The old parsonage house, with its sombre atmosphere and its silence
broken only by the ticking of the great Dutch clock in the parlor,
seemed to Bess a secluded hermitage where she would be safe from her
kinsfolk and from the savagery of her forest lover. The kitchen was in
the wing at the back of the house, shut off from the fields by Dr.
Sugg’s orchard and a holly hedge, and parted on the west from the
church-yard by the garden and a high stone-wall. The very consciousness
of her nearness to Jeffray filled her with contentment. She flitted
about the brick-paved kitchen singing to herself at times, and thinking
of Jeffray as she did her work. There was the cow to be called in from
the parsonage meadow and milked at dawn and sunset. Mary Sugg herself
answered the kitchen door so that Bess’s presence should be kept as
secret as possible. Dr. Sugg alone went into Rodenham village, for since
the breaking out of the small-pox his daughter had kept to the house and
garden, leaving such business as lay outside the rectory to her father.
Bess served her new friends with all the ardor of her nature. She
brushed Dr. Sugg’s coat for him, buckled on his shoes, and warmed his
slippers. As for Miss Mary, she had fallen coyly in love with their
handsome handmaid, and treated her more as a friend than as a servant.
Each day Dr. Sugg would trudge up to the priory and make inquiries after
Richard Jeffray’s health. For Bess it was the culminating moment in the
day when she unlocked the front-door for the rector—for they kept the
door locked—saw him hang his hat in the hall, and heard him remark with
a twinkle that “Mr. Jeffray was doing very well.” 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.
As for Miss Mary Sugg, she was a very modest creature, and had grown to
regard the passionate intoxications of life as bordering on indecency.
Like many inevitable spinsters, she had become ashamed, as it were, of
her own sex, and the very reading of the banns in church made her mouth
straighten primly and her hands clasp each other more chastely in her
lap. The parson’s daughter appeared sincerely disturbed when Bess spoke
to her of her life in Pevensel. Prudence and propriety! The very thought
of such savagery as Dan’s sent a pious shiver through Miss Sugg’s frame.
She admired Bess for her courage, and even looked up to her with some
sort of awe as to one who had survived terrible temptings of the devil.
Bess grew to trust the prim, kindly little creature in the course of a
few days. She felt greatly moved to pet Miss Sugg, to stroke her gentle
face, and caress her as a child might caress some smiling and delightful
grandmother. Poor Mary took Bess’s attentions with blushes and a secret
sense of pleasure. It had been her lot to be one of the odd women in the
world, slighted by every one with the exception of Richard Jeffray and
her father.
It has been said that Mary Sugg regarded matrimony with suspicion, and
though Miss Sugg had not the remotest hope of marrying Richard Jeffray
herself, she had no liking for his betrothal to Jilian Hardacre. Mary,
like all women of sense, was something of a gossip, and it was at
Rodenham parsonage that Bess learned at last of Jeffray’s entanglement
at Hardacre. Mary was helping Bess to clean the silver and the pewter in
the pantry when she let the truth slip casually into the girl’s ears.
Bess started, reddened, and went on polishing Dr. Sugg’s tankard as
though the news had no concern for her heart.
“I did not know Mr. Jeffray was to be married,” she said, frowning a
little, and staring out of the narrow window.
Miss Sugg, lost in her own reflections for the moment, noticed nothing
strained or unnatural in Bess’s manner.
“Yes, I suppose it will soon be quite an old affair,” she said, with a
sigh.
“And is Miss Hardacre very handsome?”
“A matter of opinion, my dear.”
“Mr. Jeffray is very much in love with her?”
Miss Sugg’s mouth tightened primly.
“It is not my business,” she said, quietly, “to inquire into the warmth
and nature of a gentleman’s affections.”
Poor Bess, her forecastings of the future were greatly changed by those
few words of Mary Sugg’s. She woke no longer in the morning with a rush
of joy to hear the thrushes singing in the parsonage garden. All her
quaint imaginings were past and gone, for she was woman enough to feel
the significance of this new truth. A kind of hopelessness took
possession of her, a conviction that Jeffray had given her nothing but
pity, and that all her dreams had been made of mist. Miss Hardacre was a
great lady, and of course Mr. Jeffray was right in wishing to marry her.
Bess went about her work with a dull ache at her heart. She no longer
dreamed of the day when she should see Jeffray face to face again;
rather, she dreaded the very thought of it, and grew full of a bitter
humbleness that softened her whole nature. Her one yearning was to be
saved from Dan and Isaac, to be left in peace awhile, unquestioned and
alone.
It was the seventh evening of Bess’s sojourn at the parsonage. Dr. Sugg
had gone down into the village to visit certain of the villagers who
were sick to death of the fever, and Miss Sugg was sitting in her
bedroom, sewing. Bess had been sweeping the kitchen and polishing the
pewter and the plate. The evening was full of the splendor of spring,
birds singing in every tree, and the sky a great sheet of gold in the
west. The garden looked so green and fair with the sunlight shimmering
through upon the grass, and daffodils asleep in the shade, that Bess had
opened the garden door and looked up at the blue zenith and the golden
west. The broad beds would soon be ablaze with tulips, red and white.
Anemones and primroses were flowering in the shrubbery, and the gorse on
the heath above Rodenham was gilding the purple of the hills.
Halting suddenly as she crossed the grass, she fancied that she caught
the sound of footsteps close by in the church-yard. The stone-wall that
divided the burial-ground, with its gray headstones and its yews, from
the parsonage garden, stood some seven feet high, and was tufted along
the summit with gilliflower and grass. Bess ran her eyes suspiciously
along the edge that cut the gold of the western sky. Suddenly, just
above her, she saw a pair of hairy hands come over the wall, the fingers
clawing at the stone-work to gain a surer hold. A fur cap jerked up
above the wall; a face followed it, the mouth agape, the eyes straining
right and left into the dusk.
Bess, standing stone-still, recognized Dan, her cousin. He had a red
handkerchief knotted about his forehead, and a pad of lamb’s-wool over
his wounded ear. Her fear of him made her like Lot’s wife for the
moment, as she stood discovered on the open lawn. She was conscious only
of the grin on the man’s face, as he stared at her, and of the great,
hairy hands still gripping the wall.
Her pistol! She felt in her bosom for it, and found with a shock of
horror that she had left it in the attic. Dan, who had scrambled astride
the wall, gave a hoarse shout and waved his hand. Bess had turned and
was racing for the house. She heard Dan leap down from the wall and come
padding after her across the grass. Mary Sugg’s white and terrified face
showed for a moment at one of the upper windows. The parson’s daughter
saw two more men leap down from the church-yard into the garden.
Bess stumbled over the step at the kitchen door, and half fell across
the threshold. She struggled up and in, and clapped to the door, only to
find Dan’s weight heaving against it before she could put up the bar.
The latch and bolt gave way like brittle wood, and Bess herself was sent
staggering against the wall. Before she could recover, Dan’s great arms
were round her, his face thrust close to hers, his breath beating on her
cheek.
Bess struggled fiercely, beating one fist in his face, and striving to
untwine herself from his arms. He was too strong for her, however, and
she read the savage delight of it in his eyes. Crushing Bess to him, and
lifting her off her feet, he carried her out into the garden, mocking
her as she pleaded, fought, and threatened.
Isaac, and Solomon, his brother, were waiting under the holly hedge
closing the orchard. They ran forward to meet Dan, and set to to bind
Bess’s wrists and ankles, while Dan held her down upon the grass. Isaac
was mocking her the while with an exultation that made his smooth face
seem diabolical under its white hair. Bess, desperate, and struggling
still, cursed him as he held her left arm pinned against the ground
while Solomon knotted the cord about her wrist.
“Old man,” she said, “be sure that I shall kill you some day.”
Isaac, thrusting his hand into her hair, and twisting a mass of it about
his fingers, wrenched at the strands till Bess cried out with pain.
“You would run away from us, eh! We’ll cure you of your tricks, my lady.
This is the last time you’ll laugh at us, I guess.”
“Devil—”
“That’s as it may be, my dear. Quick, lad, tie up her feet. I’ll shove
this rag in her mouth and tie the cloth over it. That’s the trick. Up
with her, Dan, she’s yours now, I reckon.”
Dan took Bess in his arms, hugging her tight to his broad chest, and
carried her through the orchard and out into the meadow. Isaac and
Solomon followed, keeping a keen watch behind them to see whether they
were to be meddled with from the house. On the road over Rodenham heath
old Isaac’s wagon was waiting, with three stout horses in the team. One
of Solomon’s sons, Enoch, held the ropes. There was a pile of loose
straw in the wagon, and Dan, half throwing Bess in over the tail-board,
climbed in after her and covered her with the straw. Isaac and Solomon
clambered in after him, and, whipping up the horses, they went at a trot
for the wooded slopes of Pevensel.