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

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