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 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, an' 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 goin's-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 young 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--odd
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 judgment 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 scandal-mongers 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 farther. 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'porth for
so lugubrious and hypocritical a husband.
She had showered drinks on all her friends, and had, moreover, chattered
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 tap-room 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 woollen 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 half-way 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.
There was a mousehole in the skirting of the stairs close to the
cupboard. She slipped in a finger, felt along an empty space behind, and
drew out a key.
It turned easily in the cupboard lock, and the two boxes stood revealed,
standing apparently just as they stood when John left them. In hot haste
Bessie dragged the treasure-box from under the other, starting at every
sound in the process, at the thud the old wooden trunk made on the floor
of the cupboard as its supporter was withdrawn, at the rustle of her own
dress. All the boldness she had shown at the Spotted Deer had vanished.
She was now the mere trembling and guilty woman.
The lock on Bolderfield's box had been forced long before; it opened to
her hand. A heap of sovereigns and half-sovereigns lay on one side,
divided by a wooden partition from the few silver coins, crowns and
half-crowns, still lying on the other. She counted both the gold and
silver, losing her reckoning again and again, because of the sudden
anguish of listening that would overtake her.
Thirty-six pounds on the one side, not much more than thirty shillings on
the other. When John left it there had been fifty-one pounds in gold,
and rather more than twenty pounds in silver, most of it in half-crowns.
Ah! she knew the figures well.
Did that man who had spoken to the landlord in the public-house suspect?
How strange they had all looked! What a silly fool she had been to
change so much of the silver, instead of sticking to the gold! Yet she
had thought the gold would be noticed more.
When was old John coming back? He had written once from Frampton to say
that he was "laid up bad with the rheumatics," and was probably going
into the Frampton Infirmary. That was in November. Since then nothing
had been heard of him. John was no scholar. What if he died without
coming back? There would be no trouble then, except--except with Isaac.
Her mind suddenly filled with wild visions--of herself marched through
the village by Watson, as she had once seen him march a poacher who had
mauled one of Mr. Forrest's keepers--of the towering walls of Frampton
jail--of a visible physical shame which would kill her--drive her mad.
If, indeed, Isaac did not kill her before any one but he knew! He had
been that cross and glum all these last weeks--never a bit of talk
hardly--always snapping at her and the children. Yet he had never said a
word to her about the drink--nor about the things she had bought. As to
the "things" and the bills, she believed that he knew nothing--had
noticed nothing. At home he was always smoking, sitting silent, with dim
eyes, like a man in a dream--or reading his father's old books, "good
books," which filled Bessie with a sense of dreariness unspeakable--or
pondering his weekly paper.
But she believed he had begun to notice the drink. Drinking was
universal in Clinton, though there was not much drunkenness. Teetotalers
were unknown, and Isaac himself drank his beer freely, and a glass of
spirits, like anybody else, on occasion. She had been used for years to
fetch his beer from the public, and she had been careful. But there were
signs----
Oh! if she could only think of some way of putting it back--this thirty
odd pounds. She held her head between her hands, thinking and thinking.
Couldn't that little lawyer man to whom she went every month at Bedford,
to fetch her legacy money--couldn't he lend it her, and keep her money
till it was paid? She could make up a story, and give him something for
himself to induce him to hold his tongue. She had thought of this often
before, but never so urgently as now. She would take the carrier's cart
to Bedford next day, while Isaac was at work, and try.
Yet all the time despair was at her heart. So hard to undo! Yet how
easy it had been to take and to spend. She thought of that day in
September, when she had got the news of her legacy--six shillings a week
from an old aunt--her father's aunt, whose very existence she had
forgotten. The wild delight of it! Isaac got sixteen shillings a week
in wages--here was nearly half as much again. She was warned that it
would come to an end in two years. But none the less it seemed to her a
fortune--and all her life, before it came, mere hard pinching and
endurance. She had always been one to spend where she could. Old John
had often rated her for it. So had Isaac. But that was his money. This
was hers, and he who, for religious reasons, had never made friends with
or thought well of any of her family, instinctively disliked the money
which had come from them, and made few inquiries into the spending of it.
Oh! the joy of those first visits to Frampton, when all the shops had
seemed to be there for her, and she their natural mistress! How ready
people had been to trust her in the village! How tempting it had been to
brag and make a mystery! That old skinflint, Mrs. Moulsey, at "the
shop," she had been all sugar and sweets _then_.
And a few weeks later--six, seven weeks later--about the beginning of
October, these halcyon days had all come to an end. She owed what she
could not pay--people had ceased to smile upon her--she was harassed,
excited, worried out of her life.
Old familiar wonder of such a temperament! How can it be so easy to
spend, so delightful to promise, and so unreasonably, so unjustly
difficult, to pay?
She began to be mortally afraid of Isaac--of the effect of disclosures.
One night she was alone in the cottage, almost beside herself under the
pressure of one or two claims she could not meet--one claim especially,
that of a little jeweller, from whom she had bought a gold ring and a
brooch at Frampton--when the thought of John's hoard swept upon
her--clutched her like something living and tyrannical, not to be shaken
off.
It struck her all in an instant that there was another cupboard in the
little parlour, exactly like that on the stairs. The lower cupboard had
a key--what if it fitted?
The Devil must have been eager and active that night, for the key turned
in the lock with a smoothness that made honesty impossible--almost
foolish. And the old, weak lock on the box itself--why, a chisel had
soon made an end of that! Only five minutes--it had been so quick--there
had been no trouble. God had made no sign at all.
Since! All the village smiles--the village flatteries recovered--an
orgie of power and pleasure--new passions and excitements--above all, the
rising passion of drink, sweeping in storms through a weak nature that
alternately opened to them and shuddered at them. And through everything
the steadily dribbling away of the hoard--the astonishing ease and
rapidity with which the coins--gold or silver--had flowed through her
hands! How could one spend so much in meat and dress, in beer and gin,
in giving other people beer and gin? How was it possible? She sat lost
in miserable thoughts, a mist around her. . . .
"Wal, I niver!" said a low, astonished voice at the foot of the stairs.
Bessie rose to her feet with a shriek, the heart stopping in her breast.
The door below was ajar, and through the opening peered a face--the
vicious, drunken face of her husband's eldest son, Timothy Costrell.
The man below cast one more look of amazement at the woman standing on
the top stair, at the candle behind her, at the open box. Then an idea
struck him: he sprang up the stairs at a bound.
"By gosh!" he said, looking down at the gold and silver. "_By gosh!_"
Bessie tried to thrust him back. "What are you here for?" she asked
fiercely, her trembling lips the colour of the whitewashed wall behind.
"You get off at onst, or I'll call yer father."
He pushed her contemptuously aside. The swish of her dress caught the
candle, and by good fortune put it out, or she would have been in a
blaze. Now there was only the light from the paraffin lamp in the
kitchen below striking upwards through the open door.
She fell against the doorway of her bedroom, panting and breathless,
watching him.
He seated himself in her place, and stooped to look at the box. On the
inside of the lid was pasted a discoloured piece of paper, and on the
paper was written, in a round, laborious hand, the name, "John
Bolderfield."
"My blazes!" he said slowly, his bloodshot eyes opening wider than ever.
"It's old John's money! So yo've been after it, eh?"
He turned to her with a grin, one hand on the box. He had been tramping
for more than three months, during which time they had heard nothing of
him. His filthy clothes scarcely hung together. His cheeks were hollow
and wolfish. From the whole man there rose a sort of exhalation of
sodden vice. Bessie had seen him drunken and out at elbows before, but
never so much of the beast as this.
However, by this time she had somewhat recovered herself, and,
approaching him, she stooped and tried to shut the box.
"You take yourself off," she said, desperately, pushing him with her
fist. "That money's no business o' yourn, It's John's, an' he's comin'
back directly. He gave it us to look after, an' I wor countin' it.
March!--there's your father comin'!"
And with all her force she endeavoured to wrench his hand away. He tore
it from her, and hit out at her backwards--a blow that sent her reeling
against the wall.
"Yo take yer meddlin' fist out o' that!" he said. "Father ain't coming,
and if he wor, I 'spect I could manage the two on yer--_Keowntin'_ it--"
he mimicked her. "Oh! yer a precious innercent, ain't yer? But I know
all about yer. Bless yer, I've been in at the Spotted Deer to-night, and
there worn't nothin' else talked of but yo' and yor goin's on. There
won't be a tongue in the place to-morrow that won't be a-waggin' about
yer--yur a public charickter, yo' are--they'll be sendin' the reporters
down on yer for a hinterview. 'Where the devil do she get the money?'
they says."
He threw his curly head back and laughed till his sides shook.
"Lor', I didn't think I wor going to know quite so soon! An' sich queer
'arf-crowns, they ses, as she keeps a-changin'. Jarge somethin'--an old
cove in a wig. An' 'ere they is, I'll be blowed--some on 'em. Well, yer
a nice 'un, yer are!"
He stared her up and down with a kind of admiration.
Bessie began to cry feebly--the crying of a lost soul.
"Tim, if yer'll go away an' hold yer tongue, I'll give yer five o' them
suverins, and not tell yer father nothin'."
"Five on 'em?" he said, grinning. "Five on 'em, eh?"
And, dipping his hands into the box, he began deliberately shovelling the
whole hoard into his trousers and waist-coat pockets.
Bessie flung herself upon him. He gave her one business-like blow, which
knocked her down against the bedroom door. The door yielded to her fall,
and she lay there half stunned, the blood dripping from her temple.
"Noa, I'll not take 'em all," he said, not even troubling to look where
she had fallen. "That 'ud be playing it rayther too low down on old
John. I'll leave 'im two--jest two--for luck."
He buttoned up his coat tightly, then turned to throw a last glance at
Bessie. He had always disliked his father's second wife, and his sense
of triumph was boundless.
"Oh! yer not hurt," he said; "yer shammin'. I advise yer to look sharp
with shuttin' up. Father'll be up the hill in two or three minutes now.
Sorry I can't 'elp yer, now yer've set me up so comfortabul. Bye-bye!"
He ran down the stairs. She, as her senses revived, heard him open the
back-door, cross the little garden, and jump the hedge at the end of it.
Then she lay absolutely motionless, till suddenly there struck on her ear
the distant sound of heavy steps. They roused her like a goad. She
dragged herself to her feet, shut the box, had just time to throw it into
the cupboard and lock the door, when she heard her husband walk into the
kitchen. She crept into her own room, threw herself on the bed, and
wrapped her head and eyes in an old shawl, shivering so that the
mattresses shook.
"Bessie, where are yer?"
She did not answer. He made a sound of astonishment, and, finding no
candle, took the lamp and mounted the stairs. They were covered with
traces of muddy snow, and at the top he stooped to examine a spot upon
the boards. It was blood; and his heart thumped in his breast.
"Bessie, whatever is the matter?"
For by this time he had perceived her on the bed. He put down the lamp
and came to the bedside to look at her.
"I've 'ad a fall," she said, faintly. "I tripped up over my skirt as I
wor comin' up to look at Arthur. My head's all bleedin'. Get me some
water from over there."
His countenance fell sadly. But he got the water, exclaiming when he saw
the wound.
He bathed it clumsily, then tied a bit of rag round it, and made her head
easy with the pillow. She did not speak, and he sat on beside her,
looking at her pale face, and torn, as the silent minutes passed, between
conflicting impulses. He had just passed an hour listening to a good
man's plain narrative of a life spent for Christ, amid fever-swamps, and
human beings more deadly still. The vicar's friend was a missionary
bishop, and a High Churchman; Isaac, as a staunch Dissenter by conviction
and inheritance, thought ill both of bishops and Ritualists.
Nevertheless, he had been touched; he had been fired. Deep, though often
perplexed, instincts in his own heart had responded to the spiritual
passion of the speaker. The religious atmosphere had stolen about him,
melting and subduing.
And the first effect of it had been to quicken suddenly his domestic
conscience; to make him think painfully of Bessie and the children as he
climbed the hill. Was his wife going the way of his son? And he,
sitting day after day like a dumb dog, instead of striving with her!
He made up his mind hurriedly. "Bessie," he said, stooping to her and
speaking in a strange voice, "Bessie, had yer been to Dawson's?"
Dawson was the landlord of the Spotted Deer.
Bessie was long in answering. At last she said, almost inaudibly--
"Yes."
She fully understood what he had meant by the question, and she wondered
whether he would fall into one of his rages and beat her.
Instead, his hand sought clumsily for hers.
"Bessie, yer shouldn't; yer mustn't do it no more; it'll make a bad woman
of yer. I know as I'm not good to live with; I don't make things
pleasant to yer; but I've been thinkin'; I'll try if yo'll try."
Bessie burst into tears. It seemed as though her life were breaking
within her. Never since their early married days had he spoken to her
like this. And she was in such piteous need of comfort; of some strong
hand to help her out of the black pit in which she lay. The wild impulse
crossed her to sit up and tell him--to throw it all on Timothy, to show
him the cupboard and the box. Should she tell him; brave it all now that
he was like this? Between them they might find a way--make it good.
Then the thought of the man in the public-house, of the half-crowns, a
host of confused and guilty memories, swept upon her. How could she ever
get herself out of it? Her heart beat so that it seemed a live creature
strangling and silencing her. She was still fighting with her tears and
her terror when she heard Isaac say--
"I know yer'll try, and I'll help yer. I'll be a better husband to yer,
I swear I will. Give us a kiss, old woman."
She turned her face, sobbing, and he kissed her cheek.
Then she heard him say in another tone--
"An' I got a bit o' news down at the Club as will liven yer up.
Parkinson was there; just come over from Frampton to see his mother; an'
he says John will be here to-morrer or next day. 'Ee seed him
yesterday--pulled down dreadful--quite the old man, 'ee says. An' John
told him as he was comin' 'ome directly to live comfortable."
Bessie drew her shawl over her head.
"To-morrer, did yer say?" she asked in a whisper.
"Mos' like. Now, you go to sleep; I'll put out the lamp."
But all night long Bessie lay wide awake in torment, her soul hardening
within her, little by little.