# The Golden Bessie

Extracted from Everybody's magazine, June 1923, pp. 2–14. Accompanying illustrations may be omitted.
“You are hurt! You are hurt!” Bessie's eyes looked away with a shudder from the red, welling puncture that disfigured the white skin.
The Golden Bessie
Romance at Its Best in This Story of a Miser's Daughter and the Cynical Court into Which She Was Introduced
By Stephen Vincent Benét
Illustration by Sidney H. Riesenberg
IT BEGINS with an old rime, with a queer rime, with a quavering song:
Oh, the captain he's fine in his gay scarlet coat.
Bold sailors seem kings on the seas where they float.
And lawyers and merchants are gallant and free.
But gold masters all men, my golden Bessee!
The harsh, lonely voice with that somber color of tone in it that rang dully through all it uttered like the plucking of a leaden wire, that tone that is seldom found in the accents of ordinary, pleasant men, fell off into silence for a moment. The ragged man in the torn coat, eaten with holes where it was not piebald with patches, the man with the long, arrogant fingers, shapely and curving, that come by birthright from generations of ancestors who have never worked roughly with their hands, the man of the eyes that were always a little too bright these days, passed his fingers through the tangle of his white hair, so blanched it seemed almost artificial when contrasted with the powerful maturity of his slight, strong body. He looked round the chamber a little dazedly.
The song which he had just finished and certain lessons in the conduct of life which he gave to his daughter daily were his sole relaxations now—and even they were so narrowly entwined with the single purpose of his present existence that the very idea of relaxation in connection with them might have seemed far-fetched to a stranger. But when a soul has but one diversion, that diversion is apt to grow more queerly intense with pleasure than people of a varied interest imagine. It excites the mind inordinately, as a single deep draft of wine does the senses of a fellow who tastes it seldom. It was so with Geoffrey Barrow.
This hour or so snatched out of every rigorous day, in which to temper by ballad and precept the young mind of the only living thing he kept by him nowadays, was an hour to linger over with a delight near to the unearthly in its extremity. At no other time could he rest and know himself justified—here, even playfulness was a choicer species of labor, for it clutched at the future, for himself, for his name, for his treasure. His eyes moved satisfiedly about the chamber again.
The room was spacious and nobly proportioned—all its furnishings and ornaments had been splendid and costly. Now its paneling—the oak black with age, with the ceiling where a few faint sparks of tarnished gilt still glimmered a little in the recesses of the carving—alone remained to show that it had once had its proper place in a house maintained with magnificence. The floor was as dirty as if it had not been swept for years. Bird-droppings and the tracks of small animals spotted it. From a corner, came the squeak and scuffling of rats. The panes of the tall windows were broken and stuffed with rags. Two crazy rush-bottomed chairs were the only furniture. In front of the fireplace lay a huddle of rags and dirty straw and sacking that looked like a beggar's bed. The white-haired man saw all—and was pleased by all.
With a tall-enough ladder he might yet be able to scrape those few flecks of stale gold down from the ceiling. He groaned inwardly—a ladder like that would be so costly to purchase, and days spent in making one would be gambling on a chance that might show no profit at all. His mind went eagerly off into calculations—was recalled with a jerk.
“AM I not to say my responses to-day then, father?” said a shy voice at his elbow.
Geoffrey Barrow, the last of the griping Barrows, turned and looked at Elizabeth, bis one daughter. She was clad in a single garment made of sacking, and her bare toes peeped unconcernedly through the cracks in her rotten shoes—but even in her thirteen-year-old gawkiness she showed promise of very great beauty. In her delicate, heavenly color, in her straight, pure nose that was neither too long nor too short, in her small, ripe mouth with its “bee-stung” lower lip, and her eyes as deeply clear blue as the tint of a precious Chinese jar, above all in the rarity of her shimmering, tangled hair that fell below her slim waist when she let it fall, she was to have all that loveliness that dizzies the mind. Geoffrey Barrow stared at her, eyes intent. The gold on the ceiling did not matter after all. Here was other gold, untarnished—more refined, more priceless gold. At a high price, that gold—to be sold very high——
“Am I not to make my responses, then, at all?” said Bessie again, her voice a little frightened at the fixity of her father's gaze.
“Why, yes, my daughter.” Barrow had recovered himself—that gold must be mended, schooled to gather more gold and more when time was ripe—to gather and never spend. He fumbled in his rags for a dirty cloth-wrapped packet tied up with a dozen kinds of soiled string, his movements oddly ceremonious. From the packet he took one guinea after another to the number of twelve, looking furtively about him as be handled each one. He ranged the guineas in a line on the filthy floor, his hands crooking greedily, hating to let them go.
“What is this, now, Bessie?” he said in a husky voice when he had done.
The child's eyes looked at the pieces with grave delight in the game.
“They are gold pieces, father.” Her voice had the hushed seriousness of one serving a ritual.
“Right! They are gold pieces. And how many are they in number?”
“Twelve.”
“And they are——”
“The twelve months of the transitory year. In each month we should make one thing only our sole endeavor—to gather gold.”
“Right, Bessie; right!” The man's voice was feverish—feverish—the child's pitiably sincere. He fumbled in his packet, clawed out a ring with a gaping hole where the stone had been pried away—a thick, hooped, glittering earring, a sheet of something thin as foil that shone, a tangle of shining threads.
“What is this?”
“Gold.”
“And this?”
“Gold.”
“And this—and this—and this?” He touched the first guinea as well with a trembling finger.
“Gold. They are all pure gold.” The clear notes of the child's voice rang hollow in the great chamber—hollow and sharp, like the chinking of delicate coins. Her father's face was thin with some passion now. His voice rose eerily.
“Is it to be spent?” His eyes held her.
“No.”
“Is it to be lent, then?”
“Never!”
“Then what shall we do with it, Bessie—my golden Bessie?”
“Keep it, father; keep it!” The child's voice was victorious at answering so well. She clapped her smooth hands.
The stare died from her father's eye, and with it died the intenseness that had tightened his frame like a racked man's body. He was weak now, weak and trembling a little all over, like a man waking from sleep that had given nightmare.
He patted her firm hand gently with his unstable hand.
“Good girl, my Bessie; good girl!” he said in quick, worried breaths. “A rare daughter, golden Bessie—a rare, true daughter of mine!”
His head sank on his knees; for a considerable space of time he squatted there, motionless. The child watched him affectionately, with neither terror nor pity. Knowing few other fathers with whom to compare him, she knew only that he was hers and had never spoken ungently to her since she could remember, and that each day, toward evening, he unbent and played with her this exciting and rapid game.
After a time a voice came from the squatting figure—a voice incongruously normal.
“I think we should have supper, Bessie, my dear.”
“Yes, father.” And the child rose and moved away as easily as a fox to the cupboard in the room where their supper lay—two hunks of black bread, a jug of sweet milk that had cost a whole penny.
When she was gone the squatting figure Stirred. It began to replace its treasure in the packet. The oddments first—then the gold pieces—very slowly—luxurious fingers stroking each shining coin as tenderly as if they caressed a woman's hair.
JOHN CUSTYN hummed the old words idly as his big bay slashed clods still smelling of dew from the squelching turf:
“The Viners for duty, the Custyns for beauty,
The Reeves to law with the crown.
And the griping Barrows to hoard their gold
Till the world turns upside down.”
He was singularly young in all ways of the body and some of the mind for his years, which were forty in his time, which was a little before the hour when the second Charles, King of England, regretted that he took so unconscionable a time a-dying. Most of his old merry companions were less merry now—the pretty jests of their youth had caught up with them, turning against their old masters like cast-off hounds. Some were dead, and not pleasantly, either—in the faces of the others the purple veins gathered like network; they grew burly, coarsened of feature, or withered like burnt-up shrubs. But on John Custyn the whole rakehelliness of the Restoration—and he had been boon friend of Rochester's at one time—had had as little effect as the scorch of the sun on iron. The Custyns made old bones.
He had kept his whip-lash suppleness, his fencer's wrist, his palate for wine, his eye for a face, his rocklike seat in the saddle. The dark spark came to his eyes on occasion yet. The rare flush that rose sometimes in his olive skin when he was more than usual amused came as easily as a boy's. To himself, at least, he seemed not to have shed one scrap of the inordinate Custyn gusto for living in his twenty years' hunting of pleasure, in the careless quest for something genuinely worth a Custyn's pains.
Moreover, he had for two years been Earl of Camlet, and, as most of those two years had been spent on a French embassy, he was to all intents and purposes, new-come to his possessions. So, as he rode through the morning, he hummed out, of mere light-headedness:
“And the griping Barrows to hoard their gold Till the world turns upside down.”
There was something to be said for such country rimes after all, he reflected, in spite of their devilish lack of polish—for he had always maintained toward the arts a genuine if properly condescending interest, and could both paint and rime in the very best manner compatible with gentility. The griping Barrows—He must be hard upon Barrow Chase at the moment.
How came such an oddity as miserliness in the blood of a good line, he wondered, to strengthen and strengthen until it drove its last servant beyond the restraints of the sane? For the tales of Geoffrey Barrow and the daughter he kept like a young Gipsy were racier than the run of such county tittle-tattle. There was a flavor of lowness about such avarice—a vulgar odor. As long as one could not carry gentle blood without some curse of sorts, he mused languidly, he was glad that the Custyn dilemma had always been beauty of women.
His hand had slacked on the reins. The bay took the opportunity, pretended to bolt. The next five minutes were pretty fencing. They ended when the big bay, mastered again, took a scrubby hedge with the smooth skim of a gull and checked sharply on the other side at the unexpected sight of a ragged girl gathering sticks not five feet away.
“'Ware, lass; 'ware'” cried John Custyn. the words jounced out of him by the sudden swerve of the bay. Then, “There!”—as he gentled his horse. “Ods-fish. though, my dear, you had best thank your stars for Lansquenet's good manners. Had you been two yards nearer the hedge—” And there he stopped.
The ragged girl had stood up. She was looking at him direct, the sudden scare dying out of her face, color coining instead. She was clad in a long garment of sacking, her feet poked through broken shoes, but in her face and in every slight stir of her body were such grace and beauty and gentleness as are never given together except in the supremest measure.
Down her back her heavy hair hung in two long plaits—gold none who saw could imagine as ever growing dim—a shining weight.
“Who are you?” said John Custyn in a gasp, all his elaborate manners blown from him like dust at the surprising sight of her. He was flushed from taming his horse—he rode his horse easily—gallant in person, gallantly dressed. He must have been as splendid a sight to her as if a painted coat of arms had suddenly taken on life.
She did not answer.
“Who are you?” he repeated, his poise coming back to him, “For if no Phyllis neat—heigh-ho!—'faith, I swear 'tis most impertinent of me, mistress—but an I be not mistook, you gather sticks on my lands.”
The girl flushed deeply at his patronizing courtesy.
“You are mistook,” she said. “This is Barrow Chase, my fine gentleman.”
“Is it so?” said John Custyn, and laughed a little. “Well, and then, my charming young pastoral, I will even invite you, for your good, to gather sticks on the other side of the hedge, where the sticks are mine. For, from all report, the master of Barrow Chase would grudge you even the least of his twigs; whereas I, dear creature——”
Then her scornful voice broke the false sentence like brittle glass.
“The master of Barrow Chase is Geoffrey Barrow, my father, since you be so curious,” she answered composedly. “And I am Elizabeth Barrow.”
He was off his horse in an instant, but she did not see him. She was looking at her dress instead—and very near tears. It had always clad her sufficiently before—and she had accepted dutifully her father's dictum that that was enough. Now, for some reason, it became suddenly intolerable to her. She stood looking down, her eyes blinking.
John Custyn approached her, doffing his hat, no mockery left in the gesture or the words that accompanied it.
“I cry you mercy,” he said—antiquely, no doubt, but his voice was honest. “Dear maid, I do sue for your pardon. Will you not forgive?”
Her trouble passed like a shower.
“Why, yes, sir—an you be honest repentant,” she answered, lifting her eyes.
They talked then. He even stooped together fresh sticks for her—a satiric familiar pinching him somewhere in his mind, tittering in his mind like an actress at the sight of Sir Fribble Fopling turned woodcutter. For the first time in many years he attempted to silence that familiar. This moment was better than satire, oddly enough.
“Your father is a gentleman of whose acquaintance I have long been envious,” he said deftly, in a pause over binding her faggot.
“I will take you to him now—an you desire it,” she said directly at once.
He looked at her very sharply, but her eyes were perfectly calm. He remembered an elaborate rimed attack of his on the “innocence” of women with profound distaste. “I would stake my life she has neither guile nor greed,” he thought, with a sudden romanticism that amazed him, that stirred him wholly as if he were a beaten drum—and, as he thought, laughed out aloud like a boy.
From the door of his house Geoffrey Barrow saw them coming slowly up the overgrown road between the long alley of trees. John Custyn led the bay, and beside him walked golden Bessie, the sun in her hair.
They were talking together, and the bay walked where he pleased for all the trouble John Custyn took to guide him. Geoffrey Barrow drew his breath in sharply as he saw them so, and his mouth was more satisfied than if he had died in peace, and his eyes were glinting and eager, like bright coins in the dark.
THE huge, lumbering coach lurched heavily from rut to rut of the muddy road. But John Custyn still had the campaigner's gift for sleeping whenever opportunity offered. He called upon it now—cushioned himself as best he could in one corner of the great, unwieldy vehicle—prepared for a doze. An hour yet, at the least, before they would reach the inn where they were to break their journey. But before he closed his eyes definitively he opened them wider than ever for an instant, to have one last look at his countess.
She was curled in the opposite corner, sleeping as easily as if she lay on down. What youth she had, he thought, with the completest gratitude. What beauty she had, now her first maid's beauty had given just place to a kind of tender maturity even fairer, a hesitating, delightful assumption of love and marriage that seemed to breathe from her like odor, like honeysuckle scent! Her hair had come loose—it was golden all over her shoulders—within it she, too, was golden, as something light and immortal created on one clear morning from sun and the golden foam. In her sleep, too, she must be remembering a happiness, for she smiled. John Custyn closed his eyes contentedly. Every day of the year since their marriage—happiness, happiness—a falling of brilliant leaves from a clear sky, each leaf warm with delight like a color, like a color of gold, like her!
BUT the sleep did not come to him at once; his body was too pleasant with thought. Pictures ran behind his shut eyes—a multitude of pictures. Pictures of doubt, of politic doubt of what counties would say and wits, of doubt of himself, of ill remembrance of what he had been before ever he saw the golden Bessie. Pictures of certainty, driving them away as he found alive in himself, to startle him wholly, a shifting of all his attitudes of mind and thought so mighty that it was as if the very blood in his veins had gone back to first youth—Bessie's face, Bessie's eyes, Bessie's lips as, gradually, all his satire shredded away from him, and he realized, with a humility that seemed strange to his soul, that nothing done or been in the past was to make any difference—that all that mattered was what was yet left for Bessie and himself to do. Pictures of Bessie again, her trust, her dear childishness, her impenitent joy in loving and being loved, her girl's delight in the pretty things he gave her. “Oh, the golden Bessie!” he thought, with his heart as hot as a ballad-singer's.
Then his lips shut down. There was one dark picture, too.
A white-haired man in rags on a ragged bed. A dying man whose breath came hard through his lips, whose hands gripped at his tattered covering with excruciating strength, as if they would pull him back to life again in spite of all fate. At the bedside, golden Bessie and John Custyn, her husband, Countess and Earl of Camlet.
The dry lips unclosed. The voice came wavering, shaking, from Death's very throat.
“Bessie, Bessie, my daughter, my own true daughter!”
“Yes, father; yes!”
“I cannot see you, my daughter. Are you beside me?”
“Yes, father. Truly I am here.”
The voice strengthened.
“The packet, Bessie—the packet in my breast. There is a writing there. It tells all— all the secret hiding-holes—all—my—wealth!”
“Oh, father, father!”
“It is yours, my daughter. All is yours.”
The head sank back on the pillow; the voice stopped. When it spoke again, it was wandering, though still strong.
“It is time to make your responses, Bessie, my daughter.”
“Father—not now!”
“It is time to make your responses, my golden Bessie,” the unappeasable voice went on.
The weak hands went to the breast, came away again, made a fumbling gesture of counting down coins.
John Custyn bit at his lip—this had gone too far. He glanced at Bessie anxiously—dying father or no, he would not have her thus tortured. But for the first time since he had known her she did not return his glance. Her eyes were bound to her father's, very large, very still. A change had come over her—she had never seemed so removed. Her voice, as she answered her father, had the calm, obliterating arrogance of one who shares with one other a secret as proud and deadly as a poisoned gem.
“What is this, Bessie?” quavered the dying man.
“God, father”—very clearly. “It is gold.”
“And this?”
“Gold.”
“And this—this—this?”—with a dreadful hurry to cheat Death himself from the last word.
“Gold. They are all pure gold.” Her young voice had the cold ring of metals—smooth metals alien to all living flesh.
“Is it to be spent?” The voice rose like wind before a storm.
“No.”
“Is it to be lent?”
“Never.”
The voice shrilled, victorious,
“Then what, what, what shall we do with it, golden Bessie?”
“Keep it, father; keep it! Never let it go.”
Her triumph answered his triumph. They stared at each other, true father, true daughter now.
Then the body on the bed was shaken with a gust of noiseless, approving laughter—and then it tightened all over and as suddenly lay slack.
WHEN John Custom, much shaken, led golden Bessie away from her grief, it was back to their house and another grief to come that was to bind them closer than ever. For, the following morning, the son whose coming both had so desired was born prematurely—and dead.
John Custyn, very disturbed, put that picture away, though not without some highly unforgiving wishes as to the present abode of Geoffrey Barrow. The cursed miser had done his best to make his daughter in his own image, he thought, with hate. And—God be praised!—he had failed. It was true that Bessie had shown, for a loving woman, an uncommon obstinacy in praying that he keep the treasure gleaned from Barrow House as it had been found—in gold. But that meant nothing—nor the fact that in her dress she always preferred gold ornaments before any jewels. He was rich enough for both—she could make ducks and drakes of her dowry, and it amused her.
His mind turned hurriedly toward more ordinary things. This journey to London—a royal “request” where there could be no disobedience. That must have come sooner or later—they were lucky to have had one year at Camlet in peace. But, for all that, he looked forward to the court with little pleasure. It was not alone the manners of that court—or the foes he had there—but appearing before his old companions as Benedick most unfashionably in love with his wife—he and Bessie the seven days' wonder for any idle impertinent to quiz and eye like savages from the colonies. That would not be pleasant—he had thought himself done with all that. “Cophetua Custyn and his golden beggar maid”—he could hear their tongues wag now. And his uncle, the smooth bishop, would be there, with that son, his cousin, who had been the likeliest next Earl of Camlet before John Custyn married—ods-fish!
He opened his eyes again troubledly, saw Bessie. For a long time he looked at Bessie, and as he looked the trouble left his face. Softly his eyes began to close again; his body relaxed for sleep.
As they were going to bed in the inn that night, he stood with his coat off, counting some money puzzledly.
“God's ransom!” he swore, then, with a nod at Bessie, who sat brushing her hair, “Your pardon, madam, but my hour's drowse in the coach has cost me a golden guinea.”
The smooth stroke of the brush hesitated for an instant, but then went on.
“And why so, sir?”—in the clearest of unworried voices.
John Custyn laughed shamefacedly.
“Ah, sweet, I sound like a pedler, do I not? For the reason that a guinea must have dropped from my pocket as I lay drowsing— Oh, 'tis no use inquiring. The coachman hath it by now, no doubt, and will swear he has never seen such a thing in all his days. Still, an it teaches me to carry my coins in a purse like thine, 'twill be money saved.” And he laughed again.
“I will knit you a purse like mine, sweet,” said Bessie, brushing her hair. “But I would question the coachman, too, for 'tis sin to loose a whole guinea,” she added, in a way that jarred him a little.
“Oh, let the rogue have it. The road was rough enough to-day,” he said, with a slight stiffness of manner. Then, to make up for it, picking up a feminine trifle of netted green silk that lay on the table: “So this is your treasury, Countess? Faith, 'tis better stocked than my pockets! One, two, three, seven guineas, and one that hath James his head. I did not know you had a guinea of James, Countess?”
“It is one of my father's,” said Bessie, brushing her hair. “Sweet, give me the purse, for I must put it away,” she added, with a charming smile.
He bowed and gave it. The incident was ended. But surely he had seen her count the coins idly on the journey—and there had been but six guineas. And when he had wakened that afternoon, it had been to find her awake. These thoughts were very unworthy. With a sudden rush of penitence he went over to her and kissed her.
All the same, it was with more anxiety in his manner than the fatigue of the journey warranted that he got into bed. When she came, too, he saw that she had a cord about her throat. Hanging from it, against her warm breast, was the purse with the guineas.
“YOU are hurt! You are hurt!” And Bessie's fingers were at the stained sleeve in an instant, gently stripping it hack. Bessie's eyes looked away with a shudder from the red, welling puncture that disfigured the white skin. Then she ran for water and bandages. John Custyn did not reply till she was back again, dabbing at the wound with a wet cloth, applying the salve, the bandages, her voice making little sorry, encouraging sounds as her fingers worked skilfully and firmly. Then,
“Not greatly,” he said in a voice tired past endurance. “Mountford is worse.”
“Lord Mountford?”
“I ran him through the body—an he dies I have murder on my soul,” said John Custyn grimly. “Oh, I am no boy. I have killed in duel and battle before—but never in duel where my foe had all the right of it,” he added, with great bitterness, drawing his but half-bandaged arm away stiffly from under Bessie's fingers.
“Do not stir so, my lord, my dear lord—oh, my dear, you hurt your poor arm! Oh, John—you must not rise yet! You are weak—weak and fevered.”
“I am not fevered.” And John Custyn had risen, his face gray iron, his voice very cold. “I am not fevered, but I had best get to my feet, I think, for what I have to say to you. The arm is well enough, mistress. Let it be!”
“John, John! 'Mistress,' to me! I am no one strange—no mistress—only your Bessie.”
“Aye; so I see,” said John Custyn, swaying as he stood. “Well, my Bessie, since you will, I have a slight tale to tell you—about this arm.
“Lord Charles Mountford has a golden snuff-box—or had it—a foppish toy. Oh, do not start so; do not whiten so like a play-actress ready to swoon—there is no ghost here, my Bessie, only your husband. When Mountford dined here three nights ago, he had this snuff-box, I say.
“He passed it around the table for all to admire—a silly popinjay, Lord Charles—I have never liked the man. All saw it; all flattered it—you too, my Bessie, my honorable wife. Dost remember how you would hardly give it up to Captain Tyncombe—it was such a gentle toy? Dost remember, indeed?”
The woman had sunk down into the chair now, her hands over her face. The voice of the man went on, toneless as an oracle's, mocking as a clown's.
“When Lord Charles took his leave of this, our house, he had not the snuff-box—he had laid it down somewhere, mislaid it no doubt—as other guests at our house have mislaid other trinkets, such as guineas and scarves with gold thread in them, and even gold rings. It is odd—is it not, my Bessie?—that, in spite of all our searchings and questionings of servants, these things have never been found—oh, devilish odd!”
His voice cackled suddenly with laughter. He slapped his knee with his hand.
“So Lord Charles—and this is the merriest part of all, my dear Countess—oh, 'tis laughable past all words! Lord Charles, I say, sets a witty rumor afloat that it is you—'old griping Barrow's fair miser' as he merrily dubbed you—who stole his paltry snuff-box, as you had stolen the gewgaws and rings of others, all for no reason except the base love of all that is gold.”
He cackled again, then sobered to deathly earnestness.
“Laughable, eh? A court jest better than madcap Rochester's prank with the tweezers that drove the frail Ransom mad?
“I found Charles Mountford and gave him the lie direct. We fought—he lies at death's door—he will not repeat his jest. But, oh, Bessie, Bessie”—and the man's voice broke out suddenly into blinding pain as his countess knelt before him, clutching his knees—“oh, Bessie, but I would have taken his sword in my heart with such joy instead—if he had lied!”
The woman at his feet, nothing left of the child any more in aspect or gesture, all crouching, unhappy woman, looked up at him with the eyes of a beaten spaniel.
“How did you know?” she whispered. “Oh, how did you know?”
“I have thought of it till I could not sleep these last weeks,” he said heavily. “And always I have mastered the thought, for I loved you true, but yesterday afternoon—while you were away—I had heard of Mountford's tale—it was in me like venom—I put mine honor aside and searched in your room. It was there—in a drawer—wrapped up in a handkerchief—not even well hidden. Oh, Bessie, Bessie!”
“John—oh, my dear, dear husband, I am guilty! I am very guilty! It was bright and winked at me—the gold. It wanted to come to me—it knew I would keep it safe—never spend—never lend—keep always—the gold—I—I—” And she sobbed heart-brokenly. “Not for the gain—we are rich; there was no need. The gold only—my father taught me so. So, John, but I could not help it—I could not—and now I have hurt you so——”
“The hurt is nothing,” said John Custyn desolately. “But I gave you my honor, mistress—to hold and keep. I have reason to repent of much in my life, but of nothing touching my honor. That you have shamed. It will not wipe off.”
“Not even with blood, John?” She was offering him her breast. “Not even with this blood?”
He looked at her—a long second—pitiably.
“Not even with that,” he said slowly; then, gently thrusting her hands from his knees, he turned on his heel and walked from the room, back bent.
THE court marveled at how John Custyn braved it. Such a humming scandal had not been known for years—the sly toast of “the golden Bessie,” followed by a ceremonious taking of snuff was the jest of the hour. Some said that Custyn and his countess intended to ruffle it through till the gossip died; some that he had asked the king permission to retire to his estates—a permission refused on the unspoken ground that such rare entertainment as he furnished at the moment could not be allowed to die. Golden Bessie kept a hoard of guineas sewn in her gown—golden Bessie and her miser father had lived for years on a diet of leaves and grass. At private meals in Camlet House the only service that could be used was one of pewter for, if any rarer metal appeared in so much as a spoon, golden Bessie had it stolen before one could wink an eye—so the gossip ran.
Having carefully sifted all which gossip, the worthy Bishop of Perchester, John Custyn's uncle and next of kin, took it upon himself to pay his nephew a suitable visit of condolence.
The bishop was a tall, hearty man of a portly, impressive presence, except for his eyes, which were small and narrow and eager like a fox's—a person of much bland experience in walking on egg-shells without breaking them. But, for all that, he was glad enough when the ticklish preliminaries of his visit were over and he had discovered that he might allude to the Countess of Camlet's infirmity, if he did it smoothly enough, without being shown the door.
“It is very sad,” he said, sighing and watching his nephew closely. From the haggard wildness of that nephew's appearance he could gratifyingly predict, unless matters mended shortly, an unhappy event not very far away which would bring the earldom of Camlet to him or his gawky son.
“Very sad,” he repeated vaguely. “Of course, an my poor spiritual services—the Church——”
“Could do nothing,” said John Custyn shortly. His uncle's eyes upon him gave him an uncomfortable twinge—a memory of a phrase about “waiting for dead men's shoes.”
“No; I suppose they could not. We do not claim the pretended powers of the Romish Church in exorcism,” purred the Bishop of Perchester. “And yet it is very lamentable. Now, if I were to advise—advise—” He let the words float away.
“Your advice is ever welcome, uncle,” said John Custyn impatiently.
“Well then—well—and as your countess has seemed, in all my acquaintance with her, a most admirable, charming lady——”
“She is perfect in all ways but one,” said Custyn rather huskily. Then he laughed without humor. “But life is not bearable sans honor,” he said.
“There is honor and honor,” said the bishop weightily, testing his steps—this was dangerous ground. A man whose breath still caught like that when he spoke of his wife might yet be very easily reconciled to her by some slight accident. With that thought, the earldom that had been so close to the bishop drifted away again, a gilded bubble that fled.
“And for the good of the succession—since your countess had not as yet provided you with an heir——”
“An heir!” said Custyn shrewdishly. “Let heirs go hang! I shall have no heirs now, uncle.”
The bishop glowed pleasantly within him at this speech. But one must make sure—hate and love were too near akin.
“I should suggest a reconcilement—for the good of our house,” he said smoothly.
The proposition so put could not go far from infuriating John Custyn. But, instead, John Custyn received it with surprising calm.
“If I could only believe—if only I were sure of the future—” he muttered brokenly. “If——”
So that was how the land lay! Even better so.
“She is very young,” said the bishop.
“God knows she is young!”
“Have you ever seen a young child cured of greediness after sweets?” said the bishop cautiously. “They give it naught but sweets—rub its nose in the honey-pot. It gorges—it ails—it is not greedy again.”
“Yes, uncle; yes!”
“Or the Grecian fable of Midas? Or that Italian tale of the gilded man?”
“What tale, sir?”
“Oh, 'twas of a miser, nephew.” John Custyn shuddered. “A man whose sole end was gold. His fame came to the prince. The prince conversed with him; disgusted by his avarice, he had him gilded.”
“Gilded?”
“All over his body, with fine gold leaf and made him walk in the streets, so gilded, for days on end. It so sated the rogue with gold and showed him the vulgarity of his avarice that he never hoarded again. Like cures like, nephew.”
“But this tale of the gilded miser—is it true? Ods-fish! What a singular cure!”
“True history, nephew—'tis all in Guicciardini his book. Well, 'tis all the advice I have for you.”
“I am grateful, uncle.” But Custyn's eyes were abstracted—he was obviously still considering the doctrine of like cures like and the gilded man.
As the bishop observed, he felt satisfied again. Those eyes were too eager for the eyes of one wholly sane. He rose.
“I must take my leave for the present.”
They exchanged politenesses. Then, just as the bishop was going, John Custyn spoke, with some difficulty, for he was a proud man.
“You will not discover this to others, uncle,” he said. “But my wife—I have a promise from her—it is nearly a month now—we give a ball three nights hence—the promise runs over that night. So far it has been kept, I hope—” He stopped.
“I am joined with you in that hope,” said his uncle elaborately. “Though I fear an it were I, I should look for more stringent remedies than promises. Like cures like,” he repeated softly.
Then he had made his adieux and was going down the stairs.
John Custyn stood by the door of the chamber, his body hag-ridden, his mind going wearily over the strange incident of the gilded man.
He heard greetings exchanged on the stairs between his uncle and some woman—Bessie. She must have returned. He would go and speak with her.
His uncle's voice came to him through the open door, courteous as ever, but this time a little high.
“Oh, no, my dear Countess; you should not trouble about it. 'Tis but a trifle, though of gold. My son valued it solely, since it was from his mother. Do not question your servants, I pray you. They would not remember. 'Twas lost three days gone or more.”
He did not hear Bessie's answer. He had no wish to hear more.
His step, as he passed through the door, was the step of a sick man; his eyes smarted weakly.
He turned to the left along the long gallery as Bessie came up the stairs, going toward the room he had once been used to paint in, where some of his painter's tools were still kept.
THE last ball given at Camlet House in John Custyn's time was a masquerade of singular magnificence. The king had declared his intent of honoring it, even to the point of disguising his royal person. Gossip could play as it liked with golden Bessie; John Custyn was still Earl of Camlet. In curiosity, therefore, in languid tribute to the Custyn bravado, with ennui hoping for diversion, a king; with dubious expectations under a smooth countenance, a bishop; with laughter, many; with any sympathy or pity, none, the masks arrived, began to crowd on the steps of Camlet House.
Those arriving first were not shown directly to the great stairs leading to the ball room, at whose head the earl and countess stood to welcome their friends. They were ushered into various antechambers—rejoined when their wraps had been laid aside and the ladies' complexions freshened—formed, jesting and tittering, into a sort of loose column, four abreast, by two gray footmen with silver wands. Then, when it was time, the doors that gave on the ballroom staircase were thrown open. From a hidden gallery four trumpets sang out on the instant a marching-air. The music caught the foremost—almost automatically they started to tramp up the stairs, and after followed the whole winding, vivid parade, sparkling with jewels, gay with color, climbing the stairs like a dragon made out of bright silks.
But half-way up the stairs that first wave of masquerade halted—for a single instant but halted—as its components saw their hostess and host. A gasp ran down the column like sparks down a fuse—a gasp that flared into words, into witty, drawling quips, into stifled laughter. They had jested long with John Custyn and his golden Bessie. Here stood greater insolence in answer, returning stroke for stroke, the very body of bravado, his counter-jest.
John Custyn, his face white as his hair-powder, his whole figure and bearing set and stiff, was clad from the points of his shoes to the lace at his hands and throat in black velvet, deep and soft as a black cat's fur. He was Night, unrelieved save where the diamond buckles on his shoes, the diamonds crusted on his sword-hilt, glittering in rings on his hands, were fiery as winter stars. But Bessie was golden Day.
Her body was dressed extravagantly in gold brocade so weighty and stiff it shone like bullion itself. Her shoes were gold and her stockings—gold as her golden hair. But that was the least of the wonder—it was not that took the breath. Her arms and the soft rise of her breast to the stately column of her throat, her fingers whiter than lilies, the colorful marvel of her face—these, too, were gold—the gold of a gilded image. From her heels to her hair she gleamed expressionless, unmortal, as if some ironic magic had taken her and changed her, changed every live cell in her body to gold and the dust of gold.
Like a ripple of teasing wind the comprehension of John Custyn's enormous insolence ran through all that great impudent assembly as it toiled up the stairs. They had mocked him very cleverly; they had taken her name of “the golden Bessie” and made it a tap-room joke. It was thus superbly he replied, with a satire to which their satire was the calling of names of a pack of dirty children. The reply was to their taste. There was not one that did not savor it exquisitely, with a damned appreciation. They could sting him no longer—not even the subtlest of them. He had thrown their own scorn back in their faces with a gesture so hugely brazen it dampened their every squib. They must give him best.
THE ball began—in a fashion strangely stately for a ball whose host was a noble, whose wife had stained his honor forever in all eyes genteel. It proceeded—the hours died under it like petals under the feet of a woodland dancer. The king came—and saw—and for once was speechless at a nine days' wonder. The music played; the dancers bowed, to their partners. There was food and wine. And through all the bright, meaningless shimmer, like threads in a pattern still weaving, John Custyn moved with his lady, haughtier their pride. And both faces were masklike ever—the one stern with a bitterness keener than east wind; the other set as an idol's in its gilt disguise, but with eyes both brilliant and, in some strange manner, rapt, like the eyes of a penitent, pressing his breast on steel that the soul might go clean.
There was little gaiety that night in the hearts of any—the bubbles of mockery that kept these people willing to live had died from their minds like a fume of wine at their first sight of Bessie, bright in her golden mask. There was only a hastiness left—a scared, unacknowledged wish that went deeper than terror, to be always talking or moving or dancing or taking wine—lest, if the motion in the ballroom stopped for an instant, some incredible, ungentlemanly thing might happen—the sky crack above them with the noise of last judgment or golden Bessie suddenly halt where she walked, and stiffen and stand there, a gilded statue of stone.
So the night went past like fever, and dawn came on.
IT WAS just as dawn was beginning to seep through the drawn curtains in drippings of shadowy gray and tarnished pearl that the Bishop of Perchester managed to get speech alone with his nephew in the deserted supper-room. The bishop was a man of neither great sensitiveness of mind nor much pity, but the first sight of golden Bessie had chilled him like air blown over a new grave, and all through the eery frenzy of the ball, as the hours increased, he had been brought to think more and more unpleasantly, and at last with pure fear, of certain words he had spoken. The earldom of Camlet was a very great thing, no doubt, and never before in his life had he hesitated or demurred when a prize lay fair in his reach. But, when all was said and done, he had once had the rags of a conscience—and that conscience, like that of all cowards, made him balk and stumble when murder was taken bluntly out into action from the twilit regions of mere pleasant thought and desire.
He began by wishing reflectively that he had not thought it go for his nephew to overhear that extra lie as to his son's losing a gold trifle in Camlet House. But as the time grew toward dawn and the fear in the air grew no lighter, he was forced to consider himself and his ambitions with a strictness he seldom showed—and the task was not overpleasant, even for him. So it was with a sick relief that he saw John Custyn stride into the room where he had been fortifying himself with brandy, John Custyn's eyes staring ahead of him, as if they saw nothing of all that passed.
“Nephew',” said the bishop timorously; “nephew!” and plucked at his sleeve.
John Custyn turned.
“What is it, mine uncle?” said he, and his voice was as cold as a voice that has left its body behind.
“Nephew,” said the bishop, and shook like a jelly; “are you mad, nephew? Oh, nephew, are you mad?” He was shrill with fear.
John Custyn turned blank eyes on his uncle's pale face. He considered deeply.
“Why, no; I do not think so—wholly,” he said—very awfully, it seemed, to that other man.
The bishop broke into a hurry of tormented speech.
“Then why this jest—this ghastliness, this devil's mockery? Why this show of your countess—gilded—ah, the poor child! Why——”
Again John Custyn looked at him, and his mouth was stopped.
“'Twas your advice—your very good advice, mine uncle,” Custyn answered slowly. “For the dog returns to his vomit and the burnt child creeps back to the fire,” he added, with an extremity of bitterness. “Well, uncle—we must take sure means to warn the child from the fire forever.”
“But that—but I spoke but in jest!” groaned the bishop, panting. “But I did not mean—oh, may God help me, I did not! I never thought——”
“A wise jest,” said John Custyn. “A most salutary jest.”
“But, nephew—but she cannot live!” shrieked the weak and pitiful rogue in a squeak like a bat's.
John Custyn did not take the full meaning of his words at first. When he had their import, he was suddenly trembling all through his body.
“What mean you? What are you saying? Name of God, what?” he said in one hissing breath, his hands on the other's shoulders, clutching for the throat.
“I mean she will die!” squealed the other, sinking in the clutch. “I mean she will not live the day out unless you find her some remedy. The tale I told you—the tale of the gilded miser—I thought you would divine—God help me, I thought you saw the prince's intent——”
“How die?” said John Custyn, shaking him like a rat. “How die? And what intent?”
“Fool, the body breathes through the skin!” the bishop gasped. “It has a million mouths in the skin to breathe—'tis so we live. 'Tis not by the lungs alone. Shut those mouths with paint, with gilt, and how may the body endure? And then there are poisons in paints. The miser lived but two days—a strong man. Your wife is but woman—she will not live this day out unless— O God!” And he lapsed into articulate sounds, for John Custyn was throttling him.
But a second later the fingers had dropped from his throat. He crumpled to the floor, lay wheezing. From where he lay he heard a terrible sob shake Custyn's body. He saw John Custyn shiver with uttermost pain, his face drawn and frightful as if he had got his death.
“Where is my wife?” cried John Custyn furiously. “Where is my wife? Oh, Bessie, Bessie!”
A noise answered him from the ballroom—the confused noise of many people suddenly alarmed.
“The countess!” said the noise, “The countess! She has swooned—she is dying!” And over all the babble, one cool note, mocking, “Oh, golden Bessie's gone home!”
THEY had carried her to a couch in a side chamber—she lay there motionless. One golden arm and hand trailed down to the floor; the fingers relaxed, looking too heavy for life. Those that plied her with water and wine kept their eyes away from her face—it was too like a death-mask grimly painted, now the eyes were shut. John Custyn knelt by her side, his hands chafing her hand, striving dreadfully to bring warmth to what was so cold. He saw, as through dizzying mist, that his uncle was there also, trying feebly to force some wine through her teeth.
After time so long it could not be of this world he saw, with joy unspeakable, her eyelids tremble faintly. He gave a hoarse cry.
“She is living!” he cried. “She is living! Oh, Bessie, Bessie!”
At the sound of his voice, as if he had called her to return from a region so removed that each step back was great labor, she gave a long sigh, and again her eyelids trembled.
Now the bishop was able to pour some wine in her mouth. After another time her eyes unclosed.
They looked in the eyes of John Custyn with trust complete.
“My dear lord!” she said weakly.
Tears came to him, overmastering.
“Oh, Bessie, Bessie, and I—and my devil's punishment—I feared—I had killed——”
“It is nothing,” she said. “It was nothing. It was just.”
Her eyes closed again.
“Oh, Bessie, live!” he cried passionately. “Live, Bessie! Live, Bessie! Or I must die in my sin!”
The others crept out of the room—all but John Custyn and his uncle. They two stood over her as she lay, chafing her wrists, loosening her bodice that she might breathe easier—waiting.
A shudder ran through her body; the first faint stirring of life returned.
Her eyes opened again. This time they did not close.
“I will live—though you punish me even again for my great disobedience,” she said.
“Disobedience! Oh, Bessie——” .
He could not look at her face; his eyes fell to her throat, to her bodice. Where the laces of the bodice had been loosed the round of her bosom showed whitely, untouched with gold. Her eyes followed his. She smiled like a child convicted of great mischief.
“I could not bear it—to gild my whole body—” she whispered. “It was so cold on me, so deathly cold! And, moreover, dear lord”—she smiled again—“it was gold—and I could not waste it so,” she confessed in a whisper.
But John Custyn had knelt beside her, crushing her hand to his breast.
“My sweet—oh, my sweet! Thank God!”
“But you must punish me, nevertheless,” she said presently. “Though for some months I fear you must not,” she added.
“Ah, Bessie, to fright me so!”
“It was not after my desire,” she said. “But I could not mend it.” He trembled. She put her hand on his cheek, with much love. “My lord,” she said gravely, slowly, “I give you joy. My lord, I pray God this time I may give you a son. Nor shall I be concerned with gold for this poor body of mine any longer,” she added. “It will all be his.”
When John Custyn raised his head again, his uncle was gone from the room, gone softly and disgustedly like an old wicked cat that has seen the cream-pan it stretched for lifted on a sudden wholly beyond its reach. John Custyn looked about the room—they two alone were left there. Unfashionably, he took his golden Bessie close in his arms.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1943, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 80 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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