He seemed pleased. 'You wear it for my sake.'

'I wear it,' she replied, truthfully, 'because I took a solemn oath on

that day, and I will not go from it. What I undertook that I will

fulfil, neither more nor less. What I did not promise I will not do,

what I did undertake that I will execute.'

'And you bear the ring in your bosom----'

'As a reminder to me of my promise. I will not be false to myself or to

you. Do not press me further. You know what to expect and what not to

expect. If I could love you I would; but I cannot. I did not promise

that then and I will not promise it now, for I know the performance is

out of my power.'

'You must wear the wedding ring on your finger.'

'I cannot wear this link, it is too large.'

'I will get you a gold ring, such as other women wear.'

'No. I cannot wear a lie; the gold ring belongs to the perfect

marriage, to the union of hearts. It befits not ours.'

'You are right,' he said, and sighed. He still held her hand; she made

a slight effort to withdraw it, but he clasped the hand the tighter.

'Let me touch and hold you, Glory,' he said. 'Remember I can no more see

you, except mistily. You must allow me some compensation. I know what

you are now, sitting here in the sun, with your hair full of rich

coppery gleams, and your eyes full of light and darkness at once, and

your cheek like a ripe apricot. I know what you are, splendid, noble, as

no other girl in the whole world; but you have shut my eyes, that I may

not see you, so allow me, at least, to feel you.' He paused. Then he

went on: 'You are right, our union is unlike any other, as you and I are

different from all others in the world. The married life of some is

smooth and shining and rustless like the gold, but ours is quite

contrary, it is rough and dark and full of blisters and canker. It may

be different some day----' he turned his dim eyes enquiringly at her,

'but not now, not now. Nevertheless as the ring is without an end so is

our union. Give me the link of iron, Glory, and come with me to the

forge. I will beat out a bit of the metal into a ring, one small enough

and light enough for you to wear.'

He got up, and holding her hand, bade her lead him to the forge.

Near the bakehouse was a small smithy, fitted up with all necessary

appliances. Rebow was a skilful workman at the anvil, and shod his own

horses, and made all that was needed in iron for the house and farm.

Mehalah conducted him to the shop, and brought fire from the kitchen for

the forge, she worked the bellows and blew the fire into size and

strength, whilst Elijah raked the coals together.

'Where is the link, Glory?' he asked, and went up to her. He put his

hand to her neck, before she did, and drew out of her bosom something.

'That is not the link, Elijah,' she said; 'it is my medal--the medal

that----'

He uttered a fierce cry, and wrenching it off, dashed it on the ground.

He would have stamped on it had he been able to see it.

Mehalah's cheek flushed, but she said nothing. She saw where the coin

had rolled. She stooped, picked it up, impressed a kiss upon it, and

hid it once more in her bosom.

'Here is the iron link,' she said; he took it from her sullenly.

The flame gleamed up blue above the wetted coal, and glared out white

through the crevices in the clot, as the bellows panted, and Rebow drew

the coals together or broke into the glaring mass with an iron rod.

'I heard a preacher once take as his text,' said he, 'Our God is a

consuming fire; and he told all in the chapel that this was writ in

Scripture and therefore must be true to the letter, for God wrote it

Himself, and He knew what He was better than any man. He said that fire

warms and illumines at a distance, but if you come too close it dazzles

and burns up. And he told us it was so with God. You can't keep too

far off of Him to be comfortable and safe; the nearer you get, the worse

it is for you; and to my thinking that is Hell, when you get sucked into

the very core of the fire in the heart of God. You must be consumed

because you are not divine, fire alone can live in fire; most folks are

clay and water, and they are good enough, they get light and warmth, but

when they die they burn up like this dock of coke. But there are other

folk, like you and me, Glory! who are made of fire and clay; it takes

but a word or a thought to make us roar and blaze and glow like this

furnace. There is passion in us--and that is a spark of the divine. I

do not care what the passion be, love or hate, or jealousy or anger, if

it be hot and red and consuming so that it melts and burns all that

opposes it, that fiery passion is of God and will live, live on for

ever, in the central heart and furnace, which is God. When you and I

die, Glory! and are sucked into the great fiery whirlpool, we shall not

be burnt up altogether, but intensified. If I love you with fiery

passion here I shall love you with fiery passion ten thousand times

hotter hereafter; my passion will turn to glaring white heat, and never

go out for all everlasting, for it will be burning, blazing in God who

is eternal. If you hate me, you will be whirled in, and your fury

fanned and raked into a fiery phrenzy which will rage on for ages on

ages, and cannot go out, for it will be burning in the everlasting

furnace of God. If I love, and you hate with infinite intensity for an

infinity of time--that is Hell. But if you love and I love, our love

grows hotter and blazes and roars and spurts into one tongue, cloven

like the tongues at Pentecost, twain yet one, and that is Heaven. My

love eating into yours and encircling it, and yours into mine, and

neither containing nor consuming the other, but going on in growing

intensity of fiery fury of love from everlasting to everlasting, that is

Heaven of Heavens.'

He was heating the link, held between the teeth of long shanked pincers,

and then withdrawing it, and forging it on the anvil as he spoke.

'Glory!' he said; 'tell me, you do not hate me?'

She hesitated.

'Glory!' he repeated, and laid hammer and pincer on the anvil, and

leaned his head towards her, as she shrank into the dark corner by the

bellows, 'Glory! tell me, you do not hate me.'

'Elijah,' she said, 'I must be candid with you. When I think of what, by

your own confession, you have done to him whom I loved more than all the

world----'

He raised his hammer and brought it down on the link, cutting it in

half, and sending one fiery half across the smithy.

'When I think of what you have done to him, I feel that I do hate you,

and that I have every cause and right to hate you. I could forgive

everything else. I have turned over in my mind all that you have done to

me, the cruel way in which you worked till you had brought me within

your power, the heartless way in which you got my good name to be evil

spoken of, and drove me out of self-defence to take your hand before the

altar of God, I have thought of all this, and I feel that my

act--unintentional though it was--yet my act, which has blinded you, has

expiated all those offences. You have wronged me, and I have wronged

you. I have ruined your life, but you have also ruined mine. We are

quits so far. You have my frank forgiveness. I blot out all the past,

as far as it concerns me, from my memory. It shall no more rankle in my

heart. You have shown me a generous forgiveness of my misdeed, and I

would imitate you. But what you did to George is not to be expiated.

You sinned against him more terribly, more wickedly than against me, and

he alone can pardon you. That I cannot forgive; and for that crime I

must still hate you.'

He stood trembling--a strange weakness came over him--he was not angry,

savage, morose; he seemed a prey to fear and uncertainty.

'Tell me, tell me truly, Glory! Does that alone prevent you from loving

me? Had I never done what I said I had done, could you love me?'

'I do not say that,' she replied. 'As I have told you before, I gave my

heart once for all to George De Witt. I never could love you with my

fresh full heart, as a woman should love her husband, but I feel that I

could like you as a friend. I do pity you. God knows how bitterly I

have suffered from remorse for what I did unwittingly, and how sincere I

am in my repentance and desire to deal tenderly and truly by you,

Elijah. I feel sometimes as if I could like you; I do acknowledge that

you and I stand apart from others, and alone can understand each other;

but then that great crime of your life against George rises up before me

and drives back my rising compassion.'

Rebow worked again at the link, beating out the fragment into a wire,

and cutting it again. He was thinking whilst he wrought.

'Sooner or later,' he muttered at last, 'all will out.'

He worked with difficulty, and slowly, as he could not see, and was

obliged to feel the iron, and cool it repeatedly to ascertain whether it

was as he desired it.

'Look here, Glory!' he said, 'when iron is taken from the smelting

furnace it is crystalline and brittle; there is no thread and texture in

it, but we burn it and beat it, and as we work we beat our stubborn

purpose into the metal, and it is the will of the smith which goes

through his arm and hammer into the iron and converts it to steel; he

drives his will into the metal, and that becomes the fibre in it. You

don't find it so in nature. The human soul must part with something and

transfuse it into the inanimate iron, and there it will lie and last,

for the will of man is divine and eternal. It is much the same with all

with which we have to do. I have spent time and labour over you, and

thought and purpose have been consumed in making you my wife; they are

none of them lost, they are all in you, they have become fibres in your

soul. You may not be aware of it, but there they all are. The more one

thinks and labours for the other the more he ingrafts himself in the

nature of the other. I have heard of sound men having their healthy

blood drawn off and injected into the veins of the sick, and restoring

them thus to activity and health. We are always doing this with our

wills, injecting their fire into the hearts of others, and so by degrees

transfusing their natures. You are pouring yourself into me, and I into

you, whether we know it or not, till in time we are alike in colour and

tone and temperature.'

He had worked the piece of steel into a rude ring, not very cumbrous,

and he bade Mehalah try it on her finger. It was too small. He easily

enlarged it, and then got a file to smooth off the roughnesses.

'I had rather you wore this than a ring of gold,' he said, 'for there is

part of my soul in this iron. I have made it in spite of my blindness,

because I had the will to do so. The whole metal is full of my purpose,

which tinctures it as wine stains water; and with it goes my resolve

that you shall be mine altogether in heart and soul, in love as well as

in pity, for now and for all eternity. You will wear that on your

finger, the finger that has a nerve leading from the heart. Stretch out

your hand, Glory, and let me put it on. Stretch out your hand over the

hearth, above the fire, our God is a consuming fire, and this is His

proper altar.'

He stood on one side of the furnace, she on the other; the angry red

coals glowed below, and a hot smoke rose from them.

She extended her hand to him, and he grasped it with the left above the

fire, and held the steel ring in his right.

'Glory!' he said in a tremulous voice. 'At the altar in the church you

swore to obey me. In the hall you knelt and swore to cherish me; here,

over the fire, the figure of our God, as I put the iron ring on, swear

to me also to love me.'

She did not answer. She stood as though frozen to ice; with her eyes on

the door of the smithy, where stood a figure--the figure of a man.

Suddenly she uttered a piercing cry. 'George! my George! my George!'

and withdrew her hand from the grasp of Elijah. The iron ring fell from

his fingers into the red fire below and was lost.

*CHAPTER XXVII.*

*THE RETURN OF THE LOST.*

Mehalah was clasped in the arms of George De Witt.

'Who is there? Where is he?' shouted Elijah, staggering forward with

his great pincers raised ready to strike.

George drew the girl out of the way, and let the angry man burst out of

the door and pass, beating the air with his iron tool. He put his arm

round her, and led her from the house. She could not speak, she could

only look up at him as at one risen from the dead. He led her towards

the sea-wall, looking behind him at the figure of the blind man, rushing

about, and smiting recklessly in his jealousy and fury, and hitting

bushes, rails, walls, anything in hopes of smiting down the man whose

name he had heard, and who he knew had come back to break in on and ruin

his hopes.

George De Witt walked lamely, he had a somewhat stiff leg; otherwise he

seemed well.

'How manly you have grown!' exclaimed Mehalah, holding him at arms'

length, and contemplating him with pride.

'And you, Glory, have become more womanly; but in all else are the

same.'

'Where have you been, George?'

'At sea, Glory, and smelt powder. I have been a sailor in His Majesty's

Royal Navy, in the Duke of Clarence, and I am pensioned off, because of

my leg.'

'Have you been wounded?'

'Not exactly. A cannon-ball, as we were loading, struck me on the shin

and bruised the bone, so that I have been invalided with swellings and

ulcerations. I ain't fit for active service, but I'm not exactly a

cripple.'

'But George! when did this take place? I do not understand. After your

escape?'

'Escape, Glory? I have had no escape.'

'From confinement in Red Hall,' she added.

'I never was confined there. I do not know what you are talking about.'

Mehalah passed her hand over her face.

'George! I thought that Elijah had made you drunk and then put you in

his cellar, chained there till you went mad.'

'There is not a word of truth in this,' said De Witt. 'Who told you such

a tale?'

'Elijah himself.'

'Elijah is a rascal. I have enough cause against him without that.'

'Then tell me about yourself. I am bewildered. How came you to

disappear?'

'Let us walk together to the spit by the windmill, and I will tell you

all.'

They turned the way he said, and he did not speak again till they had

reached the spot.

'We will sit down, Glory; I suffer still somewhat from my leg, so that I

am always glad to rest. Now I will tell you the whole story. You

remember the evening when we quarrelled. You had behaved rather roughly

to Phoebe Musset.'

'I remember it only too well, George.'

'After you had left, I went to the Mussets' house to inquire after

Phoebe, who had been well soused in the sea by you; and on my return I

fell in with Elijah Rebow. He took me to task for not having gone after

you and patched up our little difference. He said that a quarrel should

never be allowed to cool, but mended while hot. He persuaded me to let

him row me in his boat to the Ray. He said he was going there after

ducks or something of that sort, I do not remember exactly. I agreed,

and got into his punt with him, and we made for the Rhyn. We had

scarcely entered the channel when a lugger full of men ran across our

bows and had us fast in a jiffy. I was overpowered before I knew where

I was, and taken by the men in their boat.'

'Who were they, George?' asked Mehalah, breathlessly.

'They were some of the crew of the _Salamander_, a war schooner then

lying in the offing, come to press me into the service with Captain

Macpherson, who had been on the coast-guard, but was appointed to the

command. I was carried off as many another man has been, without my

consent, and made to serve His Majesty on compulsion.'

'But, George! how about your medal that I gave you? That was returned

to me the same night.'

'I suppose it was,' he replied coolly. 'As I was taken, Elijah said to

me, "Have you no token to send back to Glory?" I bade him tell you how

I was impressed, and how I would return to you whenever the war was over

and I was paid off; but he asked for some token, that you might believe

him. Well, Glory! I had nothing by me save your medal, and I handed it

to him and told him to give it to you with my love.'

Mehalah wrung her hands and moaned.

'I have a notion,' continued George, 'that Rebow was somehow privy to my

being pressed; for he went out that afternoon to the _Salamander_ in his

cutter, and had a private talk with Captain Macpherson, who was short of

men. Now I fancy, though I can't prove it, that he schemed with the

captain how he should catch me, and that Elijah with set purpose took me

into the trap set for me. He is deep enough to do such a dirty trick.'

Mehalah's head sank on her knees, and she sobbed aloud.

'And now, Glory, dearest!' he went on, 'the rascal has got you to marry

him, I am told. How could you take him? Why did you not wait for me?

You were promised to me, and we looked on one another as soon to be

husband and wife. You must have soon forgotten your promise.'

'I thought you were dead,' she gasped.

'So did my mother. I do not understand. Elijah knew better.'

'But he told no one. He allowed us all to suppose you were drowned in

one of the fleets.'

'It is very hard,' said George, 'for a fellow to return from the wars to

reclaim his girl, and to find her no longer his. It is a great blow to

me, Glory! I did so love and admire you.'

She could only sway to and fro in her distress.

'It is very disappointing to a chap,' said George, putting a quid in his

cheek. 'When he has calculated on getting a nice girl as his wife, and

in battle and storm has had the thoughts of her to cheer and encourage

him; when he has some prize-money in his pocket, and hopes to spend it

on her--well, it is hard.'

'George,' said she between her sobs, 'why did you return the medal? I

gave it you, and you swore never to part with it. You should not have

sent it to me.'

'Did I really swear that, Glory?' he answered; 'if so, I had forgotten.

You see I was so set upon and flustered that night, I did not rightly

consider things as they should have been considered.' He stopped.

'Well?' asked Mehalah, eagerly.

'Don't catch me up, Glory. I only stopped to turn the quid. As I was

about to say, I did not remember what I had promised. I had nothing

else to send you that would serve as a token. The medal was an article

about which there could be no mistake. I knew when you saw that you

would make sure Elijah's story was true, and my promise would be

sacred--I have kept it, I have returned to you, Glory, and if you were

not married I should make you my wife. I love you still, as I always

did love you. I've seen a sight of fine girls since I left Mersea.

There's more fish in the sea than come out of it; but I'm darned if I

have seen a finer anywhere, or more to my liking than you, Glory. You

were my first love, and the sight of you brings back pleasant memories.

The more I look at you now, the more I feel inclined to wring that old

prophet's neck. You are too good for such a chap as he; you should have

waited for me. You had promised, and might have had patience. But,

Lord bless me! how the girls do run after the men! Glory! I have seen

the world since I left Mersea, and I know more of it than I did. I

suppose you thought that as I was gone to Davy Jones's locker you must

catch whom you could.'

'George!' exclaimed Mehalah, 'do not speak to me thus. I cannot bear

it. I know you are only talking in this way to try me, and because you

resent my marriage. I promised once to be true to you, I gave you my

heart, and I have remained, and I will remain, true to you; my heart is

yours, and I can never recover it and give it to another.'

'This is very fine and sentimental, Glory,' said George; 'I've smelt

powder and I know the colour of blood. I've seen the world, and know

what sentiment is worth; it is blank cartridge firing; it breaks no

bones, but it makes a noise and a flash. I don't see how you can call

it keeping true to me when you marry another man for his money.'

'You are determined to drive me mad,' exclaimed Mehalah. 'Have mercy on

me, my own George, my only George! I have loved and suffered for you.

God can see into my heart, and knows how deeply it has been cut, and how

profusely it has bled for you. You must spare me. I have thought of

you. I have lived only in a dream of you. The world without you has

been dead and blank. I have not had a moment of real joy since your

disappearance; it seems to me as though a century of torment had drawn

its slow course since then. No, George! I have married for nothing but

to save my self-respect. I was forced by that man, whom I will not name

now, so hateful and horrible to me is the thought of him--I was forced

by him from my home on the Ray to lodge under his roof. He smoked my

mother and me out of our house as if we were foxes. When he had me

secure he drew a magician's circle round me, and I could not break

through it. My character, my name were tarnished, there was nothing for

it but for me to marry him. I did so, but I did so under stipulations.

I took his name, but I am not, and never shall be, more to him than his

wife in the register of the parish. I have never loved him--I never

undertook to love him.'

'This is a queer state of things,' said George. 'Dashed if, in all my

experience of life and of girls, I came across anything similar, and I

have seen something. I have not spent all my days in Mersea. I've been

to the West Indies. I've seen white girls, and yellow girls, and brown

girls, and copper-coloured girls, and black ones--black as rotted

seaweed. I have--they are all much of a muchness, but this beats my

experience. You are not like others.'

'So he says; he and I are alone in the world, and alone can understand

one another. Do you understand me, George?'

'I'm blessed if I do.'

She was silent. She was very unhappy. She did not like his tone: there

was an insincerity, a priggishness about it which jarred with her

reality and depth of feeling. But she could not analyse what offended

her. She thought he was angry with her, and had assumed a taunting air

to cover his mortification.

She drew the medal from her bosom.

'George! dear, dear George!' she said vehemently, 'take the pledge

again. I give it you with my whole heart once more. I believe it saved

you once, it may save you again. At all events, it is a token to you

that my heart is the same, that I care for and love none but you in the

whole wide world.'

He took it and suspended it round his neck.

'I will keep it for your sake,' he said; 'you may be sure it will be

treasured by me.'

'Keep it better than you did before.'

'Certainly I will. I shall value it inexpressibly.'

'George!' she went on, trembling in all her limbs, and rising to her

feet. 'George! my first and only love! as I give it you back now, I

make you the same promise that I made you before. I will

love--love--love you and you only, eternally. I swore then to be true

to you, and I have been true. Swear again to me the same.'

'Certainly. I shall always love you, Glory! I'm damned if it is

possible for a fellow not to, you are so handsome with those flashing

eyes and glowing cheeks. A fellow must be made of ice not to love you.'

'Be true to me, as I to you.'

'To be sure I will, Glory!' and added in an undertone, 'rum sort of

truth hers, to go and marry another chap.'

'What is that you say, George?'

'Take care, Glory!' exclaimed the sailor; 'here comes the old prophet

with a pair of tongs over his shoulder, staggering along the wall

towards us. I had better sheer off. He don't look amiable. Good-bye,

Glory!'

'Oh, George! I must see you again.'

'I will come again. You will see me often enough. Sailors can no more

keep away from handsome girls than bees from clover.'

'George, George!'

Elijah came up, his face black with passion.

'Mehalah!' he roared, as he swung his iron pincers.

She caught his wrist and disarmed him.

'I could bite you, and tear your flesh with my teeth,' he raged. 'All

was so peaceful and beautiful, and then he came from the dead and broke

it into shivers. Where are you?' He put out his hands to grasp her.

'Do not touch me!' she cried, loathing in her voice. 'With my whole soul

I abhor you, you base coward. You lied to me about George, a hateful lie

that made me mad, and yet the reality is almost as bad--it is worse. He

is alive and free, and I am bound, bound hand and foot, to you.'

*CHAPTER XXVIII.*

*TIMOTHY'S TIDINGS.*

'Mehalah!' roared the wretched man, smiting at her with both his

clenched fists, and nearly precipitating himself into the mud, by

missing his object, 'Mehalah! where are you? Come near, and let me beat

and kill you.'

'Why are you angry, Elijah?' asked the girl. 'The man you betrayed to

the pressgang has returned, are you vexed at that?'

'Come near me,' he shouted.

'You have gained your end, and may well be content that he is alive.

You have separated us for ever; what more could you desire? His hopes

and mine are alike shattered by your act. You lied to me about his

madness, but though that wickedness was not wrought to which you

pretended, you have done that which passes forgiveness.'

'Where is he?'

'He is gone. He would not meet you. He could not deal the punishment

you deserve on a blinded man.'

'You have been discussing me--the blinded man,' raved Elijah. 'Yes, you

first blind me that I may not see, and then you meet and intrigue with

your old lover, in security, knowing I cannot watch, and pursue, and

punish you.'

'Go back to the house, Elijah. You are in no fit temper to speak to on

this subject.'

'Oh yes! go back and sit in the hall alone, whilst you are with

him--your George! No, Mehalah! I tell you this. I will not be

deceived. Though I be blind, I can and will see and follow you. I will

sell my soul to the devil for twenty-four hours' vision, that I may

track and catch and crush your two heads together, and trample the life

out of you with my big iron-heeled boots. You shall not see him, you

shall never see him again. Give me back my pincers, and I will make an

end of it all.'

'Elijah, you must trust me. I married you in self-respect, and I shall

never forget the respect I owe to myself.'

'I cannot trust you,' he answered, 'because you are just one of those

whose movements no one can calculate. I tell you what, Mehalah. God

made most folks of clockwork and stuck them on their little plots of

soil to spin round and run their courses, like the figures on an Italian

barrel-organ. You look at Mersea island, that is the board of such a

contrivance, and on it are so many dolls; they twist about, and you know

that if God turns the handle for ten minutes or for ten years, or for

ten times ten years, they will do exactly the same things in exactly the

same ways, just as He made them and set them to spin. But as He was

making the dolls that were to twirl and pirouette His breath got into

some, and they are different from the rest. They don't go according to

the clockwork, and don't follow the circles of the machine, as set

agoing by the organ-handle. God himself can't count on them, for they

have free wills, and His breath is genius and independence in their

hearts. They go where they list, and do what they will, they follow the

impulse of the breath of God within, and not the wires that fasten them

to the social mechanism. I do not know what I may do. I do not know

what you may do. We have the breath of God in us. I am sure that you

have, and I am sure that I have; but I know that there is none in your

mother, none in such as George De Witt. The laws of the land and of

religion are the slits in the board on which the dolls dance, and they

only move along these slits; but you and I, and such as have free souls,

go anywhere, and do anything. We have no law. The wind bloweth where it

listeth, and thou canst not tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth;

so is everyone that is born of the Spirit. I heard a preacher once

explain that text, and he said that the wind was the Spirit of God and

it went where it willed, and so all who were born of the Spirit followed

their wills, and there was neither right nor wrong to them, for they

were blown about, across and up and down, where others not so born dare

not step, and they never forfeited their sonships whatever they did, for

it was not they, but the divine will in them that drove them. Mehalah!

you are one with a free, headlong will, and how can I count on what you

will do? There is no cut track along which you must run. The puppets

dance their rounds, but you rush in and out and upset those that are in

your way. I am the same. You have seen and learned my way. Who could

reckon on me? I never mapped out my course, but went on as I was

impelled; and so will you. But be sure of this, Mehalah! I shall not

endure your desertion of me. Beware how you meet and speak to George De

Witt again.'

'Elijah,' said the girl; 'I give you only what I promised you, my

obedience, never expect more. Your crooked courses are not such as can

gain respect, much less regard. You say that you act on impulse, and

have not mapped your course. I do not believe you. You have worked with

a set purpose before you to get rid of George, and obtain hold over me.

Your purpose was deliberate, your plans laid in cold blood. You have

got as much as you can get. You have obtained some sort of control over

me, but my soul is free, my heart is free, and these you shall never

bring into slavery.'

'I was ready half an hour ago to forgive you for having blinded me. I

cannot forgive you now. You have done me a wicked wrong. You acted on

impulse, without purpose, you say. I do not believe it. There was set

design and cold scheming in it all. You knew that George De Witt was

not dead--or you thought he might be yet alive and might return, so you

dashed the firejuice into my eyes to blind them to what would take place

on his reappearance.'

'This is false!' exclaimed Mehalah indignantly.

'So is it false that I schemed and worked,' he said. 'Do you not

understand, Mehalah, that what we do, we do for an end which we do not

see? We act on the spur of passion, and the acts link together, and

make a complete chain in the end. I did at the moment what I thought

must be done, and so it was brought about that you became my wife. You

acted as anger and love inspired, and now I am made helpless, whilst you

sport with your lover. But I tell you, Mehalah, I will not endure this.

I don't care if you die and I die, but parted we shall not be. You and

I must find our heaven in each other and nowhere else. You are going

after wandering lights if you expect a port away from my heart.

Wrecking lights attached to asses' heads.' He stamped and caught at

her.

'My heart was given to George before I knew you,' said Glory sadly; 'I

have long known him, and we had long been promised to each other. We

had hoped to be married this spring and then we should have been happy,

unspeakably happy. He has been true to me and I will be true to him.

We cannot now marry. You have prevented that; but we can still love one

another and be true to each other, and live in the thought and

confidence of the other. He trusts me and I trust him. He is now

bitterly distressed to find that you have separated us, but in time he

will be reconciled, and then it will be as of old, when I was on the

Ray. We shall see one another, and we shall be true, loving friends,

but nothing more; nothing more is possible. You have barred that.'

'Is this your resolve?' he asked, turning livid with anger; even his

lips a dead leaden tint.

'It is not a resolve, it is what must be. I must love him, I cannot

help it. We must see each other. We can never be man and wife, that you

have succeeded in preventing, and for that I shall never forgive you.

But I will not be false to my oath. I will still serve you, and I will

cherish you in your wretchedness and blindness.'

'This will not do,' he cried. 'My whole nature, my entire soul, cries

out and hungers for you, for your nature, for your soul. I must have

your whole being as mine, I will not be master of a divided Glory!

allegiance here, love there, cold obedience to me and gushing devotion

to him. The thought is unendurable. O God!' he burst forth in an agony,

'why did I not take you in my arms when the Ray house was burning, and

spring with you into the flames and hold you there in the yellow

wavering tongue of fire, till we melted into one lump? Then we should

both have been at peace now, both in one, and happy in our unity.' He

strode up and down, with his head down.

'Mehalah! have you seen water poured on lime? What a fume and boiling

takes place, the two fight together which shall obtain the mastery, but

neither gets it all its own way in the end, but one enters into and

penetrates every pore of the other, and the heat and the steam only

continue till every part of one is impregnated with the other. You and

I are mixing like water and lime, and we rage and smoke, but there is

peace at the end, in view, when we are infused the one into the other,

when it is neither I nor you, but one being. The mixture must be

complete some day, in this life or the next; and then we shall clot into

one hard rock, imperishable and indivisible.'

'Elijah! try to take interest in something else; think of something

beside me. I can be nothing more to you than what I am, so rest

contented with what you have got, and turn your thoughts to your farm,

or anything else.'

'I cannot do it, Mehalah. I put a little plant once in a pot and filled

the vessel with rich mould, and the plant grew and at last broke the pot

into a hundred pieces, and I found within a dense mat of fibres; the

root had eaten up and displaced all the soil and swelled till it rent

the vessel. It has been so with my love of you. It got planted, how I

know not, in my heart, and it has thrown its roots through the whole

chamber, and devoured all the substance, and woven a net of fibres in

and out and up and down, and has swelled and is thrusting against the

walls, till there is scarce love there any more but horrible, biting,

wearing pain. I cannot kill the plant and pluck it out, or it will

leave a great void. I must let it grow till it has broken up the vessel.

It grows and makes root, but will not flower. There has been scarce

leaf, certainly no blossom, to my love. It is all downward, inward,

clogging, bursting tangle of fibre. Can you say it is so with you? You

cannot. Your care for that fool George is but a slip struck in that may

root or not, that must be nursed or it will wither. Tear it up and cast

it away. It is not worthy of you. George is a simple fool. I know

him. A clown without a soul. Why, Glory! there are none hereabouts

with souls but you and me. Your mother has none, Mrs. De Witt has none,

Abraham has none. They can't understand the ways and workings of those

that have souls. They are bodies, ruled by bodily wants, and look at

all things out of bodily eyes, and interpret by bodily instincts all

things done by those spiritually above them. But you understand me, and

I understand you. Soul speaks to soul. I've heard a preacher say that

once on a time the sons of God went in unto the daughters of men, and

what they begat of them were cursed of heaven. That means that men with

souls married vulgar women with only instincts and appetites, and such

unions are unnatural. The sons of God must marry the daughters of God,

and leave the animal men and women to pig together and breed listless,

dull-eyed, muddle-headed, dough-hearted, scandal-mongering generations.

The curse of God would have rested upon you if you had married George De

Witt. I have saved you from that. You have mated with your equal.'

'What happiness, what blessing has attended our union?' she asked

bitterly.

'None,' he replied, 'because you oppose your will to the inevitable. We

must be united entirely, and blended into one, but you resist, and so

misery ensues. I am blinded and wretched, and you, you----'

'I am wretched also,' she said; 'but stay! here comes someone to speak

to us.'

'Who is it?'

'I do not know exactly. A young man who came here one day with Phoebe

Musset.'

'What does he want with us? I will have no young men coming here.'

The person who approached was Timothy Spark, 'cousin' to Admonition

Pettican. He was dressed in a new suit of mourning. He lounged along

the sea-wall with his hands in his pockets.

'Your servant, master,' he said to Elijah as he came up. 'Your most

devoted servant,' he added with a bow to Mehalah, and a simper.

'Charmed to see my dear and beautiful cousin so well.'

'Cousin!' exclaimed Rebow, stepping back and frowning.

'Certainly, certainly,' said Timothy. 'I am cousin to Admonition, wife,

or rather let me say widow of the late lamented Charles Pettican, and he

was first cousin to Mrs. Sharland, so my pretty cousin Mehalah will not,

I am sure, deny the relationship. Let me offer you an arm,' he wedged

his way between Rebow and Glory.

'First cousin once and a half removed,' he said. 'Drop the fractions and

say cousin, broadly. Certainly, certainly so. Is it not so, my dear?'

In an undertone and aside to Mehalah. 'Let us drop the old fellow

behind. I have a word to say in your ear, cousin Mehalah! By the way,

how do you shorten that long name? It is such a mouthful. But I

forget, where is my memory going? Glory is the name you go by among

relatives and friends. Come along, Glory! Lean on my arm. The blind

gentleman is a little unsteady on his pins and can't keep up with us.

He will be more comfortable taking his airing slowly by himself; we

shall distract him with our frolicsome talk. He is in a serious mood,

perhaps pious.'

'Say what you have to say at once,' said Elijah surlily. 'I must hear

it. What did you say about _late_ Charles Pettican?'

'The poor gentleman is deceased,' said Timothy; 'and his disconsolate

widow is drinking down her grief in hot toddy.'

'Mr. Charles Pettican dead!' exclaimed Mehalah with grief.

'Dead as Nebuchadnezzar,' replied Timothy; 'rather rapid at the last,

the paralysis attacked his vitals, and then it was all over with him in

a snap. Fortunately, he had made his will. You haven't taken my arm

yet, my pretty cousin. You won't? well then, I will continue. I

flatter myself that my influence prevailed, and he made a will not in

favour of Admonition, who had really become too exacting towards myself,

and inconsiderate towards him, for us to endure it much longer. He

threw himself on my honour, and I told him I relied on his gratitude.

We put our heads together. Admonition has had a fall. She gets only a

hundred pounds. My friend Charles, in token of my friendship, has

kindly, I may say handsomely, remembered me,--and all the bulk of his

property he has bequeathed to my good cousin here, Glory. I need hardly

say that this has proved as great a surprise to Admonition as it must be

to you. Admonition brought it on herself. She should not have

attempted to displace me; I am not a person so unimportant as to be

dispensed with at pleasure. Admonition cannot recover from the shock

and mortification, and I left her at Wyvenhoe, venting it in language

not flattering to the late lamented. She led me a dance, and him she

treated like a galley-slave, so that she has got her deserts. I saw

that she was carrying it on a little too far for the endurance of

Charles, so I had a talk with him on the matter, and offered to help him

in the management of his affairs for a trifling salary, and he was good

enough to see how advantageous it would be to him to have me as a friend

and adviser; so we put our heads together, and then Admonition tried to

bundle me out of the house, and much to her surprise learned that I was

as securely installed therein as herself. I was private secretary and

accountant to Charles, and cousin Admonition had to knuckle under then.

Curiously enough, she had picked up another cousin about that time, one

I had never heard of before in my life, and she wanted to bring him into

the house in my place; I did not allow that game to be played. I kept

my berth, and Admonition was in a pretty temper about it, you may be

sure. How Charles chuckled! He enjoyed it. Upon my word I believe he

chuckles in his grave to think how he has done Admonition in the end;

and he smirks doubtless to consider also how he has served me.'

'What has he left Mehalah?' asked Rebow surlily.

'I cannot tell you exactly, but I suspect about two hundred and fifty to

three hundred pounds a year; a nice little fortune, and dropping in very

unexpectedly, I presume. I am executor, and shall have the choicest

pleasure in explaining all to my sweet cousin. Is it not near about

your dinner-time?'

'Yes.'

'Then I don't mind picking a bone and drinking a glass with you. The

drive is long from Wyvenhoe. You happen perhaps to have a spare room in

the house?'

No answer was given to this question.

'Because I have brought over my little traps. I thought it best. We

can talk over matters, and I will show you what the amount of property

is that Charles has left. I have the will with me, it is not proved

yet. I shall do that shortly.'

'There's an inn at Salcott. The "Rising Sun." You can go there. We do

not take in strangers.'

'Certainly, certainly! only you see,' touching Elijah knowingly in the

ribs, 'I'm not a stranger, but a friend and relative of the family, a

cousin; you understand, a cousin, and ready to make myself agreeable to

one,' with a bow to Mehalah, 'and useful to the other,' with a tap on

Rebow's arm.

'You can settle all you have to say on business in an hour if you stick

to it, and then you can be gone,' said Elijah in ill-temper, withdrawing

his arm from the familiar touch.

'Certainly, certainly,' said Timothy. 'But then, I must call again, and

yet again, always I am sure, with increasing pleasure, but still at some

inconvenience to myself. I thought I might just settle in here, you

might give me a shake-down in any nook, and I would make myself a most

invaluable member of the family. You, old gentleman, with your

affliction, want an overlooker to the farm, and who could serve your

purpose better than myself, a friend and a relation, a cousin, almost

first cousin, with just a remove or so between, not worth

particularising. I could devote my time to your affairs----'

'I don't want you. I will not have you!' exclaimed Rebow angrily. 'Why

have you come here, you meddling puppy? Did I ask you to come? Did

Mehalah want you? I know you and your ways. You got into Pettican's

house hanging on to the skirts of his wife, and then made mischief

between man and wife; and now you come here to play the same game; you

come because I am blind and helpless, and sneaking behind my Glory; you

want to steal in to play the fool with her and set us one against the

other. We want none of you here. We are not so tender together that we

desire another element of discord to enter into the jangled clash of

bells. Be off with you. As for the matter of Mehalah's inheritance,

the lawyers shall communicate with us, and between you and her. I will

not have you set your foot inside my house.'

'Stay,' said Glory; 'I must know if this be really true. Am I really

inheritor of such a fortune?'

'I have the will in my pocket.'

'Show it me.'

Timothy produced the document and read it to Elijah and Mehalah. Both

drew near.

'Let me see it!' said Rebow vehemently, and grasped at the paper with

nervous hand.

'My good friend,' remarked Timothy patronisingly; 'the state of your

eyes, if I mistake not, will prevent your being able to read it.'

'I must feel it then.'

He grasped it fiercely and in a moment tore it with his hands, and then,

biting the fragments, rent it further and further.

'For heaven's sake!' exclaimed the young man in dismay.

'Ha! Glory! Did you suppose you were to be made independent of me?

Did you think I would let you get a fortune of your own, to emancipate

you from me? That you might go off with it, and enjoy it along with your

George De Witt?'

He dashed the tatters about him.

'You mad fool!' exclaimed Timothy Spark. 'Do you suppose that by such a

scurvy trick as this you will despoil my pretty cousin of her money, and

perhaps of her liberty?'

'I have done it,' shouted Rebow wrathfully. 'You cannot make the will

whole, I have chewed and swallowed portions, and others the winds have

taken into the sea.'

'Indeed!' said Timothy. 'Do you suppose that this is the original? Of

course not. It is an authenticated copy. The original will is left

with Morrell the lawyer, and this is but a transcript.'

Rebow gnashed his teeth.

'It seems to me,' said Timothy, 'that after all I shall be called upon

to step in between husband and wife, and to protect my pretty dark-eyed,

rosy-lipped cousin. I am sure you have a spare room where I can have a

shake-down.'

*CHAPTER XXIX.*

*TEMPTATION.*

Elijah Rebow sank into a sullen fierce silence. He scarcely stirred

from the house except to the forge, where he groped among the dead ashes

for the iron ring, which however he never found. He sat in his hall,

smoking, his elbows on the arms of his chair, his head sunk on his

breast, with his dull eyes on the floor. He seemed brooding over

something, which occupied all his thoughts, and he rarely spoke.

There had been little difficulty in getting rid of Timothy. He lingered

a day or two about Salcott and Red Hall, but as he met with angry

repulse from Rebow, and no encouragement from Mehalah, he abandoned the

ground as unproductive. He was an idle, good-for-nothing young man,

hating work, and when he was obliged to leave comfortable quarters at

Wyvenhoe, hoped to settle himself into a similar position at Salcott.

He was conceited, and fancied himself able to make conquests when he

liked, and never for a moment doubted that his looks and address would

have ingratiated him with Mehalah, and won him a lodgment in the house.

He had been hovering about Phoebe Musset for some time, as she was

thought to have money. Her parents had no other child, and the farm and

shop would have suited him. When he met with a rebuff at Red Hall he

betook himself to Mersea, and was much surprised to be received there

with coldness where he had expected warmth. The reason was that George

De Witt had returned, a sailor in the Royal Navy, covered with glory

according to his own account, and Phoebe was more disposed to set her

cap at him than flirt with the shore-loafer, Timothy Spark.

As Mehalah was crossing the farmyard one day, old Abraham Dowsing

stopped her.

'I want to speak along of you,' he said in his uncouth, abrupt manner.

'What does the master mean by his goings on? I saw him to-day after his

dinner sitting with the great knife in his hand. The door was open and

I was at the bottom of the steps, and I looked up, and there he was

making stabs with it into the air. Then he got up, and holding the knife

behind him, he crept over towards your mother's leather-backed chair. I

seed him feel at it, and when he did touch it, then there came a wild

look over his face, and he out with the carving knife, quick as thought,

and he clutched the back of the chair with his left, and dug the blade

right into the leather, and it came through at the back. You look next

time you go into the hall. I guess he's going as his brother did.'

'Going out of his mind, Abraham?'

'Yes, I reckon. What else does it all mean? It is either that, or

there is something that deadly angers him.'

He looked with a cunning covert glance at her.

'It is not that these matters concern me, over much, but I don't want to

change places in my old age. I'm comfortable enough here. I gets my

wittles regular, and my swipes of ale. Take care of yourself, Mistress.

I've heard as how the master got somebody pressed when he was in the

way,--there's a tale about it abroad. He won't stand that party about

here much, and I wouldn't adwise the encouragement of him.'

'George De Witt is my friend. He may come when he likes,' said Mehalah

gravely. 'He and I have known one another since we were children, and

my marriage need not destroy an old friendship.'

'I mentioned no names,' said the old man. 'You can't say I did. One

thing I be sure of. Whenever somebody comes here, the master knows it;

he knows it by a sort of instinct, I fancy. I see him at the head of

the steps looking out as though he could see, and biting at the air,

just as a mad dog snaps at everything and nothing.'

'There is George!' suddenly exclaimed Mehalah, as she saw the young

sailor's figure rise on the sea-wall.

'And there is the master,' muttered Abraham, pointing to Elijah, who

appeared at his door, peering about, and holding his hand to his ear.

Mehalah hesitated a moment, and then went up the steps to him.

'Do you want to come down?' she asked; 'shall I lead you?'

'Yes, help me.' He clutched her hand by the wrist and came out and

stood on the stair. Then he grasped her shoulder with the other hand,

and he began to shake and twist her.

She could see into his heart as into clear water, to the ugly snags and

creeping things at the bottom. She saw that the temptation had come on

him to fling her down: but she saw also that it was immediately

overcome. He knew she read his thoughts. 'The height is not much,' he

muttered; 'you might sprain an ankle but not break your neck. I will

not hurt you, do not fear. Hurt you! Good God! I would not hurt you,

not give you one moment's pain, I would bear hours of agony rather than

make you suffer for one second. But what must be, must be! There is no

way out of the marsh but over the dyke. There is no peace which is not

won by a fight and wounds. Let me go back.' He drew her in at the

door, a ferocious expression flickered over his face, like

phosphorescent illumination over dead fish.

'I cannot endure this longer. Mehalah! you are killing me. This is

worse than the fire-juice in my eyes, you are drenching my heart and

brain in vitriol, I feel it gnawing and stinging and blackening as it

consumes a way to the inner core, leaving charred matter behind.'

'What am I doing, to make you suffer?' she asked.

'You are doing all you can. I cannot, I will not endure that agony.

Have you seen the coal heap in the forge, how the fire rages and glows

within before the blast? Water is thrown on without quenching the fire,

it only intensifies its heat. At last the black mass cracks on all

sides and the white fury shoots out in spits and knives of flame. It is

so with me. The fire is here.' He smote his breast and then his brain.

'It is raging, panting, whitening, intensifying, and at last it will

break out on all sides. Who is blowing the fire into vehemence? It is

you--you--you!'

He gathered himself up, like a crouching beast, as though to spring on

her and strangle or tear her; but she stepped back beyond his spring.

'I give you no occasion for this,' she said; 'you speak and act like a

madman.'

'It is you who drive me to act and speak like one,' he cried. 'You are

now mistress of yourself, you have money--as much as you want; now you

will shake me off. Now you will desert the man who stood between you

and your fool. You will go off with him and forget me. It shall not

be.' He clutched his hands into his sides. 'It never shall be.'

'I will not listen to this. I will not endure such words,' she

exclaimed. 'Remain here and cool.' Then she left the room, and,

walking across the pasture to the landing-place, extended her hand with

a smile to George. It was a relief to her to be away for a while from

the gloom and savagery of the man to whom she was bound for life. In

her simplicity and guilelessness she would not believe that there was

any wrong in meeting the friend of her childhood, her almost brother.

She needed some light on her sad life, and the light shone from him.

'My dear Glory,' he said,' I am delighted to see you. What a colour

there is in your cheeks. Has the prophet been in his frenzies again? I

fear so. You must not allow it. You should not endure it.'

'How can I help it, George? it is the man's nature to rave; he has it in

his blood. I almost fear he will go mad like his poor brother.'

'The sooner the better.'

'Do not say that. You do not know how dreadful was the condition of

that miserable wretch.'

'I do say it, Glory, dearest! I say it, because the sooner you are

freed from this tyranny and torture, the better for both of us.'

'How so?'

'Glory, dear! is it true that you have been left a small fortune?'

'Yes, it is true. It seems that there is money in various securities,

the savings of Charles Pettican's life, and they bring in something like

three hundred pounds a year. Sometimes it may be less, sometimes

perhaps more.'

'And is this money absolutely your own?'

'Entirely.'

'You may do with it what you like?'

'Yes, altogether; even Elijah cannot touch it. I will give you all if

you like, or as much as you like.'

'I would not touch it without you, Glory.'

She sighed.

'Oh, George, George! to think how happy we might have been!'

'We may be, Glory.'

'I do not see how that is possible. I have no more any hopes, but it is

a great pleasure to me to see you and to hear you talk. I think of old

days and old dreams of happiness.'

'Why, Glory! with three hundred a year we might have lived as

gentlefolks, doing nothing. We might have bought a little house and

garden just anywhere, at the other end of England, in Scotland, or where

you liked, away from all ugly sights and memories.'

'I had no ugly memories in the old days,' she said sorrowfully.

'I suppose not. But you have now. My Glory! how delightful it would be

to cast all the horrible past away like a bad dream; all the past from

when I was pressed into the service, to now--to drop it all out of

memory as though it never had been, and to take up the story of life

from that interruption.'

'Oh, George!' She trembled and gave one great sob, that shook her.

'How we should live to one another, live in one another, and love one

another. Why, Glory! we should not care for any others to come and

disturb us, we should be so happy----'

She covered her face.

'On three hundred a year,' he went on. 'That is a beautiful sum. I

suppose you need not live here on it: you might live where you liked on

the money. It is not laid out on land in Wyvenhoe?'

'No, no.'

'You might take, let us suppose, a cottage by Plymouth Harbour. I have

been there; it is a lovely spot, where you would see ships of all sorts

sailing by; and just draw your money and live at ease.'

'I suppose so.'

'And nobody there would know you, whence you came, and what your

history. They would not care to ask. That would be a new life, and in

it all the past would be forgotten.'

'Why do you talk like this to me, George? I cannot bear it. You raise

pictures before me which never can exist. All I want is to live on here

in my sorrow and difficulties, and just now and then to see you and talk

to you, and thus to get refreshed and go back to my duties again with a

lighter heart, and strengthened to bear my burden.'

'I do not understand what you mean by duties,' he said. 'You have told

me more than once that you have only formally taken Elijah Rebow as a

husband, but that he is nothing to you in reality, you do not love him,

and have no tie to bind you to him save the farce you went through with

him in church.'

'There is another,' said Mehalah in a faint tone.

'What other? What other can there be? You do not look on him as your

husband, do you?'

'No I do not, and I never will.'

'You do not even wear a wedding ring.'

'No.'

'He understood that he was to be regarded by you in no other light than

as one who gave his name to you in consideration for some service.'

'That was all.'

'Then I cannot see that you are not free. You promised to be my wife,

quite as solemnly as you have promised anything to Elijah, and you made

your agreement with him on the supposition that I was dead. He knew he

was deceiving you, and that I was alive to claim the fulfilment of your

oath to me. He got your promise from you under false representations,

and it cannot stand. You did not know how matters stood, or you would

never have taken it.'

'Never, never!'

'Through all, you say, you have held true to me.'

'Indeed I have, George.'

'Then Glory, my dearest, our course is quite clear. You are not bound to

this man, but you are bound to me. Your tie to him is worthless and is

snapped; your tie to me is strong and holds. I insist on the

fulfilment, I have a right to do so. I must have you as my own. Come

away with me. Come to any part of England, where you will, where we are

not known, where our names have never been heard, and we will be

properly married in a church, and live together happily the rest of our

lives. As for your mother, she is failing fast. I will wait till her

death, or we can take her away at once with us.'

'Oh, George, George!' Mehalah's tones were those of one in acute pain.

She flung herself on the ground at his feet, and clasped her hands on

her brow.

He looked at her with some surprise: 'This will be a change for the

better. You will escape out of darkness into sunshine, and leave all

your miseries in this hateful marsh behind your back.'

'George! George!' she moaned.

'Elijah deserves not a thought,' he went on. 'He has behaved like a

villain from beginning to end, and if he is served out now, no one will

pity him.'

'It is impossible, George!' exclaimed Mehalah, lifting herself on her

knees and holding her knitted fingers against her heart. 'It cannot be,

George. It never can be. There is another tie that I cannot break.'

'What tie?'

'I must own it, though it steep me in shame. It was I, George, who

blinded him, I in mad fear and anger mingled, not knowing what I did,

poured the vitriol over his eyes.'

George De Witt drew back from her.

'Glory! how dreadful!'

'It is dreadful, but it was done without premeditation. He had me in his

arms and told me what he had done to you--' she corrected herself--'what

he pretended he had done to you, and then he tried to kiss me, and in a

moment of loathing and effort to escape I did the deed. I did not know

what was in the bottle. I did not know what I laid hold of.'

'You are a dangerous person to deal with, Glory. I should be sorry to

provoke you. I do not understand you.'

'I suppose you do not,' she said, with a sob; 'but you must see this,

George. I have blinded him and made him a helpless creature dependent

on me. I did it, and I must atone for it. I brought him into this

condition, and I must expiate what I did by helping him to bear the

affliction.'

'He exasperated you.'

'Yes, but think what he is now, a wreck. I must tow the wreck into

port. There is no help for it; I cannot leave him, I have brought this

on myself, and I must bear it.'

'Glory! what nonsense! You do not love me or you would at once come

away with me, and leave him to his fate. He has richly deserved it.'

'I not love you!' she cried. 'Oh, George! how can you doubt that I do?

I have suffered for you, dreamed of you, lived for you. My world

without you is a world without a sun.'

'Then come with me.'

'I cannot do it. I have done that which binds me to Elijah. I must not

leave him.'

'You will not. Hark!' A burst of merry bells from West Mersea church

tower swept over the water. 'There is a wedding to-day yonder, and the

bells are being pealed in honour of it. Did the bells peal when you

were married?'

'No.'

'They shall when you become mine. Not those Mersea bells, but some

others where we are not known.'

'It cannot, it cannot be. George! do not tempt and torture me. I must

not leave Elijah. I have linked my fate to his by my own mad act, and

that cannot be undone. Oh, George! if it had not been for that, I might

have listened to you and followed you; for I am not, and never will be

his; but now I cannot desert him in his darkness and despair. I could

not be happy with you if I were to leave him.'

'This is too bad of you,' said the young man angrily. 'You are to me an

incomprehensible girl.'

'Can we not live on as we are at present, true to each other yet

separated?'

'No, we cannot. It is not in nature. I will tell you what, Glory! If

you do not come away with me and marry me, I will marry someone else.

There are more fish in the sea than come out of it.'

She rose to her feet and stood back, and looked at him with wide open

eyes. 'George, this is a cruel jest. It should not be uttered.'

'It is no jest, but sober earnest,' he answered sullenly. 'Glory! I

don't see why I should not marry as well as you.'

'Oh, George! George! do not speak to me in this way. I have been true

to you, and you have promised to be true to me.'

'Conditionally,' he interjected.

'You could not do it. You could not take another woman to your heart.

George! you talk of impossibilities.'

'Indeed! Do you think that another girl would not have me? If so, you

are mistaken.'

'You could not do it,' she persisted. 'If you were to, it would not be

the George I knew and loved and lost, but another. The George I knew

and loved and lost was true to me as I to him; he could no more take

another to his heart than can I.'

'But you have, Glory.'

'I have not. Elijah sits nowhere near my heart.'

'I do not believe it. If he did not, you would shake him off without

another thought and follow me.'

'Do you not see,' she cried passionately, holding out both her palms,

and trembling with her vehemence, 'that I cannot. I by my own act have

made him helpless, and would you have me desert him in his helplessness?

I cannot do it. There is something in here, in my bosom, I know not

what it is, but it will not let me. If I were to go against that I

should never be at ease.'

'You are not at ease now.'

'That would be different. I have my sorrow now, but my distress then

would be of another sort and utterly unendurable. I cannot explain

myself. George! you ought to understand me. If I were to say these

words to Elijah he would see through my heart at once, and all the

thoughts in it would be visible to him as painted figures in a church

window. To you they seem all broken and jumbled and meaningless.'

'I tell you again, Glory, I do not understand you. Perhaps it is as well

that we should live apart. I hate to have a knot in my hands I can't

untie. If Elijah understands you, keep to him. I shall look for a mate

elsewhere.'

'George!' she said plaintively, 'You are angry and offended. I am sorry

for it. I will do anything for you. True to you I must and will

remain, but I will not leave Elijah and follow you. I could not do it.'

'Very well then, I shall look for a wife elsewhere.'

'You cannot do it,' she said.

'Can I not?' echoed George De Witt with a laugh; 'I rather believe there

is a nice girl at Mersea who only wants to be asked to jump into my

arms. It seems to me that I owe her reparation for your treatment of

her once on my boat.'

'What!'

'Now, Glory! let us understand one another. If you will run off with

me--and I see nothing but some silly sentiment to hinder you--then we

will be married and live happily together on your little fortune and my

pension and what I can pick up.'

She shook her head.

'If you will not, why then, I shall go straight from here to Phoebe

Musset, and ask her to be my wife; and you may take my word for it that

in three weeks the bells that are now pealing from Mersea tower will be

pealing again for us.'

'You could not do it.'

'Indeed I will. I shall go direct to her. My mother wishes it and I

know that Phoebe is ready with her yes.'

'You can take her, _her_, to your heart?'

'Delighted to do so.'

'Then, George! I never knew you, I never understood you.'

'I dare say not, no more than I can understand you. Once again, will you

come with me?'

'No, never.'

'You never loved me. I shall go to Phoebe and have done with Glory.'

She lifted her hands to heaven, pressed them to her heart, and then ran

with extended arms back to Red Hall, stumbling and recovering herself,

and fluttering on, still with arms outstretched, like a wounded bird

trying to rise but unable, seeking a covert where it may hide its head

and die.

*CHAPTER XXX.*

*TO WEDDING BELLS.*

She ran on. Red Hall was before her. The sun had set, and scarlet,

amber, and amethyst were the tints of the sky, blotted by the great bulk

of the old house standing up alone against the horizon.

She ran on, and the wedding bells of Mersea steeple chanted joyously in

the summer evening air, and the notes flew over the flats like melodious

wildfowl.

She ran up the steps, in at the door of the hall, where sat Elijah with

his finger feeling the inscription on the chimney-piece, with the red

light glaring through the western window on his forehead, staining it

crimson.

She cast herself at his feet; she placed her elbows on his knees, and

laid her head upon them. Dimly he saw the scarlet cap like a broken

poppy droop and fall before him, he put out his hand and it rested upon

it.

She had come to him, to the only heart that was constant, that was not

to be shaken and moved from its anchorage; to the only soul that

answered to her own, to the only mind that read her thoughts. The

George of her fancy, the ideal of truth and steadfastness, was

dissolved, and had disappeared leaving a mean vulgar object behind from

which she shrank. To him whom she had hated, with whom she had fought

and against whom she had stiffened her back, she now flew as her only

support, her only anchorage.

She could not speak, her thoughts chased through her head in wild

disorder like the clouds when there are cross currents in the sky.

Now and then a spasmodic sob broke from her and shook her.

'What is the matter, Mehalah? Where have you been?'

She did not answer. She could not. She was choking. Perhaps she did

not hear him, or hearing did not understand the import of his words.

She saw only the falling to pieces into dust of an idol. Better had

George died, and she had lived on looking upon him as her ideal of

manhood, noble, straightforward, truthful, constant. She would have

been content to drudge on in her weary life at Red Hall and would have

borne Elijah's humours and her mother's fretfulness, without a hope

herself, if only she might still have maintained intact her image of all

that was honourable and steadfast. She could not bear the revulsion of

feeling. She was like a religionist who, on lifting the purple veil of

the sanctuary, has found his God, before whom he had offered libations

and prayers, to be some grovelling beast.

'Where have you been?' again asked Elijah placing his hands on her

shoulders.

She raised her head, and gasped for breath, she essayed to speak but

could not.

'Why do you not answer me?' he asked, not with fierceness in his tone,

but with iron resolve.

'Mehalah!' he said firmly, solemnly. 'There have passed many days since

George De Witt returned, and since Charles Pettican's bequest has

rendered you independent of me. I have waited, and wanted to hold you,

as I hold you now, firmly, fast in my strong hands. You feel them on

your shoulders. They shall never let go. Now that I hold I shall hold

fast. Mehalah! we have old scores to wipe out. Days and weeks of blind

agony in me, hours, days of horrible internal torture whilst George De

Witt has been here. I hold you now and all must now be made square

between us.'

She tried to raise her hands, but he held her shoulders so tightly she

could not move them.

'Elijah!' she said, 'do with me what you will. It is all one to me.'

'Where have you been? with whom have you been?'

'I have been with him.'

'I knew it. You shall never be with him again.'

She sighed. She knew that he spoke truly. Never could she see him

again, in the old light; she never could meet him again on the old

footing.

'Mehalah!' he went on, and his hands shook, and shook her; 'I have loved

you; but now I hate and love you at the same time. You have caused me

to suffer tortures, the like of which I could not suppose it possible

any man could have endured, and have lived. You little knew and less

cared what I endured in my eyes when they were burnt out. You little

know and less care what I have endured in my soul since George De Witt

has been back.'

'Elijah,' she said raising her heavy head, 'let me speak. George----'

'No never,' he interrupted, 'never shall you utter his name again.' He

covered her mouth with his hand.

'No, I could not bear it,' he went on. 'Mehalah! your heart has never

been mine, and I will not endure to be longer without it. Could you

come to my breast and let my arms lap round you and our hearts beat

against each other's bosom, and glue your lips to mine? No, no,' he

answered himself. 'Not now, I cannot expect it. He has stood in my

path, he has risen out of the waters to part us. Whilst we are on the

earth we cannot be united, because he intercepts the current which runs

from my heart to yours, and from yours to mine. Although he might be

far away, a thousand miles distant, yet the tide of your affection would

set to him. The moon they tell us is some hundreds of thousands of

miles from the ocean, and yet the water throbs and rises, and falls and

retreats responsive to the impulse of the moon, because moon and earth

are both in one sphere. As long as you and he are together in one orb,

there is no peace for me, your love will never flow to me and dance and

sparkle about me. I must look elsewhere for peace, elsewhere for union,

without which there is no peace. Lift up your head, Mehalah! Why is it

resting thus heavily on my knee? I do not know what has come over you.

Yes--' he said suddenly, in a louder tone, 'Yes I do know what it is.

It is the shadow of the cloud, the scent before the rain. You have

crept to me, you have cast yourself at my feet, you have leaned your

head on my knee, you lift your arms to my heart, for the consummation is

at hand. Mehalah! Do you understand me?'

'Yes.'

'Yes. We two understand each other, and none others can. Now, Mehalah!

Glory! you shall not escape me. Glory! will you kiss me?'

He put his hand to her head, and felt it shaken in the negative.

'No. I did not suppose you would. You would kiss George, but not me;

but you never shall belong to another but me. Hold up your face,

Glory!'

He lifted it with one hand, and peered at it through the haze that ever

attended him.

'Glory!' he said. 'Will you swear to me, if I let you go one minute,

that you will place yourself here, at my feet, in my hands, as you lie

now?'

'Yes.'

'It is dark, is it not? I can see nothing, not your flaming cap. I

will let you go. I can trust your lightest word. Go and kindle me a

candle.' He relaxed his grasp, and she staggered to her feet, and

dully, in a dream obeyed. There was a candle on the chimney-piece, she

took it to the hearth in the kitchen and lighted it there. The

charwoman was gone.

'Go upstairs,' he said. 'There has been no sound in the house this

hour. Go and kiss your mother and come back.'

She obeyed again, and crept lifelessly up the stairs; in another moment

he heard a low long muffled wail.

He listened. She did not return.

'Mehalah!' he called.

He waited a minute and then called again.

She came down bearing the light. He did not see, but the candle

glittered in tears rolling down her cheeks.

'Come to your place,' he ordered. 'Remember you swore.'

She threw herself at his feet.

'My mother! my mother!'

'She is dead,' said Elijah. 'I knew it. I heard her feebly cry for

you, an hour ago, and I crept upstairs, and I listened by her bed, and

held my hand to her heart till it ceased.'

Mehalah did not speak, her frame shook with emotion.

He took the candle, raised her face with his hand under the chin and

held the light close to it.

'I cannot see much,' he said; 'I can see scarce anything of the dear

face, of the great brown eyes I loved so well, I can see only something

flame there. That is the cap.' He took it off and passed his hand

through her rich hair. 'I can see, I think I can see, the flicker of

the candle flame in the eyes. I can see the mouth, that mouth I have

never touched, but I see it only as a red evening cloud across the sky.'

'Let me go!' she wailed. 'My mother! my mother!'

'We will go together to her,' he answered; 'stay one moment.'

He put down the candle, and once more laid his hand on her head, and now

he pressed it back with his left hand. Did she see in the dull eyes a

gathering moisture, the rising of a tide? A tear ran down each of his

rugged cheeks. Then he suddenly rose, and he struck her full in the

forehead with his iron fist, heavy as a sledge hammer. She dropped in a

heap on the floor.

'Glory! my own, own Glory!' he cried, and listened.

There was no answer.

'Glory! my love! my pride! my second self! my double!'

He caught her up, and she hung across his knee. He held his ear to her

mouth and hearkened.

'Oh Glory! my own! my own!'

He stretched his hand above the mantelpiece and plucked down the chain

and padlock; he secured the key. Then he cast the chain over his arm

and drew the inanimate girl to him and held her in his firm grasp, and

lifted her over his shoulder, and felt his way out at the door and down

the steps.

No one was in the yard. No one on the pasture.

The sun had set some time, but there was blood and fire on the horizon,

clouds seamed with flame, and streaks of burning crimson.

He cautiously descended the stairs, and crossing the yard, made his way

over the pasture to the landing place. He knew the path well. He could

have trod it in the darkest night without error. He came to the

sea-wall, and there he laid Mehalah, whilst he groped for his boat, and

unloosed the rope that attached it to the shore.

He returned, and took up the still unconscious girl.

He felt her feeble breath on his cheek as he carried her, but he did not

see the spot of returning colour in her face. He was eager, and hasty.

He knew no delay, but pressed on. He carried her into the boat and took

his oars and began to row, with her lying in the bottom.

The tide was running out. His instinct guided him.

The bells of Mersea tower were dancing a merry peal.

The windows of the 'Leather Bottle' were lighted up, and the topers were

drinking prosperity to the married pair.

George De Witt was making his way to the Mussets, little conscious that

Mehalah was lying in a boat, stunned, and being carried out seaward.

Presently Elijah felt sure by the fresher breeze and increased motion

that he was out of the fleet in deep water. Then he quietly shipped his

oars.

He lifted Mehalah, and drew her into his arms and laid her against his

heart.

'My Glory! my own dearest! my only one!' he moaned. 'I could not help

it. You would have left me had I not done this. There was no other way

out of the tangle, there was no other path into the light. Glory! we

were created for each other, but a perverse fortune has separated your

heart from mine here. We shall meet and unite in another world. We

must do so, we were born for each other. Glory! Glory!'

She stirred and opened her eyes, and drew a long breath.

'Are you waking, Glory?' he asked. 'Hark, hark! the marriage bells are

ringing, ringing, ringing, for you and me. Now Glory! now only is our

marriage! now only, locked together, shall we find rest.'

He took the iron chain, and wound it round her and him, tying them

together tight, and then he fastened the padlock and flung the key into

the sea.

'Once I turned the key in the lock carelessly, and he who was bound by

this chain escaped. I have fastened it firmly now, it will not fall

apart for all eternity. Now Glory! Now we are bound together for

everlasting.'

She sighed.

'Do you hear me?' he asked. 'It is well. Glory! one kiss?'

He put down his hand into the bottom of the boat, and drew out the plug,

and tossed it overboard. At once the cold sea-water rushed in and

overflowed his feet.

'Glory!' he cried, and he folded her to his heart, and fastened his lips

fiercely, ravenously to hers.

He felt her heart throb, faintly indeed, but really.

Merrily pealed the musical bells. Cans of ale had been supplied the

ringers, and they dashed the ropes about in a fever of intoxication and

sympathy. Joy to the wedded pair! Long life and close union and

happiness without end! The topers at the 'Leather Bottle' brimmed their

pewter mugs and drank the toast with three cheers.

The water boiled up, through the plughole, and the boat sank deeper.

Life was beginning to return to Mehalah, but she neither saw nor knew

aught. Her eyes were open and turned seaward, to the far away horizon,

and Elijah relaxed his hold one instant.

'Elijah!' she suddenly exclaimed, 'How cold!'

'Glory! Glory! It is fire! We are one!' The bells pealed over the

rolling sea--no boat was on it, only a sea-mew skimming and crying.