Bessie Costrell | Page 6

spend it" (Edwards was the post-master), "an' then he laughed fit to split 'imself. Yer couldn't see more nor the length of your own nose, he said--it was edication you wanted. As for 'im, 'ee said, 'ee'd have kep' it for you if you'd asked him, but you'd been like a bear with a sore 'ead, 'ee said, ever since Mrs. Moulsey's affair--so 'ee didn't suppose you would."
"Well, 'ee's about right there," said John, grimly; "ee's talkin' sense for onst when 'ee says that. I'd dig a hole in the hill and bury it sooner nor I'd trust it to 'im--I would, by----" he swore vigorously. "A thieving set of magpies is all them Saunders--cadgin' 'ere and cadgin' there."
He spoke with fierce contempt, the tacit hatred of years leaping to sight. Bessie's bright brown eyes looked at him with sympathy.
"It was just his nassty spite," she said. "He knew 'ee could never ha' done it--not what you've done--out o' your wages. Not unless 'ee got Sally to tie 'im to the dresser with ropes so as 'ee couldn't go a-near the Spotted Deer no more!"
She laughed like a merry child at her own witticism, and John relished it too, though he was not in a laughing mood.
"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.'"
John's face relaxed. The temper and obstinacy in the eyes began to yield to the weak complacency which was their more normal expression.
There 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 and luminous sky.
Such 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.
"Look 'ere, Bessie," he said suddenly; "what 'ud you say if I wor to ask Isaac an' you to take care on it?"
Bessie 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.
It was, of course, her own settled opinion that her uncle ought to leave that box with her and Isaac; and it had wounded her vanity, and her affection besides, that John had never yet made any such proposal, though she knew--as, indeed, the village knew--that he was perplexed as to what to do with his hoard. But she had never dared to suggest that he should leave it with her, out of fear of Eliza Bolderfield. Bessie was well aware that Eliza thought ill of her, and would dissuade John from any such arrangement if she could. And so formidable was Eliza--a woman of the hardest and sourest virtue--when she chose, that Bessie was afraid of her, even on her deathbed, though generally ready enough to quarrel with other people. Nevertheless, Bessie had always felt that it would be a crying shame and slight if she and Isaac did not have the guardianship of the money. She thirsted, perhaps, to make an impression upon public opinion in the village, which, as she instinctively realised, held her cheaply. And then, of course, there was the secret thought of John's death, and what might come of it. John had always loudly proclaimed that he meant to spend