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

the bullet is not for you. Let go, I say, or I will brain you with the butt end, and then shoot him!"

"I will not! Kill me if you will!"

Strong, athletic, lithe in her movements, Mehetabel was a match for the small muscular Jonas. If he succeeded for a moment in twisting the gun out of her hands it was but for an instant. She had caught the barrel again at another point.

He strove to beat her knuckles against Thor's Stone, but she was too dexterous for him. By a twist she brought his hand against the block instead of her own.

With an oath he cast himself upon her, by the impact, by the weight, to throw her down. Under the burden she fell on her knees, but did not relinquish her hold on the gun. On the contrary she obtained greater power over it, and held the barrel athwart her bosom, and wove her arms around it.

Iver was hastening to her assistance. He saw that some contest was going on, but was not able to discern either with whom Mehetabel was grappling nor what was the meaning of the struggle.

In his attempt to approach, Iver was regardless where he trod. He sank over his knees in the mire, and was obliged to extricate himself before he could advance.

With difficulty, by means of oziers, he succeeded in reaching firm soil, and then, with more circumspection, he sought a way by which he might come to the help of Mehetabel.

Meanwhile, regardless of the contest of human passion, raging close by, the great bird swung like a pendulum above the mere, and its shadow swayed below it.

"Let go! I will murder you, if you do not!" hissed Jonas. "You think I will kill him. So I will, but I will kill you first."

"Iver! help!" cried Mehetabel; her strength was abandoning her.

The Broom-Squire dragged his kneeling wife forward, and then thrust her back. He held the gun by the stock and the end of the barrel. The rest was grappled by her, close to her bosom.

He sought to throw her on her face, then on her back. So only could he wrench the gun away.

"Ah, ah!" with a shout of triumph.

He had disengaged the barrel from her arm. He turned it sharply upward, to twist it out of her hold she had with the other arm.

Then--suddenly--an explosion, a flash, a report, a cry; and Bideabout staggered back and fell.

A rush of wings.

The large bird that had vibrated above the water had been alarmed, and now flew away.


CHAPTER XXIV.


THE IRON-STONE HAMMER.

For a couple of minutes complete, death-like silence ensued.

Mehetabel, panting, everything swimming, turning before her eyes, remained motionless on her knees, but rested her hands on Thor's Stone, to save herself from falling on her face.

What had happened she hardly knew. The gun had been discharged, and then had fallen before her knees. Whom had it injured? What was the injury done?

She was unable to see, through the veil of tears that covered her eyes. She had not voice wherewith to speak.

Iver, moreover, stood motionless, holding to a willow. He also was ignorant of what had occurred. Was the shot aimed at him, or at Mehetabel? Who had fired?

Crouching against a bush, into which he had staggered and then collapsed, was the Broom-Squire. A sudden spasm of pain had shot through him at the flash of the gun. That he was struck he knew, to what extent injured he could not guess.

As he endeavored to raise one hand, the left, in which was the seat of pain, he became aware that his arm was stiff and powerless. He could not move his fingers.

The blood was coursing over his hand in a warm stream.

A horrible thought rushed through his brain. He was at the mercy of that woman who had invoked the Devil against him, and of the lover on whose account she had desired his death. She had called, and in part had been answered. He was wounded, and incapable of defending himself. This guilty pair would complete the work, kill him; blow out his brains, beat his head with the stock of the gun, and cast his body into the marsh.

Who would know how he came by his death? His sister was aware that he had gone to the moor to stalk deer. What evidence would be producible against this couple should they complete the work and dispose of him?

Strangely unaccountable as it may seem, yet it was so, that at the moment, rage at the thought that, should they kill him, Mehetabel and Iver would escape punishment, was the prevailing thought and predominant passion in Jonas's mind, and not by any means fear for himself. This made him disregard his pain, indifferent to his fate.

"I have still my right hand and my teeth," he said. "I will beat and tear that they may bear marks that shall awake suspicion."

But his head swam, he turned sick and faint, and became insensible.

When Jonas recovered consciousness he lay on his back, and saw faces bowed over him--that of his wife and that of Iver, the two he hated most cordially in the world, the two at least he hated to see together.

He struggled to rise and bite, like a wild beast, but was held down by Iver.

"Curse you! will you kill me so?" he yelled, snapping with his great jaws, trying to reach and rend the hands that restrained him.

"Lie still, Bideabout," said the young painter, "are you crazed? We will do you no harm. Mehetabel is binding up your arm. As far as I can make out the shot has run up it and is lodged in the shoulder."

"I care not. Let me go. You will murder me." Mehetabel had torn a strip from her skirt and was making a bandage of it.

"Jonas," she said, "pray lie quiet, or sit up and be reasonable. I must do what I can to stay the blood."

As he began to realize that he was being attended to, and that Iver and Mehetabel had no intention to hurt him, the Broom-Squire became more composed and patient.

His brows were knit and his teeth set. He avoided looking into the faces of those who attended to him.

Presently the young painter helped him to rise, and offered his arm. This Jonas refused.

"I can walk by myself," said he, churlishly; then turning to Mehetabel, he said, with a sneer, "The devil never does aught but by halves."

"What do you mean?"

"The bullet has entered my arm and not my heart, as you desired."

"Go," she said to the young artist; "I pray you go and leave me with him. I will take him home."

Iver demurred.

"I entreat you to go," she urged. "Go to your mother. Tell her that my husband has met with an accident, and that I am called away to attend him. That is to serve as an excuse. I must, I verily must go with him. Do not say more. Do not say where this happened."

"Why not?"

She did not answer. He considered for a moment and then dimly saw that she was right.

"Iver," she said in a low tone, so that Jonas might not hear, "you should not have followed me; then this would never have happened."

"If I had not followed you he would have been your murderer, Matabel."

Then, reluctantly, he went. But ever and anon turned to listen or to look.

When he was out of sight, then Mehetabel said to her husband, "Lean on me, and let me help you along."

"I can go by myself," he said bitterly. "I would not have his arm. I will have none of yours. Give me my gun."

"No, Jonas, I will carry that for you."

Then he put forth his uninjured right hand, and took the kidney-iron stone from the anvil block, on which Mehetabel had left it.

"What do you want with that?" she asked.

"I may have to knock also," he answered. "Is it you alone who are allowed to have wishes?"

She said no more, but stepped along, not swiftly, cautiously, and turning at every step, to see that he was following, and that he had put his foot on substance that would support his weight.

"Why do you look at me?" he asked captiously.

"Jonas, you are in pain, and giddy with pain. You may lose your footing, and go into the water."

"So--that now is your desire?"

"I pray you," she answered, in distress, "Jonas, do not entertain such evil thoughts."

They attained a ridge of sand. She fell back and paced at his side.

Bideabout observed her out of the corners of his eyes. By the moonlight he could see how finely, nobly cut was her profile; he could see the glancing of the moon in the tears that suffused her cheeks.

"You know who shot me?" he inquired, in a low tone.

"I know nothing, Jonas, but that there was a struggle, and that during this struggle, by accident--"

"You did it."

"No, Jonas. I cannot think it."

"It was so. You touched the trigger. You knew that the piece was on full cock."

"It was altogether an accident. I knew nothing. I was conscious of nothing, save that I was trying to prevent you from committing a great crime."

"A great crime!" jeered he. "You thought only how you might save the life of your love."

Mehetabel stood still and turned to him.

"Jonas, do not say that. You cruelly, you wrongfully misjudge me I will tell you all, if you will I never would have hidden anything from you if I had not known how you would take and use what I said. Iver and I were child friends, almost brother and sister. I always cared for him, and I think he liked me. He went away and I saw nothing of him. Then, at our wedding, he returned home; and since then I have seen him a good many times--you, yourself asked him to the Punch-Bowl, and bade me stand for him to paint. I cannot deny that I care for him, and that he likes me."

"As brother and sister?"

"No--not as brother and sister. We are children no longer. But, Jonas, I have no wish, no thought other than that he should leave Thursley, and that I should never, never, never see his face again. Of thought, of word, of act against my duty to you I am guiltless. Of thoughts, as far as I have been able to hold my thoughts in chains, of words, of acts I have nothing to reproach myself with, there have been none but what might be known to you, in a light clearer than that poured down by this moon. You will believe me, Jonas."

He looked searchingly into her beautiful, pale face--now white as snow in the moonlight. After a long pause, he answered, "I do not believe you."

"I can say no more," she spoke and sighed, and went forward.

He now lagged behind.

They stepped off the sand ridge, and were again in treacherous soil, neither land nor water, but land and water tossed together in strips and tags and tatters.

"Go on,"