Sophy of Kravonia. Anthony Hope

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III

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BEAUTIFUL JULIA—AND MY LORD

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      "It seemed somehow impossible, me going to be cook there all my days." So writes Sophy at a later date in regard to her life at Morpingham Hall. To many of us in our youth it has seemed impossible that we should pass all our days in the humdrum occupations and the mediocre positions in which we have in fact spent them. Young ambitions are chronicled only when they have been fulfilled—unless where a born autobiographer makes fame out of his failures. But Sophy had a double portion of original restlessness—this much the records of Morpingham years, scanty as they are, render plain. Circumstances made much play with her, but she was never merely the sport of chance or of circumstances. She was always waiting, even always expecting, ready to take her chance, with arm out-stretched to seize Occasion by the forelock. She co-operated eagerly with Fate and made herself a partner with Opportunity, and she was quick to blame the other members of the firm for any lack of activity or forwardness. "You can't catch the train unless you're at the station—and take care your watch isn't slow," she writes somewhere in the diary. The moral of the reflection is as obvious as its form; it is obvious, too, that a traveller so scrupulous to be in time would suffer proportionate annoyance if the train were late.

      The immediate result of this disposition of hers was unhappy, and it is not hard to sympathize with the feelings of the Brownlows. Their benevolence was ample, but it was not unconscious; their benefits, which were very great, appeared to them exhaustive, not only above what Sophy might expect, but also beyond what she could imagine. They had picked her up from the road-side and set her on the way to that sort of kingdom with the prospect of which Basil Williamson had tried to console her. The Squire was an estimable man, but one of small mind; he moved among the little—the contented lord of a pin-point of the earth. Mrs. Brownlow was a profoundly pious woman, to whom content was a high duty, to be won by the performance of other duties. If the Squire detected in the girl signs of ingratitude to himself, his wife laid equal blame on a rebellion against Heaven. Sophy knew—if not then, yet on looking back—what they felt; her references to them are charged with a remorse whose playful expression (obstinately touched with scorn as it is) does not hide its sincerity. She soon perceived, anyhow, that she was getting a bad character; she, the cook in posse, was at open war with Mrs. Smilker, the cook in esse; though, to be sure, "Smilker" might have done something to reconcile her to "Grouch!"

      Mrs. Brownlow naturally ranged herself on the side of constituted authority, of the superior rank in the domestic hierarchy. Moreover, it is likely that Mrs. Smilker was right in nine cases out of ten, at all events; Sophy recognized that probability in after-life; none the less, she allows herself more than once to speak of "that beast of a Smilker." Mere rectitude as such never appealed to her; that comes out in another rather instructive comment, which she makes on Mrs. Brownlow herself, "Me being what I was, and she what she was, though I was grateful to her, and always shall be, I couldn't love her; and what hit me hardest was that she didn't wonder at it, and, in my opinion, wasn't very sorry either—not in her heart, you know. Me not loving her made what she was doing for me all the finer, you see."

      Perhaps these flashes of insight should not be turned on our benefactors, but the extract serves to show another side of Sophy—one which in fairness to her must not be ignored. Not only was restlessness unsatisfied, and young ambitions starved; the emotions were not fed either, or at least were presented with a diet too homely for Sophy's taste. For the greater part of this time she had no friends outside the Hall to turn to. Julia Robins was pursuing her training in London, and, later, her profession in the country. Basil Williamson, who "amused" her, was at Cambridge, and afterwards at his hospital; a glimpse of him she may have caught now and then, but they had no further talk. Very probably he sought no opportunity; Sophy had passed from the infants' school to the scullery; she had grown from a child into a big girl. If prudent Basil kept these transformations in view, none can blame him—he was the son of the Rector of the parish. So, when bidden to the Hall, he ate the potatoes Sophy had peeled, but recked no more of the hand that peeled them. In the main the child was, no doubt, a solitary creature.

      So much is what scientific men and historians call "reconstruction"—a hazardous process—at least when you are dealing with human beings. It has been kept within the strict limits of legitimate inference, and accordingly yields meagre results. The return of Julia Robins enables us to put many more of the stones—or bones, or whatever they may be called—in their appropriate places.

      It is the summer of 1865—and Julia is very gorgeous. Three years had passed over her head; her training had been completed a twelvemonth before, and she had been on her first tour. She had come home "to rest"—and to look out for a new engagement. She wore a blue hat with a white feather, a blue skirt, and a red "Garibaldi" shirt; her fair hair was dressed in the latest fashion. The sensation she made in Morpingham needs no record. But her head was not turned; nobody was ever less of a snob than Julia Robins, no friendship ever more independent of the ups and downs of life, on one side or the other, than that which united her and Sophy Grouch. She opened communications with the Hall scullery immediately. And—"Sophy was as much of a darling as ever"—is her warm-hearted verdict.

      The Hall was not accessible to Julia, nor Woodbine Lodge to Mrs. Brownlow's little cook-girl. But the Squire's coachman had been at the station when Julia's train came in: her arrival would be known in the Hall kitchen, if not up-stairs. On the morrow she went into the avenue of old elms about twelve o'clock, conjecturing that her friend might have a few free moments about that hour—an oasis between the labors of the morning and the claims of luncheon. Standing there under the trees in all her finery—not very expensive finery, no doubt, yet fresh and indisputably gay—she called her old mocking challenge—"Sophy Grouch! Sophy Grouch!"

      Sophy was watching. Her head rose from the other side of the ditch. She was down in a moment, up again, and in her friend's arms. "It's like a puff of fresh air," she whispered, as she kissed her, and then, drawing away, looked her over. Sophy was tall beyond her years, and her head was nearly on a level with Julia's. She was in her short print gown, with her kitchen apron on; her sleeves rolled up, her face red from the fire, her hands too, no doubt, red from washing vegetables and dishes. "She looked like Cinderella in the first act of a pantomime," is Miss Robins's professional comment—colored, perhaps, also by subsequent events.

      "You're beautiful!" cried Sophy. "Oh, that shirt—I love red!" And so on for some time, no doubt. "Tell me about it; tell me everything about it," she urged. "It's the next best thing, you know."

      Miss Robins recounted her adventures: they would not seem very dazzling at this distance. Sophy heard them with ardent eyes; they availed to color the mark on her cheek to a rosy tint. "That's being alive," she said, with a deep-drawn sigh.

      Julia patted her hand consolingly. "But I'm twenty!" she reminded her friend. "Think how young you are!"

      "Young or old's much the same in the kitchen," Sophy grumbled.

      Linking arms, they walked up the avenue. The Rector was approaching from the church. Sophy tried to draw her arm away. Julia held it tight. The Rector came up, lifted his hat—and, maybe, his brows. But he stopped and said a few pleasant words to Julia. He had never pretended to approve of this stage career, but Julia had now passed beyond his jurisdiction. He was courteous to her as to any lady. Official position betrayed itself only as he was taking leave—and only in regard to Sophy Grouch.

      "Ah, you keep up old friendships," he said—with a rather forced approval. "Please don't unsettle the little one's mind, though. СКАЧАТЬ