Chapter IV: Part 4

'I know I am. As I have been working in my forge, I have watched the flame on the hearth dance and waver to the clinking of the hammer. There was something in the flame, I know not what, which made it wince or flare, as the blows fell hard or soft. So there are things in Nature respond to each other without your knowing why it is, and in what their sympathy consists. So I know all that passes in Mehalah's mind. I feel my own soul dance and taper to her pulses. If you had not been a fool, George, you would already have been after her. What are you staying for now?'

'My mother; what will she say?'

'Do you care for her more than for Glory? If you think of her now, you lose Glory for ever. Once more I ask you, do you waver? Are you inclined to forsake Mehalah for milk-face?'

'I am not,' said De Witt impatiently; 'why do you go on with this? I have said already that Glory is mine.'

'_Unless_ death you do part.'

'_Till_ death us do part, is what I said.'

'Then make haste. An hour hence the Ray house will be closed, and the girl and her mother in bed.'

'I will get my boat and row thither at once.'

'You need not do that. I have my boat here, jump in. We will each take an oar, and I will land you on the Ray.'

'You take a great interest in my affairs.'

'I take a very great interest in them,' said Rebow dryly.

'Lead the way, then.'

'Follow me.'

Rebow walked forward, over the shingle towards his boat, then suddenly turned, and asked in a suppressed voice, 'Do you know whither you are going?'

'To the Ray.'

'To the Ray, of course. Is there anyone on the Hard?'

'Not a soul. Had I not better go to my mother before I start and say that I am going with you?'

'On no account. She will not allow you to go to the Ray. You know she will not.'

De Witt was not disposed to dispute this.

'You are sure,' asked Rebow again, 'that there is no one on the Hard. No one sees you enter my boat. No one sees you push off with me. No one sees whither we go.'

'Not a soul.'

'Then here goes!' Elijah Rebow thrust the boat out till she floated, sprang in and took his oar. De Witt was already oar in hand on his seat.

'The red curtain is over the window at the Leather Bottle,' said George. 'No signalling to-night, the schooner is in the offing.'

'A red signal. It may mean more than you understand.'

They rowed on.

'Is there a hand on that crimson pane,' asked Rebow in a low tone, 'with the fingers dipped in fire, writing?'

'Not that I can see.'

'Nor do you see the writing, Mene, mene, tekel, Upharsin.'

'You jest, Elijah!'

'A strange jest. Perhaps the writing is in the vulgar tongue, thou art weighed and found wanting, feeble fool, and thy kingdom is taken from thee, and given to ME.'

Mehalah sat by the hearth, on the floor, in the farmhouse at the Ray. Her mother was abed and asleep. The girl had cast aside the cap and thrown off her jersey. Her bare arms were folded on her lap; and the last flicker of the red embers fell on her exposed and heaving bosom.

Elijah Rebow on the Hard at Mersea had read accurately the workings and transitions in the girl's heart. Precisely that was taking place which he had described. The tempest of passion had roared by, and now a tide of self-reproach rose and overflowed her soul. She was aware that she had acted wrongly, that without adequate cause she had given way to an outburst of blind fury. Phoebe was altogether too worthless a creature for her jealousy, too weak to have been subjected to such treatment. Her anger against George had expired. He did well to be indignant with her. It was true he had not rebuked Phoebe nor restrained his mother, but the reason was clear. He was too forbearing with women to offend them, however frivolous and intemperate they might be. He had relied on the greatness of his Glory's heart to stand above and disregard these petty storms.

She had thrown off her boots and stockings, and sat with her bare feet on the hearth. The feet moved nervously in rhythm to her thoughts. She could not keep them still. Her trouble was great. Tears were not on her cheeks; in this alone was Elijah mistaken. Her dark eyes were fixed dreamily on the dying fire--they were like the marsh-pools with the will-o'-the-wisp in each. They did not see the embers, they looked through the iron fireback, and the brick wall, over the saltings, over the water, into infinity.

She loved George. Her love for him was the one absorbing passion of her life. She loved her mother, but no one else--only her and George. She had no one else to love. She was without relations. She had been brought up without playfellows on that almost inaccessible islet, only occasionally visiting Mersea, and then only for an hour. She had seen and known nothing of the world save the world of morass. She had mixed with no life, save the life of the flocks on the Ray, of the fishes and the seabirds. Her mind hungered for something more than the little space of the Ray could supply. Her soul had wings and sought to spread them and soar away, whither, however, she did not know. She had a dim prevision of something better than the sordid round of common cares which made up the life she knew.

With a heart large and full of generous impulses, she had spent her girlhood without a recognition of its powers. She felt that there was a voice within which talked in a tongue other from that which struck her ears each day, but what that language was, and what the meaning of that voice, she did not know. She had met with De Witt. Indeed they had known each other, so far as meeting at rare intervals went, for many years; she had not seen enough of him to know him as he really was, she therefore loved him as she idealised him. The great cretaceous sea was full of dissolved silex penetrating the waters, seeking to condense and solidify. But there was nothing in the ocean then save twigs of weed and chips of shells, and about them that hardest of all elements drew together and grew to adamant. The soul of Mehalah was some such vague sea full of ununderstood, unestimated elements, seeking their several centres for precipitation, and for want of better, condensing about straws. To her, George De Witt was the ideal of all that was true and manly. She was noble herself, and her ideal was the perfection of nobility. She was rude indeed, and the image of her worship was rough hewn, but still with the outline and carriage of a hero. She could not, she would not, suppose that George De Witt was less great than her fancy pictured.

The thought of life with him filled her with exultation. She could leap up, like the whooper swan, spread her silver wings, and shout her song of rapture and of defiance, like a trumpet. He would open to her the gates into that mysterious world into which she now only peeped, he would solve for her the perplexities of her troubled soul, he would lead her to the light which would illumine her eager mind.

Nevertheless she was ready to wait patiently the realisation of her dream. She was in no hurry. She knew that she could not live in the same house or boat with George's mother. She could not leave her own ailing mother, wholly dependent on herself. Mehalah contentedly tarried for what the future would unfold, with that steady confidence in the future that youth so generally enjoys.

The last embers went out, and all was dark within. No sound was audible, save the ticking of the clock, and the sigh of the wind about the eaves and in the thorntrees. Mehalah did not stir. She dreamed on with her eyes open, still gazing into space, but now with no marsh fires in the dark orbs. The grey night sky and the stars looked in at the window at her.

Suddenly, as she thus sat, an inexpressible distress came over her, a feeling as though George were in danger, and were crying to her for help. She raised herself on the floor, and drew her feet under her, and leaning her chin on her fingers listened. The wind moaned under the door; everything else was hushed.

Her fear came over her like an ague fit. She wiped, her forehead, there were cold drops beading it. She turned faint at heart; her pulse stood still. Her soul seemed straining, drawn as by invisible attraction, and agonised because the gross body restrained it. She felt assured that she was wanted. She must not remain there. She sprang to her feet and sped to the door, unbolted it and went forth. The sky was cloudless, thick strewn with stars. Jupiter glowed over Mersea Isle. A red gleam was visible, far away at the 'City.' It shone from the tavern window, a coloured star set in ebony. She went within again. The fire was out. Perhaps this was the vulgar cause of the strange sensation. She must shake it off. She went to her room and threw herself on the bed. Again, as though an icy wave washed over her, lying on a frozen shore, came that awful fear, and then, again, that tension of her soul to be free, to fly somewhere, away from the Ray, but whither she could not tell.

Where was George? Was he at home? Was he safe? She tried in vain to comfort herself with the thought that he ran no danger, that he was protected by her talisman. She felt that without an answer to these questions she could not rest, that her night would be a fever dream.

She hastily drew on her jersey and boots; she slipped out of the house, unloosed her punt, and shot over the water to Mersea. The fleet was silent, but as she flew into the open channel she could hear the distant throb of oars on rowlocks, away in the dark, out seaward. She heard the screech of an owl about the stacks of a farm near the waterside. She caught as she sped past the Leather Bottle muffled catches of the nautical songs trolled by the topers within.

She met no boat, she saw no one. She ran her punt on the beach and walked to the 'Pandora,' now far above the water. The ladder was still down; therefore George was not within. 'Who goes there?' asked the voice of Mrs. De Witt. 'Is that you, George? Are you coming home at last? Where have you been all this while?'

Mehalah drew back. George was not only not there, but his mother knew not where he was.

The cool air and the exercise had in the mean time dissipated Mehalah's fear. She argued with herself that George was in the tavern, behind the red curtain, remaining away from his mother's abusive tongue as long as he might. His boat lay on the Hard. She saw it, with the oars in it. He was therefore not on the water; he was on land, and on land he was safe. He wore the medal about his neck, against his heart.

How glad and thankful she was that she had given him the precious charm that guarded from all danger save drowning.

She rowed back to the Ray, more easy in her mind, and anchored her punt. She returned cautiously over the saltings, picking her way by the starlight, leaping or avoiding the runnels and pools, now devoid of water, but deep in mud most adhesive and unfathomable.

She felt a little uneasy lest her mother should have awoke during her absence, and missed her daughter. She entered the house softly; the door was without a lock, and merely hasped, and stole to her mother's room. The old woman was wrapt in sleep, and breathing peacefully.

Mehalah drew off her boots, and seated herself again by the hearth. She was not sleepy. She would reason with herself, and account for the sensation that had affected her.

Hark! she heard some one speak. She listened attentively with a flutter at her heart. It was her mother. She stole back on tiptoe to her. The old woman was dreaming, and talking in her sleep. She had her hands out of bed together and parted them, and waved them, 'No, Mehalah, no! Not George! not George!' she gave emphasis with her hand, then suddenly grasped her daughter's wrist, 'But Elijah!' Next moment her grasp relaxed, and she slept calmly, apparently dreamlessly again.

Mehalah went back.

It was strange. No sooner was she in her place by the hearth again than the same distress came over her. It was as though a black cloud had swept over her sky and blotted out every light, so that neither sun, nor moon, nor star appeared, as though she were left drifting without a rudder and without a compass in an unknown sea, under murky night with only the phosphorescent flash of the waves about, not illumining the way but intensifying its horror. It was as though she found herself suddenly in some vault, in utter, rayless blackness, knowing neither how she came there nor whether there was a way out.

Oppressed by this horror, she lifted her eyes to the window, to see a star, to see a little light of any sort. What she there saw turned her to stone.

At the window, obscuring the star's rays, was the black figure of a man. She could not see the face, she saw only the shape of the head, and arms, and hands spread out against the panes. The figure stood looking in and at her.

Her eyes filmed over, and her head swam.

She heard the casement struck, and the tear of the lead and tinkle of broken glass on the brick floor, and then something fell at her feet with a metallic click.

When she recovered herself, the figure was gone, but the wind piped and blew chill through the rent lattice.

How many minutes passed before she recovered herself sufficiently to rise and light a candle she never knew, nor did it matter. When she had obtained a light she stooped with it, and groped upon the floor.

* * * * * *

Mrs. Sharland was awakened by a piercing scream.

She sprang from her bed and rushed into the adjoining room. There stood Mehalah, in the light of the broken candle lying melting and flaring on the floor, her hair fallen about her shoulders, her face the hue of death, her lips bloodless, her eyes distended with terror, gazing on the medal of Paracelsus, which she held in her hand, the sea-water dripping from the wet riband wound about her fingers.

'Mother! Mother! He is drowned. I have seen him. He came and returned me this.'

Then she fell senseless on the floor, with the medal held to her heart.

*CHAPTER VIII.*

*WHERE IS HE?*

If there had been excitement on the Hard at Mersea on the preceding day when the schooner anchored off it, there was more this morning. The war-vessel had departed no one knew whither, and nobody cared. The bay was full of whiting; the waters were alive with them, and the gulls were flickering over the surface watching, seeing, plunging. The fishermen were getting their boats afloat, and all appliances ready for making harvest of that fish which is most delicious when fresh from the water, most flat when out of it a few hours.

Down the side of the 'Pandora' tumbled Mrs. De Witt, her nose sharper than usual, but her cap more flabby. She wore a soldier's jacket, bought second-hand at Colchester. Her face was of a warm complexion, tinctured with rum and wrath. She charged into the midst of the fishermen, asking in a loud imperative tone for her son.

To think that after the lesson delivered him last week, the boy should have played truant again! The world was coming to a pretty pass. The last trumpet might sound for aught Mrs. De Witt cared, and involve mankind in ruin, for mankind was past 'worriting' about.

George had defied her, and the nautical population of the 'City' had aided and abetted him in his revolt.

'This is what comes of galiwanting,' said Mrs. De Witt; 'first he galiwants Mehalah, and then Phoebe. No good ever came of it. I'd pass a law, were I king, against it, but that smuggling in love would go on as free under it as smuggling in spirits. Young folks now-a-days is grown that wexing and wicious---- Where is my George?' suddenly laying hold of Jim Morell.

The old sailor jumped as if he had been caught by a revenue officer.

'Bless my life, Mistress! You did give me a turn. What is it you want? A pinch of snuff?'

'I want my George,' said the excited mother. 'Where is he skulking to?'

'How should I know?' asked Morell, 'he is big enough to look after himself.'

'He is among you,' said Mrs. De Witt; 'I know you have had him along with a party of you at the Leather Bottle yonder. You men get together, and goad the young on into rebellion against their parents.'

'I know nothing about George. I have not even seen him.'

'I've knitted his guernseys and patched his breeches these twenty years, and now he turns about and deserts me.'

'Tom!' shouted Morell to a young fisherman, 'have you seen George De Witt this morning?'

'No, I have not, Jim.'

'Oh, you young fellows!' exclaimed the old lady, loosing her hold on the elder sailor, and charging among and scattering the young boatmen. 'Where is my boy? What have you done with him that he did not come home last night, and is nowhere wisible?'

'He went to the Mussets' last evening, Mistress. We have not set eyes on him since.'

'Oh! he went there, did he? Galiwanting again!' She turned about and rushed over the shingle towards the grocery, hardware, drapery, and general store.

Before entering that realm of respectability, Mrs. De Witt assumed an air of consequence and gravity.

She reduced her temper under control, and with an effort called up an urbane smile on her hard features when saluting Mrs. Musset, who stood behind the counter.

'Can I serve you with anything, ma'am?' asked the mother of Phoebe, with cold self-possession.

'I want my George.'

'We don't keep him in stock.'

'He was here last night.'

'Do you suppose we kept him here the night? Are you determined to insult us, madam? You have been drinking, and have forgot yourself and where you are. We wish to see no more of your son. My Phoebe is not accustomed to demean herself by association with cannibals. It is unfortunate that she should have stepped beyond her sphere yesterday, but she has learned a lesson by it which will be invaluable for the future. I do not know, I do not care, whether the misconduct was that of your son or of your daughter-in-law. Birds of a feather flock together, and lambs don't consort with wolves. I beg, madam, that it be an understood matter between the families that, except in the way of business, as tobacco, sugar, currants, or calico, intimacy must cease.'

'Oh indeed!' exclaimed Mrs. De Witt, the colour mottling her cheek. 'You mean to insinuate that our social grades are so wery different.'

'Providence, madam, has made distinctions in human beings as in currants. Some are all fruit, and some half gravel.'

'You forget,' said Mrs. De Witt, 'that I was a Rebow--a Rebow of Red Hall. It was thence I inherit the blood in my weins and the bridge of my nose.'

'And that was pretty much all you did inherit from them,' observed Mrs. Musset. 'Much value they must be to you, as you have nothing else to boast of.'

'Oh, indeed, Mistress Musset!'

'Indeed, Mistress De Witt!' with a profound curtsey.

Mrs. De Witt attempted an imitation, but having been uninstructed in deportment as a child, and inexperienced in riper years, she got her limbs entangled, and when she had arrived at a sitting posture was unable to extricate herself with ease.

In attempting to recover her erect position she precipitated herself against a treacle barrel and upset it. A gush of black saccharine matter spread over the floor.

'Where is my son?' shouted Mrs. De Witt, her temper having broken control.

'You shall pay for the golden syrup,' said Mrs. Musset.

'Golden syrup!' jeered Mrs. De Witt, 'common treacle, the cleanings of the niggers' feet that tread out the sugar-cane.'

'It shall be put down to you!' cried the mistress of the store, defying her customer across the black river. 'I will have a summons out against you for the syrup.'

'And I will have a search-warrant for my son.'

'I have not got him. I should be ashamed to keep him under my respectable roof.'

'What is this disturbance about?' asked Mr. Musset, coming into the shop with his pipe.

'I want my son,' cried the incensed mother. 'He has not been seen since he came here last night. What have you done to him?'

'He is not here, Mistress. He only remained a few minutes to enquire after Phoebe, and then he left. We have not seen him since. Go to the Leather Bottle; you will probably find him there.'

The advice was reasonable; and having discharged a parting shot at Mrs. Musset, the bereaved mother departed and took her way to the quaint old inn by the waterside, entitled the Leather Bottle.

Mrs. De Witt pushed the door open and strode in. No one was there save the host, Isaac Mead. He knew nothing of George's whereabouts. He had not seen him or heard him spoken of. Mrs. De Witt having entered, felt it incumbent on her to take something for the good of the house.

The host sat opposite her at the table.

'Where can he be?' asked Mrs. De Witt. 'The boy cannot be lost.'

'Have you searched everywhere?'

'I have asked the lads; they either know nothing, or won't tell. I have been to the Musset's. They pretend they have not seen him since last night.'

'Perhaps he rowed off somewhere.'

'His boat is on the Hard.'

'Do not bother your head about him,' said the host with confidence, 'he will turn up. Mark my words. I say he will certainly turn up, perhaps not when you want him, or where you expect him, but he assuredly will reappear. I have had seven sons, and they got scattered all over the world, but they have all turned up one after another, and,' he added sententiously, 'the world is bigger than Mersea. It is nothing to be away for twelve or fourteen hours. Lads take no account of time, they do not walue it any more than they walue good looks. We older folks do; we hold to that which is slipping from us. When we was children, we thought we could deal with time as with the sprats. We draw in all and throw what we can't consume away. At last we find we have spoiled our fishing, and we must use larger meshes in our net. I will tell you another thing, Mistress,' continued the host, who delighted to moralise, 'time is like a clock, when young it goes slow, and when old it gallops. When you and I was little, we thought a day as long as now we find a year. As we grew older years went faster; and the older we wax the greater the speed with which time spins by; till at last it passes with a whisk and a flash, and that is eternity.'

'He cannot be drowned,' said Mrs. De Witt. 'That would be too ridiculous.'

'It would, just about.' After a moment's consideration Isaac added, 'I heard that Elijah Rebow was on the Hard last night, maybe your George is gone off with him.'

'Not likely, Isaac. I and Elijah are not on good terms. My father left me nothing. Elijah took all after his parents, and I did not get a penny.'

'You know we have war with foreigners,' observed the publican. 'Now I observe that everything in this world goes by contraries. When there's peace abroad, there is strife at home, and _vice versa_. There was a man-of-war in the bay yesterday. I should not wonder if that put it into George's head to be a man-of-peace on land. When you want to estimate a person's opinions, first ask what other folks are saying round him, and take the clean contrary, and you hit the bull's-eye. If you see anything like to draw a man in one direction, look the opposite way, and you will find him. There was pretty strong intimation of war yesterday with the foreigners, then you may be dead certain he took a peaceful turn in his perwerse vein, and went to patch up old quarrels with Elijah.'

'It is possible,' said Mrs. De Witt. 'I will row to Red Hall and find out.'

'Have another glass before you go,' said the landlord. 'Never hurry about anything. If George be at his cousin's he will turn up in time. There is more got by waiting than by worrying.'

'But perhaps he is not there.'

'Then he is elsewhere.'

'He may be drowned.'

'He will turn up. Drowned or not, he will turn up. I never knew boys to fail. If he were a girl it would be different. You see it is so when they drown. A boy floats face upwards, and a girl with her face down. It is so also in life. If a girl strays from home, she goes to the bottom like a plummet, but a boy on the contrary goes up like a cork.'

Mrs. De Witt so far took Isaac Mead's advice that she waited at her home till afternoon. But as George did not return, she became seriously uneasy, not so much for him as for herself. She did not for a moment allow that any harm had befallen him, but she imagined this absence to be a formal defiance of her authority. Such a revolt was not to be overlooked. In Mrs. De Witt's opinion no man was able to stand alone, he must fall under female government or go to the dogs. Deliberate bachelors were, in her estimation, God-forsaken beings, always in scrapes, past redemption. She had ruled her husband, and he had submitted with a meekness that ought to have inherited the earth. George had been always docile. She had bored docility into him with her tongue, and hammered it into him with her fist.

The idea came suddenly on her,--What if he had gone to the war schooner and enlisted? but was dismissed as speedily as impossible. Tales of ill-treatment in the Navy were rife among the shoremen. The pay was too small to entice a youth who owned a vessel, a billyboy, and oyster pans. He might do well in his trade, he must fare miserably in the Navy. Captain MacPherson had indeed invited George and others to follow him, but not one had volunteered.

She determined at last, in her impatience, to visit Red Hall, and for that purpose she got into the boat. Mrs. De Witt was able to row as well as a man. She did not start for Red Hall without reluctance. She had not been there since her marriage, kept away by her resentment. Elijah had made no overtures to her for reconciliation, had never invited her to revisit her native place, and her pride prevented her from making first advances. She had been cut off by her father, the family had kept aloof from her, and this had rankled in her heart. True, Elijah's father and mother were dead, and he was not mixed up in the first contentions; but he had inherited money which she considered ought to have fallen to her.

She was, however, anxious to see the old place again. Her young life there had not been happy; quite the reverse, for her father had been brutal, and her mother Calvinistic and sour. Yet Red Hall was, after all, her old home; its marshes were the first landscape on which her eyes had opened, its daisies had made her first necklaces, its bulrushes her first whips, its sea-wall the boundary of her childish world. It was a yearning for a wider, less level world, which had driven her in a rash moment into the arms of Moses De Witt.

The tide was out, so Mrs. De Witt was obliged to land at the point near the windmill. She walked thence on the sea-wall. She knew that wall well, fragrant with sovereign wood in summer, and rank with sea spinach. The aster blooming time was past, and the violet petals had fallen off, leaving only the yellow centres.

There, before her, like a stranded ark, was the old red house, unaltered, lonely, without a bush or tree to screen it.

The cattle stood browsing in the pasture as of old. In the marsh was a pond, a flight of wild fowl was wheeling round it, as in the autumns long ago. There was the little creek where her punt had lain, the punt in which she had been sometimes sent to Mersea to buy groceries for her mother.

The hard crust about the heart of Mrs. De Witt began to break, and the warm feeling within to ooze through. Gentler sentiments began to prevail. She would not take her son by the ears and bang his head, if she should find him at Red Hall. She would forgive him in a Christian spirit, and grant his dismissal with an innocuous curse.

She walked straight into the house. Elijah was crouched in his leather chair, with his head on one side, asleep. She stood over him and contemplated his unattractive face in silence, till he suddenly started, and exclaimed, 'Who is here? Who is this?'

Next moment he had recognised his visitor.

'So you are come, Aunt. You have not honoured me before. Will you have some whisky?'

'Thank you, Elijah, thank you. I am dry with rowing. But how come you to be asleep at this time of day? Were you out after ducks last night?'

'No, I was not out. I lay abed. I went to bed early.'

'Elijah, where is my son?'

He started, and looked at her suspiciously.

'How am I to know?'

'I cannot find him anywhere,' said the mother. 'I fear the boy has levanted. I may have been a little rough with him, but it was for his good. You cannot clean a deck with whiting, you must take holystone to the boards, and it is so with children. If you are not hard, you get off no edges, if you want to polish them, you must be gritty yourself. I doubt the boy is off.'

'What makes you think so?'

'I have not seen him. Nobody at Mersea has seen him. Have you?'

'Not since last night.'

'You saw him then?'

'Yes, he was on the beach going to Mehalah.'

'Galiwanting!' exclaimed Mrs. De Witt. 'Oh, what wickedness comes of galiwanting!' Then, recovering herself, 'But how could he get there? His boat was left on the Hard!'

'I suppose he went by land. He said something to that effect. You see the tide would have been out if he purposed to stay some time.'

'But what should make him go to the Ray? He had seen Mehalah on his boat.'

'He said there had been a quarrel, and he was bent on making it up. Go and look for him on the Ray. If he is not back on your boat already, you will find him, or hear of him, there.'

'Oh, the worries to parents that come of galiwanting!' moaned Mrs. De Witt, 'none who have not experienced can tell. Do not stay me, Elijah. Dear sackalive; I must go home. I dare say the boy is now on the "Pandora," trying to look innocent.' She rubbed her hands, and her eyes glistened. 'By cock!' she exclaimed, 'I would not be he.' She was out of the room, without a farewell to her nephew, down the steps, away over the flat to the sea-wall and her boat, her heart palpitating with anger.

It was late in the afternoon before Mrs. De Witt got back to Mersea. She ascended her ladder and unlocked the hatches. She looked about her. No George was on deck. She returned to the shore and renewed her enquiries. He had not been seen. No doubt he was still galivanting at the Ray. The uncertainty became unendurable. She jumped into her boat once more, and rowed to the island inhabited by Glory and her mother.

With her nose high in the air, her cap-frills quivering, she stepped out of the skiff. She had donned her military coat, to add to her imposing and threatening aspect.

The door of the house was open. She stood still and listened. She did not hear George's voice. She waited; she saw Mehalah moving in the room. Once the girl looked at her, but there was neither recognition nor lustre in her eyes. Mrs. De Witt made a motion towards her, but Glory did not move to meet her in return.

As she stepped over the threshold, Mrs. Sharland, who was seated by the fire, turned and observed her. The widow rose at once with a look of distress in her face, and advanced towards her, holding out her hand.

'Where is George?' asked Mrs. De Witt, ignoring the outstretched palm, in a hard, impatient tone.

'George!' echoed Mehalah, standing still, 'George is dead.'

'What nonsense!' said Mrs. De Witt, catching the girl by the shoulder and shaking her.

'I saw him. He is dead.' She quivered like an aspen.

The blood had ebbed behind her brown skin. Her eyes looked in Mrs. De Witt's face with a flash of agony in them.

'He came and looked in at the window at me, and cast me back the keepsake I had given him, and which he swore not to part with while life lasted.'

'Dear sackalive!' exclaimed Mrs. De Witt; 'the girl is dreaming or demented. What is the meaning of all this, Mistress Sharland?'

'Last night,' explained the widow, 'as Mehalah was sitting here in the dark, some one came to the window, stove it in--look how the lead is torn, and the glass fallen out--and cast at the feet of Mehalah a medal she had given George on Thursday. She thinks,' added the old woman in a subdued tone, 'that what she saw was his spirit.'

Mrs. De Witt was awed. She was not a woman without superstition, but she was not one to allow a supernatural intervention till all possible prosaic explanations had been exhausted.

'Is this Gospel truth?' she asked.

'It is true,' answered the widow.

'Did you see the face, Glory? Are you sure that what you saw was George?'

'I did not see the face. I saw only the figure. But it was George. It could have been no other. He alone had the medal, and he brought it back to me.'

'You see,' explained the widow Sharland, 'the coin was an heirloom; it might not go out of the family.'

'I see it all,' exclaimed Mrs. De Witt. 'Galiwanting again! He came to return the keepsake to Mehalah, because he wanted to break with her and take on with another.'

'No, never!' exclaimed Mehalah vehemently. 'He could not do it. He was as true to me as I am to him. He could not do it. He came to tell me that all was over.'

'Dear sackalive!' said Mrs. De Witt, 'you don't know men as I do. You have had no more experience of them than you have of kangaroos. I will not believe he is dead.'

'He is dead,' Mehalah burst forth with fierce vehemence. 'He is drowned, he is not false. He is dead, he is dead.'

'I know better,' said Mrs. De Witt in a low tone to herself as she bit her thumb. 'That boy is galiwanting somewhere; the only question to me is Where. By cock! I'd give a penny to know.'

*CHAPTER IX.*

*IN MOURNING.*

A month passed, and no tidings whatever of George De Witt had reached his mother or Mehalah. The former constantly expected news of her son. She would not believe in his death, and was encouraged in her opinion by Isaac Mead. But Mehalah had never entertained hope; she did not look for news, she knew that George was drowned.

His body had not been found. His disappearance had been altogether mysterious. Mrs. De Witt used every effort to trace him, but failed. From the moment the door of the Mussets had closed upon him, no one had seen him. With the closing of that door the record of his life had closed. He had passed as completely beyond pursuit as though he had passed through the gate of death.

There was but one possible way of accounting for his disappearance, and it was that at which public opinion arrived. He had gone round by the Strood from Mersea to reach the Ray, which was on that side accessible, but with difficulty, and occasionally only by land, had lost his way among the saltmarshes in the night, had fallen into one of the myriad creeks that traverse this desolate region, and had been engulfed in the ooze. The sea will give up her dead after a storm and with the tide, but the slime of the marshes never.

Mehalah made no attempt to account for the disappearance of George; it was sufficient for her that he was lost to her for ever. But his mother made enquiries when selling shrimps along the Colchester road, and on the island. He had nowhere been seen. He had not visited the Rose.

It was Elijah Rebow who finally brought Mrs. De Witt to admit that her son was entirely lost to her.

He visited her in November. She was surprised and pleased to see him. Since the disappearance of George, Mrs. De Witt had taken more vigorously than before to grog. Her feelings needed solace, and she found it in her glass. Perhaps the presence of George had acted as a restraint on his mother. She had not wished him to suppose her a habitual tippler. Her libations had been performed when he was away, or under the excuse of stomachics. On the subject of her internal arrangements, discomforts, and requirements, Mrs. De Witt had afforded her son information more copious than interesting. Her digestion sympathised with all the convulsions then shaking Europe. Revolutions were brought about there by the most ordinary edibles, and were always to be reduced by spirituous drinkables.

The topic of her internal economy, when introduced by Mrs. De Witt, always prefaced a resolve to try a drop of cordial. Now that George was gone, Mrs. De Witt brooded over her loss at home, stirring her glass as if it were the mud of the marshes, and she hoped to turn George up out of the syrup of the dissolving sugar.

Mrs. De Witt had laid aside her red coat, as inappropriate to her forlorn condition. The month of October had seen a sad deterioration in the mistress of the 'Pandora.' Her funds had been fast ebbing. The bread-winner was gone, and the rum-drinker had obtained fresh excuse for deep potations. There were fish in the sea to be caught, but he that had netted them was now under the mud. Things could not go on thus for ever.

Mrs. De Witt was musing despondingly over her desperate position, when Elijah appeared above the hatchway and descended to the cabin.

Mrs. De Witt had stuck a black bow in her mob cap, as a symbol of her woe. She hardly needed to hang out the flag, for her whole face and figure betokened distress. It cannot be said that her maternal bowels yearned after her son out of love for him so much as out of solicitude for herself. She naturally grieved for her 'poor boy,' but her grief for him was largely tinctured with anxiety for her own future. How should she live? On what subsist? She had her husband's old hull as a home, and a fishing smack, and a rowing boat. There was some money in the box, but not much. 'There's been no wasteful outlay over a burying,' said Mrs. De Witt. 'That is a good job.'

But, as already said, Mrs. De Witt only yielded reluctantly to the opinion that her boy was drowned. She held resolutely in public to this view for reasons she confided to herself over her rum. 'It is no use dropping a pint of money in dragging for the body, and burying it when you've got it. To my notion that is laying out five pound to have the satisfaction of spending another five. George was a gentleman,' she said with pride. 'If he was to go from his pore mother, he went as cheap from her as a lad could do it.'

Another reason why she refused to believe in his death was characteristic of the illogicality of her sex. This she announced to Rebow. 'You have it in a nutshell. How can the poor boy be drowned? For, if so, what is to become of me, and I a widow?'

'Mrs. De Witt,' said Rebow, helping himself to some rum, 'you may as well make your mind easy on this point. If George be not dead where can he be?'

'That I do not take on myself to say.'

'He is nowhere on Mersea, is he?'

'Certainly not.'

'He did not go along the Colchester road beyond the Strood?'

'No, or I should have heard of him.'

'Moreover, he told me he purposed going to the Ray.'

'To be sure he did.'

'And he never reached the Ray.'

'No, for certain.'

'Then it is obvious he must have been lost between Mersea and the Ray.'

'There is something in what you say, Elijah; there is what we may term argument in it.'

'There was a reason why he should go to the Ray.'

'I suppose there was.'

'He had quarrelled with Glory, and desired to make it up that night.'

'I know there had been a squall.'

'Then do not flatter yourself with false hopes. George is gone past recall; you and Glory must give him up for ever.'

Mrs. De Witt shook her head, wiped her eyes with the frill of her cap, looked sorrowfully into her glass and said, 'Pore me!'

'You are poor indeed,' said Elijah, 'but how poor I suspect rather than know. What have you got to live upon?'

'That is just it,' answered Mrs. De Witt; 'my head has been like the Swin light, a rewolving and a rewolving. But there is this difference, the Swin rewolves first light and then dark alternately, whereas in my head there has been naught rewolving but warious degrees of darkness.'

'What do you propose doing?'

'Well, I have an idea.' Mrs. De Witt hitched her chair nearer to her nephew, and breathed her idea and her spirit together into his ear. 'I think I shall marry.'

'You----!'

'Yes, I. Why not? There is the billyboy running to waste, rotting for want of use, crying out for a master to take her out fishing. There are as many fisher-boys on shore as there are sharks in the ocean, ready to snap me up were I flung to them. I have felt them. They have been a-nibbling round me already. Consider, Elijah! there is the "Pandora," good as a palace for a home, and the billyboy and the boat, and the nets, and the oyster garden, and then there is my experience to be thrown in _gratis_, and above all,' she raised herself, 'there is my person.'

Rebow laughed contemptuously.

'What have these boys of their own?' asked Mrs. De Witt, laying down the proposition with her spoon. 'They have nothing, no more than the sea-cobs. They have naught to do but swoop down on whatever they can see, sprats, smelt, mullet, whiting, dabs, and when there is naught else, winkles. Their thoughts do not rise that proudly to me, and I must stoop to them. I tell you what, Elijah, if I was to be raffled for, at a shilling a ticket, there would be that run among the boys for me, that I could make a fortune. But I won't demean myself to that. I shall choose the stoutest and healthiest among them, then I can send him out fishing, and he can earn me money, as did George, and so I shall be able to enjoy ease, if not opulence.'

'But suppose the lads decline the honour.'

'I should like to see the impertinence of the lad that did,' said Mrs. De Witt firmly. 'I have had experience with men, and I know them in and out that familiarly that I could find my way about their brains or heart, as you would about your marshes, in the dark. No, Elijah, the question is not will they have me, but whether I will be bothered with any more of the creatures. I will not unless I can help it. I will not unless the worst comes to the worst. But a woman must live, Elijah.'

'How much have you got for current expenses?'

'Only a few pounds.'

'There are five and twenty pounds owed you by the Sharlands. You are not going to let them have it as a present?'

'No, certain, I am not.'

'Do you expect to get it by waiting for it?'

'To tell you the truth, Elijah, I hadn't given that five and twenty pounds a thought. I will go over to the Ray and claim the money.'

'You will not get it.'

'I must have it.'

'They cannot possibly pay.'

'But they shall pay. I want and will have my money.'

'Mehalah will pretend that George gave her the money.'

'No, she will not. She acknowledged the debt to me before George's face. She promised repayment as soon as she had sufficient.'

'If you do not seize on their goods, or some of them, you will never see the colour of the coin again.'

'I must and will have it.'

'Then follow my advice. Put in an execution. I will lend you my men. All you have to do is to give notice on this island when the sale is to be, get together sufficient to bid and buy, and you have your money. You must have an auction.'

'Can I do so, Elijah?'

'Of course you can. Go over to the Ray at once and demand your money. If they decline to pay, allow them a week's grace, more if you like. I'll go with you, when the sale is to take place, and perhaps bid. We will have a Dutch auction.'

'By cock! I'll do it. I will go there right on end.'

At once, with her natural impetuosity, the old woman started. Before departing, however, to heighten her importance, and give authority and sternness to her appearance, she donned her red coat. In token of mourning she wrapped a black rag round her left arm. Over her cap she put a broad-brimmed battered straw hat, in front of which she affixed with a hair-pin the large black bow that had figured on her cap. Thus arrayed she entered her boat and rowed to the Ray.

The demand for the money filled Mrs. Sharland with dismay. It was a demand as unexpected as it was embarrassing. She and Mehalah were absolutely without the means of discharging the debt. They had, indeed, a few pounds by them, which had been intended to serve to carry them through the winter, and these they offered Mrs. De Witt, but she refused to receive a portion on account when she wanted the whole of the debt.

Mrs. Sharland entreated delay till spring, but Mrs. De Witt was inexorable. She would allow no longer than a week. She departed, declaring that she would sell them up, unless the five and twenty pounds were produced.

Since the death or disappearance of George De Witt, Mehalah had gone about her usual work in a mechanical manner. She was in mourning also. But she did not exhibit it by a black bow on her cap or a sable rag round her arm, like the mother of the lost lad. She still wore her red cap, crimson kerchief and blue jersey. But the lustre was gone from her eyes, the bloom from her cheek, animation from her lips. There was no spring in her step, no lightness in her tone. The cow was milked as regularly as usual, and foddered as attentively as before. The house was kept as scrupulously clean, Mrs. Sharland ministered to with the same assiduity, but the imperiousness of Mehalah's nature had gone. The widow found to her astonishment that she was allowed to direct what was to be done, and that her daughter submitted without an objection.

It is the way with strong natures to allow their griefs no expression, to hide their sorrows and mask their wounds. Glory did not speak of George. She did not weep. She made no lamentation over his loss; more wonderful still in her mother's eyes, she uttered no reproaches against anyone for it. A weak nature always exhausts its troubles in reproaches of others; a strong one eats out its own heart. Mehalah listened with a dull ear to her mother's murmurs, and made no response. Mrs. Sharland set her down as unfeeling. A feeble querulous woman like her was quite unable to measure the depth of her daughter's heart, and understand its working. The result was that she read them wrong, and took false soundings.

When her mother was in bed and asleep, then Mehalah sat at the hearth, or leaned at the window looking at the stars, hour by hour, immovable, uttering no sound, not building castles in the clouds, not weaving any schemes for her future, not hoping for anything, not imagining anything, but exhaling her pain. As the turned earth after the plough may be seen in a sudden frost to smoke, so was it with that wounded heart, it smoked, gave up its fever heat, and in silence and solitude cooled. There was something, which yet was no _thing_, to which her weary soul stretched, in dim unconsciousness. There was a communing without words, even without the thoughts which form into words, with that Unseen which is yet so surely felt. It was the spirit--that infinite essence so mysteriously enclosed within bounds, in strange contradiction to its nature, asserting its nature and yearning for Infinity.

The human heart in suffering is like the parched soil in summer; when its sky is overcast and it cannot see beyond the cloud that lies low over it, then it must harbour its heat, and gape with fever. But, should a rent appear in the earthborn vaporous veil, through which it can look into unfathomable space, at once it radiates the ardour that consumes it, casts off the fever that consumes it, and drinks in, and is slaked by, the dew of heaven.

*CHAPTER X.*

*STRUCK COLOURS.*