But the mother turned away her eyes.
“’Elp ye to marry Charley Chiswick!” echoed she stupidly. “Why, father’d kill me for it, ye know ’e would, Bess! ’Ow can ye ask such a thing and you knowing ’ow set on ’e is against it all?”
Mrs. Benson fell a-crying again, and Bess turned away with a sigh.
“Why, ’e told me I was to lock ye up if ye ’adn’t come to no understanding with Jim Preston, ’e did. ‘Mary,’ says he, ‘she ain’t fit to go out-doors, and out-doors she don’t go till she goes as Jim Preston’s wife.’ Ye knows as well as me what father is. There ain’t no gainsayin’ father.”
Bess raked the fire together. The last ashes of her letter had disappeared.
“Very well,” said she quietly. “Ye needn’t trouble to lock me up, mother. I won’t come down no more till father sends for me.”
She folded away the duster with which she had been doing her work and went out of the room. And the mother sat there only feebly crying and listlessly listening to the young footfall as it lightly shook the rafters of the old chamber overhead.
The night had descended and the stars shone. There had been a row down-stairs, and a woman’s scream had pierced to the bedroom where Bess sat alone in the dark. She had held her breath a moment, but such scenes were of too frequent occurrence for her to be deeply frightened, and presently her mother came up carrying a candle in her hand and bringing the bread-and-water that was to be her only food. She was still crying, but she did not speak, not even when the girl, with a sudden tightening at her heart, went up to her and threw her arms round her neck.
“Oh, mother, mother,” whispered she, “I’m real sorry to bring all this trouble upon ye—I’m real sorry!”
She smoothed the thin, bleached hair and kissed the wrinkled brow, and the mother cried more copiously, and for an instant strained her daughter to her breast, but she quickly shook her head, and, as though afraid of herself, hastened away as she had come, taking the light with her.