During the evening Iver was hardly able to take his eyes offMehetabel, as she passed to and fro in the kitchen.
She knew where was every article that was needed for the gentlemen.She moved noiselessly, did everything without fuss, without haste.
He thought over the words she had uttered, and he had overheard: Lost happiness is past recovery. Not only was she bereft of happiness, but so was he. His father and mother, when too late, had found that they also had parted with theirs when they had let Mehetabel leave the house.
She moved gracefully. She was slender, her every motion merited to be sketched. Iver's artistic sense was excited to admiration. What a girl she was! What a model! Oh, that he had her as his own!
Mehetabel knew that she was watched, and it disconcerted her. She was constrained to exercise great self-control; not to let slip what she carried, not to forget what tasks had to be discharged.
In her heart she glowed with pride at the thought that Iver loved her—that he, the prince, the idol of her childhood, should have retained a warm place in his heart for her. And yet, the thought, though sweet, was bitter as well, fraught with foreshadowings of danger.
Mrs. Verstage also watched Mehetabel, and her son likewise, with anxious eyes.
The old man left the house to attend to his cattle; and one of the gentlemen came to the kitchen-door to invite Iver, whose acquaintance he had made during the day, to join him and his companions over a bowl of punch.
The young man was unable to refuse, but left with reluctance manifest enough to his mother and Mehetabel.
Then, when the hostess was alone with the girl, she drew her to her side, and said, "There is now nothing to occupy you. Sit by me and tell me about yourself and how you get on with Bideabout. You have no notion how pleased I am to have you here again."
Mehetabel kissed the old woman, and a tear from her eye fell on the withering cheek of the landlady.
"I dare be bound you find it lonely in the new home," said Mrs. Verstage. "Here, in an inn, there is plenty of life; but in the farm you are out of the world. How does the Broom-Squire treat you?"
She awaited an answer with anxiety, which she was unable to disguise.
After a pause Mehetabel replied, with heightened color, "Jonas is not unkind."
"You can't expect love-making every day," said the hostess. "It's the way of men to promise the sun, moon, and planets, till you are theirs, and after that, then poor women must be content to be given a spark off a fallen star. There was Jamaica Cheel runn'd away with his Betsy because he thought the law wouldn't let him have her; she was the wife of another, you know. Then he found she never had been proper married to the other chap, and when he discovered he was fast tied to Betsy he'd a run away from her only the law wouldn't let him. Jonas ain't beautiful and young, that I allow."
"I knew what he was when I married him," answered Mehetabel. "I cannot say I find him other than what I expected."
"But is he kind to you?"
"I said he was not unkind."
Mrs. Verstage looked questioningly at her adopted child. "I don't know," she said, with quivering lips. "I suppose I was right. I acted for the best. God knows I sought your happiness. Do not tell me that you are unhappy."
"Who is happy?" asked Mehetabel, and turned her eyes on the hostess, to read alarm and distress in her face. "Do not trouble yourself about me, mother. I knew what I was doing when I took Jonas. I had no expectation of finding the Punch-Bowl to be Paradise. It takes a girl some time to get settled into fresh quarters, and to feel comfortable among strangers. That is mainly my case. I was perhaps spoiled when here, you were so kind to me. I thank you, mother, that you have not forgotten me in your great joy at getting Iver home again."
"There was Thomasine French bought two penn'orth o' shrimps, and as her husband weren't at home thought to enjoy herself prodigious. But she came out red as a biled lobster. With the best intentions things don't always turn out as expected," said Mrs. Verstage, "and the irritation was like sting nettles and—wuss." Then, after a pause, "I don't know how it is, all my life I have wished to have Iver by me. He went away because he wanted to be a painter; he has come back, after many years, and is not all I desire. Now he is goyn away. I could endure that if I were sure he loved me. But I don't think he does. He cares more for his father, who sent him packin' than he does for me, who never crossed him. I don't understand him. He is not the same as he was."
"Iver is a child no longer," said Mehetabel. "You must not expect of him more than he can give. What you said to me about a husband is true also of a child. Of course, he loves you, but he does not show it as fully as you desire. He has something else now to fill his heart beside a mother."
"What is that?" asked Mrs. Verstage, nervously.
"His art," answered Mehetabel.
"Oh, that!" The landlady was not wholly satisfied, she stood up and said with a sigh, "I fancy life be much like one o' them bran pies at a bazaar. Some pulls out a pair of braces as don't wear trousers, and others pull out garters as wears nuthin' but socks. 'Tis a chance if you get wot's worth havin. Well, I must go look out another sheet in place of that Polly has burnt."
"Let me do that, mother."
"No, as you may remember, I have always managed the linen myself."
A few minutes later, after she had left the room, Iver returned.He had escaped from the visitors on some excuse.
His heart was a prey to vague yearnings and doubts.
With pleasure he observed that his mother was no longer in the kitchen. He saw Mehetabel hastily dry her eyes. He knew that she had been crying, and he thought he could divine the cause.
"You are going to Guildford to-morrow morning, are you not?" she asked hastily.
"I don't know."
Iver planted himself on a stool before the fire, where he could look up into Mehetabel's face, as she sat in the settle.
"You have your profession to attend to," she said. "You do not know your own mind. You are changeful as a girl."
"How can I go—with you here?" he exclaimed, vehemently.
She turned her head away. He was looking at her with burning eyes.
"Iver," she said, "I pray you be more loving to your mother. You have made her heart ache. It is cruel not to do all you can now to make amends to her for the past. She thinks that you do not love her. She is failing in health, and you must not drip drops of fresh sorrow into her heart during her last years."
Iver made a motion of impatience.
"I love my mother. Of course I love her."
"Not as truly as you should, Iver," answered Mehetabel. "You do not consider the long ache—"
"And I, had not I a long ache when away from home?"
"You had your art to sustain you. She had but one thought—and that of you."
"She has done me a cruel wrong," said he, irritably.
"She has never done anything to you but good, and out of love," answered the girl vehemently.
"To me; that is not it."
Mehetabel raised her eyes and looked at him. He was gazing moodily at the fire.
"She has stabbed me through you," exclaimed Iver, with a sudden outburst of passion. "Why do you plead my mother's cause, when it was she—I know it was she, and none but she—who thrust you into this hateful, this accursed marriage."
"No, Iver, no!" cried Mehetabel in alarm. "Do not say this. Iver! talk of something else."
"Of what?"
"Of anything."
"Very well," said he, relapsing into his dissatisfied mood. "You asked me once what my dream had been, that I dreamt that first night under your roof. I will tell you this now. I thought that you and I had been married, not you and Jonas, you and I, as it should have been. And I thought that I looked at you, and your face was deadly pale, and the hand I held was clay cold."
A chill ran through Mehetabel's veins. She said, "There is some truth in it, Iver. You hold a dead girl by the hand. To you, I am, I must be, forever—dead."
"Nonsense. All will come right somehow."
"Yes, Iver," she said; "it will so. You are free and will go about, and will see and love and marry a girl worthy of you in every way. As for me, my lot is cast in the Punch-Bowl. No power on earth can separate me from Bideabout. I have made my bed and must lie on it, though it be one of thorns. There is but one thing for us both—we must part and meet no more."
"Matabel," he put forth his hand in protest.
"I have spoken plainly," she said, "because there is no good in not doing so. Do not make my part more difficult. Be a man—go."
"Matabel! It shall not be, it cannot be! My love! My only one."
He tried to grasp her.
She sprang from the settle. A mist formed before her eyes. She groped for something by which to stay herself.
He seized her by the waist. She wrenched herself free.
"Let me go!" she cried. "Let me go!"
She spoke hoarsely. Her eyes were staring as if she saw a spirit. She staggered back beyond his reach, touched the jambs of the door, grasped them with a grasp of relief. Then, actuated by a sudden thought, turned and fled from the room, from the house.
Iver stood for a minute bewildered. Her action had been so unexpected that he did not know what to think, what to do.
He went to the porch and looked up the road, then down it, and did not see her.
Mrs. Verstage, came out. "Where is Matabel?" she asked, uneasily.
"Gone!" said Iver. "Mother—gone!"
Mehetabel ran, neither along the way that led in the direction ofPortsmouth, nor along that to Godalming, but to the Moor.
"The Moor," is the marsh land that lies at the roots of the sandstone heights that culminate in Hind Head, Leith Hill, and the Devil's Jumps. As already said, the great mass of Bagshot sand lies upon a substratum of clay. The sand drinks in every drop of rain that falls on the surface. This percolates through it till it reaches the clay, which refuses to absorb it, or let it sink through to other beds. Thereupon the accumulated water breaks forth in springs at the base of the hills, and forms a wide tract of morass, interspersed with lagoons that teem with fish and wild fowl. This region is locally known as "Moor," in contradistinction to the commons or downs, which are the dry sandy upland.
"The Moor" is in many places impassable, but the blown sand has fallen upon it, and has formed slight elevations, has drifted into undulations, and these strips of rising ground, kept moist by the water they absorb, have become covered with vegetation. It is, moreover, possible by their means to penetrate to the heart of, and even thread, the intricacies, and traverse the entire region of the Moor.
But it is, at best, a wild and lonesome district, to be explored with caution, a labyrinth, the way through which is known only to the natives of the sandhills that dominate the marshy plain.
About thirty years ago a benevolent and beneficent landlord, in a time of agricultural distress, gave employment to a large number of men out of work in the construction of a causeway across the Thursley "Moor."
But the work was of no real utility, and it is now overgrown with weeds, and only trodden by the sportsman in pursuit of game and the naturalist in quest of rare insects and water plants.
A considerable lake, Pudmere, or Pug—Puckmere, lies in the Thursley marsh land, surrounded with dwarf willows and scattered pines. These latter have sprung from the wind-blown seeds of the plantations on higher ground. Throughout this part of the country an autumn gale always results in the upspringing of a forest of young pines, next year, to leeward of a clump of cone-bearing trees. In the Moor such self-sown woods come to no ripeness. The pines are unhealthy and stunted, hung with gray moss, and eaten out with canker. The excessive moisture and the impenetrable subsoil, and the shallowness of the congenial sand that encouraged them to root make the young trees decay in adolescence.
An abundant and varied insect world has its home in the Moor. The large brown hawkmoth darts about like an arrow. Dragon flies of metallic blue, or striped yellow and brown, hover above the lanes of water, lost in admiration of their own gorgeous selves reflected in the still surface. The great water-beetle booms against the head of the intruder, and then drops as a stone into the pool at his feet. Effets, saffron yellow bellied, with striped backs, swim in the ponds or crawl at their bottom. The natterjack, so rare elsewhere, differing from a toad in that it has a yellow band down its back, has here a paradise. It may be seen at eve perched on a stock of willow herb, or running—it does not hop—round the sundew, clearing the glutinous stamens of the flies that have been caught by them, and calling in a tone like the warning note of the nightingale. Sleeping on the surface the carp lies, and will not be scared save by a stone thrown into the still water in which it dreams away its life.
The sandy elevations are golden with tormintilla; a richer gold is that which lies below, where the marsh glows with bog asphodel. The flowering rush spreads its pale pink blossoms; a deeper crimson is the marsh orchis showing its spires among the drooping clusters of the waxy-pink, cross-leaved heath, and the green or pale and rosy-tinted bog-mosses.
Near Pudmoor Pool stands a gray block of ironstone, a solitary portion of the superincumbent bed that has been washed away. It resembles a gigantic anvil, and it goes by the name of Thor's Stone. The slopes that dip towards it are the Thor's-lea, and give their name to the parish that includes it and them.
At one time there was a similar mass of iron at the summit ofBorough Hill, that looks down upon the morasses.
To this many went who were in trouble or necessity, and knocking on the stone made known their requirements to the Pucksies, and it was asserted, and generally believed, that such applicants had not gone away unanswered, nor unrelieved.
It was told of a certain woman who one evening sought to be freed by this means from the husband who had made her life unendurable, that that same night—so ran the tale—he was returning from the tavern, drunk, and stumbling over the edge of a quarry fell and broke his neck. Thereupon certain high moralists and busybodies had the mass of stone broken up and carted away to mend the roads, with the expectation thereby of putting an end to what they were pleased to term "a degrading superstition."
To some extent the destruction of the Wishing Block did check the practice. But there continued to be persons in distress, and women plagued with drunken husbands, and men afflicted with scolding wives. And when the pilgrimage of such to Borough Hill ceased, because of the destruction of the stone on it, then was it diverted, and the current flowed instead to Thor's Stone—a stone that had long been regarded with awe, and which now became an object of resort, as it was held to have acquired the merits of the block so wantonly demolished on Borough Hill.
Nevertheless, the object of the high moralists and busybodies was partially attained, inasmuch as the difficulties and dangers attending a visit to Thor's Stone reduced the number of those seeking superhuman assistance in their difficulties. Courage was requisite in one who ventured to the Moor at night, and made a way to the iron-stone block, over tracts of spongy morass, among lines of stagnant ooze, through coppices of water-loving willows and straggling brier. This, which was difficult by day, was dangerous in a threefold degree at night. Moreover, the Moor was reputed to be haunted by spirits, shadows that ran and leaped, and peered and jabbered; and Puck wi' the lantern flickered over the surface of the festering bog.
If, then, the visits to Thor's Stone were not so many as to the stone on Borough Hill, this was due less to the waning of superstition than to the difficulties attending an expedition to the former. Without considering what she was doing, moved by a blind impulse, Mehetabel ran in the direction of Puck's Moor.
And yet the impulse was explicable. She had often thought over the tales told of visits to the habitation of the "Good Folk" on Borough Hill, and the transfer of the pilgrimage to Thor's Stone. She had, of late, repeatedly asked herself whether, by a visit thither, she might not gain what lay at her heart—an innocent desire—none other than that Iver should depart.
Now that he had made open show of his passion, that all concealment was over between them, every veil and disguise plucked away—now she felt that her strength was failing her, and it would fail completely if subjected to further trial.
One idea, like a spark of fire shooting through her brain, alone possessed her at this moment. Her safety depended on one thing—the removal of Iver. Let him go! Let him go! then she could bear her lot. Let her see him no more! then she would be able to bring her truant heart under discipline. Otherwise her life would be unendurable, her tortured brain would give way, her overtaxed heart would break.
She found no stay for her soul in the knowledge where was situated the country of the Gergesenes, no succor in being well drilled in the number of chapters in Genesis. She turned desperately, in her necessity, to Thor's Stone, to the spirits—what they were she knew not—who aided those in need, and answered petitions addressed to them.
The night had already set in, but a full golden moon hung in the sky, and the night was in no way dark and dreadful.
When she reached the Moor, Mehetabel ran among sheets of gold, leaped ribbons of shining metal, danced among golden filagree—the reflection of the orb in the patches, channels, frets of water. She sprang from one dark tuft of rushes to another; she ran along the ridges of the sand. She skipped where the surface was treacherous. What mattered it to her if she missed her footing, sank, and the ooze closed over her? As well end so a life that could never be other than long drawn agony.
Before leaving the heath, she had stooped and picked up a stone. It was a piece of hematite iron, such as frequently occurs in the sand, liver-shaped, and of the color of liver.
She required a hammer, wherewith to knock on Thor's anvil, and make her necessities known, and this piece of iron would serve her purpose.
Frogs were croaking, a thousand natterjacks were whirring like the nightjar. Strange birds screamed and rushed out of the trees as she sped along. White moths, ghostlike, wavered about her, mosquitoes piped. Water-rats plunged into the pools.
As a child she had been familiar with Pudmoor, and instinctively she walked, ran, only where her foot could rest securely.
A special Providence, it is thought, watches over children and drunkards. It watches also over such as are drunk with trouble, it holds them up when unable to think for themselves, it holds them back when they court destruction.
To this morass, Mehetabel had come frequently with Iver, in days long gone by, to hunt the natterjack and the dragon-fly, to look for the eggs of water fowl, and to pick marsh flowers.
As she pushed on, a thin mist spread over portions of the "Moor." It did not lie everywhere, it spared the sand, it lay above the water, but in so delicate a film as to be all but imperceptible. It served to diffuse the moonlight, to make a halo of silver about the face of the orb, when looked up to by one within the haze, otherwise it was scarcely noticeable.
Mehetabel ran with heart bounding and with fevered brain, and yet with her mind holding tenaciously to one idea.
After a while, and after deviations from the direct course, rendered necessary by the nature of the country she traversed, Mehetabel reached Thor's Stone, that gleamed white in the moonbeam beside a sheet of water, the Mere of the Pucksies. This mere had the mist lying on it more dense than elsewhere. The vapor rested on the surface as a fine gossamer veil, not raised above a couple of feet, hardly ruffled by a passing sigh of air. A large bird floated over it on expanded wings, it looked white as a swan in the moonlight, but cast a shadow black as pitch on the vaporous sheet that covered the face of the pool.
It was as though, like Dinorah, this bird were dancing to its own shadow. But unlike Dinorah, it was silent. It uttered no song, there was even no sound of the rush of air from its broad wings. When Mehetabel reached the stone she stood for a moment palpitating, gasping for breath, and her breath passing from her lips in white puffs of steam.
The haze from the mere seemed to rise and fling its long streamers about her head and blindfold her eyes, so that she could see neither the lake nor the trees, not even the anvil-stone. Only was there about her a general silvery glitter, and a sense of oppression lay upon her.
Mehetabel had escaped from the inn, as she was, with bare arms, her skirt looped up.
She stood thus, with the lump of ironstone resting on the block, the full flood of moonlight upon her, blinding her eyes, but revealing her against a background of foliage, like a statue of alabaster. Startled by a rustle in the bulrushes and willow growth behind her, Mehetabel turned and looked, but her eyes were not clear enough for her to discern anything, and as the sound ceased, she recovered from her momentary alarm.
She had heard that a deer was in Pudmoor that was supposed to have escaped from the park at Peperharow. Possibly the creature was there. It was harmless. There were no noxious beasts there. It was too damp for vipers, nothing in Pudmoor was hurtful save the gnats that there abounded. Then, with her face turned to the north, away from the dazzling glory of the moon, Mehetabel swung the lump of kidney iron she had taken as hammer, once from east to west, and once from west to east. With a third sweep she brought it down upon Thor's Stone and cried:
"Take him away! Take him away!"
She paused, drew a long breath.
Again she swung the hammer-stone. And now she turned round, and passed the piece of iron into her left hand. She raised it and struck on the anvil, and cried: "Save me from him. Take him away." A rush, all the leaves of the trees behind seemed to be stirring, and all the foliage falling about her.
A hand was laid on her shoulder roughly, and the stone dropped from her fingers on the anvil. Mehetabel shrank, froze, as struck with a sudden icy blast, and cried out with fear.
Then said a voice: "So! you seek the Devil's aid to rid you of me."
At once she knew that she was in the presence of her husband, but so dazzled was she that she could not discern him.
His fingers closed on her arm, as though each were an iron screw.
"So!" said he, in a low tone, his voice quivering with rage, "likeKaron Wyeth, you ask the Devil to break my neck."
"No," gasped Mehetabel.
"Yes, Matabel. I heard you. 'Save me from him. Take him away.'"
"No—no—Jonas."
She could not speak more in her alarm and confusion.
"Take him away. Snap his spine—send a bullet through his skull; cast him into Pug's mere and drown him; do what you will, only rid me of Bideabout Kink, whom I swore to love, honor, and to obey."
He spoke with bitterness and wrath, sprinkled over, nay, permeated, with fear; for, with all his professed rationalism, Jonas entertained some ancestral superstitions—and belief in the efficacy of the spirits that haunted Thor's Stone was one.
"No, Jonas, no. I did not ask it."
"I heard you."
"Not you."
"What," sneered he; "are not these ears mine?"
"I mean—I did not ask to have you taken away."
"Then whom?"
She was silent. She trembled. She could not answer his question.
If her husband had been at all other than he was, Mehetabel would have taken him into her confidence. But there are certain persons to whom to commit a confidence is to expose yourself to insult and outrage. Mehetabel knew this. Such a confidence as she would have given would be turned by him into a means of torture and humiliation.
"Now listen to me," said Jonas, in quivering tones of a voice that was suppressed. "I know all now. I did not. I trusted you. I was perhaps a fool. I believed in you. But Sarah has told me all—how he—that painting ape—has been at my house, meeting you, befooling you, pouring his love-tales into your ears, and watching till my back was turned to kiss you."
She was unable to speak. Her knees smote together.
"You cannot answer," he continued. "You are unable to deny that it was so. Sarah has kept an eye on you both. She should have spoken before. I am sorry she did not. But better late than never. You encouraged him to come to you. You drew him to the house."
"No, Jonas, no. It was you who invited him."
"Ah! for me he would not come. Little he cared for my society. The picture-making was but an excuse, and you all have been in a league against me."
"Who—Jonas?"
"Who? Why, Sanna Verstage and all. Did not she ask to have you at the Ship, and say that the painting fellow was going or gone? And is he not there still? She said it to get you and him together there, away from me, out of the reach of Sarah's eyes."
"It is false, Jonas!" exclaimed Mehetabel with indignation, that for a while overcame her fear.
"False!" cried Bideabout. "Who is false but you? What is false but every word you speak? False in heart, false in word, and false in act." He had laid hold of the bit of ironstone, and he struck the anvil with it at every charge of falsehood.
"Jonas," said Mehetabel, recovering self-control under the resentment she felt at being misunderstood, and her action misinterpreted. "Jonas, I have done you no injury. I was weak. God in heaven knows my integrity. I have never wronged you; but I was weak, and in deadly fear."
"In fear of whom?"
"Of myself—my own weakness."
"You weak!" he sneered. "You—strong as any woman."
"I do not speak of my arms, Jonas—my heart—my spirit—"
"Weak!" he scoffed. "A woman with a weak and timorous soul would not come to Thor's Stone at night. No—strong you are—in evil, in wickedness, from which no tears will withhold you. And—that fellow—that daub-paint—"
Mehetabel did not speak. She was trembling.
"I ask—what of him? Was not he in your thoughts when you asked the Devil to rid you of me—your husband?"
"I did not ask that, Jonas."
"What of him? He has not gone away. He has been with you. You knew he was not going. You wanted to be with him. Where is he—this dauber of canvas—now?"
Then, through the fine gauze of condensing haze, came a call from a distance—"Matabel! Where are you?"
"Oh, ho!" exclaimed the Broom-Squire. "Here he comes. By appointment you meet him here, where you least expected that I would be."
"It is false, Jonas. I came here to escape."
"And pray for my death?"
"No, Jonas, to be rid of him."
Bideabout chuckled, with a sarcastic sneer in the side of his face.
"Come now," said he; "I should dearly like to witness this meeting. If true to me, as you pretend, then obey me, summon him here, and let me be present, unobserved, when you meet. If your wish be, as you say, to be rid of him, I will help you to its fulfilment."
"Jonas!"
"I will it. So alone can you convince me."
She hesitated. She had not the power to gather her thoughts together, to judge what she should do, what under the circumstances would be best to be done.
"Come now," repeated Jonas. "If you are true and honest, as you say, call him."
She put her trembling hand to her head, wiped the drops from her brow, the tears from her eyes, the dew from her quivering lips.
Her brain was reeling, her power of will was paralyzed.
"Come, now," said Jonas once more, "answer him—here am I."
Then Mehetabel cried, "Iver, here am I!"
"Where are you, Mehetabel?" came the question through the silvery haze and the twinkling willow-shoots.
"Answer him, by Thor's Stone," said Jonas.
Again she hesitated and passed her hand over her face.
"Answer him," whispered Jonas. "If you are true, do as I say. If false, be silent."
"By Thor's Stone," called Mehetabel.
Then all the sound heard was that of the young man brushing his way through the rushes and willow boughs.
In the terror, the agony overmastering her, she had lost all independent power of will. She was as a piece of mechanism in the hands of Jonas. His strong, masterful mind dominated her, beat down for a time all opposition. She knew that to summon Iver was to call him to a fearful struggle, perhaps to his death, and yet the faculty of resistance was momentarily gone from her. She tried to collect her thoughts. She could not. She strove to think what she ought to do, she was unable to frame a thought in her mind that whirled and reeled.
Bideabout stooped and picked up a gun he had been carrying, and had dropped on the turf when he laid hold of his wife.
Now he placed the barrel across the anvil stone, with the muzzle directed whence came the sound of the advance of Iver.
Jonas went behind the stone and bent one knee to the ground.
Mehetabel heard the click as he spanned the trigger.
"Stand on one side," said Jonas, in a low tone, in which were mingled rage and exultation. "Call him again."
She was silent. Lest she should speak she pressed both her hands to her mouth.
"Call him again," said Jonas. "I will receive him with a dab of lead in his heart."
She would not call.
"On your obedience and truth, of which you vaunt," persisted Jonas.
Should she utter a cry of warning? Would he comprehend? Would that arrest him, make him retrace his steps, escape what menaced?
Whether she cried or not he would come on. He knew Thor's Stone as well as she. They had often visited it together as children.
"If false, keep silence," said Jonas, looking up at her from where he knelt. "If true, bid him come—to his death, that I may carry out your wish, and rid you of him. If the spirits won't help you, I will."
Then she shrilly cried, "Iver, come!"
After Bideabout had done his business in Godalming he had returned to the Punch-Bowl.
The news had reached his ears that a deer had been seen on the Moor, and he knew that on the following day many guns would be out, as every man in Thursley was a sportsman. With characteristic cunning he resolved to forestall his fellows, go forth at night, which he might well do when the moon was full, and secure the deer for himself.
As he left the house, he encountered his sister.
"Where are you going off to?" she inquired. "And got a gun too."
He informed her of his intention.
"Ah! you'll give us some of the venison," said she.
"I'm not so sure of that," answered the Broom-Squire, churlishly.
"So you are going stag-hunting? That's purely," laughed she.
"Why not?"
"I should have thought you'd best a' gone after your own wife, and brought her home."
"She is all right—at the Ship."
"I know she is at the Ship—just where she ought not to be; just where you should not let her be."
"She'll earn a little money."
"Oh, money!" scoffed Sarah Rocliffe. "What fools men be, and set themselves up as wiser than all the world of women. You've had Iver Verstage here; you've invited him over to paint your Matabel; and here he has been, admiring her, saying soft things to her, and turnin' her head. Sometimes you've been present. Most times you've been away. And now you've sent her to the Ship, and you are off stag huntin'." Then with strident voice, the woman sang, and looked maliciously at her brother.
"Oh, it blew a pleasant gale,As a frite under sail,Came a-bearing to the south along the strand.With her swelling canvas spread.But without an ounce of lead,And a signalling, alack t she was ill-manned."
With a laugh, and a snap of her fingers in Bideabout's face, she repeated tauntingly:—
"And a-signalling, alack I she was ill-manned."
Then she burst forth again:—
"She was named the Virgin Dove,With a lading, all of love.And she signalled, that for Venus (Venice) she was bound.But a pilot who could steer.She required, for sore her fear,Lest without one she should chance to run aground."
"Be silent, you croaking raven," shouted the Broom-Squire. "If you think to mock me, you are wrong. I know well enough what I am about. As for that painting chap, he is gone—gone to Guildford."
"How do you know that?"
"Because the landlady said as much."
"What—to you?"
"Yes, to me."
Mrs. Rocliffe laughed mockingly.
"Oh, Bideabout," she said, "did not that open your eyes? What did Sanna Verstage mean when she asked you to allow your wife to go to the inn! What did she mean but this?" she mimicked the mistress, "'Please, Master Bideabout, may Matabel come to me for a day or two—that naughty boy of mine is away now. So don't be frightened. I know very well that if he were at the Ship you might hesitate to send Matabel there.'" Then in her own tones Sarah Rocliffe said. "That is the meaning of it. But I don't believe that he is gone."
"Sanna Verstage don't tell lies."
"If he were gone, Matabel would not be so keen to go there."
"Matabel was not keen. She did not wish to go."
"She did wish it; but she made a pretence before you that she did not."
"Hold your slanderous tongue," shouted Jonas. "I'll not hear another word."
"Then you must shut your ears to what all the parish is saying."
Thereupon she told him what she had seen, with amplifications of her own. She was glad to have the opportunity of angering or wounding her brother; of sowing discord between him and his wife.
When he parted from her, she cast after him the remark—"I believe he is still at the Ship."
In a mood the reverse of cheerful, angry with Mehetabel, raging against Iver, cursing himself, and overflowing with spite against his sister Jonas went to the Moor in quest of the strayed deer. He knew very well that his sister bore Mehetabel a grudge; he was sufficiently acquainted with her rancorous humor and unscrupulous tongue to know that what she said was not to be relied on, yet discount as he might what she had told him, he was assured that a substratum of truth lay at the bottom.
Before entering the morass Jonas halted, and leaning on his gun, considered whether he should not go to the tavern, reclaim his wife and reconduct her home, instead of going after game. But he thought that such a proceeding might be animadverted upon; he relied upon Mrs. Verstage's words, that Iver was departing to his professional work, and he was eager to secure the game for himself.
Accordingly he directed his course to the Moor, and stole along softly, listening for the least sound of the deer, and keeping his eye on the alert to observe her.
He had been crouching in a bush near the pool when he was startled by the apparition of Mehetabel.
At first he had supposed that the sound of steps proceeded from the advancing deer, for which he was on the watch, and he lay close, with his barrel loaded, and his finger on the trigger. But in place of the deer his own wife approached, indistinctly seen in the moonlight, so that he did not recognize her. And his heart stood still, numbed by panic, for he thought he saw a spirit. But as the form drew near he knew Mehetabel.
Perplexed, he remained still, to observe her further movements. Then he saw her approach the stone of Thor, strike on it with an extemporized hammer, and cry, "Save me from him! Take him away!"
Perhaps it was not unreasonable that he at once concluded that she referred to himself.
He knew that she did not love him. Instead of each day of married life drawing more closely the bonds that bound them together, it really seemed to relax such as did exist. She became colder, withdrew more into herself, shrank from his clumsy amiabilities, and kept the door of her heart resolutely shut against all intrusion. She went through her household duties perfunctorily, as might a slave for a hated master.
If she did not love him, if her married life was becoming intolerable, then it was obvious that she sought relief from it, and the only means of relief open to her lay through his death.
But there was something more that urged her on to desire this. She not merely disliked him, but loved another, and over his coffin she would leap into that other man's arms. As Karon Wyeth had aimed at and secured the death of her husband, so did Mehetabel seek deliverance from him.
Bideabout sprang from his lurking-place to check her in the midst of her invocation, and to avert the danger that menaced himself. And now he saw the very man draw nigh who had withdrawn the heart of his wife from him, and had made his home miserable; the man on behalf of whom Mehetabel had summoned supernatural aid to rid her of himself.
Kneeling behind Thor's Stone, with the steel barrel of his gun laid on the anvil, and pointed in the direction whence came Iver's voice, he waited till his rival should appear, and draw within range, that he might shoot him through the heart.
"Summon him again," he whispered.
"Iver come!" called Mehetabel.
Then through the illuminated haze, like an atmosphere of glow-worm's light, himself black against a background of shining water, appeared the young man.
Jonas had his teeth clenched; his breath hissed like the threat of a serpent, as he drew a long inspiration through them.
"You are there!" shouted Iver, joyously, and ran forward.
She felt a thrill run through the barrel, on which she had laid her hand; she saw a movement of the shoulder of Jonas, and was aware that he was preparing to fire.
Instantly she snatched the gun to her, laid the muzzle against her own side, and said: "Fire!" She spoke again. "So all will be well."
Then she cried in piercing tones, "Iver! run! run! he is here, and he seeks to kill you."
Jonas sprang to his feet with a curse, and endeavored to wrest the gun from Mehetabel's hand. But she held it fast. She clung to it with tenacity, with the whole of her strength, so that he was unable to pluck it away.
And still she cried, "Run, Iver, run; he will kill you!"
"Let go!" yelled Bideabout. He set his foot against Thor's Stone; he twisted the gun about, he turned it this way, that way, to wrench it out of her hands.
"I will not!" she gasped.
"It is loaded! It will go off!"
"I care not."
"Oh, no! so long as it shoots me."
"Send the lead into my heart!"
"Then let go. But no! the bullet is not for you. Let go, I say, orI will brain you with the butt end, and then shoot him!"
"I will not! Kill me if you will!"
Strong, athletic, lithe in her movements, Mehetabel was a match for the small muscular Jonas. If he succeeded for a moment in twisting the gun out of her hands it was but for an instant. She had caught the barrel again at another point.
He strove to beat her knuckles against Thor's Stone, but she was too dexterous for him. By a twist she brought his hand against the block instead of her own.
With an oath he cast himself upon her, by the impact, by the weight, to throw her down. Under the burden she fell on her knees, but did not relinquish her hold on the gun. On the contrary she obtained greater power over it, and held the barrel athwart her bosom, and wove her arms around it.
Iver was hastening to her assistance. He saw that some contest was going on, but was not able to discern either with whom Mehetabel was grappling nor what was the meaning of the struggle.
In his attempt to approach, Iver was regardless where he trod. He sank over his knees in the mire, and was obliged to extricate himself before he could advance.
With difficulty, by means of oziers, he succeeded in reaching firm soil, and then, with more circumspection, he sought a way by which he might come to the help of Mehetabel.
Meanwhile, regardless of the contest of human passion, raging close by, the great bird swung like a pendulum above the mere, and its shadow swayed below it.
"Let go! I will murder you, if you do not!" hissed Jonas. "You think I will kill him. So I will, but I will kill you first."
"Iver! help!" cried Mehetabel; her strength was abandoning her.
The Broom-Squire dragged his kneeling wife forward, and then thrust her back. He held the gun by the stock and the end of the barrel. The rest was grappled by her, close to her bosom.
He sought to throw her on her face, then on her back. So only could he wrench the gun away.
"Ah, ah!" with a shout of triumph.
He had disengaged the barrel from her arm. He turned it sharply upward, to twist it out of her hold she had with the other arm.
Then—suddenly—an explosion, a flash, a report, a cry; andBideabout staggered back and fell.
A rush of wings.
The large bird that had vibrated above the water had been alarmed, and now flew away.
For a couple of minutes complete, death-like silence ensued.
Mehetabel, panting, everything swimming, turning before her eyes, remained motionless on her knees, but rested her hands on Thor's Stone, to save herself from falling on her face.
What had happened she hardly knew. The gun had been discharged, and then had fallen before her knees. Whom had it injured? What was the injury done?
She was unable to see, through the veil of tears that covered her eyes. She had not voice wherewith to speak.
Iver, moreover, stood motionless, holding to a willow. He also was ignorant of what had occurred. Was the shot aimed at him, or at Mehetabel? Who had fired?
Crouching against a bush, into which he had staggered and then collapsed, was the Broom-Squire. A sudden spasm of pain had shot through him at the flash of the gun. That he was struck he knew, to what extent injured he could not guess.
As he endeavored to raise one hand, the left, in which was the seat of pain, he became aware that his arm was stiff and powerless. He could not move his fingers.
The blood was coursing over his hand in a warm stream.
A horrible thought rushed through his brain. He was at the mercy of that woman who had invoked the Devil against him, and of the lover on whose account she had desired his death. She had called, and in part had been answered. He was wounded, and incapable of defending himself. This guilty pair would complete the work, kill him; blow out his brains, beat his head with the stock of the gun, and cast his body into the marsh.
Who would know how he came by his death? His sister was aware that he had gone to the moor to stalk deer. What evidence would be producible against this couple should they complete the work and dispose of him?
Strangely unaccountable as it may seem, yet it was so, that at the moment, rage at the thought that, should they kill him, Mehetabel and Iver would escape punishment, was the prevailing thought and predominant passion in Jonas's mind, and not by any means fear for himself. This made him disregard his pain, indifferent to his fate.
"I have still my right hand and my teeth," he said. "I will beat and tear that they may bear marks that shall awake suspicion."
But his head swam, he turned sick and faint, and became insensible.
When Jonas recovered consciousness he lay on his back, and saw faces bowed over him—that of his wife and that of Iver, the two he hated most cordially in the world, the two at least he hated to see together.
He struggled to rise and bite, like a wild beast, but was held down by Iver.
"Curse you! will you kill me so?" he yelled, snapping with his great jaws, trying to reach and rend the hands that restrained him.
"Lie still, Bideabout," said the young painter, "are you crazed? We will do you no harm. Mehetabel is binding up your arm. As far as I can make out the shot has run up it and is lodged in the shoulder."
"I care not. Let me go. You will murder me." Mehetabel had torn a strip from her skirt and was making a bandage of it.
"Jonas," she said, "pray lie quiet, or sit up and be reasonable.I must do what I can to stay the blood."
As he began to realize that he was being attended to, and that Iver and Mehetabel had no intention to hurt him, the Broom-Squire became more composed and patient.
His brows were knit and his teeth set. He avoided looking into the faces of those who attended to him.
Presently the young painter helped him to rise, and offered his arm. This Jonas refused.
"I can walk by myself," said he, churlishly; then turning to Mehetabel, he said, with a sneer, "The devil never does aught but by halves."
"What do you mean?"
"The bullet has entered my arm and not my heart, as you desired."
"Go," she said to the young artist; "I pray you go and leave me with him. I will take him home."
Iver demurred.
"I entreat you to go," she urged. "Go to your mother. Tell her that my husband has met with an accident, and that I am called away to attend him. That is to serve as an excuse. I must, I verily must go with him. Do not say more. Do not say where this happened."
"Why not?"
She did not answer. He considered for a moment and then dimly saw that she was right.
"Iver," she said in a low tone, so that Jonas might not hear, "you should not have followed me; then this would never have happened."
"If I had not followed you he would have been your murderer,Matabel."
Then, reluctantly, he went. But ever and anon turned to listen or to look.
When he was out of sight, then Mehetabel said to her husband, "Lean on me, and let me help you along."
"I can go by myself," he said bitterly. "I would not have his arm.I will have none of yours. Give me my gun."
"No, Jonas, I will carry that for you."
Then he put forth his uninjured right hand, and took the kidney-iron stone from the anvil block, on which Mehetabel had left it.
"What do you want with that?" she asked.
"I may have to knock also," he answered. "Is it you alone who are allowed to have wishes?"
She said no more, but stepped along, not swiftly, cautiously, and turning at every step, to see that he was following, and that he had put his foot on substance that would support his weight.
"Why do you look at me?" he asked captiously.
"Jonas, you are in pain, and giddy with pain. You may lose your footing, and go into the water."
"So—that now is your desire?"
"I pray you," she answered, in distress, "Jonas, do not entertain such evil thoughts."
They attained a ridge of sand. She fell back and paced at his side.
Bideabout observed her out of the corners of his eyes. By the moonlight he could see how finely, nobly cut was her profile; he could see the glancing of the moon in the tears that suffused her cheeks.
"You know who shot me?" he inquired, in a low tone.
"I know nothing, Jonas, but that there was a struggle, and that during this struggle, by accident—"
"You did it."
"No, Jonas. I cannot think it."
"It was so. You touched the trigger. You knew that the piece was on full cock."
"It was altogether an accident. I knew nothing. I was conscious of nothing, save that I was trying to prevent you from committing a great crime."
"A great crime!" jeered he. "You thought only how you might save the life of your love."
Mehetabel stood still and turned to him.
"Jonas, do not say that. You cruelly, you wrongfully misjudge me I will tell you all, if you will I never would have hidden anything from you if I had not known how you would take and use what I said. Iver and I were child friends, almost brother and sister. I always cared for him, and I think he liked me. He went away and I saw nothing of him. Then, at our wedding, he returned home; and since then I have seen him a good many times—you, yourself asked him to the Punch-Bowl, and bade me stand for him to paint. I cannot deny that I care for him, and that he likes me."
"As brother and sister?"
"No—not as brother and sister. We are children no longer. But, Jonas, I have no wish, no thought other than that he should leave Thursley, and that I should never, never, never see his face again. Of thought, of word, of act against my duty to you I am guiltless. Of thoughts, as far as I have been able to hold my thoughts in chains, of words, of acts I have nothing to reproach myself with, there have been none but what might be known to you, in a light clearer than that poured down by this moon. You will believe me, Jonas."
He looked searchingly into her beautiful, pale face—now white as snow in the moonlight. After a long pause, he answered, "I do not believe you."
"I can say no more," she spoke and sighed, and went forward.
He now lagged behind.
They stepped off the sand ridge, and were again in treacherous soil, neither land nor water, but land and water tossed together in strips and tags and tatters.
"Go on," he said. "I will step after you."
Presently she looked behind her, and saw him swinging his right hand, in which was the lump of ironstone.
"Why do you turn your head?" he asked.
"I look for you."
"Are you afraid of me?"
"I am sorry for you, Jonas."
"Sorry—because of my arm?"
"Because you are unable to believe a true woman's word."
"I do not understand you."
"No—I do not suppose you can."
Then he screamed, "No, I do not believe." He leaped forward, and struck her on the head with the nodule of iron, and felled her at his feet.
"There," said he; "with this stone you sought my death, and with it I cause yours."
Then he knelt where she lay motionless, extended, in the marsh, half out of the water, half submerged.
He gripped her by the throat, and by sheer force, with his one available arm, thrust her head under water.
The moonlight played in the ripples as they closed over her face; it surely was not water, but liquid silver, fluid diamond.
He endeavored to hold her head under the surface. She did not struggle. She did not even move. But suddenly a pang shot through him, as though he had been pierced by another bullet. The bandage about his wound gave way, and the hot blood broke forth again.
Jonas reeled back in terror, lest his consciousness should desert him, and he sank for an instant insensible, face foremost, into the water.
As it was, where he knelt, among the water-plants, they were yielding under his weight.
He scrambled away, and clung to a distorted pine on the summit of a sand-knoll.
Giddy and faint, he laid his head against the bush, and inhaled the invigorating odor of the turpentine. Gradually he recovered, and was able to stand unsupported.
Then he looked in the direction where Mehetabel lay. She had not stirred. The bare white arms were exposed and gleaming in the moonlight. The face he did not see. He shrank from looking towards it.
Then he slunk away, homewards.
When Bideabout arrived in the Punch-Bowl, as he passed the house of the Rocliffes, he saw his sister, with a pail, coming from the cow-house. One of the cattle was ill, and she had been carrying it a bran-mash.
He went to her, and said, "Sally!"
"Here I be, Jonas, what now?"
"I want you badly at my place. There's been an accident."
"What? To whom? Not to old Clutch?"
"Old Clutch be bothered. It is I be hurted terr'ble bad. In my arm.If it weren't dark here, under the trees, you'd see the blood."
"I'll come direct. That's just about it. When she's wanted, your wife is elsewhere. When she ain't, she's all over the shop. I'll clap down the pail inside. You go on and I'll follow."
Jonas unlocked his house, and entered. He groped about for the tinder-box, but when he had found it was unable to strike a light with one hand only. He seated himself in the dark, and fell into a cold sweat.
Not only was he in great pain, but his mind was ill at ease, full of vague terrors. There was something in the corner that he could see, slightly stirring. A little moonlight entered, and a fold flickered in the ray, then disappeared again. Again something came within the light. Was it a foot? Was it the bottom of a skirt? He shrank back against the wall, as far as possible from this mysterious, restless form.
He looked round to see that the scullery door was open, through which to escape, should this thing move towards him.
The sow was grunting and squealing in her stye, Jonas hailed the sound; there was nothing alarming in that. Had all been still in and about the house, there might have come from that undefined shadow in the comer a voice, a groan, a sigh—he knew not what. With an exclamation of relief he saw the flash of Sally Rocliffe's lantern pass the window.
Next moment she stood in the doorway.
"Where are you, Jonas?"
"I am here. Hold up the lantern, Sarah. What's that in the corner there, movin'?"
"Where, Jonas?"
"There—you are almost touchin it. Turn the light."
"That," said his sister; "why don'ty know your own old oilcloth overcoat as was father's, don'ty know that when you see it?"
"I didn't see it, but indistinct like," answered Jonas.
His courage, his strength, his insolence were gone out of him.
"Now, what's up?" asked Sarah. "How have you been hurted?"
Jonas told a rambling story. He had been in the Marsh. He had seen the deer, but in his haste to get within range he had run, caught his foot in a bramble, had stumbled, and the gun had been discharged, and the bullet had entered his arm.
Mrs. Rocliffe at once came to him to examine the wound.
"Why, Jonas, you never did this up yourself. There's some one been at your arm already. Here's this band be off Matabel's petticoat. How came you by that?"
He was confounded, and remained silent.
"And where is the gun, Jonas?"
"The gun!"
He had forgotten all about it in his panic. Mehetabel had been carrying it when he beat her down. He had thought of it no more. He had thought of nothing after the deed, but how to escape from the spot as speedily as possible.
"I suppose I've lost it," he said. "Somewhere in the Moor. You see when I was wounded, I hadn't the head to think of anything else."
Mrs. Rocliffe was examining his arm. The sleeve of his coat had been cut.
"I don't understand your tale a scrap, Jonas," she said. "Who used his knife to slit up your sleeve? And how comes your arm to be bandaged with this bit of Matabel's dress?"
Bideabout was uneasy. The tale he had told was untenable. There was a necessity for it to be supplemented. But his condition of alarm and pain made him unable readily to frame a story that would account for all, and satisfy his sister.
"Jonas," said Sarah, "I'm sure you have seen Matabel, and she did this for you. Where is she?"
Bideabout trembled. He thrust his sister from him, saying, irritably, "Why do you worrit me with questions? My arm wants attendin' to."
"I can't do much to that," answered the woman. "A doctor should look to that. I'll go and call Samuel, and bid him ride away after one."
"I won't be left alone!" exclaimed the Broom-Squire, in a sudden access of terror.
Sarah Rocliffe deliberately took the lantern and held it to his face.
"Jonas," she said, "I'll do nuthin' more for you till I know the whole truth. You've seen your wife and there's somethin' passed between you. I see by your manner that all is not right. Where is Matabel? You haven't been after the deer on the Moor. You have been to the Ship."
"That is a lie," answered Bideabout. "I have been on the Moor. 'Tis there I got shot, and, if you will have it all out, it was Matabel who shot me."
"Matabel shot you?"
"Yes, it was. She shot me to prevent me from killin' him."
"Whom?"
"You know—that painter fellow."
"So that is the truth? Then where is she?"
The Broom-Squire hesitated and moved his feet uneasily.
"Jonas," said his sister, "I will know all."
"Then know it," he answered angrily. "Somehow, as she was helpin' me along, her foot slipped and she fell into the water. I had but one arm, and I were stiff wi' pains. What could I do? I did what I could, but that weren't much. I couldn't draw her out o' the mire. That would take a man wi' two good arms, and she was able to scramble out if she liked. But she's that perverse, there's no knowing, she might drown herself just to spite me."
"Why did you not speak of that at once?"
"Arn't I hurted terr'ble bad? Arn't I got a broken arm or somethin' like it? When a chap is in racks o' pain he han't got all his wits about him. I know I wanted help, for myself, first, and next, for her; and now I've told you that she's in the Moor somewhere. She may ha' crawled out, or she may be lyin' there. I run on, so fast as possible, in my condition, to call for help."
"Where is she? Where did you leave her?"
"Right along between here and Thor's Stone. There's an old twisted Scotch pine with magpies' nests in it—I reckon more nests than there be green stuff on the tree. It's just about there."
"Jonas," said the sister, who had turned deadly white, and who lowered the lantern, unable longer to hold it to her brother's face with steady hand, "Jonas, you never ort to ha' married into a gallus family; you've ketched the complaint. It's bad enough to have men hanged on top o' Hind Head. We don't want another gibbet down at the bottom of the Punch-Bowl, and that for one of ourselves."
Then voices were audible outside, and a light flickered through the window.
In abject terror the Broom-Squire screamed "Sally, save me, hide me; it's the constables!"
He cowered into a corner, then darted into the back kitchen, and groped for some place of concealment.
He heard thence the voices more distinctly. There was a tramp of feet in his kitchen; a flare of fuller light than that afforded by Mrs. Rocliffe's lantern ran in through the door he had left ajar.
The sweat poured over his face and blinded his eyes.
Bideabout's anxiety was by no means diminished when he recognized one of the voices in his front kitchen as that of Iver.
Had Iver watched him instead of returning to the Ship? Had he followed in his track, spying what he did? Had he seen what had taken place by the twisted pine with the magpies' nests in it? And if so, had he hasted to Thursley to call out the constable, and to arrest him as the murderer of his wife.