But, as Squire Harpur had prophesied, the cost was enormous. It was the work of years. Woods were cut down to supply timber for scaffolding; then lands were mortgaged or sold, and who but William Harpur was chief buyer? But still the work proceeded.
“Travellers who can cross the river dry-shod will gladly pay a small toll for the privilege,” said the sisters, as the last of their possessions, the old hall, passed into their cousin’s hands, and they took refuge in a small house in a bye-way, which goes by the name of “No Man’s-Lane” to this day.
It was a glad day for travellers on horse or foot when Swarkstone Bridge, of twenty-nine arches, was declared free for traffic, a bridge which spanned the Trent and its low meads for three-quarters of a mile, and the good Ladies Bellamont, who built it, had a right to expect those who could thus travel safely and dry-shod at all seasons to be grateful for the inestimable boon.
They had no charter to exact a toll to repay the moneys they had expended; but there was at the Swarkstone end a small chapel erected and dedicated to St. James, in which it was fondly hoped the users of the bridge would pause to thank God and drop their small thank-offerings in a box set there to receive them.
At first, when they began to build, people about called the sisters “the twin angels;” but by the time the bridge was built it had ceased to be a new thing. It was used as a matter of course; but the thank-offerings grew fewer and fewer as people ceased to remember the danger and discomfort of the passage by the ford.
They had impoverished themselves for the security of strangers. The offerings of gratitude would not keep life in the good sisters. They began to spin flax for a livelihood. Avice bore her lot meekly. Not so Idonea, into whose soul the sense of ingratitude was eating like a canker. But Avice said gently, “If we gave our wealth to build a bridge expecting a return, what answer can we make to our Lord when we go to Him? Let us be content that our individual losses will be the gain of thousands after us.” And that put an end to Idonea’s rebellion.
At length the aged prior, who had built Monks’ Bridge between the counties of Stafford and Derby for a people as ungrateful, stirred up William Harpur to remember the poor kinswomen on whose lands he was flourishing, and he offered them a home at Ticknall.
The offer came too late to save them. The Ladies Bellamont died as they had lived, together, and were buried with their two symbolic crosses on their breasts. And then, thanks chiefly to the prior, who reverenced them, a marble monument could be erected to their memories with their sleeping effigies upon it. It was inscribed “The Builders of the Bridge.” But the prior would fain have added, “They built unseen another bridge over the troubled waters of life—a bridge from earth to heaven.”
THE END.