Chapter TWENTY-TWO: The Soul of Hagar

Two hours had passed. Bessie was in her bedroom--the little one-eyed chamber (entered from the first landing on the stairs) in which she had dressed for Douglas. But the sheet of silvered glass on the whitewashed wall which had shone then with the light of her beaming eyes was now reflecting her broken, tear-stained, woebegone face.

She knew that her journey had been in vain, that her sufferings had been wasted. Her child was not to be stillborn. Through the closed door she heard Dan Baldromma going off in the stiff cart. He was going to the Speaker, to threaten him with the shame of her unborn child, and to call upon him to compel his son to marry her.

Wild, blind error! But what would be the result? Alick would hear of her whereabouts and learn of her condition and that would be the end of everything between them. All her secret scheme to wipe out her fault, to keep her name clean for Alick, to preserve his beautiful faith in her, would be destroyed, and he would be dead to her for ever.

But no, come what would that should not be! And if the only way to prevent it was to make away with her child when it came she must do so. Only nobody must know--not even her mother.

Time and again the old woman came hobbling upstairs, bringing food and trying to comfort her.

"Will I send for Doctor Clucas, Bessie?"

"No, no. I shall be better in the morning."

The day passed heavily. She could not lie down. Sometimes she sat on the edge of the bed; sometimes stood and held on to the end of it; and sometimes walked to and fro in the narrow space of her bedroom floor. Having no window in her room her only sight of the world without was through the skylight in the thatch, which showed nothing but the sky. The only sound that reached her was the squealing of a pig that was being killed at a neighbouring farm.

At length darkness fell. Hitherto she had been thinking of her unborn child with a certain tenderness, even a certain pity. But now, in the wild disorder of her senses, she began to hate it. It seemed to be some evil spirit that was coming into the world to destroy everybody. Why shouldn't she kill it? She would! Only she must be alone--quite alone.

Shivering, perspiring, weak, dizzy, she was sitting in the darkness when her mother came to say good-night.

"Here are a few broth. Take them. They'll warm thee."

"No, no."

"Come, let me coax thee, bogh."

Bessie refused again, and the old woman's eyes began to fill.

"Will I stay up the night with thee, Bessie?"

"Oh, no, no!"

"I'll leave my door open then, and if thou art wanting anything thou'll call."

"Yes, yes."

"Thy father isn't home yet, and if thou'rt no better when he goes by thy door thou must tell him and he'll let me know."

Bessie raised her eyes in astonishment, and the old woman, with a shamefaced look, began to apologize for her husband. He was not so bad after all, and when a woman had taken a man for better or worse....

"Do you say that, mother?"

Something quivered in the old woman's wrinkled throat.

"Well, we women are all alike, thou knows."

"Good-night and go to sleep, mother."

Bessie hustled her mother out of the room, but hardly had she gone than she wanted to call her back.

"Mother! Mother!" she cried in the sudden access of her pain, but though her door was ajar her mother, who was going deaf, did not hear her.

At the next moment she was glad. Her mother believed in God and religion. To burden her conscience with any knowledge of what she meant to do would be too cruel.

But Bessie's terror increased at every moment. The night outside was quiet, yet the air seemed to be full of fearful cries. At the bidding of some instinctive impulse she blew out the candle, and then, in the darkness and solitude, a great terror took hold of her.

"Alick! Alick!" she cried, but only the deep night heard her. At last, in the paroxysm of her pain, she fell back on the bed--she was unconscious.

When she came to herself again she had a sense of blessed ease, like that of sailing into a quiet harbour out of a tempestuous sea. Before she opened her eyes she heard a faint cry. She thought at first it was only a memory of the bleating of the lost lamb on the mountains. But the cry came again and then she knew what had happened--her child had been born!

Time passed--how long or what she did in it, she never afterwards knew. Her weakness seemed to have gone and she had a feeling of surprising strength. The bitterness of her heart had gone too, and a flood of happiness was sweeping over her.

It was motherhood! To Bessie too, in her misery and shame, the merciful angel of mother-love had come. Her child! Hers! Hers! Make away with it? Kill it? No, not for worlds of worlds!

It was a boy too! Thank God it was a boy! A woman was so weak; she had so much to suffer, so many things to think about. But a man was strong and free. He could fight his own way in life. And her boy would fight for her also, and make amends for all she had gone through.

It was the middle of the night. The glimmering and guttering candle on the wash-table (she had been up and had lit it afresh) was casting dark shadows in the room. Only a little dairy loft with the turfy thatch overhead, and the sheepskin rugs underfoot, but oh, how it shone with glory!

Bessie was singing to her baby (words and tune springing to her mind in a moment) when suddenly she heard sounds from outside. They were the rattle of cart wheels and the clatter of horse's hoofs on the cobbles of the "street."

Dan Baldromma had come home!

Her heart seemed to stop its beating. She blew out her candle and listened, scarcely drawing breath. She heard her step-father tipping up his stiff-cart and then shouting at his horse as he dragged off its harness in the stable. After that she heard him coming into the house and throwing his heavy boots on to the hearthstone. Then she heard the thud, thud, thud of the old man's stockinged feet on the kitchen floor--he was about to come upstairs.

At that moment the child, who had been asleep on her arm, awoke and cried. Only a feeble cry, half-smothered by the closeness of the little mouth to her breast, but in Bessie's ears it sounded like thunder. If her step-father heard it, what would he do? Involuntarily, and before she knew what she was doing, she put her hand over the child's mouth.

Then thud, thud, thud! Dan Baldromma was coming upstairs. Bessie could hear his thick breathing. He had reached the landing. He seemed to stop for a moment outside her door. But he passed on, went up the second short flight, pushed open the door of her mother's room and clashed it noisily behind him.

Then Bessie drew breath and turned back to her child. She was shocked to find that in her terror she had been holding her trembling hand tightly down on the child's mouth. It had only been for a moment (what had seemed like a moment), but when she took her hand away and listened, in the throbbing darkness, for the child's soft breathing, no sound seemed to come.

With shaking fingers she lit her candle again, and then held the light to the baby's face.

The little, helpless, innocent face lay still.

"Can it be possible .... no, no, God forbid it!"

But at length the awful truth came surging down on her. She had killed her child.

II

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.

III

Bridget Skillicorne had had a cow sick that night. It had been suffering from a colic, probably due to grazing among the rank grass which had been lying under the water that had been drained away. But Bridget was sure that "that dirt Baldromma" had "wutched" it (bewitched it) just to spite her for what she had said.

She had tried a hot bran mash in vain. The cow still writhed and roared, so nothing remained, if they were not to lose their creature, but that Will should go to the Ballawhaine (a witch-doctor who lived nine or ten miles away on the seaward side of the Curragh) and get a charm to take off the witching.

Old Will, being a class-leader, was well aware that such sorcery was the arts of Satan. But if the cow died it would make a big hole in their stocking-purse to buy another, so his conscience compounded with his pocket, and he agreed to go.

"Aw well, a few good words will do no harm at all," he said, and carrying his stable lantern he set out towards nine o'clock on his long journey.

Then Bridget, taking another lantern, a half-knitted stocking and a three-legged stool, went into the cow-house to sit up with her cow and watch the progress of its malady.

Towards midnight the creature became easier, and, gathering her legs under her, lay down to sleep. But Bridget remained three hours longer in the close atmosphere of the cow-house, waiting for old Will but thinking of Dan, and making her needles go with a furious click at the thought of his threat to evict her.

The upper half of the cow-house door stood open, and somewhere in the dark hours towards dawn she was startled by a bright light and the hissing and crackling of a sudden fire outside. She knew what it was (such fires on the mountains were not uncommon), but nevertheless she stepped out to see.

She saw more than she had expected. In the glen below her brew, where every bush and tree stood out for a moment in the flare of the burning gorse, she saw the figure of a woman. The woman was standing by the _Clagh-ny-Dooiney_. She had something white under her arm. After a moment she knelt, put her parcel under the lip of the stone and then hurried away.

Who was she? In her present mood, with her mind running on one subject, Bridget could have no uncertainty. It was the Collister girl! It must be! What had she been doing down there? In her own walk through life Bridget had never stepped aside, therefore she was severe on those who had. There was only one thing that could bring a girl out of bed in the middle of the night to a place like that. The slut! The strumpet!

When Will Skillicorne reached home half-an-hour afterwards he was carrying a wisp of straw. With this he was to make the sign of the cross on the back of the sick cow, and say some good words about St. Patrick and St. Bridget, giving it at the same time a hot drink of meal and water.

"But the craythur is better these three hours," said Bridget.

"Praise the Lord!" said Will. "That must have been the very minute the good man came down from his bed to me in his flannel drawers!"

"But did thou meet anybody as thou was coming up the glen?"

"Maybe I did."

"Was it a woman?"

"It's like it was, now."

"Did she go into the mill-house?"

"I believe in my heart she did, though."

Bridget was triumphant.

It was the Collister girl! There could not be a doubt about it. And at break of day she would go down to the glen and see what she had left under the _Clagh-ny-Dooiney_.

"Show me the road at Hollantide, will he? The dirt! The dirty black toad! We'll see! We'll see!"

IV

Bessie's sleep of exhaustion deepened to delirium and for a long day she lay in the grip of it. When she floated out of her unconsciousness, she had a sense of confusion. A babel of meaningless voices, like the many sounds of a wild night, were clashing in her brain. A man and a woman were in her bedroom, talking like somnambulists.

"Her feet have been bleeding. Where has she been, think you?"

The man's voice must be that of Doctor Clucas, and then came some vague answer in the woman's voice, with a thick snuffle and a suppressed sob--her mother's.

Bessie heard no more. A cloud passed over her brain that was like the rolling mist that alternately reveals and conceals a bell-buoy at sea. When it cleared she heard a strange woman's voice outside the house--her bedroom door had been left open that her mother might hear her if she called.

"I didn't know thy daughter had come home, Liza Collister."

"And how dost thou know now, Bridget Skillicorne?"

"How? There's someones coming will tell thee how, woman."

Bessie felt as if somebody had struck her in the face. Had anything become known? Later she heard her step-father speaking in the kitchen.

"Is she herself yet."

"Not yet."

"Better she never should be."

"Sakes alive, man, what art thou saying?"

"I'm saying that old trollop on the brews is after finding something under the _Clagh-ny-Dooiney_ and sending her man to the police to fetch it."

"Fetch what?"

"Just a parcel in a silk scarf with a lil arm sticking out--that's all, ma'am."

The doctor at the hospital had been holding a post-mortem, and now Cain, the constable, was to make a house to house visitation of the parish to find the mother of the child.

Bessie covered her mouth to suppress a scream. But something whispered, "Hush! Keep still! They know nothing!"

Early next day she was awakened by the sound of many men's voices downstairs, and her mother's voice in angry protestation.

"I tell thee, I know nothing about it. The girl came home to me three days ago, and I put her to bed, and she has never since been out of it."

"They all say that, ma'am," said one of the men. It was Cain, the constable.

A little later, while Bessie lay with closed eyes and her face to the wall, she became aware of several persons in her bedroom, and one of them leaning over her. She knew it was Cain--she could hear his asthmatical breathing.

"Is she really unconscious, doctor?"

"Undoubtedly she is. You can leave her for a few days anyway. She'll not run away, you see."

After that, listening intently, Bessie heard the constable ranging the room as if examining everything.

"What's this?" he asked.

Bessie drew a quick breath, but dared not look around.

"Only a remnant seemingly," said the doctor.

"We'll be taking it with us, though," said the constable, and then the rolling mist of unconsciousness covered everything again.

When it passed Bessie knew that the police were suspecting her. They thought they had found her out, and they were going to bring the whole machinery of the law to punish her. What a wicked thing the law was! She had injured nobody--nobody that anybody had ever seen in this world. She had only tried to save somebody she loved from shame and pain. And yet the constables, the courts and the coroners were all in a conspiracy to crush one poor girl! No matter! She would deny everything.

Next day was Sunday. Bessie heard the church bells ringing across the Curragh, and, before they stopped, the singing of a hymn. The Primitives were holding a service at the corner of the high road before going into their chapel. After the hymn somebody prayed. It was Will Skillicorne. Bessie (listening through her open skylight) recognised the high pitch of his preaching voice. He would be standing on the chapel steps.

There was a great deal about "carnal transgression," about "brands plucked from the burning," about "the judgments of the Lord," and finally about the "conscious sinner," throwing herself upon her Saviour and repenting of "the sin she had committed against God." At the close of his prayer Will gave out the first two lines of another hymn--

"_I was a wandering sheep,
I did not love the fold._"

Bessie knew whom all this was meant for. The Primitives were torturing her. But they were torturing somebody else as well. Through the singing and praying she heard her mother's sighs downstairs, and the beating of her foot on the hearthstone, as she sat by the fire and listened to the service for her guilty child.

What a cowardly thing religion was! Sin? What sin had she committed? She had never intended to do wrong, and only those who had gone through it could know what she had suffered. Anyway, such as she was God had made her. She would admit nothing. Nothing whatever.

Two days passed. Bessie's heart softened and became calm. The police were leaving her alone--they must have given up that nonsense about punishing her. Everything was going to turn out as she had expected.

On the third day, her mother, coming into her bedroom, found her with widely-opened eyes and all her face a smile. Yes, she was herself once more. In fact there had not been much amiss with her. Only, never having been ill before, she had been frightened and had come home to be nursed by her mother. But now she was better and must soon go back .... back to where she came from.

She told her mother about Alick and how fond he was of her--parting from his father and sisters and even his mother for her sake. It was quite a mistake to suppose that Alick had refused to marry her. He would have married her long ago, and it was she who had been holding back. Why? She wished to be strong and well first. It wasn't fair to a man to let him marry a sick wife--was it?

The old woman, with a broken face, looking sadly down at the girl, said, "Yes, bogh! It's like it isn't, bogh," and turned her eyes away.

On the fourth day Bessie got out of bed and moved about the room just to show how strong she was.

"See what a step I have now. I could walk miles and miles, mother."

The moral of that was that she must go back to Derby Haven without more delay. Alick was waiting for her and he would be growing anxious. She must take the first train in the morning.

"It's rather early, but never mind about breakfast. A cup of tea and a piece of barley bonnag--that will do."

Late that night, when Mrs. Collister, going to bed with a heavy heart, looked in to say good-night, Bessie asked to be called in good time in the morning.

"Don't forget to waken me. I used to be the first up, you know, but now I'm a sleepy-head."

And then she kissed her mother (never having kissed her since she was a child) and the old woman's eyes overflowed.

Left alone, in the dark, she began to think how good God had been to her after all. Only those who had sinned and suffered knew how good He could be. She remembered the text about the friend who, when all earthly friends forsake you, sticketh closer than a brother. Also, with a certain shame, she recalled the hymn the Primitives had sung on Sunday morning, and, covering her head in the bedclothes, she sang two lines of it--

"_But now I love my Father's voice,
I love my Father's home._"

How happy she was! At that time to-morrow she would be in bed at Derby Haven, having seen Alick and arranged everything.

Next morning, when she awoke, she was startled to find the sun pouring into the room. She knew by the line it made on the wall that the first train must have gone. The chickens, too, were clucking at the kitchen door, and they never came round before breakfast.

She had risen on her elbow intending to call, when she heard the roll of a van-like vehicle drawing up in front of the house, and immediately afterwards, a man's husky, asthmatical voice in the kitchen, mingling with her mother's shrill treble.

"Go upstairs and tell her to make ready, ma'am."

"No, no; the girl's not fit for it, I tell thee."

"She's fit enough for the prison hospital, anyway."

"She has never been out of my door since she came into it."

"We'll lave that to the High Bailiff and the Dempster, if you plaze."

Bessie, supporting herself on her trembling arm, could scarcely restrain herself from screaming. One moment she sat and gasped, and then, grasping her head with both hands, she turned about and fell forward and buried her face in her pillow.

At the next moment she was conscious of somebody coming into her room, and at the next, from somewhere at the foot of the bed, she heard her mother say, in a strange voice she had never known before--throbbing, choking, scarcely audible--

"They have come for thee, Bessie."