The Broom-Squire

"I shall be otherwise employed," said the girl, in confusion.

"Indeed, I shan't spare her for any of that nonsense," said Mrs.

Verstage.

The hostess was much perplexed. She had reckoned on her son's departure before Mehetabel arrived. She would not have asked for her assistance if she had not been convinced that he would take himself off.

She expostulated. Iver must not neglect his business, slight his engagements. He had resolved to go, and had no right to shilly-shally, and change his mind. She required his room. He would be in the way with the guests.

To all these objections Iver had an answer. In fine, said he, with

Mehetabel in the house he could not and he would not go.

What was Mehetabel to do? Jonas had locked up his house and had carried away the key with him; moreover, to return now was a confession of weakness. What was Mrs. Verstage to do? She had three visitors, real gentlemen, in the house. They must be made comfortable; and the new servant, Polly, according to her notion, was a hopeless creature, slatternly, forgetful, impudent.

There was no one on whom the landlady could fall back, except Mehetabel, who understood her ways, and was certain to give satisfaction. Mrs. Verstage was not what she had once been, old age, and more than that, an internal complaint, against which she had fought, in which she had refused to believe, had quite recently asserted itself, and she was breaking down.

There was consequently no help for it. She resolved to keep a sharp lookout on the young people, and employ Mehetabel unremittingly. But of one thing she was confident. Mehetabel was not a person to forget her duty and self-respect.

The agitation produced by finding that Iver purposed remaining in the house passed away, and Mehetabel faced the inevitable.

Wherever her eye rested, memories of a happy girlhood welled up in her soft and suffering breast. The geraniums in the window she had watered daily. The canary – she had fed it with groundsel. The brass skillets on the mantelshelf – they had been burnished by her hand. The cushion on "father's" chair was of her work. Everything spoke to her of the past, and of a happy past, without sharp sorrows, without carking cares.

Old Simon was rejoiced to see Mehetabel again in the house. He made her sit beside him. He took her hand in his, and patted it. A pleasant smile, like a sunbeam, lit up his commonplace features.

"Mother and I have had a deal to suffer since you've been gone," said Simon. "The girl Polly be that stupid and foreright (awkward) we shall be drove mad, both of us, somewhen."

"Do you see that window-pane?" he asked, pointing to a gap in the casement. "Polly put her broom handle through. There was not one pane broke all the time you was with us, and now there be three gone, and no glazier in the village to put 'em to rights. You mind the blue pranked (striped) chiney taypot? Mother set great store on that. Polly's gone and knocked the spout off. Mother's put about terrible over that taypot. As for the best sheets, Polly's burnt a hole through one, let a cinder fly out on it, when airing. Mother's in a pretty way over that sheet. I don't know what there'll be to eat, Polly left the larder open, and the dog has carried off a leg of mutton. It has been all cross and contrary ever since you went."

Simon mused a while, holding Mehetabel's hand, and said after a pause, "It never ort to a' been. You was well placed here and never ort to a' left. It was all mother's doing. She drove you into weddin' that there Broom-Squire. Women can't be easy unless they be hatchin' weddin's; just like as broody hens must be sittin' on somethin'. If that had never been brought about, then the taypot spout would not have been knocked off, nor the winder-pane broken, nor the sheet riddled wi' a cinder, nor the dog gone off wi' the leg o' mutton."

Mehetabel was unable to suppress a sigh.

"Winter be comin' on," pursued the old man, "and mother's gettin' infirm, and a bit contrary. When Polly worrits her, then I ketches it. That always wos her way. I don't look forward to winter. I don't look forward to nuthin' now – " He became sorrowful. "All be gone to sixes and sevens, now that you be gone, Matabel. What will happen I dun' know, I dun' know."

"What may happen," said Mehetabel, "is not always what we expect.

But one thing is certain – lost happiness is past recovery."

CHAPTER XX

GONE

During the evening Iver was hardly able to take his eyes off

Mehetabel, as she passed to and fro in the kitchen.

She knew where was every article that was needed for the gentlemen.

She moved noiselessly, did everything without fuss, without haste.

He thought over the words she had uttered, and he had overheard: Lost happiness is past recovery. Not only was she bereft of happiness, but so was he. His father and mother, when too late, had found that they also had parted with theirs when they had let Mehetabel leave the house.

She moved gracefully. She was slender, her every motion merited to be sketched. Iver's artistic sense was excited to admiration. What a girl she was! What a model! Oh, that he had her as his own!

Mehetabel knew that she was watched, and it disconcerted her. She was constrained to exercise great self-control; not to let slip what she carried, not to forget what tasks had to be discharged.

In her heart she glowed with pride at the thought that Iver loved her – that he, the prince, the idol of her childhood, should have retained a warm place in his heart for her. And yet, the thought, though sweet, was bitter as well, fraught with foreshadowings of danger.

Mrs. Verstage also watched Mehetabel, and her son likewise, with anxious eyes.

The old man left the house to attend to his cattle; and one of the gentlemen came to the kitchen-door to invite Iver, whose acquaintance he had made during the day, to join him and his companions over a bowl of punch.

The young man was unable to refuse, but left with reluctance manifest enough to his mother and Mehetabel.

Then, when the hostess was alone with the girl, she drew her to her side, and said, "There is now nothing to occupy you. Sit by me and tell me about yourself and how you get on with Bideabout. You have no notion how pleased I am to have you here again."

Mehetabel kissed the old woman, and a tear from her eye fell on the withering cheek of the landlady.

"I dare be bound you find it lonely in the new home," said Mrs. Verstage. "Here, in an inn, there is plenty of life; but in the farm you are out of the world. How does the Broom-Squire treat you?"

She awaited an answer with anxiety, which she was unable to disguise.

After a pause Mehetabel replied, with heightened color, "Jonas is not unkind."

"You can't expect love-making every day," said the hostess. "It's the way of men to promise the sun, moon, and planets, till you are theirs, and after that, then poor women must be content to be given a spark off a fallen star. There was Jamaica Cheel runn'd away with his Betsy because he thought the law wouldn't let him have her; she was the wife of another, you know. Then he found she never had been proper married to the other chap, and when he discovered he was fast tied to Betsy he'd a run away from her only the law wouldn't let him. Jonas ain't beautiful and young, that I allow."

"I knew what he was when I married him," answered Mehetabel. "I cannot say I find him other than what I expected."

"But is he kind to you?"

"I said he was not unkind."

Mrs. Verstage looked questioningly at her adopted child. "I don't know," she said, with quivering lips. "I suppose I was right. I acted for the best. God knows I sought your happiness. Do not tell me that you are unhappy."

"Who is happy?" asked Mehetabel, and turned her eyes on the hostess, to read alarm and distress in her face. "Do not trouble yourself about me, mother. I knew what I was doing when I took Jonas. I had no expectation of finding the Punch-Bowl to be Paradise. It takes a girl some time to get settled into fresh quarters, and to feel comfortable among strangers. That is mainly my case. I was perhaps spoiled when here, you were so kind to me. I thank you, mother, that you have not forgotten me in your great joy at getting Iver home again."

"There was Thomasine French bought two penn'orth o' shrimps, and as her husband weren't at home thought to enjoy herself prodigious. But she came out red as a biled lobster. With the best intentions things don't always turn out as expected," said Mrs. Verstage, "and the irritation was like sting nettles and – wuss." Then, after a pause, "I don't know how it is, all my life I have wished to have Iver by me. He went away because he wanted to be a painter; he has come back, after many years, and is not all I desire. Now he is goyn away. I could endure that if I were sure he loved me. But I don't think he does. He cares more for his father, who sent him packin' than he does for me, who never crossed him. I don't understand him. He is not the same as he was."

"Iver is a child no longer," said Mehetabel. "You must not expect of him more than he can give. What you said to me about a husband is true also of a child. Of course, he loves you, but he does not show it as fully as you desire. He has something else now to fill his heart beside a mother."

"What is that?" asked Mrs. Verstage, nervously.

"His art," answered Mehetabel.

"Oh, that!" The landlady was not wholly satisfied, she stood up and said with a sigh, "I fancy life be much like one o' them bran pies at a bazaar. Some pulls out a pair of braces as don't wear trousers, and others pull out garters as wears nuthin' but socks. 'Tis a chance if you get wot's worth havin. Well, I must go look out another sheet in place of that Polly has burnt."

"Let me do that, mother."

"No, as you may remember, I have always managed the linen myself."

A few minutes later, after she had left the room, Iver returned.

He had escaped from the visitors on some excuse.

His heart was a prey to vague yearnings and doubts.

With pleasure he observed that his mother was no longer in the kitchen. He saw Mehetabel hastily dry her eyes. He knew that she had been crying, and he thought he could divine the cause.

"You are going to Guildford to-morrow morning, are you not?" she asked hastily.

"I don't know."

Iver planted himself on a stool before the fire, where he could look up into Mehetabel's face, as she sat in the settle.

"You have your profession to attend to," she said. "You do not know your own mind. You are changeful as a girl."

"How can I go – with you here?" he exclaimed, vehemently.

She turned her head away. He was looking at her with burning eyes.

"Iver," she said, "I pray you be more loving to your mother. You have made her heart ache. It is cruel not to do all you can now to make amends to her for the past. She thinks that you do not love her. She is failing in health, and you must not drip drops of fresh sorrow into her heart during her last years."

Iver made a motion of impatience.

"I love my mother. Of course I love her."

"Not as truly as you should, Iver," answered Mehetabel. "You do not consider the long ache – "

"And I, had not I a long ache when away from home?"

"You had your art to sustain you. She had but one thought – and that of you."

"She has done me a cruel wrong," said he, irritably.

"She has never done anything to you but good, and out of love," answered the girl vehemently.

"To me; that is not it."

Mehetabel raised her eyes and looked at him. He was gazing moodily at the fire.

"She has stabbed me through you," exclaimed Iver, with a sudden outburst of passion. "Why do you plead my mother's cause, when it was she – I know it was she, and none but she – who thrust you into this hateful, this accursed marriage."

"No, Iver, no!" cried Mehetabel in alarm. "Do not say this. Iver! talk of something else."

"Of what?"

"Of anything."

"Very well," said he, relapsing into his dissatisfied mood. "You asked me once what my dream had been, that I dreamt that first night under your roof. I will tell you this now. I thought that you and I had been married, not you and Jonas, you and I, as it should have been. And I thought that I looked at you, and your face was deadly pale, and the hand I held was clay cold."

A chill ran through Mehetabel's veins. She said, "There is some truth in it, Iver. You hold a dead girl by the hand. To you, I am, I must be, forever – dead."

"Nonsense. All will come right somehow."

"Yes, Iver," she said; "it will so. You are free and will go about, and will see and love and marry a girl worthy of you in every way. As for me, my lot is cast in the Punch-Bowl. No power on earth can separate me from Bideabout. I have made my bed and must lie on it, though it be one of thorns. There is but one thing for us both – we must part and meet no more."

"Matabel," he put forth his hand in protest.

"I have spoken plainly," she said, "because there is no good in not doing so. Do not make my part more difficult. Be a man – go."

"Matabel! It shall not be, it cannot be! My love! My only one."

He tried to grasp her.

She sprang from the settle. A mist formed before her eyes. She groped for something by which to stay herself.

He seized her by the waist. She wrenched herself free.

"Let me go!" she cried. "Let me go!"

She spoke hoarsely. Her eyes were staring as if she saw a spirit. She staggered back beyond his reach, touched the jambs of the door, grasped them with a grasp of relief. Then, actuated by a sudden thought, turned and fled from the room, from the house.

Iver stood for a minute bewildered. Her action had been so unexpected that he did not know what to think, what to do.

He went to the porch and looked up the road, then down it, and did not see her.

Mrs. Verstage, came out. "Where is Matabel?" she asked, uneasily.

"Gone!" said Iver. "Mother – gone!"

CHAPTER XXI

THOR'S STONE

Mehetabel ran, neither along the way that led in the direction of

Portsmouth, nor along that to Godalming, but to the Moor.

"The Moor," is the marsh land that lies at the roots of the sandstone heights that culminate in Hind Head, Leith Hill, and the Devil's Jumps. As already said, the great mass of Bagshot sand lies upon a substratum of clay. The sand drinks in every drop of rain that falls on the surface. This percolates through it till it reaches the clay, which refuses to absorb it, or let it sink through to other beds. Thereupon the accumulated water breaks forth in springs at the base of the hills, and forms a wide tract of morass, interspersed with lagoons that teem with fish and wild fowl. This region is locally known as "Moor," in contradistinction to the commons or downs, which are the dry sandy upland.

"The Moor" is in many places impassable, but the blown sand has fallen upon it, and has formed slight elevations, has drifted into undulations, and these strips of rising ground, kept moist by the water they absorb, have become covered with vegetation. It is, moreover, possible by their means to penetrate to the heart of, and even thread, the intricacies, and traverse the entire region of the Moor.

But it is, at best, a wild and lonesome district, to be explored with caution, a labyrinth, the way through which is known only to the natives of the sandhills that dominate the marshy plain.

About thirty years ago a benevolent and beneficent landlord, in a time of agricultural distress, gave employment to a large number of men out of work in the construction of a causeway across the Thursley "Moor."

But the work was of no real utility, and it is now overgrown with weeds, and only trodden by the sportsman in pursuit of game and the naturalist in quest of rare insects and water plants.

A considerable lake, Pudmere, or Pug – Puckmere, lies in the Thursley marsh land, surrounded with dwarf willows and scattered pines. These latter have sprung from the wind-blown seeds of the plantations on higher ground. Throughout this part of the country an autumn gale always results in the upspringing of a forest of young pines, next year, to leeward of a clump of cone-bearing trees. In the Moor such self-sown woods come to no ripeness. The pines are unhealthy and stunted, hung with gray moss, and eaten out with canker. The excessive moisture and the impenetrable subsoil, and the shallowness of the congenial sand that encouraged them to root make the young trees decay in adolescence.

An abundant and varied insect world has its home in the Moor. The large brown hawkmoth darts about like an arrow. Dragon flies of metallic blue, or striped yellow and brown, hover above the lanes of water, lost in admiration of their own gorgeous selves reflected in the still surface. The great water-beetle booms against the head of the intruder, and then drops as a stone into the pool at his feet. Effets, saffron yellow bellied, with striped backs, swim in the ponds or crawl at their bottom. The natterjack, so rare elsewhere, differing from a toad in that it has a yellow band down its back, has here a paradise. It may be seen at eve perched on a stock of willow herb, or running – it does not hop – round the sundew, clearing the glutinous stamens of the flies that have been caught by them, and calling in a tone like the warning note of the nightingale. Sleeping on the surface the carp lies, and will not be scared save by a stone thrown into the still water in which it dreams away its life.

The sandy elevations are golden with tormintilla; a richer gold is that which lies below, where the marsh glows with bog asphodel. The flowering rush spreads its pale pink blossoms; a deeper crimson is the marsh orchis showing its spires among the drooping clusters of the waxy-pink, cross-leaved heath, and the green or pale and rosy-tinted bog-mosses.

Near Pudmoor Pool stands a gray block of ironstone, a solitary portion of the superincumbent bed that has been washed away. It resembles a gigantic anvil, and it goes by the name of Thor's Stone. The slopes that dip towards it are the Thor's-lea, and give their name to the parish that includes it and them.

At one time there was a similar mass of iron at the summit of

Borough Hill, that looks down upon the morasses.

To this many went who were in trouble or necessity, and knocking on the stone made known their requirements to the Pucksies, and it was asserted, and generally believed, that such applicants had not gone away unanswered, nor unrelieved.

It was told of a certain woman who one evening sought to be freed by this means from the husband who had made her life unendurable, that that same night – so ran the tale – he was returning from the tavern, drunk, and stumbling over the edge of a quarry fell and broke his neck. Thereupon certain high moralists and busybodies had the mass of stone broken up and carted away to mend the roads, with the expectation thereby of putting an end to what they were pleased to term "a degrading superstition."

To some extent the destruction of the Wishing Block did check the practice. But there continued to be persons in distress, and women plagued with drunken husbands, and men afflicted with scolding wives. And when the pilgrimage of such to Borough Hill ceased, because of the destruction of the stone on it, then was it diverted, and the current flowed instead to Thor's Stone – a stone that had long been regarded with awe, and which now became an object of resort, as it was held to have acquired the merits of the block so wantonly demolished on Borough Hill.

Nevertheless, the object of the high moralists and busybodies was partially attained, inasmuch as the difficulties and dangers attending a visit to Thor's Stone reduced the number of those seeking superhuman assistance in their difficulties. Courage was requisite in one who ventured to the Moor at night, and made a way to the iron-stone block, over tracts of spongy morass, among lines of stagnant ooze, through coppices of water-loving willows and straggling brier. This, which was difficult by day, was dangerous in a threefold degree at night. Moreover, the Moor was reputed to be haunted by spirits, shadows that ran and leaped, and peered and jabbered; and Puck wi' the lantern flickered over the surface of the festering bog.

If, then, the visits to Thor's Stone were not so many as to the stone on Borough Hill, this was due less to the waning of superstition than to the difficulties attending an expedition to the former. Without considering what she was doing, moved by a blind impulse, Mehetabel ran in the direction of Puck's Moor.

And yet the impulse was explicable. She had often thought over the tales told of visits to the habitation of the "Good Folk" on Borough Hill, and the transfer of the pilgrimage to Thor's Stone. She had, of late, repeatedly asked herself whether, by a visit thither, she might not gain what lay at her heart – an innocent desire – none other than that Iver should depart.

Now that he had made open show of his passion, that all concealment was over between them, every veil and disguise plucked away – now she felt that her strength was failing her, and it would fail completely if subjected to further trial.

One idea, like a spark of fire shooting through her brain, alone possessed her at this moment. Her safety depended on one thing – the removal of Iver. Let him go! Let him go! then she could bear her lot. Let her see him no more! then she would be able to bring her truant heart under discipline. Otherwise her life would be unendurable, her tortured brain would give way, her overtaxed heart would break.

She found no stay for her soul in the knowledge where was situated the country of the Gergesenes, no succor in being well drilled in the number of chapters in Genesis. She turned desperately, in her necessity, to Thor's Stone, to the spirits – what they were she knew not – who aided those in need, and answered petitions addressed to them.

The night had already set in, but a 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.