One other person important to this story had come to Douglas that
day--Bessie Collister. During the first three years after her return
home from Castletown she had lived in physical fear of Dan Baldromma;
but during the next three years, having grown big and strong and
become useful on the farm, she had been more than able to hold her
own with him, and he had even been compelled to pay her wages.
"I don't know in the world what's coming over the girls," he would
say. "In my young days they were content with priddhas and herrings
three times a day, and welcome, but nothing will do now, if it's your
own daughter itself, but ten pounds a year per annum, and as much
loaf bread and butcher's mate as would fill the inside of a lime
kiln."
"Aw, but the girl's smart though," Mrs. Collister would answer.
"I'm saying nothing against her," Dan would reply. "A middling good
girl enough, and handy with the bases, but imperent grown--imperent
uncommon and bad with the tongue."
There was scarcely a farmer on the island who would not have given
Bessie twice the wages Dan paid her, but she remained at home, partly
for reasons of her own and partly to protect her mother from Dan's
brutalities by holding over his head the threat of leaving him.
Mrs. Collister, who had been stricken with sciatica and was hobbling
about on a stick, had by this time taken refuge from her life-long
martyrdom in religion, having joined the "Primitives," whose chapel
(a whitewashed barn) stood at the opposite angle of the glen and the
high road. She had tried to induce her daughter to follow her there,
but Bessie had refused, having come to the conclusion that the
"locals" on the "plan-beg," whose favourite subject was the
crucifixion of the flesh, were always preaching at her mother, or
pointing at her.
So on Sunday mornings when the church bells were ringing across the
Curragh, and the chapel-going women of the parish were going by with
their hymn-books in their handkerchiefs, and old Will Skillicorne,
who was a class-leader, was coming down from his thatched cottage in
his tall beaver, black frock coat and black kid gloves, Bessie, in
her sunbonnet and a pair of Dan's old boots, and with her skirt
tucked up over her linsey-wolsey petticoat, would be seen feeding the
pigs or washing out a bowl of potatoes at the pump.
And on Sunday evenings, while the Primitives were singing a hymn
outside their chapel before going in for service, she would be
tripping past, lightly shod, and wearing a hat with an ostrich
feather, on her way to town, where a German band played sacred music
on the promenade, and young people, walking arm-in-arm, laughed and
"glimed" at each other under the gas-light.
"I wonder at herself though, bringing up her daughter like a haythen
in a Christian land," old Will would say. "But then what can you
expect from a child of sin and a son of Belial"--the latter being a
dig at Dan, whose lusty voice could always be heard over the singing,
reading aloud to himself in the kitchen the "Rights of Man" or "The
Mistakes of Moses."
Bessie was a full-developed and warm-blooded woman by this time,
living all day and every day in the natural world of the farmyard,
ready to break loose at the first touch of the hand of a live man if
only he were the right one, and having no better relief for the fever
of her womanhood than an occasional dance in the big barn at Kirk
Michael Fair.
But then came her adventure with Stowell and Gell in the glen and it
altered everything. Running down in her excitement she told her
mother what had happened, and her mother, in a moment of tenderness,
told Dan, and Dan, in the impurity of his heart, drew his own
conclusions.
"It's the Spaker's son again," he said, making a noise in his
nostrils.
The young men had camped out there expressly to meet Bessie, and it
wasn't the first time the girl had gone up to them.
"Goodness sakes, man veen, how do thou know that? And what's the
harm done anyway?" said Mrs. Collister.
"Wait and see what's the harm, woman. Girls is not to trust when a
wastrel like that is about. We've known it before now, haven't we?"
To one other person Bessie told the story of the glen, and that was
her chief friend, Susie Stephen, the English barmaid at the Ginger
Hall Inn--a girl of fair complexion and some good looks who had
shocked the young wives of the parish by wearing short frocks,
transparent stockings and a blouse cut low over the bosom.
It was at closing-time a few nights after the event, and as the girls
stood whispering together by the half-open door, with the lights put
out in the bar behind them, they squealed with laughter, laid hold of
each other and shuddered.
The young men had gone from the glen by that time, but the August
holidays were coming, so they decided to go up to Douglas on the
Saturday following to dance off their excitement.
At five o'clock that day, having milked her cows, and given a drink
of meal and water to her calves, Bessie was in her bedroom making
ready for her journey.
It was a stuffy little one-eyed chamber over the dairy, entered from
the first landing of the stairs, open to the whitewashed scraas
(which gave it a turfy odour), having a skylight in the thatch, a
truckle bed, a deal table for wash-stand and a few dried sheepskins
on the floor for rugs.
Bessie threw off the big unlaced boots and the other garments of the
cow-house, kicking the one into a corner and throwing the others in a
disorderly mass on to the bed over her pink-and-white sunbonnet,
washed to the waist and then folded her arms over each other in their
warmth and roundness and laughed to herself in sheer joy of bounding
health and conscious beauty.
While doing so she heard her step-father's voice in the kitchen
below, loud as usual and as full of protest, but she had a matter of
more moment to think of now--what to wear out of her scanty wardrobe.
The question was easily decided. After putting on white rubber shoes
and white stockings, she drew aside a sheet on the wall that ran on a
string and took down a white woollen skirt and a new cream-coloured
blouse cut low at the neck like Susie's.
But the anchor of her hope was her hat, which she was to wear for the
first time, having bought it the day before in Ramsey. It was shaped
like a shell, with a round lip in front, and to find the proper angle
for it on her head was a perplexing problem. So she stood long and
twisted about before an unframed sheet of silvered glass which hung
by a nail on the wall, with a lash comb in her hand, a number of
hat-pins across her mouth, while the floor creaked under her, and the
conversation went on below.
She got it right at last, just tilted a little aside, to look pert
and saucy, with her black hair, which was long and wavy, creeping up
to it like a cushion. And then, standing off from her glass to look
at it again over her shoulder, with eyes that danced with delight,
she turned to the door and walked with a buoyant step downstairs.