Part 22

'And,' went on the curate, 'he naturally wished his wife to be present. He wanted her to come down to be seen of his lords and princes.'

'Go on! Damn your sneezing. Put it off till you're preaching, and then no one will care,' said Rebow.

'But,' pursued the parson, when he had wiped his nose and eyes, and recovered breath after the fit, 'Queen Vashti refused to come down.'

'Well, what did the husband say to that?' asked Elijah.

'If he was a sensible man,' said Goppin, 'he cut into the mutton, and didn't bother about she.'

'You don't know, neighbour, that it was a leg of mutton,' said Grout. 'It might have been sirloin.'

'Sirloin!' exclaimed Bunting; 'I wouldn't go ten yards to taste sirloin. There's not enough on the bone, except fat.'

'Go on,' said Elijah to the curate. 'How did the man--king, was he--take it?'

'He dismissed Vashti, and took Esther to be his queen. But then,' put in the frightened curate, thinking he had suggested a startling precedent, 'Ahasuerus was not a Christian, and knew no better.'

'Do you think,' laughed Rebow, 'that I would cast off my Glory for any other woman that ever was born? No, I would not. Let her do what she likes. She don't care to associate with such as you. She holds herself above you. And she's right. She is one the like of whom does not exist. She has a soul stronger and more man-like than anyone of you. If she don't choose to come and guzzle here along of you, she's right. I like her for it.'

He flung himself back in his chair and drained his full glass.

'I ask you, Goppin! Did you ever see the equal of my Glory?'

'I can't say as ever I did, Rebow,' answered the farmer.

'I took the liberty to chuck her under the chin, and she up with the pitchfork out of my hand, and had like to have sent me to kingdom come, had not my good woman been nigh to hand, and run to the rescue. I hope you'll find her more placable when you come to ask a kiss.'

Elijah rubbed his hands, and laughed boisterously.

'Ha!' shouted he, 'that is my Glory! I tell you, Goppin, she'd have drove the prongs of the fork into your flesh as I dig this into the meat,' and he stabbed at the joint fiercely with his carving fork.

'I dare say,' grumbled the farmer, wincing and rubbing his leg. 'I'd for my part rather have a more peacable mate; but there's no choosing fat beasts for others, as the saying goes.'

'What do you think of her?' asked Rebow, turning round with exultation on Bunting and Grout.

'She came to my old woman,' said the latter, 'and asked her to take her in and give her work. She wanted to leave you.'

'She did,' exclaimed Rebow. 'And what did your old woman say to that?'

'She said she durstn't do it. She durstn't do it.'

'She durstn't do it!' echoed Elijah with a great laugh. 'That was fine. She durstn't do it!'

'No,' pursued Grout, 'without your leave.'

'And you wouldn't have dared to do it neither,' turning to Bunting, who shook his head.

'No, you would not dare. I'd like to see the man or woman in Salcott or Virley as would dare. I reckon there is none that knows me would make the venture. By God!' he burst forth. 'Where is the girl? I will have her here; and I'm cursed if you shall not all stand on your legs, and drink to her health and happiness as the most splendid woman as ever was or shall be.'

'Abraham Dowsing is at the door,' said Mrs. Sharland.

'Come in, and say what you have to say before us all,' called Elijah. 'If it be anything about my Glory, say it out.'

'She is gone off in her boat,' said the old man; 'I saw her.'

'Why did you not stop her then?' asked Mrs. De Witt.

'I stop her!' repeated Abraham. 'She is my mistress, and I a servant.'

'That is right,' said Elijah, 'if she had taken a whip and lashed your back till it was raw, you couldn't stop her. Where is she gone to?'

Abraham drew up his shoulders. 'That's her concern. It's no odds to me. But I tell ye what, Master. Here are you feasting here, and we han't had nothing extra with our wittles. I ask that we may eat and drink prosperity to you both, to her and you.'

'You shall,' said Elijah.

'Stay,' put in Mrs. De Witt. 'What do you mean, you old barnacle, you? Let your superiors eat their fill first, and then you and the other men shall have what's over. That's fair. I shall manage for you. Go, Abraham.'

The supper drew to a close. Elijah drank a great deal. He was fretted, though he tried not to show it, by the absence of Glory. As more spirits were drunk and pipes were lighted in the hall, whilst the men of the farm fed in the kitchen, several of those present repeated their regret that she in whose honour they were assembled, the new mistress of the house in which they had met, had not deigned to show herself, and receive their good wishes and congratulations.

Rebow gulped down the contents of glass after glass.

Mrs. De Witt had seated herself with the rest, and was doing her best to make up for lost time, with the bottle.

'Elijah!' said she, 'one or other must establish the mastery, either you or Glory. I did think she were a bit shy at first to come among us; but now the night is coming on and still she is away. I don't deny that this ain't civil. But then, she has lived all her life on the Ray, and can't know the fashions of high society; and again, poor thing, it's her first experience of matrimony. She will do better next time. Let us drink!' said she, holding up her brimming glass, 'to her profiting speedily by her experience, and next time we have all of us the honour of attending at her wedding, may she do us the favour to respond.'

'Amen!' said the clerk, who was present.

'Go out some one, and see if she is coming,' said Rebow, his dark face burning with anger and drink. He could not, however, wait till the messenger returned, but left his guests, and went forth himself. He mounted the sea-wall, and turned his eyes down the creek; nothing was visible. He stood there, bareheaded, cursing, for a quarter of an hour, and then went back with knitted brows.

He found his guests preparing to depart.

'Go along!' he said; 'I want no congratulations; say nothing. Glory and I have a marriage different from other folks, as she and I are not like other folks, We must fight it out between us.'

He waved his guests away, with a rude impatient gesture.

Mrs. De Witt roused her boat-boy by kicking him off the steps--he had gone to sleep there--and then tumbling on top of him. She staggered up, tucked the lad under her arm, and marched off.

'If I meet Glory by the way, I'll send her home, I'll be sure and mind it,' said she to Rebow as she departed.

He went in. He ordered Mrs. Sharland to go to her bed. The charwoman, had in for the day, cleared the table of all the glasses, save that of Elijah, and retired. He was left alone. He went to the back door and fastened it. Glory should not slink home that way without facing him. He seated himself in his armchair, and refilled his tumbler with spirits and water. He was very angry. She had deliberately insulted him before his guests, defied him in the face of the principal people of the parish. It would be spoken of, and he would be laughed at throughout the neighbourhood.

The black veins in his brow puffed out. A half-drunken, half-revengeful fire smouldered in his deep-set eyes. There was no lamp or candle burning in the room, but the twilight of midsummer filled it with a grey illumination.

He walked to the door, opened it, and looked out. The gulls were crying over the marsh, and the cattle were browsing in it. No Mehalah was to be seen.

'On my wedding day!' he muttered, and he resumed his seat. 'On that for which I have worked, to which I have looked, for which I have thought and schemed, she flies in my face, she scorns me, she shows everyone that she hates me!'

His pipe was out, he threw it impatiently away.

'She does not know me, or she would not dare to do it. There is no one in all the neighbourhood dare defy me but she. Everyone fears me but she, for everyone knows me but she. Know me she must, know me she shall. There will be no wringing love out of her till she bends under me and fears me. She will never fear me till she knows all. She shall know that; by God!' he cried aloud, 'I will tell her that which shall make her shrink and fall, and whine at my feet; and then I shall take her up, and drag her to my heart, and say, "Ah, ha! Glory! think what a man you have gotten to-day, a man whom none can withstand. There is none like me, there is none will dare what I will dare. You and I, I and you, are alone in the world. One must submit or there is no peace. You must learn to cower beneath me, or we shall fight for ever."'

He went out again upon the sea-wall, but saw nothing, and came back more angry. As he stood on his steps he heard from the path to Salcott a burst of merriment. He swore an ugly oath. Those men, rolling home, were ridiculing him, keeping his marriage feast without the presence of his bride!

He flung himself again into his chair, and rocked himself in it. He could not sit there, tortured with anger and love, in the gloaming, doing nothing. He emptied the bottle, there was not a drop more in it, and he cast it in the hearth. Then he fetched down his old musket mounted in brass, and getting the vitriol bottle from the window, began to rub and polish the metal.

He wearied of that in the end. His mind could not be drawn off Glory, and wondering where she was, and why she had thus gone away.

'I love her,' he muttered, as he replaced his gun on the nails above the chimney-piece, 'but yet I hate her. My very heart is like Grimshoe with love and hate warring together, and neither gets the mastery. I could clasp her to my breast, but I could tear out her heart with my nails, because it will not love me.' He rocked himself in his seat savagely, and his breath came fast: 'We must work the riddle out between us. We can get no help, no light from any others; she and I, and I and she, are each other's best friends and worst foes.'

A firm hand was on the door, it was thrown open, and in the grey light stood Mehalah.

'Where have you been?' asked Elijah, hardly able to speak, so agitated with fury and disappointed love was he.

'I have been,' she said composedly, 'on the Ray, sitting there and dreaming of the past.'

'Of the past!' shouted Rebow. 'You have been dreaming of George?'

'Yes, I have.'

'I thought it, I knew you were,' he yelled. 'Come here, my wife.'

'I am not your wife. I never will be your wife, except in name. I told you so. I can not, and I will not love you. I can not, and I will not, be aught to you but a housekeeper, a servant. I have taken your name to save mine, that is all.'

'That is all because you love George De Witt.'

'George De Witt is dead.'

'I don't care whether he be dead or not, you think that he is your double. I tell you, as I have told you before, he is not. I am.'

'I will not listen to more of this,' she said in a hard tone. 'Let me pass, let me go to my room.'

'I will not let you pass,' he swore; the breath came through his nostrils like the snorting of a frightened horse; 'I will not. Hear me, Glory, my own Glory! hear me you shall.' He grasped her arms between the elbow and shoulder with his iron hands, and shook her savagely.

'Listen to me, Glory, you must and shall. You do not love me, Glory, because you do not fear me. The dog whom I beat till it howls with torture creeps up to me and licks my hand. A woman will never love her equal, but she will worship her superior. You have shown me to-day that you think yourself on a level with me. You have donned again your cap of liberty,' he raised one hand to her head, plucked off the cap and cast it on the floor, 'thinking that now you have taken me before the world, you have broken my power over you. You do not know me, Glory! you do not know me. Listen to me!' Through the twilight she could see his fierce eyes flaring at her, her hair was disturbed by the hot blasts of his labouring lungs. His fingers that held her twitched convulsively as he spoke.

'Listen to me, Glory! and know me and respect me. I am no more to be escaped from than fate. I am mighty over you as a Providence. You may writhe and circumvent, but I meet you at every turn, and tread you down whenever you think to elude me. Listen to me, Glory!' He paused, and drew a long breath; 'Listen, I say, to me. Glory! how did you lose your money that night that Abraham Dowsing sold your sheep? I feel you stirring and starting in my hands. Yes, I took it. You went out with George De Witt, and left the purse on the table. When your mother left the room, I took the money. You may have it back now when you like, now that I have you. I took it--you see why. To have you in my power.'

'Coward and thief!' gasped Mehalah.

'Ah! call me names if you like; you do not know me yet, and how impossible it is to resist me. You thought when you had got the money again, from George, that you had escaped me.'

'Stay!' exclaimed Mehalah. 'It was you,' with compressed scorn, 'that fired on George and me in the marsh.'

'I fired at him, not at you; and had you not changed the place of the lanthorn in the boat, I should have shot him.'

The girl shuddered in his hands.

'I feel you,' he said with savage exultation. 'You are beginning to know me now, and to tremble. When you know all, you will kneel to me as to your God, as almighty over your destiny, irresistible, able to crush and kill whom I will, and to conquer where I will. George De Witt stood in my way to you.'

Mehalah's heart leaped and then stood still. Her pulse ceased to beat. She seemed to be hanging in space, seeing nothing, feeling nothing, hearing only, and only the words of the man before her.

'He left Mersea City one night. He left it in my boat with me.'

'He paused, rejoicing in her horror at this revelation of himself to her.

'Have you not a question to ask me, "Where he now is? What I know of him?"'

No--she could not speak, she could not even breathe.

'Do you remember when you came on Michaelmas Day to pay me my rent, how you heard and saw my mad brother in the cell there below?'

He paused again, and then chuckled. 'The poor wretch died and I buried him there. I brought George here, I made him drunk, and chained him in my brother's place, and he went mad with his captivity in darkness and cold and nakedness.'

The blood spouted from her heart through every artery. She tried to cry but could not, she strove to escape his hands, she was unable. She panted, and her eyes stood open, fixed as those of a corpse, staring before her.

'You lost your sheep,' he went on, with exultation. 'I took them. I took them to rob you of every chance of paying me, and keeping clear of me.'

She did not hear him. She cared nothing about sheep. She was thinking of George, of his imprisonment and madness.

'At last, when I feared that after all you might slip from me by means of that cripple at Wyvenhoe, I did more. I watched you on New Year's Eve; I waited for you to go to sleep, that I might fire your house. You did better than I had thought, you went out; and then I set the Ray Farm in flames. What cared I for the loss? It was nothing. By it I gained you, I secured you under my roof, by burning you out of the shelter of your own.' He swelled with pride. 'You know me now, Glory! Now think you that escape from me is possible? No, you do not, you cannot. I hedge you in, I undermine the ground you tread. I saw away the posts that hold up the roof above your head. You know now what I am, irresistible, almighty, as far as you are concerned, your fate incarnate. And I know you. I know that you are one who will never yield till you have found a man who is mightier in will and in power than you; those who have fought are best friends after the struggle, when each knows his own strength and the full measure of the resistance of the other. We have had one wrestle, and I have flung you at every round; you in your pride have stood up again, and wiped the blood from your heart, and the tears from your eyes, and tried another fall with me; but now, Glory, you have tried your last. Hitherto you fought not knowing the extent of my power, thinking that I put forth my full might when I spoke, but that I had no strength to act. Now you see what I can do, and what I have done, and you will abandon the fruitless battle. Glory! Glory! Come to my heart. You fear me now, and fear is the first step leading to love. Glory! my own Glory!' his voice faltered, and his fingers worked, 'I love you madly. I will do and dare all for you. I will live for you and for nothing in the world but you. Never till this day in the church have I so much as held your hand. Never till this moment, Glory! have I held you to my heart, never till this moment have I felt it bounding against mine, never till this moment have I kissed those dear, dear lips, as I shall now.'

He drew her to him. He unloosed his hands to throw his arms round her. She felt them closing on her like a hoop of iron, she felt his heart beating like the strokes of a blacksmith with his hammer; his burning breath was on her cheek. He! He kiss her! She lie on that heart which had schemed and carried out the destruction of her George!

She cried out. She found her tongue. 'Let go! I hate you as I never hated you before! I hate you as a mad dog, as a poisonous adder! Let go!' She writhed and slipped partly away.

'Never till I have held you to my breast and kissed you,' he said.

'That never, never!' she gasped. She got her hands on his breast and forced his arms asunder behind her.

'Ha, ha! strong,' he laughed, 'but not strong as I.' He gripped her wrists and bent her arms back. She threw herself on the ground, he drew her up. She flung herself against the chair, crushing his hand against the chimney-piece, so that he let go with it for an instant. She groped about with her free hand, in the dark, for some weapon, she grasped something. He cursed her for the pain she had given him, and attempted again to seize her hand. In a moment she had struck him--him the coward assailant, him the thief, him the murderer--between the brows with the weapon her hand had taken. It was a blow with her whole force. There followed a crash of glass, then a sense as of her hand being plunged into fire. Then a shriek loud, tearing through roof and wall, loud, agonised, as only a man or a horse can utter in supreme moments of torture; and Rebow fell on the floor, writhing like a worm, with his hands over his face and eyes.

*CHAPTER XXV.*

*IN THE DARKNESS.*

Day by day Elijah Rebow lay, or sat, in the darkened oak parlour with his eyes bandaged, a prey to wrath, pain, despair. The vitriol from the broken vial had got into his eyes, and there was reason to fear had blinded them.

He was obliged to have the burning balls kept from the light, but he raged under the obligation. He wanted to see, he could not be patient under restraint. He could ill understand that in all things he might not have his way, even in such a matter as this. He chafed also at having been conquered by Glory. That she should have defied and beaten him, and beaten him in such a crushing manner, cut his pride to the quick.

None knew how the accident had occurred save himself and Mehalah. To the doctor he had merely said that in getting the vitriol bottle from the shelf, it had fallen and broken on his forehead.

Mrs. Sharland remained in as complete ignorance of the truth as the rest, and her lamentations and commiserations, poured on Elijah and her daughter, angered him and humiliated her. Mehalah had suffered in mind agonies equal in acuteness to those endured in body by Elijah.

Horror and hatred of herself predominated. She had destroyed, by one outburst of passion, the eyesight of a man, and wrecked his life. What henceforth for thirty or forty years could life be to Rebow?--to one who could not endure existence without activity? She had rendered him in a moment helpless as a babe, and dependent on herself for everything. She must attend to his every want, and manage the farm and his business for him. By a stroke, their relative positions were reversed. The wedding night had produced a revolution in their places of which she could not have dreamed. She felt at once the burden of the responsibilities that came upon her. She was called upon by those on the farm to order and provide for everything connected with it. She had to think for the farm, and think for the master into whose position she had forced her way.

She hated herself for her rash act. She hated the man whom she had mutilated, but more herself. If by what she had done she had in one sense made herself master, in another she had cast herself into bondage. By the terrible injury she had inflicted on Rebow she had morally bound herself to him for life to repair that injury by self-devotion. Had it been possible for her to love him, even to like him, this would have been light to her, with her feminine instinct, but as it was not possible, the slavery would be inexpressibly painful.

Love will hallow and lighten the most repulsive labours, the most extreme self-sacrifice, but when there is no love, only abhorrence, labour and self-sacrifice crush mentally and morally. She must bear the most fierce and insulting reproaches without an attempt to escape them, she had in part deserved them. These she could and would endure, but his caresses!--no! however deeply she might have sinned against him, however overflowing her pity for his helpless condition might be, she could not tolerate affection from the man who by his own confession merited her profound loathing. He had taken an unoffending man, and had imprisoned him and blinded his reason by cruelty; it seemed to her as if Providence had used her hand to exact a just retribution on Rebow by condemning him to an equally miserable condition. The recompense was justly meted, but would that it had been dealt by another hand!

In one particular she was blameless, and able to excuse herself. She had acted without intent to do bodily harm, and in ignorance of the weapon she had used. She had been carried away by the instinct of self-preservation, and had taken up what was readiest at hand, without a wish to do more than emancipate herself from the grasp of the man she detested. He had brought the consequences on his own eyes by his own act.

But though she quite recognised that he had done this, and that he richly deserved the consequences, yet she could not relieve her conscience from the gnawings of self-reproach, from the scalding blush of shame at having executed a savage, unwomanly vengeance on the man who had wronged her. Had her victim been a woman and a rival, she would perhaps have gloried in her act; but the female mind is perverse in its twists and complexion, and it will tingle with pain for having hurt a man, however little that man may be loved, when it would plume itself for having done the same to a woman who has been a friend. A woman must think and act rightly towards a man, but can do neither towards one of her own sex.