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INTRODUCTION
The following narrative falls naturally into three divisions, corresponding to distinct and clearly marked periods of Sophy's life. Of the first and second – her childhood at Morpingham and her sojourn in Paris – the records are fragmentary, and tradition does little to supplement them. As regards Morpingham, the loss is small. The annals of a little maid-servant may be left in vagueness without much loss. Enough remains to show both the manner of child Sophy was and how it fell out that she spread her wings and left the Essex village far behind her. It is a different affair when we come to the French period. The years spent in and near Paris, in the care and under the roof of Lady Margaret Duddington, were of crucial moment in Sophy's development. They changed her from what she had been and made her what she was to be. Without Paris, Kravonia, still extraordinary, would have been impossible.
Yet the surviving history of Paris and the life there is scanty. Only a sketch is possible. A record existed – and a fairly full one – in the Julia Robins correspondence; that we know from Miss Robins herself. But the letters written from Paris by Sophy to her lifelong friend have, with some few exceptions, perished. Miss Robins accounts for this – and in view of her careful preservation of later correspondence, her apology must be accepted – by the fact that during these years – from 1866 to 1870 – she was constantly travelling from town to town and from lodging to lodging, as a member of various theatrical companies; this nomadic existence did not promote the careful and methodical storage of her letters. It may, of course, be added that no such obvious interest attached to these records as gathered round Sophy's doings after she had exchanged Paris and the Rue de Grenelle for Slavna and the Castle of Praslok.
When this migration has been effected, the historian is on much firmer ground; he is even embarrassed sometimes by the abundance of material of varying value. Apart from public records and general memory (both carefully consulted on the spot), the two main sources flow from Sophy's own hand. They are the Robins correspondence and the diary. Nearly to the end the letters are very constant, very full, very instructive; but they are composed with an obvious view to the tastes and interests of their recipient, and by no means always devote most space to what now seems of greatest interest. In one point, however, Miss Robins's tastes prove of real service. This lady, who rose to a respectable, if not a high, position as a Shakespearian actress, was much devoted to the study of costume, and Sophy, aware of this hobby, never omits to tell her with minute care what she herself wore on every occasion, what the other ladies wore, and what were the uniforms, military or civil, in which the men were arrayed. Trivial, perhaps, yet of great value in picturing the scenes!
In her letters Sophy is also copious in depicting places, houses, and landscapes – matters on which the diary is naturally not so full. So that, in spite of their great faults, the letters form a valuable supplement to the diary. Yet what faults – nay, what crimes! Sophy had learned to talk French perfectly and to write it fairly well. She had not learned to write English well or even decently; the letters are, in fact, a charnel-house of murdered grammar and broken-backed sentences. Still there emerge from it all a shrewdness and a rural vigor and raciness which show that the child of the little Essex farm-house survived in the writer.
But for this Kravonian period – the great period – the diary is the thing. Yet it is one of the most unconscientious diaries ever written. It is full of gaps; it is often posted up very unpunctually; it is sometimes exasperatingly obscure – there may be some intention in that; she could not tell into what hands it might fall. But it covers most of the ground; it begins almost with Sophy's arrival in Slavna, and the last entry records her discovery of Lord Dunstanbury's presence in Kravonia. It is written for the most part in French, and she wrote French, as has been said, decently – nay, even forcibly, though not with elegance; yet she frequently relapses into English – often of a very colloquial order: this happens mostly under the influence of anger or some other strong emotion. And she is dramatic – that must be allowed to her. She concentrates her attention on what she conceives (nor is her instinct far out) to be her great scenes; she gives (or purports to give) a verbatim report of critical conversations, and it is only just to say that she allows her interlocutors fair play. She has candor – and that, working with the dramatic sense in her, forbids her to warp the scene. In the earlier parts of the story she shows keen appreciation of its lighter aspects; as times grow graver, her records, too, change in mood, working up to the tense excitement, the keen struggle, the burning emotions of her last days in Kravonia. Yet even then she always finds time for a laugh and a touch of gayety.
When Sophy herself ceases to be our guide, Lord Dunstanbury's notes become the main authority. They are supplemented by the recollection of Mr. Basil Williamson, now practising his profession of surgery in Australia; and this narrative is also indebted to Colonel Markart, sometime secretary to General Stenovics, for much important information which, as emanating from the enemy's camp, was not accessible to Sophy or her informants. The contributions of other actors in the drama, too numerous to mention here, will be easily identified in their place in the story.
A word seems desirable on one other subject, and no mean one; for it is certain that Sophy's physical gifts were a powerful ally to her ambition, her strong will, and her courage; it is certain, too, that she did not shrink from making the most of this reinforcement to her powers. All the authorities named above – not excepting Sophy herself – have plenty to say on the topic, and from their descriptions a portrait of her may be attempted. Of actual pictures one only exists – in the possession of the present Lord Dunstanbury, who succeeded his father – Sophy's Earl – a few years ago. It is a pastel, drawn just before she left Paris – and, to be frank, it is something of a disappointment; the taste of the 'sixties is betrayed in a simper which sits on the lips but is alien to the character of them. Still the outline and the color are there.
Her hair was very dark, long, and thick; her nose straight and fine, her lips firm and a trifle full. Her complexion was ordinarily very pale, and she did not flush save under considerable agitation of mind or exertion of body. She was above the middle height, finely formed, and slender. It was sometimes, indeed, objected that her shape was too masculine – the shoulders a trifle too square and the hips too small for a woman. These are, after all, matters of taste; she would not have been thought amiss in ancient Athens. All witnesses agree in describing her charm as lying largely in movement, in vivacity, in a sense of suppressed force trying to break out, or (as Mr. Williamson puts it) of "tremendous driving power."
The personality seems to stand out fairly distinct from these descriptions, and we need the less regret that a second picture, known to have been painted soon after her arrival in Kravonia, has perished either through carelessness or (more probably) by deliberate destruction; there were many in Kravonia not too anxious that even a counterfeit presentment of the famous "Red Star" and its wearer should survive. It would carry its memories and its reproach.
"The Red Star!" The name appears first in a letter of the Paris period – one of the few which are in existence. Its invention is attributed by Sophy to her friend the Marquis de Savres (of whom we shall hear again). He himself used it often. But of the thing we hear very early – and go on hearing from time to time. Sophy at first calls it "my mark," but she speedily adopts Monsieur le Marquis's more poetical term, and by that description it is known throughout her subsequent career. The polite artist of the 'sixties shirked it altogether by giving a half-profile view of his subject, thus not showing the left cheek where the "star" was situated.
It was, in fact, a small birth-mark, placed just below the cheek-bone, almost round, yet with a slightly indented outline. No doubt a lover (and M. de Savres was one) found warrant enough for his phrase. At ordinary times it was a very pale red in color, but (unlike the rest of her face) it was very rapidly sensitive to any change of mood or temper; in moments of excitement the shade deepened greatly, and (as Colonel Markart says in his hyperbolic strain) "it glowed like angry Venus." Without going quite that length, we are bound to allow that it was, at these moments, a conspicuous and striking mark, and such it clearly appeared to the eyes of all who saw it. "La dame à l'étoile rouge," says the Marquis. "The Red-starred Witch," said the less courteous and more hostile citizens and soldiers of Kravonia. Sophy herself appears proud of it, though she feigns to consider it a blemish. Very probably it was one of those peculiarities which become so closely associated and identified with the personality to which they belong as at once to heighten the love of friends and to attract an increased dislike or hatred from those already disposed or committed to enmity. At any rate, for good or evil, it is as "Red Star" that the name of Sophy lives to-day in the cities and mountains of Kravonia.
So much in preface; now to the story. Little historical importance can be claimed for it. But amateurs of the picturesque, if yet there be such in this business-like world, may care to follow Sophy from Morpingham to Paris, to share her flight from the doomed city, to be with her in the Street of the Fountain, at venerable Praslok, on Volseni's crumbling wall, by the banks of the swift-flowing Krath at dawn of day – to taste something of the spirit that filled, to feel something of the love that moved, the heart of Sophy Grouch of Morpingham, in the county of Essex. Still, sometimes Romance beckons back her ancient votaries.
PART I
MORPINGHAM
I
ENOCH GROUCH'S DAUGHTER
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.
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 laugh: "Basil's awfully angry, though."
"Why should he be angry?" asked Sophy. Her own anger was gone; she was plucking daisies and sticking them here and there in her friend's golden hair. They were great friends, this pair, and Sophy was very proud of the friendship. Julia was grown up, the beauty of the village, and – a lady! Now Sophy was by no means any one of these things.
"Oh, you wouldn't understand," laughed Julia, with a blush.
"Does he want to keep company with you – and won't you do it?"
"Only servants keep company, Sophy."
"Oh!" said Sophy, obviously making a mental note of the information.
"But he's very silly about it. I've just said 'Good-bye,' to him – you know he goes up to Cambridge to-morrow? – and he did say a lot of silly things." She suddenly caught hold of Sophy and kissed her half a dozen times. "It's a wonderful thing that's happened. I'm so tremendously happy!" She set her little friend free with a last kiss and a playful pinch.
Neither caress nor pinch disturbed Sophy's composure. She sat down on the grass.