The Story of Bessie Costrell. by Mrs. Humphry Ward

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'Did yer do it?' he asked her.

He held her, looking into her eyes, Slowly she sank away from him; she
would have fallen, but for a chair that stood beside her.

'Oh, yer brute!' she said, turning her head to Saunders an instant, and
speaking under her breath, with a kind of sob. 'Yer _brute_!'

Isaac walked to the door, and threw it open.

'Per'aps yer'll go,' he said, grimly.
And the three went, without a word.

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. He drew
his hand across his brow, bewildered. The fire leapt and chattered in
the grate; the newly-washed tea-things on the table shone under the
lamp; the cat lay curled, as usual, on the chair where he sat after
supper to read his _Christian World_; yet all things were not the same.
What had changed?

Then across poor John's rifled box he saw his wife sitting rigid on the
chair where he had left her.

He came and sat down at the corner of the table, close to her, his chin
on his hand.

''Ow did yer spend it?' he said, startled, as the words came out, by his
own voice, so grinding and ugly was the note of it.

Her miserable eyes travelled over his face, seeking as it were, for some
promise, however faint, of future help and succour, however distant.

Apparently she saw none, for her own look flamed to fresh defiance.

'I didn't spend it. Saunders wor lyin.'

''Ow did yer get them half-crowns?'

'I got 'em at Bedford. Mr. Grimstone give 'em me.'

Isaac looked at her hard, his shame burning into his heart. This was how
she had got her money for the gin. Of course, she had lied to him the
night before, in her account of her fall, and of that mark on her
forehead, which still showed, a red disfigurement, under the hair she
had drawn across it. The sight of it, of her, began to excite in him a
quick loathing. He was at bottom a man of violent passions, and in the
presence of evil-doing so flagrant, so cruel--of a household ruin so
complete--his religion failed him.

'When was it as yer opened that box fust?' he asked her again, scorning
her denials.

She burst into a rage of tears, lifting her apron to her eyes, and
flinging names at him that he scarcely heard.

There was a little cold tea in a cup close to him that Bessie had
forgotten. He stretched out his hand, and took a mouthful, moistening
his dry lips and throat.

'Yer'll go to prison for this,' he said, jerking it out as he put the
cup down.

He saw her shiver. Her nerve was failing her. The convulsive sobs
continued, but she ceased to abuse him. He wondered when he should be
able to get it out of her. He himself could no more have wept than iron
and fire weep.

'Are yer goin to tell me when yer took that money, and 'ow yer spent it?
'Cos, if yer don't, I shall go to Watson.'

Even in her abasement it struck her as shameful, unnatural, that he, her
husband, should say this. Her remorse returned upon her heart, like a
tide driven back. She answered him not a word.

He put his silver watch on the table.

'I'll give yer two minutes,' he said.

There was silence in the cottage except for the choking, hysterical
sounds she could not master. Then he took up his hat again, and went out
into the snow, which was by now falling fast.

She remained helpless and sobbing, unconscious of the passage of time,
one hand playing incessantly with a child's comforter that lay beside
her on the table, the other wiping away the crowding tears. But her mind
worked feverishly all the time, and gradually she fought herself free of
this weeping, which clutched her against her will.

Isaac was away for an hour. When he came back he closed the door
carefully, and, walking to the table, threw down his hat upon it. His
face under its ruddy brown had suffered some radical disintegrating
change.

'They've traced yer,' he said, hoarsely;' they've got it up to
twenty-six pound, an more. Most on it 'ere in Clinton--some on it,
Muster Miles o' Frampton ull swear to. Watson ull go over to Frampton,
for the warrant--to-morrer.'

The news shook her from head to foot. She stared at him wildly--
speechless.

'But that's not 'arf,' he went on--'not near 'arf. Do yer 'ear? What did
yer do with the rest? I'll not answer for keepin my 'ands off yer if yer
won't tell.'

In his trance of rage and agony, he was incapable of pity. He had small
need to threaten her with blows--every word stabbed.

But her turn had come to strike back. She raised her head; she measured
her news against his; and she did it with a kind of exultation.

'Then I _will_ tell yer--an I 'ope it ull do yer good. _I_ took
thirty-one pound o' Bolderfield's money then--but it warn't me took the
rest. Some one else tuk it, an I stood by an saw 'im. When I tried to
stop 'im--look 'ere.'

She raised her hand, nodding, and pointing to the wound on her brow.

Isaac leant heavily on the table. A horrible suspicion swept through
him. Had she wronged him in a yet blacker way? He bent over her,
breathing fast--ready to strike.

'Who was it?'

She laughed. 'Well, it wor _Timothy_ then--yur precious--beautiful son--
Timothy!'

He fell back.

'Yo're lyin,' he cried; 'yer want to throw it off on some one. How cud
Timothy 'ave 'ad anythin to do with John's money? Timothy's not been
near the place this three months.'

'Not till lasst night,' she said, mocking him; 'I'll grant yer--not till
lasst night. But it _do_ 'appen, as lasst night Timothy took forty-one
pound o' John Borroful's money out o' that box, an got off--clean. I'm
sorry if yer don't like it--but I can't 'elp that; yo listen 'ere.'

And lifting a quivering finger she told her tale at last, all the
beginning of it confused and almost unintelligible, but the scene with
Timothy vivid, swift, convincing--a direct impression from the ugly
immediate fact.

He listened, his face lying on his arms. It was true, all true. She
might have taken more and Timothy less; no doubt she was making it out
as bad as she could for Timothy. But it lay between them--his wife and
his son--it lay between them.

'An I 'eard yer comin,' she ended; 'an I thought I'd tell yer--an I wor
frightened about the 'arf-crowns--people 'ad been talkin so at
Dawson's--an I didn't see no way out--an--an--'

She ceased, her hand plucking again at the comforter, her throat
working.

He, too, thought of the loving words he had said to her, and the memory
of them only made his misery the more fierce.

'An there ain't no way out,' he said violently, raising his head.
'Yer'll be took before the magistrates next week, an the assizes ull be
in February, an yer'll get six months--if yer don't get more.'

She got up from her chair as though physically goaded by the words.

'I'll not go to gaol,' she said, under her breath. 'I'll not--'

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! 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. And this
pre-eminence had come to be part of the habitual furniture of life and
thought. To be suddenly stripped of it--to be, not only disgraced by his
wife, to be thrust down himself among the low and sinful herd--this
thought made another man of him; made him wicked, as it were, perforce.
For who that heard the story would ever believe that he was not the
partner of her crime? Had he not eaten and drunk of it; were not he and
his children now clothed by it?

Bessie did not answer him nor look at him. At any other moment she would
have been afraid of him; now she feared nothing but the image in her own
mind--herself led along the village street, enclosed in that hateful
building, cut off from all pleasure, all free moving and willing--alone
and despised--her children taken from her.

Suddenly she walked into the back kitchen and opened the door leading to
the garden.

Outside everything lay swathed in white, and a snowstorm was drifting
over the deep cup of land which held the village. A dull, melancholy
moonlight seemed to be somewhere behind the snow curtain, for the
muffled shapes of the houses below and the long sweep of the hill were
visible through the dark, and the objects in the little garden itself
were almost distinct. There, in the centre, rose the round stone edging
of the well, the copious well, sunk deep into the chalk, for which
Bessie's neighbours envied her, whence her good nature let them draw
freely at any time of drought. On either side of it the gnarled stems of
old fruit-trees and the bare sticks of winter kail made black scratches
and blots upon the white.

Bessie looked out, leaning against the doorway, and heedless of the wind
that drove upon her. Down below there was a light in Watson's cottage,
and a few lights from the main street beyond pierced the darkness. The
'Spotted Deer' must be at that moment full of people, all talking of her
and Isaac. Her eye came hastily back to the snow-shrouded well and dwelt
upon it.

'Shut that door!' Isaac commanded from inside. She obeyed, and came back
into the kitchen. There she moved restlessly about a minute or two,
followed by his frowning look--the look, not of a husband but of an
enemy. Then a sudden animal yearning for rest and warmth seized her. She
opened the door by the hearth abruptly and went up, longing simply to
lie down and cover herself from the cold.

But, after all, she turned aside to the children, and sat there for some
time at the foot of the little boys' bed. The children, especially
Arthur, had been restless for long, kept awake and trembling by the
strange sounds outside their door and the loud voices downstairs; but,
with the deep silence that had suddenly fallen on the house after Isaac
had gone away to seek his interview with Watson, sleep had come to them,
and even Arthur, on whose thin cheeks the smears left by crying were
still visible, was quite unconscious of his mother. 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.

As she pushed open the door at the foot of the stairs, she saw Isaac,
where she had left him, sitting on his chair, bent forward, his hands
dropping between his knees, his gaze fixed on a bit of dying fire in the
grate.

'Isaac!'

He looked up with the unwillingness of one who hates the sound he hears,
and saw her standing on the lowest step. Her black hair had fallen upon
her shoulders, her quick breath shook the shawl she held about her, and
the light in her hand showed the anguished brightness of the eyes.

'Isaac, are yer comin up?'

The question maddened him. He turned to look at her more fixedly.

'Comin up? noa, I'm not comin up--so now yer know. Take yerself off, an
be quick.'

She trembled.

'Are yer goin to sleep down 'ere, Isaac?'

'Aye, or wherever I likes: it's no concern o' yourn. I'm no 'usband o'
yourn from this day forth. Take yourself off, I say!--I'll 'ave no thief
for _my_ wife!'

But instead of going she stepped down into the kitchen. His words had
broken her down; she was crying again.

'Isaac, I'd ha' put it back,' she said, imploring. 'I wor goin in to
Bedford to see Mr. Grimstone--'ee'd ha' managed it for me. I'd a worked
extra--I could ha' done it--if it 'adn't been for Timothy. If you'll
'elp--an you'd oughter, for yer _are_ my 'usband, whativer yer may say--
we could pay John back--some day. Yo can go to 'im, an to Watson, an say
as we'll pay it back--yo _could_, Isaac. I can take ter the plattin
again, an I can go an work for Mrs. Drew--she asked me again lasst week.
Mary Anne ull see to the childer. You go to John, Isaac, to-morrer--an--
an--to Watson. All they wants is the money back. Yer couldn't--yer
couldn't--see me took to prison, Isaac.'

She gasped for breath, wiping the mist from her eye with the edge of her
shawl.

But all that she said only maddened the man's harsh and pessimist nature
the more. The futility of her proposals, of her daring to think, after
his fiat and the law's had gone forth, that there was any way out of
what she had done, for her or for him, drove him to frenzy. And his
wretched son was far away; so he must vent the frenzy on her. 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.
She heard him give a groan on the stairs, throw away the stick, and
descend again.

Then for nearly two hours there was absolute stillness once more in this
miserable house. Bessie had sunk, half-fainting, on a chair by the bed,
and lay there, her head lying against the pillow.

But in a very short time the blessed numbness was gone, and
consciousness became once more a torture, the medium of terrors not to
be borne. Isaac hated her--she would be taken from her children--she
felt Watson's grip upon her arm--she saw the jeering faces at the
village doors.

At times a wave of sheer bewilderment swept across her. How had it come
about that she was sitting there like this? Only two days before she had
been everybody's friend. 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. She
would replace the money--of course she would! And she would not take any
more--or only a very little. 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.

Her nature, indeed, had never gauged its own capacities for pleasure
till within the last few months. Excitement, amusement, society--she had
grown to them; they had evoked in her a richer and fuller life, expanded
and quickened all the currents of her blood. As she sat shivering in the
darkness and solitude, she thought with a sick longing of the hours in
the public-house--the lights, the talk, the warmth within and without.
The drink-thirst was upon her at this moment. It had driven her down to
the village that afternoon at the moment of John's arrival. But she had
no money. She had not dared to unlock the cupboard again, and she could
only wander up and down the bit of dark road beyond the 'Spotted Deer,'
suffering and craving.

Well, it was all done--all done!

She had come up without her candle, and the only light in the room was a
cold glimmer from the snow outside. But she must find a light, for she
must write a letter. By much groping she found some matches, and then
lit one after another while she searched in her untidy drawers for an
ink-bottle and a pen she knew must be there.

She found them, and with infinite difficulty--holding match after match
in her left hand--she scrawled a few blotted lines on a torn piece of
paper. She was a poor scholar, and the toil was great. When it was done,
she propped the paper up against the looking-glass.

Then she felt for her dress, and deliberately put it on again, in the
dark, though her hands were so numb with cold that she could scarcely
hook the fastenings. Her teeth chattered as she threw her old shawl
round her.

Stooping down she took off her boots, and pushing the bolt of her own
door back as noiselessly as possible, she crept down the stairs. As she
neared the lower door, the sound of two or three loud breathings caught
her ear.

Her heart contracted with an awful sense of loneliness. Her husband
slept--her children slept--while she--

Then the wave of a strange, a just passion mounted within her. She
stepped into the kitchen, and walking up to her husband's chair, she
stood still a moment looking at him. The lamp was dying away, but she
could still see him plainly. She held herself steadily erect; a frown
was on her brow, a flame in her eyes.

'Well, good-bye, Isaac,' she said, in a low but firm voice.

Then she walked to the back door and opened it, taking no heed of noise;
the latch fell heavily, the hinges creaked.

'Isaac!' she cried, her tones loud and ringing,--_Iaac!_'

There was a sudden sound in the kitchen. She slipped through the door,
and ran along the snow-covered garden.

Isaac, roused by her call from the deep trance of exhaustion which only
a few minutes before had fallen upon his misery, stood up, felt the
blast rushing in through the open door at the back, and ran blindly.

The door had swung to again. He clutched it open; in the dim weird
light, he saw a dark figure stoop over the well; he heard something
flung aside, which fell upon the snow with a thud; then the figure
sprang upon the coping of the well.

He ran with all his speed, his face beaten by the wind and sleet. But he
was too late. A sharp cry pierced the night. As he reached the well, and
hung over it, he heard, or thought he heard, a groan, a beating of the
water--then no more.

Isaac's shouts for help attracted the notice of a neighbour who was
sitting up with her daughter and a new-born child. She roused her
son-in-law and his boy, and through them a score of others, deep night
though it was.

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 carried her in, and laid her down before the still glowing hearth.
A shudder ran through him as he knelt, bending over her. The new wound
had effaced all the traces of Timothy's blow. How long was it since she
had stood there before him pointing to it?

The features were already rigid. 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. Now that she had thrown herself on death as her only friend,
they were dissolved in pity.

Everything failed. Bessie had meant to die, and she had not missed her
aim. There came a moment when the doctor, laying his ear for the last
time to her cold breast, raised himself to bid the useless effort cease.

'Send them all away,' he said to the little widow, 'and you stay.'

Watson helped to clear the room, then he and Isaac carried the dead
woman upstairs. An old man followed them, a bent and broken being, who
dragged himself up the steps with his stick. Watson, out of compassion,
came back to help him.

'John--yer'd better go home, an to yer bed--yer can't do no good.'

'I'll wait for Mary Anne,' said John, in a shaking whisper--'I'll wait
for Mary Anne.'

And he stood at the doorway leaning on his stick; his weak and reddened
eyes fixed on his cousin, his mouth open feebly.

But Mary Anne, weeping, beckoned to another woman who had come up with
the little procession, and they began their last offices.

'Let us go,' said the doctor, kindly, his hand on Isaac's shoulder,
'till they have done.'

At that moment Watson, throwing a last professional glance round the
room, perceived the piece of torn paper propped against the glass. Ah!
there was the letter. There was always a letter.

He walked forward, glanced at it and handed it to Isaac. Isaac drew his
hand across his brow in bewilderment, then seemed to recognise the
handwriting and thrust it into his pocket without a word.

Watson touched his arm.

'Don't you destroy it,' he said in warning; 'it'll be asked for at the
inquest.'

The men descended. Watson and the doctor departed.

John and Isaac were left alone in the kitchen. Isaac hung over the fire,
which had been piled up in the hope of restoring warmth to the drowned
woman. Suddenly he took out the letter and, bending his head to the
blaze, began to read it.

'Isaac, yer a cruel husband to me, an there's no way fer me but the way
I'm goin. I didn't mean no 'arm, not at first, but there, wot's the good
o' talkin. I can't bear the way as you speaks to me an looks at me, an
I'll never go to prison--no, never. It's orful--fer the children ull
'ave no mother, an I don't know however Arthur ull manage. But yer
woodent show me no mercy, an I can't think of anythin different. 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.

John, from his seat on the settle a few yards away, looked at Isaac
miserably. His lips opened now and then as though to speak, then closed
again. His brain could form no distinct image. He was encompassed by a
general sense of desolation, springing from the loss of his money, which
was pierced every now and then by a strange sense of guilt. It seemed to
have something to do with Bessie, this last, though what he could not
have told.

So they sat, till Mary Anne's voice called 'Isaac' from the top of the
stairs.

Isaac stood up, drew one deep breath, controlled himself, and went, John
following.

Mary Anne held the bedroom door open for them, and the two men entered,
treading softly.

The women stood on either hand crying. They had clothed the dead in
white and crossed her hands upon her breast. A linen covering had been
pressed, nun-like, round the head and chin. The wound was hidden, and
the face lay framed in an oval of pure white, which gave it a strange
severity.

Isaac bent over her. Was this _Bessie_--Bessie, the human, faulty,
chattering creature--whom he, her natural master, had been free to scold
or caress at will? At bottom he had always been conscious in regard to
her of a silent but immeasurable superiority, whether as mere man to
mere woman, or as the Christian to the sinner.

Now--he dared scarcely touch her. 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. 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.

She, however, must needs go with him, and she went. The other woman
stayed. Every now and then she looked furtively at Isaac.

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