“Pooh!” Tom said contemptuously. “When she knows who we are she’ll sing another tune.”
“She won’t believe,” Sophia answered.
“She’ll believe me,” Tom said. “So let us go.”
“Do you go first, sir, if you please,” Lady Betty cried pertly, intervening for the first time. She had stood a little apart to allow the brother and sister to be private. “I’m sure her ladyship’s not fit to be seen. And I’m not much better,” she added; and then, a sudden bubble of laughter rising to the surface, she buried her face in Sophia’s skirts, and affected to be engaged in repairing the disorder. Tom saw his sister’s face relax in a smile, and he eyed the maid suspiciously; but before he could speak, Sophia also begged him to go, and see what reception the old clergyman had secured for them. He turned and went.
At the gate he looked back, but a wealth of apple blossom intervened; he did not see that the girls had flown into one another’s arms, nor did he hear them laughing, crying, asking, answering, all at once, and out of the fulness of thankful hearts. Tom’s wholesome appetite began to cry cupboard. He turned briskly up the road, discovered the wicket-gate of the parsonage, and marching to it, found to his surprise that it was locked. The obstacle was not formidable to youth, but the welcome was cold at best; and where was his friend the parson? In wonder he rattled the gate, thinking some one would come; but no one came, and out of patience he vaulted over the post, and passing round a mass of rose bushes that grew in a tangle about the pot-herb garden, he saw the door of the house standing ajar before him.
One moment; the next and before he could reach it, a boy about twelve years old, with a shock of hair and sullen eyes, looked out, saw him, and hastened to slam the door in his face. The action was unmistakable, the meaning plain; Sir Tom stood, stared, and after a moment swore. Then in a rage he advanced and kicked the door. “What do you mean?” he cried. “Open, sirrah, do you hear? Are these your manners?”
For a few seconds there was silence in the sunny herb garden with its laden air and perfumed hedges. Then a casement above creaked open, and two heads peered cautiously over the window-ledge. “Do you hear?” Tom cried, quickly espying them. “Come down and open the door, or you’ll get a whipping.”
But the boys, the one he had seen at the door, and another, a year or two older, preserved a sulky silence; eyeing him with evident dread and at the same time with a kind of morbid curiosity. Tom threatened, stormed, even took up a stone; they answered nothing and it was only when he had begun to retreat, fuming, towards the gate that one of them found his voice.
“You’d better be gone!” he cried shrilly. “They are coming for you.”
Sir Tom turned at the sound, and went back at a white heat. “What do you mean, you young cubs?” he cried, looking up. “Who are coming for me?”
But they were dumb again, staring at him over the ledge with sombre interest. Tom repeated his question, scolded, even raised his stone, but without effect. At last he turned his back on them, and in a rage flung out of the garden.
He went out as he had entered, by vaulting the gate. As he did so, he heard a woman’s shrill voice raised in anger; and he looked in the direction whence it came. He saw a knot of people coming down the road. It consisted of three or four women, and a rough-looking labourer; but while he stood eyeing them a second party, largely made up of men and boys, came in sight, following the other; and tailing behind these again came a couple of women and last of all two or three lads. The women speaking loudly, with excited gestures, appeared to be scolding the men; those on the outside of each rank hurrying a step in advance of the others, and addressing them with turned heads. Tom watched them a moment, thinking that they might be a search party sent by Coke; then he reflected that the noise would alarm his sister, and turning in at the gate he crossed the orchard.
Sophia came to meet him. “What is it?” she asked anxiously. “What is the matter, Tom?” The clamour of strident voices, the scolding of the women had preceded him. “Have you seen the clergyman? Why, they are coming here!”
“The deuce they are!” Tom answered. He looked back, and seeing through the trees that the man with the first gang had opened the gate of the orchard, he went to meet him.
“What is it?” he asked. “What are you doing here? Has Sir Hervey sent you?”
“We want no sending!” one of the women cried sharply. “’Tis enough to send us of ourselves.”
“Aye, so it is!” a second chimed in with violence. “And do you keep your distance if you be one of them! Let’s have no nonsense, master, for we won’t stand it!”
“No, no nonsense!” cried another, as the larger party arrived and raised the number to something like a score. “She’s got to go, and you with her if you be one of her company! Ain’t that so?” the speaker continued, turning to her backers.
“Aye, she must go!” cried one. “We’ll ha’ no smallpox here!” cried another. “She’ll go or swim! Out of the parish, I say!” shrieked a third.
Tom looked along the line of excited faces, faces stupid or cruel; at the best of a low type, and now brutalised by selfish panic. And his heart sank. But for the present he neither blenched nor lost his temper.
“Why, you fools,” he said, thinking to reason with them, “don’t you know who the lady is?”
“No, nor care!” was the shrill retort. “Nor care, do you understand that?”
And then a man stepped forward. “She’s got to go,” he said, “whoever she be. That’s all.”
“I tell you, you don’t know who she is,” Tom answered stubbornly. “Whose tenant are you, my man?”
“Sir Hervey’s, to be sure,” the fellow answered, surprised at the question.
“Well, she’s his wife,” Tom answered. “Do you hear? Do you understand?” he repeated, with growing indignation. “She is Lady Coke, Sir Hervey’s wife. Lady Coke, Sir Hervey’s wife! Get that into your heads, will you! His wife, I tell you. And if you raise a finger or wag a tongue against her, you’ll repent it all your lives.”
The man stared, doubting, hesitating, in part daunted. But a woman behind him — a lean vixen, her shoulders barely covered by a meagre kerchief, pushed herself to the front, and snapped her fingers in Tom’s face. “That, my lady?” she cried. “That for the lie. You be a liar, my lad, that’s what you be! A liar, and ought to swim with her. Neighbours,” the shrew continued volubly, “she be no more my lady than I be. Madam told me she faked for to be it, but was a gipsy wench as had laid the night at Beamond’s, and now was for ‘fecting us.”
“Anyway she don’t go another step into this parish,” pronounced an elderly man, something better off than the others. “We don’t want to swim her, and we don’t want to stone her, but she must go, or worse come of it. And you, my lad, if you be with her, and the other.” For Lady Betty had crept timidly out of the garden-shed and joined the pair.
Tom was bursting with passion. “I!” he cried. “You clod, do you know who I am? I am Sir Thomas Maitland, of Cuckfield.”
“Sir, or no sir, you’ll ha’ to go,” the man retorted stubbornly. He was a dull fellow, and an unknown Sir Thomas was no more to him than plain Tom or Dick. “And ’tis best, with no more words,” he continued heavily.
Tom, enraged, was for answering in the same strain, but Sophia plucked his sleeve, and took the word herself. “I am quite willing to go,” she said, holding her head up bravely. “If you let me pass safely to the Hall, that is all I ask.”
“To the Hall?”
“Yes, to my husband.”
“To the Hall indeed! No! No! That’s likely,” cried the crowd; and were not to be silenced till the elderly farmer who had spoken before raised his hand for a hearing.
“’Tis no wonder they shout,” he said, with a smile half-cunning, half-stupid. “The Hall? No, no. Back by Beamond’s and over the water, my girl, you’ll go, same as Beamond’s folk did. There’s few live the other side, and so the fewer to take it, d’ye see. Besides, ’ti
s every one for himself.”
“Aye! aye!” the crowd cried. “He’s right; that way, no other! Hall indeed?” And at the back they began to jeer.
“You’ve no law for this?” Tom cried, furious and panting.
“Then we’ll make a law,” they answered, and jeered again, with some words that were not very fit for the ladies to hear.
Tom, at that, would have sprung at the nearest and punished him; but Sophia held him back. “No, no,” she said in a low tone. “We had better go. Sir Hervey is surely searching for us. We may meet him, and they will learn their mistake. Please let us go. Let us go quickly, or they may — I do not know what they may do.”
Tom suffered himself to be convinced; but he made the mistake of doing with a bad grace that which he had to do whether he would or no.
“Out of the way, you clods!” he cried, advancing on them with his stick raised. “You’ll sing another tune before night! Do you hear, I say? Out of the way!”
Moving sullenly, they left his front open; and he marched proudly through the gate of the orchard, Sophia and Betty beside him. But his challenge had raised the devil that lies dormant in the most peaceful crowd. He had no sooner passed than the women closed in upon his rear, and followed him with taunts and laughter. And presently a boy threw a stone.
It fell short of the mark; but another stone followed, and another; and the third struck Tom on the leg. He wheeled round in a towering passion, caught sight of the offender, and made for him. The boy tripped in trying to escape, and fell, shrieking. Tom got home two cuts; then a virago, her tongue spitting venom, her nails in the air, confronted him over the body of the fallen, and he returned sullenly to his charges, and resumed his retreat.
But the boy’s screams had exasperated the rabble. Groans took the place of laughter, curses succeeded jeers. The bolder threw dirt, the more timid hooted and booed, while all pressed more and more closely on his heels, threatening every moment to jostle him. Tom had to turn and brandish his stick to drive them back, and finding that even so he could scarcely secure the briefest respite, he began to grow hot and confused, and looked about for a way of escape in something between rage and terror.
To run, he knew, would only precipitate the disaster. To defend himself was scarcely possible, for Sophia, fearing he would attempt reprisals, hampered him on one side, while Betty, in pure fear, clung to him on the other. Both were sinking with apprehension, while his ears tingled under the coarse jeers and coarser epithets that were hurled at them. Yet he dared not suffer them to move a pace from him. Cries of “Roll them! Duck them! To the pond!” began to be heard; and once he barely checked an ugly rush by facing about at the last moment. At last he espied a little before him the turning into the main road, and whispering to the women to keep up their courage, he pressed sullenly towards it.
He had as good as reached it, when a stone more weighty and better aimed than those which had preceded it, struck Lady Betty fairly between the shoulders. The girl stumbled forward with a gasp, and Sophia, horror-stricken and uncertain how much she was hurt, sprang to her side to hold her up. The movement freed Tom’s arm; his sister’s furious cry, “You cowards! Oh, you cowards!” burned up the last shred of his self-control.
In a tempest of rage he rushed on the nearest hobbledehoy, and felling him with his stick, rained blows upon him. In an instant he was engaged, hand to hand, with half a dozen combatants.
Unfortunately the charge had carried him a dozen yards from his companions; the more timid of the rascals, who were not eager to encounter him or his stick, saw their opportunity. In a twinkling they cut off the two girls, and hemmed them in. Beginning with pushing and jostling them they would soon have gone on to further insults if Sophia had not flown at them in her turn, and repelled them with a rage that for a few seconds daunted them. Tom, too, heard the girls’ cries, and turned to relieve them; but as he sprang forward a boy tripped him up, and he fell prone on the road.
That gave the last impulse to the evil instincts of the crowd. The louts darted on him with a savage yell, and began to pommel him; and ill it must have gone with Tom as well as with his womenfolk if the crowd had had their way with them for many seconds.
But at that critical instant, without warning, or any at least that the victors regarded, the long lash of a hunting-whip flickered in the air, and fell as by magic between the girls and their assailants; it seared, as with a red-hot iron, the hand which a sturdy young clown, half-boy, half-man, was brandishing under Sophia’s nose; it stung with the sharpness of a dozen wasps the mocking face that menaced Betty on the other side. The lads who had flung themselves on Tom, awoke with yells of pain to find the same whip curling about their shoulders, and to see behind it, set in grim rage, the face of their landlord.
That instant, the harpies, who had been hounding them on, vanished as by magic, scuttling all ways like frightened hens. And Sir Hervey let them go — for the time; but behind the lads and louts, fleeing and panting and racing and sweating down the road, and aiming fruitlessly at gates and gaps, the lash fell ever and mercilessly on sturdy backs and fleshy legs. The horse he rode was an old hunter, known in the district, quick and cunning, broken to all turns of the hare; and that day it carried fate, and punishment with no halting foot followed hard upon the sin!
Sobbing with exhaustion, with labouring chests that at intervals shot forth cries of pain, as the flickering thong licked their hams, and they bounded like deer under the sting, the bullies came at last to the vicarage gate. There Sir Hervey left them, free at last to rub their weals and curse their folly; sorer, but it is to be hoped wiser men.
Sophia, supporting herself by a gate, and now laughing hysterically, now repressing with difficulty the inclination to weep, watched him return. She saw him through a mist of smiles and tears. For the moment she forgot that he was her husband, forgot that this was the meeting so long and greatly dreaded.
He sprang from his horse.
“You’re not hurt?” he cried. “Child — —” and then, with astonishment she saw that he was speechless.
Her own words came easily; even her manner was eager and unembarrassed. “No,” she cried, “nor Lady Betty! You came just in time, Sir Hervey.”
“Thank God, I did,” he answered; “thank God! And you are sure, child, you are none the worse? You are not hurt?”
“No,” she answered, laughing, as people laugh in moments of agitation. “Not a bit! You are looking at my dress? Oh, we have had adventures, a vast lot of adventures, Sir Hervey! It would take a day to tell them, wouldn’t it, Betty? Betty’s my maid, Sir Hervey.” She was above herself. She spoke gaily and archly, as Betty might have spoken.
“Lady Betty your maid?” he exclaimed, turning to Betty, who blushed and laughed. “What do you mean?”
“Mean? Why only — hush, where is Tom? Oh, repairing himself! Why, only a frolic, Sir Hervey! Tom took her for my woman, and we want to keep him in it! So not a word, if you please. This is Betty the maid, you’ll remember?”
“I obey,” Sir Hervey answered. “But to tell the truth,” he continued soberly, “my head turns. Where did you meet Tom, my dear? What has happened to you? And why are you wearing — that queer cloak? And where are your shoes?”
“It’s not very becoming, is it?” she cried, and she looked at him. Never before in her life had she played the coquette, never; now in this moment of unrestrained feeling, her eyes, provocative as Lady Betty’s, challenged the compliment. And she wondered at herself.
“You are always — the same to me,” he said simply. And then: “You are really all of you unhurt? Well, thank God for it! And, Tom, my lad, you know, I suppose, how you came to be in this? I am sure I don’t; but I thought it was you when I came up.”
“I hope you flayed them!” Tom growled, as they gripped hands. “See, she’s barefoot! They hunted us half a mile, I should think.”
Sir Hervey looked and grew red. “I did!” he answered. “I think they have learned a lesson. And they have
not heard the last of it!” Then the post-chaise, which he had escorted to Beamond’s Farm on a fruitless search, came up, and behind it a couple of mounted servants, whose training scarce enabled them to conceal their surprise, when they saw the condition of their new mistress.
Sir Hervey postponed further inquiry. He hurried the two ladies into the carriage, set Tom on a servant’s horse, and gave the word. A moment later the party were travelling rapidly in the direction of the Hall. Coke rode on the side next his wife, Tom by Lady Betty. But the noise of the wheels made conversation difficult, and no one spoke.
Presently Sophia stole a glance at Sir Hervey; and whether his country costume and the flush of colour which exercise had brought to his cheek became him, or he had a better air, as some men have, on horseback, it is certain that she wondered she had ever thought him old. The moment in which he had appeared, towering on his horse above the snarling, spitting rabble, and driven them along the road as a man drives sheep, remained in her memory. He had wielded, and grimly and ably wielded, the whip of authority. He had ridden as if horse and man were one; he had disdained weapons, and had flogged the hounds into submission and flight. Now in repose his strong figure in its plain dress wore in her eyes a new air of distinction.
She looked away and looked again, wondering if it really was so. And slowly a vivid blush spread over her pale face. The man who rode beside the wheel, the man whose figure she was appraising was — her husband. At the thought she turned with a guilty start to Lady Betty; but the poor girl, worn out by excitement and the night’s vigil, had fallen asleep. Sophia’s eyes went slowly back to her husband, and the carriage, leaving the road, swept through the gates into the park.
CHAPTER XXIII
TWO PORTRAITS
Tom rubbed his hands in cruel anticipation. “They are coming to the Hall at four o’clock,” he said. “And I wouldn’t be in their shoes for a mug and a crust. Coke will swinge them,” he continued with zest. “He must swinge them, like it or not! It’ll be go, bag and baggage, for most of them, and some, I’m told, have been on the land time out of mind!”
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 362