THE SPY IN THE CAMP.
It is a year now since I wrote any of this story, and this time I shall
really finish it. How little do we foresee the course of events! and
certainly, when I last laid down my pen, I little thought that this
story would have ended as it has. Most of what follows I have at times
gathered from Sophy's lips, the rest from my own knowledge of the
affair.
Sophy Gregory did not leave me, the first time when she came, until it
was getting dusk, as she did not wish to arrive at Sturry until after
dark, for a single woman with a bundle entering that quiet village would
be almost certain to attract attention. Then she rose to go, and
submitted to my embrace as before, in a quiet, impassive way; and yet,
as she turned to leave me, there was a strange, wistful look in her
eyes, as if with me she felt that she had left the last of her old
landmarks behind, that she had finally started on the strange course
which she had chosen. But whatever her thoughts were, there was no sign
of wavering or hesitation. Steadily and quietly as she had said
good-bye, she went out, down the steps, and through the gathering
darkness.
By the time she was past the barracks and out into the bleak country
beyond, night had fairly fallen, and the wind blew keenly across the
flats. But Sophy hardly felt it; she had entered upon her task at last,
and it would have been no ordinary event which would have attracted her
attention now.
Presently the long, straight, level road rose suddenly, and she heard
the heavy water-shed wheel working, and could dimly see the black mass
of the building to her right. She was nearly at Sturry now; a little
further on and she could just see two white foaming streams on her left,
and she knew now she was passing the great mill. Another hundred yards
and she was in the village itself. There was hardly any one about, but
the windows were a-glow with the bright fires within. Sophy shivered
slightly and drew her shawl more closely round her, as she hurried on;
but it was her own bitter memories, and no thought of the cutting wind,
which had so chilled her. The last time she had passed through the
village was on the night she had eloped; the time before that she had
driven through it in her pony chaise with her two pretty ponies.
Sophy passed through the village and went up the hill beyond it till she
reached the plantation where she had so often met Robert Gregory, and
the lane where the dog-cart had stood waiting on that evening for her.
Absorbed as she was in the future, concentrated as all her energies and
thoughts were upon that one point, she could not help being moved by
that sad remembrance of the past. That night--oh, how different might
her life have been had she not taken that false step! How different--oh,
how different! and with a wailing cry Sophy sat down upon some stones at
the corner of the lane, and cried with a terrible sorrow over her lost
life, cried as she had not cried since her husband's death. A long time
she sat there and wept; passionately and bitterly at first, quietly and
tranquilly afterwards. When she rose at last and went on, it was with
feebler steps than before, but with a mind lightened and relieved. It
seemed to her that a great weight was taken from her brain. She had, for
so many weary months, thought of this one idea to the exclusion of all
other, that her brain sorely needed relief; and that long fit of crying
took off the deadening strain, and I do believe saved her reason. Her
eyes had a softer look afterwards, and her manner was less hard and
cold. I noticed the change when I saw her a month afterwards, and told
her that she looked much more like herself, and that her eyes had lost a
strange look which they had about them. She answered that she knew that
it was so, and she had herself, at times, thought that her brain was
failing her; she told me she believed that that fit of crying had been
mercifully sent as a relief to her, for she had felt a different woman
ever since.
And so Sophy rose from the heap of stones, weaker indeed in body, but
with a clearer and brighter intellect; and although her search was by no
means given up, she went about it in a more steady and thoughtful, if
with a less fixed and cunning method; and she herself told me, "If at
times my old, strange, wild feeling comes over me, I shut myself up in
my room, and think over my past life; I am able now to pray God to have
pity on me, to bring wrong right, and to spare my reason for my child's
sake."
Sophy went on until at last she came to the well-remembered east lodge,
where she had lived so long as a child, not dreaming then but that it
was her proper home; and afterwards, as long as she lived at Harmer
Place, she had been in the habit of going down at least once a week to
see her foster-mother. She knocked at the door, and without waiting for
an answer, lifted the latch and went in.
A tall woman of about fifty years old came out from the inner room on
hearing the door open, for she had not heard Sophy's gentle knock.
She looked suspiciously for a moment at her visitor, and then seeing by
her attire, which was that of a respectable servant, that although she
had a bundle in her hand, she was no ordinary tramp, she asked civilly,
"What may you please to want?"
"Don't you know me, Mammy Green?" Sophy said, calling her by her old
childish name.
The woman fell back as if struck by a blow, her candle dropped from her
hand and was extinguished; then she seized Sophy's arm and almost
dragged her to the fire, that she might see her features more
distinctly, and then as Sophy smiled sadly, she recognized her face
again, and with a cry of "Sophy! Sophy!" caught her in her strong arms
and kissed her, and cried over her. Sophy cried too, and the old woman
recovered from her unwonted emotion first, for Sophy was weak and
exhausted by the day's excitement, and her foster-mother soothed and
petted her as she would have done a child. When Sophy was composed
again, her nurse took off her bonnet and shawl, and made her sit down
quietly in the great oak settle by the fire, while she put some wood on
and made a cheerful blaze. Then she lit the candle again, and laid the
little round table with the tea-things; in a short time the kettle
boiled, and Sophy, after taking a cup of tea, felt once more herself.
"And are you come down to live with me again, my dear?" her nurse asked
presently.
"We will talk all that over to-morrow, Mammy Green, and I will tell you
some of my history, and what I intend doing. I am tired now, I suppose
my little bedroom is nearly as it used to be?"
"Yes, just the same, deary," the woman said, and taking down a key she
unlocked the door, and Sophy saw her little room quite unchanged, and
looking exactly as it did when she slept there last, twelve years
before. Her little drawings hung on the wall, the elaborate sampler she
had worked when quite a child, was in its frame in its old place over
the mantle. Not a speck of dirt was visible anywhere, and a sweet scent
of rosemary and lavender filled the room. Everything was just as she had
left it; the white coverlid lay on the bed, which needed only its sheets
to be ready for sleeping in.
"The bed is quite aired," her nurse said, "I have the room opened, and
aired, and dusted once a week, and I take the bed off and put it before
the fire all day once a month, and the blankets and sheets are kept in
the closet against the kitchen chimney, so they are always warm and dry.
I have always been hoping you would come back to me again some day, and
I was determined you should find it all ready."
She then took the paper ornament off the grate, the fire was ready laid
behind it; this she lit, and in a few minutes, by the time she had made
the bed, the fire burned brightly up. Sophy, exhausted and tired with
her day's excitement, was soon in bed, and her old nurse then came in to
see if she wanted anything else, and to tuck her up and kiss her as she
had done when she was a child; and Sophy, when she had said "good night,
Mammy Green," lay drowsily watching the dancing shadows cast by the fire
on the wall, and could hardly believe that she was not a child again,
and that all these last twenty years were not a troubled feverish dream.
Sophy's last injunction to her foster-mother before going to bed was,
that on no account--should she see any one in the morning--was she to
mention that she had returned; but that Mrs. Green was to tell all whom
she met, that a young woman who had been in service in London, had come
down with a letter from some old friend there, asking her to take her in
until she could find a place in the country, which she was anxious to do
for the sake of her health.
Accordingly, when Mrs. Green went down into the village early in the
morning, before Sophy was awake, to purchase a few little luxuries--such
as white sugar, some ham, and a little fresh meat--she told her
neighbours that a friend of her old acquaintance Martha White, who had
gone up to London to service eight years before, had come down with a
letter from her, asking her to take her friend in for a while, as she
had been ill, and was ordered country air.
When Sophy awoke, she heard her old nurse moving about in the next room.
On calling to her, she came in, with many inquiries as to how Sophy had
slept, and Sophy was able honestly to answer, that she had not slept so
well for weeks. The first question, in return, was, whether her nurse
had seen any one that morning; and when she found that she had, she
insisted on her repeating, word for word, what she had said; and not
until she had done so twice was Sophy satisfied that her nurse had in no
way betrayed her secret. In a quarter of an hour she was dressed, and
found breakfast in the next room--tea and fresh cream, eggs newly laid,
for Mrs. Green kept a number of fowls, and a rasher of ham.
"You look better, much better, this morning, deary," her nurse said, as
she came in; "but still there is something quite strange about you,
which makes you look altogether different to what you used to."
"Never mind now, nurse: I will tell you all about it after breakfast."
Presently her nurse put down a cup of tea she was in the act of raising
to her lips.
"There is one question I must ask you, deary; it has been on my lips
ever since you came in last night, only you looked so tired and weary I
was feared to sorrow you. But in the short letters you sent me when I
wrote to you, as you asked me, about the old lady's health up there, you
used to write about your little boy. Have you--have you lost the little
darling, Sophy?"
"No, Mammy Green--no. Thank God! he is alive and well; but I have left
him with some kind friends in London while I came down here."
"Thank God! indeed, Miss Sophy. Do you know, I have been so anxious ever
since you came in about him, only I daren't, for the life of me, ask you
last night, though I almost had to bite my tongue off to keep quiet.
There--go on with your breakfast now, deary. Now my mind is at rest, you
need not tell me any more till you are quite ready to do so yourself."
After breakfast was over, Sophy tucked up her sleeves, and, in spite of
many remonstrances, helped to clear the things away, and wash them up.
When all was tidy, they sat down to the fire--Mrs. Green knitting, and
Sophy hemming an apron, to keep her fingers employed while she
talked--and then she began, and told as much of her past history as she
deemed it expedient for the woman to know.
Mrs. Green interrupted her frequently with ejaculations of wonder and
pity.
When Sophy had finished her story, she told her old nurse that she had
come down for the express purpose of finding the will, by which she
would become the heiress of Harmer Place; and that it was to this end
that she had begged her to write, letting her know how Miss Harmer was,
as--in the way in which she intended to attempt to find the will--it was
useless for her to attempt anything as long as Miss Harmer was in good
health.
"My dear," her old nurse said, shaking her head, "well or ill, it will
make no difference. It is my belief, and always has been, that that
woman has got a stone for a heart, and, well or ill, you might as well
try to stop one of them engines which go running along the valley, as
try and change what she has once resolved upon."
"I have no idea of changing her mind," Sophy said, quietly; "my opinion
on that subject perfectly agrees with yours. I am going quite another
way to work, and in this I require your help. I wish to get the place of
servant to Miss Harmer's confessor."
This proposal so much roused Mrs. Green's indignation and amazement,
that for a long time Sophy could not utter a word.
"What! Miss Sophy, who was the lawful mistress of the Hall, to go for a
servant! and--most of all--as a servant to a Popish priest! What was she
thinking of? A servant, indeed! She had thought, from the way Sophy had
spoken of what she had been doing, that she had money; if not, it was of
no consequence. She had two hundred pounds in the savings' bank, which
she had laid by in the good times; and was it likely that, as long as
that lasted, she would let her Miss Sophy go out as a servant? No,
indeed!"
Sophy had to wait patiently till the storm was past, and she then
explained to her nurse that it was not because she wanted money that she
did this, for that she had an abundant supply; that she was very much
obliged to her dear old Mammy Green for her offer, but it was not a
question of money at all; and that it was absolutely necessary, for the
recovery of the will, that she should enter the priest's service.
The nurse for a long time obstinately refused to do anything whatever to
forward the design, and it was only by dint of coaxings and arguments
innumerable, and, indeed, by the threat, if she would not assist her,
that she must proceed--difficult as it would be--by herself, that she at
last succeeded in persuading Mrs. Green into giving her assistance in
the enterprise. At last, however, she gave in, and consented--although
under protest that she disapproved of it all, and that she washed her
hands of the whole affair--to do what Sophy desired of her.
Accordingly the next day Mrs. Green went down into the village, putting
some eggs and a chicken into a basket, and under pretence of offering
them for sale to the priest entered into conversation with his old
servant. She mentioned to her that she had a friend down from London who
had been in service there, but whose health was very bad, and who was
ordered by the doctor to go down into the country and to take some very
quiet situation there. Mrs. Green said that her friend had saved some
money in service and would not mind paying handsomely for such a place
as she wanted, as the doctor said her life depended upon it.
The old woman listened with great interest, and a day or two afterwards
when Mrs. Green went down again with eggs, she told her that she should
like very much to have a talk with her friend, for that she herself had
been thinking of leaving service for some time, and of going to live
with some relatives in a distant part of the country. Mrs. Green
thereupon invited her to come up and take a cup of tea with her on the
following evening--which invitation was accepted.
The next evening, after tea, the matter was entered into, and a great
amount of bargaining and discussion went on between Sophy and the old
servant, as Sophy did not wish to appear too eager about it. But it was
at last settled that Sophy should give L8--which was a year's wages--if
the place could be procured for her at once. The old woman took her
leave, chuckling inwardly at the thought of the good bargain she had
made; for Miss Harmer was not expected now to last many months longer,
and as there was no heir, and the property would pass to strangers, who
were not likely to require the services of a priest, she thought it
probable that her successor would not remain long enough in her new
place even to receive the year's wages she had paid for it.
The next morning the old servant told her master the tale which had been
agreed upon, namely--that she had just heard that a relative in a
distant town was taken seriously ill, and wished her to go and live with
her and nurse her. She said that she should take it very kind of her
master if he would let her go at once; and that she trusted that he
would not be inconvenienced; for that there was a person staying in the
village who would suit his situation exactly. She was a friend of her
own--indeed, a sort of relation; she had been in service but had left to
marry a tradesman; it was altogether a very sad story; for her husband
had been ruined and had died; the poor thing's health was not very
strong, and so she wished to take some quiet place in the country; and
that she was quite sure she would suit master.
The priest heard her quietly to the end, and then asked if her friend
would be willing to come.
"Yes, she would, sir. After you had gone up to the Hall yesterday, I
went up to see her, as I could not have asked you to let me go at once,
if I could not have found some one to take my place. She would be glad
to come, sir; and I am sure she will suit you."
"Ask her to come in to see me at once, then," Father Eustace said,
"before I go up to the Hall."
In an hour Sophy came down. Father Eustace looked at her gravely, and
saw a respectable quiet-looking woman before him, very pale and
sad-looking--much as he might have expected from what he had heard of
her story.
He asked a few questions, which were satisfactorily answered, and that
same afternoon Sophy Gregory entered upon her new duties as servant to
Father Eustace.