Sophia: A Romance

by Stanley John Weyman

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.