The Story of Bessie Costrell. by Mrs. Humphry Ward

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'If some one don't look arter 'im,' she said to herself, ''ee'll go as
his father and his brothers went afore him. 'Ee's got the look on it
awready. Wheniver it's light I'll go fetch Muster Drew.'

With the first rays of the morning Bolderfield got up from the bed in
Mary Anne's cottage, where she had placed him a couple of hours before,
imploring him to lie still and rest himself. He slipped on his coat, the
only garment he had taken off, and taking his stick he crept down to the
cottage door. Mary Anne, who had gone out to fetch some bread, had left
it ajar. He opened it and stood on the threshold looking out.

The storm of the night was over, and already a milder breeze was
beginning to melt the newly-fallen snow. The sun was striking cheerfully
from the hill behind him upon the glistening surfaces of the distant
fields; the old labourer felt a hint of spring in the air. It brought
with it a hundred vague associations, and filled him with a boundless
despair. What would become of him now--penniless and old and feeble? The
horror of Bessie's death no longer stood between him and his own pain,
and would soon even cease to protect her from his hatred.

Mary Anne came back along the lane, carrying a jug and a loaf. Her
little face was all blanched and drawn with weariness; yet when she saw
him her look kindled. She ran up to him.

'What did yer come down for, John? I'd ha taken yer yer breakfast in yer
bed.'

He looked at her, then at the food. His eyes filled with tears.

'I can't pay yer for it,' he said, pointing with his stick; 'I can't pay
yer for it.'

Mary Anne led him in, scolding and coaxing him with her gentle,
trembling voice. She made him sit down while she blew up the fire; she
fed and tended him. When she had forced him to eat something, she came
behind him and laid her hand on his shoulder.

'John,' she said, clearing her throat, 'John, yer shan't want while I'm
livin. 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_!'

John put his arms on the table and hid his face upon them. He could not
speak of forgiveness, nor could he thank her for her promise. His chief
feeling was an intense wish to sleep; but as Mary Anne dried her tears
and began to go about her household work, the sound of her step, the
sense of her loving presence near him, began for the first time to relax
the aching grip upon his heart. He had always been weak and dependent,
in spite of his thrift and his money. He would be far more weak and
dependent now and henceforward. But again, he had found a woman's
tenderness to lean upon, and as she ministered to him--this humble
shrinking creature he had once so cordially despised--the first drop of
balm fell upon his sore.

Meanwhile, in another cottage a few yards away, Mr. Drew was wrestling
with Isaac. In his own opinion, he met with small success. The man who
had refused his wife mercy, shrank with a kind of horror from talking of
the Divine mercy. 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. 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.

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