Chapter VI: Part 6

'Oh dear, dear!' moaned Mrs. Sharland, 'that it should come to this! But I suppose I must, I must indeed. Run, Mehalah, run quick and unrip the belt of my green gown. Quick, fetch it me.'

The girl hastily obeyed. The old woman got her knife, and with trembling hand cut away the lining in several parts of the body. Shining sovereigns came out.

'There are twenty here,' she said with a sigh, 'and we have seven over of what George let us have. Give the wretches the money.'

'Mother, mother!' exclaimed Mehalah. 'How could you borrow! How could you send me----!'

'Never mind, I did not want to use my little store till every chance had failed. Run out and pay the money.'

Mehalah darted from the door.

The clerk was selling the cow.

'Going for twenty-five pounds. What? no one bid, going for twenty-five pounds, and dirt cheap at the money, all silent! Well I never, and such a cow! Going for twenty-three----'

'Stop!' shouted Mehalah. 'Here is Mrs. De Witt's money, twenty-five pounds.'

'Damnation!' roared Elijah, 'where did you get it?'

'Our savings,' answered Mehalah, and turned her back on him.

*CHAPTER XII.*

*A GILDED BALCONY.*

Mehalah was hurt and angry at her mother's conduct. She thought that she had not been fairly treated. When the loss sustained presumably by Abraham Dowsing's carelessness had been discovered, Mrs. Sharland had not hinted the existence of a private store, and had allowed De Witt to lend her the money she wanted for meeting the rent. Glory regarded this conduct as hardly honest. It jarred, at all events, with her sense of what was honourable. On the plea of absolute inability to pay the rent, they had obtained five and twenty pounds from the young fisherman. Then again, when Mrs. De Witt reclaimed the debt, Mehalah had been subjected to the humiliation of appealing to Mr. Pettican and being repulsed by Admonition. She had been further driven to sue a loan of the parson; she had not, indeed, asked him for the money, but that was only because he avoided, intentionally or not she could not say, giving her the chance. She had gone with the intention of begging, and his manner, and the accidental discovery that the sale was already taking place, had alone prevented her from undergoing the shame of asking and being refused.

She did not like to charge her mother with having behaved dishonourably, for she felt instinctively that her mother's views and hers were not coincident. Her brow was clouded, and an unpleasant gleam flickered in her eyes. She resisted the treatment she had been subjected to as unnecessary. It was only justifiable in an extreme emergency, and no such emergency had existed. Her mother would rather sacrifice her daughter's self-respect than break in on the little hoard.

'Charles said he had money in the bank, did he?' asked Mrs. Sharland.

'Yes.'

'To think of that! My cousin has an account in the bank, and can write his cheques, and one can cash cheques signed Charles Pettican! That is something to be proud of, Mehalah.'

'Indeed, mother?'

'And you say he has a beautiful house, with a verandah. A real gilt balcony. Think of that! And Charles is my cousin, the cousin of your own mother. There's something to think of, there. I couldn't sleep last night with dreaming of that house with its green shutters and a real balcony. I do believe that I shall die happy, if some day I may but see that there gilded--you said it was gilded--balcony. Charles Pettican with a balcony! What is the world coming to next! A real gilded balcony, and two figureheads looking over--there's an idea! Did you tell me there was a sofa in his sitting-room; and I think you said the dressing-table had a pink petticoat with gauze over it. Just think of that. I might have been Mrs. Charles Pettican, if all had gone well, and things had been as they should have, and then I should have had a petticoat to my dressing-table and a balcony afore my window. I am glad you went, it was like the Queen of Sheba visiting Solomon and seeing all his glory, and now you've come back into your own land, and filled me with your tidings.'

Mehalah let her mother meander on, without paying any attention to what she said. Mrs. Sharland had risen some stages in her self-importance since she had heard how prosperous in a pecuniary sense her relation was. It shed a sort of glory on her when she thought that, had fate ruled it so, she might have shared with him this splendour, instead of being poor and lonely on the desolate Ray. Mrs. Sharland would have loved a gossip, but never got a chance of talking to anyone with a similar partiality. Had she married Mr. Charles Pettican she would have been in the vortex of a maelstrom of tittle-tattle. It was something to puff her up to think that if matters had taken another turn this would have been her position in Wyvenhoe.

'I don't think Mrs. De Witt had any notion how rich and distinguished my relatives are, when she came here asking for her five and twenty pounds. I'll take my oath on it, she has no cousin with a balcony and a sofa. I don't suppose we shall be troubled much now, when it is known that my cousin draws cheques, and that the name of Charles Pettican is honoured at the bank.'

'You forget we got, and shall get, no help from him.'

'I do not forget it, Mehalah. I remember perfectly how affably he spoke of me--his Liddy Vince, his pretty cousin. I do not forget how ready he was to lend the money. Twenty pounds! if you had asked fifty, he'd have given it you as readily. He was about to break open his cash-box, as he hadn't the key by him, and would have given me the money I wanted, had not a person who is no relation of mine interposed. That comes of designing women stepping in between near relatives. Charles Pettican is my cousin, and he is not ashamed to acknowledge it; why should he? I have always maintained myself respectable, and always shall.'

'Mother,' said Mehalah, interrupting this watery wash of vain twaddle, 'you should not have borrowed the money of George De Witt. That was the beginning of the mischief?'

'Beginning of what mischief?'

'The beginning of our trouble.'

'No, it was not; Abraham's carelessness was the beginning.'

'But, mother, I repeat it, you did wrong in not producing your hidden store instead of borrowing.'

'I did not borrow. I never asked George De Witt for his money, he proposed to let us have it himself.'

'That is indeed true; but you should have at once refused to take it, and said it was unnecessary for us to be indebted to him, as you had the sum sufficient laid by.'

'That is all very well, Mehalah, but when a generous offer is made me, why should I not accept it? Because there's still some milk of yesterday in the pan, do you decline to milk the cow to-day? I was glad of the opportunity of keeping my little savings untouched. Besides, I always thought George would make you his wife.'

'I thought so too,' said Mehalah in a low tone, and her face became sad and blank as before; she went off into a dream, but presently recovered herself and said, 'Then, when Mrs. De Witt asked for her money, why did you not produce it, and free us of her insults and annoyance?'

'I did not want to part with my money. And it has turned out well. If I had done as you say, we should not have revived old acquaintance, and obtained the valuable assistance of Charles Pettican.'

'He did not assist us.'

'He did as far as he was able. He would have given us the money, had not untoward circumstances intervened. He as good as let us have the twenty pounds. That is something to be proud of--to be helped by a man whose name is honoured at the bank--at the Colchester Bank.'

'But, mother, you have given me inexpressible pain!'

'Pained you!' exclaimed Mrs. Sharland. 'How could I?'

Her eyes opened wide. Mehalah looked at her. They had such different souls, that the girl saw it was of no use attempting to explain to her mother what had wounded her; her sensations belonged to a sense of which her mother was deprived. It is idle to speak of scarlet to a man who is blind.

'I did it all for you,' said Mrs. Sharland reproachfully. 'I was thinking and caring only for you, Mehalah, from beginning to end, from first to last.'

'Thinking and caring for me!' echoed Glory in surprise.

'Of course I was. I put those gold pieces away, one a quarter from the day you were born, till I had no more savings that I could put aside. I put them away for you. I thought that when I was gone and buried, you should have this little sum to begin the world upon, and you would not say that your mother died and left you nothing. Nothing in the world would have made me touch the hoard, for it was your money, Mehalah--nothing but the direst need, and you will do me the justice to say that this was the case to-day. It would have been the worst that could have happened for you to-day had the money not been paid, for you would have sunk in the scale.'

'Mother!' exclaimed Mehalah, intensely moved, 'you did all this for me; you thought and cared for _me_--for _me_!'

The idea of her mother having ever done anything for her, ever having thought of her, apart from herself, of having provided for her independently of herself, was too strange and too amazing for Mehalah to take it in at once. As long as she remembered anything she had worked for her mother, thought for her, and denied herself for her, without expecting any return, taking it as a matter of course that she should devote herself to her mother without the other making any acknowledgment.

And now the thought that she had been mistaken, that her mother had really cared for and provided for her, overwhelmed her. She had not wept when she thought that George De Witt was lost to her, but now she dropped into her chair, buried her face in her arms, and burst into a storm of sobs and tears.

Mrs. Sharland looked at her with a puzzled face. She never had understood Mehalah, and she was content to be in the dark as to what was passing in her breast now. She settled back in her chair, and turned back to the thoughts of Charles Pettican's gilt balcony, and petticoated dressing-table.

By degrees Mehalah recovered her composure, then she went up to her mother and kissed her passionately on the brow.

'Mother dear,' she said in a broken voice, 'I never, never will desert you. Whatever happens, our lot shall be cast together.'

Then she reared herself, and in a moment was firm of foot, erect of carriage, rough and imperious as of old.

'I must look after the sheep on the saltings,' she said. 'Abraham's head is turned with the doings here to-day, and he has gone to the Rose to talk and drink it over. The moon is full, and we shall have a high tide.'

Next moment Mrs. Sharland was alone.

The widow heaved a sigh. 'There is no making heads or tails of that girl, I don't understand her a bit,' she muttered.

'I do though,' answered Elijah Rebow at the door. 'I want a word with you, mistress.'

'I thought you had gone, Elijah, after the sale.'

'No, I did not leave with the rest. I hung about in the marshes, waiting a chance when I might speak with you by yourself. I can't speak before Glory; she flies out.'

'Come in, master, and sit down. Mehalah is gone down to the saltings, and will not be back for an hour.'

'I must have a word with you. Where has Glory been? I saw her go off t'other day in gay Sunday dress towards Fingringhoe. What did she go after?'

Mrs. Sharland raised herself proudly. 'I have a cousin lives at Wyvenhoe, and we exchange civilities now and then. I can't go to him and he can't come to me, so Mehalah passes between us.'

'What does she go there for?'

'My cousin, Mr. Charles Pettican--I dare say you have heard the name, it is a name that is honoured at the bank----' she paused and pursed up her lips.

'Go on, I have heard of him, an old shipbuilder.'

'He made his fortune in shipbuilding,' said Mrs. Sharland. 'He has laid by a good deal of money, and is a free and liberal man with it, among his near relatives.'

'Curse him,' growled Elijah, 'he let you have the money?'

'I sent Mehalah to my cousin Charles, to ask him to lend me a trifle, being for a moment inconvenienced,' said Mrs. Sharland with stateliness.

'She--Glory--went cringing for money to an old shipbuilder!' exclaimed Rebow with fury in his face.

'She did not like doing so,' answered the widow, 'but I entreated her to put her prejudices in her pocket, and do as I wished. You see, Master Rebow, this was not like asking strangers. Charles is my cousin, my nearest living relative, and some day, perhaps, there is no knowing----' she winked, and nodded, and ruffled up in her pride. 'We are his nearest of kin, and he is an old man, much older than I am. I am young compared to him, and he is half-paralysed.'

'He gave the money without any difficulty or demur?' asked Elijah, his face flaming.

'He was most willing, anxious, I may say, to help. You see, Master Rebow, he is well off, and has no other relatives. He is a man of fortune, and has a gilt balcony before his house, and a real sofa in his sitting-room. His name is engraved on brass on a plate on the door, it commands respect and receives honour at the Colchester Bank.'

'So you are fawning on him, are you?' growled Elijah.

'He has real oil-paintings on his walls. There's some in water-colours, and some in worsted work, but I make no count of them, but real oils, you know; there's something to think of in that. A man don't break out into oil unless he has money in the bank at command.'

Mrs. Sharland was delighted with the opportunity of airing her re-discovered cousin, and exalting his splendour before some one other than her daughter.

'A valance all round his bed--there's luxury!' said the widow, 'and that bed a whole tester. As for his dressing-table, it wears a better petticoat than I, pink calico that looks like silk, and over it gauze, just like a lady at an assembly ball, a real quality lady. My cousin is not one to see his Liddy--he calls me his pretty cousin Liddy--my name before I was married was Vince, but instead of Sharland it might have been Pettican, if all had been as it ought. I say cousin Charles is not the man to see his relatives sold up stick and stock by such as Mrs. De Witt.'

'You think if you can't pay me my rent, he will help you again?'

'If I feel a little behind-hand, Master Rebow, I shall not scruple sending Mehalah to him again. Charles is a man of kind and generous heart, and it is touching how he clings to his own flesh and blood. He has taken a great affection for Mehalah. He calls her niece, and wants her to look on him as an uncle, but you know that is not the real relationship. He was my mother's only brother's son, so we was first cousins, and he can only be a cousin of some sort to Mehalah, can he?'

'Oh curse your cousinships!' broke in Elijah angrily. 'To what an extent can you count on his help?'

'To any amount,' said the widow, too elated to care to limit her exaggeration.

'How is Mehalah? Is she more inclined to think of me?'

Mrs. Sharland shook her head.

'She don't love me?' said Elijah with a laugh.

'I fear not, Elijah.'

'She won't be disposed to take up her quarters at Red Hall?'

Mrs. Sharland sighed a negative.

'Nor to bear with me near her all day?'

'No, Elijah.'

'No, she won't,' said he with a jerky laugh, 'she won't till she is made to. She won't come to Red Hall till she can't help it. She won't live with me till I force her to it. Damn that cousin! He stands in my path. I will go see him. There comes Mehalah, back from the saltings. I must be off.'

'My cousin is a man of importance,' observed Mrs. Sharland, bridling up at Elijah's slighting remark. 'He is not accustomed to be cursed. Men with names that the bank honours, and who have gilded balconies over their doors, don't like it, they don't deserve it.'

*CHAPTER XIII.*

*THE FLAG FLIES.*

A month after the interrupted auction, Elijah Rebow appeared one day before Mr. Pettican's door at Wyvenhoe. The gull was screaming and flying at his feet. His stick beat a loud summons on the door, but the noise within was too considerable for the notices of a visitor to be heard and responded to.

Elijah remained grimly patient outside, with a sardonic smile on his face, and amused himself with tormenting the gull.

Presently the door flew open, and a dashing young woman flung out, with cherry-coloured ribands in her bonnet, and cherry colour in her cheeks.

'All right, Monie?' asked a voice from the balcony, and then Elijah was aware of a young man in a blue guernsey and a straw hat lounging over the balustrade, between the figureheads, smoking a pipe.

'He has learned his place at last,' answered Admonition; 'I never saw him so audacious before. Come along, Timothy.' The young man disappeared, and presently emerged at the door. At the same time a little withered face was visible at the window, with a dab of putty, as it seemed, in the middle of it, but which was probably a nose flattened against the glass. Two little fists were also apparent shaken violently, and a shrill voice screamed imprecations and vowed vengeance behind the panes, utterly disregarded by Admonition and Timothy, who stared at Elijah, and then struck down the gravelled path without troubling themselves to ask his business.

The door was left open, and Elijah entered, but stood on the threshold, and looked after the pair as they turned out of the garden-gate, and took the Colchester road, laughing and talking, and Admonition tossing her saucy head, in the direction of the face at the window, and then taking the sailor's arm.

A wonderful transformation had taken place in Mrs. Pettican's exterior as well as in her manner since her marriage.

She had been a soft demure little body with melting blue eyes and rich brown hair very smoothly laid on either side of her brow--a modest brow with guilelessness written on it--and the simplest little curls beside her round cheeks. She wore only black, in memory of a never-to-be-forgotten mother, and a neat white cap and apron. If she allowed herself a little colour, it was only a flower in her bosom. Poor Charles Pettican! How often he had supplied that flower!

'I can't pick one myself, Admonition,' he had said; 'you go into my garden and pluck a rose.'

'But _you_ must give it me,' she had invariably said on such occasions, with a shy eye just lifted, and then dropped again.

And of course Mr. Pettican had presented the flower with a compliment, and an allusion to her cheek, which had always deepened the modest flush in it.

Now Admonition affected bright colours--cherry was her favourite. She who had formerly dressed below her position, now dressed above it; she was this day flashing through Wyvenhoe in a straw broad-brimmed hat with crimson bows, lined with crimson, and in a white dress adorned with carnation knots, and a red handkerchief over the shoulders worn bare in the house. There was no doubt about it, that Admonition looked very well thus attired, better even than in her black.

Her hair was now frizzled over her brow, and she wore a mass of curls about her neck, confined in the house by a carnation riband. The soft eyes were now marvellously hard when directed upon the husband, and only retained their velvet for Timothy. The cheek now blushed at nothing, but flamed at the least opposition.

'I married one woman and got another,' said Charles Pettican to himself many times a day. 'I can't make it out at all. Marriage to a woman is, I suppose, much like a hot bath to a baby; it brings out all the bad humours in the blood. Young girls are as alike as flour and plaster of Paris, and it is not till you begin to be the making of them that you find the difference. Some make into bread, but others make into stone.'

When Elijah Rebow entered the little parlour, he found Mr. Pettican nearly choked with passion. He was ripping at his cravat to get it off, and obtain air. His face was nearly purple. He took no notice of his visitor for a few moments, but continued shaking his fist at the window, and then dragging at his neckcloth.

Being unable to turn himself about, the unfortunate man nearly strangled himself in his inability to unwind his cravat. This increased his anger, and he screamed and choked convulsively.

'You will smother yourself soon,' observed Elijah dryly, and going up to Mr. Pettican, he loosened the neckcloth.

The cripple lay back and panted. Presently he was sufficiently recovered to project his head towards Rebow, and ask him what he wanted, and who he was.

Elijah told him his name. Charles Pettican did not pay attention to him; his mind was engrossed by other matters.

'Come here,' said he, 'here, beside me. Do you see them?'

'See what?' asked Elijah in return, gruffly, as Pettican caught his arm, and drew him down, and pointed out of the window.

'There they are. Isn't it wexing to the last degree of madness?'

'Do you mean your daughter and her sweetheart?'

'Daughter!' echoed the cripple. 'Daughter! I wish she was. No, she's my wife. I don't mean her.'

'What do you mean then?'

'Why, my crutches. Don't you see them?'

'No, I do not,' answered Rebow looking round the room.

'They are not here,' said Pettican. 'Admonition flew out upon me, because I wouldn't draw more money from the bank, and she took away my crutches, to confine me till I came into her whimsies. There they are. They are flying at the mast-head. She got that cousin of hers to hoist them. She knows I can't reach them, that here I must lie till somebody fetches them down for me. You should have heard how they laughed, those cousins as they call themselves, as my crutches went aloft. Oh! it was fun to them, and they could giggle and cut jokes about me sitting here, flattening my nose at the pane, and seeing my crutches hoisted. They might as well have robbed me of my legs--better, for they are of no use, and my crutches are. Fetch me them down.'

Elijah consented, chuckling to himself at the distress of the unfortunate shipbuilder. He speedily ran the crutches down, and returned them to Pettican.

'Turning me into fun before the whole town!' growled Pettican, 'exposing my infirmity to all the world! It was my wife did it. Admonition urged on her precious cousin Timothy to it. He did fare to be ashamed, but she laughed him into it, just as Eve jeered Adam into eating the apple. She has turned off my servant too, and here am I left alone and helpless in the house all day, whilst she is dancing off to Colchester market with her beau--cousin indeed! What do you think, master--I don't know your name.'

'Elijah Rebow, of Red Hall.'

'What do you think, Master Rebow? That cousin has been staying here a month, a whole calendar month. He has been given the best room, and there have been junketings without number; they have ate all the oysters out of my pan, and drank up all my old stout, and broken the necks of half the whisky bottles in my cellar, and smoked out all my havannahs. I have a few boxes, and indulge myself occasionally in a good cigar, they come costly. Well, will you believe me! Admonition routs out all my boxes, and gives her beau a havannah twice a day or more often, as he likes, and I haven't had one between my lips since he came inside my doors. That lot of old Scotch whisky I had down from Dundee is all drunk out. Before I married her, Admonition would touch nothing but water, and tea very weak only coloured with the leaf; now she sucks stout and rum punch and whisky like a fish. It is a wonder to me she don't smoke too.'

The cripple tucked his recovered crutches under his arms, rolled himself off his chair, and stumped vehemently half a dozen times round the room. He returned at length, out of breath and very hot, to his chair, into which he cast himself.

'Put up my legs, please,' he begged of Elijah. 'There!' he said, 'I have worked off my excitement a little. Now go into the hall and look in the box under the stairs, there you will find an Union Jack. Run it up to the top of the mast. I don't care. I will defy her. When that girl who came here the other day--I forget her name--sees the flag flying she will come and help me. If Admonition has cousins, so have I, and mine are real cousins. I doubt but those of Admonition are nothing of the sort. If that girl----'

'What girl?' asked Rebow gloomily, as he folded his arms across his breast, and scowled at Charles Pettican.

'I don't know her name, but it is written down. I have it in my note-book--Ah! Mehalah Sharland. She is my cousin, her mother is my cousin. I'll tell you what I will do, master. But before I say another word, you go up for me into the best bed-room--the blue room, and chuck that fellow's things out of the window over the balcony, and let the gull have the pecking and tearing of them to pieces. I know he has his best jacket on his back; more's the pity. I should like the gull to have the clawing and the beaking of that, but he can make a tidy mess of his other traps; and will do it.'

'Glory----' began Elijah.

'Ah! you are right there,' said Pettican. 'It will be glory to have routed cousin Timothy out of the house; and if the flag flies, my cousin--I forget her name--Oh! I see, Mehalah--will come here and bring her mother, and before Master Timothy returns with Admonition from market--they are going to have a shilling's worth on a merry-go-round, I heard them scheme it--my cousins will be in possession, and cousin Timothy must content himself with the balcony, or cruise off.'

'Glory--or Mehalah, as you call her.'

'I'll not listen to another word, till you have chucked that fellow's trape overboard. There's a portmantle of his up there, chuck that over with the rest, and let the gull have the opening and examination of the contents.'

There was nothing for it but compliance, if Elijah wished to speak on the object of his visit. The old man was in an excited condition which would not allow him to compose his mind till his caprices were attended to, and his orders carried out. Rebow accordingly went upstairs and emptied the room of all evidences of its having been occupied. There was a discharge of boots, brush, clothes, pipes, into the garden, at which Pettican rubbed his hands and clucked like a fowl.

Rebow returned to the parlour, and the old shipbuilder was profuse in his thanks. 'Now,' said he, 'run the flag up. You haven't done that yet. Then come and have a glass of spirits. There is some of the whisky left, not many bottles, but there is some, and not locked up, for Admonition thought she had me safe when she hoisted my crutches up the mast-head. Go now and let the bunting float as of old in my halcyon days.' This was also done; the wind took, unfurled, and flapped the Union Jack, and the old man crowed with delight, and swung his arms.

'That is right. I haven't seen it fly for many months; not since I was married. Now that girl, I forget her name, oh! I have it here--Mehalah--will see it, and come to the rescue. Do you know her?'

'What, Glory?'

'That ain't her name. Her name is--is--Mehalah.'

'We call her Glory. She is the girl. I know her,' he laughed and his eyes glittered. He set his teeth. Charles Pettican looked at him, and thought he had never seen a more forbidding countenance. He was frightened, and asked hastily,

'Who are you?'

'I am Elijah Rebow, of Red Hall.'

'I don't know you or the place.'

'I am in Salcott and Virley. You know me by name.'

'Oh! perhaps I do. My memory is not what it once was. I get so put out by my wife's whimsies that I can't collect my faculties all at once. I think I may have heard of you, but I haven't met you before.'

'I am the landlord of Glory--Mehalah, you call her. The Ray, which is their farm, belongs to me, with all the marshes and the saltings, and all that thereon is. I bought it for eight hundred pounds. Glory and her mother are mine.'

'I don't understand you.'

'I bought the land, and the farm, and them, a job lot, for eight hundred pounds.'

'I remember, the girl--I forget her name, but I have it here, written down----'

'Glory!'

'No, not that, Mehalah. I wish you wouldn't call her what she is not, because it confuses me; and I have had a deal to confuse me lately. Marriage does rummage a man's hold up so. Mehalah came here a few weeks back to ask me to lend her some money, as her mother could not pay the rent. Her mother is my cousin, Liddy Vince that was, I used to call her "Pretty Liddy," or Lydia Languish, after a character in a play, because of her ague, and because she sort of languished of love for me. And I don't deny it, I was sweet on her once, but the ague shivers stood in the way of our love waxing wery hot.'

'You lent her the money.'

'I--I----' hesitated Mr. Pettican. 'You see how I am circumstanced, my wife----'

'You lent her the money. Mistress Sharland told me so.'

'She did!' exclaimed Pettican in surprise.

'Yes, she did. Now I want to know, will you do that again? I am landlord. I bought the Ray for eight hundred pounds, and I don't want to drop my money without a return. You understand that. A man doesn't want to give his gold away, and be whined out of getting interest for it by an old shivering, chattering woman, and flouted out of it by a devil of a girl.' His hands clenched fiercely.

'Of course, of course,' said the cripple. 'I understand you. You think those two can't manage the farm, and were better out of it.'

'I want to be sure of my money,' said Elijah, knitting his dark brows, and fixing his eyes intently on Pettican.

'I quite understand,' said the latter, and tapping his forehead, he added, 'I am a man of business still. I am not so old as all that, whatever Admonition may say.'

'Now what I want to know,' pursued Elijah, 'is this--for how long are you going to pay your cousin's rent? For how long is that Glory to come to me and defy me, and throw the money down before me?'

'I don't quite take you,' said Pettican.

'How many times will you pay their rent?' asked Rebow.

'Well!' said the cripple, passing his hand over his face. 'I don't want them to stay at your farm at all. I want them to come here and take care of me. I cannot defend myself. If I try to be a man--that girl, I forget her name, you confuse me about it--told me to be a man, and I will be a man, if she will back me up. I have been a man somewhat, have I not, master, in chucking cousin Timothy's traps to the gull--that I call manly. You will see the girl---Mehalah--I have the name now. I will keep my note-book open at the place. Mehalah, Mehalah, Mehalah, Mehalah.'

'I want to know----' broke in Elijah.

'Let me repeat the name ten times, and then I shall not forget it again.' Pettican did so. 'You called her something else. Perhaps we are not speaking of the same person.'

'Yes, we are. I call her Glory. I am accustomed to that name. Tell me what you want with her.'

'I want her and her mother to come and live with me, and take care of me, and then I can be a man, and make head against the wind that is now blowing in my teeth. Shall you see them?'

'Yes.'

'To-day?'

'Perhaps.'

'Then pray make a point of seeing the girl or her mother, in case she should not notice the flag, and say that I wish them to come here at once; at once it must be, or I shall never have courage to play the man again, not as I have to-day. They did put my monkey up by removing my crutches and hoisting them to the masthead, leaving me all by myself and helpless here. I should wish Mehalah to be here before Admonition and her beau return. They won't be back till late. There's a horsemanship at Colchester as well as a merry-go-round, and they are going to both, and perhaps to the theatre after that. There'll be junketings and racketings, and I--poor I--left here with no one to attend to me, and my crutches at the mast-head. You will tell the girl and her mother that I expect their help, and I will be a man, that I will. It would be something to boast of, would it not, if Timothy were to return and find his room occupied and his baggage picked to rags, and if Admonition were to discover that I have cousins as well as she?'

'You are bent on this?'

'I rely on you. You will see them and tell them to come to me, and I will provide for them whilst I am alive, and afterwards--when I am no more--we won't talk or think of such an eventuality. It isn't pleasant to contemplate, and may not happen for many years. I am not so old as you might think. My infirmity is due to accident; and my digestion is, or rather was, first-rate. I could eat and drink anything before I was married. Now I am condemned to see others eat and drink what I have laid in for my own consumption, and I am put off with the drumstick of the fowl, or the poorest swipes of ale, whilst the others toss off my stout--bottled stout. I will not endure this any longer. Tell that girl--I forget her name--and her mother that they must come to me.'

'But suppose they will not come.'

'They will, I know they will. The female heart is tender and sympathetic, and compassionates misery. My suffering will induce them to come. If that will not, why then the prospects of being comfortably off and free from cares will make them come. I have plenty of money. I won't tell you, I have not told Admonition, how much. I have money in the Colchester Bank. I have South Sea shares, and insurances, and mortgages, and I shall not let Admonition have more money than I can help, as it all goes on cousin Timothy, and whirligigs and horsemanships, or regattas, and red ribands, and what not; none is spent on me. No, no. The Sharlands shall have my money. They are my cousins. I have cousins as well as Admonition. I will be a man and show that I have courage too. But I have another inducement that will be sure to bring them.'

'What is that?'

'I have observed,' said Pettican, with a hiccuppy giggle, 'that just as tom-cats will range all over the country in search of other tom-cats, just for the pleasure of clawing them and tearing out their hair, so women will hunt the whole country-side for other women, if there be a chance of fighting them. Tell my cousin Liddy that Admonition is game, she has teeth, and tongue, and nails, and sets up her back in a corner, and likes a scrimmage above everything, and my word for it, Liddy--unless the ague has taken the female nature out of her--will be here before nightfall to try her teeth, and tongue, and nails on Admonition. It is said that if on a May morning you rub your eyes with cuckoo spittle, you see things invisible before, the fairies in the hoes dancing and feasting, swimming in eggshells on the water to bore holes in ships' sides, milking the cows before the maids come with the pail, and stealing the honey from the hives. Well, marriage does much the same sort of thing to a man as salving his eyes in cuckoo spittle; it affords him a vision of a world undreamt of before; it gives him an insight into what is going on in the female world, and the workings and brewings and the mischief in women's hearts. Tell Liddy Sharland about my Admonition, and she will be here, with all her guns run out and ready charged, before nightfall.'

Rebow shook his head. 'Mistress Sharland and Glory won't come.'

'Don't say so. They must, or I shall be undone. I cannot live as I have, tyrannised over, insulted, trampled on by Admonition and her cousin. I will no longer endure it. The flag is flying. I have proclaimed my independence and defiance. But, as you see, I am unable to live alone. If Liddy and her daughter will not come to me, I shall be driven to do something desperate. My life has become intolerable, I will bear with Admonition no longer.'

'What will you do?' asked Elijah with a sneer.

'I tell you, I do not care. I am reckless, I will even fire the house, and burn it over their heads.'

'What good would that do?'

'What good would it do?' repeated Pettican. 'It would no longer be a shelter for Admonition and that beau Timothy. I am not going to be trifled with, I have endured too much. I will be a man. I shouldn't mind a bit smoking them out of this snug lair.'

'And what about yourself?'

'Oh, as for me, I could go to the Blue Anchor, and put up there for the rest of my days. I think I could be happy in a tavern, happier than here, and I should have the satisfaction of thinking I had shaken the weevils out of the biscuit.'

Elijah started, and strode up and down the room, with head bent, and his eyes fixed on the floor. His hands were clenched and rigid at his side.

'You will tell Liddy,' said the cripple, watching him.

'Smoke them out! Ha! ha! that is a fine idea!' burst forth from Elijah, with a laugh.

'You will tell Liddy,' repeated Charles Pettican. 'You must, you know, or I am lost. If Admonition were to return with Timothy at her heels, and were to find the flag flying, and me alone----' he passed his agitated hand over his face, and his lips trembled.

'I see,' said Rebow. 'You would then cease to be a man.'

It was late when Admonition and her cousin returned from the market. It was so dark that they did not see the flag. But as Admonition put her hand on the gate it was grasped.

'Stop,' said Elijah. 'A word with you.'

'Who are you?' asked Mrs. Pettican in alarm, and Timothy swaggered forward to her defence.

'Never mind who I am. I have waited here some hours to warn you. Was there a girl, a handsome girl, a glorious girl, here to see that man, your husband, a month ago? You need not answer. I know there was. She is his cousin. He lent her money.'

'No, he did not. I stopped that, didn't I, Tim?'

'He lent her money. You think you stopped that, but you did not. He let her have the money, twenty pounds, how I know not. She had his money, and she will have more, _all_, unless you keep a sharp watch on him.'

'Tim! do you hear this?' asked Admonition.

'He will send for his cousin to live in the house with him, and to support him against you.'

'Oh, oh! That's fine, isn't it, Tim?'

'If they come, your reign is at an end. That girl, Glory, has a head of iron and the heart of a lion. No one can stand against her but one. There is only one in all the world has dared to conquer her, and he will do it yet. Don't you think you will be able to lift a little finger against her will. She will be too strong for you and a hundred of your Timothys.'

Admonition laughed. 'My little mannikin daren't do it. He is under my thumb.'

'The flag is flying,' sneered Elijah.

At that moment the faint light of evening broke through the clouds and Admonition saw the Union Jack at the mast-head.

'He is right. There is audacity! Run, Tim, haul it down, and bring it me. It shall go into the kitchen fire to boil the water for a glass of grog.'

*CHAPTER XIV.*

*ON THE BURNT HILL.*

It was Christmas Eve. A hard frost had set in. The leaves which had hung on the thorn trees on the Ray rained off and were whirled away by the wind and scattered over the rising and falling waters in the Rhyn. On the saltings were many pools, filled from below, through crab burrows, from the channels; when the tide mounted, the water squirted up through these passages and brimmed the pools, and when the tide fell, it was sucked down through them as if running out of a colander. Now a thin film of ice was formed about the edges of these pondlets, and the marsh herbs that dipped in them were encased in crystal. The wild geese and ducks came in multitudes, and dappled the water of Mersea channel.

'There's four gone,' said Abraham Dowsing in a sulky voice to Mehalah.

'Four what?'

'Four ewes to be sure, of what else have we more than one?'

'Where are they?'

'That is what I should like to know. Two went yesterday, but I said nothing about it, as I thought they might be found, or that I hadn't counted aright; but there's two more missing to-day.'

'What can have become of them?'

'It's no use asking me. Is it like I should know?'

'But this is most extraordinary. They must have wandered off the saltings, on to the causeway, and so away.'

'That is likely, ain't it,' said Abraham. 'It is like the ways of sheep, to scatter, and two or three to go off and away from all the flock. I'll believe that when sheep change their nature.'

'They must have fallen into a pool and been drowned.'

'Then I should find their carcases; but I haven't. Perhaps there has been a spring tide at the wrong time of the year and overflowed and drowned them. That's likely, isn't it?'

'But, Abraham, they must be found.'

'Then you must find 'em yourself.'

'Where can they be?'

'I've told you it is no use asking me.'

'Can they have been stolen?'

'I reckon that is just about it.'

'Stolen!' exclaimed Mehalah, her blood flashing to her face and darkening cheek and brow. 'Do you mean to tell me that some scoundrel has been here in the night, and carried off four of our ewes?'

Abraham shrugged his shoulders; 'Mud tells tales at times.'

Mehalah trembled with anger.

'Some boat was here last night, and night afore, and the keel marks remain. I saw them, and I saw footprints of sheep too, near them.'

'When?'

'The tide is up, and you can't see. Near the Burnt Hill.'

'Abraham, this is not to be borne.'

'Who is to help it?'

'I will. I will watch,' she stamped her foot fiercely on the red glasswort; 'I will kill the cowardly sneaking thief who comes here to rob the widow and the orphan.'

'You must see him first,' said Abraham, 'and sheep-stealers don't generally let themselves be seen.'

'A man who steals sheep can be hung for it.'

'Yes.'

'I'll catch him,' she laughed, 'and the gallows will be set up on the Burnt Hill, and then he shall dangle till his bones drop away into the ooze.'

'You must catch him first,' said the shepherd, and shrugged his shoulders again.

Mehalah strode up and down in the marsh, her brows knit, and the veins swollen on her temples. She breathed fast and her blood sang in her ears. To be robbed in this cowardly manner! The thought was maddening. Hitherto she and her mother had deemed themselves perfectly safe on the Ray: nothing had ever been taken from them; the ooze and the sea water walled them in. The Ray was a trap from which there was no escape save by boat. It was said that once a deserter found his way into Mersea Isle and lingered about the marshes for many days. He dared not return by the causeway, thinking it would be watched and he would be secured, and he had no money wherewith to bribe a boatman to put him across elsewhere. One evening he lit on a farmer with a spade over his shoulder going to the sea-wall to block a rent against an expected tide. He fell on the man from behind, wrenched away his spade and cut his head open with it, then turned out his pockets in search of coin, but found none. The man was taken. He could not escape, and was hung on the marshes where the murder was done, by the mouth of the Pyefleet.

If Mersea was a trap, how much more so the Ray. The Sharlands had not even a lock to their door. No one was ever seen on the island after dark save those who dwelt there, for the hill was surrounded on all sides, save where girt by the sea, by a labyrinth of creeks and pools. A robber there would be like a fly in a cobweb, to be caught at once. The sheep were allowed to ramble all over the marsh and saltings, they could thread their way; and it was only when the moon was full or new, and the wind in the south-east, that the shepherd drove them into fold till the waters subsided. There were times--such as the coincidence of a peculiar wind with an equinoctial tide--when to leave the sheep on the marsh would be to ensure their being drowned. This was so well known, that precaution was always taken against the occasion.

The sense of being treated unjustly, of being cruelly wronged, of advantage being taken of their feebleness, filled Mehalah's heart with bitterness, with rage. An over-mastering desire for revenge came upon her. She, a girl, would defend her property, and chastise the man who injured her. She gave up all thought of obtaining the assistance of Abraham, if it ever entered her mind. The old man was too slow in his movements, and dull of sight and hearing, to be of use. As likely as not, moreover, he would refuse to risk himself on the saltings at night, to expose himself to the ague damp or the bullet. What could he, a feeble old loon, do against a sturdy sheep-stealer?

'Whom do you suspect?' asked Glory abruptly.

He drew up his shoulders.

'Come, tell me.'

'An empty belly.'

'Abraham! one man cannot have taken four sheep for himself.'

Another shrug.

There was nothing to be got out of the dogged rustic. Mehalah waited till evening, then she wrapped a cloak round her, put her pistol in her belt, and walked through the marsh to the point indicated by the shepherd as the Burnt Hill.

Through all the low flat coast land of this region, above the saltings, or pasture overflowed by high tides occasionally, are scattered at irregular intervals large broad circular mounds of clay burned to brick red, interspersed with particles of charcoal. A few fragments of bone are found in them, relics of the meals of those who raised these heaps, but they cover no urns, and enclose no cists, they contain no skeletons. They were never intended as funeral monuments, and are quite different from the hoes or barrows which stand on high land, and which were burial mounds. The burnt or red hills are always situate at high-water mark; near them, below the surface of the vegetable deposit, are multitudes of oyster shells. Near them also are sometimes found, sunk in the marsh, polished chert weapons. Who raised these mounds? For what purpose were they reared? These are questions that cannot be answered satisfactorily. One thing is certain. An immense amount of wood must have been consumed to burn such a mass of clay, and the country must then have been more overgrown with timber than at present. Many of the mounds are now enclosed in fields by sea-walls which hold out the tide, the plough has been drawn over them, and the spade has scattered them over the surface, colouring a whole field brick red, and making it rich for the production of corn. There is no better manure than a red hill.

But why were these mounds so laboriously raised? The tradition of the marsh-dwellers is that they were platforms for huts, the earth burned as a prevention to ague. It is curious that in the marshy regions of Central Africa the natives adopt a precisely similar method for their protection from miasma. But why men dwelt in such numbers on the saltings remains undetermined. Whether they lived there to burn the glasswort for nitre, or to steam the sea water for salt, or to take charge of oyster grounds, is uncertain. Fragments, very broken, of pottery are found in these heaps, scattered throughout them, but not a specimen of a perfect vessel. The burnt hills are built up on the old shingle of the shore, with no intervening line of vegetable matter, the growth of the marsh has been later and has risen about their bases and has partly buried them.

Glory reached the Burnt Hill, and stood on it. A cold east wind wailed over the waste; a white fog like curd lay on the water, and the surface of the saltings, clinging to the surface and rising scarce above three feet from it. Here and there it lifted itself in a vaporous column, and moved along in the wind like a white spectral woman, nodding her head and waving her arms cumbered with wet drapery. Above, the sky was clear, and a fine crescent moon sparkled in it without quenching the keenness of the stars. Cassiopeia was glorious in her chair, Orion burned sideways over Mersea Isle. No red gleam was visible to-night from the tavern window at the City, the veil of fog hung over it and curtained it off. To the north-west was a silvery glow at the horizon, then there rose a pure ray as of returning daylight, it was answered by a throb in the north-east, then it broke into two rays, and again united and spread, and suddenly was withdrawn. Mehalah had often seen the Aurora, and she knew that the signals portended increased cold or bad weather.

She seated herself on the mound, and drew her cloak about her more closely, the damp cold bit into her flesh; she knew she was safe from ague on the burnt earth.