Complete works of hall c.., p.586
Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 586
He drew his whip from its nail over the fireplace and stepped to the door.
“And if this matter ends as I expect I’ll be hearing what the Coorts have to say about it, too. Young Mr. Sto’ll is to be made Dempster they’re telling me. They’re putting him in for it, anyway and he is bosom friend to the Spaker’s son. But friend or no friend,” he said, with his hand on the hasp, and ready to go, “maybe his first job when he comes back to the island will be to send his Coroner to this house to turn the man’s mistress and her by-child into the road.”
“Tell him to send her coffin at the same time, then,” cried the old woman, almost screaming. “Mine too, Dan Collister. That’s the only way he’ll turn my daughter out of this house, I promise thee.”
But the old woman collapsed the moment her husband had gone, and staggering to the rocking-chair she dropped into it and cried. Then Bessie, who had not yet spoken, rose and said, crying herself, “Don’t cry, I’ll go away myself, mother.”
But the old woman was up again in a moment.
“No, thou’ll not,” she said. “Thou’ll go up to thy bedroom in the dairy loft the one thou had in the innocent old times gone by. Come, take my arm my good arm, girl. Lean on me, woman-bogh.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
THE SOUL OF HAGAR
Two hours had passed. Bessie was in her bedroom the little one-eyed chamber (entered from the first landing on the stairs) in which she had dressed for Douglas. But the sheet of silvered glass on the whitewashed wall which had shone then with the light of her beaming eyes was now reflecting her broken, tear-stained, woe-begone face.
She knew that her journey had been in vain, that her sufferings had been wasted. Her child was not to be stillborn. Through the closed door she heard Dan Baldromma going off in the stiff cart. He was going to the Speaker, to threaten him with the shame of her unborn child, and to call upon him to compel his son to marry her.
Wild, blind error! But what would’ be the result? Alick would hear of her whereabouts and learn of her condition and that would be the end of everything between them. All her secret scheme to wipe out her fault, to keep her name clean for Alick, to preserve his beautiful faith in her, would be destroyed, and he would be dead to her for ever.
But no, come what would that should not be! And if the only way to prevent it was to make away with her child when it came she must do so. Only nobody must know not even her mother.
Time and again the old woman came hobbling upstairs, bringing food and trying to comfort her.
“Will I send for Doctor Clucas, Bessie?”
“No, no. I shall be better in the morning.”
The day passed heavily. She could not lie down. Sometimes she sat on the edge of the bed; sometimes stood and held on to the end of it; and sometimes walked to and fro in the narrow space of her bedroom floor. Having no window in her room her only sight of the world without was through the skylight in the thatch, which showed nothing but the sky. The only sound that reached her was the squealing of a pig that was being killed at a neighbouring farm.
At length darkness fell. Hitherto she had been thinking of her unborn child with a certain tenderness, even a certain pity. But now, in the wild disorder of her senses, she began to hate it. It seemed to be some evil spirit that was coming into the world to destroy everybody. Why shouldn’t she kill it? She would! Only she must be alone quite alone.
Shivering, perspiring, weak, dizzy, she was sitting in the darkness when her mother came to say good-night.
“Here are a few broth. Take them. They’ll warm thee.”
“No, no.”
“Come, let me coax thee, bogh.”
Bessie refused again, and the old woman’s eyes began to fill.
“Will I stay up the night with thee, Bessie?”
“Oh, no, no!”
“I’ll leave my door open then, and if thou art wanting anything thou’ll call.”
“Yes, yes.”
“Thy father isn’t home yet, and if thou’rt no better when he goes by thy door thou must tell him and he’ll let me know.”
Bessie raised her eyes in astonishment, and the old woman, with a shamefaced look, began to apologise for her husband. He was not so bad after all, and when a woman had taken a man for better or worse...
“Do you say that, mother?”
Something quivered in the old woman’s wrinkled throat.
“Well, we women are all like that, thou knows.”
“Good-night and go to sleep, mother.”
Bessie hustled her mother out of the room, but hardly had she gone than she wanted to call her back.
“Mother! Mother!” she cried in the sudden access of her pain, but though her door was ajar her mother, who was going deaf- did not hear her.
At the next moment she was glad. Her mother believed in God and religion. To burden her conscience with any knowledge of what she meant to do would be too cruel.
But Bessie’s terror increased at every moment. The night outside was quiet, yet the air seemed to be full of fearful cries. At the bidding of some instinctive impulse she blew out the candle, and then, in the darkness and solitude, a great terror took hold of her.
“Alick! Alick!” she cried, but only the deep night heard her. At last, in the paroxysm of her pain, she fell back on the bed she was unconscious.
When she came to herself again she had a sense of blessed ease, like that of sailing into a quiet harbour out of a tempestuous sea. Before she opened her eyes she heard a faint cry. She thought at first it was only a memory of the bleating of the lost lamb on the mountains. But the cry came again and then she knew what had happened her child had been born!
Time passed how long or what she did in it, she never afterwards knew. Her weakness seemed to have gone and she had a feeling of surprising strength. The bitterness of her heart had gone too, and a flood of happiness was sweeping over her.
It was motherhood! To Bessie too, in her misery and shame, the merciful angel of mother-love had come. Her child! Hers! Hers! Make away with it? Kill it? No, not for worlds of worlds!
It was a boy too! Thank God it was a boy! A woman was so weak; she had so much to suffer, so many things to think about. But a man was strong and free. He could fight his own way in life. And her boy would fight for her also, and make amends for all she had gone through.
It was the middle of the night. The glimmering and guttering candle on the wash-table (she had been up and had lit it afresh) was casting dark shadows in the room. Only a little dairy loft with the turfy thatch overhead, and the sheepskin rugs underfoot, but oh, how it shone with glory!
Bessie was singing to her baby (words and tune springing to her mind in a moment) when suddenly she heard sounds from outside. They were the rattle of cart wheels and the clatter of horse’s hoofs on the cobbles of the “street.”
Ban Baldromma had come home!
Her heart seemed to stop its beating. She blew out her candle and listened, scarcely drawing breath. She heard her step-father tipping up his stiff -cart and then shouting at his horse as he dragged off its harness in the stable. After that she heard him coming into the house and throwing his heavy boots on to the hearthstone. Then she heard the thud, thud, thud of the old man’s stockinged feet on the kitchen floor he was about to come upstairs.
At that moment the child, who had been asleep on her arm, awoke and cried. Only a feeble cry, half-smothered by the closeness of the little mouth to her breast, but in Bessie’s ears it sounded like thunder. If her step -father heard it, what would he do? Involuntarily, and before she knew what she was doing, she put her hand over the child’s mouth.
Then thud, thud, thud! Dan Baldromma was coming upstairs. Bessie could hear his thick breathing. He had reached the landing. He seemed to stop for a moment outside her door. But he passed on, went up the second short flight, pushed open the door of her mother’s room and clashed it noisily behind him.
Then Bessie drew breath and turned back to her child. She was shocked to find that in her terror she had been holding her trembling hand tightly down on the child’s mouth. It had only been for a moment (what had seemed like a moment), but when she took her hand away and listened, in the throbbing darkness, for the child’s soft breathing, no sound seemed to come.
With shaking fingers she lit her candle again, and then held the light to the baby’s face.
The little, helpless, innocent face lay still.
“Can it be possible... no, no. God forbid it!”
But at length the awful truth came surging down on her. She had killed her child.
When Bessie awoke the next day the sun was shining on her eye lids from the skylight in the thatch. She had some difficulty in realising where she was. Before opening her eyes she heard the muffled lowing of the cows in the closed-up cow-house, and had an impulse to do as she had done in earlier days get up and milk them. At the next moment she heard her mother’s shuffling step on the kitchen floor, and then the tide of memory swept back on her.
But she was a different woman this morning. She had no remorse now, no qualm, no compunction. What she had done, she had done, and after all it was the best thing that could have happened best for her, best for Alick, best for everybody.
Her child being dead she no longer loved it. All she had to do was to bury it away somewhere, and then everything would go on as she had intended. Meantime (before going to sleep) she had taken her precautions. Nobody must know. If there had been reasons why she should not take her mother into her confidence last night they were now increased tenfold.
After a while her mother came up with her breakfast. A veil seemed to dim the old woman’s eyes she looked as if she had been crying.
“How art thou now, bogh?”
“Better! Much better! I told you I should be better in the morning.”
The old woman was silent for a moment and then said, “Thou were not up and downstairs in the night, Bessie?”
“‘Deed no! Why should you think so?”
“Because I shut the wash-house door when I went to bed and it was open when I came down in the morning.”
Bessie’s lip trembled, but she made no answer.
A little later she heard her step-father talking loudly in the kitchen. He had seen the Speaker, having waited all day for him. There had been a stormy scene. The big man had foamed at the mouth, talked about blackmail, threatened to turn him out of the farm at Hollantide, and finally shouted for Tom Kermode, his steward, to fling him into the road.
“I lave it with you, Sir,” Dan had answered. “If you prefer the new Dempster, when he comes, to see justice done to the girl, it’s all as one to me.”
Bessie could have laughed. Wicked, selfish, scheming how she was going to defeat it!
All morning she lay quiet, thinking out her plans. Half a mile up the glen there was a large stone of irregular shape, surrounded by a wild tangle of briar and gorse. The Manx called it the Clagh-ny-Dooiney-marroo the dead man’s stone, the body of a murdered man having been found on it. By reason of this gruesome association of the bloody hand upon it, few approached the stone by day and the bravest man (unless he were in drink) would hesitate to go near it by night.
Bessie decided to bury her child under the Clagh-ny-Dooiney. It would lie hidden for ever there; nobody would find it.
The day was long in passing, for Bessie was waiting for the night. She heard the young lambs bleating in the fields and the cocks crowing in the haggard. A linnet perched on the ledge of her skylight (her mother had opened it) and looked in on her and sang.
At length the sky darkened and night fell. The moon (it was in its first quarter) sailed across her patch of sky and disappeared. Once or twice the skylight was aglow with a palpitating red light someone was burning gorse on the mountains. But the fires died down and then there was nothing save the sky with its stars.
Her mother came again to say good-night. She had the pitiful look of a woman who was struggling to keep back her tears.
“Wilt thou not sit up, Bessie, while I make thy bed for thee?”
Bessie started and then stammered: “Oh no! I mean … it will do in the morning.”
The old woman looked down at her with eyes which seemed to say, “Can thou not trust thy mother, girl?” But she only sighed and went off to bed.
Somewhere in the early morning (Dan having gone to bed also) Bessie got up to make ready. She found herself very weak, and it took her a long time to dress. When she was about to put on her shoes she remembered that they were new and told herself they would creak as she went downstairs, so she decided to go barefoot again.
Having finished her dressing she took from under the bedclothes what she had hidden there, and began to wrap it in a large silk scarf. It was the scarf she had worn in the storm a present from Alick, with “Bessie” stamped on one corner.
Seeing her name at the last moment, she tore a strip of the scarf away, and threw it aside (intending to destroy it in the morning), opened her door, listened for an instant and then crept downstairs and out of the house.
The night was chill and the ground struck cold into her body. It was very dark, for the moon and stars had gone out, and there was no light anywhere except the dull red of the gorse fires on the mountains, which had sunk so low as to look like a dying eye. But Bessie could have found her way blindfold.
Carrying her burden she crossed the wooden bridge and reached the path that went up the glen. Just as she did so she heard the sound of singing, of laughter and of carriage-wheels on the high road. A company of jolly girls and boys were driving home after one of their Bachelor Balls in a neighbouring parish. That cut deep, but Bessie thought of Alick and the wound passed away. She would return to him in a few days; they would be married soon, and then she, too, would be glad and happy.
How dark it was under the trees, though! She had left it late. The dawn was near, for the first birds were beginning to call.
“It must be here,” she thought, and she slipped down from the path to the bed of the glen.
But the trees were thicker there, and, being already in early leaf, they obscured the little light that was left in the sky. Where could the stone be? The briars were tearing at her dress and the tall nettles were stinging her hands. She was feeling weak and lost and had begun to cry. How the dogs howled at her step-father’s farm!
Suddenly a breeze rose and fanned the gorse fires on the mountains to a crackling glow. And then a red flame rent the darkness and lighted up the valley from end to end, making it for a few moments almost as clear as day.
Bessie was terrified. Here was the Clagh-ny-Dooiney almost at her feet, but this bright light was like an accusing eye from heaven looking down on her and pointing her out.
For a moment she wanted to drop down among the briars and hide herself. But making a call on her resolution she crept up to the big stone, stooped, pushed her burden under the overlapping lip of it, and then rose, turned about and ran.
Trembling and weeping she stumbled her way home. It was lighter now. The day was coming rapidly and the small spring leaves were shivering in the cold wind that runs over the earth before the dawn. The lambs were bleating in the unseen fields, and the newly-born ones were making their first pitiful cry. It sounded like the cry of her child as she had heard it last night, and it tore her terribly.
The little face, the little hands, the little feet she had left behind why had she not been brave and strong and faced the world with them?
Should she stop and go back? She tried to do so but could not. The more she wanted to return the faster she ran away.
Her strength was failing her, and she was scarcely able to put one foot before another. Often she stumbled and fell and got up again. Was she going the right way home?
“Alick! Alick!” she cried, and the hot tears fell over her cold cheeks.
At last she saw the dark roof of the mill-house against the leaden grey of the sky. She had reached the bridge over the mill-race when she felt a light on her face and saw a figure approaching her. Somebody was coming up the glen and the lantern he carried was swinging by his side as he walked.
Then the instinct of self-preservation took possession of her. Dizzy, dazed, breathing rapidly and trembling in every limb, she crossed the bridge quickly, crept up to the door of the dwelling house, stumbled upstairs to her room, tore off her outer garments, dropped back on to her bed, and then fell (almost in a moment) into the sleep of utter exhaustion.
III
Bridget Skillicorne had had a cow sick that night. It had been suffering from a colic, probably due to grazing among the rank grass which had been lying under the water that had been drained away. But Bridget was sure that “that dirt Baldromma” had “wutehed” it (bewitched it) just to spite her for what she had said.
She had tried a hot bran mash in vain. The cow still writhed and roared, so nothing remained, if they were not to lose their creature, but that Will should go to the Ballawhaine (a witch-doctor who lived nine or ten miles away on the seaward side of the Curragh) and get a charm to take off the witching.
Old Will, being a class-leader, was well aware that such sorcery was the arts of Satan. But if the cow died it would make a big hole in their stocking-purse to buy another, so his conscience compounded with his pocket, and he agreed to go.
“Aw well, a few good words will do no harm at all,” he said, and carrying his stable lantern he set out towards nine o’clock on his long journey.
Then Bridget, taking another lantern, a half-knitted stocking and a three-legged stool, went into the cow-house to sit up with her cow and watch the progress of its malady.
Towards midnight the creature became easier, and, gathering her legs under her, lay down to sleep. But Bridget remained three hours longer in the close atmosphere of the cow-house, waiting for old Will but thinking of Dan, and making her needles go with a furious click at the thought of his threat to evict her.
