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 feelin's 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--in different
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 them."
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 feelin's about poor Eliza, an' 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 post-master), "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 shillin's a week--why, it's an
example to the county,' '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 and
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 deathbed, 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 a 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
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 going 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'
the 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 folk's 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 sent 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 stockinged
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.