Part 17

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.