Mrs. Humphry Ward

“ And for those who have the 'grace' of faith, in the broken and imperfect action of these healing powers upon this various world—in the love of the merciful for the unhappy, in the tremulous yet undying hope that pierces even sin and remorse with the vision of some ultimate salvation from the self that breeds them—in these powers there speaks the only voice which can make us patient under the tragedies of human fate, whether these tragedies be 'the falls of princes' or such meaner, narrower pains as brought poor Bessie Costrell to her end. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Watson was among the first of those who gathered round the well. He and others lowered Isaac with ropes into its icy depths, and drew him up again, while the snow beat upon them all—the straining men—two dripping shapes emerging from the earth. A murmur of horror greeted the first sight of that marred face on Isaac's arm, as the lanterns fell upon it. For there was a gash above the eye, caused by a projection in the hard chalk side of the well, which of itself spoke death. ”

“ Isaac Costrell's was a strange and groping soul. But those misjudged him who called him a hypocrite.
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. ”

“ 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 'extempry 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. ”

“ 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. Then he sat down beside her, motionless. 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. ”

“ No one felt the smallest hope. Yet with that futile tenderness all can show to the dead, everything was tried. Mary Anne Waller came—white and speechless—and her deft gentle hands did whatever the village doctor told her. And there were many other women, too, who did their best. Some of them, had Bessie dared to live, would have helped with all their might to fill her cup of punishment to the brim. ”

“ She looked at them from time to time, by the light of a bit of a candle she had placed on a box beside her; but she did not kiss them, and her eyes had no tears. From time to time she looked quickly round her, as though startled by a sound, a breathing.
Presently, shivering with cold, she went into her own room. There, mechanically, she took off her outer dress, as though to go to bed; but when she had done so her hands fell by her side; she stood motionless till, suddenly wrapping an old shawl round her, she took up her candle and went downstairs again. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 round 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The melancholia, which religion had more or less restrained and comforted during a troubled lifetime, became on this tragic night a wild-beast impulse that must have its prey.
He rose suddenly and came towards her, his eyes glaring, and a burst of invective on his white lips. Then he made a rush for a heavy stick that leant against the wall.
She fled from him, reached her bedroom in safety, and bolted the door. ”

“ 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 Gaol—of a visible physical shame which would kill her—drive her mad. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I know many 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— old 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 judgement of the tap-room, such a kindling had it given to her brown eyes and such a redness to her cheek. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ She can't a spent it. She must a got it somewhere. Yo speak to her, Muster Saunders. It's a crule thing to rob an old man like me—an her own mother's brother. Yo speak to 'er—an yo, too, Mary Anne.'
He looked piteously from one to the other. But his misery only seemed to goad Bessie to fresh fury. She turned upon him, arms akimbo.
'Oh! an of course it must be me as robs yer! It couldn't be nobody else, could it? There isn't tramps an thieves, an rogues—'undreds of 'em—going about o' nights? Nary one, I believe yer! There isn't another thief in Clinton Magna, nobbut Bessie Costrell, is ther? ”

“ Life had been perpetually gay and exciting. She had had qualms indeed, moments of a quick anguish, before the scene in the 'Spotted Deer.' But there had been always some thought to protect her from herself. John was not coming back for a long, long time. ”

“ 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 feelins as other people.' Whence it would seem that the capitalist is no more truly popular in small societies than in large. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 goins-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 goin 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. ”

“ 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.'
Bessie burst into tears. It seemed as though her life were breaking within her. Never since their early married days had he spoken to her like this. And she was in such piteous need of comfort; of some strong hand to help her out of the black pit in which she lay. The wild impulse crossed her to sit up and tell him—to throw it all on Timothy, to show him the cupboard and the box. Should she tell him ”

“ A sound of scorn broke from Isaac.
'You 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 you! 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 'ud never been born! ”

“ 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. ”

“ I did love yer an the childer, but the drink got holt o' 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....'
As he read it, the man's fixed pallor and iron calm gave way. He leant against the mantelpiece, shaken at last with the sobs of a human and a helpless remorse. ”