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 are 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 lips 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 Kertnode, 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
_Claghny-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 bed-clothes 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 blindfolded.
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 stepfather'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 millrace 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.