The night before a red-haired little maid had run into the kitchen with eager eyes, and the girl’s heart had leapt into her mouth. Luckily there had been no one by, but Bess had snatched the child in her arms and carried her into the orchard, kicking and screaming at the indignity, ere she had dared to ask her for what she carried. It was a letter, addressed A. B., and was supposed to be for some person unknown.
Bess took possession of it, in exchange for a good scolding for instructions of secret delivery not adhered to, and a bright penny for acid-drops. And then she ran away into the wood.
The leaves were all off the trees, and lay rotting in the purple brushwood; a hard sky looked on a hard and frozen land, and there was a promise of snow in the air in place of the soughing of the wind in the watching forest on that night when every gust had borne a tale of love through the moonlight.
But Bess knew nothing of wind or weather: Charley was beside her once more; his kisses made her heart beat again, and her face was hot in the frost as it lay, in her thought, against his. He was well, he loved her, he had never looked at another girl, he had got work at last, and he was coming back for her soon. And she kissed the letter as girls do, and cried over it in her joy.
That was why her face shone over the plum-pudding as it used to do when she was a little maid, and that was why the Christmas bells were sweet to her.
But Christmas went by, and New Year went by, and the frost held unrelenting sway, and Bess drooped. The crispness went out of her pretty hair, and her tall young figure grew quite too slim, and her fair, fresh skin became wan and transparent. The mother sighed, as any mother must, but dared make no remark, for she lived in terror of her man, and if it was for love of one whom he had said must not be loved that Bess grew pale,—pale she must grow, and there was no help: Farmer Benson never changed his mind, other folk had to change theirs.
But it was not only with the hunger of love unsatisfied that Bess was growing white; her health was strange, and a great fear was growing in her mind. Yes, young as she was, she was too much of a country girl not to know very well what things meant, and an awful chill struck at her heart.
What should she do? Whither turn for help, with whom consult, in whom confide?
Her mother? She loved her mother, and would never have dreamed of blaming her for being what she was; but was it wonderful that she should feel the burthen would only weigh the heavier on herself for endeavouring to share it with one who was too weak to bear any part of it? Perhaps—perhaps if she had known more of mother’s love she would have trusted it a little, and perhaps she might have been right; perhaps even that wavering heart would have swelled to a sense of its greatest duty, have yearned to protect that which it had borne. But Bess never gave it a thought.
“Not to worry mother” had always been her motto, it was her motto still.