HOME.
Bideabout was driving his wife home.
Home! There is no word sweeter to him who has created that reality
to which the name belongs; but there is no word more full of vague
fears to one who has it to create.
Home to Bideabout was a rattle-trap farmhouse built partly of
brick, mainly of timber, thatched with heather, at the bottom of
the Punch-Bowl.
It was a dwelling that served to cover his head, but was without
pleasant or painful associations--a place in which rats raced and
mice squeaked; a place in which money might be made and hoarded,
but on which little had been spent. It was a place he had known
from childhood as the habitation of his parents, and which now was
his own. His childhood had been one of drudgery without cheerfulness,
and was not looked back on with regret. Home was not likely to be
much more to him in the future than it was in the present. More
comfortable perhaps, certainly more costly. But it was other with
Mehetabel.
She was going to the unknown.
As we shudder at the prospect of passing out of this world into
that beyond the veil, so does many a girl shrink at the prospect
of the beyond seen through the wedding ring.
She had loved the home at the Ship. Would she learn to love the
home in the Punch-Bowl?
She had understood and made allowance for the humors of the
landlord and landlady of the tavern; did she know those of her
future associate in the farm? To many a maid, the great love that
swells her heart and dazzles her brain carries her into the new
condition on the wings of hope.
Love banishes fear. Confidence in the beloved blots out all mistrust
as to the future.
But in this case there was no love, nothing to inspire confidence;
and Mehetabel looked forward with vague alarm, almost with a
premonition of evil.
Jonas was in no mood for meditation. He had imbibed freely at the
inn, and was heavy, disposed to sleep, and only prevented from
dozing by the necessity he was under of keeping the lazy cob in
movement.
For if Jonas was in no meditative mood, the old horse was, and he
halted at intervals to ponder over the load he was drawing, and
ask why on this occasion he had to drag uphill two persons instead
of one.
The sun had set before the couple left the Ship.
The road ascended, at first gradually, then at a more rapid incline.
The cob could not be induced to trot by word or whip; and the walk
of a horse is slower than that of a man.
"It's bostall (a steep ascent, in the Wealden dialect) till we
come to the gallows," muttered Jonas; "then we have the drove-road
down into the Punch-Bowl."
Mehetabel tightened her shawl about her shoulders and throat. The
evening was chilly for the time of the year. Much rain had fallen,
and the air was charged with moisture, that settled in cold dew on
the cart, on the harness, on Bideabout's glazed hat, on the bride's
clothing, bathing her, all things, as in the tears of silent sorrow.
"One of us must get out and walk," said the bridegroom. "Old
Clutch--that's the 'oss--is twenty-five, and there's your box and
bundle behind."
He made no attempt to dismount, but looked sideways at the bride.
"If you'll pull up I'll get out and walk," she answered. "I shall
be glad to do so. The dew falls like rain, and I am chilled to the
marrow."
"Right then," assented the Broom-Squire, and drew the rein.
Mehetabel descended from her seat in the cart. In so doing
something fell on the road from her bosom. She stooped and picked
it up.
"Wots that?" asked Jonas, and pointed to the article with his
whip, that was flourished with a favor of white ribbons.
"It is a present father has made me," answered Mehetabel. "I was
in a hurry--and not accustomed to pockets, so I just put it into
my bosom. I ought to have set it in a safer place, in the new
pocket made to my gown. I'll do that now. Its money."
"Money!" repeated Bideabout. "How much may it be?"
"I have not looked."
"Then look at it, once now (at once)."
He switched the whip with its white favor about, but kept his eye
on Mehetabel.
"What did he give it you for?"
"As a wedding present."
"Gold, is it?"
"Gold and notes."
"Gold and notes. Hand 'em to me. I can count fast enough."
"The sum is fifteen pounds--dear, kind, old man."
"Fifteen pounds, is it? You might ha' lost it wi' your carelessness."
"I'll not be careless now."
"Good, hand it me."
"I cannot do that, Jonas. It is mine. Father said to me I was to
keep it gainst a rainy day."
"Didn't you swear in church to endow me with all your worldly
goods?" asked the Broom-Squire.
"No, it was you who did that. I then had nothing."
"Oh, was it so? I don't remember that. If you'd had them fifteen
pounds then, and the passon had knowed about it, he'd ha' made you
swear to hand it over to me--your lord and master."
"There's nothing about that in the Prayer-book."
"Then there ort to be. Hand me the money. You was nigh on losing
the lot, and ain't fit to keep it. Fifteen pounds!"
"I cannot give it to you, Bideabout; father told me it was to be
my very own, I was not to let it go out of my hands, not even into
yours, but to husband it."
"Ain't I your husband?"
"I do not mean that, to hoard it against an evil day. There is no
saying when that may come. And I passed my word it should be so."
He growled and said, "Look here, Matabel. It'll be a bostall road
with you an' me, unless there's give on one side and take on the
other."
"Is all the give to be on my side, and the take on yours?"
"In coorse. Wot else is matrimony? The sooner you learn that the
better for peace."
He whipped the cob, and the brute moved on.
Mehetabel walked forward and outstripped the conveyance. Old Clutch
was a specially slow walker. She soon reached that point at which
moorland began, without hedge on either side. Trees had ceased to
stud the heathy surface.
Before her rose the ridge that culminated where rose the gallows,
and stood inky black against the silvery light of declining day
behind them.
To the north, in the plain gleamed some ponds.
Curlew were piping sadly.
Mehetabel was immersed in her own thoughts, glad to be by herself.
Jonas had not said much to her in the cart, yet his presence had
been irksome. She thought of the past, of her childhood along with
Iver, of the day when he ran away. How handsome he had become! What
an expression of contempt had passed over his countenance when he
looked at Bideabout, and learned that he was the bridegroom--the
happy man who had won her! How earnestly he had gazed into her
eyes, till she was compelled to lower them!
Was Iver going to settle at the Ship? Would he come over to the
Punch-Bowl to see her? Would he come often and talk over happy
childish days? There had been a little romance between them as
children: long forgotten: now reviving.
Her hand trembled as she raised it to her lips to wipe away the
dew that had formed there.
She had reached the highest point on the road, and below yawned
the great crater-like depression, at the bottom of which lay the
squatter settlement. A little higher, at the very summit of the
hill, stood the gibbet, and the wind made the chains clank as it
trifled with them. The bodies were gone, they had mouldered away,
and the bones had fallen and were laid in the earth or sand beneath,
but the gallows remained.
Clink! clink! clank! Clank! clink! clink!
There was rhythm and music, as of far-away bells, in the clashing
of these chains.
The gibbet was on Mehetabel's left hand; on the right was the abyss.
She looked down into the cauldron, turning with disgust from the
gallows, and yet was inspired with an almost equal repugnance at
the sight of the dark void below.
She was standing on the very spot where, eighteen years before,
she had been found by Iver. He had taken her up, and had given her
a name. Now she was taken up by another, and by him a new name
was conferred upon her.
"Come!" said Jonas; "it's all downhill, henceforth."
Were the words ominous?
He had arrived near her without her hearing him, so occupied had
her mind been. As he spoke she uttered a cry of alarm.
"Afraid?" he asked. "Of what?"
She did not answer. She was trembling. Perhaps her nerves had
been overwrought. The Punch-Bowl looked to her like the Bottomless
Pit.
"Did you think one of the dead men had got up from under the
gallows, and had come down to talk with you?"
She did not speak. She could not.
"It's all a pass'l o' nonsense," he said. "When the dead be turned
into dust they never come again except as pertaties or the like.
There was Tim Wingerlee growed won'erful fine strawberries; they
found out at last he took the soil in which he growed 'em from
the churchyard. I don't doubt a few shovelfuls from under them
gallows 'ud bring on early pertaties--famous. Now then, get up
into the cart."
"I'd rather walk, Jonas. The way down seems critical. It is dark
in the Bowl, and the ruts are deep."
"Get up, I say. There is no occasion to be afraid. It won't do
to drive among our folk, to our own door, me alone, and you
trudgin', totterin' behind. Get up, I say."
Mehetabel obeyed.
There was a fragrance of fern in the night air that she had inhaled
while walking. Now by the side of Bideabout she smelt only the
beer and stale tobacco that adhered to his clothes.
"I am main glad," said he, "that all the hustle-bustle is over.
I'm glad I'm not wed every day. Fust and last time I hopes. The
only good got as I can see, is a meal and drink at the landlord's
expense. But he'll take it out of me someways, sometime. Folks
ain't liberal for nuthin'. 'Tain't in human nature."
"It is very dark in the Punch-Bowl," said Mehetabel. "I do not see
a glimmer of a light anywhere."
"That's becos the winders ain't looking this way. You don't suppose
it would be a pleasure to have three dead men danglin' in the wind
afore their eyes all day long. The winders look downward, or else
there's a fold of the hill or trees between. But I know where
every house is wi'out seeing 'em. There's the Nashes', there's
the Boxalls', there's the Snellings', there's my brother-in-law's,
Thomas Rocliffe's, and down there be I."
He pointed with his whip. Mehetabel could distinguish nothing
beyond the white favor bound to his whip.
"We're drivin to Paradise," said Jonas. And as to this remark she
made no response, he explained--"Married life, you know."
She said nothing.
"It rather looks as if we were going down to the other place," he
observed, with a sarcastic laugh. "But there it is, one or the
other--all depends on you. It's just as you make it; as likely to
be one as the other. Give me that fifteen pounds--and Paradise is
the word."
"Indeed, Jonas, do you not understand that I cannot go against
father's will and my word?"
The road, or rather track, descended along the steep side of the
Punch-Bowl, notched into the sand falling away rapidly on the left
hand, on which side sat Mehetabel.
At first she had distinguished nothing below in the blackness, but
now something like a dead man's eye looked out of it, and seemed
to follow and observe her.
"What is that yonder?" she asked.
"Wot is wot?" he asked in reply.
"That pale white light--that round thing glimmerin' yonder?"
"There's water below," was his explanation of the phenomenon.
In fact that which had attracted her attention and somewhat alarmed
her, was one of the patches of water formed in the marshy bottom
of the Punch-Bowl by the water that oozes forth in many springs
from under the sandstone.
The track now passed under trees.
A glimpse of dull orange light, and old Clutch halted, unbidden.
"Here we be, we two," said Jonas. "This is home. And Paradise, if
you will."