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

so I have come to offer my assistance."

Jonas was somewhat reassured, but his cunning eyes fixed on Iver observed that the young painter was looking around, in quest, doubtless, of Mehetabel.

"I must have hot water. Who will attend to me?" asked the surgeon.

"I will do what is necessary," said Mrs. Rocliffe.

"Will you go to bed?" asked the surgeon, "I can best look to you then."

Jonas shook his head. He would have the wound examined there, as he sat in his arm-chair.

Then came the inquiry from Iver--"Where is your wife, Jonas? I thought she had returned with you."

"My wife? She has lagged behind."

"Not possible. She was to assist you home."

"I needed no assistance."

"She ought to be here to receive instructions from the doctor."

"These can be given to my sister."

"But, Bideabout, where is she?"

Jonas was silent, confused, alarmed.

Iver became uneasy.

"Bideabout, where is Matabel. She must be summoned."

"It's nort to you where she be," answered the Broom-Squire savagely.

Then Mrs. Rocliffe stepped forward.

"I will tell you," she said. "My brother is that mad wi' pain, he don't know what to think, and say, and do. As they was coming along together, loving-like, as man and wife, she chanced to slip and fall into the water, and Jonas, having his arm bad, couldn't help her out, as he was a-minded, and he runned accordin' here, to tell me, and I was just about sendin' my Samuel to find and help her."

"Matabel in the water--drowned!"

"Jonas did not say that. She falled in."

"Matabel--fell in!"

Iver looked from Mrs. Rocliffe towards Jonas. There was something in the Broom-Squire's look that did not satisfy him. It was not pain alone that so disturbed his face, and gave it such ghastly whiteness.

"Bideabout," said he, gravely, "I must and will have a proper explanation. I cannot take your sister's story. Speak to me yourself. After what I had seen between you and Matabel, I must necessarily feel uneasy. I must have a plain explanation from your own lips."

Jonas was silent; he looked furtively from side to side.

"I will be answered," said Iver, with vehemence.

"Who is to force me to speak?" asked the Broom-Squire, surlily.

"If I cannot, I shall fetch the constable. I say--where did you leave Mehetabel?"

"My sister told you--under the tree."

"What--not in the water?"

"She may have fallen in. I had but one arm, and that hurting terrible."

"Good heavens!" exclaimed Iver. "You came home whining over your arm--leaving her in the marsh!"

"You don't suppose I threw her in?" sneered Jonas. "Me--bad of an arm."

"I don't know what to think," retorted Iver. "But I will know where Mehetabel is."

In the doorway, with her back to the moonlight, stood a female figure.

The first to see it was Jonas, and he uttered a gasp--he thought he saw a spirit.

The figure entered, without a word, and all saw that it was Mehetabel.


CHAPTER XXVI.


A SECRET.

It was indeed Mehetabel.

She entered quietly, without a word, carrying Bideabout's gun, which she placed in the corner, by the fireplace.

Jonas and his sister looked at her, at first terror-struck, as though they beheld a ghost, then with unrest, for they knew not what she would say.

She said nothing.

She was deadly pale, and Iver, looking at her, was reminded of the Mehetabel he had seen in his dream.

At once she recognized that her husband's arm was being dressed, and leisurely, composedly, she came forward to hold the basin of water, and do whatever was required of her by the surgeon.

The first to speak was Iver, who said, "Matabel! We have just been told you had fallen into the water."

"Yes. My dress is soaked."

"And you managed to get out?"

"Yes, when I fell I had hold of my husband's gun and that was caught in a bush; it held me up."

"But how came you to fall?"

"I believe I was unconscious perhaps a faint."

Nothing further could be elicited from her, then or later. Had she any suspicion that she had been struck down? This was a question that, later, Jonas asked himself. But he never knew till--, but we must not anticipate.

A day or two after that eventful night he made some allusion to a blow on her head, when she appeared with a bandage round it.

"Yes," she said: "I fell, and hurt myself."

For some days Bideabout was in much pain and discomfort. His left shoulder had been injured by the ball that had lodged in it, and it was probable that he would always be stiff in that arm, and be unable to raise it above the breast. He was irritable and morose.

He watched Mehetabel suspiciously and with mistrust of her intentions. What did she know? What did she surmise? If she thought that he had attempted to put an end to her life, would she retaliate? In his suspicion he preferred to have his sister attend to him, and Sarah consented to do for him, in his sickness, what he required, not out of fraternal affection, but as a means of slighting the young wife, and of observing the relations that subsisted between her and Jonas.

Sarah Rocliffe was much puzzled by what had taken place. Her brother's manner had roused her alarm. She knew that he had gone forth with his jealousy lashed to fury. She had herself kindled the fire. Then he had come upon Mehetabel and Iver on the Moor, she could not doubt. How otherwise explain the knowledge of the accident which led Iver to bring the surgeon to the assistance of her brother?

But the manner in which the accident had occurred and the occasion of it, all of this was dark to her. Then the arrival of Jonas alone, and his reticence relative to his wife, till she had asked about her; also his extraordinary statement, his manifest terror; and the silence of Mehetabel on her reappearance, all this proved a mystery involving the events of the night, that Sarah Rocliffe was desirous to unravel.

She found that her every effort met with a rebuff from Jonas, and elicited nothing from Mehetabel, who left her in the same uncertainty as was Bideabout, whether she knew anything, or suspected anything beyond the fact that she had fallen insensible into the water. She had fallen grasping the gun, which had become entangled in some bushes, and this together with the water weeds had sustained her. When she recovered consciousness she had drawn herself out of the marsh by means of the gun, and had seated herself under an old pine tree, till her senses were sufficiently clear. Thereupon she had made the best of her way homeward.

What did she think of Jonas for having left her in the water? asked Mrs. Rocliffe.

Mehetabel answered, simply, that she had not thought about it. Wet, cold, and faint, she had possessed no idea save how to reach home.

There was much talk in the Punch-Bowl as well as throughout the neighborhood relative to what had taken place, and many forms were assumed by the rumor as it circulated. Most men understood well enough that Jonas had gone after the Peperharow deer, and was attempting to forestall others--therefore, serve him right, was their judgment, however he came by his accident.

Iver left Thursley on the day following and returned to Guildford. The surgeon staying at the Ship Inn continued his visits to the Punch-Bowl, as long as he was there, and then handed his patient over to the local practitioner.

Mrs. Verstage was little better informed than the rest of the inhabitants of Thursley, for her son had not told her anything about the accident to Jonas, more than was absolutely necessary; and to all her inquiries returned a laughing answer that as he had not shot the Broom-Squire he could not inform her how the thing was done.

She was too much engaged so long as the visitors were in the house, to be able to leave it; and Mehetabel did not come near her.

As soon, however, as she was more free, she started in her little trap for the Punch-Bowl, and arrived at a time when Jonas was not at home.

This exactly suited her. She had Mehetabel to herself, and could ask her any questions she liked without restraint.

"My dear Matabel," she said, "I've had a trying time of it, with the house full, and only Polly to look to for everything. Will you believe me--on Sunday I said I would give the gentlemen a little plum-pudding. I mixed it myself, and told Polly to boil it, whilst I went to church. Of course, I supposed she would do it properly, but with those kind of people one must take nothing for granted."

"Did she spoil the pudding, mother?"

"Oh, no--the pudding was all right."

"Then what harm was done?"

"She spoiled my best nightcap."

"How so?"

"Boiled the puddin' in it, because she couldn't find a bag. I'll never get it proper white again, nor the frills starched and made up. And there is the canary bird, too."

"What of that, mother?"

"My dear, I told Polly to clean out the cage."

"And did she not do it?"

"Oh, yes--only too well. She dipped it in a pan of hot water and soda--and the bird in it."

"What--the canary--is it dead?"

"Of course it is, and bleached white too. That girl makes the water so thick wi' soda you could stand a spoon up in it. She used five pounds in two days."

"Oh, the poor canary!" Mehetabel was greatly troubled for her pet.

"I don't quite understand the ways o' Providence," said Mrs. Verstage. "I don't suppose I shall till the veil be lifted. I understand right enough why oysters ain't given eyes--lest they should see those who are opening their mouths to eat 'em. And if geese were given wings like swallows, they wouldn't bide with us over Michaelmas. But why Providence should ha' denied domestic servants the gift of intelligence wherewith we, their masters and mistresses, be so largely endowed--that beats me. Well," in a tone of resignation, "one will know that some day, doubtless."

After a bit of conversation about the progress of Jonas to convalescence, and the chance of his being able to use his arm, Mrs. Verstage approached the topic uppermost in her mind.

"I should like to hear all about it, from your own mouth, Matabel. There is such a number of wonderful tales going round, all contradictory, and so, of course, all can't be true. Some even tell that you fired the gun and wounded Jonas. But that is ridiculous, as I said to Maria Entiknap. And actually one story is that my Iver was in it somehow. Of course, I knew he heard there was an accident. You told him when you was fetched away. Who fetched you from the Ship? I left you in the kitchen."

"Oh, mother," said Mehetabel, "all the events of that terrible night are confused in my head, and I don't know where to begin--nor what is true and what fancy, so I'd as lief say nothing about it."

"If you can't trust me--" said Mrs. Verstage, somewhat offended.

"I could trust you with anything," answered Mehetabel hastily.