Part 6

'I am coming, mother.' He showed the two girls the ladder; Mrs. De Witt had disappeared. 'Go down into the fore cabin, then straight on. Turn your face to the ladder as you descend.' Phoebe hesitated. She was awestruck by the voice and appearance of Mrs. De Witt. However, at a sign from George she went down, and was followed by Mehalah. Bending her head, she passed through the small fore-cabin where was George's bunk, into the main cabin, which served as kitchen, parlour, and bedroom to Mrs. De Witt. A table occupied the centre, and at the end was an iron cooking stove. Everything was clean, tidy, and comfortable. On a shelf at the side stood the chairs. Mrs. De Witt whisked one down.

'Your servant,' said she to Phoebe, with more amiability than the girl anticipated. 'Yours too, Glory,' curtly to Mehalah.

Mrs. De Witt was not favourable to her son's attachment to Glory. She was an imperious, strong-minded woman, a despot in her own house, and she had no wish to see that house invaded by a daughter-in-law as strong of will and iron-headed as herself. She wished to see George mated to a girl whom she could browbeat and manage as she browbeat and managed her son. George's indecision of character was due in measure to his bringing up by such a mother. He had been cuffed and yelled at from infancy. His intimacy with the maternal lap had been contracted head downwards, and was connected with a stinging sensation at the rear. Self-assertion had been beat or bawled out of him. She was not a bad, but a despotic woman. She liked to have her own way, and she obtained it, first with her husband, and then with her son, and the ease with which she had mastered and maintained the sovereignty had done her as much harm as them.

If a beggar be put on horseback he will ride to the devil, and a woman in command will proceed to unsex herself. She was a good-hearted woman at bottom, but then that bottom where the good heart lay was never to be found with an anchor, but lay across the course as a shoal where deep water was desired. Her son knew perfectly where it was not, but never where it was. Mrs. De Witt in face somewhat resembled her nephew, Elijah Rebow, but she was his senior by ten years. She had the same hawk-like nose and dark eyes, but was without the wolfish jaw. Nor had she the eager intelligence that spoke out of Elijah's features. Hers were hard and coarse and unillumined with mind.

When she saw Phoebe enter her cabin she was both surprised and gratified. A fair, feeble, bread-and-butter Miss, such as she held the girl to be, was just the daughter she fancied. Were she to come to the 'Pandora' with whims and graces, the month of honey with George would assume the taste of vinegar with her, and would end in the new daughter's absolute submission. She would be able to convert such a girl very speedily into a domestic drudge and a recipient of her abuse. Men make themselves, but women are made, and the making of women, thought Mrs. De Witt, should be in the hands of women; men botched them, because they let them take their own way.

Mrs. De Witt never forgave her parents for having bequeathed her no money; she could not excuse Elijah for having taken all they left, without considering her. She found a satisfaction in discharging her wrongs on others. She was a saving woman, and spent little money on her personal adornment. 'What coin I drop,' she was wont to say, 'I drop in rum, and smuggled rum is cheap.'

But though an article is cheap, a great consumption of it may cause the item to be a serious one; and it was so with Mrs. De Witt.

The vessel to which she acted as captain, steward, and cook, was named the 'Pandora.' The vicar was wont to remark that it was a 'Pandora's' box full of all gusts, but minus gentle Zephyr.

'Will you take a chair?' she said obsequiously to Phoebe, placing the chair for h er, after having first breathed on the seat and wiped it with her sleeve. Then turning to Mehalah, she asked roughly, 'Well, Glory! how is that old fool, your mother?'

'Better than your manners,' replied Mehalah.

'I am glad you are come, Glory,' said Mrs. De Witt, 'I want to have it out with you. What do you mean by coming here of a night, and carrying off my son when he ought to be under his blankets in his bunk? I won't have it. He shall keep proper hours. Such conduct is not decent. What do you think of that?' she asked, seating herself on the other side of the table, and addressing Phoebe, but leaving Mehalah standing. 'What do you think of a girl coming here after nightfall, and asking my lad to go off for a row with her all in the dark, and the devil knows whither they went, and the mischief they were after. It is not respectable, is it?'

'George should not have gone when she asked him,' said the girl.

'Dear Sackalive! she twists him round her little finger. He no more dare deny her anything than he dare defy me. But I will have my boy respectable, I can promise you. I combed his head well for him when he came home, I did by cock! He shall not do the thing again.'

'Look here, mother,' remonstrated George; 'wash our dirty linen in private.'

'Indeed!' exclaimed Mrs. De Witt. 'That is strange doctrine! Why, who would know we wore any linen at all next our skin, unless we exposed it when washed over the side of the wessel? Now you come here. I have a bone to pick along with you, George!'

To be on a level with her son, and stare him full in the eyes, a way she had with everyone she assailed, she sat on the table, and put her feet on the chair.

'What has become of the money? I have been to the box, and there are twenty pounds gone out of it, all in gold. I haven't took it, so you must have. Now I want to know what you have done with it. I will have it out. I endure no evasions. Where is the money? Fork it out, or I will turn all your pockets inside out, and find and retake it. You want no money, not you. I provide you with tobacco. Where is the money? Twenty pounds, and all in gold. I was like a shrimp in scalding water when I went to the box to-day and found the money gone. I turned that red you might have said it was erysipelas. I shruck out that they might have heard me at the City. Turn your pockets out at once.'

George looked abashed; he was cowed by his mother.

'I'll take the carving knife to you!' said the woman, 'if you do not hand me over the cash at once.'

'Oh don't, pray don't hurt him!' cried Phoebe, interposing her arm, and beginning to cry.

'Dear Sackalive!' exclaimed Mrs. De Witt, 'I am not aiming at his witals, but at his pockets. Where is the money?'

'I have had it,' said Mehalah, stepping forward and standing between De Witt and his mother. 'George has behaved generously, nobly by us. You have heard how we were robbed of our money. We could not have paid our rent for the Ray had not George let us have twenty pounds. He shall not lose it.'

'You had it, you!--you!' cried Mrs. De Witt in wild and fierce astonishment. 'Give it up to me at once.'

'I cannot do so. The greater part is gone. I paid the money to-day to Rebow, our landlord.'

'Elijah has it! Elijah gets everything. My father left me without a shilling, and now he gets my hard-won earnings also.'

'It seems to me, mistress, that the earnings belong to George, and surely he has a right to do with them what he will,' said Mehalah coldly.

'That is your opinion, is it? It is not mine.' Then she mused: 'Twenty pounds is a fortune. One may do a great deal with such a sum as that, Mehalah; twenty pounds is twenty pounds whatever you may say; and it must be repaid.'

'It shall be.'

'When?'

'As soon as I can earn the money.'

Mrs. De Witt's eyes now rested on Phoebe, and she assumed a milder manner. Her mood was variable as the colour of the sea; 'I'm obliged to be peremptory at times,' she said; 'I have to maintain order in the wessel. You will stay and have something to eat?'

'Thank you; your son has already promised us some oysters,--that is, promised me.'

'Come on deck,' said George. 'We will have them there, and mother shall brew the liquor below.'

The mother grunted a surly acquiescence.

When the three had re-ascended the ladder, the sun was setting. The mouth of the Blackwater glittered like gold leaf fluttered by the breath. The tide had begun to flow, and already the water had surrounded the 'Pandora.' Phoebe and Mehalah would have to return by boat, or be carried by De Witt.

The two girls stood side by side. The contrast between them was striking, and the young man noticed it. Mehalah was tall, lithe, and firm as a young pine, erect in her bearing, with every muscle well developed, firm of flesh, her skin a rich ripe apricot, and her eyes, now that the sun was in them, like volcanic craters, gloomy, but full of fire. Her hair, rich to profusion, was black, yet with coppery hues in it when seen with a side light. It was simply done up in a knot, neatly not elaborately. Her navy-blue jersey and skirt, the scarlet of her cap and kerchief, and of a petticoat that appeared below the skirt, made her a rich combination of colour, suitable to a sunny clime rather than to the misty bleak east coast. Phoebe was colourless beside her, a faded picture, faint in outline. Her complexion was delicate as the rose, her frame slender, her contour undulating and weak. She was the pattern of a trim English village maiden, with the beauty of youth, and the sweetness of ripening womanhood, _sans_ sense, _sans_ passion, _sans_ character, _sans_ everything--pretty vacuity. She seemed to feel her own inferiority beside the gorgeous Mehalah, and to be angry at it. She took off her bonnet, and the wind played with her yellow curls, and the setting sun spun them into a halo of gold about her delicate face.

'Loose your hair, Mehalah,' said the spiteful girl.

'What for?'

'I want to see how it will look in the sun.'

'Do so, Glory!' begged George. 'How shining Phoebe's locks are. One might melt and coin them into guineas.'

Mehalah pulled out a pin, and let her hair fall, a flood of warm black with red gleams in it. It reached her waist, and the wind scattered it about her like a veil.

If Phoebe's hair resembled a spring fleecy cloud gilded by the sun, buoyant in the soft warm air, that of Mehalah was like an angry thunder shower with a promise of sunshine gleaming through the rain.

'Black or gold, which do you most admire, George?' asked the saucy girl.

'That is not a fair question to put to me,' said De Witt in reply; but he put his fingers through the dark tresses of Mehalah, and raised them to his lips. Phoebe bit her tongue.

'George,' she said sharply. 'See the sun is in my hair. I am in glory. That is better than being so only in name.'

'But your glory is short-lived, Phoebe; the sun will be set in a minute, and then it is no more.'

'And hers,' she said spitefully, 'hers--you imply--endures eternally. I will go home.'

'Do not be angry, Phoebe, there cannot be thunder in such a golden cloud. There can be nothing worse than a rainbow.'

'What have you got there about your neck, George?' she asked, pacified by the compliment.

'A riband.'

'Yes, and something at the end of it--a locket containing a tuft of black horsehair.'

'No, there is not.'

'Call me "mate," as you did when we were at the Decoy. How happy we were there, but then we were alone, that makes all the difference.'

George did not answer. Mehalah's hot blood began to fire her dark cheek.

'Tell me what you have got attached to that riband; if you love me, tell me, George. We girls are always inquisitive.'

'A keepsake, Phoebe.'

'A keepsake! Then I must see it.' She snatched at the riband where it showed above De Witt's blue jersey.

'I noticed it before, when you were so attentive at the Decoy.'

Mehalah interposed her arm, and placing her open hand on George's breast, thrust him out of the reach of the insolent flirt.

'For shame of you, how dare you behave thus!' she exclaimed.

'Oh dear!' cried Phoebe, 'I see it all. Your keepsake. How sentimental! Oh, George! I shall die of laughing.'

She went into pretended convulsions of merriment. 'I cannot help it, this is really too ridiculous.'

Mehalah was trembling with anger. Her gipsy blood was in flame. There is a flagrant spirit in such veins which soon bursts into an explosion of fire.

Phoebe stepped up to her, and holding her delicate fingers beside the strong hand of Mehalah, whispered, 'Look at these little fingers. They will pluck your love out of your rude clutch.' She saw that she was stinging her rival past endurance. She went on aloud, casting a saucy side glance at De Witt, 'I should like to add my contribution to the trifle that is collecting for you since you lost your money. I suppose there is a brief. Off with the red cap and pass it round. Here is a crown.'

The insult was unendurable. Mehalah's passion overpowered her. In a moment she had caught up the girl, and without considering what she was doing, she flung her into the sea. Then she staggered back and panted for breath.

A cry of dismay from De Witt. He rushed to the side.

'Stay!' said Mehalah, restraining him with one hand and pressing the other to her heart. 'She will not drown.'

The water was not deep. Several fisherlads had already sprung to the rescue, and Phoebe was drawn limp and dripping towards the shore. Mehalah stooped, picked up the girl's straw hat, and slung it after her.

A low laugh burst from someone riding in a boat under the side of the vessel.

'Well done, Glory! You served the pretty vixen right. I love you for it.'

She knew the voice. It was that of Rebow. He must have heard, perhaps seen all.

*CHAPTER VII.*

*LIKE A BAD PENNY.*

'For shame, Glory!' exclaimed De Witt when he had recovered from his surprise but not from his dismay. 'How could you do such a wicked and unwomanly act?'

'For shame, George!' answered Mehalah, gasping for breath. 'You stood by all the while, and listened whilst that jay snapped and screamed at me, and tormented me to madness, without interposing a word.'

'I am angry. Your behaviour has been that of a savage!' pursued George, thoroughly roused. 'I love you, Glory, you know I do. But this is beyond endurance.'

'If you are not prepared, or willing to right me, I must defend myself,' said Mehalah; 'and I will do it. I bore as long as I could bear, expecting every moment that you would silence her, and speak out, and say, "Glory is mine, and I will not allow her to be affronted." But not a step did you take, not a finger did you lift; and then, at last, the fire in my heart burst forth and sent up a smoke that darkened my eyes and bewildered my brain. I could not see, I could not think. I did not know, till all was over, what I had done. George! I know I am rough and violent, when these rages come over me, I am not to be trifled with.'

'I hope they never may come over you when you have to do with me,' said De Witt sulkily.

'I hope not, George. Do not trifle with me, do not provoke me. I have the gipsy in me, but under control. All at once the old nature bursts loose, and then I do I know not what. I cannot waste my energy in words like some, and I cannot contend with such a girl as that with the tongue.'

'What will folks say of this?'

'I do not care. They may talk. But now, George, let me warn you. That girl has been trifling with you, and you have been too blind and foolish to see her game and keep her at arm's length.'

'You are jealous because I speak to another girl besides you.'

'No, I am not. I am not one to harbour jealousy. Whom I trust I trust with my whole heart. Whom I believe I believe with my entire soul. I know you too well to be jealous. I know as well that you could not be false to me in thought or in act as I know my truth to you. I cannot doubt you, for had I thought it possible that you would give me occasion to doubt, I could not have loved you.'

'Sheer off!' exclaimed George, looking over his shoulder. 'Here comes the old woman.'

The old woman appeared, scrambling on deck, her cap-frills bristling about her ears, like the feathers of an angry white cockatoo.

'What is all this? By jaggers! where is Phoebe Musset? What have you done with her? Where have you put her? What were those screams about?'

'Sheer off while you may,' whispered De Witt; 'the old woman is not to be faced when wexed no more than a hurricane. Strike sail, and run before the wind.'

'What have you done with the young woman? Where is she? Produce the corpse. I heard her as she shruck out.'

'She insulted me,' said Mehalah, still agitated by passion, 'and I flung her overboard.'

Mrs. De Witt rushed to the bulwarks, and saw the dripping damsel being carried--she could not walk--from the Strand to her father's house.

'You chucked her overboard!' exclaimed the old woman, and she caught up a swabbing-mop. 'How dare you? She was my visitor; she came to sip my grog and eat my natives at my hospitable board, and you chucked her into the sea as though she were a picked cockleshell!'

'She insulted me,' said Mehalah angrily.

'I will teach you to play the dog-fish among my herrings, to turn this blessed peaceful "Pandora" into a cage of bears!' cried Mrs. De Witt, charging with her mop.

Mehalah struck the weapon down, and put her foot on it.

'Take care!' she exclaimed, her voice trembling with passion. 'In another moment you will have raised the devil in me again.'

'He don't take much raising,' vociferated Mrs. De Witt. 'I will teach you to assault a genteel young female who comes a wisiting of me and my son in our own wessel. Do you think you are already mistress here? Does the "Pandora" belong to you? Am I to be chucked overboard along with every lass that wexes you? Am I of no account any more in the eyes of my son, that I suckled from my maternal bottle, and fed with egg and pap out of my own spoon?'

'For heaven's sake,' interrupted George, 'sheer off, Mehalah. Mother is the dearest old lady in the world when she is sober. She is a Pacific Ocean when not vexed with storms. She will pacify presently.'

'I will go, George,' said Mehalah, panting with anger, her veins swollen, her eye sparkling, and her lip quivering; 'I will go, and I will never set foot in this boat again, till you and your mother have asked my pardon for this conduct; she for this outrage, you for having allowed me to receive insult, white-livered coward that you are.'

She flung herself down the ladder, and waded ashore.

Mrs. De Witt's temper abated as speedily as it rose. She retired to her grog. She set feet downwards on the scene; the last of her stalwart form to disappear was the glowing countenance set in white rays.

George was left to his own reflections. He saw Mehalah get into her boat and row away. He waved his cap to her, but she did not return the salute. She was offended grievously. George was placed in a difficult situation. The girl to whom he was betrothed was angry, and had declared her determination not to tread the planks of the 'Pandora' again, and the girl who had made advances to him, and whom his mother would have favoured, had been ejected unceremoniously from it, and perhaps injured, at all events irretrievably offended.

It was incumbent on him to go to the house of the Mussets and enquire for Phoebe. He could do no less; so he descended the ladder and took his way thither.

Phoebe was not hurt, she was only frightened. She had been wet through, and was at once put to bed. She cried a great deal, and old Musset vowed he would take out a summons against the aggressor. Mrs. Musset wept in sympathy with her daughter, and then fell on De Witt for having permitted the assault to take place unopposed.

'How could I interfere?' he asked, desperate with his difficulties. 'It was up and over with her before I was aware.'

'My girl is not accustomed to associate with cannibals,' said Mrs. Musset, drawing herself out like a telescope.

As George returned much crestfallen to the beach, now deserted, for the night had come on, he was accosted by Elijah Rebow.

'George!' said the owner of Red Hall, laying a hand on his cousin's shoulder, 'you ought not to be here.'

'Where ought I to be, Elijah? It seems to me that I have been everywhere to-day where I ought not to be. I am left in a hopeless muddle.'

'You ought not to allow Glory to part from you in anger.'

'How can I help it? I am sorry enough for the quarrel, but you must allow her conduct was trying to the temper.'

'She had great provocation. I wonder she did not kill that girl. She has a temper, has Mehalah, that does not stick at trifles; but she is generous and forgiving.'

'She is so angry with me that I doubt I shall not be able to bring her back to good humour.'

'I doubt so, too, unless you go the right way to work with her; and that is not what you are doing now.'

'Why, what ought I to do, Elijah?'

'Do you want to break with her, George? Do you want to be off with Glory and on with milk-face?'

'No, I do not.'

'You are set on Glory still? You will cleave to her till naught but death shall you part, eh?'

'Naught else.'

'George! That other girl has good looks and money. Give up Mehalah, and hitch on to Phoebe. I know your mother will be best pleased if you do, and it will suit your interests well. Glory has not a penny, Phoebe has her pockets lined. Take my word for it you can have milk-face for the asking, and now is your opportunity for breaking with Glory if you have a mind to do so.'

'But I have not, Elijah.'

'What can Glory be to you, or you to Glory? She with her great heart, her stubborn will, her strong soul, and you--you--bah!'

'Elijah, say what you like, but I will hold to Glory till death us do part.'

'Your hand on it. You swear that.'

'Yes, I do. I want a wife who can row a boat, a splendid girl, the sight of whom lights up the whole heart.'

'I tell you Glory is not one for you. See how passionate she is, she blazes up in a moment, and then she is one to shiver you if you offend her. No, she needs a man of other stamp than you to manage her.'

'She shall be mine,' said George: 'I want no other.'

'This is your fixed resolve?'

'My fixed resolve.'

'For better for worse?'

'For better for worse, till death us do part.'

'Till death you do part,' Elijah jerked out a laugh. 'George, if you are not the biggest fool I have set eyes on for many a day, I am much mistaken.'

'Why so?'

'Because you are acting contrary to your interests. You are unfit for Glory, you do not now, you never will, understand her.'

'What do you mean?'

'You let the girl row away, offended, angry, eating out her heart, and you show no sign that you desire reconciliation.'

'I have though. I waved my hat to her, but she took no notice.'

'Waved your hat!' repeated Rebow, with suppressed scorn. 'You never will read that girl's heart, and understand her moods. Oh, you fool! you fool! straining your arms after the unapproachable, unattainable, star! If she were mine----' he stamped and clenched his fists.

'But she is not going to be yours, Elijah,' said George with a careless laugh.

'No, of course not,' said Elijah, joining in the laugh. 'She is yours till death you do part.'

'Tell me, what have I done wrong?' asked De Witt.

'There--you come to me, after all, to interpret the writing for you. It is there, written in letters of fire, Mene, mene, tekel, Upharsin! Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting, and this night shall thy kingdom be taken from thee and given to----'

'Elijah, I do not understand this language. What ought I to do to regain Mehalah's favour?'