Sophy of Kravonia Part 3

Sophy's manner expanded into a calm graciousness. "I'm very sorry," she said.

"Thank you."

"You amuse me."

"The deuce I do!" laughed Basil Williamson.

She raised her eyes slowly to his. "You'll be friends, anyhow, won't you?"

"To cook or queen," he said--and heartiness shone through his raillery.

Sophy nodded her head gravely, sealing the bargain. A bargain it was.

"Now I must go and have tea, and then say my catechism," said she.

The young fellow--his thoughts were sad--wanted the child to linger.

"Learning your catechism? Where have you got to?"

"I've got to say my 'Duty towards my Neighbor' to Mrs. James after tea."

"Your 'Duty towards your Neighbor'--that's rather difficult, isn't it?"

"It's very long," said Sophy, resignedly.

"Do you know it?"

"I think so. Oh, Mr. Basil, would you mind hearing me? Because if I can say it to you, I can say it to her, you know."

"All right, fire away."

A sudden doubt smote Sophy. "But do you know it yourself?" she asked.

"Yes, rather, I know it."

She would not take his word. "Then you say the first half, and I'll say the second."

He humored her--it was hard not to--she looked so small and seemed so capable. He began--and tripped for a moment over "'To love, honor, and succor my father and mother.'" The child had no chance there. But Sophy's eyes were calm. He ended, "'teachers, spiritual pastors, and masters.' Now go on," he said.

"'To order myself lowly and reverently to all my betters; to hurt n.o.body by word nor deed; to be true and just in all my dealing; to bear no malice nor hatred in my heart; to keep my hands from picking and stealing, and my tongue from evil-speaking, lying, and slandering; to keep my body in temperance, soberness, and chast.i.ty [the young man smiled for an instant--that sounded pathetic]; not to covet nor desire other men's goods, but to learn and labor truly to get mine own living and to do my duty in that state of life unto which it has pleased G.o.d to call me.'"

"Wrong!" said Basil. "Go down two!"

"Wrong?" she cried, indignantly disbelieving.

"Wrong!"

"It's not! That's what Mrs. James taught me."

"Perhaps--it's not in the prayer-book. Go and look."

"You tell me first!"

"'And to do my duty in that state of life unto which it shall please G.o.d to call me.'" His eyes were set on her with an amused interest.

She stood silent for a moment. "Sure?" she asked then.

"Positive," said he.

"Oh!" said Sophy, for the third time. She stood there a moment longer.

Then she smiled at him. "I shall go and look. Good-bye."

Basil broke into a laugh. "Good-bye, missy," he said. "You'll find I'm right."

"If I do, I'll tell you," she answered him, generously, as she turned away.

His smile lasted while he watched her. When she was gone his grievance revived, his gloom returned. He trudged home with never a glance back at the avenue where Julia was. Yet even now the thought of the child crossed his mind; that funny mark of hers had turned redder when he corrected her rendering of the catechism.

Sophy walked into Mrs. James's kitchen. "Please may I read through my 'Duty' before I say it?" she asked.

Permission accorded with some surprise--for hitherto the teaching had been by word of mouth--she got the prayer-book down from its shelf and conned her lesson. After tea she repeated it correctly. Mrs. James noticed no difference.

III

BEAUTIFUL JULIA--AND MY LORD

"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 pa.s.s 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. Circ.u.mstances made much play with her, but she was never merely the sport of chance or of circ.u.mstances. 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 ingrat.i.tude 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 const.i.tuted 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 rect.i.tude 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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; n.o.body was ever less of a sn.o.b 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.