The Project Gutenberg eBook ofBessie CostrellThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: Bessie CostrellAuthor: Mrs. Humphry WardRelease date: July 26, 2007 [eBook #22128]Most recently updated: January 2, 2021Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Al Haines*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BESSIE COSTRELL ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: Bessie CostrellAuthor: Mrs. Humphry WardRelease date: July 26, 2007 [eBook #22128]Most recently updated: January 2, 2021Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Al Haines
Title: Bessie Costrell
Author: Mrs. Humphry Ward
Author: Mrs. Humphry Ward
Release date: July 26, 2007 [eBook #22128]Most recently updated: January 2, 2021
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Al Haines
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BESSIE COSTRELL ***
Produced by Al Haines
1912
It was an August evening, still and cloudy after a day unusually chilly for the time of year. Now, about sunset, the temperature was warmer than it had been in the morning, and the departing sun was forcing its way through the clouds, breaking up their level masses into delicate lattice-work of golds and greys. The last radiant light was on the wheat-fields under the hill, and on the long chalk hill itself. Against that glowing background lay the village, already engulfed by the advancing shadow. All the nearer trees, which the daylight had mingled in one green monotony, stood out sharp and distinct, each in its own plane, against the hill. Each natural object seemed to gain a new accent, a more individual beauty, from the vanishing and yet lingering sunlight.
An elderly labourer was walking along the road which led to the village. To his right lay the allotment gardens just beginning to be alive with figures, and the voices of men and children. Beyond them, far ahead, rose the square tower of the church; to his left was the hill, and straight in front of him the village, with its veils of smoke lightly brushed over the trees, and its lines of cottages climbing the chalk steeps behind it. His eye as he walked took in a number of such facts as life had trained it to notice. Once he stopped to bend over a fence, to pluck a stalk or two of oats. He examined them carefully; then he threw back his head and sniffed the air, looking all round the sky meanwhile. Yes, the season had been late and harsh, but the fine weather was coming at last. Two or three days' warmth now would ripen even the oats, let alone the wheat.
Well, he was glad. He wanted the harvest over. It would, perhaps, be his last harvest at Clinton Magna, where he had worked, man and boy, for fifty-six years come Michaelmas. His last harvest! A curious pleasure stirred the man's veins as he thought of it, a pleasure in expected change, which seemed to bring back the pulse of youth, to loosen a little the yoke at those iron years that had perforce aged and bent him; though, for sixty-two, he was still hale and strong.
Things had all come together. Here was "Muster" Hill, the farmer he had worked for these seventeen years, dying of a sudden, with a carbuncle on the neck, and the farm to be given up at Michaelmas. He—John Bolderfield—had been working on for the widow; but, in his opinion, she was "nobbut a caselty sort of body," and the sooner she and her children were taken off to Barnet, where they were to live with her mother, the less she'd cost them as had the looking after her. As for the crops, they wouldn't pay the debts; not they. And there was no one after the farm—"nary one"—and didn't seem like to be. That would make another farm on Muster Forrest's hands. Well, and a good job. Landlords must be "took down"; and there was plenty of work going on the railway just now for those that were turned off.
He was too old for the railway, though, and he might have found it hard to get fresh work if he had been staying at Clinton. But he was not staying. Poor Eliza wouldn't last more than a few days; a week or two at most, and he was not going to keep on the cottage after he'd buried her.
Aye, poor Eliza! She was his sister-in-law, the widow of his second brother. He had been his brother's lodger during the greater part of his working life, and since Tom's death he had stayed on with Eliza. She and he suited each other, and the "worritin' childer" had all gone away years since and left them in peace. He didn't believe Eliza knew where any of them were, except Mary, "married over to Luton"—and Jim and Jim's Louisa. And a good riddance too. There was not one of them knew how to keep a shilling when they'd got one. Still, it was a bit lonesome for Eliza now, with no one but Jim's Louisa to look after her.
He grew rather downhearted as he trudged along, thinking. She and he had stuck together "a many year." There would be nobody left for him to go along with when she was gone. There was his niece Bessie Costrell and her husband, and there was his silly old cousin Widow Waller. He dared say they'd both of them want him to live with them. At the thought a grin crossed his ruddy face. They both knew aboutit—that was what it was. And he wouldn't live with either of them, not he. Not yet a bit, anyway. All the same, he had a fondness for Bessie and her husband. Bessie was always very civil tohim—he chuckled again—and if anything had to be done with it, while he was five miles off at Frampton on a job of work that had been offered him, he didn't know but he'd as soon trust Isaac Costrell and Bessie as anybody else. You might call Isaac rather a fool, what with his religion, and "extemp'ry prayin', an' that," but all the same Bolderfield thought of him with a kind of uneasy awe. If ever there was a man secure of the next world it was Isaac Costrell. His temper, perhaps, was "nassty," which might pull him down a little when the last account came to be made up; and it could not be said that his elder children had come to much, for all his piety. But, on the whole, Bolderfield only wished he stood as well with the Powers talked about in chapel every Sunday as Isaac did.
As for Bessie, she had been a wasteful woman all her life, with never a bit of money put by, and never a good dress to her back. But, "Lor' bless yer, there was a many worse folk nor Bessie." She wasn't one of your sour people—she could make you laugh; she had a merry heart. Many a pleasant evening had he passed chatting with her and Isaac; and whenever they cooked anything good there was always a bite for him. Yes, Bessie had been a good niece to him; and if he trusted any one he dared say he'd trust them.
"Well, how's Eliza, Muster Bolderfield?" said a woman who passed him in the village street.
He replied, and then went on his way, sobered again, dreading to find himself at the cottage once more, and in the stuffy upper room with the bed and the dying woman. Yet he was not really sad, not here at least, out in the air and the sun. There was always a thought in his mind, a fact in his consciousness, which stood between him and sadness. It had so stood for a long, long time. He walked through the village to-night, in spite of Eliza and his sixty years, with a free bearing and a confident glance to right and left. He knew, and the village knew, that he was not as other men.
He passed the village green with its pond, and began to climb a lane leading to the hill. Half-way up stood two cottages sideways. Phloxes and marigolds grew untidily about their doorways, and straggly roses, starved a little by the chalk soil, looked in at their latticed windows. They were, however, comparatively modern and comfortable, with two bedrooms above and two living-rooms below, far superior to the older and more picturesque cottages in the main street.
John went in softly, put down his straw dinner-bag, and took off his heavy boots. Then he opened a door in the wall of the kitchen, and gently climbed the stairs.
A girl was sitting by the bed. When she saw his whitish head and red face emerge against the darkness of the stair-hole, she put up her finger for silence.
John crept in and came to look at the patient. His eyes grew round and staring, his colour changed.
"Is she a-goin'?" he said, with evident excitement.
Jim's Louisa shook her head. She was rather a stupid girl, heavy and round-faced, but she had nursed her grandmother well.
"No; she's asleep. Muster Drew's been here, and she dropped off while he was a-talkin' to her."
Mr. Drew was the Congregational minister.
"Did she send for him?"
"Yes; she said she felt her feet a-gettin' cold, and I must run. But I don't believe she's no worse."
John stood looking down, ruefully. Suddenly the figure in the bed turned.
"John," said a comparatively strong voice which made Bolderfield start—"John, Muster Drew says you'd oughter put it in the bank. You'll be a fool if yer don't, 'ee says."
The old woman's pinched face emerged from the sheets, looking up at him. Bluish patches showed here and there on the drawn white skin; there was a great change since the morning, but the eyes were still alive.
John was silent a moment, one corner of his mouth twitching, as though what she had said struck him in a humorous light.
"Well, I don't know as I mind much what 'ee says, 'Liza."
"Sit down."
She made a movement with her emaciated hand. John sat down on the chair Louisa gave up to him, and bent down over the bed.
"If yer woan't do—what Muster Drew says, John—whateverwullyer do with it?"
She spoke slowly, but clearly. John scratched his head. His complexion had evidently been very fair. It was still fresh and pink, and the full cheek hung a little over the jaw. The mouth was shrewd, but its expression was oddly contradicted by the eyes, which had on the whole a childish, weak look.
"I think yer must leave it to me, 'Liza," he said at last. "I'll do all for the best."
"No—yer'll not, John," said the dying voice. "You'd a done a many stupid things—if I 'adn't stopped yer. An' I'm a-goin'. You'll never leave it wi' Bessie?"
"An' who 'ud yer 'ave me leave it with? Ain't Bessie my own sister's child?"
An emaciated hand stole out of the bed-clothes and fastened feebly on his arm.
"If yer do, John, yer'll repent it. Yer never were a good one at judgin' folk. Yer doan't consider nothin'—an' I'm a-goin'. Leave it with Saunders, John."
There was a pause. Then John said with an obstinate look—
"Saunders 'as never been a friend o' mine since 'ee did me out o' that bit o' business with Missus Moulsey. An' I don't mean to go makin' friends with him again."
Eliza withdrew her hand with a long sigh, and her eyelids closed. A fit of coughing shook her; she had to be lifted in bed, and it left her gasping and deathly. John was sorely troubled, and not only for himself. When she was more at ease again, he stooped to her and put his mouth to her ear.
"'Liza, don't yer think no more about it. Did Mr. Drew read to yer?Are yer comfortable in yer mind?"
She made a sign of assent, which showed, however, no great interest in the subject. There was silence for a long time. Louisa was getting supper downstairs. John, oppressed by the heat of the room and tired by his day's work, had almost fallen asleep in his chair, when the old woman spoke again.
"John—what 'ud you think o' Mary Anne Waller?"
The whisper was still human and eager.
John roused himself, and could not help an astonished laugh.
"Why, whatever put Mary Anne into your head, 'Liza? Yer never thought anythink o' Mary Anne—no more than me."
Eliza's eyes wandered round the room.
"P'r'aps——" she said, then stopped, and could say no more. She seemed to become unconscious, and John went to call for Louisa.
In the middle of the night John woke with a start, and sat up to listen. Not a sound—but they would have called him if the end had come. He could not rest, however, and presently he huddled on some clothes and went to listen at Eliza's door. It was ajar, and, hearing nothing, he pushed it open.
Poor Eliza lay in her agony, unconscious, and breathing heavily. Beside her sat the widow, Mary Anne Waller, and Louisa, motionless too, their heads bent. There was an end of candle in a basin behind the bed, which threw circles of wavering light over the coarse whitewash of the roof and on the cards and faded photographs above the tiny mantelpiece.
John crept up to the bed. The two women made a slight movement to let him stand between them.
"Can't yer give her no brandy?" he asked, whispering.
Mary Anne Waller shook her head.
"Dr. Murch said we wer'n't to trouble her. She'll go when the light comes—most like."
She was a little shrivelled woman with a singularly delicate mouth, that quivered as she spoke. John and Eliza Bolderfield had never thought much of her, though she was John's cousin. She was a widow, and greatly "put upon" both by her children and her neighbours. Her children were grown up, and settled—more or less—in the world, but they still lived on her freely whenever it suited them; and in the village generally she was reckoned but a poor creature.
However, when Eliza—originally a hard, strong woman—took to her bed with incurable disease, Mary Anne Waller came in to help, and was accepted. She did everything humbly; she even let Louisa order her about. But before the end, Eliza had come to be restless when she was not there.
Now, however, Eliza knew no more, and the little widow sat gazing at her with the tears on her cheeks. John, too, felt his eyes wet.
But after half an hour, when there was still no change, he was turning away to go back to bed, when the widow touched his arm.
"Won't yer give her a kiss, John?" she said timidly. "She wor a good sister to you."
John, with a tremor, stooped, and clumsily did as he was told—the first time in his life he had ever done so for Mary Anne. Then, stepping as noiselessly as he could on his bare feet, he hurried away. A man shares nothing of that yearning attraction which draws women to a death-bed as such. Instead, John felt a sudden sickness at his heart. He was thankful to find himself in his own room again, and thought with dread of having to go back—for the end. In spite of his still vigorous and stalwart body, he was often plagued with nervous fears and fancies. And it was years now since he had seen death—he had, indeed, carefully avoided seeing it.
Gradually, however, as he sat on the edge of his bed in the summer dark, the new impression died away, and something habitual took its place—that shielding, solacing thought, which was in truth all the world to him, and was going to make up to him for Eliza's death, for getting old, and the lonesomeness of a man without chick or child. He would have felt unutterably forlorn and miserable, he would have shrunk trembling from the shapes of death and pain that seemed to fill the darkness, but for this fact, this defence, this treasure, that set him apart from his fellows and gave him this proud sense of superiority, of a good time coming in spite of all. Instinctively, as he sat on the bed, he pushed his bare foot backwards till his heel touched a wooden object that stood underneath. The contact cheered him at once. He ceased to think about Eliza, his head was once more full of whirling plans and schemes.
The wooden object was a box that held his money, the savings of a labourer's lifetime. Seventy-one pounds! It seemed to him an ocean of gold, never to be exhausted. The long toil of saving it was almost done. After the Frampton job, he would begin enjoying it, cautiously at first, taking a bit of work now and again, and then a bit of holiday.
All the savour of life was connected for him with that box. His mind ran over the constant excitements of the many small loans he had made from it to his relations and friends. A shilling in the pound interest—he had never taken less and he had never asked more. He had only lent to people he knew well, people in the village whom he could look after, and seldom for a term longer than three months, for to be parted from his money at all gave him physical pain. He had once suffered great anxiety over a loan to his eldest brother of thirty pounds. But in the end James had paid it all back. He could still feel tingling through him the passionate joy with which he had counted out the recovered sovereigns, with the extra three half-sovereigns of interest.
Muster Drew indeed! John fell into an angry inward argument against his suggestion of the savings bank. It was an argument he had often rehearsed, often declaimed, and at bottom it all came to this—without that box under his bed, his life would have sunk to dulness and decrepitude; he would have been merely a pitiful and lonely old man. He had neither wife nor children, all for the hoard's sake; but while the hoard was there, to be handled any hour, he regretted nothing. Besides, there was the peasant's rooted distrust of offices, and paper transactions, of any routine that checks his free will and frightens his inexperience. He was still eagerly thinking when the light began to flood into his room, and before he could compose himself to sleep the women called him.
But he shed no more tears. He saw Eliza die, his companion of forty years, and hardly felt it. What troubled him all through the last scene was the thought that now he should never know why she was so set against "Bessie's 'avin' it."
It was, indeed, the general opinion in Clinton Magna that John Bolderfield—or "Borrofull," as the village pronounced it, took his sister-in-law's death too lightly. The women especially pronounced him a hard heart. Here was "poor Eliza" gone, Eliza who had kept him decent and comfortable for forty years, ever since he was a lad, and he could go about whistling, and—to talk to him—as gay as a lark! Yet John contributed handsomely to the burial expenses—Eliza having already, through her burial club, provided herself with a more than regulation interment; and he gave Jim's Louisa her mourning. Nevertheless, these things did not avail. It was felt instinctively that he was not beaten down as he ought to have been, and Mrs. Saunders, the smith's wife, was applauded when she said to her neighbours that "you couldn't expeck a man with John Bolderfield's money to have as many feelin's as other people." Whence it would seem that the capitalist is no more truly popular in small societies than in large.
John, however, did not trouble himself about these things. He was hard at work harvesting for Muster Hill's widow, and puzzling his head day and night as to what to do with his box.
When the last field had been carried and the harvest supper was over, he came home late, and wearied out. His working life at Clinton Magna was done; and the family he had worked for so long was broken up in distress and poverty. Yet he felt only a secret exultation. Such toil and effort behind—such a dreamland in front!
Next day he set to work to wind up his affairs. The furniture of the cottage was left to Eliza's son Jim, and the daughter had arranged for the carting of it to the house twelve miles off where her parents lived. She was to go with it on the morrow, and John would give up the cottage and walk over to Frampton, where he had already secured a lodging.
Only twenty-four hours!—and he had not yet decided. Which was it to be—Saunders, after all—or the savings bank—or Bessie?
He was cording up his various possessions—a medley lot—in different parcels and bundles when Bessie Costrell knocked at the door. She had already offered to stow away anything he might like to leave with her.
"Well, I thought you'd be busy," she said as she walked in, "an' I came up to lend a hand. Is them the things you're goin' to leave me to take care on?"
John nodded.
"Field's cart, as takes Louisa's things to-morrer, is a-goin' to deliver these at your place first. They're more nor I thought they would be. But you can put 'em anywheres."
"Oh, I'll see to them."
She sat down and watched him tie the knots of the last parcel.
"There's some people as is real ill-natured," she said presently, in an angry voice.
"Aye?" said John, looking up sharply. "What are they sayin' now?"
"It's Muster Saunders. 'Ee's allus sayin' nassty things about other folks. And there'd be plenty of fault to be found with 'im, if onybody was to try. An' Sally Saunders eggs him on dreadful."
Saunders was the village smith, a tall, brawny man, of great size and corresponding wisdom, who had been the village arbiter and general councillor for a generation. There was not a will made in Clinton Magna that he did not advise upon; not a bit of contentious business that he had not a share in; not a family history that he did not know. His probity was undisputed; his ability was regarded with awe; but as he had a sharp tongue and was no respecter of persons, there was of course an opposition.
John took a seat on the wooden box he had just been cording, and mopped his brow. His full cheeks were crimson, partly with exertion, partly with sudden annoyance.
"What's 'ee been sayin' now? Though it doan't matter a brass farthin' to me what 'ee says."
"He says you 'aven't got no proper feelin's about poor Eliza, an' you'd ought to have done a great deal more for Louisa. But 'ee says you allus were a mean one with your money—an' you knew that'eeknew it—for 'ee'd stopped you takin' an unfair advantage more nor once. An' 'ee didn't believe as your money would come to any good; for now Eliza was gone you wouldn't know how to take care on it."
John's eyes flamed.
"Oh! 'ee says that, do 'ee? Well, Saunders wor allus a beast—an' a beast 'ee'll be."
He sat with his chin on his large dirty hands, ruminating furiously.
It was quite true that Saunders had thwarted him more than once. There was old Mrs. Moulsey at the shop, when she wanted to buy those cottages in Potter's Row—and there was Sam Field the higgler—both of them would have borrowed from him if Saunders hadn't cooled them off. Saunders said it was a Jew's interest he was asking—because there was security—but he wasn't going to accept a farthing less than his shilling a pound for three months—not he! So they might take it or leave it. And Mrs. Moulsey got hers from the Building Society, and Sam Field made shift to go without. And John Bolderfield was three pounds poorer that quarter than he need have been—all along of Saunders. And now Saunders was talking "agen him" like this—blast him!
"Oh, an' then he went on," pursued Bessie with gusto, "about your bein' too ignorant to put it in the post-office. 'Ee said you'd think Edwards would go an' spend it" (Edwards was the post-master), "an' then he laughed fit to split 'imself. Yer couldn't see more nor the length of your own nose, he said—it was edicationyouwanted. As for 'im, 'ee said, 'ee'd have kep' it for you if you'd asked him, but you'd been like a bear with a sore 'ead, 'ee said, ever since Mrs. Moulsey's affair—so 'ee didn't suppose you would."
"Well, 'ee's about right there," said John, grimly; "ee's talkin' sense for onst when 'ee says that. I'd dig a hole in the hill and bury it sooner nor I'd trust it to 'im—I would, by——" he swore vigorously. "A thieving set of magpies is all them Saunders—cadgin' 'ere and cadgin' there."
He spoke with fierce contempt, the tacit hatred of years leaping to sight. Bessie's bright brown eyes looked at him with sympathy.
"It was just his nassty spite," she said. "He knew'eecould never ha' done it—not what you've done—out o' your wages. Not unless 'ee got Sally to tie 'im to the dresser with ropes so as 'ee couldn't go a-near the Spotted Deer no more!"
She laughed like a merry child at her own witticism, and John relished it too, though he was not in a laughing mood.
"Why," continued Bessie with enthusiasm, "it was Muster Drew as said to me the other afternoon, as we was walkin' 'ome from the churchyard, says 'ee, 'Mrs. Costrell, I call it splendid what John's done—Ido,' 'ee says. 'A labourer on fifteen shillin's a week—why, it's an example to the county,' 'ee says. ''Ee ought to be showed.'"
John's face relaxed. The temper and obstinacy in the eyes began to yield to the weak complacency which was their more normal expression.
There was silence for a minute or two. Bessie sat with her hands on her lap and her face turned towards the open door. Beyond the cherry-red phloxes outside it the ground fell rapidly to the village, rising again beyond the houses to a great stubble field, newly shorn. Gleaners were already in the field, their bent figures casting sharp shadows on the golden upland, and the field itself stretched upwards to a great wood that lay folded round the top of a spreading hill. To the left, beyond the hill, a wide plain travelled into the sunset, its level spaces cut by the scrawled elms and hedgerows of the nearer landscape. The beauty of it all—the beauty of an English midland—was of a modest and measured sort, depending chiefly on bounties of sun and air, on the delicacies of gentle curves and the pleasant intermingling of wood and cornfield, of light spaces with dark, of solid earth and luminous sky.
Such as it was, however, neither Bessie nor John spared it a moment's attention. Bessie was thinking a hundred busy thoughts. John, on the other hand, had begun to consider her with an excited scrutiny. She was a handsome woman, as she sat in the doorway with her fine brown head turned to the light. But John naturally was not thinking of that. He was in the throes of decision.
"Look 'ere, Bessie," he said suddenly; "what 'ud you say if I wor to ask Isaac an' you to take care on it?"
Bessie started slightly. Then she looked frankly round at him. She had very keen, lively eyes, and a bright red-brown colour on thin cheeks. The village applied to her the epithet which John's thoughts had applied to Muster Hill's widow. They said she was "caselty," which means flighty, haphazard, excitable; but she was popular, nevertheless, and had many friends.
It was, of course, her own settled opinion that her uncle ought to leave that box with her and Isaac; and it had wounded her vanity, and her affection besides, that John had never yet made any such proposal, though she knew—as, indeed, the village knew—that he was perplexed as to what to do with his hoard. But she had never dared to suggest that he should leave it with her, out of fear of Eliza Bolderfield. Bessie was well aware that Eliza thought ill of her, and would dissuade John from any such arrangement if she could. And so formidable was Eliza—a woman of the hardest and sourest virtue—when she chose, that Bessie was afraid of her, even on her deathbed, though generally ready enough to quarrel with other people. Nevertheless, Bessie had always felt that it would be a crying shame and slight if she and Isaac did not have the guardianship of the money. She thirsted, perhaps, to make an impression upon public opinion in the village, which, as she instinctively realised, held her cheaply. And then, of course, there was the secret thought of John's death, and what might come of it. John had always loudly proclaimed that he meant to spend his money, and not leave it behind him. But the instinct of saving, once formed, is strong. John, too, might die sooner than he thought—and she and Isaac had children.
She had come up, indeed, that afternoon, haunted by a passionate desire to get the money into her hands; yet the mere sordidness of "expectations" counted for less in the matter than one would suppose. Vanity, a vague wish to ingratiate herself with her uncle, to avoid a slight—these were, on the whole, her strongest motives. At any rate, when he had once asked her the momentous question, she knew well what to say to him.
"Well, if you arst me," she said hastily, "of coursewethink as it's only nateral you should leave it with Isaac an' me, as is your own kith and kin. But we wasn't goin' to say nothin'; we didn't want to be pushin' of ourselves forward."
John rose to his feet. He was in his shirt-sleeves, which were rolled up. He pulled them down, put on his coat, an air of crisis on his fat face.
"Where 'ud you put it?" he said.
"Yer know that cupboard by the top of the stairs? It 'ud stand there easy. And the cupboard's got a good lock to it; but we'd 'ave it seen to, to make sure."
She looked up at him eagerly. She longed to feel herself trusted and important. Her self-love was too often mortified in these respects.
John fumbled round his neck for the bit of black cord on which he kept two keys—the key of his room while he was away and the key of the box itself.
"Well, let's get done with it," he said. "I'm off to-morrer mornin', six o'clock. You go and get Isaac to come down."
"I'll run," said Bessie, catching up her shawl and throwing it over her head. "He wor just finishin' his tea."
And she whirled out of the cottage, running up the steep road behind it as fast as she could. John was vaguely displeased by her excitement; but the die was cast. He went to make his arrangements.
Bessie ran till she was out of breath. When she reached her own house, a cottage in a side lane above the Bolderfields' cottage and overlooking it from the back, she found her husband sitting with his pipe at the open door and reading his newspaper. Three out of her own four children were playing in the lane, otherwise there was no one about.
Isaac greeted her with a nod and slight lightening of the eyes, which, however, hardly disturbed the habitual sombreness of the face. He was a dark, finely featured man, with grizzled hair, carrying himself with an air of sleepy melancholy. He was much older than his wife, and was a prominent leader in the little Independent chapel of the village. His melancholy could give way on occasion to fits of violent temper. For instance, he had been almost beside himself when Bessie, who had leanings to the Establishment, as providing a far more crowded and entertaining place of resort on Sundays than her husband's chapel, had rashly proposed to have the youngest baby christened in church. Other Independents did it freely—why not she? But Isaac had been nearly mad with wrath, and Bessie had fled upstairs from him, with her baby, and bolted the bedroom door in bodily terror. Otherwise, he was a most docile husband—in the neighbours' opinion, docile to absurdity. He complained of nothing, and took notice of little. Bessie's untidy ways left him indifferent; his main interest was in a kind of religious dreaming, and in an Independent paper to which he occasionally wrote a letter. He was a gardener at a small house on the hill, and had rather more education than most of his fellows in the village. For the rest, he was fond of his children, and, in his heart of hearts, exceedingly proud of his wife, her liveliness and her good looks. She had been a remarkably pretty girl when he married her, some eight years after his first wife's death, and there was a great difference of age between them. His two elder children by his first marriage had long since left home. The girl was in service. It troubled him to think of the boy, who had fallen into bad ways early. Bessie's children were all small, and she herself still young, though over thirty.
When Bessie came up to him, she looked round to see that no one could hear. Then she stooped and told him her errand in a panting whisper. He must go down and fetch the box at once. She had promised John Borrofull that they would stand by him. They were his own flesh and blood—and the cupboard had a capital lock—and there wasn't no fear of it at all.
Isaac listened to her at first with amazement, then sulkily. She had talked to him often certainly about John's money, but it had made little impression on his dreamer's sense. And now her demand struck him disagreeably.
He didn't want the worrit of other people's money, he said. Let them as owned it keep it; filthy lucre was a snare to all as had to do with it; and it would only bring a mischief to have it in the house.
After a few more of these objections, Bessie lost her temper. She broke into a torrent of angry arguments and reproaches, mainly turning, it seemed, upon a recent visit to the house of Isaac's eldest son. The drunken ne'er-do-weel had given Bessie much to put up with. Oh yes!—shewas to be plagued out of her life by Isaac's belongings, and he wouldn't do a pin's worth for her. Just let him see next time, that was all.
Isaac smoked vigorously through it all. But she was hammering on a sore point.
"Oh, it's just like yer!" Bessie flung at him at last in desperation. "You're allus the same—a mean-spirited feller, stannin' in your children's way! 'Ow doyouknow who old John's going to leave his money to? 'Ow doyouknow as he wouldn't leave it tothempoor innercents"—she waved her hand tragically towards the children playing in the road—"if we was just a bit nice and friendly with him now 'ee's gettin' old? But you don't care, not you!—one 'ud think yer were made o' money—an' that little un there not got the right use of his legs!"
She pointed, half crying, to the second boy, who had already shown signs of hip disease.
Isaac still smoked, but he was troubled in his mind. A vague presentiment held him, but the pressure brought to bear upon him was strong.
"I tell yer the lock isn't a good 'un!" he said, suddenly removing his pipe.
Bessie stopped instantly in the middle of another tirade. She was leaning against the door, arms akimbo, eyes alternately wet and flaming.
"Then, if it isn't," she said, with a triumphant change of tone, "I'll soon get Flack to see to it—it's nobbut a step. I'll run up after supper."
Flack was the village carpenter.
"An' there's mother's old box as takes up the cupboard," continuedIsaac gruffly.
Bessie burst out laughing.
"Oh! yer old silly," she said. "As if they couldn't stand one top o' the t'other. Now, do just go, Isaac—there's a lovey! 'Ee's waitin' for yer. Whatever did make yer so contrairy? Of course I didn't mean nothin' I said—an' I don't mind Timothy, nor nothin'."
Still he did not move.
"Then I s'pose yer want everybody in the village to know?" he said with sarcasm.
Bessie was taken aback.
"No—I—don't—" she said undecidedly—"I don't know what yer mean."
"You go back and tell John as I'll come when it's dark, an', if he's not a stupid, he won't want me to come afore."
Bessie understood and acquiesced. She ran back with her message toJohn.
At half-past eight, when it had grown almost dark, Isaac descended the hill. John opened the door to his knock.
"Good evenin', Isaac. Yer'll take it, will yer?"
"If you can't do nothin' better with it," said Isaac, unwillingly."But in gineral I'm not partial on keeping other folk's money."
John liked him all the better for his reluctance.
"It'll give yer no trouble," he said. "You lock it up, an' it'll be all safe. Now, will yer lend a hand?"
Isaac stepped to the door, looked up the lane, and saw that all was quiet. Then he came back, and the two men raised the box.
As they crossed the threshold, however, the door of the next cottage—which belonged to Watson, the policeman—opened suddenly. John, in his excitement, was so startled that he almost dropped his end of the box.
"Why, Bolderfield," said Watson's cheery voice, "what have you got there? Do you want a hand?"
"No, I don't—thank yer kindly," said John in agitation. "An', ifyouplease, Muster Watson, don't yer say nothin' to nobody."
The burly policeman looked from John to Isaac, then at the box. John's hoard was notorious, and the officer of the law understood.
"Lor' bless yer," he said, with a laugh, "I'm safe. Well, good evenin' to yer, if I can't be of any assistance."
And he went off on his beat.
The two men carried the box up the hill. It was in itself a heavy, old-fashioned affair, strengthened and bottomed with iron. Isaac wondered whether the weight of it were due more to the box or to the money. But he said nothing. He had no idea how much John might have saved, and would not have asked him the direct question for the world. John's own way of talking about his wealth was curiously contradictory. His "money" was rarely out of his thoughts or speech, but no one had ever been privileged for many years now to see the inside of his box, except Eliza once; and no one but himself knew the exact amount of the hoard. It delighted him that the village gossips should double or treble it. Their estimates only gave him the more ground for vague boasting, and he would not have said a word to put them right.
When they reached the Costrells' cottage, John's first care was to examine the cupboard. He saw that the large wooden chest filled with odds and ends of rubbish which already stood there was placed on the top of his own box. Then he tried the lock, and pronounced it adequate; he didn't want to have Flack meddling round. Now, at the moment of parting with his treasure, he was seized with a sudden fever of secrecy. Bessie meanwhile hovered about the two men, full of excitement and loquacity. And the children, shut into the kitchen, wondered what could be the matter.
When all was done, Isaac locked the cupboard, and solemnly presented the key to John, who added it to the other round his neck. Then Bessie unlocked the kitchen, and sent the children flying, to help her with the supper. She was in her most bustling and vivacious mood, and she had never cooked the bloaters better or provided a more ample jug of beer. But John was silent and depressed.
He took leave at last with many sighs and lingerings. But he had not been gone half an hour, and Bessie and Isaac were just going to bed, when there was a knock at the door, and he reappeared.
"Let me lie down there," he said, pointing to a broken-down old sofa that ran under the window. "I'm lonesome somehow, an' I've told Louisa." His white hair and whiskers stood out wildly round his red face. He looked old and ill, and the sympathetic Bessie was sorry for him.
She made him a bed on the sofa, and he lay there all night, restless, and sighing heavily. He missed Eliza more than he had done yet, and was oppressed with a vague sense of unhappiness. Once, in the middle of the night when all was still, he stole upstairs in his stockinged feet and gently tried the cupboard door. It was quite safe, and he went down contented.
An hour or two later he was off, trudging to Frampton through theAugust dawn, with his bundle on his back.
Some five months passed away.
One January night the Independent minister of Clinton Magna was passing down the village street. Clinton lay robed in light snow, and "sparkling to the moon." The frozen pond beside the green, though it was nearly eight o'clock, was still alive with children, sliding and shouting. All around the gabled roofs stood laden and spotless. The woods behind the village, and those running along the top of the snowy hill, were meshed in a silvery mist which died into the moonlit blue, while in the fields the sharpness of the shadows thrown by the scattered trees made a marvel of black and white.
The minister, in spite of a fighting creed, possessed a measure of gentler susceptibilities, and the beauty of this basin in the chalk hills, this winter triumphant, these lights of home and fellowship in the cottage windows disputing the forlornness of the snow, crept into his soul. His mind travelled from the physical purity and hardness before him to the purity and hardness of the inner life—the purity that Christ blessed, the "hardness" that the Christian endures. And such thoughts brought him pleasure as he walked—the mystic's pleasure.
Suddenly he saw a woman cross the snowy green in front of him. She had come from the road leading to the hill, and her pace was hurried. Her shawl was muffled round her head, but he recognised her, and his mood fell. She was the wife of Isaac Costrell, and she was hurrying to the Spotted Deer, a public-house which lay just beyond the village, on the road to the mill. Already several times that week had he seen her going in or coming out. Talk had begun to reach him, and he said to himself to-night as he saw her—that Isaac Costrell's wife was going to ruin.
The thought oppressed him, pricked his pastoral conscience. Isaac was his right-hand man: dull to all the rest of the world, but not dull to the minister. With Mr. Drew sometimes he would break into talk of religion, and the man's dark eyes would lose their film. His big troubled self spoke with that accent of truth which lifts common talk and halting texts to poetry. The minister, himself more of a pessimist than his sermons showed, felt a deep regard for him. Could nothing be done to save Isaac's wife and Isaac? Not so long ago Bessie Costrell had been a decent woman, though a flighty and excitable one. Now some cause, unknown to the minister, had upset a wavering balance, and was undoing a life.
As he passed the public-house a man came out, and through the open doorMr. Drew caught a momentary glimpse of the bar and the drinkers.Bessie's handsome, reckless head stood out an instant in the bright light.
Then Drew saw that the man who had emerged was Watson the policeman. They greeted each other cordially and walked on together. Watson also was a member of the minister's flock. Mr. Drew felt suddenly moved to unburden himself.
"That was Costrell's wife, Watson, wasn't it, poor thing?"
"Aye, it wor Mrs. Costrell," said Watson in the tone of concern natural to the respectable husband and father.
The minister sighed. "It's terrible the way she's gone downhill the last three months. I never pass almost but I see her going in there or coming out."
"No," said Watson, slowly, "no, it's bad. What I'd like to know," he added reflectively, "is where she gets the money from."
"Oh, she had a legacy, hadn't she, in August? It seems to have been a curse. She has been a changed woman ever since."
"Yes, she had a legacy," said Watson dubiously; "but I don't believe it was much. She talked big, of course, and made a lot o' fuss—she's that kind o' woman—just as she did about old John's money."
"Old John's money?—Ah! did any one ever know what became of that?"
"Well, there's many people thinks as Isaac has got it hid in the house somewhere, and there's others thinks he's put it in Bedford bank. Edwards told me private he didn't know nothing about it at the post-office, an' Bessie told my wife as John had given Isaac the keepin' of it till he come back again; but he'd knock her about, she said, if she let on what he'd done with it. That's the story she's allus had, and boastin', of course, dreadful, about John's trustin' them, and Isaac doin' all his business for him."
The minister reflected.—"And you say the legacy wasn't much?"
"Well, sir, I know some people over at Bedford where her aunt lived as left it her, and they were sure it wasn't a great deal; but you never know."
"And Isaac never said?"
"Bless yer, no, sir! He was never a great one for talking, wasn't Isaac; but you'd think now as he'd never learnt how. He'll set there in the Club of a night and never open his mouth to nobody."
"Perhaps he's fretting about his wife, Watson?"
"Well, I don't believe as he knows much about her goin's-on—not all, leastways. I've seen her wait till he was at his work or gone to the Club, and then run down the hill,—tearin'—with her hair flyin'—you'd think she'd gone silly. Oh, it's a bad business," said Watson, strongly, "an' uncommon bad business—all them young children too."
"I never saw her drunk, Watson."
"No—yer wouldn't. Nor I neither. But she'll treat half the parish if she gets the chance. I know many young fellers as go to the Spotted Deer just because they know she'll treat 'em, She's a-doin' of it now—there's lots of 'em. And allus changin' such a queer lot of money too—odd half-crowns—years and years old—King George the Third, sir. No—it's strange—very strange."
The two walked on into the darkness, still talking.
Meanwhile, inside the Spotted Deer Bessie Costrell was treating her hangers-on. She had drunk one glass of gin and water—it had made a beauty of her in the judgment of the tap-room, such a kindling had it given to her brown eyes and such a redness to her cheek. Bessie, in truth, had reached her moment of physical prime. The marvel was that there were no lovers in addition to the drinking and the extravagance. But the worst of the village scandal-mongers knew of none. Since this new phase of character in her had developed, she would drink and make merry with any young fellow in the place, but it went no farther. She wasbonne camaradewith all the world—no more. Perhaps at bottom some coolness of temperament protected her; nobody, at any rate, suspected that it had anything to do with Isaac, or that she cared a ha'porth for so lugubrious and hypocritical a husband.
She had showered drinks on all her friends, and had, moreover, chattered and screamed herself hoarse, when the church-clock outside slowly struck eight. She started, changed countenance, and got up to pay at once.
"Why, there's another o' them half-crowns o' yourn, Bessie," said a consumptive-looking girl in a bedraggled hat and feathers, as Mrs. Costrell handed her coin to the landlord. "Wheriver do yer get 'em?"
"If yer don't ask no questions, I won't tell yer no lies," said Bessie, with quick impudence. "Where did you get them hat and feathers?"
There was a coarse laugh from the company. The girl in the hat reddened furiously, and she and Bessie—both of them in a quarrelsome state—began to bandy words.
Meanwhile the landlord was showing the coin to his assistant at the bar.
"Rum, ain't it? I niver seed one o' them pieces in the village afore this winter, an' I've been 'ere twenty-two year come April."
A decent-looking labourer, who did not often visit the Spotted Deer, was leaning over the bar and caught the words.
"Well, then, I 'ave," he said promptly. "I mind well as when I were a lad, sixteen year ago, my fayther borrered a bit o' money off John Bolderfield, to buy a cow with—an' there was 'arf of it in them 'arf-crowns."
Those standing near overheard. Bessie and the girl stopped quarrelling. The landlord, startled, cast a sly eye in Bessie's direction. She came up to the bar.
"What's that yer sayin'?" she demanded. The man repeated his remark.
"Well, I dessay there was," said Bessie—"I dessay there was. I s'pose there's plenty of 'em. Where do I get 'em?—why, I get 'em at Bedford, of course, when I goes for my money."
She looked round defiantly. No one said anything; but everybody instinctively suspected a lie. The sudden silence was striking.
"Well, give me my change, will yer?" she said impatiently to the landlord. "I can't stan' here all night."
He gave it to her, and she went out showering reckless good-nights, to which there was little response. The door had no sooner closed upon her than every one in the tap-room pressed round the bar in a close gathering of heads and tongues.
Bessie ran across the green and began to climb the hill at a rapid pace. Her thin woollen shawl blown back by the wind left her arms and bosom exposed. But the effects of the spirit in her veins prevented any sense of cold, though it was a bitter night.
Once or twice, as she toiled up the hill, she gave a loud sudden sob.
"Oh, my God!" she said to herself. "My God!"
When she was half-way up she met a neighbour.
"Have yer seen Isaac?" Bessie asked her, panting.
"'Ee's at the Club, arn't 'ee?" said the woman. "Well, they won't be up yet. Jim tolt me as Muster Perris"—Muster Perris was the vicar of Clinton Magna—"'ad got a strange gen'leman stayin' with 'im, and was goin' to take him into the Club to-night to speak to 'em. 'Ee's a bishop, they ses—someun from furrin parts."
Bessie threw her good-night and climbed on.
When she reached the cottage the lamp was flaming on the table and the fire was bright. Her lame boy had done all she had told him, and her miserable heart softened. She hurriedly put out some food for Isaac. Then she lit a candle and went up to look at the children. They were all asleep in the room to the right of the stairs—the two little boys in one bed, the two little girls in the other, each pair huddled together against the cold, like dormice in a nest. Then she looked, conscience-stricken, at the untidiness of the room. She had bought the children a wonderful number of new clothes lately, and, the family being quite unused to such abundance, there was no place to keep them in. A new frock was flung down in a corner just as it had been taken off; the kitten was sleeping on Arthur's last new jacket; a smart hat with a bunch of poppies in it was lying about the floor; and under the iron beds could be seen a confusion of dusty boots, new and old. The children were naturally reckless, like their mother, and they had been getting used to new things. What excited them now, more than the acquisitions themselves, was that their mother had strictly forbidden them ever to show any of their new clothes to their father. If they did, she would beat them well, she said. That they understood; and life was thereby enriched, not only by new clothes but by a number of new emotions and terrors.
If Bessie noted the state of the room, she made no attempt to mend it. She smoothed back the hair from the boys' foreheads with a violent, shaky hand, and kissed them all, especially Arthur. Then she went out and closed the door behind her.
Outside she stood a moment on the tiny landing—listening. Not a sound; but the cottage walls were thin. If any one came along the lane with heavy boots she must hear them. Very like he would be half an hour yet.
She ran down the stairs and shut the door at the bottom of them, opening into the kitchen. It had no key, or she would have locked it; and in her agitation, her state of clouded brain, she forgot the outer door altogether. Hurrying up again, she sat down on the topmost step, putting her candle on the boards beside her. The cupboard at the stair-head where John had left his money was close to her left hand.
As she sank into the attitude of rest, her first instinct was to cry and bemoan herself. Deep in her woman's being great floods of tears were rising, and would fain have spent themselves. But she fought them down, rapidly passing instead into a state of cold terror—terror of Isaac's step—terror of discovery—of the man in the public-house.
There was a mousehole in the skirting of the stairs close to the cupboard. She slipped in a finger, felt along an empty space behind, and drew out a key.
It turned easily in the cupboard lock, and the two boxes stood revealed, standing apparently just as they stood when John left them. In hot haste Bessie dragged the treasure-box from under the other, starting at every sound in the process, at the thud the old wooden trunk made on the floor of the cupboard as its supporter was withdrawn, at the rustle of her own dress. All the boldness she had shown at the Spotted Deer had vanished. She was now the mere trembling and guilty woman.
The lock on Bolderfield's box had been forced long before; it opened to her hand. A heap of sovereigns and half-sovereigns lay on one side, divided by a wooden partition from the few silver coins, crowns and half-crowns, still lying on the other. She counted both the gold and silver, losing her reckoning again and again, because of the sudden anguish of listening that would overtake her.
Thirty-six pounds on the one side, not much more than thirty shillings on the other. When John left it there had been fifty-one pounds in gold, and rather more than twenty pounds in silver, most of it in half-crowns. Ah! she knew the figures well.
Did that man who had spoken to the landlord in the public-house suspect? How strange they had all looked! What a silly fool she had been to change so much of the silver, instead of sticking to the gold! Yet she had thought the gold would be noticed more.
When was old John coming back? He had written once from Frampton to say that he was "laid up bad with the rheumatics," and was probably going into the Frampton Infirmary. That was in November. Since then nothing had been heard of him. John was no scholar. What if he died without coming back? There would be no trouble then, except—except with Isaac.
Her mind suddenly filled with wild visions—of herself marched through the village by Watson, as she had once seen him march a poacher who had mauled one of Mr. Forrest's keepers—of the towering walls of Frampton jail—of a visible physical shame which would kill her—drive her mad. If, indeed, Isaac did not kill her before any one but he knew! He had been that cross and glum all these last weeks—never a bit of talk hardly—always snapping at her and the children. Yet he had never said a word to her about the drink—nor about the things she had bought. As to the "things" and the bills, she believed that he knew nothing—had noticed nothing. At home he was always smoking, sitting silent, with dim eyes, like a man in a dream—or reading his father's old books, "good books," which filled Bessie with a sense of dreariness unspeakable—or pondering his weekly paper.
But she believed he had begun to notice the drink. Drinking was universal in Clinton, though there was not much drunkenness. Teetotalers were unknown, and Isaac himself drank his beer freely, and a glass of spirits, like anybody else, on occasion. She had been used for years to fetch his beer from the public, and she had been careful. But there were signs——
Oh! if she could only think of some way of putting it back—this thirty odd pounds. She held her head between her hands, thinking and thinking. Couldn't that little lawyer man to whom she went every month at Bedford, to fetch her legacy money—couldn't he lend it her, and keep her money till it was paid? She could make up a story, and give him something for himself to induce him to hold his tongue. She had thought of this often before, but never so urgently as now. She would take the carrier's cart to Bedford next day, while Isaac was at work, and try.
Yet all the time despair was at her heart. So hard to undo! Yet how easy it had been to take and to spend. She thought of that day in September, when she had got the news of her legacy—six shillings a week from an old aunt—her father's aunt, whose very existence she had forgotten. The wild delight of it! Isaac got sixteen shillings a week in wages—here was nearly half as much again. She was warned that it would come to an end in two years. But none the less it seemed to her a fortune—and all her life, before it came, mere hard pinching and endurance. She had always been one to spend where she could. Old John had often rated her for it. So had Isaac. But that was his money. This was hers, and he who, for religious reasons, had never made friends with or thought well of any of her family, instinctively disliked the money which had come from them, and made few inquiries into the spending of it.
Oh! the joy of those first visits to Frampton, when all the shops had seemed to be there for her, and she their natural mistress! How ready people had been to trust her in the village! How tempting it had been to brag and make a mystery! That old skinflint, Mrs. Moulsey, at "the shop," she had been all sugar and sweetsthen.
And a few weeks later—six, seven weeks later—about the beginning of October, these halcyon days had all come to an end. She owed what she could not pay—people had ceased to smile upon her—she was harassed, excited, worried out of her life.
Old familiar wonder of such a temperament! How can it be so easy to spend, so delightful to promise, and so unreasonably, so unjustly difficult, to pay?
She began to be mortally afraid of Isaac—of the effect of disclosures. One night she was alone in the cottage, almost beside herself under the pressure of one or two claims she could not meet—one claim especially, that of a little jeweller, from whom she had bought a gold ring and a brooch at Frampton—when the thought of John's hoard swept upon her—clutched her like something living and tyrannical, not to be shaken off.
It struck her all in an instant that there was another cupboard in the little parlour, exactly like that on the stairs. The lower cupboard had a key—what if it fitted?
The Devil must have been eager and active that night, for the key turned in the lock with a smoothness that made honesty impossible—almost foolish. And the old, weak lock on the box itself—why, a chisel had soon made an end of that! Only five minutes—it had been so quick—there had been no trouble. God had made no sign at all.
Since! All the village smiles—the village flatteries recovered—an orgie of power and pleasure—new passions and excitements—above all, the rising passion of drink, sweeping in storms through a weak nature that alternately opened to them and shuddered at them. And through everything the steadily dribbling away of the hoard—the astonishing ease and rapidity with which the coins—gold or silver—had flowed through her hands! How could one spend so much in meat and dress, in beer and gin, in giving other people beer and gin? How was it possible? She sat lost in miserable thoughts, a mist around her. . . .
"Wal, I niver!" said a low, astonished voice at the foot of the stairs.
Bessie rose to her feet with a shriek, the heart stopping in her breast. The door below was ajar, and through the opening peered a face—the vicious, drunken face of her husband's eldest son, Timothy Costrell.
The man below cast one more look of amazement at the woman standing on the top stair, at the candle behind her, at the open box. Then an idea struck him: he sprang up the stairs at a bound.
"By gosh!" he said, looking down at the gold and silver. "By gosh!"
Bessie tried to thrust him back. "What are you here for?" she asked fiercely, her trembling lips the colour of the whitewashed wall behind. "You get off at onst, or I'll call yer father."
He pushed her contemptuously aside. The swish of her dress caught the candle, and by good fortune put it out, or she would have been in a blaze. Now there was only the light from the paraffin lamp in the kitchen below striking upwards through the open door.
She fell against the doorway of her bedroom, panting and breathless, watching him.
He seated himself in her place, and stooped to look at the box. On the inside of the lid was pasted a discoloured piece of paper, and on the paper was written, in a round, laborious hand, the name, "John Bolderfield."
"My blazes!" he said slowly, his bloodshot eyes opening wider than ever."It's old John's money! So yo've been after it, eh?"
He turned to her with a grin, one hand on the box. He had been tramping for more than three months, during which time they had heard nothing of him. His filthy clothes scarcely hung together. His cheeks were hollow and wolfish. From the whole man there rose a sort of exhalation of sodden vice. Bessie had seen him drunken and out at elbows before, but never so much of the beast as this.
However, by this time she had somewhat recovered herself, and, approaching him, she stooped and tried to shut the box.
"You take yourself off," she said, desperately, pushing him with her fist. "That money's no business o' yourn, It's John's, an' he's comin' back directly. He gave it us to look after, an' I wor countin' it. March!—there's your father comin'!"
And with all her force she endeavoured to wrench his hand away. He tore it from her, and hit out at her backwards—a blow that sent her reeling against the wall.
"Yo take yer meddlin' fist out o' that!" he said. "Father ain't coming, and if he wor, I 'spect I could manage the two on yer—Keowntin'it—" he mimicked her. "Oh! yer a precious innercent, ain't yer? But I know all about yer. Bless yer, I've been in at the Spotted Deer to-night, and there worn't nothin' else talked of but yo' and yor goin's on. There won't be a tongue in the place to-morrow that won't be a-waggin' about yer—yur a public charickter, yo' are—they'll be sendin' the reporters down on yer for a hinterview. 'Where the devil do she get the money?' they says."
He threw his curly head back and laughed till his sides shook.
"Lor', I didn't think I wor going to know quite so soon! An' sich queer 'arf-crowns, they ses, as she keeps a-changin'. Jarge somethin'—an old cove in a wig. An' 'ere they is, I'll be blowed—some on 'em. Well, yer a nice 'un, yer are!"
He stared her up and down with a kind of admiration.
Bessie began to cry feebly—the crying of a lost soul.
"Tim, if yer'll go away an' hold yer tongue, I'll give yer five o' them suverins, and not tell yer father nothin'."
"Five on 'em?" he said, grinning. "Five on 'em, eh?"
And, dipping his hands into the box, he began deliberately shovelling the whole hoard into his trousers and waist-coat pockets.
Bessie flung herself upon him. He gave her one business-like blow, which knocked her down against the bedroom door. The door yielded to her fall, and she lay there half stunned, the blood dripping from her temple.
"Noa, I'll not take 'em all," he said, not even troubling to look where she had fallen. "That 'ud be playing it rayther too low down on old John. I'll leave 'im two—jest two—for luck."
He buttoned up his coat tightly, then turned to throw a last glance at Bessie. He had always disliked his father's second wife, and his sense of triumph was boundless.
"Oh! yer not hurt," he said; "yer shammin'. I advise yer to look sharp with shuttin' up. Father'll be up the hill in two or three minutes now. Sorry I can't 'elp yer, now yer've set me up so comfortabul. Bye-bye!"
He ran down the stairs. She, as her senses revived, heard him open the back-door, cross the little garden, and jump the hedge at the end of it.
Then she lay absolutely motionless, till suddenly there struck on her ear the distant sound of heavy steps. They roused her like a goad. She dragged herself to her feet, shut the box, had just time to throw it into the cupboard and lock the door, when she heard her husband walk into the kitchen. She crept into her own room, threw herself on the bed, and wrapped her head and eyes in an old shawl, shivering so that the mattresses shook.
"Bessie, where are yer?"
She did not answer. He made a sound of astonishment, and, finding no candle, took the lamp and mounted the stairs. They were covered with traces of muddy snow, and at the top he stooped to examine a spot upon the boards. It was blood; and his heart thumped in his breast.
"Bessie, whatever is the matter?"
For by this time he had perceived her on the bed. He put down the lamp and came to the bedside to look at her.
"I've 'ad a fall," she said, faintly. "I tripped up over my skirt as I wor comin' up to look at Arthur. My head's all bleedin'. Get me some water from over there."
His countenance fell sadly. But he got the water, exclaiming when he saw the wound.
He bathed it clumsily, then tied a bit of rag round it, and made her head easy with the pillow. She did not speak, and he sat on beside her, looking at her pale face, and torn, as the silent minutes passed, between conflicting impulses. He had just passed an hour listening to a good man's plain narrative of a life spent for Christ, amid fever-swamps, and human beings more deadly still. The vicar's friend was a missionary bishop, and a High Churchman; Isaac, as a staunch Dissenter by conviction and inheritance, thought ill both of bishops and Ritualists. Nevertheless, he had been touched; he had been fired. Deep, though often perplexed, instincts in his own heart had responded to the spiritual passion of the speaker. The religious atmosphere had stolen about him, melting and subduing.
And the first effect of it had been to quicken suddenly his domestic conscience; to make him think painfully of Bessie and the children as he climbed the hill. Was his wife going the way of his son? And he, sitting day after day like a dumb dog, instead of striving with her!
He made up his mind hurriedly. "Bessie," he said, stooping to her and speaking in a strange voice, "Bessie, had yer been to Dawson's?"
Dawson was the landlord of the Spotted Deer.
Bessie was long in answering. At last she said, almost inaudibly—
"Yes."
She fully understood what he had meant by the question, and she wondered whether he would fall into one of his rages and beat her.
Instead, his hand sought clumsily for hers.
"Bessie, yer shouldn't; yer mustn't do it no more; it'll make a bad woman of yer. I know as I'm not good to live with; I don't make things pleasant to yer; but I've been thinkin'; I'll try if yo'll try."