The Story of Bessie Costrell. by Mrs. Humphry Ward

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'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 death-bed, 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 course _we_ think 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 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
the 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!--
_she_ was 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 do _you_ know who old John's goin to leave his money
to? 'Ow do _you_ know as he wouldn't leave it to _them_ poor
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,' continued Isaac,
gruffly.

Bessie burst out laughing.

'Oh! yer old silly,' she said. 'As if they couldn't stand one top o'
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 to John.

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 folks' 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, if _you_
please, 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 set 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 stocking 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 the August
dawn, with his bundle on his back.

SCENE III

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 with 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 door
Mr. 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, and 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 goins-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 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. 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 scandalmongers 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 further. She was
_bonne camarade_ with 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'p'orth for
so lugubrious and hypocritical a husband.

She had showered drinks on all her friends, and had, moreover, clattered
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 taproom 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 woolen 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 halfway 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.

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