The Story of Bessie Costrell. by Mrs. Humphry Ward

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THE WRITINGS OF

MRS HUMPHRY WARD

FENWICK'S CAREER
AND
THE STORY OF BESSIE COSTRELL

[Illustration: [[Latin inscription: TOVT BIEN OV BIEN]]]

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
MDCCCCX

COPYRIGHT, 1895, 1905, 1906, BY MRS. HUMPHRY WARD

COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

THE
STORY OF BESSIE COSTRELL

SCENE I

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
latticework 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 of 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.

[Illustration: _The Village of Aldbury_]

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 about _it_--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 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. 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 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. Halfway 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 stairhole, 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--whatever _wull_ yer 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 bedclothes 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'raps--' 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 wern'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.'

SCENE II

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 feelins 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--indifferent
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 'em.'

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 feelins about poor Eliza, and 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 '_ee_ knew 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 postmaster), 'an then he laughed
fit to split 'imself. Yer couldn't see more nor the length of your own
nose he said--it was edication _you_ wanted. 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 '_ee_ could 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--I _do_," 'ee
says. "A labourer on fifteen shillins a week--why it's an example to the
country," '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 with 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.

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