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.