent. “Had I not better go to the Hall at once,” he said blandly, “and send a carriage for my lady?”
“Go to the Hall without seeing her?” Tom cried, awakening from his reverie. “Not I! I go to her straight. Sophia? Sophia? Good Lord!”
“And so do I, sir, by your leave,” the girl cried pertly. “And at once. I know my duty.”
“And you’re the man to show us the way,” Tom continued heartily, slapping his reverence on the back. “No more going up and down at random for me! Let’s to her at once! We can find a messenger to go to the Hall, when we have seen her. But Lord! I can’t get over it! When was she married, my girl?”
“Well,” Betty answered demurely, “’twas the same day, I believe, as your honour was to have been married.”
Tom winced and looked at her askance. “You know that, you baggage, do you?” he cried.
“So it went in the steward’s room, sir!”
But the vicar, his suspicions confirmed by their decision not to go to the Hall, hung back. “I think I had better go on,” he said. “I think Sir Hervey should be warned.”
“Oh, hang Sir Hervey!” Tom answered handsomely. “Why is he not looking after his wife? Lead on! Lead on, do you hear, man? How far is it?”
“About a mile,” the vicar faltered; “I should say a — a long mile,” he added, as he reluctantly obeyed the pressure of Tom’s hand.
“Well, I am glad it’s no further!” the young man answered. “For I’m so sharp set I could eat my sister. You’ve parson’s fare, I suppose? Bacon and eggs and small beer?” he continued, clapping the unfortunate clergyman on the back with the utmost good humour. “Well, sir, you shall entertain us! And while we are dining, the messenger can be going to the Hall. Soap and a jack-towel will serve my turn, but the girl — what’s your name, child?”
“Betty, sir.”
“Will be the better for the loan of your wife’s shoes and a cap! And Sophy is married? Where was it, my girl?”
“At Dr. Keith’s, sir.”
“The deuce it was!” Tom cried ruefully. “Then that’s two hundred out of my pocket! Were you with her, child?”
“No, sir, her ladyship hired me after she was married.”
Tom looked at her. “But — but I thought,” he said, “that you told me last night that you had been brought up with your mistress?”
Betty bit her lip, unable to remember if she had told him so. “Oh, yes, sir,” she said hastily, “but that was another mistress.”
“Also of the name of Sophia?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And for which Sophia — were you weeping last night?” Tom asked with irony.
Betty’s face flamed; her fingers tingled also, though the slip was her own. It would have been the easiest thing in the world to throw off the mask, and tell the young man who she was. But for a reason, Betty did not choose to adopt this course. Instead, she stooped, pretending that her shoe-buckle was unfastened; when she rose there were tears in her eyes.
“You are very unkind, sir,” she said in a low voice. “I took a — a liberty 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, w
ent 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 here! He was fit to kill himself when he found her ladyship was gone,” the woman continued with zest; “and Sir Hervey was lit to kill ’em all, and serve ’em right; and now they are searching the country, and a score with them; but it’s tolerable sure the villains ha’ got away with my lady, some think by Newhaven and foreign parts! What? Isn’t your reverence going to the house?”
“No,” his reverence muttered, with a sickly smile. “No.” And he turned from the cool shadows of the chestnut avenue, that led to the Hall, and setting his face the way he had come, hastened through the heat. He might still prevent the worst! He might still — but he must get home. He must get home. He had walked three miles in forty minutes in old days; he must do it now. True, the sun was midsummer high, the time an hour after noon, the road straight and hot, and unshaded, his throat was parched, and he was fasting. But he must press on. He must press on, though his legs began to tremble under him — and he was not so young as he had been. There was the end of Benacre’s Lane! He had done a mile; but his knees were shaky, he must sit a moment on the bank. He did so, and found the trees begin to dance before his eyes, his thoughts to grow confused; frightened he tried to rise, but instead he sank in a swoon, and lay inert at the foot of the bank.
CHAPTER XXII
‘TIS GO OR SWIM
It was a strange meeting between brother and sister. Tom, mindful how they had parted in Clarges Row, and with what loyalty she had striven to save him from himself — at a time when he stood in the utmost need of such efforts — was softened and touched beyond the ordinary. While Sophia, laughing and crying at once in the joy of a meeting as unexpected as it was welcome, experienced as she held Tom in her arms something nearer akin to happiness than had been hers since her marriage. The gratitude she owed to Providence for preservation amid the dangers of the night strengthened this feeling; the sunshine that flooded the orchard, the verdure under foot, the laden sprays of blossom overhead, the songs of the birds, the very strangeness of the retreat in which they met, all spoke to a heart peculiarly open at that moment to receive impressions. Tom recovered, Tom kind, formed part of the world which welcomed her back, and shamed her repining; while her brother, sheep
ish and affectionate, marvelled to see the little sister whom he had patronised all his life, suddenly and wonderfully transmogrified into Lady Coke.
He asked how she came to be so oddly dressed, learned that she also had fallen in with the vicar; and, when he had heard: “Well,” he exclaimed, “’tis the luckiest thing your woman met me I ever knew!”
“You might have been in any part of England!” she answered, smiling through her tears. “Where were you going, Tom?”
“Why, to Coke’s to be sure,” he replied; “and wanted only two or three miles of it!”
“Not — not knowing?” she asked. And she blushed.
“Not the least in life! I was on the point of enlisting,” he explained, colouring in his turn, “at Reading, in Tatton’s foot, when a man he had sent in search of me, found me and gave me a note.”
“From Sir Hervey?”
“Of course,” Tom answered, “telling me I could stay at the Hall until things blew over. And — and not to make a fool of myself,” he added ingenuously. “’Twas like him and I knew it was best to come, but when I was nearly there — that was last night, you know — I thought I would wait until morning and hear who were in the house before I showed myself. That is why Mistress Betty found me where she did.”
Sophia could not hide her feelings on learning what Sir Hervey had done for Tom and for her; what he had done silently, without boasting, without telling her. Tom saw her tremble, saw that for some reason she was on the verge of tears, and he wondered.
“Why,” he said, “what is the matter, Sophy? What is it now?”
“It’s nothing, nothing,” she answered hurriedly.
“I know what it is!” he replied. “You’ve been up all night, and had nothing to eat. You will be all right when you have had a meal. The old parson said he’d give us bacon and eggs. It should be ready by this time.”
Sophia laughed hysterically. “I fear it doesn’t lie with him,” she said. “His wife would not let me into the house. She’s afraid of the smallpox.”
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 361