Part 24

'Let me touch and hold you, Glory,' he said. 'Remember I can no more see you, except mistily. You must allow me some compensation. I know what you are now, sitting here in the sun, with your hair full of rich coppery gleams, and your eyes full of light and darkness at once, and your cheek like a ripe apricot. I know what you are, splendid, noble, as no other girl in the whole world; but you have shut my eyes, that I may not see you, so allow me, at least, to feel you.' He paused. Then he went on: 'You are right, our union is unlike any other, as you and I are different from all others in the world. The married life of some is smooth and shining and rustless like the gold, but ours is quite contrary, it is rough and dark and full of blisters and canker. It may be different some day----' he turned his dim eyes enquiringly at her, 'but not now, not now. Nevertheless as the ring is without an end so is our union. Give me the link of iron, Glory, and come with me to the forge. I will beat out a bit of the metal into a ring, one small enough and light enough for you to wear.'

He got up, and holding her hand, bade her lead him to the forge.

Near the bakehouse was a small smithy, fitted up with all necessary appliances. Rebow was a skilful workman at the anvil, and shod his own horses, and made all that was needed in iron for the house and farm.

Mehalah conducted him to the shop, and brought fire from the kitchen for the forge, she worked the bellows and blew the fire into size and strength, whilst Elijah raked the coals together.

'Where is the link, Glory?' he asked, and went up to her. He put his hand to her neck, before she did, and drew out of her bosom something.

'That is not the link, Elijah,' she said; 'it is my medal--the medal that----'

He uttered a fierce cry, and wrenching it off, dashed it on the ground. He would have stamped on it had he been able to see it.

Mehalah's cheek flushed, but she said nothing. She saw where the coin had rolled. She stooped, picked it up, impressed a kiss upon it, and hid it once more in her bosom.

'Here is the iron link,' she said; he took it from her sullenly.

The flame gleamed up blue above the wetted coal, and glared out white through the crevices in the clot, as the bellows panted, and Rebow drew the coals together or broke into the glaring mass with an iron rod.

'I heard a preacher once take as his text,' said he, 'Our God is a consuming fire; and he told all in the chapel that this was writ in Scripture and therefore must be true to the letter, for God wrote it Himself, and He knew what He was better than any man. He said that fire warms and illumines at a distance, but if you come too close it dazzles and burns up. And he told us it was so with God. You can't keep too far off of Him to be comfortable and safe; the nearer you get, the worse it is for you; and to my thinking that is Hell, when you get sucked into the very core of the fire in the heart of God. You must be consumed because you are not divine, fire alone can live in fire; most folks are clay and water, and they are good enough, they get light and warmth, but when they die they burn up like this dock of coke. But there are other folk, like you and me, Glory! who are made of fire and clay; it takes but a word or a thought to make us roar and blaze and glow like this furnace. There is passion in us--and that is a spark of the divine. I do not care what the passion be, love or hate, or jealousy or anger, if it be hot and red and consuming so that it melts and burns all that opposes it, that fiery passion is of God and will live, live on for ever, in the central heart and furnace, which is God. When you and I die, Glory! and are sucked into the great fiery whirlpool, we shall not be burnt up altogether, but intensified. If I love you with fiery passion here I shall love you with fiery passion ten thousand times hotter hereafter; my passion will turn to glaring white heat, and never go out for all everlasting, for it will be burning, blazing in God who is eternal. If you hate me, you will be whirled in, and your fury fanned and raked into a fiery phrenzy which will rage on for ages on ages, and cannot go out, for it will be burning in the everlasting furnace of God. If I love, and you hate with infinite intensity for an infinity of time--that is Hell. But if you love and I love, our love grows hotter and blazes and roars and spurts into one tongue, cloven like the tongues at Pentecost, twain yet one, and that is Heaven. My love eating into yours and encircling it, and yours into mine, and neither containing nor consuming the other, but going on in growing intensity of fiery fury of love from everlasting to everlasting, that is Heaven of Heavens.'

He was heating the link, held between the teeth of long shanked pincers, and then withdrawing it, and forging it on the anvil as he spoke.

'Glory!' he said; 'tell me, you do not hate me?'

She hesitated.

'Glory!' he repeated, and laid hammer and pincer on the anvil, and leaned his head towards her, as she shrank into the dark corner by the bellows, 'Glory! tell me, you do not hate me.'

'Elijah,' she said, 'I must be candid with you. When I think of what, by your own confession, you have done to him whom I loved more than all the world----'

He raised his hammer and brought it down on the link, cutting it in half, and sending one fiery half across the smithy.

'When I think of what you have done to him, I feel that I do hate you, and that I have every cause and right to hate you. I could forgive everything else. I have turned over in my mind all that you have done to me, the cruel way in which you worked till you had brought me within your power, the heartless way in which you got my good name to be evil spoken of, and drove me out of self-defence to take your hand before the altar of God, I have thought of all this, and I feel that my act--unintentional though it was--yet my act, which has blinded you, has expiated all those offences. You have wronged me, and I have wronged you. I have ruined your life, but you have also ruined mine. We are quits so far. You have my frank forgiveness. I blot out all the past, as far as it concerns me, from my memory. It shall no more rankle in my heart. You have shown me a generous forgiveness of my misdeed, and I would imitate you. But what you did to George is not to be expiated. You sinned against him more terribly, more wickedly than against me, and he alone can pardon you. That I cannot forgive; and for that crime I must still hate you.'

He stood trembling--a strange weakness came over him--he was not angry, savage, morose; he seemed a prey to fear and uncertainty.

'Tell me, tell me truly, Glory! Does that alone prevent you from loving me? Had I never done what I said I had done, could you love me?'

'I do not say that,' she replied. 'As I have told you before, I gave my heart once for all to George De Witt. I never could love you with my fresh full heart, as a woman should love her husband, but I feel that I could like you as a friend. I do pity you. God knows how bitterly I have suffered from remorse for what I did unwittingly, and how sincere I am in my repentance and desire to deal tenderly and truly by you, Elijah. I feel sometimes as if I could like you; I do acknowledge that you and I stand apart from others, and alone can understand each other; but then that great crime of your life against George rises up before me and drives back my rising compassion.'

Rebow worked again at the link, beating out the fragment into a wire, and cutting it again. He was thinking whilst he wrought.

'Sooner or later,' he muttered at last, 'all will out.'

He worked with difficulty, and slowly, as he could not see, and was obliged to feel the iron, and cool it repeatedly to ascertain whether it was as he desired it.

'Look here, Glory!' he said, 'when iron is taken from the smelting furnace it is crystalline and brittle; there is no thread and texture in it, but we burn it and beat it, and as we work we beat our stubborn purpose into the metal, and it is the will of the smith which goes through his arm and hammer into the iron and converts it to steel; he drives his will into the metal, and that becomes the fibre in it. You don't find it so in nature. The human soul must part with something and transfuse it into the inanimate iron, and there it will lie and last, for the will of man is divine and eternal. It is much the same with all with which we have to do. I have spent time and labour over you, and thought and purpose have been consumed in making you my wife; they are none of them lost, they are all in you, they have become fibres in your soul. You may not be aware of it, but there they all are. The more one thinks and labours for the other the more he ingrafts himself in the nature of the other. I have heard of sound men having their healthy blood drawn off and injected into the veins of the sick, and restoring them thus to activity and health. We are always doing this with our wills, injecting their fire into the hearts of others, and so by degrees transfusing their natures. You are pouring yourself into me, and I into you, whether we know it or not, till in time we are alike in colour and tone and temperature.'

He had worked the piece of steel into a rude ring, not very cumbrous, and he bade Mehalah try it on her finger. It was too small. He easily enlarged it, and then got a file to smooth off the roughnesses.

'I had rather you wore this than a ring of gold,' he said, 'for there is part of my soul in this iron. I have made it in spite of my blindness, because I had the will to do so. The whole metal is full of my purpose, which tinctures it as wine stains water; and with it goes my resolve that you shall be mine altogether in heart and soul, in love as well as in pity, for now and for all eternity. You will wear that on your finger, the finger that has a nerve leading from the heart. Stretch out your hand, Glory, and let me put it on. Stretch out your hand over the hearth, above the fire, our God is a consuming fire, and this is His proper altar.'

He stood on one side of the furnace, she on the other; the angry red coals glowed below, and a hot smoke rose from them.

She extended her hand to him, and he grasped it with the left above the fire, and held the steel ring in his right.

'Glory!' he said in a tremulous voice. 'At the altar in the church you swore to obey me. In the hall you knelt and swore to cherish me; here, over the fire, the figure of our God, as I put the iron ring on, swear to me also to love me.'

She did not answer. She stood as though frozen to ice; with her eyes on the door of the smithy, where stood a figure--the figure of a man.

Suddenly she uttered a piercing cry. 'George! my George! my George!' and withdrew her hand from the grasp of Elijah. The iron ring fell from his fingers into the red fire below and was lost.

*CHAPTER XXVII.*

*THE RETURN OF THE LOST.*

Mehalah was clasped in the arms of George De Witt.

'Who is there? Where is he?' shouted Elijah, staggering forward with his great pincers raised ready to strike.

George drew the girl out of the way, and let the angry man burst out of the door and pass, beating the air with his iron tool. He put his arm round her, and led her from the house. She could not speak, she could only look up at him as at one risen from the dead. He led her towards the sea-wall, looking behind him at the figure of the blind man, rushing about, and smiting recklessly in his jealousy and fury, and hitting bushes, rails, walls, anything in hopes of smiting down the man whose name he had heard, and who he knew had come back to break in on and ruin his hopes.

George De Witt walked lamely, he had a somewhat stiff leg; otherwise he seemed well.

'How manly you have grown!' exclaimed Mehalah, holding him at arms' length, and contemplating him with pride.

'And you, Glory, have become more womanly; but in all else are the same.'

'Where have you been, George?'

'At sea, Glory, and smelt powder. I have been a sailor in His Majesty's Royal Navy, in the Duke of Clarence, and I am pensioned off, because of my leg.'

'Have you been wounded?'

'Not exactly. A cannon-ball, as we were loading, struck me on the shin and bruised the bone, so that I have been invalided with swellings and ulcerations. I ain't fit for active service, but I'm not exactly a cripple.'

'But George! when did this take place? I do not understand. After your escape?'

'Escape, Glory? I have had no escape.'

'From confinement in Red Hall,' she added.

'I never was confined there. I do not know what you are talking about.'

Mehalah passed her hand over her face.

'George! I thought that Elijah had made you drunk and then put you in his cellar, chained there till you went mad.'

'There is not a word of truth in this,' said De Witt. 'Who told you such a tale?'

'Elijah himself.'

'Elijah is a rascal. I have enough cause against him without that.'

'Then tell me about yourself. I am bewildered. How came you to disappear?'

'Let us walk together to the spit by the windmill, and I will tell you all.'

They turned the way he said, and he did not speak again till they had reached the spot.

'We will sit down, Glory; I suffer still somewhat from my leg, so that I am always glad to rest. Now I will tell you the whole story. You remember the evening when we quarrelled. You had behaved rather roughly to Phoebe Musset.'

'I remember it only too well, George.'

'After you had left, I went to the Mussets' house to inquire after Phoebe, who had been well soused in the sea by you; and on my return I fell in with Elijah Rebow. He took me to task for not having gone after you and patched up our little difference. He said that a quarrel should never be allowed to cool, but mended while hot. He persuaded me to let him row me in his boat to the Ray. He said he was going there after ducks or something of that sort, I do not remember exactly. I agreed, and got into his punt with him, and we made for the Rhyn. We had scarcely entered the channel when a lugger full of men ran across our bows and had us fast in a jiffy. I was overpowered before I knew where I was, and taken by the men in their boat.'

'Who were they, George?' asked Mehalah, breathlessly.

'They were some of the crew of the _Salamander_, a war schooner then lying in the offing, come to press me into the service with Captain Macpherson, who had been on the coast-guard, but was appointed to the command. I was carried off as many another man has been, without my consent, and made to serve His Majesty on compulsion.'

'But, George! how about your medal that I gave you? That was returned to me the same night.'

'I suppose it was,' he replied coolly. 'As I was taken, Elijah said to me, "Have you no token to send back to Glory?" I bade him tell you how I was impressed, and how I would return to you whenever the war was over and I was paid off; but he asked for some token, that you might believe him. Well, Glory! I had nothing by me save your medal, and I handed it to him and told him to give it to you with my love.'

Mehalah wrung her hands and moaned.

'I have a notion,' continued George, 'that Rebow was somehow privy to my being pressed; for he went out that afternoon to the _Salamander_ in his cutter, and had a private talk with Captain Macpherson, who was short of men. Now I fancy, though I can't prove it, that he schemed with the captain how he should catch me, and that Elijah with set purpose took me into the trap set for me. He is deep enough to do such a dirty trick.'

Mehalah's head sank on her knees, and she sobbed aloud.

'And now, Glory, dearest!' he went on, 'the rascal has got you to marry him, I am told. How could you take him? Why did you not wait for me? You were promised to me, and we looked on one another as soon to be husband and wife. You must have soon forgotten your promise.'

'I thought you were dead,' she gasped.

'So did my mother. I do not understand. Elijah knew better.'

'But he told no one. He allowed us all to suppose you were drowned in one of the fleets.'

'It is very hard,' said George, 'for a fellow to return from the wars to reclaim his girl, and to find her no longer his. It is a great blow to me, Glory! I did so love and admire you.'

She could only sway to and fro in her distress.

'It is very disappointing to a chap,' said George, putting a quid in his cheek. 'When he has calculated on getting a nice girl as his wife, and in battle and storm has had the thoughts of her to cheer and encourage him; when he has some prize-money in his pocket, and hopes to spend it on her--well, it is hard.'

'George,' said she between her sobs, 'why did you return the medal? I gave it you, and you swore never to part with it. You should not have sent it to me.'

'Did I really swear that, Glory?' he answered; 'if so, I had forgotten. You see I was so set upon and flustered that night, I did not rightly consider things as they should have been considered.' He stopped.

'Well?' asked Mehalah, eagerly.

'Don't catch me up, Glory. I only stopped to turn the quid. As I was about to say, I did not remember what I had promised. I had nothing else to send you that would serve as a token. The medal was an article about which there could be no mistake. I knew when you saw that you would make sure Elijah's story was true, and my promise would be sacred--I have kept it, I have returned to you, Glory, and if you were not married I should make you my wife. I love you still, as I always did love you. I've seen a sight of fine girls since I left Mersea. There's more fish in the sea than come out of it; but I'm darned if I have seen a finer anywhere, or more to my liking than you, Glory. You were my first love, and the sight of you brings back pleasant memories. The more I look at you now, the more I feel inclined to wring that old prophet's neck. You are too good for such a chap as he; you should have waited for me. You had promised, and might have had patience. But, Lord bless me! how the girls do run after the men! Glory! I have seen the world since I left Mersea, and I know more of it than I did. I suppose you thought that as I was gone to Davy Jones's locker you must catch whom you could.'

'George!' exclaimed Mehalah, 'do not speak to me thus. I cannot bear it. I know you are only talking in this way to try me, and because you resent my marriage. I promised once to be true to you, I gave you my heart, and I have remained, and I will remain, true to you; my heart is yours, and I can never recover it and give it to another.'

'This is very fine and sentimental, Glory,' said George; 'I've smelt powder and I know the colour of blood. I've seen the world, and know what sentiment is worth; it is blank cartridge firing; it breaks no bones, but it makes a noise and a flash. I don't see how you can call it keeping true to me when you marry another man for his money.'

'You are determined to drive me mad,' exclaimed Mehalah. 'Have mercy on me, my own George, my only George! I have loved and suffered for you. God can see into my heart, and knows how deeply it has been cut, and how profusely it has bled for you. You must spare me. I have thought of you. I have lived only in a dream of you. The world without you has been dead and blank. I have not had a moment of real joy since your disappearance; it seems to me as though a century of torment had drawn its slow course since then. No, George! I have married for nothing but to save my self-respect. I was forced by that man, whom I will not name now, so hateful and horrible to me is the thought of him--I was forced by him from my home on the Ray to lodge under his roof. He smoked my mother and me out of our house as if we were foxes. When he had me secure he drew a magician's circle round me, and I could not break through it. My character, my name were tarnished, there was nothing for it but for me to marry him. I did so, but I did so under stipulations. I took his name, but I am not, and never shall be, more to him than his wife in the register of the parish. I have never loved him--I never undertook to love him.'

'This is a queer state of things,' said George. 'Dashed if, in all my experience of life and of girls, I came across anything similar, and I have seen something. I have not spent all my days in Mersea. I've been to the West Indies. I've seen white girls, and yellow girls, and brown girls, and copper-coloured girls, and black ones--black as rotted seaweed. I have--they are all much of a muchness, but this beats my experience. You are not like others.'

'So he says; he and I are alone in the world, and alone can understand one another. Do you understand me, George?'

'I'm blessed if I do.'

She was silent. She was very unhappy. She did not like his tone: there was an insincerity, a priggishness about it which jarred with her reality and depth of feeling. But she could not analyse what offended her. She thought he was angry with her, and had assumed a taunting air to cover his mortification.

She drew the medal from her bosom.

'George! dear, dear George!' she said vehemently, 'take the pledge again. I give it you with my whole heart once more. I believe it saved you once, it may save you again. At all events, it is a token to you that my heart is the same, that I care for and love none but you in the whole wide world.'

He took it and suspended it round his neck.

'I will keep it for your sake,' he said; 'you may be sure it will be treasured by me.'

'Keep it better than you did before.'

'Certainly I will. I shall value it inexpressibly.'

'George!' she went on, trembling in all her limbs, and rising to her feet. 'George! my first and only love! as I give it you back now, I make you the same promise that I made you before. I will love--love--love you and you only, eternally. I swore then to be true to you, and I have been true. Swear again to me the same.'

'Certainly. I shall always love you, Glory! I'm damned if it is possible for a fellow not to, you are so handsome with those flashing eyes and glowing cheeks. A fellow must be made of ice not to love you.'

'Be true to me, as I to you.'

'To be sure I will, Glory!' and added in an undertone, 'rum sort of truth hers, to go and marry another chap.'

'What is that you say, George?'

'Take care, Glory!' exclaimed the sailor; 'here comes the old prophet with a pair of tongs over his shoulder, staggering along the wall towards us. I had better sheer off. He don't look amiable. Good-bye, Glory!'

'Oh, George! I must see you again.'

'I will come again. You will see me often enough. Sailors can no more keep away from handsome girls than bees from clover.'

'George, George!'

Elijah came up, his face black with passion.

'Mehalah!' he roared, as he swung his iron pincers.

She caught his wrist and disarmed him.

'I could bite you, and tear your flesh with my teeth,' he raged. 'All was so peaceful and beautiful, and then he came from the dead and broke it into shivers. Where are you?' He put out his hands to grasp her.

'Do not touch me!' she cried, loathing in her voice. 'With my whole soul I abhor you, you base coward. You lied to me about George, a hateful lie that made me mad, and yet the reality is almost as bad--it is worse. He is alive and free, and I am bound, bound hand and foot, to you.'

*CHAPTER XXVIII.*

*TIMOTHY'S TIDINGS.*

'Mehalah!' roared the wretched man, smiting at her with both his clenched fists, and nearly precipitating himself into the mud, by missing his object, 'Mehalah! where are you? Come near, and let me beat and kill you.'

'Why are you angry, Elijah?' asked the girl. 'The man you betrayed to the pressgang has returned, are you vexed at that?'

'Come near me,' he shouted.