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

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'.