The Broom-Squire
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On all sides, as already intimated at the opening of this tale, the sandy commons near Thursley are furrowed as though a giant plough had been drawn along them, but at so remote a period that since the soil was turned the heather had been able to cast its deep brown mantle of velvet pile over every irregularity, and to veil the scars made in the surface.
These gullies or furrows vary in depth from ten to forty feet, and run to various lengths. They were the subaerial excavations and open adits made by miners in quest of iron ore. They are probably of all dates from prehistoric antiquity to the reign of the Tudors, after which the iron smelting of the weald came to an end. The magnificent oaks of the forest of Anderida that stretched from Winchelsea, in Kent, a hundred and twenty miles west, with a breadth of thirty miles between the northern and southern chalk downs – these oaks had been hewn down and used as fuel, in the fabrication of military armor and weapons, and just as the wood was exhausted, coal was discovered in the north, and the entire industry of iron in the weald came to an end.
Mehetabel had often run up these gullies when a child, playing on the commons with Iver, or with other scholars of Dame Chivers school.
She remembered now that in one of these she and Iver had discovered a cave, scooped out in the sandrock, possibly the beginning of an adit, probably a place for storing smuggled goods. On a very small scale it resembled the extraordinary labyrinth of subterranean passages at Puttenham, that may be explored at the present day. During the preceding century and the beginning of that in which we live, an extensive business in smuggled spirits, tea, and tobacco was carried on from the coast to the Thames; and there were certain store places, well-known to the smugglers in the line of trade. In Thursley parish is a farm that is built over vast vaults, carefully constructed, with the entrance of them artfully disguised. The Puttenham labyrinth has its openings in a dense coppice; and it had this advantage, that with a few strokes of the pick a passage could be blocked with sand from the roof.
The cave that Mehetabel had discovered, and in which she had spent many a summer hour, opened out of the side of one of the most profound of the trenches cut in the surface after ore. The entrance was beneath a projecting slab of ironstone, and was concealed by bushes of furze and bramble. It did not penetrate beyond thirty feet into the sand rock, or if it had done so formerly, it was choked when known to Mehetabel, with the falling in of the roof. These sandstone caves are very dry, and the temperature within agreeable.
Here Mehetabel resolved to bide for a while, till she had found some place of greater security for herself and the child.
She did not leave Mrs. Chivers without having arranged with her for the conveyance of food to a place agreed on between them.
With the shawl so kindly given her by the gardener, Mehetabel could exclude all wintry air from her habitation, and abundance of fuel was at hand in the gully, so that she could make and maintain a fire that would be unnoticed, because invisible except to such as happened to enter the ravine.
Mehetabel left the village and emerged on the path bearing that precious but woeful burden, her little babe, in her arms folded about it. Then, all at once, before her she saw that same young lawyer who had insulted her at the Hammer Pond. He recognized her at once, as she did him. She drew back and her heart beat furiously.
"What, Queen of the heath?" said he, "still about with your baby?"
She would not answer him. She stepped back.
"Do not be afraid; I wish you well – you and your little one. Come, for the sake of that mite, accept my offer. What will you say to yourself – how excuse yourself if it die through exposure, and because of your silly scruples?"
She would not listen to him. She darted past, and fled over the down.
She roamed about, lost, distracted. In her confusion she missed the way to the cave, and the darkness was gathering. The moaning little morsel of her flesh could not be comforted. She rocked it violently, then gently. In neither way could she give it relief. She knew not which direction she had taken, on what part of the heath she was straying.
And now rain began to fall, and Mehetabel had to protect her child from being drenched. For herself she had no thought. The rain came down first in a slight sprinkle, and then in large drops, and a cold wind swashed the drops into her face, blinding her.
All at once, in the uncertain light, she saw some dark gap open before her as a grave. She would have fallen headlong into it had she not arrested her foot in time. Then, with a gasp of relief she recognized where she was.
She stood at the edge of the old mining ravine. This trench, cut in the sandy down, had looked like a little bit of Paradise to the child-eyes of the pupils of Betty Chivers in summer, when the air was honey-sweet with the fragrance of the flowering furze, and musical with the humming of bees; and the earth was clotted with spilt raspberry cream – the many-tinged blossom of the heather – alas! it was now sad, colorless, dripping, cold, and repellent.
CHAPTER XLII
THE CAVE
Mehetabel made her way down the steep side of the gully, and to the cave, burdened with the babe she carried in her arms. She bore a sack over her back that contained some dry turves, shavings, and a few potatoes, given her by the school-dame. The place of refuge had obviously been frequented by children long after the time when Mehetabel and Iver had retired to it on hot summer days. The sides of the entrance had been built up with stones, with moss driven into their interstices. Within, the floor was littered with dry fern, and in one place was a rude hearth, where fires had been kindled; this was immediately under a vertical opening that served as chimney, and prevented the smoke of a fire from filling the cave.
The young mother laid her child on the shawl she spread over the bracken, and proceeded to kindle a fire with a tinder-box lent her by Mrs. Chivers. It amused the babe to watch the sparks as they flew about, and when the pile of turves and sticks and heather was in combustion, to listen to the crackle, and watch the play and leap of the flames.
As the fire burnt up, and the blue smoke stole through the natural chimney, the whole cave glowed orange.
The air was not cold within, and in the radiation from the fire, the place promised to be warm and comfortable.
The child crowed and stretched its feet out to the blaze.
She looked attentively at the babe.
What did that wicked young lawyer mean by saying that it would die through exposure? It had cried and moaned. All children cry and moan. They have no other means of making their wants known. Wet the little creature was not; she had taken every precaution against that, but her own garments steamed in the heat of the fire she had kindled, and leaving the babe to watch the dancing flames, she dried her wet gown and stockings in the glow.
Then by the reflection Mehetabel could see on the nether surface of the sandstone slab at the entrance the initials of herself and Iver that had been cut by the latter many years ago, with a true-lover's knot uniting them. And there on that knot, lost in dream, was a peacock butterfly that had retired to hibernate. The light from the fire glowed in its purple and gold eyes, and the warm ascending air fluttered the wings, but did not restore animation to the drowsy insect. In corners were snails at the limit of their glazed tracks, also in retreat before winter. They had sealed themselves up in their houses against cold.
Mehetabel was constrained to pass in and out of her habitation repeatedly so as to accumulate fuel that might serve through the night. Happily, on her way she had noticed a little shelter hut, probably constructed by a village sportsman, under which he might conceal himself with his gun and await the game. This was made of dry heather, and branches of fir and chestnut. She had no scruple in pulling this to pieces, and conveying as much as she could carry at a time to her cave.
The child, amused by the fire, did not object to her temporary desertion, and it was too feeble and young to crawl near to the flames.
After several journeys to and fro Mehetabel had contrived to form a goodly pile of dry fuel at the back of her habitation, and now that a sufficiency of ash had been formed proceeded to embed in it the potatoes that Betty Chivers had given her.
How often had she and Iver, as children, talked of being savages and living in wigwams and caves, and now she was driven to a life of savagery in the midst of civilization. It would not, however, be for long. She would search the neighborhood round for work, and when she had got it move away from this den in the Common.
A stoat ran in, raised its head, looked at the fire, then at her, with glistening eyes devoid of fear, but at a movement of the child darted away and disappeared.
A Sabbath sense of repose came over Mehetabel. The babe was content and crooning itself to sleep. Her nerves in tension all day were now relaxed; her wearied body rested. She had no inquisitive companion to worry her with questions, none overkind to try her with injudicious attentions. She could sit on the fragrant fern leaves, extend her feet, lean her head against the sandstone, and watch the firelight play over the face of her child.
A slight sound attracted her attention. It was caused by a bramble leaf caught in a cobweb, drawn in by the draught produced by the fire, and it tapped at and scratched the covering stone. Mehetabel, roused from her languor, saw what occasioned the sound, and lost all concern about it. There were particles in the sand that sparkled. It afforded her a childish pleasure to see the twinkles on every side in the rise and fall of the flames. It was no exertion to cast on another branch of heather, or even a bough of pine. It was real pleasure to listen to the crackle and to see the sparks shoot like rockets from the burning wood. The cave was a fairy palace. The warmth was grateful. The potatoes were hissing in the embers. Then Mehetabel dreamily noticed a black shadow stealing along the lower surface of the roof stone. At first she saw it without interest, without inquiry in her mind, but little by little her interest came, and her attention centred itself on the dark object.
It was a spider, a hairy insect with a monstrous egglike belly, and it was creeping slowly and with caution towards the hibernating butterfly. Perhaps its limbs were stiff with inaction, its blood congealed; perhaps it dreaded lest by precipitation it might alarm its prey and lose it.
Mehetabel put out her hand, picked up a piece of furze, and cast it at the spider, which fell.
Then she was uneasy lest it would crawl along the ground and come to her baby, and sting it. She inherited the common superstition that spiders are poisonous insects.
She must look for it.
Only now, as she tried to raise herself, did she discover how stiff her joints had become. She rose to her knees, and raked out some of the potatoes from the ashes, and swept the floor where the spider had dropped with a brush of Scottish pine twigs.
Then, all at once, she remained motionless. She heard steps and voices outside, the latter in low converse. Next a face looked in, and an exclamation followed, "Jamaica! There, sure enough, she be!"
The voice, the face – there was no mistaking either. They belonged to Sally Rocliffe.
The power to cry out failed in Mehetabel. She hastily thrust her child behind her, into the depths of the cave, and interposed herself between it and the glittering eyes of the woman.
"Come on, Jamaica, we'll see how she has made herself comfortable," said Mrs. Rocliffe, and she entered, followed by Giles Cheel. Both had to stoop at the opening, but when they were a few feet within, could stand upright.
"Well, now, I call this coorious," said Sarah; "don't you, Jamaica? Here's all the Punch-Bowl turned out. Some runnin' one way, some another, all about Matabel. Some sez she's off her head; some thinks she has drownded herself and the child. And there's Jonas stormin', and in a purty takein'. There is my Thomas – gone with him – and Jamaica and I come this way over the Common. But I had a fancy you might be at the bottom o' one of them Hammer Ponds. I was told you'd been to the silk mill."
"What be you run away for? What be you a hidin' for – just like a wild beast?" asked Giles Cheel.
Mehetabel could not answer. How could she declare her reason? That the life of the child was menaced by its own father.
"Now come back with us," said Jamaica, in a persuasive tone.
"I will not. I never will return," exclaimed Mehetabel with energy. She was kneeling, with her hands extended to screen her child from the eye of Sally Rocliffe.
"I told you so, did I not?" asked the woman.
"She sed as much to me yesterday mornin when I saw her run away."
"I will not go back. I will never go back," repeated Mehetabel
"Where is the child?" asked Sally.
"It is behind me."
"How is it?"
"It is well now, now we are out of the Punch-Bowl, where all hate it and wish it dead."
"Now, look here, Matabel," said Cheel, "you be reasonable, and come peaceably."
"I will not go back; I never will!" she answered with increased vehemence.
"That's all very fine sayin'," pursued Giles Cheel. "But go back you must when Jonas fetches you."
"I will not go back! Never! never!"
"He'll make you."
"Not if I will not go."
"Aye, but he can. If you won't go when he axes, he can get the constable to force you to go home. The law of the land can help him thereto."
"I will not go back! Never!"
"Where he is just now, I can't say," pursued Cheel. "But I have a notion he's prowlin' about the moor, thinkin' you may have gone to Thor's Stone. Come he will, and he'll take you and the baby, and you may squeal and scratch, go back with him you must and will. So I say go peaceable."
"I will not go back!" cried Mehetabel. She picked up a lump of ironstone and said, passionately, "I will defend myself. I am as strong as he. I am stronger, for I will fight for my child. I will kill him rather than let him take my baby from me."
"Hear her!" exclaimed Sally Rocliffe. "She threatens she'll do for Jonas. Every one knows she tried that on once afore, wi' his gun."
"Yes," said Mehetabel, fiercely, "I will even do that. Rather than go back and have my baby in that hated place again, I will fight and kill him. Let him come here and try."
She set her teeth, her eyes glared, her breath came snorting through her nostrils.
"I say, Gilly, I'll go back. It ain't safe here. She's possessed with seven devils."
"I am not possessed, save with mother's love. I will never, never go back and take my babe to the Punch-Bowl. Never, never, allow you, Sally, to look at its innocent face again, nor Jonas to touch it. There is no one cares for it, no one loves it, no one who does not wish its death, but me, and I will fight, and never – "
Her strength gave way, her hands sank in the sand, and her hair fell over her face, as she broke into a storm of sobs and tears.
"I say, Jamaica, come out," whispered Mrs. Rocliffe. "We'll talk over wot's to be done."
Giles Cheel and Sally Rocliffe crept out of the cave backwards. They did so, facing Mehetabel, with mistrust. Each believed that she was mad.
When the two were outside, then Jonas's sister said to her companion "I'll tell you what, Jamaica, I won't have nuthin' more to do with this. There's somethin' queer; and whether Jonas has been doin' what he ort not, or whether Matabel be gone rampagin' mad, that's not for me to say. Let Jonas manage his own affairs, and don't let us meddle no more."
"I am sure it's 'as nuthin' to me," said Cheel. "But this is a fine thing. At the christenin' of that there baby he had words to say about me and my Betsy, as if we was a disgrace to the Punch-Bowl, becos we didn't always agree. But my Betsy and me never came to such a pass as this. I'm willin'. Let's go back and have our suppers, and let her be where she is."
"You need not tell Jonas that we have found her."
"No; not if you wishes."
"Let the matter alone altogether; I reckon she's in a dangerous mood, and so is Jonas. Something may come of it, and I'd as lief be out of it altogether."
"That's my doctrine, too," said Giles.
Then he put his head in at the cave door, and said "Good-night, missus!"
CHAPTER XLII
AT COLPUS'S
On the morrow Mehetabel, carrying her babe, revisited the schoolmistress, at an early hour, before the children assembled.
Betty Chivers received her with joy.
"Matabel," she said, "I've been thinking about you. There's James Colpus and his daughter are in want of a woman. That girl, Julia Caesar, as has been with them, got at the barrels of ale, and has been givin' drink all round to the men, just when they liked. She'd got a key to the cellar unbeknown to Master Colpus; so she has had to walk off. Polly Colpus, she knows you well enough, and what a managing girl you are. They couldn't do better than take you – that is, if they can arrange with Bideabout, and don't object to the baby."
Accordingly, somewhat later, Mehetabel departed for the farm of
James Colpus, that adjoined the land occupied by old Simon
Verstage.
James Colpus was preparing to go out fox-hunting when Mehetabel arrived. He wore a tight, dark-colored suit, that made his red face look the redder, and his foxy hair the foxier. His daughter had a face like a full moon, flat and eminently livid;' fair, almost white eyebrows, and an unmistakable moustache. She was extraordinarily plain, but good-natured. She was pouring out currant brandy for her father when Mehetabel arrived.
"Well!" exclaimed Colpus. "Here is the runaway wife. Tally-ho! Tally-ho! We've got her. All the parish has been out after you, and you run to earth here, do you?"
"If you please," said Mehetabel, "I have come to offer my services in the place of Julia Caesar, who has been sent away. You know I can work. You know I won't let nobody have the tap o' the beer – and as for wages, I'll take what you are willing to give."
"That's all very fine, Miss Runaway, but what will Bideabout say to that?"
"I am not going back to Bideabout," answered Mehetabel. "If you cannot take me, I shall go to every farm and offer myself, and if none in Thursley or Witley will have me, I'll beg my bread from door to door, till I do find a house where I may honestly earn it. Go back to the Punch-Bowl I will not."
"I'd like to take you," said Colpus. "Glad to have you. Never a better girl anywhere, of that I am quite certain – only, how about the Broom-Squire? I'm constable, and it must not be said that the constable is keeping a man's wife away from him."
"You will not keep me from him. Nothing in the world will make me go back to him."
"Then – what about the baby? Can you let Bideabout have that?"
Mehetabel flushed almost as red as Colpus and his daughter.
"Never!" she said, firmly.
"But, look here," said the farmer, "if I did agree to take you, why, after a day or two, you'd be homesick, and wantin' to be back in the arms of Jonas. It's always so with women."
"I shall never go back," persisted Mehetabel.
"So you say. But before the week is out you'll be piping another song."
"You may bind me to stay – three months – six – a year,"
"That is all very well to say. Bind me, but how? What bind will hold – when the marriage tie does not?"
"The marriage tie would have held me till death," answered Mehetabel gravely, "if Jonas had not done that which makes it impossible for me to remain. It is not for my sake that I am away. Had I been alone I would have borne all till I died. But I have other duties now. I am a mother. Here is my darling, a charge from God. I owe it to God to do what I am here for – to find another home, a place away from the Punch-Bowl."
"What do you mean?"
"I cannot explain."
"Is the Punch-Bowl unhealthy for the child?"
"Yes, it would die there."
"Who told you so?"
"I know it. My heart says so."
"Now look here," said Colpus, getting red as a poppy, "there's a lot of talk in the place about you. Some say that Bideabout is in the wrong, some say that the wrong lies with you. It is reported that he beat you, and there are folks that tell as how you gave him occasion. You must let me know the right of it all, or I can't take you."
"Then I must go," said Mehetabel, "I cannot tell you all. You may think ill of me if you choose, I cannot help that."
Colpus rubbed his foxy whiskers and head.
"You're a won'erful active woman, and do more work than three ordinary gals. I'd like to have you in the house. But then – what am I to say if Kink comes to claim you?"
"Say you will not give me up."
"But I ain't so sure but what he can force me to surrender you."
"You are the strongest man in Thursley."
"'Tain't that," said Colpus, gratified by the compliment. "'Tis he might bring the law against me. I don't know nuthin' about law, though I'm constable, but I reckon, if I was to keep a cow of his as had strayed and refused to give her up, he could compel me. And what's true of a cow is true of a wife. If I could be punished for stealin' his goose I might be summonsed all on account of you. Then there's the babe – that might be brought in as kidnappin'! I daren't risk it."
"But, father," put in Polly. "How would it do for a time, just to try."
"There's something in that, Polly.
"And Julia Caesar have left things in a terrible mess. We must have all cleared up before another comes in. What if we take Matabel by the day to clear up?"
"Look here, Polly," said Colpus, who visibly oscillated in mind between his wishes to engage Mehetabel and his fears as to what the consequences might be. "It's this," he touched his forehead, and made a sign towards the applicant. "Folk do say it."
"Matabel," said the good-natured farmer's daughter, "you go along to Thursley, and father and I will talk it over. If we think we can take you – where shall we send to find you?"
"To Betty Chivers' house."
"Well, in half an hour I trust we shall have decided. Now go."
As Mehetabel withdrew, Polly said, "It's all gammon, father, about her not being right in her head. Her eye is as steady as the evenin' star. And it's all lies about there bein' any fault in her. Matabel is as honest and true as sunlight."
Then old Colpus shouted after Mehetabel, who was departing by the lane. "Don't go that way, over the field is the path – by the stile. There's a lot o' water in the lane."
The young mother turned, thanked him with an inclination of the head, and pressing her cheek to the child she bore, she took the path that crossed a meadow, and which led to a tuft of holly, near which was the stile, into the lane. She walked on, with her cheek resting on the child's head, and her eyes on the trodden, cropped wintry grass, with a flutter of hope in her bosom; for she was almost certain that with the influence of Polly engaged on her side, old Colpus would agree to receive her.
She did not walk swiftly. She had no occasion for haste. She hoped that the objections of the farmer would give way before she had reached the hedge, and that he would recall her.
She had almost arrived t the turf of holly, singing in a low tone to the child in her arms, when, a voice made her start and cry out.
She looked up. Jonas was before her.
Unobserved by her he had entered the field. From the lane he had seen her, and he had crossed the stile and come upon her.
She stood frozen to the spot. Each muscle became rigid; the blood in her arteries tingled as though bees were making their way through every vein. Her brows met in a black band across her face. She trembled for a moment, and then was firm. A supreme moment, the supreme moment in her life was come.
"So I have found you at last," sneered Jonas. Hatred, fury, were in him and sent a quiver through the tones of his voice.
"Yes, you have found me," she answered with composure.
"You – do you know what you have done? Made me a derision and a talk to all Thursley, a jest in every pot-house."