BESS’S TRIUMPH
Bess knocked twice, and, stooping to the keyhole, repeated the owl’s
hoot. Presently a bar was drawn back, and after a brief interval, which
those within appeared to devote to listening, the key was turned, and
the door was opened far enough to admit one person at a time. The two
slid in, Bess pushing Henrietta before her.
The moment she had passed the threshold Henrietta stood, dazzled by the
light and bewildered by what she saw. Nor was it her eyes only that
were unpleasantly affected. A voice, loud and blustering, hailed her
appearance with a curse, fired from the heart of a cloud of tobacco
smoke. And the air was heavy with the reek of spirits.
“By G—d!” the voice which had affrighted her repeated. “Who’s this? Are
you mad, girl?” And the speaker sprang to his feet. He was one of two
thickset, unshaven men who were engaged in playing cards on a corner of
the table. His comrade kept his place, but stared, a jug half lifted to
his lips; while a third man, the only other present, a loose-limbed,
good-looking gipsy lad, who had opened the door, grinned at the
unexpected vision—as if his stake in the matter was less, and his
interest in feminine charms greater. But nowhere, though the kitchen
was wastefully lighted, and her frightened eyes flew to every part of
it, was the man to be seen whom she came to meet.
She turned quickly upon Bess, as if she thought she might still escape.
But the door was already closed behind them, the key turned. And before
she could speak:
“Have done a minute!” Bess muttered, pushing her aside. “And let me
deal with them.” Then, advancing into the room—but not before she had
seen the great bar drawn across the locked door—“Shut your trap!” she
cried to the man who had spoken. “And listen!”
“Who’s this?”
“What’s that to you?”
“Who is it, I say?” the man cried, even more violently. “And what the
blazes have you brought her here for?” And he poured out a string of
oaths that drove the blood from Henrietta’s cheeks. “Who is it? Who is
it?” he continued. “D’you think, you vixen, that because my neck is in
a noose, I want some one to pull the rope tight?”
“What a fool you are to talk before her!” Bess answered, with quiet
scorn. “If any one pulls the hemp it’s you.”
“Lord help you, I’ll do more than talk!” the man rejoined. And he
snatched up a heavy pistol that lay on the table beside the cards.
“Quick, will you? Speak! Who is it, and why do you bring her?”
“I’ll speak quick enough, but not here!” Bess answered, contemptuously.
“If you must jaw, come into the dairy! Come, don’t think that I’m
afraid of you!” And she turned to Henrietta, who, stricken dumb by the
scene, recognised too late the trap into which she had fallen. “Do you
stay here,” she said, “unless you want his hand on you. Sit there!”
pointing abruptly to the settle, “and keep mum until I come back.”
But Henrietta’s terror at the prospect of being abandoned by the girl,
though that girl had betrayed her, was such that she seized Bess by the
sleeve and held her back.
“Don’t leave me!” she said. And again, with a shadow of the old
imperiousness, “You are not to leave me! Do you hear? I will come with
you. I——”
“You’ll do what you’re bid!” Bess answered. “Go and sit down!” And the
savage glint in her eyes put a new fear into Henrietta.
She went to the settle, her limbs unsteady under her, her eyes glancing
round for a chance of escape. Where was the woman of the house? Where
was Tyson? Chiefest of all, where was Walterson? She saw no sign of any
of them. And terrified to the heart, she sat shivering where the other
had ordered her to sit.
Bess opened a side door which led to the dairy, a cold, flagged room,
lower by a couple of steps than the kitchen. She took up a candle, one
of five or six which were flaring on the table, and she beckoned to the
two men to follow her. When they had done so, the one who had taken up
the pistol still muttering and casting suspicious glances over his
shoulder, she slammed to the door. But, either by accident, or with a
view to intimidate her prisoner, she let it leap ajar again; so that
much of the talk which followed reached Henrietta’s ears. It soon
banished from the unhappy girl’s cheeks the blood which the gipsy lad’s
stare of admiration had brought to them.
Lunt’s first word was an oath. “You know well enough,” he cried, “that
we want no praters here! Why have you brought this fool here to peach
on us?”
“Why?”
“Ay, why?” Lunt repeated. “In two days more we had all got clear, and
nothing better managed!”
“And thanks to whom?” the girl retorted with energy. “Who has hidden
you? Who has kept you? Who has done all for you? But there it is! Now
my lad’s gone, and Thistlewood’s gone, you think all’s yours! And as
much of yourselves as masterless dogs!”
“Stow it!”
“But I’ll not!” she retorted. “Whose house is this?”
“Well, my lass, not yours!” Giles, the less violent of the two,
answered.
“Nor yours either! And, any way, it’s due to me that you are in it, and
not outside, with irons on you.”
“But cannot you see, lass,” Giles answered, in a more moderate tone,
“that you’ve upset all by bringing the wench here? You’ll hear the
morrow, or the morrow of that, that your lad’s got clear to Leith, and
Thistlewood with him! And then we go our way, and yon gipsy will carry
off the brat in his long pack, and drop him the devil cares where—and
nobody’ll be the wiser, and his father’ll have a lesson that will do
him good! But, now you’ve let the girl in, what’ll you do with her when
we get clear? You cannot stow her in the long pack, and the moment you
let her go her tongue will clack!”
“How do you know it will clack?” Bess asked, in a tone that froze the
listening girl’s blood. “How do you know it will clack?” she repeated.
“The lake’s deep enough to hold both.”
“But what’s the game, lass?” Giles asked. “Show a glim. Let’s see it.
If you are so fond of us,” in a tone of unpleasant meaning, “that
you’ve brought her—just to amuse us in our leisure, say it out! Though
even then I’m not for saying that the game is worth the candle, my
lass! Since coves in our very particular case has to be careful, and
the prettiest bit of red and white may hang a man as quick as her
mother! But I don’t think you had that in your mind, Bess.”
“Well?”
“And that being so, and hemp so cheap, out with it! Show a glim, and
you’ll not find us nasty.”
“The thing’s pretty plain, isn’t it?” Bess answered, coolly. “You’ve
had your fun. Why shouldn’t I have mine? You’d a grudge, and you’ve
paid it. Why am I not to pay mine?”
“What has the wench done to you?”
“What’s that to you?” viciously. “Stolen my lad, if you like. Any Away,
it’s my business. If I choose to treat her as you have treated the
brat, what is it to you? If I’ve a mind to give her a taste of the
smugglers’ oven, what’s that to you? Or if I choose to spoil her looks,
or break her pride—she’s one of those that teach us to behave ourselves
lowly and reverently to all our betters—and if I choose to give her a
lesson, is it any business but mine? She’s crossed me! She’s a peacock!
And if I choose to have some fun with her and hold her nose to the
grindstone, what’s that to you?”
“But afterwards?” Giles persisted. “Afterwards, my lass? What then?”
“Ask me no questions, and I’ll tell you no lies,” Bess answered. “For
the matter of that, if my old dad once gets his fingers round her
throat she’ll not squeak! You may swear to that.”
They dropped their voices then, or they moved farther from the door. So
that the remainder of the debate escaped Henrietta, though she strained
her ears to the utmost.
She had heard enough, however; enough to know where she stood, and to
feel the cold grip of despair close upon her. Fortunately she had had
such preparation as the scene and the change in Bess’s demeanor
afforded; and while her heart thumped to choke her, and she could not
restrain the glances that like a hunted hare she cast about her, she
neither fainted nor raised an outcry. The gipsy lad, who lolled beside
the door and never took his bold eyes from her, detected the sudden
stillness of her pose and her changed aspect. But, though his gaze
dwelt as freely as he pleased on her, on the turn of her pale cheek,
and the curve of her figure, he was deceived into thinking that she did
not catch the drift that was so clear to him.
“She’s frightened!” he thought, smacking his lips. “She’s frightened!
But she’d be more frightened if she heard what they are saying. A
devil, Bess is, a devil if there ever was one!” And he wondered
whether, if he told the girl, she would cling to him, and pray to him,
and kneel to him—to save her! He would like that, for she was a pretty
prey; and the prettier in his eyes, because she was not dark-skinned
and black-eyed, like his own women, but a thing of creamy fairness.
Henrietta heard all, however, and understood. And for a few moments she
was near to swooning. Then the very peril in which she found herself
steadied her, and gave her power to think. Was there any quarter to
which she could look for help—outside or in? Outside the house, alas,
none; for she had taken care, fatal care, to blind her trail, and to
leave no trace by which her friends could find her! And inside, the
hope was as slight. Walterson, to whose pity she might have
appealed—with success, if all chivalry were not dead in him—was gone,
it seemed. There remained only—a feeble straw indeed to which to
cling—the woman of the house; the white-faced woman who had gone in
fear, and thought this very girl Bess had designs on her life!
But was the woman here? She had been very near her time, yet no cry, no
whimper bore witness to the presence of child life in the house. And
the room in its wild and wasteful disorder gave the lie to the presence
of any housewife, however careless. The flagged floor, long uncleaned
and unwhitened, was strewn with broken pipe-stems, half-burned
pipe-lights, gnawed bones and dirty platters. The bright oaken table,
the pride of generations of thrifty wives, was a litter of dog’s-eared
cards and over-set bottles, broken loaves, and pewter dishes. One of
the oat-cake springs hung loose, tearing the ceiling; in one corner a
bacon chest gaped open and empty. In another corner a pile of dubious
bedding lay as its occupant had left it. The chimney corner was
cumbered with logs of wood. Greasy frying-pans and half-cleaned pots
lay everywhere; and on the whole, and on a medley of tattered things
too repulsive to mention, a show of candles, that would have scared the
least frugal dame, cast a useless glare.
In a word, everything within sight proved that the house was at the
mercy of the gang who surrounded her. And if that were so? If no help
were possible? For an instant panic gripped her. The room swam round,
and she had to grasp the settle with her hands to maintain her
composure. What was she to do? What could she do, thus trapped? What?
What?
She must think—for her own sake, for the child’s sake, who, it was
clear, was also in their power. But it was hard, very hard, to think
with that man’s eyes gloating on her; and when with every second the
door of the dairy, where they were conferring, might open, and—she knew
not what horror might befall her. And—and then again there was the
child!
For she spared it a thought of pity, grudgingly taken from her own
need. And then the door opened. And Bess, carrying the light above her
head, came up the steps, followed by the two men.
“We’ll let her down soft!” she said, as she appeared. “We’ll make her
drudge first and smart afterwards! And she’ll come to it the quicker.”
“Nay, Bess,” one of the men answered with a grin, “but you’ll not spoil
her pretty fingers.”
“Oh, won’t we?” Bess answered. And turning to Henrietta, and throwing
off the mask, “Now, peacock!” she said, “I’ve got you here and you
can’t escape. I am going to put your nose to the grindstone. I’m going
to see if you are of the same stuff as other people! Can you cook?”
Henrietta did not know what to answer; nor whether she dared assert
herself. She tried to frame the words, “Where is Walterson? Where is
Walterson? If he is not here, let me go!” But she knew that they would
not let her go. And, unable to speak, she stood dumb before them.
“Ah, well, we’ll see if you can,” Bess said, scoffingly. “I see you
know what’s what, and where you are. Come, slice that bacon! And fry
it! There’s the knife, and there’s the flitch, and let’s have none of
your airs, or—you’ll have the knife across your knuckles. Do you hear,
cat? Do you understand? You’ll do as you are bid here. We’ll see how
you like to be undermost.”
The men laughed.
“That’s the way, Bess,” one said. “Break her in, and she’ll soon come
to it!”
“Anyways, she’ll not take my lad again!” Bess said, as Henrietta,
bending her head, took the knife with a shaking hand. “We’ll give her
something to do, and she’ll sleep the sounder for it when she goes to
bed.”
“Ay,” said Giles, with a smile. “Hope she’ll like her room!”
“She’ll lump it’ or like it!” said Bess. “She’s one of them that grinds
our faces. We’ll see how she likes to be ground!”
Involuntarily Henrietta, stooping with a white face to her work,
shuddered. But she had no choice. To beg for mercy, it was clear, was
useless; to resist was to precipitate matters, while every postponement
of the crisis offered a chance of rescue. As long as insult was
confined to words she must put up with it—how foolish, how foolish she
had been to come! She must smile—though it were awry—and play the
sullen or the cheerful, as promised best. The door was locked on her.
She had no friends within reach. Help there was none. She was wholly at
the mercy of these wretches, and her only hope was that, if she did
their bidding, she might awaken a spark of pity in the breast of one or
other of them.
Still, she did not quite lose her presence of mind. As she bent over
her task, and with shaking fingers hacked at the tough rind of the
bacon, the while Bess rained on her a shower of gibes and the men
grinned at the joke, her senses were on the alert. Once she fancied a
movement and a smothered cry in the room above; and she had work to
keep her eyes lowered when Bess immediately went out. She might have
thought more of the matter; but left alone with the three men she had
her terrors. She dared not let her mind or her eyes wander. To go on
with the task, and give the men not so much as a look, seemed the only
course.
For the present the three limited their coarse gallantries to words.
Nay, when the gipsy lad would have crept nearer to her, the others bade
him have done; adding, that kissing the cook-maid never cleaned a dish.
Then Bess came back and forced her to hold the pan on the fire, though
the heat scorched her cheeks.
“We’ve to do it! See how you like it!” the girl cried, standing over
her vindictively. “And see you don’t drop it, my lass, or I’ll lay the
pan to your cheek. You’re proud of your pink and white”—thrusting her
almost into the fire—“see how it will stand a bit of cook-maid’s work!”
Pride helped Henrietta to restrain the rising sob, the complaint. And
luckily it needed but another minute to complete the cooking. Bess and
the three men sat down to the table, and Bess’s first humour was to
make her wait on them. But a moment later she changed her mind, forced
the girl to sit down, and, will she, nill she, Henrietta had to
swallow, though every morsel seemed to choke her, the portion set for
her.
“Down with it!” Bess cried, spitefully. “What’s good enough for us is
good enough for you! And when supper’s done I’ll see you to your
bedroom. You’re a mile too dainty, like all your sort! Ah, you’d like
to kill me this minute, wouldn’t you? That’s what I like! I’ve often
thought I should like to have one of you peacocks—who look at me as if
I were dirt—and put my foot upon her face! And now I’ve got you—who
stole my lad! And you’ll see what I’ll do to you!”