Читать книгу Sophy of Kravonia - Anthony Hope - Страница 13

Table of Contents

Grouch! That is the name—and in the interest of euphony it is impossible not to regret the fact. Some say it should be spelled "Groutch," which would not at all mend matters, though it makes the pronunciation clear beyond doubt—the word must rhyme with "crouch" and "couch." Well might Lady Meg Duddington swear it was the ugliest name she had ever heard in her life! Sophy was not of a very different opinion, as will be shown by-and-by. She was Grouch on both sides—unmixed and unredeemed. For Enoch Grouch married his uncle's daughter Sally, and begat, as his first child, Sophy. Two other children were born to him, but they died in early infancy. Mrs. Grouch did not long survive the death of her little ones; she was herself laid in Morpingham church-yard when Sophy was no more than five years old. The child was left to the sole care of her father, a man who had married late for his class—indeed, late for any class—and was already well on in middle age. He held a very small farm, lying about half a mile behind the church. Probably he made a hard living of it, for the only servant in his household was a slip of a girl of fifteen, who had, presumably, both to cook and scrub for him and to look after the infant Sophy. Nothing is remembered of him in Morpingham. Perhaps there was nothing to remember—nothing that marked him off from thousands like him; perhaps the story of his death, which lives in the village traditions, blotted out the inconspicuous record of his laborious life.

Morpingham lies within twenty-five miles of London, but for all that it is a sequestered and primitive village. It contained, at this time at least, but three houses with pretensions to gentility—the Hall, the Rectory, and a smaller house across the village street, facing the Rectory. At the end of the street stood the Hall in its grounds. This was a handsome, red-brick house, set in a spacious garden. Along one side of the garden there ran a deep ditch, and on the other side of the ditch, between it and a large meadow, was a path which led to the church. Thus the church stood behind the Hall grounds; and again, as has been said, beyond the church was Enoch Grouch's modest farm, held of Mr. Brownlow, the owner of the Hall. The church path was the favorite resort of the villagers, and deservedly, for it was shaded and beautified by a fine double row of old elms, forming a stately avenue to the humble little house of worship.

On an autumn evening in the year 1855 Enoch Grouch was returning from the village, where he had been to buy tobacco. His little girl was with him. It was wild weather. A gale had been blowing for full twenty-four hours, and in the previous night a mighty bough had been snapped from one of the great elms and had fallen with a crash. It lay now right across the path. As they went to the village, her father had indulged Sophy with a ride on the bough, and she begged a renewal of the treat on their homeward journey. The farmer was a kind man—more kind than wise, as it proved, on this occasion. He set the child astraddle on the thick end of the bough, then went to the other end, which was much slenderer. Probably his object was to try to shake the bough and please his small tyrant with the imitation of a see-saw. The fallen bough suggested no danger to his slow-moving mind. He leaned down towards the bough with out-stretched hands—Sophy, no doubt, watching his doings with excited interest—while the wind raged and revelled among the great branches over their heads. Enoch tried to move the bough, but failed; in order to make another effort, he fell on his knees and bent his back over it.

At this moment there came a loud crash—heard in the Rectory grounds and in the dining-room at Woodbine Cottage, the small house opposite.

"There's another tree gone!" cried Basil Williamson, the Rector's second son, who was giving his retriever an evening run.

He raced through the Rectory gate, across the road, and into the avenue.

A second later the garden gate of Woodbine Cottage opened, and Julia, the ten-years-old daughter of a widow named Robins who lived there, came out at full speed. Seeing Basil just ahead of her, she called out: "Did you hear?"

He knew her voice—they were playmates—and answered without looking back: "Yes. Isn't it fun? Keep outside the trees—keep well in the meadow!"

"Stuff!" she shouted, laughing. "They don't fall every minute, silly!"

Running as they exchanged these words, they soon came to where the bough—or, rather, the two boughs—had fallen. A tragic sight met their eyes. The second bough had caught the unlucky farmer just on the nape of his neck, and had driven him down, face forward, onto the first. He lay with his neck close pinned between the two, and his arms spread out over the undermost. His face was bad to look at; he was quite dead, and apparently death must have been instantaneous. Sobered and appalled, the boy and girl stood looking from the terrible sight to each other's faces.

"Is he dead?" Julia whispered.

"I expect so," the boy answered. Neither of them had seen death before.

The next moment he raised his voice and shouted: "Help, help!" then laid hold of the upper bough and strove with all his might to raise it. The girl gave a shriller cry for assistance and then lent a hand to his efforts. But between them they could not move the great log.

Up to now neither of them had perceived Sophy.

Next on the scene was Mr. Brownlow, the master of the Hall. He had been in his greenhouse and heard the crash of the bough. Of that he took no heed—nothing could be done save 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.