'Where is my son?' shouted Mrs. De Witt, her temper having broken

control.

'You shall pay for the golden syrup,' said Mrs. Musset.

'Golden syrup!' jeered Mrs. De Witt, 'common treacle, the cleanings of

the niggers' feet that tread out the sugar-cane.'

'It shall be put down to you!' cried the mistress of the store, defying

her customer across the black river. 'I will have a summons out against

you for the syrup.'

'And I will have a search-warrant for my son.'

'I have not got him. I should be ashamed to keep him under my

respectable roof.'

'What is this disturbance about?' asked Mr. Musset, coming into the shop

with his pipe.

'I want my son,' cried the incensed mother. 'He has not been seen since

he came here last night. What have you done to him?'

'He is not here, Mistress. He only remained a few minutes to enquire

after Phoebe, and then he left. We have not seen him since. Go to the

Leather Bottle; you will probably find him there.'

The advice was reasonable; and having discharged a parting shot at Mrs.

Musset, the bereaved mother departed and took her way to the quaint old

inn by the waterside, entitled the Leather Bottle.

Mrs. De Witt pushed the door open and strode in. No one was there save

the host, Isaac Mead. He knew nothing of George's whereabouts. He had

not seen him or heard him spoken of. Mrs. De Witt having entered, felt

it incumbent on her to take something for the good of the house.

The host sat opposite her at the table.

'Where can he be?' asked Mrs. De Witt. 'The boy cannot be lost.'

'Have you searched everywhere?'

'I have asked the lads; they either know nothing, or won't tell. I have

been to the Musset's. They pretend they have not seen him since last

night.'

'Perhaps he rowed off somewhere.'

'His boat is on the Hard.'

'Do not bother your head about him,' said the host with confidence, 'he

will turn up. Mark my words. I say he will certainly turn up, perhaps

not when you want him, or where you expect him, but he assuredly will

reappear. I have had seven sons, and they got scattered all over the

world, but they have all turned up one after another, and,' he added

sententiously, 'the world is bigger than Mersea. It is nothing to be

away for twelve or fourteen hours. Lads take no account of time, they

do not walue it any more than they walue good looks. We older folks do;

we hold to that which is slipping from us. When we was children, we

thought we could deal with time as with the sprats. We draw in all and

throw what we can't consume away. At last we find we have spoiled our

fishing, and we must use larger meshes in our net. I will tell you

another thing, Mistress,' continued the host, who delighted to moralise,

'time is like a clock, when young it goes slow, and when old it gallops.

When you and I was little, we thought a day as long as now we find a

year. As we grew older years went faster; and the older we wax the

greater the speed with which time spins by; till at last it passes with

a whisk and a flash, and that is eternity.'

'He cannot be drowned,' said Mrs. De Witt. 'That would be too

ridiculous.'

'It would, just about.' After a moment's consideration Isaac added, 'I

heard that Elijah Rebow was on the Hard last night, maybe your George is

gone off with him.'

'Not likely, Isaac. I and Elijah are not on good terms. My father left

me nothing. Elijah took all after his parents, and I did not get a

penny.'

'You know we have war with foreigners,' observed the publican. 'Now I

observe that everything in this world goes by contraries. When there's

peace abroad, there is strife at home, and _vice versa_. There was a

man-of-war in the bay yesterday. I should not wonder if that put it

into George's head to be a man-of-peace on land. When you want to

estimate a person's opinions, first ask what other folks are saying

round him, and take the clean contrary, and you hit the bull's-eye. If

you see anything like to draw a man in one direction, look the opposite

way, and you will find him. There was pretty strong intimation of war

yesterday with the foreigners, then you may be dead certain he took a

peaceful turn in his perwerse vein, and went to patch up old quarrels

with Elijah.'

'It is possible,' said Mrs. De Witt. 'I will row to Red Hall and find

out.'

'Have another glass before you go,' said the landlord. 'Never hurry

about anything. If George be at his cousin's he will turn up in time.

There is more got by waiting than by worrying.'

'But perhaps he is not there.'

'Then he is elsewhere.'

'He may be drowned.'

'He will turn up. Drowned or not, he will turn up. I never knew boys to

fail. If he were a girl it would be different. You see it is so when

they drown. A boy floats face upwards, and a girl with her face down.

It is so also in life. If a girl strays from home, she goes to the

bottom like a plummet, but a boy on the contrary goes up like a cork.'

Mrs. De Witt so far took Isaac Mead's advice that she waited at her home

till afternoon. But as George did not return, she became seriously

uneasy, not so much for him as for herself. She did not for a moment

allow that any harm had befallen him, but she imagined this absence to

be a formal defiance of her authority. Such a revolt was not to be

overlooked. In Mrs. De Witt's opinion no man was able to stand alone,

he must fall under female government or go to the dogs. Deliberate

bachelors were, in her estimation, God-forsaken beings, always in

scrapes, past redemption. She had ruled her husband, and he had

submitted with a meekness that ought to have inherited the earth.

George had been always docile. She had bored docility into him with her

tongue, and hammered it into him with her fist.

The idea came suddenly on her,--What if he had gone to the war schooner

and enlisted? but was dismissed as speedily as impossible. Tales of

ill-treatment in the Navy were rife among the shoremen. The pay was too

small to entice a youth who owned a vessel, a billyboy, and oyster pans.

He might do well in his trade, he must fare miserably in the Navy.

Captain MacPherson had indeed invited George and others to follow him,

but not one had volunteered.

She determined at last, in her impatience, to visit Red Hall, and for

that purpose she got into the boat. Mrs. De Witt was able to row as well

as a man. She did not start for Red Hall without reluctance. She had not

been there since her marriage, kept away by her resentment. Elijah had

made no overtures to her for reconciliation, had never invited her to

revisit her native place, and her pride prevented her from making first

advances. She had been cut off by her father, the family had kept aloof

from her, and this had rankled in her heart. True, Elijah's father and

mother were dead, and he was not mixed up in the first contentions; but

he had inherited money which she considered ought to have fallen to her.

She was, however, anxious to see the old place again. Her young life

there had not been happy; quite the reverse, for her father had been

brutal, and her mother Calvinistic and sour. Yet Red Hall was, after

all, her old home; its marshes were the first landscape on which her

eyes had opened, its daisies had made her first necklaces, its bulrushes

her first whips, its sea-wall the boundary of her childish world. It

was a yearning for a wider, less level world, which had driven her in a

rash moment into the arms of Moses De Witt.

The tide was out, so Mrs. De Witt was obliged to land at the point near

the windmill. She walked thence on the sea-wall. She knew that wall

well, fragrant with sovereign wood in summer, and rank with sea spinach.

The aster blooming time was past, and the violet petals had fallen off,

leaving only the yellow centres.

There, before her, like a stranded ark, was the old red house,

unaltered, lonely, without a bush or tree to screen it.

The cattle stood browsing in the pasture as of old. In the marsh was a

pond, a flight of wild fowl was wheeling round it, as in the autumns

long ago. There was the little creek where her punt had lain, the punt

in which she had been sometimes sent to Mersea to buy groceries for her

mother.

The hard crust about the heart of Mrs. De Witt began to break, and the

warm feeling within to ooze through. Gentler sentiments began to

prevail. She would not take her son by the ears and bang his head, if

she should find him at Red Hall. She would forgive him in a Christian

spirit, and grant his dismissal with an innocuous curse.

She walked straight into the house. Elijah was crouched in his leather

chair, with his head on one side, asleep. She stood over him and

contemplated his unattractive face in silence, till he suddenly started,

and exclaimed, 'Who is here? Who is this?'

Next moment he had recognised his visitor.

'So you are come, Aunt. You have not honoured me before. Will you have

some whisky?'

'Thank you, Elijah, thank you. I am dry with rowing. But how come you

to be asleep at this time of day? Were you out after ducks last night?'

'No, I was not out. I lay abed. I went to bed early.'

'Elijah, where is my son?'

He started, and looked at her suspiciously.

'How am I to know?'

'I cannot find him anywhere,' said the mother. 'I fear the boy has

levanted. I may have been a little rough with him, but it was for his

good. You cannot clean a deck with whiting, you must take holystone to

the boards, and it is so with children. If you are not hard, you get

off no edges, if you want to polish them, you must be gritty yourself.

I doubt the boy is off.'

'What makes you think so?'

'I have not seen him. Nobody at Mersea has seen him. Have you?'

'Not since last night.'

'You saw him then?'

'Yes, he was on the beach going to Mehalah.'

'Galiwanting!' exclaimed Mrs. De Witt. 'Oh, what wickedness comes of

galiwanting!' Then, recovering herself, 'But how could he get there?

His boat was left on the Hard!'

'I suppose he went by land. He said something to that effect. You see

the tide would have been out if he purposed to stay some time.'

'But what should make him go to the Ray? He had seen Mehalah on his

boat.'

'He said there had been a quarrel, and he was bent on making it up. Go

and look for him on the Ray. If he is not back on your boat already, you

will find him, or hear of him, there.'

'Oh, the worries to parents that come of galiwanting!' moaned Mrs. De

Witt, 'none who have not experienced can tell. Do not stay me, Elijah.

Dear sackalive; I must go home. I dare say the boy is now on the

"Pandora," trying to look innocent.' She rubbed her hands, and her eyes

glistened. 'By cock!' she exclaimed, 'I would not be he.' She was out

of the room, without a farewell to her nephew, down the steps, away over

the flat to the sea-wall and her boat, her heart palpitating with anger.

It was late in the afternoon before Mrs. De Witt got back to Mersea.

She ascended her ladder and unlocked the hatches. She looked about her.

No George was on deck. She returned to the shore and renewed her

enquiries. He had not been seen. No doubt he was still galivanting at

the Ray. The uncertainty became unendurable. She jumped into her boat

once more, and rowed to the island inhabited by Glory and her mother.

With her nose high in the air, her cap-frills quivering, she stepped out

of the skiff. She had donned her military coat, to add to her imposing

and threatening aspect.

The door of the house was open. She stood still and listened. She did

not hear George's voice. She waited; she saw Mehalah moving in the

room. Once the girl looked at her, but there was neither recognition

nor lustre in her eyes. Mrs. De Witt made a motion towards her, but

Glory did not move to meet her in return.

As she stepped over the threshold, Mrs. Sharland, who was seated by the

fire, turned and observed her. The widow rose at once with a look of

distress in her face, and advanced towards her, holding out her hand.

'Where is George?' asked Mrs. De Witt, ignoring the outstretched palm,

in a hard, impatient tone.

'George!' echoed Mehalah, standing still, 'George is dead.'

'What nonsense!' said Mrs. De Witt, catching the girl by the shoulder

and shaking her.

'I saw him. He is dead.' She quivered like an aspen.

The blood had ebbed behind her brown skin. Her eyes looked in Mrs. De

Witt's face with a flash of agony in them.

'He came and looked in at the window at me, and cast me back the

keepsake I had given him, and which he swore not to part with while life

lasted.'

'Dear sackalive!' exclaimed Mrs. De Witt; 'the girl is dreaming or

demented. What is the meaning of all this, Mistress Sharland?'

'Last night,' explained the widow, 'as Mehalah was sitting here in the

dark, some one came to the window, stove it in--look how the lead is

torn, and the glass fallen out--and cast at the feet of Mehalah a medal

she had given George on Thursday. She thinks,' added the old woman in a

subdued tone, 'that what she saw was his spirit.'

Mrs. De Witt was awed. She was not a woman without superstition, but

she was not one to allow a supernatural intervention till all possible

prosaic explanations had been exhausted.

'Is this Gospel truth?' she asked.

'It is true,' answered the widow.

'Did you see the face, Glory? Are you sure that what you saw was

George?'

'I did not see the face. I saw only the figure. But it was George. It

could have been no other. He alone had the medal, and he brought it

back to me.'

'You see,' explained the widow Sharland, 'the coin was an heirloom; it

might not go out of the family.'

'I see it all,' exclaimed Mrs. De Witt. 'Galiwanting again! He came to

return the keepsake to Mehalah, because he wanted to break with her and

take on with another.'

'No, never!' exclaimed Mehalah vehemently. 'He could not do it. He was

as true to me as I am to him. He could not do it. He came to tell me

that all was over.'

'Dear sackalive!' said Mrs. De Witt, 'you don't know men as I do. You

have had no more experience of them than you have of kangaroos. I will

not believe he is dead.'

'He is dead,' Mehalah burst forth with fierce vehemence. 'He is

drowned, he is not false. He is dead, he is dead.'

'I know better,' said Mrs. De Witt in a low tone to herself as she bit

her thumb. 'That boy is galiwanting somewhere; the only question to me

is Where. By cock! I'd give a penny to know.'

*CHAPTER IX.*

*IN MOURNING.*

A month passed, and no tidings whatever of George De Witt had reached

his mother or Mehalah. The former constantly expected news of her son.

She would not believe in his death, and was encouraged in her opinion by

Isaac Mead. But Mehalah had never entertained hope; she did not look

for news, she knew that George was drowned.

His body had not been found. His disappearance had been altogether

mysterious. Mrs. De Witt used every effort to trace him, but failed.

From the moment the door of the Mussets had closed upon him, no one had

seen him. With the closing of that door the record of his life had

closed. He had passed as completely beyond pursuit as though he had

passed through the gate of death.

There was but one possible way of accounting for his disappearance, and

it was that at which public opinion arrived. He had gone round by the

Strood from Mersea to reach the Ray, which was on that side accessible,

but with difficulty, and occasionally only by land, had lost his way

among the saltmarshes in the night, had fallen into one of the myriad

creeks that traverse this desolate region, and had been engulfed in the

ooze. The sea will give up her dead after a storm and with the tide,

but the slime of the marshes never.

Mehalah made no attempt to account for the disappearance of George; it

was sufficient for her that he was lost to her for ever. But his mother

made enquiries when selling shrimps along the Colchester road, and on

the island. He had nowhere been seen. He had not visited the Rose.

It was Elijah Rebow who finally brought Mrs. De Witt to admit that her

son was entirely lost to her.

He visited her in November. She was surprised and pleased to see him.

Since the disappearance of George, Mrs. De Witt had taken more

vigorously than before to grog. Her feelings needed solace, and she

found it in her glass. Perhaps the presence of George had acted as a

restraint on his mother. She had not wished him to suppose her a

habitual tippler. Her libations had been performed when he was away, or

under the excuse of stomachics. On the subject of her internal

arrangements, discomforts, and requirements, Mrs. De Witt had afforded

her son information more copious than interesting. Her digestion

sympathised with all the convulsions then shaking Europe. Revolutions

were brought about there by the most ordinary edibles, and were always

to be reduced by spirituous drinkables.

The topic of her internal economy, when introduced by Mrs. De Witt,

always prefaced a resolve to try a drop of cordial. Now that George was

gone, Mrs. De Witt brooded over her loss at home, stirring her glass as

if it were the mud of the marshes, and she hoped to turn George up out

of the syrup of the dissolving sugar.

Mrs. De Witt had laid aside her red coat, as inappropriate to her

forlorn condition. The month of October had seen a sad deterioration in

the mistress of the 'Pandora.' Her funds had been fast ebbing. The

bread-winner was gone, and the rum-drinker had obtained fresh excuse for

deep potations. There were fish in the sea to be caught, but he that

had netted them was now under the mud. Things could not go on thus for

ever.

Mrs. De Witt was musing despondingly over her desperate position, when

Elijah appeared above the hatchway and descended to the cabin.

Mrs. De Witt had stuck a black bow in her mob cap, as a symbol of her

woe. She hardly needed to hang out the flag, for her whole face and

figure betokened distress. It cannot be said that her maternal bowels

yearned after her son out of love for him so much as out of solicitude

for herself. She naturally grieved for her 'poor boy,' but her grief

for him was largely tinctured with anxiety for her own future. How

should she live? On what subsist? She had her husband's old hull as a

home, and a fishing smack, and a rowing boat. There was some money in

the box, but not much. 'There's been no wasteful outlay over a

burying,' said Mrs. De Witt. 'That is a good job.'

But, as already said, Mrs. De Witt only yielded reluctantly to the

opinion that her boy was drowned. She held resolutely in public to this

view for reasons she confided to herself over her rum. 'It is no use

dropping a pint of money in dragging for the body, and burying it when

you've got it. To my notion that is laying out five pound to have the

satisfaction of spending another five. George was a gentleman,' she

said with pride. 'If he was to go from his pore mother, he went as

cheap from her as a lad could do it.'

Another reason why she refused to believe in his death was

characteristic of the illogicality of her sex. This she announced to

Rebow. 'You have it in a nutshell. How can the poor boy be drowned?

For, if so, what is to become of me, and I a widow?'

'Mrs. De Witt,' said Rebow, helping himself to some rum, 'you may as

well make your mind easy on this point. If George be not dead where can

he be?'

'That I do not take on myself to say.'

'He is nowhere on Mersea, is he?'

'Certainly not.'

'He did not go along the Colchester road beyond the Strood?'

'No, or I should have heard of him.'

'Moreover, he told me he purposed going to the Ray.'

'To be sure he did.'

'And he never reached the Ray.'

'No, for certain.'

'Then it is obvious he must have been lost between Mersea and the Ray.'

'There is something in what you say, Elijah; there is what we may term

argument in it.'

'There was a reason why he should go to the Ray.'

'I suppose there was.'

'He had quarrelled with Glory, and desired to make it up that night.'

'I know there had been a squall.'

'Then do not flatter yourself with false hopes. George is gone past

recall; you and Glory must give him up for ever.'

Mrs. De Witt shook her head, wiped her eyes with the frill of her cap,

looked sorrowfully into her glass and said, 'Pore me!'

'You are poor indeed,' said Elijah, 'but how poor I suspect rather than

know. What have you got to live upon?'

'That is just it,' answered Mrs. De Witt; 'my head has been like the

Swin light, a rewolving and a rewolving. But there is this difference,

the Swin rewolves first light and then dark alternately, whereas in my

head there has been naught rewolving but warious degrees of darkness.'

'What do you propose doing?'

'Well, I have an idea.' Mrs. De Witt hitched her chair nearer to her

nephew, and breathed her idea and her spirit together into his ear. 'I

think I shall marry.'

'You----!'

'Yes, I. Why not? There is the billyboy running to waste, rotting for

want of use, crying out for a master to take her out fishing. There are

as many fisher-boys on shore as there are sharks in the ocean, ready to

snap me up were I flung to them. I have felt them. They have been

a-nibbling round me already. Consider, Elijah! there is the "Pandora,"

good as a palace for a home, and the billyboy and the boat, and the

nets, and the oyster garden, and then there is my experience to be

thrown in _gratis_, and above all,' she raised herself, 'there is my

person.'

Rebow laughed contemptuously.

'What have these boys of their own?' asked Mrs. De Witt, laying down the

proposition with her spoon. 'They have nothing, no more than the

sea-cobs. They have naught to do but swoop down on whatever they can

see, sprats, smelt, mullet, whiting, dabs, and when there is naught

else, winkles. Their thoughts do not rise that proudly to me, and I

must stoop to them. I tell you what, Elijah, if I was to be raffled

for, at a shilling a ticket, there would be that run among the boys for

me, that I could make a fortune. But I won't demean myself to that. I

shall choose the stoutest and healthiest among them, then I can send him

out fishing, and he can earn me money, as did George, and so I shall be

able to enjoy ease, if not opulence.'

'But suppose the lads decline the honour.'

'I should like to see the impertinence of the lad that did,' said Mrs.

De Witt firmly. 'I have had experience with men, and I know them in and

out that familiarly that I could find my way about their brains or

heart, as you would about your marshes, in the dark. No, Elijah, the

question is not will they have me, but whether I will be bothered with

any more of the creatures. I will not unless I can help it. I will not

unless the worst comes to the worst. But a woman must live, Elijah.'

'How much have you got for current expenses?'

'Only a few pounds.'

'There are five and twenty pounds owed you by the Sharlands. You are

not going to let them have it as a present?'

'No, certain, I am not.'

'Do you expect to get it by waiting for it?'

'To tell you the truth, Elijah, I hadn't given that five and twenty

pounds a thought. I will go over to the Ray and claim the money.'

'You will not get it.'

'I must have it.'

'They cannot possibly pay.'

'But they shall pay. I want and will have my money.'

'Mehalah will pretend that George gave her the money.'

'No, she will not. She acknowledged the debt to me before George's

face. She promised repayment as soon as she had sufficient.'

'If you do not seize on their goods, or some of them, you will never see

the colour of the coin again.'

'I must and will have it.'

'Then follow my advice. Put in an execution. I will lend you my men.

All you have to do is to give notice on this island when the sale is to

be, get together sufficient to bid and buy, and you have your money. You

must have an auction.'

'Can I do so, Elijah?'

'Of course you can. Go over to the Ray at once and demand your money.

If they decline to pay, allow them a week's grace, more if you like.

I'll go with you, when the sale is to take place, and perhaps bid. We

will have a Dutch auction.'

'By cock! I'll do it. I will go there right on end.'

At once, with her natural impetuosity, the old woman started. Before

departing, however, to heighten her importance, and give authority and

sternness to her appearance, she donned her red coat. In token of

mourning she wrapped a black rag round her left arm. Over her cap she

put a broad-brimmed battered straw hat, in front of which she affixed

with a hair-pin the large black bow that had figured on her cap. Thus

arrayed she entered her boat and rowed to the Ray.

The demand for the money filled Mrs. Sharland with dismay. It was a

demand as unexpected as it was embarrassing. She and Mehalah were

absolutely without the means of discharging the debt. They had, indeed,

a few pounds by them, which had been intended to serve to carry them

through the winter, and these they offered Mrs. De Witt, but she refused

to receive a portion on account when she wanted the whole of the debt.

Mrs. Sharland entreated delay till spring, but Mrs. De Witt was

inexorable. She would allow no longer than a week. She departed,

declaring that she would sell them up, unless the five and twenty pounds

were produced.

Since the death or disappearance of George De Witt, Mehalah had gone

about her usual work in a mechanical manner. She was in mourning also.

But she did not exhibit it by a black bow on her cap or a sable rag

round her arm, like the mother of the lost lad. She still wore her red

cap, crimson kerchief and blue jersey. But the lustre was gone from her

eyes, the bloom from her cheek, animation from her lips. There was no

spring in her step, no lightness in her tone. The cow was milked as

regularly as usual, and foddered as attentively as before. The house

was kept as scrupulously clean, Mrs. Sharland ministered to with the

same assiduity, but the imperiousness of Mehalah's nature had gone. The

widow found to her astonishment that she was allowed to direct what was

to be done, and that her daughter submitted without an objection.

It is the way with strong natures to allow their griefs no expression,

to hide their sorrows and mask their wounds. Glory did not speak of

George. She did not weep. She made no lamentation over his loss; more

wonderful still in her mother's eyes, she uttered no reproaches against

anyone for it. A weak nature always exhausts its troubles in reproaches

of others; a strong one eats out its own heart. Mehalah listened with a

dull ear to her mother's murmurs, and made no response. Mrs. Sharland

set her down as unfeeling. A feeble querulous woman like her was quite

unable to measure the depth of her daughter's heart, and understand its

working. The result was that she read them wrong, and took false

soundings.

When her mother was in bed and asleep, then Mehalah sat at the hearth,

or leaned at the window looking at the stars, hour by hour, immovable,

uttering no sound, not building castles in the clouds, not weaving any

schemes for her future, not hoping for anything, not imagining anything,

but exhaling her pain. As the turned earth after the plough may be seen

in a sudden frost to smoke, so was it with that wounded heart, it

smoked, gave up its fever heat, and in silence and solitude cooled.

There was something, which yet was no _thing_, to which her weary soul

stretched, in dim unconsciousness. There was a communing without words,

even without the thoughts which form into words, with that Unseen which

is yet so surely felt. It was the spirit--that infinite essence so

mysteriously enclosed within bounds, in strange contradiction to its

nature, asserting its nature and yearning for Infinity.

The human heart in suffering is like the parched soil in summer; when

its sky is overcast and it cannot see beyond the cloud that lies low

over it, then it must harbour its heat, and gape with fever. But,

should a rent appear in the earthborn vaporous veil, through which it

can look into unfathomable space, at once it radiates the ardour that

consumes it, casts off the fever that consumes it, and drinks in, and is

slaked by, the dew of heaven.

*CHAPTER X.*

*STRUCK COLOURS.*

Woman is the natural enemy of woman. When one woman is over thirty or

plain, and the other is young or beautiful, the enmity on one side is

implacable and unqualified by mercy. A woman can be heroically

self-sacrificing and behave with magnificent generosity towards man, but

not towards one of her own sex. She is like the pillar that accompanied

the Israelites and confounded the Egyptians; she is cloud and darkness

to these, but light and fire to those. She will remorselessly pursue,

and vindictively torment a sister who offends by having a better profile

and less age. No act of submission will blunt her spite, no deed of

kindness sponge up her venom. There is but one unpardonable sin in the

sight of Heaven; there are two in the eyes of a middle-aged woman, youth

and beauty. She is unconscious of fatigue in the pursuit, and without

compunction in the treatment of the member of her sex who has sinned

against her in one particular or other. The eternal laws of justice,

the elementary principles of virtue, are set aside as inappropriate to

the world of women. Generosity, charity, pity are unknown quantities in

the feminine equation. As the Roman tyrant wished that mankind had but

one neck which he might hack through, so woman would like that womankind

had but one nose which she might put out of joint. Every woman is a

kill-joy to every other woman, a discord in the universal harmony. Her

ideal world is that of the bees, in which there is but one queen, and

all other shes are stung to death. Eve was the only woman who tasted of

happiness unalloyed, because in Eden she had no sisters.

The iron maid of Nuremberg was sweet and smiling externally, but a touch

revealed the interior bristling with spikes, and the victim thrust into

her embrace was only released a corpse to drop into an _oubliette_. All

women are Nuremberg maidens, with more or fewer spikes, discovered

perhaps by husbands, unsuspected by the rest of men, but known to all

other women, who are scarred from their embraces.

Mehalah knew that no leniency was to be looked for in Mrs. De Witt. She

thought that lady exceptionally rigorous and exacting; she thought so

because she knew nothing of the world. Her mother spent her breath in

repinings that could not help, and in hopes which must be frustrated.

The extremity of the danger roused Mehalah from her dreams. There was

no pity to be expected from the creditor, and there was no means that

she could see of defraying the debt. She considered and tried to find

some road out of the difficulty, but could discover none. Now more than

ever did she need the advice, if not the help, of him who was gone.

There was nothing on the farm that could be sold without leaving them

destitute of means of carrying it on and defraying the next half-year's

rent. The cow, the ewes, her boat, were necessary to them. The

furniture in the house was of little value, and it was impossible for

her to transport it to Colchester for sale.

She sat thinking of the situation one evening over the fire opposite her

mother, without uttering a word. Her hands with her knitting needles lay

in her lap; she could not work, she was too fully engrossed in the cares

which pressed on her.

Presently her mother roused her from her reverie, by saying, 'There is

no help for it, Mehalah, you must go to Wyvenhoe, and find out my

cousin, Charles Pettican. He is my only relative left;--at least as far

as I know, and him I have not seen for fifteen or sixteen years. I do

not even know if he be yet alive. We haven't had a chance of meeting.

I go nowhere, I am imprisoned on this island, and he is cut off from us

by the river Colne. I see no way out of our trouble but that of

borrowing money from him. He was a kind-hearted lively fellow when

young, but what he is now that he is old I cannot tell. You must go and

try what you can do with him. He is well off, and would not miss twenty

pounds more than twenty pence.'

Mehalah greatly disliked the idea of going to a stranger, to one who,

though a connection, was quite unknown to her, and begging a loan of

him. It galled her pride and wounded her independence. It lowered her

in her own eyes. She would rather have worked her fingers to the bone

than so stoop, but no work of hers could raise twenty pounds in a week.

The thought was altogether so intolerable to her, that she fought

against it as long as she could. She would herself cheerfully have gone

out of her home and left the farm rather than do this, but she was

obliged to consider her mother. She yielded at last most reluctantly;

and with tears of mortification filling her eyes, and her cheeks burning

with shame, she threw aside her customary costume, and dressed herself

in dark blue cloth gown, white kerchief, and a bonnet, and took her way

to Wyvenhoe. She had to walk some seven miles. Her road led her to the

top of high ground overlooking the mouth of the Colne.

The blue water was dotted with sails. Beyond the river on a height rose

from above trees the lofty tower of Brightlingsea. Up a winding creek

she looked, and at the head could distinguish the grey priory of St.

Osyth, then the seat of the Earl of Rochford, at the entrance to a noble

park. She descended the hill, and by a ferry crossed the river to the

village of Wyvenhoe.

On her walk she had mused over what she should say to Mr. Charles

Pettican, without coming to any determination. Her mother had let fall

some hints that her cousin had once been her fond admirer, but that they

had been parted by cruel parents. Mrs. Sharland's reminiscences were

rather vague, and not much reliance could be placed on them; however,

Mehalah hoped there might be some truth in this, and that old

recollections might be stirred in the breast of Mr. Pettican, and

stimulate him to generosity. The river was full of boats, and on the

landing were a number of people. 'We're lively to-day,' said the

ferryman who put her over, 'the regatta is on. It is late this season,

but what with one thing and another, we couldn't have it earlier no

way.'

'Will Mr. Pettican be there?'

'Lor bless you, no,' answered the man, 'that's impossible.'

Glory asked her way to the house of her mother's cousin. He was, or

rather had been, a shipbuilder. He occupied a little compact wooden

house painted white, on the outskirts of the village. It was a cheerful

place. The shutters were after the French fashion, external, and

painted emerald green. The roof was tiled and looked very red, as

though red ochred every morning by the housemaid after she had

pipeclayed the walls. Over the door of the house was a balcony with

elaborate iron balustrades gilt; against these leaned two figureheads,

females, with very pink and white complexions, and no expression in

their faces.

There was a sanded path led from the gate to the door, and there were

two green patches of turf, one on each side of it. In the centre of

that on the left was another figure-head--a Medusa with flying serpent

locks, but with a face as passionless and ordinary as that of a

milliner's block. In the midst of the other plot rose a mast. On this

day, when all Wyvenhoe was _en fete_, a flag ought properly to be flying

from the mast. Every other in the village and on the water was adorned

with its bunting, but that of Mr. Pettican alone ignored the festival.

As Mehalah ascended the walk, a gull with its wings clipped uttered a

fierce scream, and rushing across the garden with outspread pinions,

dashed at her foot with his sharp beak, and then falling back, threw out

his breast, elevated his bill, and broke into a long succession of

discordant yells, whoops, and gulps.

At the same moment one pane in the window on the right of the door

opened, a little dry face peered through and nodded.

'If you're going to knock, don't. Come in, and make no noise about it.

It's very kind. She's out.'

The gull made a second assault at Mehalah's foot.

'Kick him,' said the face; 'don't fear you will hurt him. He is as good

as a watch dog. Open the door, and when you are in the hall turn to the

right-hand.'

Then the pane was slammed to, and Mehalah turned the handle of the front

door. She found herself in a narrow passage with a flight of very steep

stairs before her, and a door on each hand. Over each of these on a

bracket stood a ship fully rigged, with all her sail on.

She entered the room on the right as directed, and found herself in a

little parlour with very white walls, and portraits of ships, some in

worsted work on canvas, others painted in oils, others again in

water-colours, covering the walls.

In the window, half sat, half reclined, an old man, with a scrubby grey

head, a pair of very lively eyes, but with a trembling feeble mouth.

He wore very high shirt-collars, exceedingly stiff, and thick folds of

black silk round his neck. His blue coat had a high black velvet

collar. The little man seemed to draw his head in between his blinkers

and beneath his coat-collar, and lose his face in his cravat, then at

will to project his head from them, as though he were a tortoise

retiring into or emerging from his shell.

As Glory came in, the little wizened face was scarce perceptible, save

that the bright eyes peeped and twinkled at her from somewhere in a

chaos of black velvet, blue cloth, white linen, and black silk; then all

at once the head shot forward, and a cheery voice said, 'I can't rise to

meet you, Mary,' he made at the same time a salutation with his hand,

'or I would throw myself at your feet. Glad to see you. How are you,

Lizzy, my dear.'

'My name is neither Mary nor Lizzy, but Mehalah.'

'Let it be Methuselah or Melchisedek, or what you like, it is all one to

me. I don't care for the name you give a wine when it is good, I drink

it and smack my lips, whether you call it Port, or Tarragona, or

Roussillon; and I don't bother about a girl's name. If she is sweet and

sunny, and bright and pretty as'--he made a little bow and a great

flourish of his hand as a salute--'as you are, I see her and listen to

her, and admire her.'

'My name's----'

'I have told you it don't matter. I never yet met with a girl's name

that wasn't pretty, except one, and I thought that pretty once.'

'What name?'

'Admonition.'

'Why do you not like it?'

The little man looked out of the window, along the walls, then turned

his head round and sighed. 'Never mind. Do you see that figure-head

out there? It belonged to a wessel I built; she was called the

"Medusa." Bad luck attended her. She was always fouling other wessels.

She ran down a Frenchman once, but that was no matter, and she did the

same by a Dutchman. Well, at last she got such a character that I was

forced to change her head and her name, but then she fared worse than

before. Changing their names don't always mend wessels and women.

Well!' with another sigh, 'we will leave unpleasant topics, and laugh

and be jolly while we may. You haven't told me how you are. This is

very kind of you to drop in on me. It is like old times; my halcyon

days, as I think they call 'em. I haven't had such a wisit since,' he

waved towards his flagstaff, 'since I lowered my flag.'

'But, sir,' said Mehalah, 'you must let me explain my purpose in coming

here; and to do that, I must tell you who I am, and whence I come.'

'I don't want to hear it. I don't care a bit about it. Be jolly and

gather the rosebuds while you may. She ain't out for long, and we must

be joyful at such opportunities as are afforded us. I know as well as

you do why you have come. You have come in the goodness of your female

heart to cheer a poor crippled wretch like me.'

'I did not know you were a cripple, sir!'

'You didn't. Give me my crutches. Look at this.' He placed his

crutches under his arms, swung himself dexterously off his chair, and

stumped round the room, dragging his lower limbs behind him, as though

they did not belong to him. They were lifeless. When he returned to

his seat he threw himself down. 'Now, Jemima, put up my legs on that

chair. I can't stir them myself. I couldn't raise them an inch if you

was to promise me a kiss for my pains. There, thank ye; now sit down

and be jolly.'

'Sir,' said Mehalah, 'you remember my mother, Mistress Sharland.'

'What! Liddy Vince, pretty cousin Liddy! I should think I did remember

her. Why, it is only the other day that she married.'

'I am her daughter, and my age is nineteen.'

'I haven't seen her for--well, never mind how many years. Years don't

tell on a man as they do on a woman; they mellow him, but wither her.

So you are her daughter, are you? Stand round there by my feet where I

can see you.'

He drew his head down among his clothes and peered at her from between

his tall white collars. 'You are an uncommon fine girl,' he said, when

his observation was completed, 'but not a bit like Liddy. You are more

like her mother--she was the deuce of a splendid woman, such eyes, such

hair--but she was a----' he hesitated, his courtesy forbade his saying

what rose to the tongue.

'A gipsy;' Mehalah supplied the words.

'Well, she was, but she couldn't help it, you know. But that is not what

I was about to say. I intended to observe that she was a--little before

my time. She was old when I knew her, but I've heard what a beauty she

was, and her eyes always remained large and noble, and her hair

luxuriant. But women don't improve with age as does good port, and as

do men. Well, now, tell me your name.'

'Mehalah.'

'A regular Essex marshland name. I hope I shall remember it. But I

have to carry so many names of nice-looking girls in my head, and of

ships I have built, that they run one another down, and I cannot be sure

to recall them. My memory is not going. Don't suppose that. Why,

bless your dear heart, I can remember everything your mother and I said

to one another when we were sweet upon each other. That don't look like

a failing memory, does it? But you see, as we go on in life, every day

brings something more to remember, and so this head gets choke full. A

babe a year old has some three hundred and sixty-five things to

recollect, that is if he remembers only one thing per diem, and a man of

fifty has over eighteen million of things stuffed away in this little

warehouse,' tapping his head; 'so he has to rummage and rout before he

can find the particular article he wants. His memory don't go with age,

but gets overchoked. Now, to change the topic, why haven't you been to

see me before?'

'Sir! I could not. I did not know you, and you live a long way from

the Ray. Mother cannot walk so far.'

'And I can't neither, but not from age but from accident. So your

mother can't walk a matter of seven miles. Dear me! How women do

deteriorate either with age or with marriage! I could; I would think

nothing of it but for my accident. Now tell me what has brought you

here, Mehalaleel?'

'I have come,' answered Mehalah, looking down, 'because driven by

necessity to apply to you, as our only relative.'

'Bless my soul! Want my help! How? I wish I could as easily apply for

yours. My dear girl, I am past help. I've hauled down my flag. All is

up with me. I'm drawn up on the mud and put to auction. They are

breaking me up. Tell your mother so. Tell her that time was--but let

bygones be bygones. How is she looking? Are the roses altogether

faded?'

'She is very feeble and suffering. She is greatly afflicted with ague.'

'She had it as a girl. One day as I was courting her and whispering

pretty things in her ear, she was going to blush and smile, when all at

once the fit of shivers came on her, and she could do nought but chatter

her teeth and turn green and stream with cold sweat. So she is very

feeble, is she?'

'She is weak and ailing.'

'Women never do improve, like men, by ripening,' said Mr. Pettican.

'Girls are angels up to one and twenty, some a little bit later, but

after that they deteriorate and become old cats. They are roses up to

marriage and after that are hips, with hard red skins outside and choke

and roughness within. Men are quite the reverse. They are louts to

twenty-five, as unformed in body as young colts, and in mind as young

owls; after that they begin to ripen, and the older they get the better

they grow. A man is like a medlar, only worth eating when rotten. A

young man is raw and hard and indigestible, but a man of forty is full

of juice and sweetness. Now don't tell your mother what I have said

about old women.'

'I will not.'

'Sit ye down, sit ye down, and be jolly. Don't stand. It does not fare

to be comfortable.'

'Sir, I must mention the object of this visit.'

'All in good time. But first let us be jolly. Give me some fun, I

haven't had any since--since,' he pointed sadly to his flagless staff

and shook his head. 'It is all up with me, save when a stray gleam of

liveliness and mirth shoots athwart my gloomy sky. But that is rarely

the case now.'

'Thank you, sir,' said Mehalah, taking a chair. 'Now to the point.'

'First be jolly. I have enough of mouths drawn down at the corners--but

never mind now. Begone dull care, thou canker. Come! I should like

your mother to know all about me. You will tell her how young I am

looking. You will say that I would be sure to come tripping over to see

her but for my accident.'

'I will tell her how I have seen you.'

'You needn't dwell on the crutches; but she knows, she has heard of that

affliction of mine, it was the talk of the county, thousands of tender

hearts beat in sympathy with me. My accident is one of long standing. I

won't say when it happened. I have not a good head for dates, but

anyhow it was not quite last year, or the year before that. It has told

on me. I look older than I really am, and yet I am hearty and well. I

have such an appetite. Just pull me up, dear, in the chair, and I will

tell you what I eat. I had a rasher of bacon and a chop for breakfast,

and a pewter of homebrewed beer; that don't look like a failing

digestion, does it. And I shall eat,--Lord bless you! You would laugh

to see me at my dinner, I eat like a ploughboy. That is not like the

decay of old age attacking the witals, is it, my pretty? Now listen to

me, and I will tell you all about it. Do you chance to notice here and

there a little grey in my hair? Just as though a few grains of salt had

dropped among black pepper? They come of care, dearest, not of years.

I never had a grizzled hair on my head till--till I struck my colours.

Now I'll tell you all about it, and you tell your mother. She will pity

me. One day in my yard I stumbled over a round of timber and fell on my

back on it, and hurt my spine, and I've been a cripple ever since. It

is a sad pity--such a fine, strapping, manly fellow as I, in the prime

of age, to be laid by like an old condemned wessel! Well! here I have

had to lie in my window, looking out, and not seeing much to interest

me. But the girls of Wyvenhoe, bless their kind hearts,--they are

angels up to one and twenty--used to come to the window, and wish me a

good day, and ask after my health, and have pleasant little gossips, and

be altogether jolly. Next, whenever they could, some one or two would

bring her knitting or needlework, and come in, and sit here and spend an

hour or so, talking, laughing and making fun. That was pleasant, wasn't

it? It is wonderful what a lot those dear girls had to say for

themselves; they became quite confidential with me, and told me all

their love affairs, and how matters stood, and who their sweethearts

were. It was worth while being ill and laid on one's back to enjoy such

society. Whenever I was dull and wanted some chat, I sent my man to

hoist the flag, and the next girl that went by, "Ah!" said she, "there's

that poor fellow would like my society," and in she came and sat talking

with me as long as she was able. Then sometimes I had a dish of tea

brought in, or some cakes, or fruit. It was a pleasant time. I wish it

were to come over all again. Tell your mother all this. I was quite

the pet of all the kind-hearted young folks in Wyvenhoe. Now that is

over. I'll tell you about it.' He sighed and passed a shaking hand

over his bright, twinkling eyes. 'You must explain it all to your

mother--Liddy that was. You see, I don't forget her name. Now tell me

yours again; it is gone from me.'

'Mehalah.'

'I'll write it down in my note-book and then I shall remember it. My

memory is overstocked, and it takes me a deal of time to find in it what

I want. But your mother's name don't get buried, but lies at hand on

the top. You'll tell her so. Now about my troubles. There was one

damsel, who was called Admonition; and she was very particularly

pleasant and attentive to me, and many a little teasing and joking I had

with her about her name. She was the girl fullest of fun, she regularly

brimmed over with it, and it ran down her sides. She was a milliner,

and had to work for her living. She had no relations and no money of

her own. It is curious what a lot of cousins she has now, mostly in the

sea-faring line, and all young. Then she was always ready for a chat.

She would bring her needlework and sit with me by the hour. I thought

it vastly pleasant, and how much more pleasant it would be if she were

always by my side to keep me laughing and chirpy. I must tell you that

I go down some degrees when alone,--not that my spirits fail me with

age,--it is constitutional. I was so as a boy.--Bless me! it seems to me

only the other day when I was a romping lout of a lad--I'm crisp and

crackly like seaweed in an East wind when I am in female society, that

is, female society up to one and twenty--but I'm like the same seaweed

in a Sou'wester when I'm alone. One day the flag was flying, but no

visitor came except Admonition. It was the day of the Regatta. She

said, and the tears came into her eyes, that she was a lone girl, with

no one to accompany her, so she had come to sit with me. She tried to

cheer up and laugh, but she felt her loneliness so that my heart was

touched, and I proposed and we were married.' There ensued a long

pause. Mr. Pettican looked out of the window. 'I had a queer sort of

premonitory feeling when I said, "I take thee Admonition to my wedded

wife," but it was too late then to retract. Now the flag that has

braved a thousand breezes is down. It has not flown since that day.'

'Where is Mrs. Pettican now?' asked Mehalah.

'At the Regatta,' answered the cripple. 'You'll tell your mother how I

am situated. She will drop a tear for poor Charlie. I will tell you

what, Me----' he looked at his note-book, 'Mehalah; men fancy all girls

sultana raisins, but when they bite them they get very hard pips between

their teeth. There's a Methodist preacher here has been haranguing on

conversion, and persuading Admonition that she is a new creature. I

know she is. She was converted on the day of the marriage ceremony; but

the conversion was not something to boast of. Matrimony with women is

what jibbing is with ships, they go through a movement of staggering and

then away they start off on a tack clean contrary to the course they

were sailing before. Marriage, Mehalah, is like Devonshire cream; it is

very rich and tasty, but it develops a deal of bile. Look here, my

pretty!' In a moment he was off his chair, stumping in his crutches

round the room, dragging his paralysed limbs after him. He returned to

his chair. 'Put up my legs, dear,' he begged; then said, 'That is the

state of my case; my better half is Admonition, the poor paralysed,

helpless, dead half is me.'

He did not speak for some moments, but brushed his eyes with his feeble

hand. At last he said, 'I've unburdened my soul. Tell your mother.

Now go ahead, and let me know what you want.'

Mehalah told Mr. Pettican the circumstances. She said that her mother

wanted a loan of fifteen or twenty pounds. If she could not procure the

sum, she would have her cow taken from her, then they would be unable to

pay the rent next Lady Day, and be without milk for the winter. They

would be turned out of the little farm on which her mother had lived so

long, in quiet and contentment, and this would go far to break her

mother's heart. She told him candidly that the loan could only be

repaid in instalments.

The old man listened patiently, only passing his hand in an agitated

manner across his face several times.

'I wish I could help you,' he said, when she had done; 'I have money. I

have laid by some. There is plenty in the box and more at the bank, but

I can't get at it.'

'Sir!'

'Before I struck my colours, Mehalah, I did what I liked with my money;

on market days my man went into Colchester, and I always gave him a

little sum to lay out in presents for my kind visitors. Bless you; a

very trifle pleased them. It is different now. I don't spend a penny

myself. The money is spent for me. I don't keep the key of my cashbox.

Admonition has it.'

'Then,' said Mehalah, rising from her seat, 'all is over with us. My

mother, your cousin, will in her old age be cast destitute into the

world. But, if you really wish to help her, be a man, use your

authority, and do what you choose with your own.'

'Bless me!' exclaimed Mr. Pettican touching his brow with his trembling

hand, 'I will be a man. Am I not a man! If I don't exert my authority,

people will say I am in my dotage. I--I--in my flower and cream of my

age--in the dotage! Go, Me----' he looked in his note-book, 'Mehalah,

fetch me my cashbox, it is in the bedroom cupboard upstairs, on the

right, over this. Bring the box down. Stay though! Before you come

down just feel in my wife's old dress pocket. She may have forgotten to

take her keys with her to the Regatta. It is just possible.'

'I cannot do that.'

'Well, no, perhaps you had better not. Do you happen to have a bunch of

keys with you?'

'No, sir.'

'Well, never mind. Bring me the case. I will be a man. I will show

the world I am not in my dotage. I will be of the masculine gender,

dative case, if it pleases me, and Admonition may lump it if she don't

like it.'

Mehalah obeyed. She found the box, which was of iron, brought it

downstairs, and placed it on the table by Mr. Pettican. 'I've been

turning the matter over in my mind,' said he, 'and I see a very happy

way out of it without a row. Give me the poker. You will find a cold

chisel in that drawer.'

'I will tell you my idea. Whilst I am left here all alone, burglars

have broken into the house, knowing my helpless condition, and have

ransacked the place, found my cashbox and broken it open.' He chuckled

and rubbed his hands. 'I shall be able accurately to describe the

ruffians. One has a black moustache, and the other a red beard, and

they look like foreigners and speak a Dutch jargon.'

He put the chisel to the lid, and struck at it with the poker, starting

the hinges by the blow.

At that moment the door was flung wide, and in swam a dashing young

woman in very gay colours, on the arm of a yachtsman.

'Charles!' she cried; 'what are you after?' then turning abruptly on

Mehalah, 'And pray what are you doing here, in my house?' Mr.

Pettican's head, which had been craned forward in eagerness over the

box, retreated amidst the collar and cravat, and almost disappeared.

'Who are you?' she asked of Mehalah, with an insulting air. 'Out of

this house with you at once!'

'My dear Monie!' pleaded Mr. Pettican, lifting his shaking hands into an

attitude of prayer.

'No "My dears" and "Monies" to me,' said the wife. 'I want to know what

you are after with my cashbox? Ho, ho! trying to prize it open and

squander my little sums laid aside for household expenses on--Heaven

knows whom.'

'Mr. Pettican is my mother's cousin,' said Mehalah.

'Cousin, indeed! never heard Mr. Pettican speak of you. Cousins are

sure to turn up when money is wanted.'

'Mr. Pettican,' said Mehalah, refusing to notice the insolent woman, 'be

a man and let me have the money you promised.'

'I should like to be a man, oh! I wish I were a man! But I can't, I

can't indeed, dear. I haven't been myself since I hauled down my flag.'

'Charles, hold out your hand, and invite my cousin Timothy to dinner.

He has kindly consented to stay a fortnight with us.'

'Timothy!' echoed Mr. Pettican, 'I did not know you had such a cousin.'

'Do you think you know anything of my relations?' exclaimed Admonition;

'I should hope not, they are a little above your sphere. There are lots

more cousins!'

The poor little man sat shrinking behind his blinkers, peering piteously

now at Mehalah, and then at his wife.

'Be a man,' said Mehalah, grasping him by both hands. 'Save us from

ruin.'

'Can't do it, Pretty, can't. I have struck my colours.'

*CHAPTER XI*

*A DUTCH AUCTION.*

Mehalah returned sadly to the Ray. The hope that had centred in help

from Wyvenhoe had been extinguished.

Her mother was greatly disappointed at the ill-success of the

application, but flattered at her cousin's recollection of her.

'If it had not been for that woman's coming in when she did, we should

have had the money,' said Mrs. Sharland. 'What a pity she did not

remain away a little longer. Charles is very well disposed, and would

help us if he could pluck up courage to defy his wife. Suppose you try

again, Mehalah, some other day, and choose your time well.'

'I will not go there again, mother.'

'If we do get turned out of this place we might settle at Wyvenhoe, and

then choose our opportunity.'

'Mother, the man is completely under his wife's thumb. There is no help

to be found there.'

'Then, Mehalah, the only chance that remains, is to get the money from

the Mersea parson.'

'He cannot help us.'

'There is no harm trying.'

The day on which Mrs. De Witt had threatened to come had passed, without

her appearing. True it had blown great guns, and there had been storms

of rain. Mrs. Sharland hoped that the danger was over. The primitive

inhabitants of the marshes had dwelt on piles, she built on straws.

Some people do not realise a danger till it is on them and they cannot

avert it. Mrs. Sharland was one of these. She liked her grievance, and

loved to moan over it; if she had not a real one she invented one, just

as children celebrate funerals over dolls. She had been so accustomed

to lament over toy troubles that when a real trouble threatened she was

unable to measure its gravity.

She was a limp and characterless woman. Mehalah had inherited the rich

red blood of her grandparents, and Mrs. Sharland had assimilated only

the water, and this flowed feebly through her pale veins. Her nature

was parasitic. She could not live on her own root, but must adhere to a

character stronger than herself. She had hung on and smothered her

husband, and now she dragged at her daughter. Mehalah must stand

upright or Mrs. Sharland would crush her to the ground. There are women

like articles of furniture that will 'wobble' unless a penny or a wedge

of wood be put under their feet. Mrs. Sharland was always crying out

for some trifle to steady her.

Mehalah did not share her mother's anticipations that the danger had

passed with the day, that Mrs De Witt's purpose had given way to kinder

thoughts; she was quite sure that she would prove relentless and push

matters to extremities. It was this certainty which drove her to act

once more on her mother's suggestion, and go to the Mersea Rectory, to

endeavour to borrow the sum of money needed to relieve them from

immediate danger.

She found the parson in his garden without his coat, which hung on the

hedge, making a potatoe pie for the winter.

He was on all fours packing the tubers in straw. His boots and gaiters

were clogged with clay.

'Hallo!' he exclaimed as Mehalah came up. 'You are the girl they call

Glory? Look here. I want you to see my kidneys. Did you ever see the

like, come clean out of the ground without canker. Would you like a

peck? I'll give them you. Boil beautiful.'

'I want to speak with you, sir.'

'Speak then by all means, and don't mind me. I must attend to my

kidneys. A fine day like this is not to be wasted at this time of the

year. Go on. There is an ashtop for you. I don't care for the potatoe

as a potatoe. It don't boil all to flour as I like. You can have a few

if you like. Now go on.'

Down went his head again, and was buried in a nest of straw. Mehalah

waited. She did not care to address his back and legs, the only part of

his person visible.

'You can't be too careful with potatoes,' said the parson, presently

emerging, very red in the face, and with a pat of clay on his nose.

'You must make them comfortable for the winter. Do to others as you

would they should do to you. Keep them well from frost, and they will

boil beautiful all the winter through. Go on with your story. I am

listening,' and in went the head again.

Mehalah lost heart. She could not begin thus.

'Pah! how I sweat,' exclaimed the parson, again emerging. 'The sun

beats down on my back, and the black waistcoat draws the heat. And we

are in November. This won't last. Have you your potatoes in, Glory?'

'We have only a few on the Ray.'

'You ought to have more. Potatoes like a light soil well drained. You

have gravel, and with some good cow-dung or sheep-manure, which is

better still, with your fall, they ought to do primely. I'll give you

seed. It is all nonsense, as they do here, planting small whole

potatoes. Take a good strong tuber, and cut it up with an eye in each

piece; then you get a better plant than if you keep the little

half-grown potatoes for seed. However, I'm wasting time. I'll be back

in a moment. I must fetch another basket load. Go on with your story

all the same: I can hear you. I shall only be in the shed behind the

Rectory.'

Parson Tyll was a curate of one parish across the Strood and of the two

on the island. The rector was non-resident, on the plea of the

insalubrity of the spot. He had held the rectory of one parish and the

vicarage of the other thirty years, and during that period had visited

his cures twice, once to read himself in, and on the other occasion to

exact some tithes denied him.

'All right,' said Mr. Tyll, returning from the back premises, staggering

under a crate full of roots. 'Go on, I am listening. Pick up those

kidneys which have rolled out. Curse it, I hate their falling and

getting bruised; they won't keep. There now, you never saw finer

potatoes in your life than these. My soil here is the same as yours on

the Ray. Don't plant too close, and not in ridges. I'll tell you what

I do. I put mine in five feet apart and make heaps round each. I don't

hold by ridges. Hillocks is my doctrine. Go on, I am listening. Here,

lend me a hand, and chuck me in the potatoes as I want them. You can

talk all the same.'

Parson Tyll crept into his heap and seated himself on his haunches.

'Chuck away, but not too roughly. They mustn't be bruised. Now go on, I

can stack the tubers and listen all the same.'

'Sir,' said Mehalah, out of heart at her reception, 'we are in great

trouble and difficulty.'

'I have no doubt of it; none in the world. You don't grow enough

potatoes. Now look at my kidneys. They are the most prolific potatoes I

know. I introduced them, and they go by my name. You may ask for them

anywhere as Tyll's kidneys. Go on, I am listening.'

'We owe Mrs. De Witt a matter of five and twenty pounds,' began Mehalah,

red with shame; 'and how to pay her we do not know.'

'Nor I,' said the parson. 'You have tried to go on without potatoes,

and you can't do it. Others have tried and failed. You should keep

geese on the saltings, and fowls. Fowls ought to thrive on a sandy

soil, but then you have no corn land, that makes a difference. Potatoes,

however, especially my kidneys, ought to be a treasure to you. Take my

advice, be good, grow potatoes. Go on, I am listening. Chuck me some

more. How is the stock in the basket? Does it want replenishing? Look

here, my lass, go to the coach-house and bring me some more. There is a

heap in the corner; on the left; those on the right are ashtops. They go

in a separate pie. You can talk as you go, I shall be here and

harkening.'

Mehalah went sullenly to the place where the precious roots were stored,

and brought him a basketful.

'By the way,' said the parson, peeping out of his mole-hill at her, 'it

strikes me you ought not to be here now. Is there not a sale on your

farm to-day?'

'A sale, sir?'

'A sale, to be sure. Mrs. De Witt has carried off my clerk to act as

auctioneer, or he would be helping me now with my potatoes. She has

been round to several of the farmers to invite them to attend and bid,

and they have gone to see if they can pick up some ewes or a cow cheap.'

Mehalah staggered. Was this possible?

'Go on with your story, I'm listening,' continued the parson, diving

back into his burrow, so that only the less honourable extremity of his

vertebral column was visible. 'Talk of potatoes. There's not one to

come up to Tyll's kidneys. Go on, I am all attention! Chuck me some

more potatoes.'

But Mehalah was gone, and was making the best of her way back.

Parson Tyll was right. This fine November day was that which it had

struck Mrs. De Witt was most suitable for the sale, that would produce

the money.

Mehalah had not long left the Strood before a strange procession began

to cross the Marshes.

Mrs. De Witt sat aloft in a tax-cart borrowed of Isaac Mead, the

publican, by the side of his boy who drove. Behind, very uncomfortably,

much in the attitude of a pair of scissors, sat the clerk, folded nearly

double in the bottom of the cart; his head reclined on Mrs. De Witt's

back and the seat of the vehicle, his legs hung over the board at the

back, and swung about like those of a calf being carried to market or to

the butcher's. Mrs. De Witt wore her red coat, and a clean washed or

stiffly starched cap. She led the way. The road over the Marshes was

bad, full of holes, and greasy. A recent tide had corrupted the clay

into strong brown glue.

The farmers and others who followed to attend the sale had put up their

gigs and carts at the cottage of the Strood keeper, and pursued their

way on foot. But Mrs. De Witt was above such feebleness of nerve. She

had engaged the trap for the day, and would take her money's worth out

of it. The boy had protested at the Strood that the cart of his master

could not go over the marshes, that Isaac Mead had not supposed it

possible that it would be taken over so horrible and perilous a road.

Mrs. De Witt thereupon brought her large blue gingham umbrella down on

the lad's back, and vowed she would open him like an oyster with her

pocket-knife unless he obeyed her. She looked quite capable of

fulfilling her threat, and he submitted.

The cart jerked from side to side. The clerk's head struck Mrs. De Witt

several sharp blows in the small of her back. She turned sharply round,

pegged at him with the umbrella, and bade him mind his manners.

'Let me get out. I can't bear this, ma'am,' pleaded the man.

'It becomes you to ride to the door as the officer of justice,' answered

she. 'If I can ride, so can you. Lie quiet,' and she banged at him with

the umbrella again.

At that moment there came a jolt of a more violent description than

before, and Mrs. De Witt was suddenly precipitated over the

splash-board, and, after a battle in the air, on the back of the

prostrate horse, with her feet, hands and umbrella she went into a mud

hole. The horse was down, but the knees of the clerk were up far above

his head. He struggled to rise, but was unable, and could only bellow

for assistance.

Mrs. De Witt picked herself up and assisted the boy in bringing the

horse to his feet again. Then she coolly pinned up her gown to her

knees, and strode forward. The costume was not so shocking to her

native modesty as might have been supposed, nor did it scandalise the

farmers, for it was that adopted by the collectors of winkles on the

flats. The appearance presented by Mrs. De Witt was, however,

grotesque. In the mud her legs had sunk to the knees, and they looked

as though she wore a pair of highly polished Hessian boots. The skirt

and the red coat gave her a curious nondescript military cut, as half

Highlander. Though she walked, she would not allow the clerk to

dismount. She whacked at the pendant legs when they rose and protested,

and bade the fellow lie still; he was all right, and it was only proper

that he, the functionary on the occasion, should arrive in state,

instead of on his own shanks.

'If you get up on the seat you'll be bobbed off like a pea on a drum.

Lie in the bottom of the cart and be peaceful, as is your profession,'

said Mrs. De Witt, with a dig of the umbrella over the side.

They formed a curious assemblage. There were the four brothers Marriage

of Peldon, not one of whom had taken a wife. Once, indeed, the

youngest, Herbert, had formed matrimonial schemes; but on his

ventilating the subject, had been fallen on by his three brothers and

three unmarried sisters who kept house for them, as though he had hinted

the introduction of a cask of gunpowder into the cellars. He had been

scolded and lectured, and taunted, as the apostate, the profligate, the

prodigal, who was bent on the ruin of the family, the dissipation of the

accumulated capital of years of labour, the introducer of discord into a

united household. And yet the household was only united in theory, in

fact the brothers were always fighting and swearing at one another about

the order of the work to be executed on the farm, and the sisters

quarrelled over the household routine.

There was Joshua Pudney, of Smith's Hall, who loved his bottle and

neglected his farm, who grew more thistles than wheat, and kept more

hunters than cows, a jolly fat red-faced man with white hair, always in

top boots. Along with him was Nathaniel Pooley, who combined preaching

with farming, was noted for sharp practice in money matters, and for not

always coming out of pecuniary transactions with clean hands. Pudney

cursed and Pooley blessed, yet the labourers were wont to say that

Pudney's curses broke no bones, but Pooley's blessings did them out of

many a shilling. Pudney let wheat litter in his stubble, and bid the

gleaners go in and be damned, when he threw the gate open to them.

Pooley raked the harvest field over thrice, and then opened the gleaning

with an invocation to Providence to bless the widow, the fatherless, and

the poor who gathered in his fields.

Farmer Wise was a gaunt, close-shaven man, always very neatly dressed, a

great snuff-taker. He was a politician, and affected to be a Whig,

whilst all the rest of his class were Tories. He was argumentative,

combative, and cantankerous, a close, careful man, and reported a miser.

A dealer, riding a black pony, a wonderful little creature that

scampered along at a flying trot, came up and slackened rein. He was a

stout man in a very battered hat, with shabby coat; a merry man, and a

good judge of cattle.

The proceedings of the day were, perhaps, hardly in accordance with

strict English law, but then English law was precisely like Gospel

precepts, made for other folk. On the Essex marshes people did not

trouble themselves much about the legality of their proceedings; they

took the law into their own hands. If the law suited them they used it,

if not they did without it. But, legally or not legally, they got what

they wanted. It was altogether inconvenient and expensive for the

recovery of a small debt to apply to a solicitor and a magistrate, and

the usual custom was, therefore, to do the thing cheaply and easily

through the clerk of the parish constituted auctioneer for the occasion,

and the goods of the defaulter were sold by him to an extemporised

assembly of purchasers on any day that suited the general convenience.

The clerk so far submitted to legal restrictions that he did not run

goods _up_, but down; he began with an absurdly high figure, instead of

one preposterously low.

When the cart and its contents and followers arrived at the Ray, the

horse was taken out, and the vehicle was run against a rick of hay, into

which the shafts were deeply thrust, so as to keep the cart upright,

that it might serve as a rostrum for the auctioneer.

'We'll go and take stock first,' said the clerk; 'we've to raise

twenty-five pounds for the debt and twenty shillings my costs. What is

there to sell?'

'Wait a bit, gaffer,' said the cattle jobber; 'you're a trifle too

quick. The old lady must demand the money first.'

'I'm agoing to do so, Mr. Mellonie,' said Mrs. De Witt; 'you teach your

grandmother to shell shrimps.' Then, looking round on about twenty

persons who had assembled, she said, 'Follow me. Stay! here comes more.

Oh! it is Elijah Rebow and his men come to see fair play. Come by water

have you, Elijah? We are not going to sell anything of yours, you

needn't fear.'

She shouldered her umbrella like an oar, and strode to the house door.

Mrs. Sharland was there, white and trembling.

'Have you got my money?' asked Mrs. De Witt.

'Oh, mistress,' exclaimed the unfortunate widow, 'do have pity and

patience. Mehalah has just gone to get it.'

'Gone to get it?' echoed Mrs. De Witt. 'Why, where in the name of

wonder does she expect to get it?'

'She had gone to Parson Tyll to borrow it.'

'Then she won't get it,' said the drover. 'There's no money to be wrung

out of empty breeches pockets.'

'Let me into the house,' said Mrs. De Witt. 'Let us all see what you

have got. There's a clock. Drag it out, and stick it up under the tree

near the cart. That is worth a few pounds. And take that chair.'

'It is my chair. I sit in it, and I have the ague so bad.'

'Take the chair,' persisted Mrs. De Witt, and Rebow's men carried it

forth. 'There's some good plates there. Is there a complete set?'

'There are only six.'

'That is better than none. Out with them. What have you got in the

corner cupboard?'

'Nothing but trifles.'

'We'll sell the cupboard and the dresser. You can't move the dresser,

Elijah. We'll carry it in our heads. Look at it,' she said to the

clerk; 'see you don't forget to put that up. Now shall we go into the

bedrooms, or go next to the cowhouse?'

'Leave the bedroom,' said Mellonie, 'you can't sell the bed from under

the old woman.'

'I can though, if I don't raise enough,' said Mrs. De Witt. 'I've slept

on a plank many a time.'

'Oh dear! Oh dear!' moaned the widow Sharland; 'I wish Mehalah had

returned; perhaps she has the money.'

'No chance of that, mistress,' said Rebow. 'You are sold up and done

for past escape now. What will you do next, you and that girl Glory,

I'd like to know?'

'I think she will get the money,' persisted the widow.

Elijah turned from her with a sneer.

'Outside with you,' shouted Mrs. De Witt. 'The sale is going to begin.'

The men--there were no women present except Mrs. De Witt--quickly

evacuated the house and pushed into the stable and cowhouse.

There was no horse, and only one cow. The sheep were on the saltings.

There was no cart, and very few tools of any sort. The little farm was

solely a sheep farm, there was not an acre of tillage land attached to

it.

The clerk climbed up into the cart.

'Stop, stop, for Heaven's sake!' gasped Mehalah dashing up. 'What is

this! Why have we not been warned?'

'Oh yes! forewarned indeed, and get rid of the things,' growled Mrs. De

Witt. 'But I did tell you what I should do, and precious good-natured I

was to do it.'

Mehalah darted past her into the house.

'Tell me, tell me!' cried the excited mother, 'have you the money?'

'No. The parson could not let me have it.'

'Hark! they have begun the sale. What is it they are crying now?'

'The clock, mother. Oh, this is dreadful.'

'They will sell the cow too,' said the widow.

'Certain to do so.'

'There! I hear the dresser's put up. Who has bought the clock?'

'Oh never mind, that matters nothing. We are ruined.'

'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.'