CHAPTER XVIII.IN A COBWEB.A month passed. Mrs. Sharland recovered, as far as recovery was possible to one of her age and enfeebled constitution, much shaken by the events of the night that saw the destruction of her home and the abrasion of the ear and tail of her biscuit-china poodle. After remaining in bed for more than a week, Mehalah almost by force obliged her to get up and descend. When once she had taken this step and found that her leather high-backed chair was before the fire in the hall, she showed no further desire to spend her days upstairs. Her life resumed the old course it had run at the Ray, but she sat more by the fire, and did less in the house than formerly. She devolved most of the domestic work on her daughter. That she had declined in strength of late was obvious. Old people will go on from year to year without any visible alteration, till some shock, or change in their surroundings takes place, when they drop perceptibly a stage, and from that moment declension becomes rapid.Mrs. Sharland was unmistakably contented with her position at Red Hall. She enjoyed comforts which were not hers at the Ray. She saw more people, some gossip reached her ears. There was a village, Salcotty within two miles, and the small talk of a village will overflow its bounds, and dribble into every house in its neighbourhood. Every little parish throws up its coarse crop of vulgar tittle-tattle, on which the inhabitants feed, and which is exactly adapted to their mental digestion. Human characters as well as skins are subject to parasitic attacks, but human beings are the vermin which burrow their heads into, and blow themselves out on the blood of moral life. There are certain creatures which will lie shrivelled up on their backs, and endure flood and frost and burning sun, without its killing them, with suspended animation, till the animal on which they feed chances to come that way, when they leap into activity and voracity at once. Mrs. Sharland had been laid aside on the Ray, without neighbours, and therefore without matter of interest and objects of attack. She was now within leaping, lancing, and sucking distance of fresh life, and she rejoiced in renewed vigour, not of body, but of mind, if mind that can be called which has neither thought nor instinct, but only a certain gravitation which sets the tongue in motion. The brain of the rustic is as unlike the brain of the man of culture as the maggot is unlike the butterfly; the one is the larva of the other. They feed, live, move in different spheres; one chews cabbage, the other sips honey; one crawls on the earth, the other flies above it; one is clumsy in all its motions, the other agile; one is carnal, the other is spiritual. And yet—wondrous thought! the one is the parent of the other.Mehalah had a great deal to do, and that work of a sort she had not been much engaged on at the Ray. No female hand had been employed at Red Hall since the death of Elijah's mother, and everything was accordingly falling out of repair and into disorder. She saw nothing of Rebow except at meals, and not always then, for he was often away with beasts at market, or at sales making purchases.The rich marshes of Red Hall were unrivalled for the grazing of cattle, and the rearing of young stock.As Mehalah was well occupied, her mind was taken off from herself, and she was for a while satisfied with her position. Rebow had not spoken to her in the manner she so disliked, and she had small occasion to speak with the men. Her mother, on the contrary, seized every occasion to entangle them in talk, or to initiate a conversation with Rebow. He maintained a surly deference towards her, and condescended at times to answer her queries and allow himself to be drawn into talk by the old woman. When that was the case, Mehalah found excuse to leave the room and engage herself in the kitchen or among the cows.Abraham Dowsing saw much less of her than formerly. The old man, with all his sulky humour and selfish greed, had got a liking for the girl. He was much at the Ray, but often about Red Hall, where he got his food.If he went after the sheep for the day, Mehalah provided him with 'baggings,' provision during his absence.Lambing time was at hand, when he would be away for some weeks, returning only occasionally. Mehalah noticed that the shepherd hesitated each time he received his food, as though he desired to speak to her, but put off the occasion. At last, one day at the beginning of February, when he was about to depart for the Ray, and would be absent some days, he said to her in a low dissatisfied tone, 'I suppose, when I come back after the lambing, you'll have been to church with him.''What do you mean?''What do I mean?' repeated Abraham, 'I mean what I say. I ain't one of those that says one thing and means another. Nobody can accuse me of that.''I do not understand you, Abraham.''There's none so dull as them that won't take,' he pursued.'I don't hold, myself, that much good comes of going to church with a man, except this, that you fasten him, and he can't cast you off when he's tired of you.'Mehalah flushed up.'Abraham,' she said angrily, 'I will not allow you to speak thus to me. I understand you now, and wish I did not.''Oh! you do take at last! That's well. I'd act on it if I was you. A man, you see, don't make no odds of taking up with a girl, and then when he's had a bit of her tongue and temper, he thinks he'd as lief be without her, and pick up another. He'd ring a whole change on the bells, he would, if it warn't for churches. That is my doctrine. Churches was built, and parsons were made, for tying up of men, and the girls are fools who let the men make up to them, and don't seize the opportunity to tie them.''Abraham, enough of this.''It is no odds to me. I don't care so long as I has my wittles and my wage. Only I'd rather see you mistress here than another. I'd get my wittles more regular and better, because you know me and my likings, and a new one wouldn't. That's all. Every man for himself, is my doctrine.''I forbid this for once and all. I am servant on wage here just as you are; I am that, and I shall never be anything else.''Oh, there you think different from most folks. You don't think according to your interests; and mistress, let me tell you, you don't talk as does the master.'He went away mumbling something about it being no concern of his, and if some people did not know how to eat their bread and butter when they had it in their hands it was no odds to him.Mehalah was hurt and incensed. She went to her mother.'Mother,' she said, 'when will you be able to move? I shall look out for a situation elsewhere.''What, my dear child! Move from here, where I am so comfortable! You can not. Elijah won't hear of it. He told me so. He told me you was to remain here, and I should spend the rest of my days here in quiet. It is a very pleasant place, and more in the world than was the Ray. I am better off here than I was there. Now we get everything for nothing, we don't lay out a penny, and you get wage beside.''Mother, Abraham has been speaking to me. He has hinted, what I do not like, that I ought to marry Elijah——''So you ought,' said the widow. 'Elijah, I am sure, is willing. It is what he has been wishing and hoping for all along, but you have been so stubborn and set against him. After all he has done for us you might yield a bit.''I will never marry him.''Don't say that. You will do anything to secure a comfortable home for me. It may not be long that I may have to trouble you,—I know you look on me as a trouble, I know that but for me you would feel free, and go away into the world. You think me a burden on you, because I can do nothing: you are young and lusty. But I bore with you, Mehalah, when you was young and feeble, and I laid by for you money that would have been very acceptable to me, and bought me many little comforts that I forbore, to save for you——' The old woman with low cunning had discovered the thread to touch, to move her daughter.'Say no more, say not another word, mother,' exclaimed Mehalah. 'You know that I never, never will forsake you, that you are more to me a thousand times than my own life. But there is one thing I never will do for you. I never will marry Elijah.''I am afraid, Mehalah, that folks will talk.''I fear so too, but they have no occasion. I will show them that. I will find a situation elsewhere.''You shall not, Mehalah!''I must, mother.'She thought for some time what she should do, and then put on her bonnet, and walked into Salcott. She had not been into the village since her arrival at Red Hall.Salcott is a small village of old cottages at the head of a creek that opens out of the Blackwater. It has a church with a handsome tower built of flints, but with no chancel. Within a bowshot, across the creek, connected with it by a bridge, is Virley church, a small hunchbacked edifice in the last stages of dilapidation, in a graveyard unhedged, unwalled; the church is scrambled over by ivy, with lattice windows bulged in by the violence of the gales, and a bellcot leaning on one side like a drunkard. Near this decaying church is a gabled farm, and this and a cottage form Virley village. The principal population congregates at Salcott, across the wooden bridge, and consisted—a hundred years ago—of labourers, and men more or less engaged in the contraband trade. Every house had its shed and stable, where was a donkey and cart, to be let on occasion to carry smuggled goods inland. At the end of the village stands a low tavern, the Rising Sun, a mass of gables; part of it, the tavern drinking-room, is only one storey high, but the rest is a jumble of roofs and lean-to buildings, chimneys, and ovens, a miracle of picturesqueness. Mehalah walked into the bar, and found there the landlady alone.'I have come here, mistress,' she said abruptly, 'in search of work. I am strong and handy, and will do as much as a man. I will serve you faithfully and well if you will engage me. I have an infirm mother who must be lodged somewhere, so I ask for small wage.''Who are you? Where do you come from?' asked the landlady eyeing her with surprise.'My name is Mehalah Sharland. I lived on the Ray till the house was burned down. Since then I have been at Red Hall.''Oh!' exclaimed the woman, her countenance falling. 'You are the young woman, are you, that I heard tell of?''I am the young woman now in service there, but wanting to go and work elsewhere.''I've heard tell of you,' said the landlady dryly.'What have you heard of me?'The woman looked knowingly at her, and smiled.'Pray what does Master Rebow say to your leaving him? You and he have fallen out, have you?' said the hostess knowingly. 'You'll come together all the faster for it. There's nothing like a good breeze for running a cargo in.''Can you give me work?''I dursn't do it.''Have you need of anyone now?''Well,' with a cough, 'if Master Rebow were agreeable, I might find such a girl as you wery handy about the house. I've lost the last girl I had; she's took with the small-pox. You could have her bed, and her work, and her wage, and welcome. But unless the master gave his consent,' she began to dust the table, 'I dursn't do it.''Is he your landlord?''No, he is not.''Then why need you doubt about taking me?''Because Rebow wouldn't allow of it.''He could not stop me. I am not engaged to him for any time.''I dursn't do it. How long have you been with Rebow?''A little more than a month.''You've never gone against him perhaps. If you had, you wouldn't ask me the reason why I dursn't stand in his way.'Mehalah considered. She had opposed Elijah from the very beginning.'There's no one would dare to do it,' continued the landlady. 'If you want to get from Master Rebow, you must go farther inland; but I doubt if you'll escape him. However,' and she tossed her head, 'you only want to make him fast. If a girl gives way at once, she's cheap.''You mistake me, you altogether mistake me,' said Mehalah indignantly. 'I will not remain in his house any longer; I must and I will go elsewhere.''If Elijah Rebow was to take the purse out of my pocket, or the bed from under me, if he was to take my daughter from my side, I dursn't say nay. If you think to escape against the will of the master, you are mistaken.''I shall.''Look here,' said the landlady; 'take my advice and go back and be mum. I won't say another word with you, lest I get into trouble.' She turned and left the bar.Mehalah went out, more determined than ever to break away from Red Hall, whether her mother desired it or not.She crossed the creaking rude wooden bridge to Virley. The churchyard and the farmyard seemed all one. The pigs were rooting at the graves. A cow was lying in the porch. An old willow drooped over a stagnant pool beneath the chancel window. Shed roof-tiles and willow leaves lay mouldering together on the edge of the pond. The church of timber and brick, put up anyhow on older stone foundations, had warped and cracked; the windows leaned, fungus growths sprouted about the bases of the timbers. Every rib showed in the roof as on the side of a horse led to the knackers.The farm was but little more prosperous in appearance than the church. Patched windows and broken railings showed a state of decline. Mehalah walked into the yard, where she saw a man carrying a pitchfork.'Who is the master here?' she asked.'I am.''Is there a mistress?''Yes. What have you to say to her?'Mehalah told her story as she had told it to the landlady of the Rising Sun. 'I will work for my keep and that of my mother, and work harder than any man on your farm.''Where do you come from?''Red Hall.''Oh!' said the farmer, with a whistle, 'Rebow's girl, eh?''I am working for him now.''Working for him, come now that's fine.''I am working for him,' repeated Mehalah with clouding brow.'And you want to come here. You think my missus would let you, do you? Now tell me, what put you on to coming to me? Has Elijah picked a quarrel with me, that he sends you here? Does he want occasion against me? Do you think I want to run any risks with my barns and my cattle and my life? No, thank you. I dursn't do it.''Tell me, where can I find work?''You must go out of the reach of Rebow's arm, if you find it.''You won't give me any?'He shook his head. 'For my life, I dursn't do it.' He laughed and put out his hand to chuck her under the chin, she struck his fingers up with her fist. 'There ain't a better judge of beasts in all the marshes than Rebow, nor in horse-flesh neither. You ain't a bad bit of meat neither. I approve his taste.'Mehalah wrenched the pitchfork out of his hand. Her eyes flamed. She would have struck him; but was suddenly assailed from behind by the farmer's wife.'Now then, hussy, what are you up to?'The girl could not answer; her anger choked the words in her throat.'She's that wench of Rebow's, you know,' said the farmer. 'I guess it is cat and dog in that house.''Get you gone,' shouted the woman, 'go out of my premises, hussy! I don't want my place to be frequented by such as you. Get you gone at once, or I will loose the mastiff.'Mehalah retired with bowed head, and her arms folded on her bosom. She halted on the bridge, and kicked fragments of frozen earth and gravel into the water. A woman going by looked at her.'Where is the parson?' asked Mehalah.'Yonder, you go over the marsh by the hill with the windmill on it, and you come to a road, you'll find a blacksmith's shop, and you must ask there. He's the curate, there's no rector hereabouts. They keep away because of the ague.'Mehalah cross the fen indicated, passed beside the windmill and the blacksmith's shop, and found the cottage occupied by the curate, a poor man, married to a woman of a low class, with a family of fourteen children, packed in the house wherever they could be stowed away. The curate was a crushed man, his ideas stunned in his head by the uproar in which he dwelt. His old scholarship remained to him in his brain like fossils in the chalk, to be picked ont, dead morsels. There was nothing living in the petrified white matter that filled his skull.Mehalah knocked at the door. The parson opened it, and admitted her into his kitchen. As soon as the wife heard a female voice, she rushed out of the back kitchen with her arms covered with soap suds, and stood in the door. A little-minded woman, she lived on her jealousy, and would never allow her husband to speak with another woman if she could help it.'What do you want, my dear?' asked the curate.'Ahem!' coughed the wife. 'Dear, indeed! Pray who are you, miss?'Mehalah explained that she sought work, and hoped that the parson would be able to recommend her.'You don't, you don't——' faltered he.'You don't suppose I'd take you on here,' said the parson's wife. 'You're too young by twenty years. I don't approve of young women; they don't make good servants. I like a staid matronly person of forty to fifty, that one can trust, and won't be gadding after boys or——' she shook her suds at her husband. 'But I don't at present want any servant. We are full.''We don't keep any,' said the pastor.'Edward! don't demean us, we do keep servants—occasionally. You know we do, Edward. Mrs. Cutts comes in to scour out and clean up of a Saturday. You forget that. We pay her ninepence.''Who are you, my dear—I mean, young woman?' asked the curate.'Yes, who are you?' said his better half. 'We must know more of you before we can recommend you among our friends. Our friends are very select, and keep quite a better sort of servants, they don't pick up anybody, they take so to speak the cream, the very purest quality.'Mehalah gave the required information. Mrs. Rabbit bridled and blew bubbles. The Reverend Mr. Rabbit became depressed, yet made an effort to be confidential. 'You'd better—you'd better marry him,' he hinted. 'It would be a satisfaction on all sides.''What is that? What did you say, Edward? No whisperings in my house, if you please. My house is respectable, I hope, though it mayn't be a lordly mansion. I do drive a conweyance,' she said, 'I hire the blacksmith's donkey-cart when I go out to make my calls, and drop my cards. So I leave you to infer if I'm not respectable. And Miss—Miss—Miss—' with a giggle and a curtsey, 'when may I have the felicity of calling on you at Red Hall, and of learning how respectable that establishment has become? There's room for improvement,' she said, tossing her nose.At that moment a rush, a roar, an avalanche down the narrow stairs, steep as a ladder. In a heap came the whole fourteen, the oldest foremost, the youngest in the rear.'We've got him, we're going to drown him.''What is it?' feebly enquired the father, putting his hands to his ears.'We'll hold him to the fire and pop his little eyes.''No, they're too small.''Into the water-butt with him!'A yell.'He's bitten me. Drown him!''What is it?' shouted the mother.'A bat. Tommy found him in the roof. We're going to put him in the butt, and see if he can swim.'The whole torrent swept and swirled round Mehalah, and carried her to the front door.The curate stole out after her.'My good girl,' he whispered, 'botch it up. Marry. Most marriages hereabouts are botches.''Edward!' shouted Mrs. Rabbit, 'come in, no sneaking outside after lasses. Come back at once. Always wanting a last word with suspicious characters.''Marry!' was the pastor's last word, as he was drawn back by two soapy hands applied to his coat tails, and the door was slammed.Mehalah walked away fast from the yelping throng of children congregated about the water-butt, watching the struggles of the expiring bat. She took the road before her, and saw that it led to Peldon, the leaning tower of which stood on a hill that had formed the northern horizon from the Ray. There was a nice farm by the roadside, and she went there, and was met with excuses. The time was not one when a girl could be engaged. There was no work to be done in the winter. The early spring was coming on, she urged, and she would labour in the fields like a man. Then the sick mother was mentioned as an insuperable objection. 'We can't have any old weakly person here on the premises,' said the farmer's wife. 'You see if she was to die, you've no money, and we should be put to the expense of the burying; anyhow there'd be the inconvenience of a corpse in the house.'Mehalah went on; and now a hope dawned in her. Another two miles would bring her to the Rose, the old inn that stood not far from the Strood. There she was known, and there she was sure, if possible, she would be accommodated and given work.She walked forward with raised head, the dark cloud that had brooded on her brow began to rise, the bands about her heart that had been contracting gave way a little. There was the inn, an old-fashioned house, with a vine scrambling over the red tile roof, and an ancient standard sign before the door, on the green, bearing a rose, painted the size of a gigantic turnip.Mehalah walked into the bar. The merry landlord and his wife greeted her with delight, with many shakes of the hands, and much condolence over the disasters that had befallen her and her mother.'Well, my dear,' said the landlady, confidentially, 'you're well out of it, if you come here. To be sure we'll take you in, and I dare say we'll find you work; bring your mother also. It ain't right for a handsome wench like you to be living all along of a lone man in his farm. Folks talk. They have talked, and said a deal of things. But you come here. What day may we expect you?''I must bring my mother by water. The tide will not suit for a week. It must be by day, my mother cannot come in the boat if there be much rain; and we shall not be able to come—at least there will be a difficulty in getting away—should Rebow be at home. Expect us some day when the weather is favourable and there be an afternoon tide.''You will be sure to come?''Sure.'CHAPTER XIX.DE PROFUNDIS.Mehalah's heart was lighter now than it had been for many a week. She had secured her object. She could be out of the toils of Rebow, away from his hateful presence.She had worked hard and conscientiously at Red Hall, and felt that she had to some extent cancelled the obligation he had laid on her. Her proud spirit, lately crushed, began to arise; her head was lifted instead of being bowed.Rebow remarked the change in her, and was satisfied either that she had reconciled herself to her position, or that she meditated something which he did not understand.Mrs. Sharland did not share in her daughter's exultation. She grumbled and protested. She was very comfortable at Red Hall, she was sure Elijah had been exceedingly kind to them. They had wanted nothing. The house was much better than the old ramshackle Ray, and their position in it superior to any they could aspire to at the Rose. This was a hint to Mehalah, but the girl refused to take it. As for Elijah, what was there to object to in him? He was well off, very well off, a prosperous man, who spent nothing on himself, and turned over a great deal of money in the year. He was not very young, but he was a man who had seen the world and was in his prime of strength and intelligence. Mrs. Sharland thought that they could not do better than settle at the Red Hall and make it their home for life, and that Mehalah should put her foolish fancies in her pocket and make the best of what offered.But Mehalah's determination bore down all opposition.St. Valentine's Day shone bright with a promise of spring. The grey owls were beginning to build in the hayrick, the catkins were timidly swelling on the nut bushes; in the ooze the glasswort shot up like little spikes of vitriol-green glass. A soft air full of wooing swept over the flats. The sun was hot.The tide flowed at noon, and Elijah was absent.Mehalah, deaf to her mother's remonstrances, removed some of their needful articles to the boat, and at last led her mother, well wrapped up, to the skiff.When the girl had cast loose, and was rowing on the sparkling water, her heart danced and twinkled with the wavelets; there was a return of spring to her weary spirit, and the good and generous seeds in her uncultivated soul swelled and promised to shoot. She was proud to think that she had carried her point, that in spite of Rebow, she had established her freedom, that her will had proved its power of resistance. She even sang as she rowed, she,—whose song had been hushed since the disappearance of George. She had not forgotten him, and cast away her grief at his loss, but the recoil from the bondage and moral depression of Red Hall filled her with transient exultation and joyousness.The row was long.'O mother!' she said, as she passed under the Ray hill, 'I must indeed run up and look at the place. I cannot go by.''Do as you will,' said Mrs. Sharland. 'I cannot control you. I don't pretend to. My wishes and my feelings are nothing to you.'Mehalah did not notice this peevish remark, she was accustomed to her mother's fretfulness. She threw the little anchor on the gravel at the 'hard,' and jumped on shore. She ascended the hill and stood by the scorched black patch which marked her old home. The house had burned to the last stick, leaving two brick chimneys standing gauntly alone. There was the old hearth at which she had so often crouched, bare, cold, and open. A few bricks had been blown from the top of the chimney, but otherwise it was intact.As she stood looking sadly on the relics, Abraham Dowsing came up.'What are you doing here?''I have come away from Red Hall, Abraham,' she said gaily, 'I do not think I have been so happy for many a day.''When are you going back?''Never.''Who then is to prepare me my wittles?' he asked sullenly. 'I ain't going to be put off with anything.''I do not know, Abraham.''But I must know. Now go back again, and don't do what's wrong and foolish. You ought to be there, and mistress there too. Then all will run smooth, and I'll get my wittles as I like them.''You need not speak of that, Abraham, I shall never return to Red Hall. I have quitted it and I hope have seen the last of the hateful house and its still more hateful master.''I wonder,' mused the shepherd, 'whether I could arrange with Rebow to get my wittles from the Rose.''That is where I am going to.''Oh!' his face lightened, 'then I don't mind. Do what you think best.' His face darkened again. 'But I doubt whether the master will keep me on when you have left. I reckon he only takes me because of you; he thinks you wouldn't like it, if I was to be turned adrift. No. You had better go back to Red Hall. Make yourself as comfortable as you can. That's my doctrine.'Presently the old man asked, 'I say, does the master know you have left?''No, Abraham.''Are you sure?''I never told him.''Did your mother know you had made up your mind to leave?''Yes, I told her so a week ago.''And you suppose she has kept her mouth shut? She couldn't do it.''If Elijah had suspected we were going to-day,' said Mehalah, 'I do not think he would have left home; he would have endeavoured to prevent me.''Perhaps. But he's deep.''Good day, Abraham!' She waved him a farewell with a smile. She knew, and made allowance for the humours of the old man. In a moment she was again by her mother, at the oar, and speeding with the flowing tide up the Rhyn to the 'hard' at its head belonging to the Rose Inn.'Have you brought the toad-jug with you, Mehalah?''No, mother.''Nor the china dogs?''No, mother.''It is of no use, I will not live at the Rose. I will not get out of the boat. I must have all my property about me.''I will fetch the other things away. When you are housed safely, then I shall not care. I will go back and bring away all our goods.''You are so rough. I won't let anyone handle the china but myself. Last time the poodles were moved, you know one lost a ear and a bit of its tail. There is no one fit to touch such things but me. Those rough-handed fellows, Jim and Joe, what do they know of the value of those dogs? You will promise me, Mehalah, to be gentle with them. Put them in the foot of a pair of stockings and wrap the legs round them, and then perhaps they will travel. I wouldn't have them lose any more of their precious persons,—no, not for worlds,—not for worlds.''I will take heed, mother.''And mind and stuff my old nightcap,—the dirty one, I mean—and my bedsocks into the toad-jug, then it won't break. You'll promise me that, won't you; if that were injured, I'd as soon die as see it.''I will use the utmost precaution with it.''Then there are the soup plates, of Lowestoft. I had them of my father, and he had them of his grandmother; there's a dozen of them, and not a chip or a crack. True beauties as ever you saw, I think you'd best put them in the folds of some of my linen. Put them between the sheets, wide apart, in the spruce hutch.''All right, mother; now hold hard, here we are.'The boat grated on the bottom, and then it was drawn up by a firm hand. Mehalah looked round and started.Elijah and two other men were there. Elijah had stepped into the water, and pulled the boat ashore.'Here we are, Glory!' he said, 'waiting ready for you. The sheriff's officer with his warrant, all ready. You haven't kept us waiting long.''What is that? What is that?' screamed Mrs. Sharland.'Step out, Glory! step out, mistress!' said Elijah.'What is the meaning of this?' asked Mehalah, a cloud suddenly darkening her sky and quenching the joy of her heart.'I've a warrant against you, madam,' said the man who stood by Rebow. 'Please to read it.' He held it out.'What is this?' screamed Mrs. Sharland, rising in the boat and staggering forwards. Mehalah helped her on shore.'This is what it is,' answered Rebow. 'You and Glory there are my tenants for the Ray. The farm is mine, with the marshes and the saltings. I gave eight hundred pounds for it. You've burnt down my premises, between you, you and Glory there. You've robbed me of a hundred or two hundred pounds worth of property with your wilfulness or carelessness. Now, I want to know, how is it you have not built up my farmhouse again?''I can't do it. I haven't the money!' wailed Mrs. Sharland. 'I am sure, Master Rebow, there was nothing but pure accident in the fire. I never thought——''Pure accident!' scoffed Elijah. 'Do you call that pure accident, soaking the whole chamber in spirits, with a fire burning on the hearth, and dashing the cask staves here and there, on the fire and off it.'Mehalah looked at him.'Ah, ha! Glory! You think I don't know it. You think I didn't see you! Why, I was at the window. I saw you do it. Tell me, mother, did not Glory smash the keg I had just given you?''I believe she did, Elijah! I am very sorry. I did my best to stop her, but she is a perverse, rebellious girl. You must forgive her, she intended no harm.''If you saw me do it, why did you let the house catch fire?' asked Mehalah, looking hard in Rebow's face.'Could I help it?' he asked in reply. 'There you sat by the hearth, and no harm came of it. At last you went out, and locked and double-locked the door. I went down to my boat. I tell you, I was uneasy, and I looked back, and I saw by the light in the room that the spirit had caught. I ran back and tried to get in. The floor was flaming.''The floor was of brick,' said Mehalah.'The door was fast locked. You know best why you locked it. It never was fastened before that night. You screwed on the lock, then you went out of the place yourself, leaving the room on fire, and fastened the door that none might get in.''A lie!' exclaimed the girl.'Is it a lie? I don't think it. I can't cipher out your doings any other way. I tried to break open the door, but you had put too stout a fastening on. Then I burst open the window, and when the wind got in, it made the fire rage worse. So I ran and shouted to my men in the big boat, and I got a balk and I stove the door in, and then it was too late to do more than save your mother and her goods. As for you, you left her and them to burn together; you wanted to be off and free of her. I know you.''Oh, Master Rebow! I know I'm a burden to her, but she would not do that!' put in Mrs. Sharland.'Why did you watch me?' asked Mehalah, and then regretted that she had put the question.'You see,' said Elijah turning to the officer, 'she didn't think anyone was near to give evidence against her.''Here I am,' said Mehalah, 'put me in prison, do with me what you will. I am innocent of all intent to burn the farm.''I could hang you for it,' laughed Elijah. 'That pretty neck where the red handkerchief hangs so jauntily would not look well with a hemp rope round it. You'd dangle on the Ray, where the house stood. You'd have a black cap then pulled over those dark eyes and brown skin, not a red one, not a red one, Glory!' he rubbed his hands.'I have no warrant against you,' said the bailiff to Mehalah. 'You stand charged with nothing. The warrant is against your mother.''Against me? What will you do with me?' cried the old woman.'You must go to prison if you cannot build the house up again, and restore it as good as it was to the landlord. He can't be at a loss by your neglect.''I cannot do it. I have not the money.''Then you must go to prison till you get it.'Mrs. Sharland sank on the gravel. She wept and wrung her hands. This was worse than the burning of the house, worse even than the lesion of the ear and tail of the poodle.'I won't go. I can't go!' she sobbed. 'I've the ague so bad. I suffer from rheumatism in all my bones. Let me alone,' she pleaded, 'and I promise I'll go to bed and never get out of it again.''You'll suffer in prison, I can promise you,' said Elijah exultingly. 'You'll have no bed to crawl into, unless you can pay for it; you'll have no blankets to wrap round you in the cold frosty night, if you can't pay for them; you'll have no fire to shiver by when there is ice on the ponds, if you haven't money to pay for it. The frost in your bones will make you shriek and jabber in prison.''I have no money. I gave the last to pay off Mrs. De Witt,' wailed the wretched woman. 'But there are the sheep.''They go to pay your rent up to Lady Day, aye, and till Michaelmas. I haven't had notice yet that you are about to quit. You can't give up the farm without, and I will exact every penny of my rent.''Then I am at your mercy,' sobbed Mrs. Sharland. She turned to Mehalah and pleaded, 'Haven't you a word to say, to save me?'The girl was silent. What could she say?'Come along, madam, it is of no use. The warrant is here, and come along you must.''I will not go to prison. I will not. I shall die of cold and ague and rheumatics there. My bones will burst like water-pipes, and I'll shiver the teeth out of my jaws and the nails off my fingers and toes. I won't go!' she screamed. 'You must carry me, I can't walk. I'm a dying old woman.''Would you like to go back to Red Hall?' asked Elijah gravely.'Oh! Master Rebow, if I might! I could shiver in comfort.''You and Glory! You and Glory!' He looked from one to the other. 'I don't take back one without the other.''Take me back!' wailed Mrs. Sharland. 'I know you won't be so cruel as to send me to prison. Let me go back to my armchair; Mehalah! promise him everything.''I will promise him nothing,' she said gloomily. 'If ever I hated this man, I hate him now.''Then she must go to prison,' growled Rebow. 'Now look you here, Glory! I don't ask much. I only ask you to go back with your mother, and work for me as you have worked hitherto. I do not say a word about anything else. You thought to escape me. You cannot. I have told you all along that it is impossible. As for the future, let the future determine. I wish to let you take your own course. I will not say another word about my wishes, till you come to me, of your own accord, and say that you will be mine. There! I promise you that. I will not force you any further; but I will not allow you to leave my house. There you must remain till you come to me and bid me take you, till you come and give yourself freely into my hands. Do you hear me, Glory?''Mehalah, save me,' pleaded Mrs. Sharland. 'Do what you can to save me from prison. Did I not lay by for you when I was a widow and needy? And will you refuse me this?''One thing or another,' said Rebow. 'Either your mother rots in prison, with no escape possible till she goes out to her grave in a pauper's shell, or you and she return at once to Red Hall, on the same conditions as you have been there hitherto, on the conditions you proposed yourself.'Mehalah trembled.'Let us go back,' said Mrs. Sharland. 'Help me into the boat. He couldn't have spoken more fair. You see, Mehalah, the Ray house is a great loss to him, and he gave eight hundred pounds for it.''And the marshes, and the saltings, and for you and Glory, and all things,' put in Rebow.Mehalah held out her arms. Her head swam; she stood as though balancing herself on a high wall. Then she clasped her hands over her forehead, and burst into a storm of tears.'Jim!' said Elijah, 'get the old doll into the stern, and you row her back to Red Hall. Take her under your arm and chuck her in anyhow.'He looked at the convulsed girl with an ugly smile of triumph.'Give me the warrant, bailiff!' He took the paper, held it under Mehalah's eyes and tore it in pieces, and scattered them over the water.'Shove off, Jim. Row the old bundle back quick. Glory and I are going to drive home.'Mehalah looked up, with a gasp as though stung.'Yes, Glory! To-day is Valentine's Day. Valentine's Day it is. I have my little gig here. It accommodates two beautifully. I am going to take you up by my side, and drive you home,home, to your home and mine, Glory, in it; and all along the road, here at the Rose where the horse is standing, at Peldon, at Salcott and Virley,—all along the road,—at the parson's, at the Rising Sun, at Farmer Goppin's,—everywhere I'll let them see that I'm out a-junketing to-day along with my Valentine.'All power of resistance was gone from Mehalah. The landlady at the Rose looked at her with pitying eyes, as she was helped up into the gig.'I thought you was coming to us,' said the woman.'You thought wrong,' answered Elijah with a boisterous laugh. 'Glory is coming back to me. We've had a bit of a tiff, but have made it up. Haven't we, Glory?'The girl's head fell in shame on her bosom. She could not speak, but the tears rolled out of her eyes and streaked the 'Gloriana' on her breast.He did not say a word to her as he drove home; but he stopped wherever she had halted a few days before. At Peldon farm he drew up, and struck at the door. He asked if there was a bullock there to be sold. The woman came into the garden with him.'Out a Valentining along with my lass,' he said, indicating Mehalah with his whip over his shoulder.He arrested his horse at the parson's cottage, and shouted till the door opened, and Mr. Rabbit appeared, with Mrs. Rabbit behind his back, peeping over his shoulder.'I say,' roared Rebow, 'one of those cursed brats of yours has been on my marshes plaguing my cows, and has run two of them lame. Let him try it on again, let him put his foot on my ground, and I'll cut it off, and send him limping home.'He stopped at the Rising Sun and called for spirits, and offered some to Mehalah. She turned aside her head in disgust; he drove up to Virley Hall farm, and into the yard, and called forth Farmer Goppin and his wife.'I tell you,' he said, 'one of my cattle has been straying, I don't suppose she has done damage; she got into this here yard, I'm told. You turned her out. I'm a man of few words, but I thank ye. I am carrying her home before she is pounded.'And then he drove straight to Red Hall.Mehalah descended, crushed, broken, no more herself, the bold haughty girl of the Ray. She crept upstairs, took off her red cap and tore it with her hands and teeth. Her liberty was for ever gone from her.Her mother was in their common bedroom, the boat had returned before the cart, for the way by water was the shortest, and tide had favoured. The old woman babbled about her grievances, and rejoiced at Rebow's magnanimity. She was busy replacing all the little articles that had been carried away, and were now brought back.Mehalah could not endure the thrumming of her talk, and she hid herself in a corner of the little inner apartment, an empty room lighted by a small triangular window. There she crouched in the corner, on the ground, with her head on her knees and her hands in her hair behind. She sat there motionless. The fountain of her tears was dried up. The hectic flames burned in her cheeks, but all the rest of her face was deadly in its pallor. She could not think, she could not feel. She had experienced but one such another period of agony, that when the medal was restored and she knew that George was lost to her. That moment was sweet to this. That was one of pure pain, this of pain and humiliation, of crushed pride, of honour trampled and dragged in the dirt. Her self-respect had had its death-wound, and she sat and let her heart bleed away. Once or twice she put her hand on the floor. She thought that that must have been flooded with blood and tears, as if, when she took her hand up, it must be steeped red. It was not so.But the soul has its ichor as well as the heart, and when it is cut deep into it also drains away, and is left empty, pulseless, pallid. Mrs. Sharland came in and spoke to her daughter, but got no answer. Mehalah looked up at her, but there was no expression in her eyes, she did not hear, or if she heard, did not understand what was said to her. The old woman went away muttering.The evening fell, and Mehalah still sat crouched in her corner. The golden triangle which had stood on the wall opposite her had moved to her side, turned to silver, and now was but a nebulous patch on the white plaster. With the death of the day some abatement came to Mehalah's distress. She moved her cramped limbs. She rose to her knees, and fixed her eyes on the sky that glimmered grey through the triangular window. A star was hanging there. She saw it, and looked at it long, it shone through her eyes and down into the dark abyss in her soul. By little her ideas began to shape themselves; recollections of the past formed over that despairing gulf; she could not think of the present; she had not the power or the will to look into the future.A year had passed since, on such an evening as this, looking on that star, she had stood with George de Witt on the Ray beneath the thorn trees, and he had gaily called her his Valentine, and given her in jest a picture of the Goddess of Liberty as proclaimed in Paris, wearing the bonnet rouge. She a goddess! She who was now so weak. Her power was gone. Liberty! She had none. She was a slave.She drew herself up on her knees, and strained her united fingers, with the palms outward, towards that glittering star, and moaned, 'My Valentine! My George, my George!'Suddenly, as if in answer to that wail from her wounded heart, there came a crash, and then loud, pealing, agonising, a cry from below out of the depths, and yet in the air about—'Glory! Glory! Glory!'
CHAPTER XVIII.
IN A COBWEB.
A month passed. Mrs. Sharland recovered, as far as recovery was possible to one of her age and enfeebled constitution, much shaken by the events of the night that saw the destruction of her home and the abrasion of the ear and tail of her biscuit-china poodle. After remaining in bed for more than a week, Mehalah almost by force obliged her to get up and descend. When once she had taken this step and found that her leather high-backed chair was before the fire in the hall, she showed no further desire to spend her days upstairs. Her life resumed the old course it had run at the Ray, but she sat more by the fire, and did less in the house than formerly. She devolved most of the domestic work on her daughter. That she had declined in strength of late was obvious. Old people will go on from year to year without any visible alteration, till some shock, or change in their surroundings takes place, when they drop perceptibly a stage, and from that moment declension becomes rapid.
Mrs. Sharland was unmistakably contented with her position at Red Hall. She enjoyed comforts which were not hers at the Ray. She saw more people, some gossip reached her ears. There was a village, Salcotty within two miles, and the small talk of a village will overflow its bounds, and dribble into every house in its neighbourhood. Every little parish throws up its coarse crop of vulgar tittle-tattle, on which the inhabitants feed, and which is exactly adapted to their mental digestion. Human characters as well as skins are subject to parasitic attacks, but human beings are the vermin which burrow their heads into, and blow themselves out on the blood of moral life. There are certain creatures which will lie shrivelled up on their backs, and endure flood and frost and burning sun, without its killing them, with suspended animation, till the animal on which they feed chances to come that way, when they leap into activity and voracity at once. Mrs. Sharland had been laid aside on the Ray, without neighbours, and therefore without matter of interest and objects of attack. She was now within leaping, lancing, and sucking distance of fresh life, and she rejoiced in renewed vigour, not of body, but of mind, if mind that can be called which has neither thought nor instinct, but only a certain gravitation which sets the tongue in motion. The brain of the rustic is as unlike the brain of the man of culture as the maggot is unlike the butterfly; the one is the larva of the other. They feed, live, move in different spheres; one chews cabbage, the other sips honey; one crawls on the earth, the other flies above it; one is clumsy in all its motions, the other agile; one is carnal, the other is spiritual. And yet—wondrous thought! the one is the parent of the other.
Mehalah had a great deal to do, and that work of a sort she had not been much engaged on at the Ray. No female hand had been employed at Red Hall since the death of Elijah's mother, and everything was accordingly falling out of repair and into disorder. She saw nothing of Rebow except at meals, and not always then, for he was often away with beasts at market, or at sales making purchases.
The rich marshes of Red Hall were unrivalled for the grazing of cattle, and the rearing of young stock.
As Mehalah was well occupied, her mind was taken off from herself, and she was for a while satisfied with her position. Rebow had not spoken to her in the manner she so disliked, and she had small occasion to speak with the men. Her mother, on the contrary, seized every occasion to entangle them in talk, or to initiate a conversation with Rebow. He maintained a surly deference towards her, and condescended at times to answer her queries and allow himself to be drawn into talk by the old woman. When that was the case, Mehalah found excuse to leave the room and engage herself in the kitchen or among the cows.
Abraham Dowsing saw much less of her than formerly. The old man, with all his sulky humour and selfish greed, had got a liking for the girl. He was much at the Ray, but often about Red Hall, where he got his food.
If he went after the sheep for the day, Mehalah provided him with 'baggings,' provision during his absence.
Lambing time was at hand, when he would be away for some weeks, returning only occasionally. Mehalah noticed that the shepherd hesitated each time he received his food, as though he desired to speak to her, but put off the occasion. At last, one day at the beginning of February, when he was about to depart for the Ray, and would be absent some days, he said to her in a low dissatisfied tone, 'I suppose, when I come back after the lambing, you'll have been to church with him.'
'What do you mean?'
'What do I mean?' repeated Abraham, 'I mean what I say. I ain't one of those that says one thing and means another. Nobody can accuse me of that.'
'I do not understand you, Abraham.'
'There's none so dull as them that won't take,' he pursued.
'I don't hold, myself, that much good comes of going to church with a man, except this, that you fasten him, and he can't cast you off when he's tired of you.'
Mehalah flushed up.
'Abraham,' she said angrily, 'I will not allow you to speak thus to me. I understand you now, and wish I did not.'
'Oh! you do take at last! That's well. I'd act on it if I was you. A man, you see, don't make no odds of taking up with a girl, and then when he's had a bit of her tongue and temper, he thinks he'd as lief be without her, and pick up another. He'd ring a whole change on the bells, he would, if it warn't for churches. That is my doctrine. Churches was built, and parsons were made, for tying up of men, and the girls are fools who let the men make up to them, and don't seize the opportunity to tie them.'
'Abraham, enough of this.'
'It is no odds to me. I don't care so long as I has my wittles and my wage. Only I'd rather see you mistress here than another. I'd get my wittles more regular and better, because you know me and my likings, and a new one wouldn't. That's all. Every man for himself, is my doctrine.'
'I forbid this for once and all. I am servant on wage here just as you are; I am that, and I shall never be anything else.'
'Oh, there you think different from most folks. You don't think according to your interests; and mistress, let me tell you, you don't talk as does the master.'
He went away mumbling something about it being no concern of his, and if some people did not know how to eat their bread and butter when they had it in their hands it was no odds to him.
Mehalah was hurt and incensed. She went to her mother.
'Mother,' she said, 'when will you be able to move? I shall look out for a situation elsewhere.'
'What, my dear child! Move from here, where I am so comfortable! You can not. Elijah won't hear of it. He told me so. He told me you was to remain here, and I should spend the rest of my days here in quiet. It is a very pleasant place, and more in the world than was the Ray. I am better off here than I was there. Now we get everything for nothing, we don't lay out a penny, and you get wage beside.'
'Mother, Abraham has been speaking to me. He has hinted, what I do not like, that I ought to marry Elijah——'
'So you ought,' said the widow. 'Elijah, I am sure, is willing. It is what he has been wishing and hoping for all along, but you have been so stubborn and set against him. After all he has done for us you might yield a bit.'
'I will never marry him.'
'Don't say that. You will do anything to secure a comfortable home for me. It may not be long that I may have to trouble you,—I know you look on me as a trouble, I know that but for me you would feel free, and go away into the world. You think me a burden on you, because I can do nothing: you are young and lusty. But I bore with you, Mehalah, when you was young and feeble, and I laid by for you money that would have been very acceptable to me, and bought me many little comforts that I forbore, to save for you——' The old woman with low cunning had discovered the thread to touch, to move her daughter.
'Say no more, say not another word, mother,' exclaimed Mehalah. 'You know that I never, never will forsake you, that you are more to me a thousand times than my own life. But there is one thing I never will do for you. I never will marry Elijah.'
'I am afraid, Mehalah, that folks will talk.'
'I fear so too, but they have no occasion. I will show them that. I will find a situation elsewhere.'
'You shall not, Mehalah!'
'I must, mother.'
She thought for some time what she should do, and then put on her bonnet, and walked into Salcott. She had not been into the village since her arrival at Red Hall.
Salcott is a small village of old cottages at the head of a creek that opens out of the Blackwater. It has a church with a handsome tower built of flints, but with no chancel. Within a bowshot, across the creek, connected with it by a bridge, is Virley church, a small hunchbacked edifice in the last stages of dilapidation, in a graveyard unhedged, unwalled; the church is scrambled over by ivy, with lattice windows bulged in by the violence of the gales, and a bellcot leaning on one side like a drunkard. Near this decaying church is a gabled farm, and this and a cottage form Virley village. The principal population congregates at Salcott, across the wooden bridge, and consisted—a hundred years ago—of labourers, and men more or less engaged in the contraband trade. Every house had its shed and stable, where was a donkey and cart, to be let on occasion to carry smuggled goods inland. At the end of the village stands a low tavern, the Rising Sun, a mass of gables; part of it, the tavern drinking-room, is only one storey high, but the rest is a jumble of roofs and lean-to buildings, chimneys, and ovens, a miracle of picturesqueness. Mehalah walked into the bar, and found there the landlady alone.
'I have come here, mistress,' she said abruptly, 'in search of work. I am strong and handy, and will do as much as a man. I will serve you faithfully and well if you will engage me. I have an infirm mother who must be lodged somewhere, so I ask for small wage.'
'Who are you? Where do you come from?' asked the landlady eyeing her with surprise.
'My name is Mehalah Sharland. I lived on the Ray till the house was burned down. Since then I have been at Red Hall.'
'Oh!' exclaimed the woman, her countenance falling. 'You are the young woman, are you, that I heard tell of?'
'I am the young woman now in service there, but wanting to go and work elsewhere.'
'I've heard tell of you,' said the landlady dryly.
'What have you heard of me?'
The woman looked knowingly at her, and smiled.
'Pray what does Master Rebow say to your leaving him? You and he have fallen out, have you?' said the hostess knowingly. 'You'll come together all the faster for it. There's nothing like a good breeze for running a cargo in.'
'Can you give me work?'
'I dursn't do it.'
'Have you need of anyone now?'
'Well,' with a cough, 'if Master Rebow were agreeable, I might find such a girl as you wery handy about the house. I've lost the last girl I had; she's took with the small-pox. You could have her bed, and her work, and her wage, and welcome. But unless the master gave his consent,' she began to dust the table, 'I dursn't do it.'
'Is he your landlord?'
'No, he is not.'
'Then why need you doubt about taking me?'
'Because Rebow wouldn't allow of it.'
'He could not stop me. I am not engaged to him for any time.'
'I dursn't do it. How long have you been with Rebow?'
'A little more than a month.'
'You've never gone against him perhaps. If you had, you wouldn't ask me the reason why I dursn't stand in his way.'
Mehalah considered. She had opposed Elijah from the very beginning.
'There's no one would dare to do it,' continued the landlady. 'If you want to get from Master Rebow, you must go farther inland; but I doubt if you'll escape him. However,' and she tossed her head, 'you only want to make him fast. If a girl gives way at once, she's cheap.'
'You mistake me, you altogether mistake me,' said Mehalah indignantly. 'I will not remain in his house any longer; I must and I will go elsewhere.'
'If Elijah Rebow was to take the purse out of my pocket, or the bed from under me, if he was to take my daughter from my side, I dursn't say nay. If you think to escape against the will of the master, you are mistaken.'
'I shall.'
'Look here,' said the landlady; 'take my advice and go back and be mum. I won't say another word with you, lest I get into trouble.' She turned and left the bar.
Mehalah went out, more determined than ever to break away from Red Hall, whether her mother desired it or not.
She crossed the creaking rude wooden bridge to Virley. The churchyard and the farmyard seemed all one. The pigs were rooting at the graves. A cow was lying in the porch. An old willow drooped over a stagnant pool beneath the chancel window. Shed roof-tiles and willow leaves lay mouldering together on the edge of the pond. The church of timber and brick, put up anyhow on older stone foundations, had warped and cracked; the windows leaned, fungus growths sprouted about the bases of the timbers. Every rib showed in the roof as on the side of a horse led to the knackers.
The farm was but little more prosperous in appearance than the church. Patched windows and broken railings showed a state of decline. Mehalah walked into the yard, where she saw a man carrying a pitchfork.
'Who is the master here?' she asked.
'I am.'
'Is there a mistress?'
'Yes. What have you to say to her?'
Mehalah told her story as she had told it to the landlady of the Rising Sun. 'I will work for my keep and that of my mother, and work harder than any man on your farm.'
'Where do you come from?'
'Red Hall.'
'Oh!' said the farmer, with a whistle, 'Rebow's girl, eh?'
'I am working for him now.'
'Working for him, come now that's fine.'
'I am working for him,' repeated Mehalah with clouding brow.
'And you want to come here. You think my missus would let you, do you? Now tell me, what put you on to coming to me? Has Elijah picked a quarrel with me, that he sends you here? Does he want occasion against me? Do you think I want to run any risks with my barns and my cattle and my life? No, thank you. I dursn't do it.'
'Tell me, where can I find work?'
'You must go out of the reach of Rebow's arm, if you find it.'
'You won't give me any?'
He shook his head. 'For my life, I dursn't do it.' He laughed and put out his hand to chuck her under the chin, she struck his fingers up with her fist. 'There ain't a better judge of beasts in all the marshes than Rebow, nor in horse-flesh neither. You ain't a bad bit of meat neither. I approve his taste.'
Mehalah wrenched the pitchfork out of his hand. Her eyes flamed. She would have struck him; but was suddenly assailed from behind by the farmer's wife.
'Now then, hussy, what are you up to?'
The girl could not answer; her anger choked the words in her throat.
'She's that wench of Rebow's, you know,' said the farmer. 'I guess it is cat and dog in that house.'
'Get you gone,' shouted the woman, 'go out of my premises, hussy! I don't want my place to be frequented by such as you. Get you gone at once, or I will loose the mastiff.'
Mehalah retired with bowed head, and her arms folded on her bosom. She halted on the bridge, and kicked fragments of frozen earth and gravel into the water. A woman going by looked at her.
'Where is the parson?' asked Mehalah.
'Yonder, you go over the marsh by the hill with the windmill on it, and you come to a road, you'll find a blacksmith's shop, and you must ask there. He's the curate, there's no rector hereabouts. They keep away because of the ague.'
Mehalah cross the fen indicated, passed beside the windmill and the blacksmith's shop, and found the cottage occupied by the curate, a poor man, married to a woman of a low class, with a family of fourteen children, packed in the house wherever they could be stowed away. The curate was a crushed man, his ideas stunned in his head by the uproar in which he dwelt. His old scholarship remained to him in his brain like fossils in the chalk, to be picked ont, dead morsels. There was nothing living in the petrified white matter that filled his skull.
Mehalah knocked at the door. The parson opened it, and admitted her into his kitchen. As soon as the wife heard a female voice, she rushed out of the back kitchen with her arms covered with soap suds, and stood in the door. A little-minded woman, she lived on her jealousy, and would never allow her husband to speak with another woman if she could help it.
'What do you want, my dear?' asked the curate.
'Ahem!' coughed the wife. 'Dear, indeed! Pray who are you, miss?'
Mehalah explained that she sought work, and hoped that the parson would be able to recommend her.
'You don't, you don't——' faltered he.
'You don't suppose I'd take you on here,' said the parson's wife. 'You're too young by twenty years. I don't approve of young women; they don't make good servants. I like a staid matronly person of forty to fifty, that one can trust, and won't be gadding after boys or——' she shook her suds at her husband. 'But I don't at present want any servant. We are full.'
'We don't keep any,' said the pastor.
'Edward! don't demean us, we do keep servants—occasionally. You know we do, Edward. Mrs. Cutts comes in to scour out and clean up of a Saturday. You forget that. We pay her ninepence.'
'Who are you, my dear—I mean, young woman?' asked the curate.
'Yes, who are you?' said his better half. 'We must know more of you before we can recommend you among our friends. Our friends are very select, and keep quite a better sort of servants, they don't pick up anybody, they take so to speak the cream, the very purest quality.'
Mehalah gave the required information. Mrs. Rabbit bridled and blew bubbles. The Reverend Mr. Rabbit became depressed, yet made an effort to be confidential. 'You'd better—you'd better marry him,' he hinted. 'It would be a satisfaction on all sides.'
'What is that? What did you say, Edward? No whisperings in my house, if you please. My house is respectable, I hope, though it mayn't be a lordly mansion. I do drive a conweyance,' she said, 'I hire the blacksmith's donkey-cart when I go out to make my calls, and drop my cards. So I leave you to infer if I'm not respectable. And Miss—Miss—Miss—' with a giggle and a curtsey, 'when may I have the felicity of calling on you at Red Hall, and of learning how respectable that establishment has become? There's room for improvement,' she said, tossing her nose.
At that moment a rush, a roar, an avalanche down the narrow stairs, steep as a ladder. In a heap came the whole fourteen, the oldest foremost, the youngest in the rear.
'We've got him, we're going to drown him.'
'What is it?' feebly enquired the father, putting his hands to his ears.
'We'll hold him to the fire and pop his little eyes.'
'No, they're too small.'
'Into the water-butt with him!'
A yell.
'He's bitten me. Drown him!'
'What is it?' shouted the mother.
'A bat. Tommy found him in the roof. We're going to put him in the butt, and see if he can swim.'
The whole torrent swept and swirled round Mehalah, and carried her to the front door.
The curate stole out after her.
'My good girl,' he whispered, 'botch it up. Marry. Most marriages hereabouts are botches.'
'Edward!' shouted Mrs. Rabbit, 'come in, no sneaking outside after lasses. Come back at once. Always wanting a last word with suspicious characters.'
'Marry!' was the pastor's last word, as he was drawn back by two soapy hands applied to his coat tails, and the door was slammed.
Mehalah walked away fast from the yelping throng of children congregated about the water-butt, watching the struggles of the expiring bat. She took the road before her, and saw that it led to Peldon, the leaning tower of which stood on a hill that had formed the northern horizon from the Ray. There was a nice farm by the roadside, and she went there, and was met with excuses. The time was not one when a girl could be engaged. There was no work to be done in the winter. The early spring was coming on, she urged, and she would labour in the fields like a man. Then the sick mother was mentioned as an insuperable objection. 'We can't have any old weakly person here on the premises,' said the farmer's wife. 'You see if she was to die, you've no money, and we should be put to the expense of the burying; anyhow there'd be the inconvenience of a corpse in the house.'
Mehalah went on; and now a hope dawned in her. Another two miles would bring her to the Rose, the old inn that stood not far from the Strood. There she was known, and there she was sure, if possible, she would be accommodated and given work.
She walked forward with raised head, the dark cloud that had brooded on her brow began to rise, the bands about her heart that had been contracting gave way a little. There was the inn, an old-fashioned house, with a vine scrambling over the red tile roof, and an ancient standard sign before the door, on the green, bearing a rose, painted the size of a gigantic turnip.
Mehalah walked into the bar. The merry landlord and his wife greeted her with delight, with many shakes of the hands, and much condolence over the disasters that had befallen her and her mother.
'Well, my dear,' said the landlady, confidentially, 'you're well out of it, if you come here. To be sure we'll take you in, and I dare say we'll find you work; bring your mother also. It ain't right for a handsome wench like you to be living all along of a lone man in his farm. Folks talk. They have talked, and said a deal of things. But you come here. What day may we expect you?'
'I must bring my mother by water. The tide will not suit for a week. It must be by day, my mother cannot come in the boat if there be much rain; and we shall not be able to come—at least there will be a difficulty in getting away—should Rebow be at home. Expect us some day when the weather is favourable and there be an afternoon tide.'
'You will be sure to come?'
'Sure.'
CHAPTER XIX.
DE PROFUNDIS.
Mehalah's heart was lighter now than it had been for many a week. She had secured her object. She could be out of the toils of Rebow, away from his hateful presence.
She had worked hard and conscientiously at Red Hall, and felt that she had to some extent cancelled the obligation he had laid on her. Her proud spirit, lately crushed, began to arise; her head was lifted instead of being bowed.
Rebow remarked the change in her, and was satisfied either that she had reconciled herself to her position, or that she meditated something which he did not understand.
Mrs. Sharland did not share in her daughter's exultation. She grumbled and protested. She was very comfortable at Red Hall, she was sure Elijah had been exceedingly kind to them. They had wanted nothing. The house was much better than the old ramshackle Ray, and their position in it superior to any they could aspire to at the Rose. This was a hint to Mehalah, but the girl refused to take it. As for Elijah, what was there to object to in him? He was well off, very well off, a prosperous man, who spent nothing on himself, and turned over a great deal of money in the year. He was not very young, but he was a man who had seen the world and was in his prime of strength and intelligence. Mrs. Sharland thought that they could not do better than settle at the Red Hall and make it their home for life, and that Mehalah should put her foolish fancies in her pocket and make the best of what offered.
But Mehalah's determination bore down all opposition.
St. Valentine's Day shone bright with a promise of spring. The grey owls were beginning to build in the hayrick, the catkins were timidly swelling on the nut bushes; in the ooze the glasswort shot up like little spikes of vitriol-green glass. A soft air full of wooing swept over the flats. The sun was hot.
The tide flowed at noon, and Elijah was absent.
Mehalah, deaf to her mother's remonstrances, removed some of their needful articles to the boat, and at last led her mother, well wrapped up, to the skiff.
When the girl had cast loose, and was rowing on the sparkling water, her heart danced and twinkled with the wavelets; there was a return of spring to her weary spirit, and the good and generous seeds in her uncultivated soul swelled and promised to shoot. She was proud to think that she had carried her point, that in spite of Rebow, she had established her freedom, that her will had proved its power of resistance. She even sang as she rowed, she,—whose song had been hushed since the disappearance of George. She had not forgotten him, and cast away her grief at his loss, but the recoil from the bondage and moral depression of Red Hall filled her with transient exultation and joyousness.
The row was long.
'O mother!' she said, as she passed under the Ray hill, 'I must indeed run up and look at the place. I cannot go by.'
'Do as you will,' said Mrs. Sharland. 'I cannot control you. I don't pretend to. My wishes and my feelings are nothing to you.'
Mehalah did not notice this peevish remark, she was accustomed to her mother's fretfulness. She threw the little anchor on the gravel at the 'hard,' and jumped on shore. She ascended the hill and stood by the scorched black patch which marked her old home. The house had burned to the last stick, leaving two brick chimneys standing gauntly alone. There was the old hearth at which she had so often crouched, bare, cold, and open. A few bricks had been blown from the top of the chimney, but otherwise it was intact.
As she stood looking sadly on the relics, Abraham Dowsing came up.
'What are you doing here?'
'I have come away from Red Hall, Abraham,' she said gaily, 'I do not think I have been so happy for many a day.'
'When are you going back?'
'Never.'
'Who then is to prepare me my wittles?' he asked sullenly. 'I ain't going to be put off with anything.'
'I do not know, Abraham.'
'But I must know. Now go back again, and don't do what's wrong and foolish. You ought to be there, and mistress there too. Then all will run smooth, and I'll get my wittles as I like them.'
'You need not speak of that, Abraham, I shall never return to Red Hall. I have quitted it and I hope have seen the last of the hateful house and its still more hateful master.'
'I wonder,' mused the shepherd, 'whether I could arrange with Rebow to get my wittles from the Rose.'
'That is where I am going to.'
'Oh!' his face lightened, 'then I don't mind. Do what you think best.' His face darkened again. 'But I doubt whether the master will keep me on when you have left. I reckon he only takes me because of you; he thinks you wouldn't like it, if I was to be turned adrift. No. You had better go back to Red Hall. Make yourself as comfortable as you can. That's my doctrine.'
Presently the old man asked, 'I say, does the master know you have left?'
'No, Abraham.'
'Are you sure?'
'I never told him.'
'Did your mother know you had made up your mind to leave?'
'Yes, I told her so a week ago.'
'And you suppose she has kept her mouth shut? She couldn't do it.'
'If Elijah had suspected we were going to-day,' said Mehalah, 'I do not think he would have left home; he would have endeavoured to prevent me.'
'Perhaps. But he's deep.'
'Good day, Abraham!' She waved him a farewell with a smile. She knew, and made allowance for the humours of the old man. In a moment she was again by her mother, at the oar, and speeding with the flowing tide up the Rhyn to the 'hard' at its head belonging to the Rose Inn.
'Have you brought the toad-jug with you, Mehalah?'
'No, mother.'
'Nor the china dogs?'
'No, mother.'
'It is of no use, I will not live at the Rose. I will not get out of the boat. I must have all my property about me.'
'I will fetch the other things away. When you are housed safely, then I shall not care. I will go back and bring away all our goods.'
'You are so rough. I won't let anyone handle the china but myself. Last time the poodles were moved, you know one lost a ear and a bit of its tail. There is no one fit to touch such things but me. Those rough-handed fellows, Jim and Joe, what do they know of the value of those dogs? You will promise me, Mehalah, to be gentle with them. Put them in the foot of a pair of stockings and wrap the legs round them, and then perhaps they will travel. I wouldn't have them lose any more of their precious persons,—no, not for worlds,—not for worlds.'
'I will take heed, mother.'
'And mind and stuff my old nightcap,—the dirty one, I mean—and my bedsocks into the toad-jug, then it won't break. You'll promise me that, won't you; if that were injured, I'd as soon die as see it.'
'I will use the utmost precaution with it.'
'Then there are the soup plates, of Lowestoft. I had them of my father, and he had them of his grandmother; there's a dozen of them, and not a chip or a crack. True beauties as ever you saw, I think you'd best put them in the folds of some of my linen. Put them between the sheets, wide apart, in the spruce hutch.'
'All right, mother; now hold hard, here we are.'
The boat grated on the bottom, and then it was drawn up by a firm hand. Mehalah looked round and started.
Elijah and two other men were there. Elijah had stepped into the water, and pulled the boat ashore.
'Here we are, Glory!' he said, 'waiting ready for you. The sheriff's officer with his warrant, all ready. You haven't kept us waiting long.'
'What is that? What is that?' screamed Mrs. Sharland.
'Step out, Glory! step out, mistress!' said Elijah.
'What is the meaning of this?' asked Mehalah, a cloud suddenly darkening her sky and quenching the joy of her heart.
'I've a warrant against you, madam,' said the man who stood by Rebow. 'Please to read it.' He held it out.
'What is this?' screamed Mrs. Sharland, rising in the boat and staggering forwards. Mehalah helped her on shore.
'This is what it is,' answered Rebow. 'You and Glory there are my tenants for the Ray. The farm is mine, with the marshes and the saltings. I gave eight hundred pounds for it. You've burnt down my premises, between you, you and Glory there. You've robbed me of a hundred or two hundred pounds worth of property with your wilfulness or carelessness. Now, I want to know, how is it you have not built up my farmhouse again?'
'I can't do it. I haven't the money!' wailed Mrs. Sharland. 'I am sure, Master Rebow, there was nothing but pure accident in the fire. I never thought——'
'Pure accident!' scoffed Elijah. 'Do you call that pure accident, soaking the whole chamber in spirits, with a fire burning on the hearth, and dashing the cask staves here and there, on the fire and off it.'
Mehalah looked at him.
'Ah, ha! Glory! You think I don't know it. You think I didn't see you! Why, I was at the window. I saw you do it. Tell me, mother, did not Glory smash the keg I had just given you?'
'I believe she did, Elijah! I am very sorry. I did my best to stop her, but she is a perverse, rebellious girl. You must forgive her, she intended no harm.'
'If you saw me do it, why did you let the house catch fire?' asked Mehalah, looking hard in Rebow's face.
'Could I help it?' he asked in reply. 'There you sat by the hearth, and no harm came of it. At last you went out, and locked and double-locked the door. I went down to my boat. I tell you, I was uneasy, and I looked back, and I saw by the light in the room that the spirit had caught. I ran back and tried to get in. The floor was flaming.'
'The floor was of brick,' said Mehalah.
'The door was fast locked. You know best why you locked it. It never was fastened before that night. You screwed on the lock, then you went out of the place yourself, leaving the room on fire, and fastened the door that none might get in.'
'A lie!' exclaimed the girl.
'Is it a lie? I don't think it. I can't cipher out your doings any other way. I tried to break open the door, but you had put too stout a fastening on. Then I burst open the window, and when the wind got in, it made the fire rage worse. So I ran and shouted to my men in the big boat, and I got a balk and I stove the door in, and then it was too late to do more than save your mother and her goods. As for you, you left her and them to burn together; you wanted to be off and free of her. I know you.'
'Oh, Master Rebow! I know I'm a burden to her, but she would not do that!' put in Mrs. Sharland.
'Why did you watch me?' asked Mehalah, and then regretted that she had put the question.
'You see,' said Elijah turning to the officer, 'she didn't think anyone was near to give evidence against her.'
'Here I am,' said Mehalah, 'put me in prison, do with me what you will. I am innocent of all intent to burn the farm.'
'I could hang you for it,' laughed Elijah. 'That pretty neck where the red handkerchief hangs so jauntily would not look well with a hemp rope round it. You'd dangle on the Ray, where the house stood. You'd have a black cap then pulled over those dark eyes and brown skin, not a red one, not a red one, Glory!' he rubbed his hands.
'I have no warrant against you,' said the bailiff to Mehalah. 'You stand charged with nothing. The warrant is against your mother.'
'Against me? What will you do with me?' cried the old woman.
'You must go to prison if you cannot build the house up again, and restore it as good as it was to the landlord. He can't be at a loss by your neglect.'
'I cannot do it. I have not the money.'
'Then you must go to prison till you get it.'
Mrs. Sharland sank on the gravel. She wept and wrung her hands. This was worse than the burning of the house, worse even than the lesion of the ear and tail of the poodle.
'I won't go. I can't go!' she sobbed. 'I've the ague so bad. I suffer from rheumatism in all my bones. Let me alone,' she pleaded, 'and I promise I'll go to bed and never get out of it again.'
'You'll suffer in prison, I can promise you,' said Elijah exultingly. 'You'll have no bed to crawl into, unless you can pay for it; you'll have no blankets to wrap round you in the cold frosty night, if you can't pay for them; you'll have no fire to shiver by when there is ice on the ponds, if you haven't money to pay for it. The frost in your bones will make you shriek and jabber in prison.'
'I have no money. I gave the last to pay off Mrs. De Witt,' wailed the wretched woman. 'But there are the sheep.'
'They go to pay your rent up to Lady Day, aye, and till Michaelmas. I haven't had notice yet that you are about to quit. You can't give up the farm without, and I will exact every penny of my rent.'
'Then I am at your mercy,' sobbed Mrs. Sharland. She turned to Mehalah and pleaded, 'Haven't you a word to say, to save me?'
The girl was silent. What could she say?
'Come along, madam, it is of no use. The warrant is here, and come along you must.'
'I will not go to prison. I will not. I shall die of cold and ague and rheumatics there. My bones will burst like water-pipes, and I'll shiver the teeth out of my jaws and the nails off my fingers and toes. I won't go!' she screamed. 'You must carry me, I can't walk. I'm a dying old woman.'
'Would you like to go back to Red Hall?' asked Elijah gravely.
'Oh! Master Rebow, if I might! I could shiver in comfort.'
'You and Glory! You and Glory!' He looked from one to the other. 'I don't take back one without the other.'
'Take me back!' wailed Mrs. Sharland. 'I know you won't be so cruel as to send me to prison. Let me go back to my armchair; Mehalah! promise him everything.'
'I will promise him nothing,' she said gloomily. 'If ever I hated this man, I hate him now.'
'Then she must go to prison,' growled Rebow. 'Now look you here, Glory! I don't ask much. I only ask you to go back with your mother, and work for me as you have worked hitherto. I do not say a word about anything else. You thought to escape me. You cannot. I have told you all along that it is impossible. As for the future, let the future determine. I wish to let you take your own course. I will not say another word about my wishes, till you come to me, of your own accord, and say that you will be mine. There! I promise you that. I will not force you any further; but I will not allow you to leave my house. There you must remain till you come to me and bid me take you, till you come and give yourself freely into my hands. Do you hear me, Glory?'
'Mehalah, save me,' pleaded Mrs. Sharland. 'Do what you can to save me from prison. Did I not lay by for you when I was a widow and needy? And will you refuse me this?'
'One thing or another,' said Rebow. 'Either your mother rots in prison, with no escape possible till she goes out to her grave in a pauper's shell, or you and she return at once to Red Hall, on the same conditions as you have been there hitherto, on the conditions you proposed yourself.'
Mehalah trembled.
'Let us go back,' said Mrs. Sharland. 'Help me into the boat. He couldn't have spoken more fair. You see, Mehalah, the Ray house is a great loss to him, and he gave eight hundred pounds for it.'
'And the marshes, and the saltings, and for you and Glory, and all things,' put in Rebow.
Mehalah held out her arms. Her head swam; she stood as though balancing herself on a high wall. Then she clasped her hands over her forehead, and burst into a storm of tears.
'Jim!' said Elijah, 'get the old doll into the stern, and you row her back to Red Hall. Take her under your arm and chuck her in anyhow.'
He looked at the convulsed girl with an ugly smile of triumph.
'Give me the warrant, bailiff!' He took the paper, held it under Mehalah's eyes and tore it in pieces, and scattered them over the water.
'Shove off, Jim. Row the old bundle back quick. Glory and I are going to drive home.'
Mehalah looked up, with a gasp as though stung.
'Yes, Glory! To-day is Valentine's Day. Valentine's Day it is. I have my little gig here. It accommodates two beautifully. I am going to take you up by my side, and drive you home,home, to your home and mine, Glory, in it; and all along the road, here at the Rose where the horse is standing, at Peldon, at Salcott and Virley,—all along the road,—at the parson's, at the Rising Sun, at Farmer Goppin's,—everywhere I'll let them see that I'm out a-junketing to-day along with my Valentine.'
All power of resistance was gone from Mehalah. The landlady at the Rose looked at her with pitying eyes, as she was helped up into the gig.
'I thought you was coming to us,' said the woman.
'You thought wrong,' answered Elijah with a boisterous laugh. 'Glory is coming back to me. We've had a bit of a tiff, but have made it up. Haven't we, Glory?'
The girl's head fell in shame on her bosom. She could not speak, but the tears rolled out of her eyes and streaked the 'Gloriana' on her breast.
He did not say a word to her as he drove home; but he stopped wherever she had halted a few days before. At Peldon farm he drew up, and struck at the door. He asked if there was a bullock there to be sold. The woman came into the garden with him.
'Out a Valentining along with my lass,' he said, indicating Mehalah with his whip over his shoulder.
He arrested his horse at the parson's cottage, and shouted till the door opened, and Mr. Rabbit appeared, with Mrs. Rabbit behind his back, peeping over his shoulder.
'I say,' roared Rebow, 'one of those cursed brats of yours has been on my marshes plaguing my cows, and has run two of them lame. Let him try it on again, let him put his foot on my ground, and I'll cut it off, and send him limping home.'
He stopped at the Rising Sun and called for spirits, and offered some to Mehalah. She turned aside her head in disgust; he drove up to Virley Hall farm, and into the yard, and called forth Farmer Goppin and his wife.
'I tell you,' he said, 'one of my cattle has been straying, I don't suppose she has done damage; she got into this here yard, I'm told. You turned her out. I'm a man of few words, but I thank ye. I am carrying her home before she is pounded.'
And then he drove straight to Red Hall.
Mehalah descended, crushed, broken, no more herself, the bold haughty girl of the Ray. She crept upstairs, took off her red cap and tore it with her hands and teeth. Her liberty was for ever gone from her.
Her mother was in their common bedroom, the boat had returned before the cart, for the way by water was the shortest, and tide had favoured. The old woman babbled about her grievances, and rejoiced at Rebow's magnanimity. She was busy replacing all the little articles that had been carried away, and were now brought back.
Mehalah could not endure the thrumming of her talk, and she hid herself in a corner of the little inner apartment, an empty room lighted by a small triangular window. There she crouched in the corner, on the ground, with her head on her knees and her hands in her hair behind. She sat there motionless. The fountain of her tears was dried up. The hectic flames burned in her cheeks, but all the rest of her face was deadly in its pallor. She could not think, she could not feel. She had experienced but one such another period of agony, that when the medal was restored and she knew that George was lost to her. That moment was sweet to this. That was one of pure pain, this of pain and humiliation, of crushed pride, of honour trampled and dragged in the dirt. Her self-respect had had its death-wound, and she sat and let her heart bleed away. Once or twice she put her hand on the floor. She thought that that must have been flooded with blood and tears, as if, when she took her hand up, it must be steeped red. It was not so.
But the soul has its ichor as well as the heart, and when it is cut deep into it also drains away, and is left empty, pulseless, pallid. Mrs. Sharland came in and spoke to her daughter, but got no answer. Mehalah looked up at her, but there was no expression in her eyes, she did not hear, or if she heard, did not understand what was said to her. The old woman went away muttering.
The evening fell, and Mehalah still sat crouched in her corner. The golden triangle which had stood on the wall opposite her had moved to her side, turned to silver, and now was but a nebulous patch on the white plaster. With the death of the day some abatement came to Mehalah's distress. She moved her cramped limbs. She rose to her knees, and fixed her eyes on the sky that glimmered grey through the triangular window. A star was hanging there. She saw it, and looked at it long, it shone through her eyes and down into the dark abyss in her soul. By little her ideas began to shape themselves; recollections of the past formed over that despairing gulf; she could not think of the present; she had not the power or the will to look into the future.
A year had passed since, on such an evening as this, looking on that star, she had stood with George de Witt on the Ray beneath the thorn trees, and he had gaily called her his Valentine, and given her in jest a picture of the Goddess of Liberty as proclaimed in Paris, wearing the bonnet rouge. She a goddess! She who was now so weak. Her power was gone. Liberty! She had none. She was a slave.
She drew herself up on her knees, and strained her united fingers, with the palms outward, towards that glittering star, and moaned, 'My Valentine! My George, my George!'
Suddenly, as if in answer to that wail from her wounded heart, there came a crash, and then loud, pealing, agonising, a cry from below out of the depths, and yet in the air about—'Glory! Glory! Glory!'