Bess

Chapter I

" The childhood shows the man As morning shows the day." — Milton. THE village of Torcliff lay sleeping in the hot June sunshine, its sinuous length stretched by the river side like a creature basking in the heat. The sun glared down on the dusty road and on the buff cottages that lined it irregularly on either hand ; the heat danced against the dark pine-woods covering the slopes of the steep hills that closed the village in, and the light was hard and dazzling on the swift, deep river that flowed down the valley's centre. Not a creature stirred in the long street ; not a human voice was heard, nor a sound from the sur rounding woods ; only the river spoke with a ceaseless murmur as it bore on its bosom the great barges that brought the stone down from quarries farther up the %'alley. Even the men on the boats were silent, and dreamed as they floated idly with the current, so that those in the buff houses were unaware that any passed.

Women were within doors, and B Bess 2 children sat drowsily over their books in the warm school-house, wondering why the hands of the clock moved so tardily, so creepingly, through the last hour before the mid-day release. Away in the quarries men were busy, and work went on with a cheery sound of ceaseless hammer and clink, but that was far up the valley, and no echoes came down its sharp, narrow curves to the village, nor woke the birds sleeping a mid-day sleep in the woods that lay so thickly on the lower slopes of the hills. Above these woods, which were dark and dense, the summits of the hills had a hard, clear outline against the cloudless sky. They shut the valley in like prison walls, so that scarcely a breeze could creep between to cool the fierce heat of the sunshine. It was on the southern side, in the valley's bottom, where the heat was like a furnace, that the village stretched its dusty length.

The sun shone almost vertically on the long, straggling street, and there were stretches where no shadow fell on either hand, where the flies baked motionless on the walls, and the very gnats forgot to hum. Something moved in the village street. Down a shadowless stretch, silently, cautiously, keeping to the wall and moving stealthily, as if it feared its own shadow, or was afraid to break the stillness and stir the motionless air, came a yellow cat, a wild cat from the woods above, thin and ugly, and with an evil look. Perhaps it had once lived in the village, and had been driven out to the woods, there to live by poaching, or to revenge itself by raids on the village poultry. With noiseless footfall it passed over the thick Bess 3 white dust, its creeping, distorted shadow cast close beneath it by the noontide sun ; on with unswerving course it stole to where for a space the houses on the one hand ceased, and a low iron rail and bushes divided the road from the river.

The river flowed at a lower level than the road, and was hardly seen except from close by this rail. There, under the bushes, a hen was dusting herself, while her chicks, no longer downy balls, but with little growing wings, pecked for themselves around her. Stealthily the yellow cat drew near, and crouching low on its shadow, it stopped, and watched, and made ready to spring. Following in the footsteps of the cat, close by the wall, with small, silent feet on the dusty road, came a child. She saw the cat, and almost as stealthily as it, with something of its own feline grace of movement, she drew near to watch. The drowsy spirit of the hour had breathed in vain on this child, for in all that hot, heavy silence here was one alert and eager. Her dark face was keen and intent, and her small sunburnt hands were tightly clasped behind her as she stood motionless by the railing and watched till the cat should spring.

She had come from a house that was larger than any other, whose buff walls were freshly coloured, and whose white doorstep was spotlessly clean ; yet it was hardly more than a cottage, and the child was dressed like the cottage children. Her cotton frock was faded, and her small shoes were worn at the toe. But in the grace of the slight figure, in the small shapeliness of the hands and feet, in the proud poise of the head and the delicacy of the features, might B Bess, 4 be traced a refinement that was hardly that of the ordinary village child. No covering sheltered her dark curls from the heat of the sun ; she stood unshaded in its full glare as if unconscious that it shone upon her. Her dark, eager eyes were fixed on the cat, and she bent slightly forward ; she could have darted on those chickens almost as quickly as the wild cat itself.

But the interest deepened, for the hen became aware of the danger, and rose in defence of her brood. It would have been easy to drive the cat away, but the child never stirred, only when the cat sprang forward, she pressed her hands together, palm to palm, and laughed a low, pleased laugh. It was a sharp struggle, but the result was certain. The poor bird stood with outspread, beating wings, and strong, fierce beak, but she was no match for the wild cat ; all her impetuous struggles and clamour to protect her brood were futile ; she was quickly worsted, and lay helpless, torn, and bleeding, while the victor stole off with one of the chicks. Then the child, still laughing, stooped and picked up a stone, but even as she aimed it at the thief, her hand dropped to her side, and her expression altered.

"No," she said, speaking aloud, "it thought of coming for the chicken, and it fought for it, and won it, and it shall keep it." She moved away, and folding her arms on the railing farther along, she looked in the opposite direction from the panting hen. Hers was a clever little face, and its expression was thoughtful as her eyes wandered along the line of buff houses that followed the curves of the river to where at a sudden Bess 5 bend the hills closed in and folded across each other. She looked at the dark fir trees, and then at the shining water ; she saw a ladened barge come floating down, and noted how, in a drowsy, mechanical way, a man skilfully steered it through the swift current ; she watched it disappear, and saw the little waves that lapped the edges fade and die, but all the while she carried on a distinct train of thought that resulted in an impatient frown and sigh.

" He is a fool — oh, a silly fool ! " she murmured, as she turned back to the dusty street. Still frowning with a frown that made her gypsy face years older, she carelessly retraced her steps along the silent road, till suddenly she paused against a sunny wall and laid her finger on a sleeping fly, not so as to kill it, but so as to hold it prisoner. Her thin little face was all animation and interest as she listened to its buzz, and sliding her hand over it, she imprisoned it under her hollowed palm. One prisoner was not enough ; two more were caught and held in the same way, and the child laughed softly aloud with much amusement as she laid her curly head against the wall to listen to the buzzing, and felt how the flies tickled her hand in their endeavours to escape. So intent was she that she failed to notice the soft, dusty footfall of approaching feet.

Round a corner close by came two other children, a boy and a fair-haired girl, who walked with lingering steps, their arms about each other, their eyes on the ground. They were talking eagerly, but the boy broke off to exclaim at sight of the intent figure by the wall, and the two approached curiously. Bess "Why, Bess," he asked, "what is it? Playing with flies! You baby! Oh, you cruel thing," he added, as he pushed her hand aside, " you are hurting them ! I never knew anything like you, Bess ; you are always doing something wicked. I wish Marty was my sister, and not you." The dark face crimsoned with passion, and the child controlled herself with difficulty. " If you were Marty's brother," she said, " you would be Peterson's boy, just a common quarryboy, and I'd have no more to do with you.

There are the flies," she continued, looking at him over her shoulder with a pretty dis dain ; " I had not hurt them, but you crushed them when you pushed my hand, and now you can kill them. Come, Marty," and she drew her to the railing, and with her arm round her neck, rubbed her dark head caressingly against the other child's fair hair. Marty held out her hand to the boy, and the three stood together, Marty Peterson, the quarry foreman's little daughter, in the middle. She was a pretty contrast in her fairness to the other two, for the boy was as dark as his sister, and indeed was but a larger and more dreamy edition of her. While her face, with its mutable expression, was passionate and hungry with a hunger for many things of which her life was as yet cruelly devoid, his, for a boy, was gentle to a fault.

He stood now with great dreamy eyes fixed on the river till, at a cry of distress from Marty, he followed the direction of her glance and saw the wounded hen. " Bess," he cried, " did you do that ? " For a moment she was silent, and looked at him Bess 7 with an inscrutable face, then answered, " I played at stoning Stephen the Martyr, but Stephen was tough and would not die." As the boy looked at her, indignation stole the colour from his cheeks. "Bess, I believe you are possessed of a devil," he said, speaking fast, while his large, soft eyes watched her almost with fear. " I don't believe a girl could be so wicked and care for nothing as you do if she could help herself. No, I don't think you can help it ; I think it is a devil who makes you do it, and you are just in his hands." " I am not," said Bess, facing him with angry decision.

" I am not in anybody's hands, and I would not obey a devil, of course I would not, any more than anybody else." " Don't be so silly, Jeff," interposed Marty. " Don't you see she is only teasing you. Why, there are no stones for her to throw — nothing but dust. Besides, Bess would not do a thing like that." " I would, for I did it," said Bess, hotly ; " and what is more, I will do it again to show you." This proof of her veracity was not exacted, for Marty hastily interfered, while Jeff looked on silently, and thought that he was assuredly right and a devil possessed his sister. He would pray — yes, he would pray earnestly, and Marty should too — that God would drive out that devil, and give her a clean heart. Marty's thoughts had not carried her to such lengths. She turned her back forgetfully on the suffering hen, and caused a diversion by asking Bess if she should come to lessons that afternoon.

" Oh, yes," answered Bess. " There are poetry and composition to-day, and I like them." Bess " Mr. Borrowdene was cross this morning at your going off as you did in the middle of lessons, and then Jeff suffered for it when his sums were wrong. I think it was rather hard on Jeff." " He is a fool," said Bess, returning to the opinion she had enunciated while alone, and referring to her father, the Parson, who taught the three children. She leaned her back against the railing, and kicked up the white dust with her small, worn shoes. " He made mistakes in our lessons this morning, and when I went away he did not know how to make me come back. Oh, he is a fool," she chanted, in an absent minded, sing-song voice, "a fool, a fool, a silly fool, to stay shut in like this," and she pointed to the dark hills that surrounded them, while her thoughts flew off to a strange world beyond those hills, a world that existed only in her own imagination.

" But no," she added, " he just reads the same Bible, and says the same prayers, and then preaches the same kind of sermons every week, every week, always the same." A sudden gleam of laughter broke across her face. " He is like a cow that is always eating grass, and eating grass in the same field, and then goes to be milked, and it is always milk. I wish it could be tea sometimes, just for a change." Marty laughed gleefully, but guiltily, for she would never have spoken so of her own father, and she knew it was naughty of Bess. Jeff was looking the other way with eyes that were thoughtful, as he leaned over the railing and watched the light on the water ; probably he had not heard her words. The noonday stillness of the village ended, and other voices than those of the children filled the air.

Bess 9 Little smoke rose from the cottage chimneys, for the mid-day meal was not the important one ; at that hour the men were absent, and there were only the women and children to feed. It was towards evening that the blue smoke would rise thickly against the high, dark woods as the sinking sun left them in shadow, and women would be busy within doors preparing supper for their men, and putting dinners ready to be carried to work on the morrow. Yet now, for such as were left in the village, it was dinner time, and a stir and hum of life awoke down the silent street. A door near by creaked on its hinges, and then screeched loudly across the rough stone floor, as an old man, past work, looked out, and blinked at the sunshine that flickered through a fuchsia by the door; then, leaning on his stick, stood shaken by an old man's guttural cough.

A sick man walked a little way, and looked wistfully along the road towards the quarries, but he shivered in the warmth, and crept again to his home, a poor creature, an object of contemptuous pity in the village, like the old or the little children. Many doors were flung wide, and women called to one another, and up and down the village sounded the voices of children released from school, sounds of light-hearted laughter, and sounds of quarrelling, all unsubdued by the fierce heat that silenced the birds in the woods. Yet clearer than the voices of women and children, louder than household noises and noises of passing feet, more distinct than the murmur and rush of the river, there sounded ever and again in the ears of Bess Borrowdene, as she stood silent by the railing, the painful gasp and flutter of the dying hen.

The Bess, 10 child was almost ready to pray that the hen might die quickly, or that the village boys might not find it and torture it further ; almost ready, but not quite, for Bess seldom prayed. In a fit of anger she had one night omitted her evening prayer, and when no dire calamity resulted, despite the superstitious adjurations of the woman servant, she had, with an unchildlike tenacity of opinion, held her own and altogether discarded the little formula she had been taught to repeat night and morning. She only prayed now when, after some ill-conduct, a stormy, passionate repentance overtook her, and she prayed wildly and fervently for forgiveness, goodness, love. Or, again, sometimes on a Sunday evening as she sat in the half empty, desolate old church and listened to the singing and the words of prayer, as she watched the green boughs wave in the slanting sunshine by the window, and the shadows of passing birds flit across the worn stone floor, and when she saw how Jeffrey's face grew grave and holy as a saint's, her own little world of deep-felt joys and sorrows would fade very far away, and a sense of peace steal over her stormy heart.

At such times she would pray with a childish simplicity, and go home feeling strangely good. But these were but rare occasions. "Why do we stand here doing nothing?" she cried, fretted by the longing to get away from sight or sound of suffering. "It must be dinner-time, and I shall go.' She turned towards the large buff house, and Jeff and Marty went with her like those accustomed to be governed by her. Her arm was round Marty's neck now, as the boy's had been when they came down Bess 11 the street. Marty accompanied the other two back to the Rectory, for all day Peterson was away at the quarries, and his little girl spent her time with the Parson's children. Dusty shoes were not allowed in the front passage, and the three children turned from the spotless doorstep, and took a path through the garden round to the back door.

Though no careful wife and mother reigned at the Rectory, an excellent order was maintained by Hannah, the woman servant, who was at once the Parson's comfort and his trial — his comfort because to her he could leave the entire management of the household, wiping his hands of all responsibility ; his trial because she ruled him with a rod of iron, and he too often felt its weight. Only Bess dared wage war with gaunt, raw-boned, cross-eyed Hannah, and Bess she idolized. That very morning, while the children were down the village, Hannah had had words, as she expressed it, with the Parson because she thought he had been hard on the child. Words she had had, and plenty of them, leaving her adversary no time ;to answer as she sat before him and reproached him roundly. Hannah always sat down to correct her master, certainly uninvited, for not the most considerate could think that her large limbs were likely to fail in their support if she were left standing ; but she felt that seated she was more difficult to displace, more unavoidable, the interview weightier.

So, on the edge of a chair, close before his writing-table, with the sly look that a squint gives, and with knees apart, and a hand on either, Hannah sat and spoke her mind, while the Parson avoided her shifty glance, and yawned, and lit his pipe. Bess, "Ay, but she's your own flesh and blood, and handsome and clever besides," Hannah cried, "while that Peterson's child is nothing but a bit of a wax doll. You'll take the sugar from your tea for Marty next, and there's nothing but the dregs of everything for Bess. The worm'll turn some day, Parson, and you'll wish you'd treated her different. Parson or no parson, I can't abide to see the gutter taken up as you've done in this case of Marty, and sure enough you and yours will get the mud about you, and be sorry for it. I'm not forgetting my place, and you the master, but there's the mistress that was I think of besides, and , I must speak my mind, even if I leave for it — I that have served you faithfully these many years, and Miss Elizabeth before."

She smoothed the creases in her sleeves where they had been rolled above the elbow, and left the room, sure that a far wider latitude of plain speaking would be allowed her before her displacement were seriously considered. The Parson might yawn and light his pipe, but the accusation that he was indulgent to Marty Peter son and hard on his own child struck home with the force of a disagreeable truth, even while he resented the woman's interference in telling him of it, and while he felt how much harder her open partisanship made the already too difficult task of bringing up his little daughter. He knew that Hannah ought to go, for he knew that she was undermining what little authority over the child he still possessed. Little indeed, for he was aware with what extreme indif ference Bess usually regarded his wishes and opinions ■ he was conscious, too, that there was no other Bess 13 authority to which she yielded, and looking back to a past he could never forget, he trembled to think of the future.

But — well, it was always some other time he would give Hannah notice, and so he turned with a sigh of relief from such petty troubles back to his beloved books as he had done many a time before. When the children reached the back door, Bess suddenly ran off and left the other two to face Hannah alone, always a trying ordeal to Marty, for she knew the servant disliked her and resented the presence of a quarryman's child in the dining-room. As a quarryman Hannah always regarded Peterson, and refused to allow him the merit due to an almost self-educated man who had risen to a position of trust and of no small responsibility as foreman of the large quarries and numerous workmen of the valley. There were others in the village who looked on Marty's position at the Rectory much as Hannah did, yet the child had a loving disposition, and rarely met with harsh words from any but the servant.

Usually Bess was ready enough to protect her little friend, and could even command a certain sullen civility towards her on Hannah's part, but to-day she forgot her, and as they stood just within the door, she left her with Jeff, and without a word of explanation quickly ran back by the way they had come. The street was almost as deserted as before, for dinner had drawn the women and children within doors, and as she passed, from almost every house there sounded, mingled with the clatter of dinner things, the noisy chatter of children, and the loud voices of women that oftenest had a scolding ring, Bess 14 even if not meant to scold. She passed unnoticed, unheeded, too, by a boy who stood teasing a white terrier, or by an old man who sat in the shade by a cottage door minding the crawling baby that was tethered to the leg of his chair.

Bess stopped an instant before him, with grave face, and hands folded behind her, to notice his meaningless smile as he dozed and woke again to the pride of his charge, himself almost as much a child as the little one on the ground. Then she stole quickly on to where they had left the wounded hen by the railing. Her face was intensely anxious, but its expression relaxed when she saw there were no boys about the spot, and knew they had not found this butt for their cruelty. She crept through the railing and knelt in the dust by the suffering creature, while a great compassion softened her face, and her dark eyes grew tender. It had been one thing to watch the fight, to thrill with interest, to share in the success of the cat : it had been another matter to stand by the defeated, and listen to those painful little cries and flutterings.

She had felt an agony of pity for the sufferer, and had stolen back to tragically end the little tragedy. She had not realized that the episode could be called by so fine a name, or the idea would have braced her nerves, and she would not have sickened to her task as she did. She stroked the ruffled feathers gently, not seeing that by so doing she terrified the hen, nor under standing what was meant by the open beak and stretched-out neck, how like a damned soul in that terrible heat the poor bird cried for a drop of water Bess 15 to cool its parching thirst. She touched it tenderly, but when she looked at her hands there was blood on them, and at that sight an ungovernable rush of tears mastered her, and crouching low in the dust, she clasped her knees about, and buried her face upon them.

" He thought I did it," she sobbed, " he thought I could do a thing like that, and when he said it, it made me feel I could." She paused, then murmured on. " I know I am wicked, but I'm not possessed by a devil — I'm sure I'm not. If I go to hell it will be their fault, for they ought to make me better, and they only make me worse. Yes, they do," she repeated decisively, and her tears almost ceased as she thus lifted the burden of her sins from her own shoulders to those of others. It was a comforting thought, for no doubt it would give infinite self-satisfaction if she came to walk the infernal regions to feel she did so as a misdirected martyr, there through the injustice of her father and brother. Hell ! yes, perhaps she would go to hell, as Jeff was always warning her she might, and she fell to picturing the hell from which he tried to lure her, as she looked through a mist of half-dried tears at the river below.

A golden glint was on the water, a glint that would not last long, for now that noon was passed, the sunshine would begin its upward course on the hillsides, leaving the narrow valley in deeper and deeper shade. That shade would grow to an early dusk, to be followed by a darkness that was darker than anything that rested on the hilltops. This deep darkness was in the child's mind while the Bess golden light was in her eyes, and they were strangely mingled in the picture she drew of hell. Terrible was this fancy of all the well-known details round her illumined through the thick blackness by the fierce glow from a river of fire. Yet the heat from such a river called for no great effort of imagination on such a day, but that was what she rather enjoyed than otherwise. Suppose, too, there were children devils ; they might be merry imps, and at that thought her red lips laughed, and there was daring laughter in her great dark eyes, as she sat with her thin arms clasped about her up-drawn knees.

Fascinated, she whispered below her breath, " I'd like to see it — oh, I'd like to see it all," but appalled by her own daring she looked round quickly, and added, " if the real devil was not there." The devil ! Jeff had said a devil possessed her, but of course that was nonsense ; nobody possessed her but herself. But what if she were a devil herself? And so she lost her depth. A long flutter at her side recalled her thoughts, and with a shiver of compunction and a repentant pang for her forgetfulness, she turned to fulfil the task she had come to perform. The hen was dying, how fast she did not know ; she only saw its panting agony, its half-glazed eyes, the blood about its open beak. She stooped, and put her hands half under it, and tried to push it gently towards the river over the edge of the wall of rock on which they were, but the thing gasped, and fluttered, and cried pitifully to her, and Bess realized she could not do it so.

A lump rose in her throat, a feeling of sickness Bess 17 and inability overtook her, and for a moment she stood uncertain ; but again she felt she could not go to her dinner and her lessons, nor play with Jeff and Marty while the hen still lay in its pain. Her wild little face was pathetic as she struggled with herself, moving restlessly, and quickly shutting and opening her thin, nervous hands. Then with a sudden, hasty desperation she fought with and mastered the hen, while its struggles grew ever feebler. She raised it in her arms, and standing close to the edge of the wall, she paused one moment, then opened wide her arms and let the creature fall, heard its last terrified cry, watched it flutter, saw the waters tumble it a helpless ball of feathers, saw them open and swallow it, and then threw herself down in the dust, and covering her eyes and ears, lay motionless.

The school bell rang, and children hurried past ; she heard their voices and the sound of their feet, but she never moved till two of the motherless chicks that had wandered away came back and chirpt loudly round her. " Oh, I didn't murder it," she cried, " I didn't murder it ; I only killed it because it was suffering so." Starting up, she made her way home, looking neither to right nor to left. " No dinner for you, Bess," sang out Jeff from the bough of an old laburnum where he and Marty sat. " It is all cleared away, and Hannah's ablaze with rage, and Father — My goodness ! you horrible girl ! What on earth have you been doing ? " Bess glanced carelessly down at her blood-stained frock and hands, and then looked up calmly into Jeff's face. " Oh, I've just been finishing Stephen — C Bess Saul of Tarsus, you know ; you like him when he is spelt with a P." With a grimace, she ran on, and into the back of the house ; but Jeff knew nothing of how she cried while she told Hannah of what had occurred.