ᐸ?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?ᐳ
ᐸsamples n="ENG18951"ᐳ
ᐸsampleᐳᐸp n="ENG18951460"ᐳ“'Ere then we 'ave”—he checked the items off on his fingers—“box locked up—key in the 'ouse as fits it, unbeknown to John—money tuk out—key 'idden away. But that's not all—not by long chalks—there's another side to the affair haltogether.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18951461"ᐳSaunders drew himself up, thrust his hands deep into his pockets, and cleared his throat.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18951462"ᐳ“Per'aps yer don' know—I'm sartin sure yer don' know—leastways I'm hinclined that way,—as Mrs. Costrell”—he made a polite inclination towards Bessie—“'ave been makin' free with money—fower—five—night a week at the Spotted Deer—fower—five—night a week. She'd used to treat every young feller, an' plenty old uns too, as turned up; an' there was a many as only went to Dawson's becos they knew as she'd treat 'em. Now, she didn't go on tick at Dawson's; she'd pay,—an' she allus payed in 'arf-crowns. An' those 'arf-crowns were curious 'alf-crowns; an' it came into Dawson's 'ead as he'd colleck them 'arf-crowns. 'Ee wanted to see summat, 'ee said—an' I dessay 'ee did. An' people began to taak. Last night theer wor a bit of a roompus, it seems, while Mrs. Costrell was a-payin' another o' them things, an' summat as was said come to my ears—an' come to Watson's. An' me an' Watson 'ave been makin' inquiries—an' Mr. Dawson wor obligin' enough to make me a small loan, 'ee wor. Now, I've got just one question to ask o' John Borroful.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18951463"ᐳHe put his hand into his waistcoat pocket, and drew out a silver coin.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18951464"ᐳ“Is that yourn, John?”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18951465"ᐳJohn fell upon it with a cry.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18951466"ᐳ“Aye, Saunders, it's mine. Look ye 'ere, Isaac, it's a king's 'ead. It's Willum—not Victory. I saved that un up when I wor a lad at Mason's, an' look yer, there's my mark in the corner—every 'arf-crown I ever 'ad I marked like that.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18951467"ᐳHe held it under Isaac's staring eyes, pointing to the little scratched cross in the corner.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18951468"ᐳ“'Ere's another, John—two on, 'em,” said Saunders, pulling out a second and a third.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18951469"ᐳJohn, in a passion of hope, identified them both.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18951470"ᐳ“Then,” said Saunders, slapping the table solemnly, “theer's nobbut one more thing to say—an' sorry I am to say it. Them coins, Isaac”—he pointed a slow finger at Bessie, whose white, fierce face moved involuntarily—“them 'arf-crowns wor paid across the bar lasst night, or the night afore, at Dawson's, by yor wife, as is now stannin' there, an' she'll deny it if she can!”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸ/sampleᐳ
ᐸsampleᐳᐸp n="ENG18951121"ᐳBessie burst out laughing.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18951122"ᐳ“Oh! yer old silly,” she said. “As if they couldn't stand one top o' the t'other. Now, do just go, Isaac—there's a lovey! 'Ee's waitin' for yer. Whatever did make yer so contrairy? Of course I didn't mean nothin' I said—an' I don't mind Timothy, nor nothin'.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18951123"ᐳStill he did not move.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18951124"ᐳ“Then I s'pose yer want everybody in the village to know?” he said with sarcasm.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18951125"ᐳBessie was taken aback.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18951126"ᐳ“No—I—don't—” she said undecidedly—“I don't know what yer mean.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18951127"ᐳ“You go back and tell John as I'll come when it's dark, an', if he's not a stupid, he won't want me to come afore.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18951128"ᐳBessie understood and acquiesced. She ran back with her message to John.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18951129"ᐳAt half-past eight, when it had grown almost dark, Isaac descended the hill. John opened the door to his knock.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18951130"ᐳ“Good evenin', Isaac. Yer'll take it, will yer?”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18951131"ᐳ“If you can't do nothin' better with it,” said Isaac, unwillingly. “But in gineral I'm not partial on keeping other folk's money.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18951132"ᐳJohn liked him all the better for his reluctance.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18951133"ᐳ“It'll give yer no trouble,” he said. “You lock it up, an' it 'll be all safe. Now, will yer lend a hand?”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18951134"ᐳIsaac stepped to the door, looked up the lane, and saw that all was quiet. Then he came back, and the two men raised the box.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18951135"ᐳAs they crossed the threshold, however, the door of the next cottage—which belonged to Watson, the policeman—opened suddenly. John, in his excitement, was so startled that he almost dropped his end of the box.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18951136"ᐳ“Why, Bolderfield,” said Watson's cheery voice, “what have you got there? Do you want a hand?”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18951137"ᐳ“No, I don't—thank yer kindly,” said John in agitation. “An', if you please, Muster Watson, don't yer say nothin' to nobody.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18951138"ᐳThe burly policeman looked from John to Isaac, then at the box. John's hoard was notorious, and the officer of the law understood.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18951139"ᐳ“Lor' bless yer,” he said, with a laugh, “I'm safe. Well, good evenin' to yer, if I can't be of any assistance.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18951140"ᐳAnd he went off on his beat.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18951141"ᐳThe two men carried the box up the hill. It was in itself a heavy, old-fashioned affair, strengthened and bottomed with iron. Isaac wondered whether the weight of it were due more to the box or to the money. But he said nothing. He had no idea how much John might have saved, and would not have asked him the direct question for the world. John's own way of talking about his wealth was curiously contradictory. His “money” was rarely out of his thoughts or speech, but no one had ever been priviledged for many years now to see the inside of his box, except Eliza once; and no one but himself knew the exact amount of the hoard. It delighted him that the village gossips should double or treble it. Their estimates only gave him the more ground for vague boasting, and he would not have said a word to put them right.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸ/sampleᐳ
ᐸsampleᐳᐸp n="ENG1895188"ᐳShe laughed like a merry child at her own witticism, and John relished it too, though he was not in a laughing mood.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG1895189"ᐳ“Why,” continued Bessie with enthusiasm, “it was Muster Drew as said to me the other afternoon, as we was walkin' 'ome from the churchyard, says 'ee, ‘Mrs. Costrell, I call it splendid what John's done—I do,’ 'ee says. ‘A labourer on fifteen shillin's a week—why, it's an example to the county,’ 'ee says. ‘'Ee ought to be showed.’”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG1895190"ᐳJohn's face relaxed. The temper and obstinacy in the eyes began to yield to the weak complacency which was their more normal expression.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG1895191"ᐳThere was silence for a minute or two. Bessie sat with her hands on her lap and her face turned towards the open door. Beyond the cherry-red phloxes outside it, the ground fell rapidly to the village, rising again beyond the houses to a great stubble field, newly shorn. Gleaners were already in the field, their bent figures casting sharp shadows on the golden upland, and the field itself stretched upwards to a great wood that lay folded round the top of a spreading hill. To the left, beyond the hill, a wide plain travelled into the sunset, its level spaces cut by the scrawled elms and hedgerows of the nearer landscape. The beauty of it all—the beauty of an English midland—was of a modest and measured sort, depending chiefly on bounties of sun and air, on the delicacies of gentle curves and the pleasant intermingling of wood and cornfield, of light spaces with dark, of solid earth with luminous sky.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG1895192"ᐳSuch as it was, however, neither Bessie nor John spared it a moment's attention. Bessie was thinking a hundred busy thoughts. John, on the other hand, had begun to consider her with an excited scrutiny. She was a handsome woman, as she sat in the doorway with her fine brown head turned to the light. But John naturally was not thinking of that. He was in the throes of decision.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG1895193"ᐳ“Look 'ere, Bessie,” he said suddenly; “what 'ud you say if I wor to ask Isaac an' you to take care on it?”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG1895194"ᐳBessie started slightly. Then she looked frankly round at him. She had very keen, lively eyes, and a bright red-brown colour on thin cheeks. The village applied to her the epithet which John's thoughts had applied to Muster Hill's widow. They said she was “caselty,” which means flighty, haphazard, excitable; but she was popular, nevertheless, and had many friends.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸ/sampleᐳ
ᐸsampleᐳᐸp n="ENG18951324"ᐳ“Oh, don't she! yo' take your 'ands away, yer little varmint, or I'll brain yer.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18951325"ᐳHe raised his stick, threatening. The child, terrified, fell back, and John, opening the door, rushed up the stairs.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18951326"ᐳHe was so terribly excited that his fumbling fingers could hardly find the ribbon round his neck. At last he drew it over his head, and made stupendous efforts to steady his hand sufficiently to put the key in the lock.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18951327"ᐳThe children below heard a sharp cry directly the cupboard door was opened; then the frantic dragging of a box on to the stairs, the creak of hinges—a groan long and lingering—and then silence.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18951328"ᐳThey clung together in terror, and the little girls began to cry. At last Arthur took courage and opened the door.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18951329"ᐳThe old man was sitting on the top stair, supported sideways by the wall, his head hanging forward, and his hands dropping over his knees, in a dead faint.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18951330"ᐳAt the sight all four children ran helter-skelter into the lane, shouting “Mammy! mammy!” in an anguish of fright. Their clamour was caught by the fierce north wind, which had begun to sweep the hill, and was borne along till it reached the ears of a woman who was sitting sewing in a cottage some fifty yards further up the lane. She stepped to her door, opened it and listened.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18951331"ᐳ“It's at Bessie's,” she said; “whativer's wrong wi' the childer?”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18951332"ᐳBy this time Arthur had begun to run towards her. Darkness was falling rapidly, but she could distinguish his small figure against the snow, and his halting gait.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18951333"ᐳ“What is it, Arthur?—what is it, lammie?”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18951334"ᐳ“O Cousin Mary Anne! Cousin Mary Anne! It's Uncle John, an' 'ee's dead!”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18951335"ᐳShe ran like the wind at the words, catching at the child's hand in the dark, and dragging him along with her.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18951336"ᐳ“Where is he, Arthur?—don't take on, honey!”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18951337"ᐳThe child hurried on with her, sobbing, and she was soon on the stairs beside the unconscious John.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18951338"ᐳMary Anne looked with amazement at the cupboard and the open box. Then she laid the old man on the floor, her gentle face working with the effort to remember what the doctor had once told her of the best way of dealing with persons in a faint. She got water, and she sent Arthur to a neighbour for brandy.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18951339"ᐳ“Where's your mother, child?” she asked, as she despatched him.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸ/sampleᐳ
ᐸsampleᐳᐸp n="ENG18951545"ᐳBut 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.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18951546"ᐳHe 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.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18951547"ᐳShe 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.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18951548"ᐳThen 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.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18951549"ᐳBut 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.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18951550"ᐳAt times a wave of sheer bewilderment swept cross 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.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG18951551"ᐳHer 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.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸ/sampleᐳᐸ/samplesᐳ