Complete works of hall c.., p.585
Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 585
It might bring on a fever, but she was strong she would soon get over it.
Farmers returning empty from market offered her a lift, but she declined and toiled on. The lighted windows of the farmhouses, gleaming through the darkness, called her in to warmth and shelter, but she struggled along. The soles of her stockings were soon worn to shreds and the stones of the roads were beginning to cut her feet, but she would not put on her shoes. In her frenzy she hardly felt the pain. And besides, what she was suffering for Alick was as nothing compared to what Alick had suffered for her. Only one night! It would soon be over.
She had walked at her slow pace down a deep descent and through a long valley when she came upon an inn and a big barn that was a scene of great festivity. She knew what it was. It was one of the” Bachelors’ Balls” which, beginning with Oiel Thomase Dhoo (the Eve of Black Thomas) and going on through the spring of the year, the unmarried men in remote places gave to the unmarried girls of the parish.
The rain was now falling in torrents and the wind had risen to the strength of a gale, but it must have been close and hot inside the barn, for as Bessie passed on the other side of the way, the doors were thrown open. The rude place was densely crowded. Stable lamps hung from the rough-hewn rafters. At one end the musicians sat on a platform raised on barrels; at the other end girls in white blouses were serving tea from, a long plank covered with a table-cloth and resting on trestles. In the space between, a dense group of young men and women were dancing with furious energy.
This, too, was like something out of her own life. Ah, if somebody had only told her ….
But what matter! She would be a proud and happy woman yet the Sheean ny Feaynid had said so.
It was now midnight by the wrist-watch that Alick had given her, and she had still another hill to climb, steeper than the last if shorter. While she was going up the rain flogged her face as with whipcord, and, when she reached the top, the wind, sweeping across the low-lying lands from the sea, tore at her skirts as if it were trying to strip her naked. At one moment it brought her to her knees, and she thought she would never be able to rise to her feet again. It was very dark. She was feeling weak and helpless.
Once more she remembered Stowell. He would be on his way to London now. She could see him (Alick had often painted such pictures) sitting in a brightly-lit first-class railway carriage, smoking cigarettes and sipping coffee.
At this thought her whole soul rose in revolt. Why was he there while she was here? She had never loved him; he had never loved her; they had both done wrong. But why for the same fault should there be such different punishment?
People who went to churches and chapels talked of nature and God. They said God was good and He was the God of nature. It was a lie a deception! If God was good He was not the God of nature. If He was the God of nature He was not good. Nature was cruel an’d pitiless. Only to a man was it kind. If you were a woman it had no mercy on you. It never forgot you; it never forgave you. Therefore a woman had a right to fight it, and when it threatened to destroy her happiness, and the happiness of those who loved her, she had a right to kill it.
That was what she was doing now. Perhaps she had done it already. The heavy burden that had been lying so long under her heart had given no sign of life for hours. So much the better! That passage in her life must be dead and buried. Victor Stowell must be wiped out for ever. Then she could marry Alick Gell with a clean heart and conscience.
Therefore, courage, courage! She would be a proud and happy woman yet the Sheean ny Feaynid had said so.
Only the great thing was to get home before daybreak, so that nobody might see her until all was over.
Somewhere in the dead and vacant dawn a pale, forlorn-looking woman, whom nobody could have known for Bessie Collister, was approaching the village of the glen. She had been eighteen hours on her journey, most of the time on her feet. Her fur-lined cloak was sodden and heavy. Her black hair had been torn from its knot and was hanging dank over her neck and shoulders. Her feet, in her dry boots, were cold and bleeding. A silk scarf which had been tied over her closely-fitting fur cap was dripping, and a little bag on her arms was wet through with all that was contained in it.
She had expected to arrive before break of day, but nobody in the village was yet stirring. In the long street of whitewashed houses all the window blinds were still down and looking like closed eye-lids.
She tied up her hair, removed the scarf and put on a veil from her handbag, drew it closely over her face, and then walked with head down and a step as light as she could make it, through the sleeping village.
She met nobody. Not a door was opened; not a blind was drawn aside; she had not been seen. She drew a long breath of relief. But suddenly, with the first sight of the mill, came a stab of memory, Dan Baldromma!
Since the witch-doctor had told her that though Dan might rage and tear he could do no harm to her of to Alick she had ceased to think of him. But why had she not thought of the harm he might do to her mother? All the way up since she was a child she had seen the tyrannies he had inflicted upon her mother through her. What fresh tyranny would he inflict on her now that she was coming home like this to be a burden to …
For a moment Bessie told herself she must go back even yet. But she was too weak and too ill to go one step farther. All the same she could not face her step-father in her present condition. If she could only get upstairs to her bedroom and sleep sleep, sleep!
She listened for the mill-wheel it was not working. She looked at the mill-door it had not yet been opened. It was impossible that Dan could be in bed he was such an early riser. He must have gone up the brews to look at the heifers in the top fields.
With a slow step she went over to the dwelling-house. The door was shut, but she could hear sounds from the kitchen. There was the shuffling of slow feet, accompanied by the tap of a walking-stick; then the blowing and coughing of bellows and the crackling of burning gorse; and then the measured beating of a foot on the hearthstone, keeping time to a husky and tremulous voice that was singing “Safe in the arms of Jesus, Safe in His tender care.”
With a palpitating heart Bessie lifted the latch, pushed the door open and took one step into the kitchen. Her mother, who was still wearing her night-cap, was sitting on the three-legged stool in the choillagh, stirring porridge in the oven-pot that hung from the slowrie. She had heard the click of the latch and was looking round.
There was silence for a moment. Bessie tried to speak and could not. The old woman rose on rigid limbs and her hand on the handle of her stick was trembling. It was just as if the spirit of someone she had been thinking about had suddenly appeared before her.
“Is it thyself, girl?” she said, in a breathless whisper.
“Mother!” cried Bessie, and she took another step forward.
Again there was a moment of silence. With her heart at her lips Bessie saw that her mother’s eyes were wandering over her figure.
Then the stick dropped from the old woman’s hand to the floor and she stretched out her arms, and her thin hands shook like withered leaves.
“Bolla veen! bolla veen!” she cried, in a low voice that was a sob. “It’s my own case over again.”
And then the girl fell into her mother’s arms and buried her head in her breast and cried, as only a suffering child can cry, helplessly, piteously.
A moment later, there was a heavy footstep outside, and the ring of an iron tool thrown down on the “street.” The old woman raised her face with a look of fear.
“It’s thy father,” she whispered.
III
Dan Baldronna had risen earlier than usual that morning. For more than a week there had not been water enough to his mill wheel for his liking, and suspecting the cause of the shortage he had put a pick over his shoulder and walked up the glen.
There was a little croft on the top of the brews half a mile nearer to the mountain. It was called Baldromma-beg (the little Baldromma) and its occupants (sub-tenants of Dan Baldromma) were a quaint old couple Will Skillicorne, a long, slow-eyed, slow-legged person who was a class-leader among the “Primitives,” and his wife, Bridget, a typical little Manxwoman of her class, keen-eyed, quick-tongued, illiterate and superstitious.
Their croft was thirsty land, though water in abundance was so near, and to every request that it should be laid on in pipes from the glen, Dan had said, “Let your wife carry it what else is the woman there for?”
Bridget had carried it for ten years. Then her anger getting the better of her, she put on a pair of her husband’s big boots and rolled two great boulders into a neck of the river, with the result that a deep stream of sweet water came flowing down to her house and fields.
This was just what Dan had suspected, and coming upon the new-made dam, he stretched his legs across it, swung his pick and sent the boulders tumbling down the glen, with a torrent of water from Baldromma-beg at the back of them.
But Bridget, also, had risen earlier than usual that morning, and, hearing the sound of Dan’s pick, she went out to him at his bad work and fell on him with hot reproaches.
“Was there nothing doing down at the mill, Dan Collister,” she cried, “that thou must be coming up here to put thy evil eye on other people’s places?”
“Get thee indoors, woman,” growled Dan,” and put thy house in order.”
“My house in order? Mine? And what about thine? Thine that is a disgrace to the parish and the talk of the island.”
“Keep a civil tongue in thy head, Mrs. Skillicorne, or maybe I’ll be showing thee the road at Hollantide.”
“Turn me out of the croft, will thou? Do it and welcome! I give thee lave. It would be middling aisy to find a better farm, and Satan himself couldn’t find a worse landlord. But set thou one foot on this land until my year is over and if there’s a bucket of dirty water on the cowhouse floor I’ll throw it over thee. Put my house in order indeed! Where’s thy daughter, eh? Where’s thy daughter, I say?”
“I’ve got no daughter, woman, and well thou knows it,” said Dan.
“‘Deed I do. No wonder the Lord wouldn’t trust thee with a daughter of thy own, the way thou’s brought up this one. The slut! The strumpet! Away with thee and look for her it will become thee better.”
But Dan having finished his work was now plunging down the glen and old Will Skillicorne had come out of his house half dressed, with his braces hanging behind him.
“Come in, woman lave the man to God,” said Will.
“God indeed! The dirt! The ugly black toad! God wouldn’t bemane Himself talking to the like.”
“Thou’s done it this time, though, I’m thinking. Thou heard what he said about Hollantide?”
“Chut! Get thee back to bed. What’s thou putting thy mouth in for? Who knows where the man himself will be by that time?”
With a face like a black cloud after this encounter, Dan threw down his pick on the cobbles of the street and went into the kitchen to work off his anger on his wife.
“That’s what thou’s done for me, ma’am! There’s not a trollop in the parish that isn’t throwing thy daughter’s bad doings in my face.”
The kitchen was full of smoke, for the porridge in the oven-pot had been allowed to burn, and it was not until he was standing back to the fire, putting his pipe in the pocket of his open waistcoat, that Dan saw Bessie where she had seated herself, after breaking out of her mother’s arms, by the table and in the darkest corner.
He took in the girl’s situation at a glance, but after the manner of the man he pretended not to do so.
“God bless my soul,” he cried. “Back, is she? Well, well! But what did I say, mother? ‘No need to send the Cross Vustha (the fiery cross) after her, she’ll come home.’ And my goodness the grand woman’s she’s grown! Fur caps and fur-lined cloaks and I don’t know the what! Just come to put a sight on the mother and the ould man, I suppose. No pride at all at all! I wouldn’t trust but there’s a grand carriage waiting for her at the corner of the road.”
“Aisy, man, aisy,” said Mrs. Collister, picking up her stick, “don’t thou see the girl has walked?”
“Walked, has she?” said Dan, raising his thick eyebrows in pretended astonishment.” You don’t say! All the way from Castletown? Well, well! So that’s how it is, is it? The young waistrel has thrown her over, has he?”
Bessie had to put her hand to her throat to keep back the cry that was bubbling up.
“Aisy, man, aisy with the like,” said the old woman. But Dan was for showing no mercy.
“Goodness me, the airs she gave herself going away! I might shut my door on her, but there would be others to open theirs. And now they have opened them, and shut them too, I’m thinking.”
Bessie, crushed and silent, was clutching the end of the table. Dan stepped over to her, laid hold of her left hand, lifted it up, as if looking for her wedding-ring, and then flung it away.
“Nothing!” he said. “She’s got nothing for it neither. I might have followed her to Castletown, but I didn’t. ‘I’ll lave her to it,’ I thought. ‘Maybe the girl’s cleverer than we thought, and will come home mistress of Baldromma and a thousand good acres besides.’ But no, not a ha’porth! And now she has come back to ate us up for the rest of our lives! The toot! The boght! The booby!”
“Dan Collister,” said the old woman, “don’t thou see the girl is ill?”
“Ill, is she?” said Dan. “I wouldn’t trust but she is, ma’am. So it’s worse than I thought, and maybe before long there’ll be another mouth to feed.”
Bessie dropped her head on to the table.
“But not in this house, if you plaze, miss. It happened here once before, and the island would be having a fine laugh at me if it happened again.”
Once more Dan stepped over to Bessie and touched her arm.
“You’re like a dead letter, you’ve come to the wrong address, mistress. It wasn’t Dan Baldromma’s thatched cottage you were wanting, but the big slate house down the road where the paycocks are scraming. I’ll trouble you to go there.”
“Sakes alive, man,” cried the old woman, “thou’rt not for turning the girl out of doors?”
“I am that, ma’am,” said Dan, going over to the door. “No trollop shall be telling me again that my house is the disgrace of the parish and the talk of the island.”
Then throwing the door wide and rattling the catch of it, he said, “Out of my house, miss! Out of it! Out of it!”
Bessie, who had been sitting motionless, raised her head and rose to go, although scarcely able to take a step forward, when she felt a hand that was trembling like a leaf laid on her shoulder.
“Stay thou there, girl, and leave this to me.”
It was the old woman who had been crouching over the fire on the three-legged stool and had now risen, thrown her stick away as if she had no longer any need of it, and was facing her husband with blazing eyes.
“Thou talks and talks of this house as thine and thine,” she said. “What made it thine?”
“The law, if thou wants to know, woman,” said Dan.
“Then the law is a robber and a thief.”
Dan looked at his wife in astonishment, and then burst into a fit of forced laughter.
“Well, that’s good! That’s rich! That’s wonderful! What next, I wonder?”
“Do thou want me to tell thee the truth, Dan Collister? Before the girl, too? Then there’s not a stick or a stone in the place that in the eyes of heaven does not belong to me.”
“What?”
“Not a stick or a stone, except the landlord’s, that wasn’t bought with my father’s money John Corteen, a man of God, if ever there was one.”
“Pity his daughter didn’t take after him, then.”
“Pity enough, Dan Collister. But when I brought shame into his house he forgave me. And when the finger of death was on the man the only trouble he had in life was what was to become of his girl when he was gone.”
“Truth enough, ma’am, he had to find thee a husband, hadn’t he?”
“He hadn’t far to look, though. And if thou had nothing in thy pocket and not much on thy back thou had plenty in thy mouth to make up for it. Thou were not afraid of scandal! Thou didn’t mind marrying a girl who had been talked of with another man!”
“And I did, didn’t I?”
“Thou did, God forgive thee! But not till the man’s trembling hand had reached up to the hole in the thatch over his bed for his stocking purse and counted the money out to thee. Three hundred good Manx pounds he had worked thirty years for and saved up for his daughter. -And then thou swore on the Holy Book to be good to his girl and her baby, and the man’s dying eyes on thee. And now – now thou talks of turning my girl out of the house this house that would have been her house some day if thou had not come between us. But no! Thou shan’t do that.”
“Shan’t I?”
“‘Deed thou shan’t! She may have done wrong, but if she has it’s no more than her mother did before her, and if I daren’t turn her out for it thou shalt not.”
“We’ll see, ma’am, we’ll see,” said Dan. He was buttoning up his waistcoat and putting on his coat.
“It’s no use talking to a woman. There’s not much sense to be got out of the like anyway. But when a man marries, the property of the wife becomes the property of the husband that’s Dempster’s law, isn’t it? And standing up for your legal rights, and not being forced by your wife, or anybody else, to find maintenance for another man’s offspring when it comes that’s Dempster’s law too, I belave.”
“Yes,” said the old woman, “and standing up for your own flesh and blood when she’s sick and weak and the world is going cold on her and she has nowhere else to lay her head in her trouble that’s Mother’s law, Dan Collister, and it’s older than the Dempster’s, I’m thinking.”
“Do as you plaze, ma’am,” said Dan. “If you want more noising about the bad doings of your daughter it’s all as one to me.”
He took his billycock hat down from the” lath” under the ceiling and continued, “I’ll hear what the Speaker has to say about this, though. His wife wasn’t for doing much for thee when the honour of this house was in question, but maybe she’ll alter her tune now that it’s the honour of her own.”
