Bess of the Woods

by Warwick Deeping

Brushing past the spreading bracken, halting, listening, peering from behind the great trunks, Bess followed the voices that led her through the forest. The scent of pines drifted through the warm darkness, while here and there a ghostly may-tree shed fragrance from its white dome. Soon Bess saw a light gleam out and go jigging and waving through the darkness. Isaac had lit his lantern. Bess blessed him for it, knowing that it would help her in the chase. She walked warily, her arched feet a-tingle with a sense of peril and adventure, her eyes watching the light that flashed and fled beyond the trees.

It was a mile before Isaac and his son came to the glade where a white-trunked fir grew on the Monk’s Knoll. They set the lantern down on the grass. Dan handling the spade, while Isaac squatted on the trunk of a fallen tree.

Bess, seeing that the light had become stationary among the trees, drew near slowly, slipping from trunk to trunk. Fearful of treading on dead wood and hearing it snap in the deathly stillness of the forest, she felt the ground with her foot each time before putting her weight upon it. At the edge of the glade bracken and white chervil and goutweed were growing. Bess, going down on her hands and knees, crawled slowly to where a low bush stood, and, drawing her hood forward over her face, looked out over the glade.

The lantern threw a vague circle of light over the grass barred with the black shadows cast by its frame. Bess could see old Isaac sitting hunched on the dead tree. He had lit his pipe, and a faint glow showed above the brown bowl, the smoke wreathing upward into the dark. The light from the lantern fell upon Dan, who had thrown off his coat and was working in his shirt. The bull neck and the hairy chest were showing, though the level of the light hardly reached his face.

Bess, crouching under the bush, which was a thorn, and holding her breath, saw Dan thrust his spade into the pile of earth beside the hole, catch something that Isaac threw to him, and bend his broad shoulders over the pit. The light from the lantern fell on his black and frowsy head and the swelling curves of his hairy forearms. Bess heard the click of a shooting lock. Dan reached deep into the hole and swung something that jingled on to the grass. Then he stood up, wiping his forehead with his forearm, and staring round into the darkness of the woods.

Isaac had reached for the bag of money when Bess, who was drawing back into the deeper shadow, set her hand on a dead thorn-bough. The spikes stabbed her palm. With the sudden pain of it she drew her breath in through her teeth with a slight and sibilant sound. She crouched down behind the thorn-bush, but both Dan and Isaac had heard her. The elder man was peering right and left like an old hawk, Dan stooping a little and staring straight to where Bess lay hid. He picked up the lantern and came striding round the edge of the glade, looking fiercely into the dark. Isaac had snatched up the gun and cocked it.

Bess, crouching behind the thorn-bush, trembled like a frightened hare. Dan was only twenty paces away, the lantern darting out arms of light into the forest. He would certainly see her if he passed the place, and with the swift instinct of the moment she chose the instant fortune of flight. Starting up like a wild thing from cover, she scurried back among the trees and took the winding path by which they had come.

Dan, giving a snort like a startled horse, dropped the lantern, flung up one arm, and plunged after her. He had seen the dark figure flit in among the trees, and could hear the crackling of twigs under her hurrying feet. With his mouth open and his hands clawing the air, he ran, rolling clumsily at the hips like a fat ketch in a heavy sea. Bess had twenty yards start of him and no more, and, quick and strong as she was, her skirts and cloak hindered her.

Bess heard him thudding in her wake, breathing hard like an angry bull. The trees sped by, solemn and untroubled, the winding path seemed to have no ending. Plod, plod, plod, came the heavy foot-falls at her heels till she felt like a child chased by an ogre. Strain as she would she could not outpace the man, and she knew enough of Dan’s doggedness to guess the end.

After all, why should she run from her own husband? She had merely caught him uncovering money in the forest, and there was no reason why he should suspect her. Halting suddenly and struggling for her breath, with her hands to her bosom, she stood in the middle of the path and laughed a shrill, breathless laugh as the man came up with her.