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 coming," 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 jail," she said under her breath. "I'll not----"
A sound of scorn broke from Isaac.
"Yo' 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 _yo'_! 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 'ad 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 or 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 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 yerself 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. Yo' 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 eyes 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, "_Isaac!_"
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--the 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 of 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 shew me no mercy, an' I can't think of
anythin' different. I did love yer an' the childer, but the drink got
holt of 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
passed, 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 a
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.
"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.