WANDERERS.
It occurred to Mehetabel that the rector of Milford had been over
at Thursley several times to do duty when the vicar of Witley was
ill, and she thought that perhaps she might obtain advice from him.
Accordingly she turned in the direction of that village as soon as
she had reached the road. She walked wearily along till she arrived
in this, the adjoining parish, separated from Thursley by a tract
of healthy common. At her request, she was shown into the library,
and she told the parson of her trouble.
He shrugged his shoulders, and read her a lecture on the duties of
wife to husband; and, taking his Bible, provided her with texts to
corroborate what he said.
"Please, sir," she said, "I was married when I did not wish it,
and when I did not know what I could do, and what was impossible.
As the Church married me, can it not undo the marriage, and set me
free again?"
"Certainly not. What has been joined together cannot be put
asunder. It is not impossible to obtain a separation, legally, but
you will have to go before lawyers for that."
Mehetabel flushed. "I will have nothing to do with lawyers," she
said hastily.
"You would be required to show good cause why you desire a
separation, and then it would be expensive. Have you money?"
"Not a penny."
"The law in England--everywhere--is only for the rich."
"Then is there nothing you can advise?"
"Only that you should go home again, and bear what you have to
bear as a cross laid on you."
"I will never go back."
"It is your duty to do so."
"I cannot, and will not."
"Then, Mrs. Kink, I am afraid the blame of this domestic broil
lies on your shoulders quite as much as on those of your husband.
Woman is the weaker vessel. Her duty is to endure."
"And a separation--"
"That is legal only, and unless you can show very good cause why
it should be granted, it may be refused. Has your husband beaten
you?"
"No, but he has spoken to me--"
"Words break no bones. I don't think words would be considered. I
can't say; I'm no lawyer. But remember--even if separated by law,
in the sight of God you would still be one."
Mehetabel left, little cheered.
As she walked slowly back along the high-road, she was caught up
by Betsy Cheel.
"Halloo!" said this woman; "where have you been?"
Mehetabel told her.
"Want to be separated from Jonas, do you? I'm not surprised. I
always thought him a bad fellow, but I doubt if he's worse than my
man, Jamaica."
After a while she said: "We'll walk together. Then we can chat.
It's dull going over the Common alone. I've been selling eggs in
Milford. They're won'erful dear now; nine a shillin'; but the hens
feel the cold, and don't lay this time of the year much. How's
the child? You didn't ort to be carryin' it about in this weather
and at this time o' the year."
"I have nowhere that I can leave it, and its only home is against
my heart, in my arms."
"You've run away?"
"Yes; I shall not go back to Jonas."
"I don't call that sense," said Bessy. "If you run away, run away
with some one who'll take care of you. That's what I did. My first
husband--well, I don't know as he was a proper husband. He called
me names, and took the stick to me when drunk; so I went off with
Jamaica. That I call reasonable. Ain't you got no one to run away
with?"
Mehetabel did not answer. She hastened her pace--she did not
relish association with the woman. "I'd have run away from Jamaica
scores o' times," continued Mrs. Cheel, "only I ain't so young as
I once as, and so the opportunities don't come. There's the pity. I
didn't start and leave him when I was good-looking and fresh. I
might have done better then. If you think a bad, cross-crabbed man
will mend as he grows older, you make a mistake. They grow wusser.
So you're right to leave Jonas. Only you've gone about in the wrong
way. There's Iver Verstage. I've heard talk about him and you. He
don't live such a terrible distance off. I hear he's doin' purty
well for himself at Guildford. Why don't you go to him? He's more
suitable in age, and he's a nice-lookin' young fellow."
"Mrs. Cheel," said Mehetabel, standing still, "will you go forward
a little faster? I cannot walk with you. I do not ask you for any
advice. I do not want to hear what you have to say. I have been to
the parson. It seems to me that I can get no help from heaven, but
that hell is holding out hands on all sides, offering assistance.
Go on your way. I shall sit here for half an hour. I am too weary
to walk at your pace."
"As you will," said Bessy Cheel. "I spoke out of good will,
and told what would be the best for you. If you won't take my
opinion--that's no odds to me, and it may turn out wuss for you."
Mehetabel drew aside, to a nodule of ironstone rock that capped the
first elevation of the Common, the first stage of the terraces
that rise to Hind Head.
Here she remained till all chance of association with Mrs. Cheel
was over. Then she went on to Thursley village, to find the Widow
Chivers in great excitement. Jonas Kink had been in the village
inquiring for his wife and child; and had learned that both had
been given shelter by the dame.
He had come to the school, and had demanded his wife and his little
son. Betty had taken charge of the infant and laid it to sleep in
her own bed and happily at this time it was asleep. When she told
Bideabout that Mehetabel had left the house in quest of work, he
had happily concluded that she had carried the child with her, and
had asked no further questions; but he had been violent and
menacing. He had threatened to fetch the constable and recover his
child, even if he let the mother go where she liked.
Mehetabel was greatly alarmed.
"I cannot stay here," she said, "in no case will I give up the babe.
When Iver Verstage baptized me it was lest I should become a
wanderer. I suppose the christening was a poor one--for my
wandering is begun, and it is not I only who am condemned to
wander, but my little child also."
With a heavy heart she left the dame's school. Had she been alone
she would have run to Godalming or Hazelmere, and sought a situation
as a domestic servant, but that was not possible to her now,
cumbered with the child.
Watching her opportunity, that none of the villagers might observe
her leaving the school and note the direction she took, she ran out
upon the heath, and turned away from the high-road.
On all sides, as already intimated at the opening of this tale, the
sandy commons near Thursley are furrowed as though a giant plough
had been drawn along them, but at so remote a period that since the
soil was turned the heather had been able to cast its deep brown
mantle of velvet pile over every irregularity, and to veil the scars
made in the surface.
These gullies or furrows vary in depth from ten to forty feet, and
run to various lengths. They were the subaerial excavations and
open adits made by miners in quest of iron ore. They are probably
of all dates from prehistoric antiquity to the reign of the Tudors,
after which the iron smelting of the weald came to an end. The
magnificent oaks of the forest of Anderida that stretched from
Winchelsea, in Kent, a hundred and twenty miles west, with a breadth
of thirty miles between the northern and southern chalk downs--these
oaks had been hewn down and used as fuel, in the fabrication of
military armor and weapons, and just as the wood was exhausted,
coal was discovered in the north, and the entire industry of iron
in the weald came to an end.
Mehetabel had often run up these gullies when a child, playing on
the commons with Iver, or with other scholars of Dame Chivers
school.
She remembered now that in one of these she and Iver had discovered
a cave, scooped out in the sandrock, possibly the beginning of an
adit, probably a place for storing smuggled goods. On a very small
scale it resembled the extraordinary labyrinth of subterranean
passages at Puttenham, that may be explored at the present day.
During the preceding century and the beginning of that in which we
live, an extensive business in smuggled spirits, tea, and tobacco
was carried on from the coast to the Thames; and there were certain
store places, well-known to the smugglers in the line of trade. In
Thursley parish is a farm that is built over vast vaults, carefully
constructed, with the entrance of them artfully disguised. The
Puttenham labyrinth has its openings in a dense coppice; and it had
this advantage, that with a few strokes of the pick a passage could
be blocked with sand from the roof.
The cave that Mehetabel had discovered, and in which she had spent
many a summer hour, opened out of the side of one of the most
profound of the trenches cut in the surface after ore. The entrance
was beneath a projecting slab of ironstone, and was concealed by
bushes of furze and bramble. It did not penetrate beyond thirty
feet into the sand rock, or if it had done so formerly, it was
choked when known to Mehetabel, with the falling in of the roof.
These sandstone caves are very dry, and the temperature within
agreeable.
Here Mehetabel resolved to bide for a while, till she had found
some place of greater security for herself and the child.
She did not leave Mrs. Chivers without having arranged with her for
the conveyance of food to a place agreed on between them.
With the shawl so kindly given her by the gardener, Mehetabel
could exclude all wintry air from her habitation, and abundance of
fuel was at hand in the gully, so that she could make and maintain
a fire that would be unnoticed, because invisible except to such as
happened to enter the ravine.
Mehetabel left the village and emerged on the path bearing that
precious but woeful burden, her little babe, in her arms folded
about it. Then, all at once, before her she saw that same young
lawyer who had insulted her at the Hammer Pond. He recognized her
at once, as she did him. She drew back and her heart beat furiously.
"What, Queen of the heath?" said he, "still about with your baby?"
She would not answer him. She stepped back.
"Do not be afraid; I wish you well--you and your little one. Come,
for the sake of that mite, accept my offer. What will you say to
yourself--how excuse yourself if it die through exposure, and
because of your silly scruples?"
She would not listen to him. She darted past, and fled over the
down.
She roamed about, lost, distracted. In her confusion she missed
the way to the cave, and the darkness was gathering. The moaning
little morsel of her flesh could not be comforted. She rocked it
violently, then gently. In neither way could she give it relief.
She knew not which direction she had taken, on what part of the
heath she was straying.
And now rain began to fall, and Mehetabel had to protect her child
from being drenched. For herself she had no thought. The rain came
down first in a slight sprinkle, and then in large drops, and a cold
wind swashed the drops into her face, blinding her.
All at once, in the uncertain light, she saw some dark gap open
before her as a grave. She would have fallen headlong into it had
she not arrested her foot in time. Then, with a gasp of relief she
recognized where she was.
She stood at the edge of the old mining ravine. This trench, cut in
the sandy down, had looked like a little bit of Paradise to the
child-eyes of the pupils of Betty Chivers in summer, when the air
was honey-sweet with the fragrance of the flowering furze, and
musical with the humming of bees; and the earth was clotted with
spilt raspberry cream--the many-tinged blossom of the heather--alas!
it was now sad, colorless, dripping, cold, and repellent.