Bess

“ Beyond the little necessary help that Bess gave him so easily and pleasantly, there was nothing to suggest to him his blindness. Bess read to him, played simple memory games with him, or, with his hand drawn through her arm, they walked up and down the long hall, talking and laughing gayly, while Fuzz tagged at their heels. He held Mrs. Carter’s skein of yarn while she wound it, and in many little ways began to live more like a natural boy, less like a wax doll. ”

“ Presently he knew, by light of this adventure on the ice, that Bess was more than mere companion in toil and hardship, some one to shelter and protect. She was a comrade-at-arms,—such a fortress of strength as the best of women have always been to the men they loved. ”

“ He held out the hare and the three birds in one great red paw, grinning amiably, yet with a glint in his red-brown eyes. Bess smiled at Dan under her scarlet hood. A lass needed wit in such a woodland haunt as this, where the strongest arm ruled, and men fought like quick, subtle, and resourceful, glib with her tongue and clever with her eyes. The felinity of her nature was developed when she must purr and fawn, or spit and extend her claws as necessity commanded. Bess did not love Black Dan, but Isaac Grimshaw’s son was a man to be humored rather than rebuffed. ”

“ Bess would turn back, in her red petticoat, white cap and apron, into the kitchen and sing softly to herself as she turned the joint on the spit, polished the pewter, or peeled apples for a tart. As yet she knew nothing of Jeffray’s betrothal to Miss Hardacre, and in her simple and passionate way she let her imagination roam at will. It was more a rare and sensuous dream with the girl, a passing and repassing of mysterious and alluring visions. Practical as she was in the trivialities of life, she became a desirous-eyed child of nature when love opened the gates of the sunset and of the dawn. ”

“ A few feet distant on the deck Bess’s eyes turned from the miracle in the skies to watch the slowly growing light in Ned Cornet’s face. It was well enough for him to find his inspiration in the majesty of nature. Bess was a woman, and that meant that man that is born of woman was her work and her being. She turned her eyes from God to behold this man.
And it was well for her that Lenore was not near enough to see her face in the wan, ghostly radiance of the Northern Lights. Her woman’s intuition would have been quick to lay bare the secret of the girl’s wildly leaping heart. ”

“ To him, Miss Bess was the one person in the world, and well might he feel so, for she was most unselfishly kind to him. From the moment when, on leaving his room in the morning, he met her at the door, ready to guide him down the unfamiliar stairs, until, after he was all in bed, she came in to say a last good-night, she was constant in her attentions to him, and adapted herself to his every mood, bright and full of fun when he was blue, encouraging when he was despondent, and with apparently nothing to do but read to him or talk with him. ”

“ And yet, seven years before, "Daft Bess" had been the brightest and prettiest girl in Trewithen, and the admiration of every lad in the country round! And Big Ben Martyn, who had a boat of his own, had been the pride of every girl! But he only cared for Bess and she for him. All their lives they had been together and loved,—and a simple, truthful love can only produce its own affinity, though in its travail it pass through pain and suffering, and, maybe, the laying down of life! ”

“ Then, like an active and capable general who knows how to follow up an advantage, Bess whipped out her broom, and attacking the prostrate Roger with the handle, gave him then and there the first and last beating of his life—all the time crying out,—
“Oh, you wicked man! Is this the way to treat a respectable girl? You call yourself a gentleman! I would not give a farthing for a wagon-load of such gentlemen!” ”

“ XLII Jeffray stood gripping his pistols in the cottage room, driven by strange stress of circumstances to fight for a peasant girl against a crowd of cursing and sweating smugglers. He had never stood forward as a hero among his peers, those blue-eyed, plump-bellied worthies who preached or swore in the pulpit and at the dining-table. Slim, sensitive, yet strong now as a band of steel, he waited, watching the door heave and creak beneath the weight of Dan’s great body. Bess, kneeling behind her chair, was plying the ramrod. ”

“ Then, suddenly turning to Bess with a smile, he went on: "What I want most of all is to be your faithful soldier."
"And Sam has always said that he'd rather be a good mechanic than anything else," added Bert. "That accounts for us all, Miss Bessie. How do you like the assortment?"
"Very much," answered Bess. "I can have Bert to cure my body, and Phil my soul, while Ted shall survey my garden, and Rob shall make a collection of the insects that devour my crops. Fred I shall keep to fight for me and with me. ”

“ The night after Bess’s meeting with Jeffray in the yew valley, Dan told his wife that he was going out after wild duck to the Holy Cross pools, and, shouldering his gun, left Bess alone to go to bed. The sky was clear, with a full moon swinging up in the east above the tangled boughs of the pines. Dan slipped away to old Isaac’s cottage with his black spaniel at his heels, and, keeping under the shadows of the orchard, knocked at the heavy door. A candle was burning in the lower room, the pewter and china, the brass work, and quaint furniture showing through the curtainless window. ”

“ As I stood and watched the last row of geraniums being put in the soil, I was joined by Bess and Mouse.
“Oh, mum!” Bess told me, “Mouse has been growling and growling at something behind the ivy. If it had been at night, I should say she had met a devil or ogre. Every minute she was with Nana and me, she got crosser and crosser; and see, her nose is quite red and bleeding, just like Hals’ when he tumbled downstairs. Could it be a real robber?” and Bess’s eyes opened wide. ”

“ Half an hour later and Hals arrived, without Fräulein Schliemann. We all felt relieved; the two children embraced hurriedly, as if life was all too short to get in all the fun of an afternoon spent in each other’s company; and then Bess said, “You can go now,” sharply to the little maid who had brought him over. “We don’t want to be unkind, but we want to be quite, quite alone, please;” then, thinking that she had not been quite courteous, Bess ran impetuously out of the room. “Poor thing!” she explained to me a minute after, “she must read, because she cannot play; she cannot help it;” ”

“ Last night she lost her breath more than common; and once, after she had stopped to puff a minute, she struck in again, full tilt, about an octave and a half higher than we were, and it made a most awful noise.”
“Poor old woman!” said Bess, trying to speak soberly, while Fred’s shoulders shook. “You shouldn’t laugh at such old people, Robin. Where’s your chivalry?”
“I can’t help it, cousin Bess. It was too funny to hear her go ‘peep,’ way up high.” ”

“ The voices came from the direction of Isaac’s cottage. Bess recognized the old man’s impatient treble, Dan answering him curtly in his gruff bass. The candle went out of a sudden, and she heard the yelp of a dog and the closing and locking of a door. Two dim figures showed in the murk before her. They moved away towards the woods. Bess, running forward on the edge of the orchard, reached Isaac’s cottage and crouched under the window, listening. She caught the whimpering of a dog, and knew that Dan had left the spaniel locked in the cottage. ”

“ We’re always having to do things in the dark in this life, and then some way or other light shines on us; but Bess”—and he hesitated, and looked at her from under drooping eyelids as shyly as if he were a boy himself. ”

“ At this Bess was comforted, for the prospect of the sea, the sands, and a spade of her very own, were very consolatory. But the day that little Hals left us, she came to me just before going off to bed.
“Mum,” she said, “I’ve been thinking.”
“Yes, dear,” I replied.
“I’ve been thinking,” pursued Bess, “that somehow there ought to be—a way to keep a boy. Grown-up girls have husbands, I know,” she said. Then, after a momentary pause, “You have a great, great book of Harrod’s. Surely, somewhere, mamsie, they have a boy stall.” ”

“ For Black Bess is a real country doctor's horse. She will stand at a loaning foot with the reins hitched over a post—that is, if you give her a yard or so of head liberty, so that she may solace herself with the grass and clover tufts on the bank. Even without any grass at all, she will stand by a peat-stack in as profound a meditation as if she were responsible for the diagnosis of the case within. ”

“ And Bess, sly love-athlete, was suited first rate
At a flirtation-mill with this legal light-weight;
And was listening to him, as minutes spun on,
Of pleas he could make,
And of fees he would take,
And of suits that he should, in the future, have won;
When just as the cold, heartless clock counted eight,
Miss Bessie's quick ear caught a step at the gate.
"'Tis mother!" she cried: "oh, go quick, I implore!
But father'll drive 'round and come in the back-door!
You can not escape them, however you turn!
So hide for a while—let me see—in this churn!" ”

“ The embers of the fire still glowed on the hearth, and the kitchen reeked of Isaac’s tobacco. Creeping to the cottage door, she took down the bar noiselessly and shot back the bolts. Without the world seemed built up of magic, the moonlight flooding down upon the orchards and the woods. Bess shut the door gently, passed through the garden, and half ran across the open grass-land betwixt the cottage and the forest. She took the path leading up towards the heath about the Beacon Rock, and, gathering her cloak round her, fled away into the moon-streaked shadows. ”

“ The rest of the time I just lie here and think till I get cross, and everything seems awful."
"Why do you 'just lie here and think,' then?" asked Bess, feeling that here was a chance to make a good suggestion. "You are strong enough now to go to drive every pleasant day. Why don't you?"
"I don't know; I don't want to," said Fred, as the quick color came to his cheeks, that were beginning to have a more healthy look. ”

“ He'd a heart mad in love with the girl of his choice,
Who made him alternately mope and rejoice,
By dealing him one day discouraging messes,
And soothing him next day with smiles and caresses.
Now Bess had a lover, who hoped her to wed—
A rising young lawyer—more rising than read ”

“ The butler was sitting by the open window of Richard’s room, watching for Surgeon Stott and listening to his master’s delirious mutterings. It was Mrs. Barbara who opened the door to Bess that morning and stared at her in some surprise. Mrs. Barbara was a sour-tempered person, very sure of her own importance; nor had the flight of her maids tended to sanctify her resentful soul.
“Well, what d’you want, eh?”
Bess colored under the woman’s curious stare. There was nothing suggestive of courtesy in Mrs. Gladden’s manner.
“I have come to see Mr. Jeffray.” ”

“ I fell in readily with Constance’s little plans for a village fête, and offered the old bowling green as a site for it to take place. “The bowling green,” I said, “is very sheltered; it is surrounded on three sides with yew hedges, and I am delighted at the idea of Bess appearing as the queen of the revels.”
Bess is to be attired all in white with a crown of flaming marsh marigolds on her head, and to bear in her hand a staff decorated with primroses, cowslips, and sprays of beech and willow. ”

“ For bully her he did after the fashion of a great, clumsy savage, proud of his own huge strength and the prerogatives thereof. It pleased the oaf to fancy that he was taming Bess as he would have tamed a bad-tempered filly; that he was breaking her spirit, and fastening his bondage upon her with the masterful complacency of a lord and a possessor. Like a great ape he would grin and mock her, tweak her hair, pinch her arms, twit her with his triumph, and gloat over the passivity that seemed to flatter his strength. ”

“ Bess was in transports over the stores of supplies and the outfit he had packed from Cottonwoods. He had certainly brought a hundred times more than he had gone for; enough, surely, for years, perhaps to make permanent home in the valley. He saw no reason why he need ever leave there again.
After a day of rest he recovered his strength, and shared Bess's pleasure in rummaging over the endless packs, and began to plan for the future. And in this planning, his trip to Cottonwoods, with its revived hate of Tull and consequent unleashing of fierce passions, soon faded out of mind. ”

“ Ever and again the poop-windows were drenched and darkened by the waves that broke over the stern of the ship. Bess was half lying on her bunk, with her red cloak wrapped round her, Jeffray leaning against the bulkhead, with the St. Thomas à Kempis, that had been his father’s, open in his hand. Captain George looked at them as though half dazed, blood running down his face to soak into his ragged beard.
“Well, captain, what news for us?”
“News!” and the man laughed with a spasmodic croaking in the throat. “We’re going to the bottom as fast as the ship can take in water.” ”

“ Bess heard the shout, stopped, and glanced back over her shoulder. She saw Solomon running towards her, shaking his fist. One look was sufficient. Bess gathered up her skirts and ran, her gray cloak melting away amid the trees, her ankles in their red stockings flashing under her green petticoat. Solomon was but a lame old horse; she could out-distance him easily in the woods.
XXXVII That same evening while Bess sat bound in Dan’s cottage in the deeps of Pevensel, there was much weighing of words in the dining-room at Hardacre. ”