BIDEABOUT.
The words were hardly spoken before a twinge of conscience made
Mrs. Verstage aware that she had given pain to the girl who had
been to her as a daughter.
Yet she justified herself to herself with the consideration that
it was in the end kindest to cut down ruthlessly any springing
expectation that might have started to life at the words of Simon
Verstage. The hostess cast a glance at Mehetabel, and saw that her
face was quivering, that all color had gone out of her cheeks, that
her hands were contracted as with the cramp.
"I had no wish to hurt you," said the landlady; "but facks are
facks, and you may pull down the blinds over 'em wi'out putting
them out o' existence. There's Laura Tickner--got a face like a
peony. She sez it's innade modesty; but we all knows it's
arrysippelas, and Matthew Maunder tells us his nose comes from
indigestion; but it's liquor, as I've the best reason to know.
Matabel, I love you well, but always face facks. You can't get rid
of facks any more than you can get rid of fleas out o' poultry."
Mrs. Verstage disappeared through the doorway. Mehetabel seated
herself on the bench. She could not follow the hostess, for her
limbs trembled and threatened to give way.
She folded her arms on her lap, and leaned forward, with her eyes
on the ground.
"A charity girl! Only a charity girl!"
She said the words to herself again and again. Her eyes burnt; a
spray hung on her eyelids. Her lips were contracted with pain,
spasms ran through her breast.
"Only a charity girl! She'd never, never a'sed that had she loved
me. She don't." Then came a sob. Mehetabel tried to check it, but
could not, and the sound of that sob passed through the house.
It was followed by no other.
The girl recovered herself, leaned back against the wall, and
looked at the twilight sky.
There was no night now. The season was near midsummer:--
"Barnaby bright,
All day and no night."
Into the luminous blue sky Mehetabel looked steadily, and did
battle with her own self in her heart.
That which had been said so shortly was true; had it been wrapped
up in filagree--through all disguise the solid unpleasant truth
would remain as core. If that were true, then why should she be
so stung by the few words that contained the truth?
It was not the words that had hurt her--she had heard them often
at school--it was that "Mother" had said them. It was the way in
which they had been uttered.
Mrs. Verstage had ever been kind to the girl; more affectionate
when she was quite a child than when she became older. Gradually
the hostess had come to use her, and using her as a servant, to
regard her in that light.
Susanna Verstage was one of those women to whom a baby is almost
a necessity, certainly a prime element of happiness. As she
philosophically put it, "Men likes 'baccy; wimin likes babies;
they was made so;" but the passion for a baby was doubly strong
in the heart of the landlady. As long as Mehetabel was entirely
dependent, the threads that held her to the heart of the hostess
were very strong, and very many, but so soon as she became
independent, these threads were relaxed. The good woman had a
blunt and peremptory manner, and she at times ruffled the girl by
sharpness of rebuke; but never previously had she alluded to her
peculiar position and circumstances in such a galling manner.
Why had she done this now? Why gone out of her way to do so?
Mehetabel thought how wonderful it was that she, a stranger,
should be in that house, treated almost, though not wholly, as
its child, whereas the son of the house was shut out from
it,--that against him only was the door fast, which was held
open with invitation to every one else.
It was the thought of this contrast, perhaps, that had been
working in Mrs. Verstage's mind, and had provoked the impatience
and occasioned the cruel words.
"Well," said Mehetabel to herself, "I must face it. I have only
the name that Iver gave me in the barn. I have no father, no
mother, and no other name than that which I am given in charity."
She looked at her gown. "I owe that to charity;" at her hands--"My
flesh is nourished out of charity." She wiped her eyes--the very
kerchief was a gift to her in charity. "It is so," she said. "I
must bear the thought and get accustomed to it. I was given a
name in charity, and in charity my father was granted a grave. All
I can look to as in some fashion my own--and yet they are not my
own--be the headstone in the churchyard to show how my real
father was killed, and the gallows on Hind Head, with the chains,
to tell where those hung who killed him. 'Tain't every one can
show that." She raised her head with a flash of pride. Human
Nature must find something on which to plume itself. If nothing
else can be found, then a murdered father and a gallows for the
murderers served.
Mehetabel was a handsome girl, and she knew it. She could not
fail to know it, situated as she was. The men who frequented the
public house would not leave a girl long in doubt whether she
were comely or the reverse.
But Mehetabel made small account of her appearance. No youth of
the neighborhood had won his way into her heart; and she blew away
the compliments lavished upon her as the men blew away the froth
from their tankards. What mattered it whether she were good-looking
or not, so long as she was only Mehetabel, without a surname,
without kin, without a penny!
When Iver had run away from home she had done all that lay in her
power to comfort the mother. She had relieved the landlady of half
of her work; she had stayed up her heart when downcast, despondent.
She had talked with her of the absent son, whose name the father
would not allow to be mentioned in his hearing; had encouraged her
with hopes, and, by her love, had sought to compensate for the loss.
It was due to her that the Ship Inn had a breath of youth and
cheerfulness infused into it. But for her, the absence and
indifference of the host, and the moroseness of the disappointed
hostess, would have driven custom away.
Mrs. Verstage had found her useful, even necessary. She could
hardly endure to be for an hour without her, and she had come to
rely upon her more and more in the conduct of business, especially
such as required sufficient scholarship to do correspondence and
keep accounts.
The hostess was proud of the girl's beauty and engaging manner,
and took to herself some of the credit of having her adopted
daughter regarded as the belle of Thursley. She was pleased to
see that the men admired her, not less than the women envied her.
There was selfishness in all this. Mrs. Verstage's heart was
without sincerity. She had loved Mehetabel as a babe, because the
child amused her. She liked her as a girl, because serviceable to
her, and because it flattered her vanity to think that her adopted
daughter should be so handsome.
Now, however, that the suspicion was engendered that her own son
might be set aside in favor of the adopted child, through Simon's
partiality, at once her maternal heart took the alarm, and turned
against the girl in resolution to protect the rights of Iver,
Mehetabel did not understand the workings of Susanna Verstage's
mind. She felt that the regard entertained for her was troubled.
She had heard Simon Verstage's remark about constituting her his
heir, but had so little considered it as seriously spoken, and
as embodying a resolution, that it did not now occur to her as an
explanation of the altered conduct of the "mother" towards herself.
Mehetabel felt instinctively that a vein of truer love throbbed
in the old host than in his wife; and now, with a hunger for some
word of kindness after the rebuff she had sustained, she stood up
and walked in the direction of the hayfield to meet Simon Verstage
on his return journey.
As she stepped along she heard a footfall behind her. The step
was quickened, and a hand was laid on her shoulder. She turned,
and exclaimed sharply:
"Bideabout--what do you want?"
"You, Matabel."
A man stayed her: the Broom-Squire.
"What with me?"
"I want you to listen to what I have to say."
"I can spare you a minute, not more. I expect father. He has gone
to look at the hay."
Mehetabel disengaged her shoulder from his grasp. She stepped
back. She had no liking for the Broom-Squire. Indeed, he inspired
her with a faint, undefined repugnance.
Jonas was now a middle-aged man, still occupying his farm in the
Punch-Bowl, making brooms, selling holly, cultivating his patch of
land, laying by money and still a bachelor.
He had rounded shoulders and a short neck; this made him thrust his
head forward in a peering manner, like a beast of prey watching for
a victim. His eyes were keen and restless. His hair was short-cut,
and his ears projected from the sides of his head like those of a
bat. Otherwise he was not a bad-looking man. His features were
good, but his expression was unpleasant. The thin lip was curled
contemptuously; and he had a trick of thrusting forth his sharp
tongue to wet his lips before making a spiteful remark.
He was a frequent visitor at the Ship, and indeed his inclination
for liquor was his one weakness.
Of late he had been much oftener at this inn than formerly.
Latterly he had been profuse in his compliments to Mehetabel,
which she had put aside, much as she brushed empty tankards, and
tobacco ash off the table. He was no welcome guest. His bitter
tongue was the occasion of strife, and a brawl was no infrequent
result of the appearance of the Broom-Squire in the public house.
Sometimes he himself became the object of attack, but usually he
succeeded in setting others by the ears and in himself escaping
unmolested. But on one of the former occasions he had lost two
front teeth, and through the gap thus formed he was wont to thrust
his tongue.
"I am glad to have caught you," said the Broom-Squire; "and caught
you alone--it is hard to find you so--as it's hard to find a
treacle cask without flies round it."
"What have you to say?"
"You have always slipped out of my way when I thought I had you."
"I did not know that you had a fancy to catch me alone." She made
as if to proceed on her course.
"Stand still," said he imperiously. "It must come out. Do not
look at me with that keep-your-distance air. I mean no incivility.
I care a deal more for you than for any one else."
"That is not saying much."
"I care for you alone in all the world."
"Except yourself."
"Of course."
He breathed as though relieved of a burden.
"Look here, Mehetabel, I've not been a marrying man. Wife and
family cost too much. I've been saving and not spending. But this
can't go on forever. All good things come to an end some time. It
has come to this, I must have a woman to mind the house. My sister
and I have had a tiff. You know her, Sarah Rocliffe. She won't do
as I like, and what I want. So I'll just shut the door in her face
and make a long nose at her, and say, 'Got some one else now.'"
"So," exclaimed Mehetabel, the color rushing to her cheeks in
anger, "you want me as your housekeeper that you may make a nose
at your sister and deny her the house."
"I won't have any other woman in my house but yourself."
"You will have to wait a long time before you get me."
"I mean all fair and honorable," said Jonas. "I didn't say
housekeeper, did I? I say wife. If any chap had said to me,
Bideabout, you are putting your feet into a rabbit net, and will
be caught, and--'" he made a sign as if knocking a rabbit's neck
to kill it--"I say, had any one said that, I'd a' laughed at him
as a fool."
"You may laugh at him still," said the girl. "No one that I know
has set any net for you."
"You have," he sniggered. "Aye, and caught me."
"I!" laughed Mehetabel contemptuously, "I spread a net for you?
It is you who pursue and pester me. I never gave you a thought
save how to make you keep at arm's length."
"You say that to me." His color went.
"It is ridiculous, it is insulting of you to speak to me of netting
and catching. What do I want of you save to be let go my way."
"Come, Mehetabel," said the Broom-Squire caressingly, "we won't
quarrel about words. I didn't mean what you have put on me. I want
you to come and be my wife. It isn't only that I've had a quarrel
with my sister. There's more than that. There is something like a
stoat at my heart, biting there, and I have no rest till you
say--'I'll have you, Jonas!'"
"The stoat must hang on. I can't say that."
"Why not?"
"I am not obliged to give a reason."
"Will you not have me?"
"No, Bideabout, I will not. How can I take an offer made in this
way? When you ask me to enable you to be rude to your sister, when
you speak of me as laying traps for you; and when you stay me on
my road as if you were a footpad."
Again she made an attempt to go in the direction of the hayfield.
Her bosom was heaving with anger, her nostrils were quivering.
Again he arrested her.
"If you will not let me go," said she, "I will call for help. Here
comes father. He shall protect me."
"I'll have you yet," said the Broom-Squire with a sneer. "If it
ain't you that nets me, then it'll be I net you, Mehetabel."