Jess: Chapter 7
Chapter 7
LOVE'S YOUNG DREAM
After waiting a few minutes, Jess said "Good-night," and went straight
to Bessie's room. Her sister had undressed, and was sitting on her
bed, wrapped in a blue dressing-gown that suited her fair complexion
admirably, and with a very desponding expression on her beautiful face.
Bessie was one of those people who are easily elated and easily cast
down.
Jess came up to her and kissed her.
"What is it, love?" she said. And Bessie could never have divined the
gnawing anxiety that was eating at her heart as she said it.
"Oh, Jess, I'm so glad that you have come. I do so want you to advise
me--that is, to tell me what you think," and she paused.
"You must tell _me_ what it is all about first, Bessie dear," she said,
sitting down opposite to her in such a position that her face was shaded
from the light. Bessie tapped her naked foot against the matting with
which the little room was carpeted. It was an exceedingly pretty foot.
"Well, dear old girl, it is just this--Frank Muller has been here to ask
me to marry him."
"Oh," said Jess, with a sigh of relief. So that was all? She felt as
though a ton-weight had been lifted from her heart. She had expected
this bit of news for some time.
"He wanted me to marry him, and when I said I would not, he behaved
like--like----"
"Like a Boer," suggested Jess.
"Like a _brute_," went on Bessie with emphasis.
"So you don't care for Frank Muller?"
"Care for him! I loathe the man. You don't know how I loathe him, with
his handsome bad face and his cruel eyes. I always loathed him, and now
I hate him too. But I will tell you all about it;" and she did, with
many feminine comments and interpolations.
Jess sat quite still, and waited till she had finished.
"Well, dear," she said at last, "you are not going to marry him, and so
there is an end of it. You can't detest the man more than I do. I have
watched him for years," she went on, with rising anger, "and I tell you
that Frank Muller is a liar and a traitor. That man would betray his own
father if he thought it to his interest to do so. He hates uncle--I am
sure he does, although he pretends to be so fond of him. I am certain
that he has tried often and often to stir up the Boers against him.
Old Hans Coetzee told me that he denounced him to the Veld-Cornet as
an _uitlander_ and a _verdomde Engelsmann_ about two years before the
annexation, and tried to get him to persuade the Landrost to report him
as a law-breaker to the Raad; while all the time he was pretending to
be so friendly. Then in the Sikukuni war it was Frank Muller who caused
them to commandeer uncle's two best waggons and spans. He gave none
himself, nothing but a couple of bags of meal. He is a wicked fellow,
Bessie, and a dangerous fellow; but he has more brains and more power
about him than any man in the Transvaal, and you will have to be very
careful, or he will do us all a bad turn."
"Ah!" said Bessie; "well, he can't do much now that the country is
English."
"I am not so sure of that. I am not so sure that the country is going
to stop English. You laugh at me for reading the home papers, but I see
things there that make me doubtful. The other party is in power now in
England, and one does not know what they may do; you heard what uncle
said to-night. They might give us up to the Boers. You must remember
that we far-away people are only the counters with which they play their
game."
"Nonsense, Jess," said Bessie indignantly. "Englishmen are not like
that. When they say a thing, they stick to it."
"They used to, you mean," answered Jess with a shrug, and got up from
her chair to go to bed.
Bessie began to fidget her white feet over one another.
"Stop a bit, Jess dear," she said. "I want to speak to you about
something else."
Jess sat or rather dropped back into her chair, and her pale face turned
paler than ever; but Bessie blushed very red and hesitated.
"It's about Captain Niel," she said at length.
"Oh," answered Jess with a little laugh, and her voice sounded cold and
strange in her own ears. "Has he been following Frank Muller's example,
and proposing to you too?"
"No-o," said Bessie, "but"--and here she rose, and, sitting on a stool
by her elder sister's chair, rested her forehead against her knee--"but
I love him, and I _believe_ that he loves me. This morning he told me
that I was the prettiest woman he had seen at home or abroad, and the
sweetest too; and do you know," she said, looking up and giving a happy
little laugh, "I think he meant it."
"Are you joking, Bessie, or are you really in earnest?"
"In earnest! ah, but that I am, and I am not ashamed to say it. I fell
in love with John Niel when he killed that cock ostrich. He looked so
strong and savage as he fought with it. It is a fine thing to see a man
put out all his strength. And then he is such a gentleman!--so different
from the men we meet round here. Oh yes, I fell in love with him at
once, and I have got deeper and deeper in love with him ever since,
and if he does not marry me I think that it will break my heart. There,
that's the truth, Jess dear," and she dropped her golden head on to her
sister's knees and began to cry softly at the thought.
But the sister sat there on the chair, her hand hanging idly by her
side, her white face set and impassive as that of an Egyptian Sphinx,
and the large eyes gazing far away through the window, against which the
rain was beating--far away out into the night and the storm. She heard
the surging of the storm, she heard her sister's weeping, her eyes
perceived the dark square of the window through which they appeared to
look, she could feel Bessie's head upon her knee--yes, she could see
and hear and feel, and yet it seemed to her that she was _dead_. The
lightning had fallen on her soul as it fell on the pillar of rock, and
it was as the pillar is. And it had fallen so soon! there had been
such a little span of happiness and hope! And so she sat, like a stony
Sphinx, and Bessie wept softly before her, like a beautiful, breathing,
loving human suppliant, and the two formed a picture and a contrast
such as the student of human nature does not often get the chance of
studying.
It was the eldest sister who spoke first after all.
"Well, dear," she said, "what are you crying about? You love Captain
Niel, and you believe that he loves you. Surely there is nothing to cry
about."
"Well, I don't know that there is," said Bessie, more cheerfully; "but I
was thinking how dreadful it would be if I lost him."
"I do not think that you need be afraid," said Jess; "and now, dear,
I really must go to bed, I am so tired. Good-night, my dear; God bless
you! I think that you have made a very wise choice. Captain Niel is a
man whom any woman might love, and be proud of loving."
In another minute she was in her room, and there her composure left her,
for she was but a loving woman after all. She flung herself upon her
bed, and, hiding her face in the pillow, burst into a paroxysm of
weeping--a very different thing from Bessie's gentle tears. Her grief
absolutely convulsed her, and she pushed the bedclothes against her
mouth to prevent the sound of it penetrating the partition wall and
reaching John Niel's ears, for his room was next to hers. Even in the
midst of her suffering the thought of the irony of the thing forced
itself into her mind. There, separated from her only by a few inches of
lath and plaster and some four or five feet of space, was the man for
whom she mourned thus, and yet he was as ignorant of it as though he
were thousands of miles away. Sometimes at such acute crises in our
lives the limitations of our physical nature do strike us after this
fashion. It is strange to be so near and yet so far, and it brings the
absolute and utter loneliness of every created being home to the mind
in a manner that is forcible and at times almost terrible. John Niel
sinking composedly to sleep, his mind happy with the recollection of
those two right and left shots, and Jess, lying on her bed, six feet
away, and sobbing out her stormy heart over him, are indeed but types of
what is continually happening in this remarkable world. How often do we
understand one another's grief? And, when we do, by what standard can
we measure it? More especially is comprehension rare, if we chance to
be the original cause of the trouble. Do we think of the feelings of the
beetles it is our painful duty to crush into nothingness? Not at all. If
we have any compunctions, they are quickly absorbed in the pride of our
capture. And more often still, as in the present case, we set our foot
upon the poor victim by pure accident or venial carelessness.
Presently John was fast asleep, and Jess, her paroxysm past, was
walking up and down, down and up, her little room, her bare feet
falling noiselessly on the carpeting as she strove to wear out the first
bitterness of her woe. Oh that it lay in her power to recall the past
few days! Oh that she had never seen his face, which must now be ever
before her eyes! But for her there was no such possibility, and she felt
it. She knew her own nature well. Her heart had spoken, and the word it
said must roll on continually through the spaces of her mind. Who can
recall the spoken word, and who can set a limit on its echoes? It is not
so with most women, but here and there may be found a nature where it is
so. Spirits like this poor girl's are too deep, and partake too much
of a divine immutability, to shift and suit themselves to the changing
circumstances of a fickle world. They have no middle course; they cannot
halt half-way; they set all their fortune on a throw. And when the throw
is lost their hearts are broken, and their happiness passes away like a
swallow.
For in such a nature love rises like the wind on the quiet breast of
some far sea. None can say whence it comes or whither it blows; but
there it is, lashing the waters to a storm, so that they roll in thunder
all the long day through, throwing their white arms on high, as they
clasp at the evasive air, till the darkness that is death comes down and
covers them.
What is the interpretation of it? Why does the great wind stir the
deep waters? It does but ripple the shallow pool as it passes, for
shallowness can but ripple and throw up shadows. We cannot tell, but
this we know--that deep things only can be deeply moved. It is the
penalty of depth and greatness; it is the price they pay for the
divine privilege of suffering and sympathy. The shallow pools, the
looking-glasses of our little life, know nought, feel nought. Poor
things! they can but ripple and reflect. But the deep sea, in its
torture, may perchance catch some echo of God's voice sounding down the
driven gale; and, as it lifts itself and tosses its waves in agony, may
perceive a glow, flowing from a celestial sky that is set beyond the
horizon that bounds its being.
Suffering, or rather mental suffering, is a prerogative of greatness,
and even here there lies an exquisite joy at its core. For everything
has its compensations. Nerves such as these can thrill with a high
happiness, that will sweep unfelt over the mass of men. Thus he who is
stricken with grief at the sight of the world's misery--as all great and
good men must be--is at times lifted up with joy by catching some faint
gleam of the almighty purpose that underlies it. So it was with the Son
of Man in His darkest hours; the Spirit that enabled Him to compass out
the measure of the world's suffering and sin enabled Him also, knowing
their purposes, to gaze beyond them; and thus it is, too, with those
deep-hearted children of His race, who partake, however dimly, of His
divinity.
Thus, even in this hour of her darkest bitterness and grief, a gleam
of comfort struggled to Jess's breast just as the first ray of dawn was
struggling through the stormy night. She would sacrifice herself to her
sister--that she had determined on; and hence came that cold gleam
of happiness, for there is happiness in self-sacrifice, whatever the
cynical may say. At first her woman's nature had risen in rebellion
against the thought. Why should she throw her life away? She had as good
a right to this man as Bessie, and she knew that by the strength of her
own hand she could hold him against Bessie in all her beauty, however
far things had gone between them; and she believed, as a jealous woman
is prone to do, that they had gone much farther than was the case.
But by-and-by, as she pursued that weary march, her better self rose up,
and mastered the promptings of her heart. Bessie loved him, and Bessie
was weaker than she, and less suited to bear pain, and she had sworn to
her dying mother--for Bessie had been her mother's darling--to promote
her happiness, and, come what would, to comfort and protect her by every
means in her power. It was a wide oath, and she was only a child when
she took it, but it bound her conscience none the less, and surely it
covered this. Besides, she dearly loved her--far, far more than she
loved herself. No, Bessie should have her lover, and she should never
know what it had cost her to give him up; and as for herself, well, she
must go away like a wounded buck, and hide till she got well--or died.
She laughed a drear little laugh, and stayed to brush her hair just as
the broad lights of the dawn came streaming across the misty veldt. But
she did not look at her face again in the glass; she cared no more
about it now. Then she threw herself down to sleep the sleep of utter
exhaustion before it was time to go out again and face the world and her
new sorrow.
Poor Jess! Love's young dream had not overshadowed her for long. It had
tarried just three hours. But it had left other dreams behind.
"Uncle," said Jess that morning to old Silas Croft as he stood by the
kraal-gate, where he had been counting out the sheep--an operation
requiring much quickness of eye, and on the accurate performance of
which he greatly prided himself.
"Yes, yes, my dear, I know what you are going to say. It was very neatly
done; it isn't everybody who can count out six hundred running hungry
sheep without a mistake. But then, I oughtn't to say too much, for you
see I have been at it for fifty years, in the old colony and here. Now,
many a man would get fifty sheep wrong. There's Niel for instance----"
"Uncle," said she, wincing a little at the name, as a horse with a sore
back winces at the touch of the saddle, "it wasn't about the sheep that
I was going to speak to you. I want you to do me a favour."
"A favour? Why, God bless the girl, how pale you look!--not but what you
are always pale. Well, what is it now?"
"I want to go up to Pretoria by the post-cart that leaves Wakkerstroom
to-morrow afternoon, and to stop for a couple of months with my
schoolfellow, Jane Neville. I have often promised to go, and I have
never gone."
"Well, I never!" said the old man. "My stay-at-home Jess wanting to go
away, and without Bessie too! What is the matter with you?"
"I want a change, uncle--I do indeed. I hope you won't thwart me in
this."
Silas looked at her steadily with his keen grey eyes.
"Humph!" he said; "you want to go away, and there's an end of it. Best
not ask too many questions where a maid is concerned. Very well, my
dear, go if you like, though I shall miss you."
"Thank you, uncle," she said, and kissed him; then turned and went.
Old Croft took off his broad hat and polished his bald head with a red
pocket-handkerchief.
"There's something up with that girl," he said aloud to a lizard that
had crept out of the crevices of the stone wall to bask in the sun. "I
am not such a fool as I look, and I say that there is something wrong
with her. She is odder than ever," and he hit viciously at the lizard
with his stick, whereon it promptly bolted into its crack, returning
presently to see if the irate "human" had departed.
"However," he soliloquised, as he made his way to the house, "I am glad
that it was not Bessie. I couldn't bear, at my time of life, to part
with Bessie, even for a couple of months."