Chapter IX: Part 9

She walked forward with raised head, the dark cloud that had brooded on her brow began to rise, the bands about her heart that had been contracting gave way a little. There was the inn, an old-fashioned house, with a vine scrambling over the red tile roof, and an ancient standard sign before the door, on the green, bearing a rose, painted the size of a gigantic turnip.

Mehalah walked into the bar. The merry landlord and his wife greeted her with delight, with many shakes of the hands, and much condolence over the disasters that had befallen her and her mother.

'Well, my dear,' said the landlady, confidentially, 'you're well out of it, if you come here. To be sure we'll take you in, and I dare say we'll find you work; bring your mother also. It ain't right for a handsome wench like you to be living all along of a lone man in his farm. Folks talk. They have talked, and said a deal of things. But you come here. What day may we expect you?'

'I must bring my mother by water. The tide will not suit for a week. It must be by day, my mother cannot come in the boat if there be much rain; and we shall not be able to come--at least there will be a difficulty in getting away--should Rebow be at home. Expect us some day when the weather is favourable and there be an afternoon tide.'

'You will be sure to come?'

'Sure.'

*CHAPTER XIX.*

*DE PROFUNDIS.*

Mehalah's heart was lighter now than it had been for many a week. She had secured her object. She could be out of the toils of Rebow, away from his hateful presence.

She had worked hard and conscientiously at Red Hall, and felt that she had to some extent cancelled the obligation he had laid on her. Her proud spirit, lately crushed, began to arise; her head was lifted instead of being bowed.

Rebow remarked the change in her, and was satisfied either that she had reconciled herself to her position, or that she meditated something which he did not understand.

Mrs. Sharland did not share in her daughter's exultation. She grumbled and protested. She was very comfortable at Red Hall, she was sure Elijah had been exceedingly kind to them. They had wanted nothing. The house was much better than the old ramshackle Ray, and their position in it superior to any they could aspire to at the Rose. This was a hint to Mehalah, but the girl refused to take it. As for Elijah, what was there to object to in him? He was well off, very well off, a prosperous man, who spent nothing on himself, and turned over a great deal of money in the year. He was not very young, but he was a man who had seen the world and was in his prime of strength and intelligence. Mrs. Sharland thought that they could not do better than settle at the Red Hall and make it their home for life, and that Mehalah should put her foolish fancies in her pocket and make the best of what offered.

But Mehalah's determination bore down all opposition.

St. Valentine's Day shone bright with a promise of spring. The grey owls were beginning to build in the hayrick, the catkins were timidly swelling on the nut bushes; in the ooze the glasswort shot up like little spikes of vitriol-green glass. A soft air full of wooing swept over the flats. The sun was hot.

The tide flowed at noon, and Elijah was absent.

Mehalah, deaf to her mother's remonstrances, removed some of their needful articles to the boat, and at last led her mother, well wrapped up, to the skiff.

When the girl had cast loose, and was rowing on the sparkling water, her heart danced and twinkled with the wavelets; there was a return of spring to her weary spirit, and the good and generous seeds in her uncultivated soul swelled and promised to shoot. She was proud to think that she had carried her point, that in spite of Rebow, she had established her freedom, that her will had proved its power of resistance. She even sang as she rowed, she,--whose song had been hushed since the disappearance of George. She had not forgotten him, and cast away her grief at his loss, but the recoil from the bondage and moral depression of Red Hall filled her with transient exultation and joyousness.

The row was long.

'O mother!' she said, as she passed under the Ray hill, 'I must indeed run up and look at the place. I cannot go by.'

'Do as you will,' said Mrs. Sharland. 'I cannot control you. I don't pretend to. My wishes and my feelings are nothing to you.'

Mehalah did not notice this peevish remark, she was accustomed to her mother's fretfulness. She threw the little anchor on the gravel at the 'hard,' and jumped on shore. She ascended the hill and stood by the scorched black patch which marked her old home. The house had burned to the last stick, leaving two brick chimneys standing gauntly alone. There was the old hearth at which she had so often crouched, bare, cold, and open. A few bricks had been blown from the top of the chimney, but otherwise it was intact.

As she stood looking sadly on the relics, Abraham Dowsing came up.

'What are you doing here?'

'I have come away from Red Hall, Abraham,' she said gaily, 'I do not think I have been so happy for many a day.'

'When are you going back?'

'Never.'

'Who then is to prepare me my wittles?' he asked sullenly. 'I ain't going to be put off with anything.'

'I do not know, Abraham.'

'But I must know. Now go back again, and don't do what's wrong and foolish. You ought to be there, and mistress there too. Then all will run smooth, and I'll get my wittles as I like them.'

'You need not speak of that, Abraham, I shall never return to Red Hall. I have quitted it and I hope have seen the last of the hateful house and its still more hateful master.'

'I wonder,' mused the shepherd, 'whether I could arrange with Rebow to get my wittles from the Rose.'

'That is where I am going to.'

'Oh!' his face lightened, 'then I don't mind. Do what you think best.' His face darkened again. 'But I doubt whether the master will keep me on when you have left. I reckon he only takes me because of you; he thinks you wouldn't like it, if I was to be turned adrift. No. You had better go back to Red Hall. Make yourself as comfortable as you can. That's my doctrine.'

Presently the old man asked, 'I say, does the master know you have left?'

'No, Abraham.'

'Are you sure?'

'I never told him.'

'Did your mother know you had made up your mind to leave?'

'Yes, I told her so a week ago.'

'And you suppose she has kept her mouth shut? She couldn't do it.'

'If Elijah had suspected we were going to-day,' said Mehalah, 'I do not think he would have left home; he would have endeavoured to prevent me.'

'Perhaps. But he's deep.'

'Good day, Abraham!' She waved him a farewell with a smile. She knew, and made allowance for the humours of the old man. In a moment she was again by her mother, at the oar, and speeding with the flowing tide up the Rhyn to the 'hard' at its head belonging to the Rose Inn.

'Have you brought the toad-jug with you, Mehalah?'

'No, mother.'

'Nor the china dogs?'

'No, mother.'

'It is of no use, I will not live at the Rose. I will not get out of the boat. I must have all my property about me.'

'I will fetch the other things away. When you are housed safely, then I shall not care. I will go back and bring away all our goods.'

'You are so rough. I won't let anyone handle the china but myself. Last time the poodles were moved, you know one lost a ear and a bit of its tail. There is no one fit to touch such things but me. Those rough-handed fellows, Jim and Joe, what do they know of the value of those dogs? You will promise me, Mehalah, to be gentle with them. Put them in the foot of a pair of stockings and wrap the legs round them, and then perhaps they will travel. I wouldn't have them lose any more of their precious persons,--no, not for worlds,--not for worlds.'

'I will take heed, mother.'

'And mind and stuff my old nightcap,--the dirty one, I mean--and my bedsocks into the toad-jug, then it won't break. You'll promise me that, won't you; if that were injured, I'd as soon die as see it.'

'I will use the utmost precaution with it.'

'Then there are the soup plates, of Lowestoft. I had them of my father, and he had them of his grandmother; there's a dozen of them, and not a chip or a crack. True beauties as ever you saw, I think you'd best put them in the folds of some of my linen. Put them between the sheets, wide apart, in the spruce hutch.'

'All right, mother; now hold hard, here we are.'

The boat grated on the bottom, and then it was drawn up by a firm hand. Mehalah looked round and started.

Elijah and two other men were there. Elijah had stepped into the water, and pulled the boat ashore.

'Here we are, Glory!' he said, 'waiting ready for you. The sheriff's officer with his warrant, all ready. You haven't kept us waiting long.'

'What is that? What is that?' screamed Mrs. Sharland.

'Step out, Glory! step out, mistress!' said Elijah.

'What is the meaning of this?' asked Mehalah, a cloud suddenly darkening her sky and quenching the joy of her heart.

'I've a warrant against you, madam,' said the man who stood by Rebow. 'Please to read it.' He held it out.

'What is this?' screamed Mrs. Sharland, rising in the boat and staggering forwards. Mehalah helped her on shore.

'This is what it is,' answered Rebow. 'You and Glory there are my tenants for the Ray. The farm is mine, with the marshes and the saltings. I gave eight hundred pounds for it. You've burnt down my premises, between you, you and Glory there. You've robbed me of a hundred or two hundred pounds worth of property with your wilfulness or carelessness. Now, I want to know, how is it you have not built up my farmhouse again?'

'I can't do it. I haven't the money!' wailed Mrs. Sharland. 'I am sure, Master Rebow, there was nothing but pure accident in the fire. I never thought----'

'Pure accident!' scoffed Elijah. 'Do you call that pure accident, soaking the whole chamber in spirits, with a fire burning on the hearth, and dashing the cask staves here and there, on the fire and off it.'

Mehalah looked at him.

'Ah, ha! Glory! You think I don't know it. You think I didn't see you! Why, I was at the window. I saw you do it. Tell me, mother, did not Glory smash the keg I had just given you?'

'I believe she did, Elijah! I am very sorry. I did my best to stop her, but she is a perverse, rebellious girl. You must forgive her, she intended no harm.'

'If you saw me do it, why did you let the house catch fire?' asked Mehalah, looking hard in Rebow's face.

'Could I help it?' he asked in reply. 'There you sat by the hearth, and no harm came of it. At last you went out, and locked and double-locked the door. I went down to my boat. I tell you, I was uneasy, and I looked back, and I saw by the light in the room that the spirit had caught. I ran back and tried to get in. The floor was flaming.'

'The floor was of brick,' said Mehalah.

'The door was fast locked. You know best why you locked it. It never was fastened before that night. You screwed on the lock, then you went out of the place yourself, leaving the room on fire, and fastened the door that none might get in.'

'A lie!' exclaimed the girl.

'Is it a lie? I don't think it. I can't cipher out your doings any other way. I tried to break open the door, but you had put too stout a fastening on. Then I burst open the window, and when the wind got in, it made the fire rage worse. So I ran and shouted to my men in the big boat, and I got a balk and I stove the door in, and then it was too late to do more than save your mother and her goods. As for you, you left her and them to burn together; you wanted to be off and free of her. I know you.'

'Oh, Master Rebow! I know I'm a burden to her, but she would not do that!' put in Mrs. Sharland.

'Why did you watch me?' asked Mehalah, and then regretted that she had put the question.

'You see,' said Elijah turning to the officer, 'she didn't think anyone was near to give evidence against her.'

'Here I am,' said Mehalah, 'put me in prison, do with me what you will. I am innocent of all intent to burn the farm.'

'I could hang you for it,' laughed Elijah. 'That pretty neck where the red handkerchief hangs so jauntily would not look well with a hemp rope round it. You'd dangle on the Ray, where the house stood. You'd have a black cap then pulled over those dark eyes and brown skin, not a red one, not a red one, Glory!' he rubbed his hands.

'I have no warrant against you,' said the bailiff to Mehalah. 'You stand charged with nothing. The warrant is against your mother.'

'Against me? What will you do with me?' cried the old woman.

'You must go to prison if you cannot build the house up again, and restore it as good as it was to the landlord. He can't be at a loss by your neglect.'

'I cannot do it. I have not the money.'

'Then you must go to prison till you get it.'

Mrs. Sharland sank on the gravel. She wept and wrung her hands. This was worse than the burning of the house, worse even than the lesion of the ear and tail of the poodle.

'I won't go. I can't go!' she sobbed. 'I've the ague so bad. I suffer from rheumatism in all my bones. Let me alone,' she pleaded, 'and I promise I'll go to bed and never get out of it again.'

'You'll suffer in prison, I can promise you,' said Elijah exultingly. 'You'll have no bed to crawl into, unless you can pay for it; you'll have no blankets to wrap round you in the cold frosty night, if you can't pay for them; you'll have no fire to shiver by when there is ice on the ponds, if you haven't money to pay for it. The frost in your bones will make you shriek and jabber in prison.'

'I have no money. I gave the last to pay off Mrs. De Witt,' wailed the wretched woman. 'But there are the sheep.'

'They go to pay your rent up to Lady Day, aye, and till Michaelmas. I haven't had notice yet that you are about to quit. You can't give up the farm without, and I will exact every penny of my rent.'

'Then I am at your mercy,' sobbed Mrs. Sharland. She turned to Mehalah and pleaded, 'Haven't you a word to say, to save me?'

The girl was silent. What could she say?

'Come along, madam, it is of no use. The warrant is here, and come along you must.'

'I will not go to prison. I will not. I shall die of cold and ague and rheumatics there. My bones will burst like water-pipes, and I'll shiver the teeth out of my jaws and the nails off my fingers and toes. I won't go!' she screamed. 'You must carry me, I can't walk. I'm a dying old woman.'

'Would you like to go back to Red Hall?' asked Elijah gravely.

'Oh! Master Rebow, if I might! I could shiver in comfort.'

'You and Glory! You and Glory!' He looked from one to the other. 'I don't take back one without the other.'

'Take me back!' wailed Mrs. Sharland. 'I know you won't be so cruel as to send me to prison. Let me go back to my armchair; Mehalah! promise him everything.'

'I will promise him nothing,' she said gloomily. 'If ever I hated this man, I hate him now.'

'Then she must go to prison,' growled Rebow. 'Now look you here, Glory! I don't ask much. I only ask you to go back with your mother, and work for me as you have worked hitherto. I do not say a word about anything else. You thought to escape me. You cannot. I have told you all along that it is impossible. As for the future, let the future determine. I wish to let you take your own course. I will not say another word about my wishes, till you come to me, of your own accord, and say that you will be mine. There! I promise you that. I will not force you any further; but I will not allow you to leave my house. There you must remain till you come to me and bid me take you, till you come and give yourself freely into my hands. Do you hear me, Glory?'

'Mehalah, save me,' pleaded Mrs. Sharland. 'Do what you can to save me from prison. Did I not lay by for you when I was a widow and needy? And will you refuse me this?'

'One thing or another,' said Rebow. 'Either your mother rots in prison, with no escape possible till she goes out to her grave in a pauper's shell, or you and she return at once to Red Hall, on the same conditions as you have been there hitherto, on the conditions you proposed yourself.'

Mehalah trembled.

'Let us go back,' said Mrs. Sharland. 'Help me into the boat. He couldn't have spoken more fair. You see, Mehalah, the Ray house is a great loss to him, and he gave eight hundred pounds for it.'

'And the marshes, and the saltings, and for you and Glory, and all things,' put in Rebow.

Mehalah held out her arms. Her head swam; she stood as though balancing herself on a high wall. Then she clasped her hands over her forehead, and burst into a storm of tears.

'Jim!' said Elijah, 'get the old doll into the stern, and you row her back to Red Hall. Take her under your arm and chuck her in anyhow.'

He looked at the convulsed girl with an ugly smile of triumph.

'Give me the warrant, bailiff!' He took the paper, held it under Mehalah's eyes and tore it in pieces, and scattered them over the water.

'Shove off, Jim. Row the old bundle back quick. Glory and I are going to drive home.'

Mehalah looked up, with a gasp as though stung.

'Yes, Glory! To-day is Valentine's Day. Valentine's Day it is. I have my little gig here. It accommodates two beautifully. I am going to take you up by my side, and drive you home, _home_, to your home and mine, Glory, in it; and all along the road, here at the Rose where the horse is standing, at Peldon, at Salcott and Virley,--all along the road,--at the parson's, at the Rising Sun, at Farmer Goppin's,--everywhere I'll let them see that I'm out a-junketing to-day along with my Valentine.'

All power of resistance was gone from Mehalah. The landlady at the Rose looked at her with pitying eyes, as she was helped up into the gig.

'I thought you was coming to us,' said the woman.

'You thought wrong,' answered Elijah with a boisterous laugh. 'Glory is coming back to me. We've had a bit of a tiff, but have made it up. Haven't we, Glory?'

The girl's head fell in shame on her bosom. She could not speak, but the tears rolled out of her eyes and streaked the 'Gloriana' on her breast.

He did not say a word to her as he drove home; but he stopped wherever she had halted a few days before. At Peldon farm he drew up, and struck at the door. He asked if there was a bullock there to be sold. The woman came into the garden with him.

'Out a Valentining along with my lass,' he said, indicating Mehalah with his whip over his shoulder.

He arrested his horse at the parson's cottage, and shouted till the door opened, and Mr. Rabbit appeared, with Mrs. Rabbit behind his back, peeping over his shoulder.

'I say,' roared Rebow, 'one of those cursed brats of yours has been on my marshes plaguing my cows, and has run two of them lame. Let him try it on again, let him put his foot on my ground, and I'll cut it off, and send him limping home.'

He stopped at the Rising Sun and called for spirits, and offered some to Mehalah. She turned aside her head in disgust; he drove up to Virley Hall farm, and into the yard, and called forth Farmer Goppin and his wife.

'I tell you,' he said, 'one of my cattle has been straying, I don't suppose she has done damage; she got into this here yard, I'm told. You turned her out. I'm a man of few words, but I thank ye. I am carrying her home before she is pounded.'

And then he drove straight to Red Hall.

Mehalah descended, crushed, broken, no more herself, the bold haughty girl of the Ray. She crept upstairs, took off her red cap and tore it with her hands and teeth. Her liberty was for ever gone from her.

Her mother was in their common bedroom, the boat had returned before the cart, for the way by water was the shortest, and tide had favoured. The old woman babbled about her grievances, and rejoiced at Rebow's magnanimity. She was busy replacing all the little articles that had been carried away, and were now brought back.

Mehalah could not endure the thrumming of her talk, and she hid herself in a corner of the little inner apartment, an empty room lighted by a small triangular window. There she crouched in the corner, on the ground, with her head on her knees and her hands in her hair behind. She sat there motionless. The fountain of her tears was dried up. The hectic flames burned in her cheeks, but all the rest of her face was deadly in its pallor. She could not think, she could not feel. She had experienced but one such another period of agony, that when the medal was restored and she knew that George was lost to her. That moment was sweet to this. That was one of pure pain, this of pain and humiliation, of crushed pride, of honour trampled and dragged in the dirt. Her self-respect had had its death-wound, and she sat and let her heart bleed away. Once or twice she put her hand on the floor. She thought that that must have been flooded with blood and tears, as if, when she took her hand up, it must be steeped red. It was not so.

But the soul has its ichor as well as the heart, and when it is cut deep into it also drains away, and is left empty, pulseless, pallid. Mrs. Sharland came in and spoke to her daughter, but got no answer. Mehalah looked up at her, but there was no expression in her eyes, she did not hear, or if she heard, did not understand what was said to her. The old woman went away muttering.

The evening fell, and Mehalah still sat crouched in her corner. The golden triangle which had stood on the wall opposite her had moved to her side, turned to silver, and now was but a nebulous patch on the white plaster. With the death of the day some abatement came to Mehalah's distress. She moved her cramped limbs. She rose to her knees, and fixed her eyes on the sky that glimmered grey through the triangular window. A star was hanging there. She saw it, and looked at it long, it shone through her eyes and down into the dark abyss in her soul. By little her ideas began to shape themselves; recollections of the past formed over that despairing gulf; she could not think of the present; she had not the power or the will to look into the future.

A year had passed since, on such an evening as this, looking on that star, she had stood with George de Witt on the Ray beneath the thorn trees, and he had gaily called her his Valentine, and given her in jest a picture of the Goddess of Liberty as proclaimed in Paris, wearing the bonnet rouge. She a goddess! She who was now so weak. Her power was gone. Liberty! She had none. She was a slave.

She drew herself up on her knees, and strained her united fingers, with the palms outward, towards that glittering star, and moaned, 'My Valentine! My George, my George!'

Suddenly, as if in answer to that wail from her wounded heart, there came a crash, and then loud, pealing, agonising, a cry from below out of the depths, and yet in the air about--'Glory! Glory! Glory!'

*CHAPTER XX.*

*IN PROFUNDUM.*

The cry roused Mehalah, as a step into cold water is a shock bringing a somnambulist instantly to full consciousness.

In a minute she was outside the house, looking for the person whose appeal had struck her ear. She saw the wooden shutter that had closed the window of the madman's den broken, hanging by one hinge. Two bleached, ghostly hands were stretched through the bars, clutching and opening.

At his door, above the steps, stood Elijah.

'Hah! Glory!' he said, 'has the crazed fool's shout brought you down?'

She was stepping towards the window. Rebow ran down before her.

'Go in!' he shouted to his brother. 'Curse you, you fool! breaking the shutter and yelling out, scaring the whole house.' He had a whip, a great carter's whip in his hand, and he smacked it. The hands disappeared instantly.

'Bring me a hammer and nails,' ordered Rebow. 'You will find them in the window of the hall.'

Mehalah obeyed. Rebow patched up the shutter temporarily. There were iron bars to the window. The wooden cover had a small hole in it to admit a little light. During the summer the shutter was removed. It was used to exclude the winter cold.

'Why did he call me?' asked Mehalah.

'He did not.'

'I heard his cry. He called me thrice, Glory! Glory! Glory!'

'He was asking for his victuals,' said Rebow, with a laugh. 'Look you here, Glory! I have been alone in this house so long, and have thought of you, and brooded on you, and had none to speak to about you. At last I took to teaching my brother your name. I wouldn't give him his food till he said it. I taught him like a parrot. I made him speak your name, as you make a dog sit up and beg for a bit of bread. I've been about on the road all day, on account of your perversity and wilfulness, and so forgot to give my brother his food. But I don't care. He had no right to smash the shutter and yell out the way he has. I'll punish him for it. I'll lay into him with the whip, so as he shall not forget. He'll be quieter in future.'

'Do not,' said Mehalah. 'It is a shame; it is wicked to treat a poor afflicted wretch thus.'

'Oh! you are turned advocate, are you? You take the side of a madman against the sane. That is like a perverse creature such as you. What has he done for you, that you should try to save his back?'

'No mercy is to be looked for at your hands,' said Mehalah sullenly.

'Look you here, Glory! the moon is full, and that always makes him madder. I have to keep him short of food, and strap his shoulders, or he would tear the walls down in his fury.'

'Let me attend to him,' asked Mehalah.

'You'd be afraid of him.'

'I should pity him,' said the girl. 'He and I are both wretched, both your victims, both prisoners, wearing your chains.'

'You have no chains round you, Glory.'

'Have I not? I have, invisible, may be, but firmer, colder, more given to rust into and rub the flesh than those carried by that poor captive. I have tried to break away, but I cannot. You draw me back.'

'I told you I could. I have threads to every finger, and I can move you as I will. I can bring you into my arms.'

'That--never,' said Mehalah gloomily and leisurely.

'You think not?'

'I am sure not. You may boast of your power over me. You have a power over me, but that power has its limits. I submit now, but only for my mother's sake. Were she not dependent wholly on me, were she dead, I would defy you and be free, free as the gull yonder.'

Elijah put his hand inside his door, drew out his gun, and in a moment the gull was seen to fall.

'She is not dead,' said Mehalah, with a gleam of triumph in her sad face.

'No, but winged. The wretch will flutter along disabled. She will try to rise, and each effort will give her mortal agony, and grind the splintered bones together and make the blood bleed away. She will skim a little while above the water, but at length will fall into the waves and be washed ashore dead.'

'Yes,' said Mehalah; 'you will not kill, but wound--wound to the quick.'

'That is about it, Glory!'

'Let me repeat my request,' she said; 'allow me to attend to your brother. I must have someone, some thing, to pity and minister to.'

'You can minister to me.'

'So I do.'

'And you can pity me.'

'Pity you!' with scorn.

'Aye. I am to be pitied, for here am I doing all I can to win the heart of a perverse and stubborn girl, and I meet with nothing but contempt and hate. I am to be pitied. I am a man; I love you, and am defied and repulsed, and fled from as though I had the pestilence, and my house were a plague hospital.'

'Will you let me attend to your brother?'

'No, I will not.'

The shutter was dashed off its hinges, flung out into the yard, and the two ghastly hands were again seen strained through the bars. Again there rang out in the gathering night the piteous cry, 'Glory! Glory! Glory!'

'By God! you hound,' yelled Elijah, and he raised his whip to bring it down in all its cutting force on the white wrists.

'I cannot bear it. I will not endure it!' cried Mehalah, and she arrested the blow. She caught the stick and wrenched it out of the hand of Rebow before he could recover from his surprise, and broke it over her knee and flung it into the dyke that encircled the yard. There was, however, no passion in her face, she acted deliberately, and her brown cheek remained unflushed. 'I take his cry as an appeal to me, and I will protect him from your brutality.'

'You are civil,' sneered Elijah. 'What are you in this house? A servant, you say. Then you should speak and act as one. No, Glory! you know you are not, and cannot be, a servant. You shall be its mistress. I forgive you what you have done, for you are asserting your place and authority. Only do not cry out and protest if in future I speak to the workmen of you as the mistress.'

A hard expression settled on Mehalah's brow and eyes. She turned away.

'Are you going? Have you not a parting word, mistress?'

'Go!' she said, in a tone unlike that usual with her. 'I care for nothing. I feel for no one. I am without a heart. Do what you will with that brother of yours. I am indifferent to him and to his fate. Everything in the world is all one to me now. If you had let me think for the poor creature and feed him, and attend to him, I might have become reconciled to being here; I could at least have comforted my soul with the thought that I was ministering to the welfare of one unhappy wretch and lightening his lot. But now,' she shrugged her shoulders. 'Now everything is all one to me. I can laugh,' she did so, harshly. 'There is nothing in the world that I care for now, except my mother, and I do not know that I care very much for her now. I feel as if I had no heart, or that mine were frozen in my bosom.'

'You do not care now for your mother!' exclaimed Rebow. 'Then leave her here to my tender mercy, and go out into the world and seek your fortune. Go on the tramp like your gipsy ancestry.'

'Leave my mother to your mercy!' echoed Mehalah. 'To the mercy of you, who could cut your poor crazed brother over the fingers with a great horsewhip! To you, who have stung and stabbed at my self-respect till it is stupefied; who have treated me, whom you profess to love, as I would not treat a marsh briar.[1] Never. Though my heart may be stunned or dead, yet I have sufficient instinct to stand by and protect her who brought me into the world and nursed me, when I was helpless. As for you, I do not hate you any more than I love you. You are nothing to me but a coarse, ill-conditioned dog. I will beat you off with a hedge-stake if you approach me nearer than I choose. If you keep your distance and keep to yourself, you will not occupy a corner of my thoughts. I take my course, you take yours.' She walked moodily away and regained her room.

[1] Horse-fly.

Mrs. Sharland began at once a string of queries. She wanted to know who had cried out and alarmed them, what Mehalah had been saying to Rebow, whether she had come to her senses at last, how long she was going to sulk, and so on.

Mehalah answered her shortly and rudely; that the cry had come from the madman, that he meant nothing by it, he had been taught to yell thus when he wanted food, that he had been neglected by his brother and was distressed; as for her mother's other questions, she passed them by without remark, and brushing in front of the old woman, went into the inner chamber.

'Mehalah!' called Mrs. Sharland. 'I will not have you glouting in there any longer. Come out.'

The girl paid no attention to her. She leaned her head against the wall and put her hands to her ears. Her mother's voice irritated her. She wanted quiet.

'This is too much of a good thing,' said the old woman, going in after her. 'Come away, Mehalah, you have your work to do, and it must be done.'

'You are right,' answered the girl in a hard tone, 'I am a servant, and I will do my work. I will go down at once.' She knitted her brows, and set her teeth. Her complexion was dull and dead. Her hair was in disorder, and fell about her shoulders. She twisted it up carelessly, and tied it round her head with George's handkerchief.

When she returned, her mother was in bed, and half-asleep. Mehalah went to the window, the window that looked towards the Ray, and drawing the curtains behind her, remained there, her head sunk, but her eyes never wavering from the point where her home had been when she was happy, her heart free, and her self-respect unmangled. So passed hour after hour. There was full moon, but the sky was covered with clouds white as curd, scudding before a north-west wind. The moon was dulled but hardly obscured every now and then, and next moment glared out in naked brilliancy.

Everything in the house was hushed. Elijah had gone to bed. Mehalah had heard his heavy tread on the stair, and the bang of his door as he shut it; it had roused her, she turned her head, and her face grew harder in the cold moonlight. Then she looked back towards the Ray.

Her mother was asleep. The starlings and sparrows who had worked their way under the eaves, and were building nests between the ceiling and the tiles, stirred uneasily; they were cold and hungry and could not sleep. Anyone not knowing what stirred would have supposed that mice were holding revel in the attics. There yonder on the marsh was something very white, like paper, flapping and flashing in the moonlight. What could it be? It moved a little way, then blew up and fell and flapped again. Was it a sheet of paper? If so how came it not to be swept away by the rushing wind. No, it was no sheet of paper. Mehalah's curiosity was roused. She opened the window and looked out. At the same moment it rose, fluttered nearer, eddied up, and fell again. A cloud drifted over the moon and made the marsh grey, and in the shadow the restless object was lost, the flash of white was blotted over. When the moon gleamed out again, she saw it once more. It did not move. The wind tore by, and shook the casement in her hand, but did not lift and blow away that white object. Then there was a lull. The air was still for a moment. At that moment the white object moved again, rose once more and fluttered up, it was flying, it was nearing,--it fell on the roof of the bakehouse under the window. Now Mehalah saw what this was. It was the wounded gull, the bird Rebow had shot.

The miserable creature was struggling with a broken wing, and with distilling blood, to escape to sea, to die, and drop into the dark, tossing, foaming waves, to lose itself in infinity. It could not expire on the land, it must seek its native element, the untamed, unconfined sea; it could not give forth its soul on the trampled, reclaimed, hedged-in earth.

Was it not so with Glory? Could her free soul rest where she now was? Could it endure for ever this tyranny of confinement within impalpable walls? She who had lived, free as a bird, to be blown here and there by every impulse, when every impulse was fresh and pure as the unpolluted breath of God that rushes over the ocean. Was she not wounded by the same hand that had brought down the white mew? There she was fluttering, rising a little, again falling, her heart dim with tears, her life's vigour bleeding away, the white of her bosom smeared with soil that adhered, as she draggled in the mire, into which he had cast her. Whither was she tending? She turned her face out to sea--it lay stretched before her ink-black. Red Hall and its marshes were to her a prison, and freedom was beyond its sea-wall.

She was startled by a sound as of bricks falling. She listened without curiosity. The sound recurred again, and was followed after a while by a grating noise, and then a rattle as of iron thrown down. She heard nothing further for a few minutes, and sank back into her dull dream, and watching of the poor mew, that now beat its wings on the roof, and then slid off and disappeared. Was it dead now? It did not matter. Mehalah could not care greatly for a bird. But presently from out of the shadow of the bakehouse floated a few white feathers. The gull was still wending its way on, with unerring instinct, towards the rolling sea. Just then Mehalah heard a thud, as though some heavy body had fallen, accompanied by a short clank of metal. She would have paid it no further attention had she not been roused by seeing the madman striding and then jumping, with the chain wound round one arm. He looked up at the moon, his matted hair was over his face, and Mehalah could not distinguish the features. He ran across the yard, and then leaped the dyke and went off at long bounds, like a kangaroo, over the pasture towards the sea-wall.

Mehalah drew back. What should she do? Should she rouse Elijah, and tell him that his brother had wrenched off the grating of his window and worked his way out, and was now at large in the glare of moon on the marshes, leaping and rejoicing in his freedom? No, she would not. Let the poor creature taste of liberty, inhale the fresh, pure air, caper and race about under no canopy but that of God's making. She would not curtail his time of freedom by an hour. He would suffer severely for his evasion on the morrow, when Elijah would call out his men, and they would hunt the poor wretch down like a wild beast. She could see Rebow stand over him with his great dog-whip, and strike him without mercy. She rouse Rebow! She reconsign the maniac to his dark dungeon, with its dank floor and stifling atmosphere! The gull was forgotten now; its little strivings overlooked in anxiety for the mightier strivings of the human sufferer. Yet all these three were bound together by a common tie! Each was straining for the infinite, and for escape from thraldom; one with a broken wing, one with a broken brain, one with a broken heart. There was the wounded bird flapping and edging its way outwards to the salt sea. There was the dazed brain driving the wretched man in mad gambols along the wall to the open water. There was the bruised soul of the miserable girl yearning for something, she knew not what, wide, deep, eternal, unlimited, as the all-embracing ocean. In that the bird, the man, the maid sought freedom, rest, recovery.

She could not go to bed and leave the poor maniac thus wandering unwatched. She would go out and follow him, and see that no harm came to him.

She took off her shoes, shut the window. Her mother was sleeping soundly. She undid the door and descended the stairs. They creaked beneath her steps, but Rebow, who had slept through the noise made by his brother in effecting his escape, was not awakened by her footfall. She unlocked the back door, closed it, and stole forth.

As she passed the bakehouse she lit on the wounded bird. In a spasm of sympathy she bent and took it up. It made a frantic effort to escape, and uttered its wild, harsh screams; but she folded her hands over the wings and held the bird to her bosom and went on. The blood from the broken bone and torn flesh wet her hand, and dried on it like glue. She heeded it not, but walked forward. By the raw moonlight she saw the madman on the wall. He had thrown down his chain. He heeded it not now. There had been sufficient intelligence or cunning in his brain to bid him deaden its clanking when making his escape from the house.

He sprang into the air and waved his arms; his wild hair blew about in the wind, it looked like seaweed tangles. Then he sat down. Mehalah did not venture on the wall, but crept along in the marsh. He had got a stone, and was beating at his chain with it upon the stone casing of the wall on the sea face. He worked at it patiently for an hour, and at last broke one of the links. He waved the chain above his head with a shout, and flung it behind him into the marsh. He ran on. Mehalah stole after him. He never looked back, always forwards or upwards. Sometimes he danced and shouted and sang snatches to the moon when it flared out from behind a cloud. Once, when at a bend of the wall, his shadow was cast before him, he cowered back from it, jabbering, and putting his hands supplicatingly towards it; then he slipped down the bank, laughed, and ran across the marsh, with his shadow behind him, and thought in his bewildered brain that he had cunningly eluded and escaped the figure that stood before him to stop him. He reached the mill that worked the pump. He must have remembered it: it was mixed up somehow with the confused recollections in his brain, for it did not seem to startle or frighten him. He scarcely noticed it, but, uttering a howl, a wild, triumphant shout, sprang upon a duck punt hauled up on the wall. It was Elijah's punt, left there occasionally, quite as often as at the landing near the house, a small, flat-bottomed boat, painted white, with a pair of white, muffled oars in it.

In a moment, before Mehalah had considered what to do, or whether she could do anything, he had run the punt down into the water, and had seated himself in it, and taken the oars and struck out to sea, out towards the open, towards the unbounded horizon.

He rowed a little way, not very far, and then stood up. He could not apparently endure to face the land, the place of long confinement, he must turn and look out to sea.

Mehalah stood on the sea-wall. The waves were lapping at her feet. The tide had turned. It flowed at midnight, and midnight was just past. She had forgotten the gull she bore, in her alarm for the man, she opened her arms, and the bird fluttered down and fell into the water.

The moon was now swimming in a clear space of sky free of cloudfloes. In that great light the man was distinctly visible, standing, waving his arms in the white punt, drifting, not rapidly, but steadily outwards. In that great light went out also, on the same cold, dark water, the dying bird, that now stirred not a wing.

Mehalah watched motionless, with a yearning in her heart that she could not understand, her arms extended towards that boundless expanse towards which the man and the bird were being borne, and into which they were fading. He was singing! Some old, childish lay of days that were happy, before the shadow fell.

There stood Glory, looking, indistinctly longing, till her eyes were filled with tears. She looked on through the watery vail, but saw nothing. When she wiped it away she saw nothing. She watched till the day broke, but she saw nothing more.

*CHAPTER XXI.*

*IN VAIN!*

Mrs. De Witt was not happy, taken all in all. There were moments indeed of conviviality when she boasted that she was now what she had always wanted to be, independent, and with none to care for but herself, 'none of them bullet-headed, shark-bellied men to fuss and worrit about.' But she laboured, like the moon, under the doom of passing through phases, and one of these was dark and despondent. As she lay in her bunk of a raw morning, and contemplated her toes in the grey light that fell through the hatches, she was forced to admit that her financial position was not established on a secure basis. It reposed on smelt, shrimps, dabs and eels, a fluctuating, an uncertain foundation. She strode about the island and the nearest villages on the mainland, with a basket on her arm, containing a half-pint measure, and a load of shrimps, or swung a stick in her hand from which depended slimy eels. She did a small trade at the farm-houses, and reaped some small retail profits. The farmers' wives were accustomed to see her in sunshine habited in scarlet more or less mottled with crimson, in storm wearing a long grey military great coat. In summer a flapping straw hat adorned her head; in winter a fur cap with a great knob at the top, and fur lappets over her ears. In compliment to her condition of mourner a big black bow was sewn to the summit of the knob, and she looked like a knight helmeted, bearing as crest a butterfly displayed, sable. It was seldom that she was dismissed from a farmhouse without having disposed of a few shrimps, or some little fish; for if she were not given custom regularly, she took huff and would not call with her basket again, till an apology were offered, and she was entreated to return.

The profits of the trade were not however considerable, and such as they were underwent reduction on all her rounds. She consumed the major part of them in her orbit at the 'Fountain,' the 'Fox,' the 'Leather Bottle' or the 'Dog and Pheasant.' In the bar of each of these ancient taverns, Mrs. De Witt was expected and greeted as cordially as at the farm-kitchen. There she was wont to uncasque, and ruffle out her white cap, and turn out her pockets to count her brass. There also this brass underwent considerable diminution. The consumption of her profits generally left Mrs. De Witt in a condition rather the worse than the better. She was a sinking fund that sucked in her capital. However cheery of face, and crisp of gathers, Mrs. De Witt may have started on her mercantile round, the close saw her thick of speech, leery of eye, festoony of walk, vague in her calculations, reckless of measurement with her little pewter half-pint, and generally crumpled in cap and garment. If she were still able to rattle a few coppers in her pocket when she stumbled up the ladder, toppled down into the hold, and tumbled into her bunk, she was happy. She was her own mistress, she had no helpless, foolish man, husband or son, to consider, and before whom to veil her indiscretions; she pulled up the ladder as soon as she was home; and, as she said, sat up for no one but herself.

She had not quite reconciled her smoking to her conscience, when she had a son to set a model of life to, before whom to posture as the ideal of womanhood and maternity; then when his foot was heard on the ladder she would slip her clay into the oven, and murmur something about a pinch out of her snuff-box having fallen on the stove, or about her having smoked her best gown as a preventive to moth. Now she smoked with composure, and turned over in her mind the various possibilities that lay before her. Should she bow to the hard necessity of leading about a tame man again, or should she remain in her present condition of absolute freedom? The five-and-twenty pounds had nearly disappeared, and she was not certain that she could live in comfort on her gains by the trade in shrimps and eels.

Mrs. De Witt was a moralist, and when nearly drunk religious. She was not a church-goer, but she was fond of convivial piety. Over her cups she had a great deal to say of her neighbours' moral shortcomings and of her own religious emotions. When in a state of liquor she was always satisfied that she was in a state of grace. In her sober hours she thought of nothing save how to make both ends meet. She mused on her future, and hovered in her choice, she feared that sooner or later she must make her election, to take a man or to do without one. The eagle can gaze on the sun without blinking, but Mrs. De Witt could not fix her eye on matrimony without the water coming into it. That was a step she would not take till driven to it by desperation. The _Pandora's_ bottom was not all that could be wished, it was rotten. Mrs. De Witt saw that the repair of the _Pandora_ was a matter she could not compass. When she let in water, Mrs. De Witt would admit a husband. Whilst a plank remained impervious to the tide, so would her breast to matrimonial dreams.