Sophy of Kravonia. Anthony HopeЧитать онлайн книгу.
heave a sigh over the damage to his cherished elms. But when the cries for help reached his ears, with praiseworthy promptitude he rushed out straight across his lawn, and (though he was elderly and stout) dropped into the ditch, clambered out of it, and came where the dead man and the children were. As he passed the drawing-room windows, he called out to his wife: "Somebody's hurt, I'm afraid"; and she, after a moment's conference with the butler, followed her husband, but, not being able to manage the ditch, went round by the road and up the avenue, the servant coming with her. When these two arrived, the Squire's help had availed to release the farmer from the deadly grip of the two boughs, and he lay now on his back on the path.
"He's dead, poor fellow," said Mr. Brownlow.
"It's Enoch Grouch!" said the butler, giving a shudder as he looked at the farmer's face. Julia Robins sobbed, and the boy Basil looked up at the Squire's face with grave eyes.
"I'll get a hurdle, sir," said the butler. His master nodded, and he ran off.
Something moved on the path—about a yard from the thick end of the lower bough.
"Look there!" cried Julia Robins. A little wail followed. With an exclamation, Mrs. Brownlow darted to the spot. The child lay there with a cut on her forehead. Apparently the impact of the second bough had caused the end of the first to fly upward; Sophy had been jerked from her seat into the air, and had fallen back on the path, striking her head on a stone. Mrs. Brownlow picked her up, wiped the blood from her brow, and saw that the injury was slight. Sophy began to cry softly, and Mrs. Brownlow soothed her.
"It's his little girl," said Julia Robins. "The little girl with the mark on her cheek, please, Mrs. Brownlow."
"Poor little thing! Poor little thing!" Mrs. Brownlow murmured; she knew that death had robbed the child of her only relative and protector.
The butler now came back with a hurdle and two men, and Enoch Grouch's body was taken into the saddle-room at the Hall. Mrs. Brownlow followed the procession, Sophy still in her arms. At the end of the avenue she spoke to the boy and girl:
"Go home, Basil; tell your father, and ask him to come to the Hall. Good-night, Julia. Tell your mother—and don't cry any more. The poor man is with God, and I sha'n't let this mite come to harm." She was a childless woman, with a motherly heart, and as she spoke she kissed Sophy's wounded forehead. Then she went into the Hall grounds, and the boy and girl were left together in the road. Basil shook his fist at the avenue of elms—his favorite playground.
"Hang those beastly trees!" he cried. "I'd cut them all down if I was Mr. Brownlow."
"I must go and tell mother," said Julia. "And you'd better go, too."
"Yes," he assented, but lingered for a moment, still looking at the trees as though reluctantly fascinated by them.
"Mother always said something would happen to that little girl," said Julia, with a grave and important look in her eyes.
"Why?" the boy asked, brusquely.
"Because of that mark—that mark she's got on her cheek."
"What rot!" he said, but he looked at his companion uneasily. The event of the evening had stirred the superstitious fears seldom hard to stir in children.
"People don't have those marks for nothing—so mother says." Other people, no wiser, said the same thing later.
"Rot!" Basil muttered again. "Oh, well, I must go."
She glanced at him timidly. "Just come as far as our door with me. I'm afraid."
"Afraid!" He smiled scornfully. "All right!"
He walked with her to the door of Woodbine Cottage, and waited till it closed behind her, performing the escort with a bold and lordly air. Left alone in the fast-darkening night, with nobody in sight, with no sound save the ceaseless voice of the angry wind essaying new mischief in the tops of the elm-trees, he stood for a moment listening fearfully. Then he laid his sturdy legs to the ground and fled for home, looking neither to right nor left till he reached the hospitable light of his father's study. The lad had been brave in face of the visible horror; fear struck him in the moment of Julia's talk about the mark on the child's cheek. Scornful and furious at himself, yet he was mysteriously afraid.
II
THE COOK AND THE CATECHISM
Sophy Grouch had gone to lay a bunch of flowers on her father's grave. From the first Mrs. Brownlow had taught her this pious rite, and Mrs. Brownlow's deputy, the gardener's wife (in whose cottage Sophy lived), had seen to its punctual performance every week. Things went by law and rule at the Hall, for the Squire was a man of active mind and ample leisure. His household code was a marvel of intricacy and minuteness. Sophy's coming and staying had developed a multitude of new clauses, under whose benevolent yet strict operation her youthful mind had been trained in the way in which Mr. Brownlow was of opinion that it should go.
Sophy's face, then, wore a grave and responsible air as she returned with steps of decorous slowness from the sacred precincts. Yet the outer manner was automatic—the result of seven years' practice. Within, her mind was busy: the day was one of mark in her life; she had been told her destined future, and was wondering how she would like it.
Her approach was perceived by a tall and pretty girl who lay in the meadow-grass (and munched a blade of it) which bordered the path under the elm-trees.
"What a demure little witch she looks!" laughed Julia Robins, who was much in the mood for laughter that day, greeting with responsive gleam of the eyes the sunlight which fell in speckles of radiance through the leaves above. It was a summer day, and summer was in her heart, too; yet not for the common cause with young maidens; it was no nonsense about love-making—lofty ambition was in the case to-day.
"Sophy Grouch! Sophy Grouch!" she cried, in a high, merry voice.
Sophy raised her eyes, but her steps did not quicken. With the same measured paces of her lanky, lean, little legs, she came up to where Julia lay.
"Why don't you say just 'Sophy'?" she asked. "I'm the only Sophy in the village."
"Sophy Grouch! Sophy Grouch!" Julia repeated, teasingly.
The mark on Sophy's left cheek grew redder. Julia laughed mockingly. Sophy looked down on her, still very grave.
"You do look pretty to-day," she observed—"and happy."
"Yes, yes! So I tease you, don't I? But I like to see you hang out your danger-signal."
She held out her arms to the little girl. Sophy came and kissed her, then sat down beside her.
"Forgive?"
"Yes," said Sophy. "Do you think it's a very awful name?"
"Oh, you'll change it some day," smiled Julia, speaking more truth than she knew. "Listen! Mother's consented, consented, consented! I'm to go and live with Uncle Edward in London—London, Sophy!—and learn elocution—"
"Learn what?"
"E-lo-cu-tion—which means how to talk so that people can hear you ever so far off—"
"To shout?"
"No. Don't be stupid. To—to be heard plainly without shouting. To be heard in a theatre! Did you ever see a theatre?"
"No. Only a circus. I haven't seen much."
"And then—the stage! I'm to be an actress! Fancy mother consenting at last! An actress instead of a governess! Isn't it glorious?" She paused a moment, then added, with a self-conscious