Bessie Costrell Part 12

"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, s.h.i.+vering 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 la.s.st 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, amus.e.m.e.nt, 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 s.h.i.+vering 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-gla.s.s.

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, pus.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.sion 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 rus.h.i.+ng 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 compa.s.sion 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 gla.s.s. Ah!