Mrs. Humphry Ward

“ Suddenly, as he tramped on, he caught sight against the hill of Bessie's cottage, the blue smoke from it blown across the rime-laden trees behind it. He drew in his breath with a deep, tremulous delight. That buoyant self-congratulation indeed which had stood between him and the pain of Eliza's death was gone. Rather, there was in him a profound yearning for rest, for long dreaming by the fire or in the sun, with his pipe to smoke, and Jim's Louisa to look after him, and nothing to do but to draw a half-crown from his box when he wanted it. No more hard work in rain and cold ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ SCENE V So the husband and wife were left together in the cottage room. The door had no sooner closed on Saunders and his companions than Isaac was seized with that strange sense of walking amid things unreal upon a wavering earth which is apt to beset the man who has any portion of the dreamer's temperament under any sudden rush of circumstance. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Bessie was always very civil to him—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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ John tried once or twice to speak to him, but Isaac shook his head impatiently. At last the mere presence of Bolderfield in the room seemed to anger him. He threw the old man such dark and restless looks that Mary Anne perceived them, and, with instinctive understanding, persuaded John to go. ”

“ Yet in truth, during the years that followed, whenever he was not under the influence of recurrent attacks of melancholia, Isaac did again derive much comfort from the aspirations and self-abasements of religion. No human life would be possible if there were not forces in and round man perpetually tending to repair the wounds and breaches that he himself makes. Misery provokes pity; despair throws itself on a Divine tenderness. ”

“ They'll be known all their life now—as 'avin' 'ad sich a woman for their mother!"
A demon of passion possessed him more and more. He looked at her with murderous eyes, his hand on the table working.
For his world, too, lay in ruins about him. Through many hard-working and virtuous years he had counted among the righteous men of the village—the men whom the Almighty must needs reckon to the good whenever the score of Clinton Magna had to be made up. ”

“ The child hurried on with her, sobbing, and she was soon on the stairs beside the unconscious John.
Mary Anne looked with amazement at the cupboard and the open box. Then she laid the old man on the floor, her gentle face working with the effort to remember what the doctor had once told her of the best way of dealing with persons in a faint. She got water, and she sent Arthur to a neighbour for brandy. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As she lay in this new-found dignity, the proud peace of her look intimidated, accused him—would always accuse him till he too rested as she rested now, clad for the end. Yet she had bade him kiss her—and he obeyed her—groaning within himself, incapable altogether, out of sheer abasement, of saying those words she had asked of him. ”

“ Bessie closed the door, leant against it, and folded her arms. She was white and haggard, but perfectly cool. In this moment of excitement it struck neither John nor Mary Anne—nor, indeed, herself—that her manner, with its brutality, and its poorly feigned surprise, was the most revealing element in the situation.
"What's all this about yer money?" she said, staring John in the face. "What do I know about yer money? 'Ow dare yer say such things? I 'aven't anythin' to do with it, an' never 'ad." ”

“ 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. ”

“ Meanwhile, the hours floated by, dressed in a colour and variety they had never yet possessed for her—charged with all the delights of wealth, as such a human being under such conditions is able to conceive them. ”

“ I promised Eliza I wouldn't forget yer, and I won't. I can work yet—there's plenty o' people want me to work for 'em—an' maybe, when yer get over this, you'll work a bit too now and again. We'll hold together, John—anyways. While I live and keep my 'elth yer shan't want. An' yer'll forgive Bessie"—she broke into sudden sobbing. "Oh! I'll never 'ear a crule word about Bessie in my 'ouse, never!" ”

“ Costrell, sartinly," he said, with emphasis. "Come along, John. Yer must get Watson and put it in 'is hands. 'Ee's the law, is Watson. Maybe as Mrs. Costrell 'ull listen to 'im."
Mary Anne ran to Bessie in despair.
"Oh, Bessie, Bessie, my dear—don't let 'em get Watson; let 'em look into 't theirselves—it'll be better for yer, my dear, it will."
Bessie looked from one to the other, panting. Then she turned back to the table.
"I don' care what they do," she said, with sullen passion. "I'm not stannin' in any one's way, I tell yer. The more they finds out the better I'm pleased." ”

“ 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?" ”

“ 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 ”

“ A sound of scorn broke from Isaac.
"Yo' should ha' thought o' that," he said. "Yo' should ha' thought o' that. An' what you've been sayin' about Timothy don't make it a 'aporth the better—not for yo'! Yo' led 'im into it too—if it 'adn't been for yo', 'ee'd never ha' seen the cursed stuff. Yo've dragged 'im down worse nor 'ee were—an' yerself—an' the childer—an' me. An' the drink, an' the lyin'!—it turns a man's stomach to think on it. An' I've been livin' with yer—these twelve years. I wish to the Lord I'd never seen yer—as the children 'ad never been born! ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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" ”

“ 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." ”

“ It's orful—fer the children ull 'ave no mother, an' I don't know however Arthur 'ull manage. But yer woodent shew me no mercy, an' I can't think of anythin' different. I did love yer an' the childer, but the drink got holt of me. Yer mus' see as Arthur is rapped up, an' Edie's eyes 'ull 'ave to be seen to now an' agen. I'm sorry, but there's nothin' else. I wud like yer to kiss me onst, when they bring me in, and jes say, Bessie, I forgive yer. It won't do yer no 'arm, an' p'raps I may 'ear it without your knowin'. So good-bye, Isaac, from yur lovin' wife, Bessie. . . . ”