Bessie Costrell, Mrs. Humphry Ward [romantic novels to read txt] 📗

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