Part 6 (2/2)
Married, made a woman, she lost her haunted look and gained some colour in her cheeks. She lost her mortal chill. Her clothing, the putting up of her hair made some difference, but loving entreaty all the difference in the world. To a casual glance there was nothing but refinement to distinguish her from her neighbours, to a closer one there was more than that. Her eyes, they said, had the far, intent, rapt gaze of a wild animal. They seemed to search minutely, reaching beyond our power of vision, to find there things beyond our human ken.
But whereas the things which she looked at, invisible to us, caused her no dismay, those within our range, the most ordinary and commonplace, filled her with alarm. Her eyes, you may say, communed with the unseen, and her soul followed their direction and dwelt remote from her body. She was easily startled, not only by what she saw but by what she heard. n.o.body was ever more sensitive to sound.
They say that a piano-tuner goes not by sound, but by the vibrations of the wire, which he is able to test without counting. It was so with her. She seemed to feel the trembling of the circ.u.mambient air, and to know by its greater or less intensity that something--and very often what thing in particular--was affecting it. All her senses were preternaturally acute--she could see incredible distances, hear, smell, in a way that only wild nature can. Added to these, she had another sense, whereby she could see what was hidden from us and understand what we could not even perceive. One could guess as much, on occasions, by the absorbed intensity of her gaze. But when she was with her husband (which was whenever he would allow it) she had no eyes, ears, senses or thoughts for any other living thing, seen or unseen. She followed him about like a dog, and when that might not be her eyes followed him. Sometimes, when he was afield with his sheep, they saw her come out of the cottage and slink up the hedgerow to the fell's foot. She would climb the brae, search him out, and then crouch down and sit watching him, never taking her eyes off him. When he was at home her favourite place was at his feet. She would sit huddled there for hours, and his hand would fall upon her hair or rest on her shoulder; and you could see the pleasure thrilling her, raying out from her--just as you can see, as well as hear, a cat purring by the fire. He used to whisper in her ear as if she was a child: like a child she used to listen and wonder. Whether she understood him or no it was sometimes the only way of soothing her. Her trembling stopped at the sound of his voice, and her eyes left off staring and showed the glow of peace. For whole long evenings they sat close together, his hand upon her hair and his low voice murmuring in her ear.
This much the neighbours report and the clergyman confirms, as also that all went well with the young couple for the better part of two years. The girl grew swiftly towards womanhood, became sleek and well-liking; had a glow and a promise of ripeness which bid fair to be redeemed. A few omens, however, remained, disquieting when those who loved her thought of them. One was that she got no human speech, though she understood everything that was said to her; another that she showed no signs of motherhood; a third that Bessie Prawle could not abide her. She alone of all the little community avoided the King household, and scowled whensoever she happened to cross the path of this gentle outland girl. Jealousy was presumed the cause; but I think there was more in it than that. I think that Bessie Prawle believed her to be a witch.
III
To eyes prepared for coming disaster things small in themselves loom out of a clear sky portentous. Such eyes had not young Andrew King the bride-groom, a youth made man by love, secure in his treasure and confident in his power of keeping what his confidence had won. Such eyes may or may not have had Mabilla, though hers seemed to be centred in her husband, where he was or where he might be. George King was old and looked on nothing but his sheep, or the weather as it might affect his sheep. Miranda King, the self-contained, stoic woman, had schooled her eyes to see her common duties. Whatever else she may have seen she kept within the door of her shut lips. She may have known what was coming, she must have known that whatever came had to come. Bessie Prawle, however, with hatred, bitter fear and jealousy to sharpen her, saw much.
Bessie Prawle was a handsome, red-haired girl, deep in the breast, full-eyed and of great colour. Her strength was remarkable. She could lift a heifer into a cart, and had once, being dared to it, carried Andrew King up the brae in her arms. The young man, she supposed, owed her a grudge for that; she believed herself unforgiven, and saw in this sudden marriage of his a long-meditated act of revenge. By that in her eyes (and as she thought, in the eyes of all Dryhope) he had ill-requited her, put her to unthinkable shame. She saw herself with her favours of person and power pa.s.sed over for a nameless, haunted, dumb thing, a stray from some other world into a world of men, women, and the children they rear to follow them. She scorned Mabilla for flinching so much, she scorned her for not flinching more.
That Mabilla could be desirable to Andrew King made her scoff; that Andrew King should not know her dangerous kept her awake at night.
For the world seemed to her a fearful place since Mabilla had been brought into it. There were signs everywhere. That summer it thundered out of a clear sky. Once in the early morning she had seen a bright light above the sun--a mock sun which shone more fiercely than a fire in daylight. She heard wild voices singing; on still days she saw the trees in Knapp Forest bent to a furious wind. When Mabilla crept up the fell on noiseless feet to spy for Andrew King, Bessie Prawle heard the bents hiss and crackle under her, as if she set them afire.
Next summer, too, there were portents. There was a great drought, so great that Dryhope burn ran dry, and water had to be fetched from a distance for the sheep. There were heather fires in many places; s.m.u.t got into the oats, and a plague of caterpillars attacked the trees so that in July they were leafless, and there was no shade. There was no pasture for the kine, which grew lean and languid. Their bones stuck out through their skin; they moaned as they lay on the parched earth, and had not strength enough to swish at the clouds of flies. They had sores upon them, which festered and spread. If Mabilla, the nameless wife, was not responsible for this, who could be? Perhaps Heaven was offended with Dryhope on account of Andrew King's impiety. Bessie believed that Mabilla was a witch.
She followed the girl about, spying on everything she did. Once, at least, she came upon her lying in the heather. She was plaiting rushes together into a belt, and Bessie thought she was weaving a spell and sprang upon her. The girl cowered, very white, and Bessie Prawle, her heart on fire, gave tongue to all her bitter thoughts. The witch-wife, fairy-wife, child or whatever she was seemed to wither as a flower in a hot wind. Bessie Prawle towered above her in her strength, and gained invective with every fierce breath she took. Her blue eyes burned, her bosom heaved like the sea; her arm bared to the shoulder could have struck a man down. Yet in the midst of her frenzied speech, in full flow, she faltered. Her fists unclenched themselves, her arm dropped nerveless, her eyes sought the ground. Andrew King, pale with rage, sterner than she had ever seen him, stood before her.
He looked at her with deadly calm.
”Be out of this,” he said; ”you degrade yourself. Never let me see you again.” Before she had shrunk away he had stooped to the huddled creature at his feet, had covered her with his arms and was whispering urgent comfort in her ear, caressing her with voice and hands. Bessie Prawle could not show herself to the neighbours for the rest of the summer and early autumn. She became a solitary; the neighbours said that she was in a decline.
The drought, with all the troubles it entailed of plague, pestilence and famine, continued through August and September. It did not really break till All-Hallow's, and then, indeed, it did.
The day had been overcast, with a sky of a coppery tinge, and intensely dry heat; a chance puff of wind smote one in the face, hot as the breath of a man in fever. The sheep panted on the ground, their dry tongues far out of their mouths; the beasts lay as if dead, and flies settled upon them in clouds. All the land was of one glaring brown, where the bents were dry straw, and the heather first burnt and then bleached pallid by the sun. The distance was blurred in a reddish lurid haze; Knapp Fell and its forest were hidden.
Mabilla, the dumb girl, had been restless all day, following Andrew about like a shadow. The heat had made him irritable; more than once he had told her to go home and she had obeyed him for the time, but had always come back. Her looks roamed wide; she seemed always listening; sometimes it was clear that she heard something--for she panted and moved her lips. There was deep trouble in her eyes too; she seemed full of fear. At almost any other time her husband would have noticed it and comforted her. But his nerves, fretted by the long scorching summer, were on this day of fire stretched to the cracking point. He saw nothing, and felt nothing, but his own discomfort.
Out on the parched fell-side Bessie Prawle sat like a bird of omen and gloomed at the wrath to come.
Toward dusk a wind came moaning down the valley, raising little spires of dust. It came now down, now up. Sometimes two currents met each other and made momentary riot. But farm-work has to get itself done through fair or foul. It grew dark, the sheep were folded and fed, the cattle were got in, and the family sat together in the kitchen, silent, preoccupied, the men oppressed and anxious over they knew not what. As for those two aliens, Miranda King and Mabilla By-the-Wood, whatever they knew, one of them made no sign at all, and the other, though she was white, though she s.h.i.+vered and peered about, had no means of voicing her thought.
They had their tea and settled to their evening tasks. The old shepherd dozed over his pipe, Miranda knitted fast, Mabilla stared out of the window into the dark, twisting her hands, and Andrew, with one of his hands upon her shoulder, patted her gently, as if to soothe her. She gave him a grateful look more than once, but did not cease to s.h.i.+ver. n.o.body spoke, and suddenly in the silence Mabilla gasped and began to tremble. Then the dog growled under the table. All looked up and about them.
A scattering, pattering sound lashed at the window. Andrew then started up. ”Rain!” he said; ”that's what we're waiting for,” and made to go to the door. Miranda his mother, and Mabilla his young wife, caught him by the frock and held him back. The dog, staring into the window-pane, bristling and glaring, continued to growl. They waited in silence, but with beating hearts.
A loud knock sounded suddenly on the door--a dull, heavy blow, as if one had pounded it with a tree-stump. The dog burst into a panic of barking, flew to the door and sniffed at the threshold. He whined and scratched frantically with his forepaws. The wind began to blow, coming quite suddenly down, solid upon the wall of the house, shaking it upon its foundations. George King was now upon his feet. ”Good G.o.d Almighty!” he said, ”this is the end of the world!”
The blast was not long-lived. It fell to a murmur. Andrew King, now at the window, could see nothing of the rain. There were no drops upon the gla.s.s, nor sound upon the sycamores outside. But even while he looked, and his grandfather, all his senses alert, waited for what was to come, and the two pale women clung together, knowing what was to come, there grew gradually another sound which, because it was familiar, brought their terrors sharply to a point.
It was the sound of sheep in a flock running. It came from afar and grew in volume and distinctness; the innumerable small thudding of sharp hoofs, the rustling of woolly bodies, the volleying of short breath, and that indefinable sense of bustle which ma.s.sed things produce, pa.s.sing swiftly.
The sheep came on, panic-driven, voiceless in their fear, but speaking aloud in the wildly clanging bells; they swept by the door of the house with a sound like the rush of water; they disappeared in that flash of sound. Old King cried, ”Man, 'tis the sheep!” and flew for his staff and shoes. Miranda followed to fetch them; but Andrew went to the door as he was, shaking off his clinging wife, unlatched it and let in a gale of wind. The dog shot out like a flame of fire and was gone.
It was as if the wind which was driving the sheep was going to scour the house. It came madly, with indescribable force; it rushed into the house, blew the window-curtains toward the middle of the room, drove the fire outward and set the ashes whirling like snow all about.
Andrew King staggered before it a moment, then put his head down and beat his way out. Mabilla shuddering shrank backward to the fireplace and crouched there, waiting. Old King came out booted and cloaked, his staff in his hand, battled to the door and was swept up the brae upon the gale. Miranda did not appear; so Mabilla, white and rigid, was alone in the whirling room.
Creeping to her through the open door, holding to whatever solid thing she could come by, entered Bessie Prawle. In all that turmoil and chill terror she alone was hot. Her grudge was burning in her. She could have killed Mabilla with her eyes.
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