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.
'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.