Part 10

'I'll write it down in my note-book and then I shall remember it. My memory is overstocked, and it takes me a deal of time to find in it what I want. But your mother's name don't get buried, but lies at hand on the top. You'll tell her so. Now about my troubles. There was one damsel, who was called Admonition; and she was very particularly pleasant and attentive to me, and many a little teasing and joking I had with her about her name. She was the girl fullest of fun, she regularly brimmed over with it, and it ran down her sides. She was a milliner, and had to work for her living. She had no relations and no money of her own. It is curious what a lot of cousins she has now, mostly in the sea-faring line, and all young. Then she was always ready for a chat. She would bring her needlework and sit with me by the hour. I thought it vastly pleasant, and how much more pleasant it would be if she were always by my side to keep me laughing and chirpy. I must tell you that I go down some degrees when alone,--not that my spirits fail me with age,--it is constitutional. I was so as a boy.--Bless me! it seems to me only the other day when I was a romping lout of a lad--I'm crisp and crackly like seaweed in an East wind when I am in female society, that is, female society up to one and twenty--but I'm like the same seaweed in a Sou'wester when I'm alone. One day the flag was flying, but no visitor came except Admonition. It was the day of the Regatta. She said, and the tears came into her eyes, that she was a lone girl, with no one to accompany her, so she had come to sit with me. She tried to cheer up and laugh, but she felt her loneliness so that my heart was touched, and I proposed and we were married.' There ensued a long pause. Mr. Pettican looked out of the window. 'I had a queer sort of premonitory feeling when I said, "I take thee Admonition to my wedded wife," but it was too late then to retract. Now the flag that has braved a thousand breezes is down. It has not flown since that day.'

'Where is Mrs. Pettican now?' asked Mehalah.

'At the Regatta,' answered the cripple. 'You'll tell your mother how I am situated. She will drop a tear for poor Charlie. I will tell you what, Me----' he looked at his note-book, 'Mehalah; men fancy all girls sultana raisins, but when they bite them they get very hard pips between their teeth. There's a Methodist preacher here has been haranguing on conversion, and persuading Admonition that she is a new creature. I know she is. She was converted on the day of the marriage ceremony; but the conversion was not something to boast of. Matrimony with women is what jibbing is with ships, they go through a movement of staggering and then away they start off on a tack clean contrary to the course they were sailing before. Marriage, Mehalah, is like Devonshire cream; it is very rich and tasty, but it develops a deal of bile. Look here, my pretty!' In a moment he was off his chair, stumping in his crutches round the room, dragging his paralysed limbs after him. He returned to his chair. 'Put up my legs, dear,' he begged; then said, 'That is the state of my case; my better half is Admonition, the poor paralysed, helpless, dead half is me.'

He did not speak for some moments, but brushed his eyes with his feeble hand. At last he said, 'I've unburdened my soul. Tell your mother. Now go ahead, and let me know what you want.'

Mehalah told Mr. Pettican the circumstances. She said that her mother wanted a loan of fifteen or twenty pounds. If she could not procure the sum, she would have her cow taken from her, then they would be unable to pay the rent next Lady Day, and be without milk for the winter. They would be turned out of the little farm on which her mother had lived so long, in quiet and contentment, and this would go far to break her mother's heart. She told him candidly that the loan could only be repaid in instalments.

The old man listened patiently, only passing his hand in an agitated manner across his face several times.

'I wish I could help you,' he said, when she had done; 'I have money. I have laid by some. There is plenty in the box and more at the bank, but I can't get at it.'

'Sir!'

'Before I struck my colours, Mehalah, I did what I liked with my money; on market days my man went into Colchester, and I always gave him a little sum to lay out in presents for my kind visitors. Bless you; a very trifle pleased them. It is different now. I don't spend a penny myself. The money is spent for me. I don't keep the key of my cashbox. Admonition has it.'

'Then,' said Mehalah, rising from her seat, 'all is over with us. My mother, your cousin, will in her old age be cast destitute into the world. But, if you really wish to help her, be a man, use your authority, and do what you choose with your own.'

'Bless me!' exclaimed Mr. Pettican touching his brow with his trembling hand, 'I will be a man. Am I not a man! If I don't exert my authority, people will say I am in my dotage. I--I--in my flower and cream of my age--in the dotage! Go, Me----' he looked in his note-book, 'Mehalah, fetch me my cashbox, it is in the bedroom cupboard upstairs, on the right, over this. Bring the box down. Stay though! Before you come down just feel in my wife's old dress pocket. She may have forgotten to take her keys with her to the Regatta. It is just possible.'

'I cannot do that.'

'Well, no, perhaps you had better not. Do you happen to have a bunch of keys with you?'

'No, sir.'

'Well, never mind. Bring me the case. I will be a man. I will show the world I am not in my dotage. I will be of the masculine gender, dative case, if it pleases me, and Admonition may lump it if she don't like it.'

Mehalah obeyed. She found the box, which was of iron, brought it downstairs, and placed it on the table by Mr. Pettican. 'I've been turning the matter over in my mind,' said he, 'and I see a very happy way out of it without a row. Give me the poker. You will find a cold chisel in that drawer.'

'I will tell you my idea. Whilst I am left here all alone, burglars have broken into the house, knowing my helpless condition, and have ransacked the place, found my cashbox and broken it open.' He chuckled and rubbed his hands. 'I shall be able accurately to describe the ruffians. One has a black moustache, and the other a red beard, and they look like foreigners and speak a Dutch jargon.'

He put the chisel to the lid, and struck at it with the poker, starting the hinges by the blow.

At that moment the door was flung wide, and in swam a dashing young woman in very gay colours, on the arm of a yachtsman.

'Charles!' she cried; 'what are you after?' then turning abruptly on Mehalah, 'And pray what are you doing here, in my house?' Mr. Pettican's head, which had been craned forward in eagerness over the box, retreated amidst the collar and cravat, and almost disappeared.

'Who are you?' she asked of Mehalah, with an insulting air. 'Out of this house with you at once!'

'My dear Monie!' pleaded Mr. Pettican, lifting his shaking hands into an attitude of prayer.

'No "My dears" and "Monies" to me,' said the wife. 'I want to know what you are after with my cashbox? Ho, ho! trying to prize it open and squander my little sums laid aside for household expenses on--Heaven knows whom.'

'Mr. Pettican is my mother's cousin,' said Mehalah.

'Cousin, indeed! never heard Mr. Pettican speak of you. Cousins are sure to turn up when money is wanted.'

'Mr. Pettican,' said Mehalah, refusing to notice the insolent woman, 'be a man and let me have the money you promised.'

'I should like to be a man, oh! I wish I were a man! But I can't, I can't indeed, dear. I haven't been myself since I hauled down my flag.'

'Charles, hold out your hand, and invite my cousin Timothy to dinner. He has kindly consented to stay a fortnight with us.'

'Timothy!' echoed Mr. Pettican, 'I did not know you had such a cousin.'

'Do you think you know anything of my relations?' exclaimed Admonition; 'I should hope not, they are a little above your sphere. There are lots more cousins!'

The poor little man sat shrinking behind his blinkers, peering piteously now at Mehalah, and then at his wife.

'Be a man,' said Mehalah, grasping him by both hands. 'Save us from ruin.'

'Can't do it, Pretty, can't. I have struck my colours.'

*CHAPTER XI*

*A DUTCH AUCTION.*

Mehalah returned sadly to the Ray. The hope that had centred in help from Wyvenhoe had been extinguished.

Her mother was greatly disappointed at the ill-success of the application, but flattered at her cousin's recollection of her.

'If it had not been for that woman's coming in when she did, we should have had the money,' said Mrs. Sharland. 'What a pity she did not remain away a little longer. Charles is very well disposed, and would help us if he could pluck up courage to defy his wife. Suppose you try again, Mehalah, some other day, and choose your time well.'

'I will not go there again, mother.'

'If we do get turned out of this place we might settle at Wyvenhoe, and then choose our opportunity.'

'Mother, the man is completely under his wife's thumb. There is no help to be found there.'

'Then, Mehalah, the only chance that remains, is to get the money from the Mersea parson.'

'He cannot help us.'

'There is no harm trying.'

The day on which Mrs. De Witt had threatened to come had passed, without her appearing. True it had blown great guns, and there had been storms of rain. Mrs. Sharland hoped that the danger was over. The primitive inhabitants of the marshes had dwelt on piles, she built on straws. Some people do not realise a danger till it is on them and they cannot avert it. Mrs. Sharland was one of these. She liked her grievance, and loved to moan over it; if she had not a real one she invented one, just as children celebrate funerals over dolls. She had been so accustomed to lament over toy troubles that when a real trouble threatened she was unable to measure its gravity.

She was a limp and characterless woman. Mehalah had inherited the rich red blood of her grandparents, and Mrs. Sharland had assimilated only the water, and this flowed feebly through her pale veins. Her nature was parasitic. She could not live on her own root, but must adhere to a character stronger than herself. She had hung on and smothered her husband, and now she dragged at her daughter. Mehalah must stand upright or Mrs. Sharland would crush her to the ground. There are women like articles of furniture that will 'wobble' unless a penny or a wedge of wood be put under their feet. Mrs. Sharland was always crying out for some trifle to steady her.

Mehalah did not share her mother's anticipations that the danger had passed with the day, that Mrs De Witt's purpose had given way to kinder thoughts; she was quite sure that she would prove relentless and push matters to extremities. It was this certainty which drove her to act once more on her mother's suggestion, and go to the Mersea Rectory, to endeavour to borrow the sum of money needed to relieve them from immediate danger.

She found the parson in his garden without his coat, which hung on the hedge, making a potatoe pie for the winter.

He was on all fours packing the tubers in straw. His boots and gaiters were clogged with clay.

'Hallo!' he exclaimed as Mehalah came up. 'You are the girl they call Glory? Look here. I want you to see my kidneys. Did you ever see the like, come clean out of the ground without canker. Would you like a peck? I'll give them you. Boil beautiful.'

'I want to speak with you, sir.'

'Speak then by all means, and don't mind me. I must attend to my kidneys. A fine day like this is not to be wasted at this time of the year. Go on. There is an ashtop for you. I don't care for the potatoe as a potatoe. It don't boil all to flour as I like. You can have a few if you like. Now go on.'

Down went his head again, and was buried in a nest of straw. Mehalah waited. She did not care to address his back and legs, the only part of his person visible.

'You can't be too careful with potatoes,' said the parson, presently emerging, very red in the face, and with a pat of clay on his nose. 'You must make them comfortable for the winter. Do to others as you would they should do to you. Keep them well from frost, and they will boil beautiful all the winter through. Go on with your story. I am listening,' and in went the head again.

Mehalah lost heart. She could not begin thus.

'Pah! how I sweat,' exclaimed the parson, again emerging. 'The sun beats down on my back, and the black waistcoat draws the heat. And we are in November. This won't last. Have you your potatoes in, Glory?'

'We have only a few on the Ray.'

'You ought to have more. Potatoes like a light soil well drained. You have gravel, and with some good cow-dung or sheep-manure, which is better still, with your fall, they ought to do primely. I'll give you seed. It is all nonsense, as they do here, planting small whole potatoes. Take a good strong tuber, and cut it up with an eye in each piece; then you get a better plant than if you keep the little half-grown potatoes for seed. However, I'm wasting time. I'll be back in a moment. I must fetch another basket load. Go on with your story all the same: I can hear you. I shall only be in the shed behind the Rectory.'

Parson Tyll was a curate of one parish across the Strood and of the two on the island. The rector was non-resident, on the plea of the insalubrity of the spot. He had held the rectory of one parish and the vicarage of the other thirty years, and during that period had visited his cures twice, once to read himself in, and on the other occasion to exact some tithes denied him.

'All right,' said Mr. Tyll, returning from the back premises, staggering under a crate full of roots. 'Go on, I am listening. Pick up those kidneys which have rolled out. Curse it, I hate their falling and getting bruised; they won't keep. There now, you never saw finer potatoes in your life than these. My soil here is the same as yours on the Ray. Don't plant too close, and not in ridges. I'll tell you what I do. I put mine in five feet apart and make heaps round each. I don't hold by ridges. Hillocks is my doctrine. Go on, I am listening. Here, lend me a hand, and chuck me in the potatoes as I want them. You can talk all the same.'

Parson Tyll crept into his heap and seated himself on his haunches. 'Chuck away, but not too roughly. They mustn't be bruised. Now go on, I can stack the tubers and listen all the same.'

'Sir,' said Mehalah, out of heart at her reception, 'we are in great trouble and difficulty.'

'I have no doubt of it; none in the world. You don't grow enough potatoes. Now look at my kidneys. They are the most prolific potatoes I know. I introduced them, and they go by my name. You may ask for them anywhere as Tyll's kidneys. Go on, I am listening.'

'We owe Mrs. De Witt a matter of five and twenty pounds,' began Mehalah, red with shame; 'and how to pay her we do not know.'

'Nor I,' said the parson. 'You have tried to go on without potatoes, and you can't do it. Others have tried and failed. You should keep geese on the saltings, and fowls. Fowls ought to thrive on a sandy soil, but then you have no corn land, that makes a difference. Potatoes, however, especially my kidneys, ought to be a treasure to you. Take my advice, be good, grow potatoes. Go on, I am listening. Chuck me some more. How is the stock in the basket? Does it want replenishing? Look here, my lass, go to the coach-house and bring me some more. There is a heap in the corner; on the left; those on the right are ashtops. They go in a separate pie. You can talk as you go, I shall be here and harkening.'

Mehalah went sullenly to the place where the precious roots were stored, and brought him a basketful.

'By the way,' said the parson, peeping out of his mole-hill at her, 'it strikes me you ought not to be here now. Is there not a sale on your farm to-day?'

'A sale, sir?'

'A sale, to be sure. Mrs. De Witt has carried off my clerk to act as auctioneer, or he would be helping me now with my potatoes. She has been round to several of the farmers to invite them to attend and bid, and they have gone to see if they can pick up some ewes or a cow cheap.'

Mehalah staggered. Was this possible?

'Go on with your story, I'm listening,' continued the parson, diving back into his burrow, so that only the less honourable extremity of his vertebral column was visible. 'Talk of potatoes. There's not one to come up to Tyll's kidneys. Go on, I am all attention! Chuck me some more potatoes.'

But Mehalah was gone, and was making the best of her way back.

Parson Tyll was right. This fine November day was that which it had struck Mrs. De Witt was most suitable for the sale, that would produce the money.

Mehalah had not long left the Strood before a strange procession began to cross the Marshes.

Mrs. De Witt sat aloft in a tax-cart borrowed of Isaac Mead, the publican, by the side of his boy who drove. Behind, very uncomfortably, much in the attitude of a pair of scissors, sat the clerk, folded nearly double in the bottom of the cart; his head reclined on Mrs. De Witt's back and the seat of the vehicle, his legs hung over the board at the back, and swung about like those of a calf being carried to market or to the butcher's. Mrs. De Witt wore her red coat, and a clean washed or stiffly starched cap. She led the way. The road over the Marshes was bad, full of holes, and greasy. A recent tide had corrupted the clay into strong brown glue.

The farmers and others who followed to attend the sale had put up their gigs and carts at the cottage of the Strood keeper, and pursued their way on foot. But Mrs. De Witt was above such feebleness of nerve. She had engaged the trap for the day, and would take her money's worth out of it. The boy had protested at the Strood that the cart of his master could not go over the marshes, that Isaac Mead had not supposed it possible that it would be taken over so horrible and perilous a road. Mrs. De Witt thereupon brought her large blue gingham umbrella down on the lad's back, and vowed she would open him like an oyster with her pocket-knife unless he obeyed her. She looked quite capable of fulfilling her threat, and he submitted.

The cart jerked from side to side. The clerk's head struck Mrs. De Witt several sharp blows in the small of her back. She turned sharply round, pegged at him with the umbrella, and bade him mind his manners.

'Let me get out. I can't bear this, ma'am,' pleaded the man.

'It becomes you to ride to the door as the officer of justice,' answered she. 'If I can ride, so can you. Lie quiet,' and she banged at him with the umbrella again.

At that moment there came a jolt of a more violent description than before, and Mrs. De Witt was suddenly precipitated over the splash-board, and, after a battle in the air, on the back of the prostrate horse, with her feet, hands and umbrella she went into a mud hole. The horse was down, but the knees of the clerk were up far above his head. He struggled to rise, but was unable, and could only bellow for assistance.

Mrs. De Witt picked herself up and assisted the boy in bringing the horse to his feet again. Then she coolly pinned up her gown to her knees, and strode forward. The costume was not so shocking to her native modesty as might have been supposed, nor did it scandalise the farmers, for it was that adopted by the collectors of winkles on the flats. The appearance presented by Mrs. De Witt was, however, grotesque. In the mud her legs had sunk to the knees, and they looked as though she wore a pair of highly polished Hessian boots. The skirt and the red coat gave her a curious nondescript military cut, as half Highlander. Though she walked, she would not allow the clerk to dismount. She whacked at the pendant legs when they rose and protested, and bade the fellow lie still; he was all right, and it was only proper that he, the functionary on the occasion, should arrive in state, instead of on his own shanks.

'If you get up on the seat you'll be bobbed off like a pea on a drum. Lie in the bottom of the cart and be peaceful, as is your profession,' said Mrs. De Witt, with a dig of the umbrella over the side.

They formed a curious assemblage. There were the four brothers Marriage of Peldon, not one of whom had taken a wife. Once, indeed, the youngest, Herbert, had formed matrimonial schemes; but on his ventilating the subject, had been fallen on by his three brothers and three unmarried sisters who kept house for them, as though he had hinted the introduction of a cask of gunpowder into the cellars. He had been scolded and lectured, and taunted, as the apostate, the profligate, the prodigal, who was bent on the ruin of the family, the dissipation of the accumulated capital of years of labour, the introducer of discord into a united household. And yet the household was only united in theory, in fact the brothers were always fighting and swearing at one another about the order of the work to be executed on the farm, and the sisters quarrelled over the household routine.

There was Joshua Pudney, of Smith's Hall, who loved his bottle and neglected his farm, who grew more thistles than wheat, and kept more hunters than cows, a jolly fat red-faced man with white hair, always in top boots. Along with him was Nathaniel Pooley, who combined preaching with farming, was noted for sharp practice in money matters, and for not always coming out of pecuniary transactions with clean hands. Pudney cursed and Pooley blessed, yet the labourers were wont to say that Pudney's curses broke no bones, but Pooley's blessings did them out of many a shilling. Pudney let wheat litter in his stubble, and bid the gleaners go in and be damned, when he threw the gate open to them. Pooley raked the harvest field over thrice, and then opened the gleaning with an invocation to Providence to bless the widow, the fatherless, and the poor who gathered in his fields.

Farmer Wise was a gaunt, close-shaven man, always very neatly dressed, a great snuff-taker. He was a politician, and affected to be a Whig, whilst all the rest of his class were Tories. He was argumentative, combative, and cantankerous, a close, careful man, and reported a miser.

A dealer, riding a black pony, a wonderful little creature that scampered along at a flying trot, came up and slackened rein. He was a stout man in a very battered hat, with shabby coat; a merry man, and a good judge of cattle.

The proceedings of the day were, perhaps, hardly in accordance with strict English law, but then English law was precisely like Gospel precepts, made for other folk. On the Essex marshes people did not trouble themselves much about the legality of their proceedings; they took the law into their own hands. If the law suited them they used it, if not they did without it. But, legally or not legally, they got what they wanted. It was altogether inconvenient and expensive for the recovery of a small debt to apply to a solicitor and a magistrate, and the usual custom was, therefore, to do the thing cheaply and easily through the clerk of the parish constituted auctioneer for the occasion, and the goods of the defaulter were sold by him to an extemporised assembly of purchasers on any day that suited the general convenience. The clerk so far submitted to legal restrictions that he did not run goods _up_, but down; he began with an absurdly high figure, instead of one preposterously low.