'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, sheepish 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."
"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, 'tis 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.