The Broom-Squire - Sabine Baring-Gould (life books to read .txt) 📗

full golden moon hung in the sky, and the night was in no way dark and dreadful.

When she reached the Moor, Mehetabel ran among sheets of gold, leaped ribbons of shining metal, danced among golden filagree--the reflection of the orb in the patches, channels, frets of water. She sprang from one dark tuft of rushes to another; she ran along the ridges of the sand. She skipped where the surface was treacherous. What mattered it to her if she missed her footing, sank, and the ooze closed over her? As well end so a life that could never be other than long drawn agony.

Before leaving the heath, she had stooped and picked up a stone. It was a piece of hematite iron, such as frequently occurs in the sand, liver-shaped, and of the color of liver.

She required a hammer, wherewith to knock on Thor's anvil, and make her necessities known, and this piece of iron would serve her purpose.

Frogs were croaking, a thousand natterjacks were whirring like the nightjar. Strange birds screamed and rushed out of the trees as she sped along. White moths, ghostlike, wavered about her, mosquitoes piped. Water-rats plunged into the pools.

As a child she had been familiar with Pudmoor, and instinctively she walked, ran, only where her foot could rest securely.

A special Providence, it is thought, watches over children and drunkards. It watches also over such as are drunk with trouble, it holds them up when unable to think for themselves, it holds them back when they court destruction.

To this morass, Mehetabel had come frequently with Iver, in days long gone by, to hunt the natterjack and the dragon-fly, to look for the eggs of water fowl, and to pick marsh flowers.

As she pushed on, a thin mist spread over portions of the "Moor." It did not lie everywhere, it spared the sand, it lay above the water, but in so delicate a film as to be all but imperceptible. It served to diffuse the moonlight, to make a halo of silver about the face of the orb, when looked up to by one within the haze, otherwise it was scarcely noticeable.

Mehetabel ran with heart bounding and with fevered brain, and yet with her mind holding tenaciously to one idea.

After a while, and after deviations from the direct course, rendered necessary by the nature of the country she traversed, Mehetabel reached Thor's Stone, that gleamed white in the moonbeam beside a sheet of water, the Mere of the Pucksies. This mere had the mist lying on it more dense than elsewhere. The vapor rested on the surface as a fine gossamer veil, not raised above a couple of feet, hardly ruffled by a passing sigh of air. A large bird floated over it on expanded wings, it looked white as a swan in the moonlight, but cast a shadow black as pitch on the vaporous sheet that covered the face of the pool.

It was as though, like Dinorah, this bird were dancing to its own shadow. But unlike Dinorah, it was silent. It uttered no song, there was even no sound of the rush of air from its broad wings. When Mehetabel reached the stone she stood for a moment palpitating, gasping for breath, and her breath passing from her lips in white puffs of steam.

The haze from the mere seemed to rise and fling its long streamers about her head and blindfold her eyes, so that she could see neither the lake nor the trees, not even the anvil-stone. Only was there about her a general silvery glitter, and a sense of oppression lay upon her.

Mehetabel had escaped from the inn, as she was, with bare arms, her skirt looped up.

She stood thus, with the lump of ironstone resting on the block, the full flood of moonlight upon her, blinding her eyes, but revealing her against a background of foliage, like a statue of alabaster. Startled by a rustle in the bulrushes and willow growth behind her, Mehetabel turned and looked, but her eyes were not clear enough for her to discern anything, and as the sound ceased, she recovered from her momentary alarm.

She had heard that a deer was in Pudmoor that was supposed to have escaped from the park at Peperharow. Possibly the creature was there. It was harmless. There were no noxious beasts there. It was too damp for vipers, nothing in Pudmoor was hurtful save the gnats that there abounded. Then, with her face turned to the north, away from the dazzling glory of the moon, Mehetabel swung the lump of kidney iron she had taken as hammer, once from east to west, and once from west to east. With a third sweep she brought it down upon Thor's Stone and cried:

"Take him away! Take him away!"


CHAPTER XXII.


IVER! COME.

She paused, drew a long breath.

Again she swung the hammer-stone. And now she turned round, and passed the piece of iron into her left hand. She raised it and struck on the anvil, and cried: "Save me from him. Take him away." A rush, all the leaves of the trees behind seemed to be stirring, and all the foliage falling about her.

A hand was laid on her shoulder roughly, and the stone dropped from her fingers on the anvil. Mehetabel shrank, froze, as struck with a sudden icy blast, and cried out with fear.

Then said a voice: "So! you seek the Devil's aid to rid you of me."

At once she knew that she was in the presence of her husband, but so dazzled was she that she could not discern him.

His fingers closed on her arm, as though each were an iron screw.

"So!" said he, in a low tone, his voice quivering with rage, "like Karon Wyeth, you ask the Devil to break my neck."

"No," gasped Mehetabel.

"Yes, Matabel. I heard you. 'Save me from him. Take him away.'"

"No--no--Jonas."

She could not speak more in her alarm and confusion.

"Take him away. Snap his spine--send a bullet through his skull; cast him into Pug's mere and drown him; do what you will, only rid me of Bideabout Kink, whom I swore to love, honor, and to obey."

He spoke with bitterness and wrath, sprinkled over, nay, permeated, with fear; for, with all his professed rationalism, Jonas entertained some ancestral superstitions--and belief in the efficacy of the spirits that haunted Thor's Stone was one.

"No, Jonas, no. I did not ask it."

"I heard you."

"Not you."

"What," sneered he; "are not these ears mine?"

"I mean--I did not ask to have you taken away."

"Then whom?"

She was silent. She trembled. She could not answer his question.

If her husband had been at all other than he was, Mehetabel would have taken him into her confidence. But there are certain persons to whom to commit a confidence is to expose yourself to insult and outrage. Mehetabel knew this. Such a confidence as she would have given would be turned by him into a means of torture and humiliation.

"Now listen to me," said Jonas, in quivering tones of a voice that was suppressed. "I know all now. I did not. I trusted you. I was perhaps a fool. I believed in you. But Sarah has told me all--how he--that painting ape--has been at my house, meeting you, befooling you, pouring his love-tales into your ears, and watching till my back was turned to kiss you."

She was unable to speak. Her knees smote together.

"You cannot answer," he continued. "You are unable to deny that it was so. Sarah has kept an eye on you both. She should have spoken before. I am sorry she did not. But better late than never. You encouraged him to come to you. You drew him to the house."

"No, Jonas, no. It was you who invited him."

"Ah! for me he would not come. Little he cared for my society. The picture-making was but an excuse, and you all have been in a league against me."

"Who--Jonas?"

"Who? Why, Sanna Verstage and all. Did not she ask to have you at the Ship, and say that the painting fellow was going or gone? And is he not there still? She said it to get you and him together there, away from me, out of the reach of Sarah's eyes."

"It is false, Jonas!" exclaimed Mehetabel with indignation, that for a while overcame her fear.

"False!" cried Bideabout. "Who is false but you? What is false but every word you speak? False in heart, false in word, and false in act." He had laid hold of the bit of ironstone, and he struck the anvil with it at every charge of falsehood.

"Jonas," said Mehetabel, recovering self-control under the resentment she felt at being misunderstood, and her action misinterpreted. "Jonas, I have done you no injury. I was weak. God in heaven knows my integrity. I have never wronged you; but I was weak, and in deadly fear."

"In fear of whom?"

"Of myself--my own weakness."

"You weak!" he sneered. "You--strong as any woman."

"I do not speak of my arms, Jonas--my heart--my spirit--"

"Weak!" he scoffed. "A woman with a weak and timorous soul would not come to Thor's Stone at night. No--strong you are--in evil, in wickedness, from which no tears will withhold you. And--that fellow--that daub-paint--"

Mehetabel did not speak. She was trembling.

"I ask--what of him? Was not he in your thoughts when you asked the Devil to rid you of me--your husband?"

"I did not ask that, Jonas."

"What of him? He has not gone away. He has been with you. You knew he was not going. You wanted to be with him. Where is he--this dauber of canvas--now?"

Then, through the fine gauze of condensing haze, came a call from a distance--"Matabel! Where are you?"

"Oh, ho!" exclaimed the Broom-Squire. "Here he comes. By appointment you meet him here, where you least expected that I would be."

"It is false, Jonas. I came here to escape."

"And pray for my death?"

"No, Jonas, to be rid of him."

Bideabout chuckled, with a sarcastic sneer in the side of his face.

"Come now," said he; "I should dearly like to witness this meeting. If true to me, as you pretend, then obey me, summon him here, and let me be present, unobserved, when you meet. If your wish be, as you say, to be rid of him, I will help you to its fulfilment."

"Jonas!"

"I will it. So alone can you convince me."

She hesitated. She had not the power to gather her thoughts together, to judge what she should do, what under the circumstances would be best to be done.

"Come now," repeated Jonas. "If you are true and honest, as you say, call him."

She put her trembling hand to her head, wiped the drops from her brow, the tears from her eyes, the dew from her quivering lips.

Her brain was reeling, her power of will was paralyzed.

"Come, now," said Jonas once more, "answer him--here am I."

Then Mehetabel cried, "Iver, here am I!"

"Where are you, Mehetabel?" came the question through the silvery haze and the twinkling willow-shoots.

"Answer him, by Thor's Stone," said Jonas.

Again she hesitated and passed her hand over her face.

"Answer him," whispered Jonas. "If you are true, do as I say. If false,