LADY BETTY'S FATE
Lady Betty had left the house on the hill a mile behind, her breath
came in heavy gasps, her heart seemed to be bursting through her
bodice; still she panted bravely along the road that stretched before
her, white under the moonbeams. Sophia had bidden her run, the moment
the man's back was turned. "Give the alarm, get help," she had
whispered as she thrust the diamonds into the child's hand; and acting
on that instinct of obedience, prompt and unquestioning, 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 this, the last of many disappointments, the
girl's courage snapped, as a rush snaps. With a wild outburst of
weeping, she flung herself down on the sloping ground, and rubbed her
face in the grass, and tore the soil with her fingers in an agony of
abandonment. "Oh, I left her! I left her!" she wailed, when sobs
allowed words to pass. "I left her, and saved myself. And she's dead!
Oh, why didn't I stay with her? Why didn't I stay with her?"
The young man listened awhile, awkward, perturbed; when he spoke his
voice was husky. "'Tis no use," he said peevishly. "No use, child!
Don't--don't go on like this! See here, you'll have a fever, if you
lie there. You will, I know," he repeated.
"I wish I had!" she cried with passion, and beat her hands on the
ground. "Oh why did I leave her?"
He cleared his throat. "It's folly this!" he urged. "It's--it's of no
use to any one. No good! And there, now it's dark. I told you so--and
we shall have fine work getting to the road again!"
She did not answer, but little by little his meaning reached her
brain, and after a minute or two she sat up, her crying less violent.
"That's better," he said. "But you are too tired to go farther. Let me
help you to climb the fence. There's a log the other side--I stumbled
over it. You can sit on it until you are rested."
She did not assent, but she suffered him to help her through the hedge
and seat her on the fallen tree. The tide of grief had ebbed; she was
regaining her self-control, though now and again a sob shook her. But
he saw that an interval must pass before she could travel, and he
stood, shy and silent, seeing her dimly by the light which the moon
still shed through a flying wrack of clouds. Round and below them lay
the country, still, shadowy, mysterious; stretching away into unknown
infinities, framing them in a solitude perfect and complete. They
might have been the only persons in the world.
By-and-by, whether he was tired, or really had a desire to comfort her
at closer quarters, he sat down on the tree; and by chance his hand
touched her hand. She sprang a foot away, and uttered a cry. He
laughed softly.
"You need not be afraid," he said. "I've seen enough of women to last
me my life. If you were the only woman in the world, and the most
beautiful, you would be safe enough for me. You may be quite easy, my
dear."
She ceased to sob, but her voice was a little broken and husky when
she spoke. "I'm very sorry," she said humbly. "I am afraid I have
given you a vast deal of trouble, sir."
"Not so much as a woman has given me before this," he answered.
She looked at him furtively out of the tail of her eye, as a woman at
that would be likely to look. And if the truth be told she felt, amid
all her grief, an inclination to laugh. But with feminine tact she
suppressed this. "And yet--and yet you came to help me?" she muttered.
He shrugged his shoulders. "One has to do certain things," he said.
"I am afraid somebody has--has behaved badly to you," she murmured;
and she sighed.
Somehow the sigh flattered him. "As women generally behave," he
replied with a sneer. "She lied to me, she cheated me, she robbed me,
and she would have ruined me."
"And men don't do those things," she answered meekly, "to women." And
she sighed again.
He started. It could not be that she was laughing at him. "Anyway, I
have done with women," he said brusquely.
"And you'll never marry, sir?"
"Marry? Oh, I say nothing as to that," he answered contemptuously.
"Marry I may, but it won't be for love. And 'twill be a lady anyway;
I'll see to that. I'll know her father and her mother, and her
grandfather and her grandmother," Tom continued. For poor Tom it was,
much battered and weathered by a week spent on the verge of 'listing.
"I'll have her pedigree by heart, and she shall bring her old nurse
with her to speak for her, if marry I must. But no more ladies in
distress for me. No more ladies picked up off the road, I thank you.
That's all."
"You are frank, sir, at any rate," she said; and she laughed in a sort
of wonder, taking it to herself.
At the sound, Tom, who had meant nothing personal, felt ashamed of
himself. "I beg your pardon, my dear," he answered. "But--but I wished
to put you at your ease. I wished to show you, you were safe with me;
as your mistress would be."
"Oh, thank you," Betty answered. "For the matter of that, sir, I've
had a lover myself, and said no to him, as well as my betters. But it
wasn't before he asked me," she continued ironically. And she tossed
her head again.
"I didn't mean--I mean I thought you were afraid of me," Tom
stammered, wondering she took it so ill.
"No more than my mistress would be," she retorted sharply. "And I'm
just as particular as she is--in one thing."
"What's that?" he asked.
"I don't take gentlemen off the road, either."
He laughed, seeing himself hit; and as if that recalled her to
herself, she sprang up with a sob of remorse. "Oh," she said, wringing
her hands, "we sit here and play, while she suffers! We don't think of
her! Do something! do something if you are a man!"
"But we don't know where we are, or where she is."
"Then let us find her," she cried; "let us find her!"
"We can do nothing in the dark," he urged. "It is dark as the pit now.
If we can find our way to the road again, it will be as much as we can
do."
"Let us try! let us try!" she answered, growing frantic. "I shall go
mad if I stay here."
He gave way at that, and consented to try. But they had not gone fifty
yards before she tripped and fell, and he heard her gasp for breath.
"Are you hurt?" he asked, stooping anxiously over her.
"No," she said. But she rose with difficulty, and he knew by her voice
that she was shaken.
"It's of no use to go on," he said. "I told you so. We must stay here.
It is after midnight now. In an hour, or a little more, dawn will
appear. If we find the road now we can do no good."
She shivered. "Take me back," she said miserably. "I--I don't know
where we are."
He took her hand, and with a little judgment found the tree again. "If
you could sleep awhile," he said, "the time would pass."
"I cannot," she cried, "I cannot." And then, "Oh Sophy! Sophy!" she
wailed, "why did I leave you? Why did I leave you?"
He let her weep a minute or two, and then as much to distract her as
for any other reason, he asked her if she had been brought up with her
mistress.
She ceased to sob. "Why?" she asked, startled.
"Because--you called her by her name," he said. "I noticed because
I've a sister of that name."
"Sophia?"
"Yes. If I had listened to her--but there, what is the use of
talking?" And he broke off brusquely.
Lady Betty was silent awhile, only betraying her impatience by sighing
or beating the trunk with her heels. By-and-by, the hour before the
dawn came, and it grew cold. He heard her teeth chatter, and after
fumbling with his coat, he took it off, and, in spite of her
remonstrances, wrapped her in it.
"Don't!" she said, feebly struggling with him. "Don't! You're a
gentleman, and I am only----"
"You're a woman as much as your mistress," he answered roughly.
"But--you hate women!" she cried.
"You don't belong to me," he answered with disdain, "and you'll not
die on my hands! Do as you are bidden, child!"
After that he walked up and down before the tree; until at last the
day broke, and the grey light, spreading and growing stronger, showed
them a sea of mist, covering the whole world--save the little eminence
on which they sat--and flowing to their very feet. It showed them also
two haggard faces--his weary, hers beautiful in spite of its pallor
and her long vigil. For in some mysterious way she had knotted up her
hair and tied her kerchief. As she gave him back his coat, and their
eyes met, he started and grew red.
"Good heavens, child!" he cried, "you are too handsome to be wandering
the country alone; and too young."
She had nothing to say to that, but her cheeks flamed, and she begged
him to come quickly--quickly; and together they went down into the
mist. At that hour the birds sing in chorus as they never sing in the
day; and, by the time the two reached the road the sun was up and the
world round them was joyous with warmth and light and beauty. The dew
besprinkled every bush with jewels as bright as those which Betty
carried in her bosom--for she had thrown away the case--and from the
pines on the hill came the perfume of a hundred Arabys. Tom wondered
why his heart beat so lightly, why he felt an exhilaration to which he
had been long a stranger. Heartbroken, a woman-hater, a cynic, it
could not be because a pair of beautiful eyes had looked kindly into
his? because a waiting-maid had for a moment smiled on him? That was
absurd.
For her, left to herself, she would have pursued the old plan, and
gone wildly, frantically up and down, seeking at random the place
where she had left Sophia. But he would not suffer it. He led her to
the nearest cottage, and learning from the staring inhabitants the
exact position of Beamond's Farm, got his companion milk and bread,
and saw her eat it. Then he announced his purpose.
"I shall leave you here," he said. "In two hours at the most I shall
be back with news."
"And you think I'll stay?" she cried.
"I think you will, for I shall not take you," he answered coolly. "Do
you want the smallpox, silly child? Do you think your ladies will be
as ready to hire you when you have lost your looks? Stay here, and in
two hours I shall be back."
She cried that she would not stay; she would not stay! "I shall not!"
she cried a third time. "Do you hear me? I shall go with you!"
"You will not!" Tom said. "And for a good reason, my girl. You heard
that woman ask us whether we came from Beamond's, and you saw the way
she looked at us. If it's known we've been there, there's not a house
within ten miles will take us in, nor a coach will give us a lift. You
have had one night out, you'll not bear another. Now, with me it is
different."
"It is not," she cried. "I shall go."
"You will not," he said; and their eyes met. And presently hers
dropped. "You will not," he repeated masterfully; "because I am the
stronger, and I will tie you to a gate before you shall go. And you,
little fool, will be thankful to me to-morrow. It's for your own
good."
She gave way at that, crying feebly, for the night had shaken her.
"Sit here in sight of the cottage," he continued, thrusting aside the
brambles and making a place for her beside a tree, "and if you can
sleep a little, so much the better. In two hours at the farthest I
will be back."
She obeyed, watched him go, and saw his figure grow smaller and
smaller, until it vanished at a turn of the road. She watched the
woman of the cottage pass in and out with pail and pattens, and
by-and-by she had to parry her questions. She saw the sun climb higher
and higher in the sky, and heard the hum of the bees grow loud and
louder, and felt the heat of the day take hold; and yet he did not
return. And while she watched for him most keenly, as she imagined,
she fell asleep.
When she awoke he was standing over her, and his face told her all.
She sprang up. "You've not found her!" she cried, clasping her hands,
and holding them out to him.
"No," he said. "There's no one in the house. No one but the dead."