MEHALAH (continued 3)

'Thank you, Elijah, thank you. I am dry with rowing. But how come you to be asleep at this time of day? Were you out after ducks last night?'

'No, I was not out. I lay abed. I went to bed early.'

'Elijah, where is my son?'

He started, and looked at her suspiciously.

'How am I to know?'

'I cannot find him anywhere,' said the mother. 'I fear the boy has levanted. I may have been a little rough with him, but it was for his good. You cannot clean a deck with whiting, you must take holystone to the boards, and it is so with children. If you are not hard, you get off no edges, if you want to polish them, you must be gritty yourself. I doubt the boy is off.'

'What makes you think so?'

'I have not seen him. Nobody at Mersea has seen him. Have you?'

'Not since last night.'

'You saw him then?'

'Yes, he was on the beach going to Mehalah.'

'Galiwanting!' exclaimed Mrs. De Witt. 'Oh, what wickedness comes of galiwanting!' Then, recovering herself, 'But how could he get there? His boat was left on the Hard!'

'I suppose he went by land. He said something to that effect. You see the tide would have been out if he purposed to stay some time.'

'But what should make him go to the Ray? He had seen Mehalah on his boat.'

'He said there had been a quarrel, and he was bent on making it up. Go and look for him on the Ray. If he is not back on your boat already, you will find him, or hear of him, there.'

'Oh, the worries to parents that come of galiwanting!' moaned Mrs. De Witt, 'none who have not experienced can tell. Do not stay me, Elijah. Dear sackalive; I must go home. I dare say the boy is now on the "Pandora," trying to look innocent.' She rubbed her hands, and her eyes glistened. 'By cock!' she exclaimed, 'I would not be he.' She was out of the room, without a farewell to her nephew, down the steps, away over the flat to the sea-wall and her boat, her heart palpitating with anger.

It was late in the afternoon before Mrs. De Witt got back to Mersea. She ascended her ladder and unlocked the hatches. She looked about her. No George was on deck. She returned to the shore and renewed her enquiries. He had not been seen. No doubt he was still galivanting at the Ray. The uncertainty became unendurable. She jumped into her boat once more, and rowed to the island inhabited by Glory and her mother.

With her nose high in the air, her cap-frills quivering, she stepped out of the skiff. She had donned her military coat, to add to her imposing and threatening aspect.

The door of the house was open. She stood still and listened. She did not hear George's voice. She waited; she saw Mehalah moving in the room. Once the girl looked at her, but there was neither recognition nor lustre in her eyes. Mrs. De Witt made a motion towards her, but Glory did not move to meet her in return.

As she stepped over the threshold, Mrs. Sharland, who was seated by the fire, turned and observed her. The widow rose at once with a look of distress in her face, and advanced towards her, holding out her hand.

'Where is George?' asked Mrs. De Witt, ignoring the outstretched palm, in a hard, impatient tone.

'George!' echoed Mehalah, standing still, 'George is dead.'

'What nonsense!' said Mrs. De Witt, catching the girl by the shoulder and shaking her.

'I saw him. He is dead.' She quivered like an aspen.

The blood had ebbed behind her brown skin. Her eyes looked in Mrs. De Witt's face with a flash of agony in them.

'He came and looked in at the window at me, and cast me back the keepsake I had given him, and which he swore not to part with while life lasted.'

'Dear sackalive!' exclaimed Mrs. De Witt; 'the girl is dreaming or demented. What is the meaning of all this, Mistress Sharland?'

'Last night,' explained the widow, 'as Mehalah was sitting here in the dark, some one came to the window, stove it in—look how the lead is torn, and the glass fallen out—and cast at the feet of Mehalah a medal she had given George on Thursday. She thinks,' added the old woman in a subdued tone, 'that what she saw was his spirit.'

Mrs. De Witt was awed. She was not a woman without superstition, but she was not one to allow a supernatural intervention till all possible prosaic explanations had been exhausted.

'Is this Gospel truth?' she asked.

'It is true,' answered the widow.

'Did you see the face, Glory? Are you sure that what you saw was George?'

'I did not see the face. I saw only the figure. But it was George. It could have been no other. He alone had the medal, and he brought it back to me.'

'You see,' explained the widow Sharland, 'the coin was an heirloom; it might not go out of the family.'

'I see it all,' exclaimed Mrs. De Witt. 'Galiwanting again! He came to return the keepsake to Mehalah, because he wanted to break with her and take on with another.'

'No, never!' exclaimed Mehalah vehemently. 'He could not do it. He was as true to me as I am to him. He could not do it. He came to tell me that all was over.'

'Dear sackalive!' said Mrs. De Witt, 'you don't know men as I do. You have had no more experience of them than you have of kangaroos. I will not believe he is dead.'

'He is dead,' Mehalah burst forth with fierce vehemence. 'He is drowned, he is not false. He is dead, he is dead.'

'I know better,' said Mrs. De Witt in a low tone to herself as she bit her thumb. 'That boy is galiwanting somewhere; the only question to me is Where. By cock! I'd give a penny to know.'

CHAPTER IX.

IN MOURNING.

A month passed, and no tidings whatever of George De Witt had reached his mother or Mehalah. The former constantly expected news of her son. She would not believe in his death, and was encouraged in her opinion by Isaac Mead. But Mehalah had never entertained hope; she did not look for news, she knew that George was drowned.

His body had not been found. His disappearance had been altogether mysterious. Mrs. De Witt used every effort to trace him, but failed. From the moment the door of the Mussets had closed upon him, no one had seen him. With the closing of that door the record of his life had closed. He had passed as completely beyond pursuit as though he had passed through the gate of death.

There was but one possible way of accounting for his disappearance, and it was that at which public opinion arrived. He had gone round by the Strood from Mersea to reach the Ray, which was on that side accessible, but with difficulty, and occasionally only by land, had lost his way among the saltmarshes in the night, had fallen into one of the myriad creeks that traverse this desolate region, and had been engulfed in the ooze. The sea will give up her dead after a storm and with the tide, but the slime of the marshes never.

Mehalah made no attempt to account for the disappearance of George; it was sufficient for her that he was lost to her for ever. But his mother made enquiries when selling shrimps along the Colchester road, and on the island. He had nowhere been seen. He had not visited the Rose.

It was Elijah Rebow who finally brought Mrs. De Witt to admit that her son was entirely lost to her.

He visited her in November. She was surprised and pleased to see him. Since the disappearance of George, Mrs. De Witt had taken more vigorously than before to grog. Her feelings needed solace, and she found it in her glass. Perhaps the presence of George had acted as a restraint on his mother. She had not wished him to suppose her a habitual tippler. Her libations had been performed when he was away, or under the excuse of stomachics. On the subject of her internal arrangements, discomforts, and requirements, Mrs. De Witt had afforded her son information more copious than interesting. Her digestion sympathised with all the convulsions then shaking Europe. Revolutions were brought about there by the most ordinary edibles, and were always to be reduced by spirituous drinkables.

The topic of her internal economy, when introduced by Mrs. De Witt, always prefaced a resolve to try a drop of cordial. Now that George was gone, Mrs. De Witt brooded over her loss at home, stirring her glass as if it were the mud of the marshes, and she hoped to turn George up out of the syrup of the dissolving sugar.

Mrs. De Witt had laid aside her red coat, as inappropriate to her forlorn condition. The month of October had seen a sad deterioration in the mistress of the 'Pandora.' Her funds had been fast ebbing. The bread-winner was gone, and the rum-drinker had obtained fresh excuse for deep potations. There were fish in the sea to be caught, but he that had netted them was now under the mud. Things could not go on thus for ever.

Mrs. De Witt was musing despondingly over her desperate position, when Elijah appeared above the hatchway and descended to the cabin.

Mrs. De Witt had stuck a black bow in her mob cap, as a symbol of her woe. She hardly needed to hang out the flag, for her whole face and figure betokened distress. It cannot be said that her maternal bowels yearned after her son out of love for him so much as out of solicitude for herself. She naturally grieved for her 'poor boy,' but her grief for him was largely tinctured with anxiety for her own future. How should she live? On what subsist? She had her husband's old hull as a home, and a fishing smack, and a rowing boat. There was some money in the box, but not much. 'There's been no wasteful outlay over a burying,' said Mrs. De Witt. 'That is a good job.'

But, as already said, Mrs. De Witt only yielded reluctantly to the opinion that her boy was drowned. She held resolutely in public to this view for reasons she confided to herself over her rum. 'It is no use dropping a pint of money in dragging for the body, and burying it when you've got it. To my notion that is laying out five pound to have the satisfaction of spending another five. George was a gentleman,' she said with pride. 'If he was to go from his pore mother, he went as cheap from her as a lad could do it.'

Another reason why she refused to believe in his death was characteristic of the illogicality of her sex. This she announced to Rebow. 'You have it in a nutshell. How can the poor boy be drowned? For, if so, what is to become of me, and I a widow?'

'Mrs. De Witt,' said Rebow, helping himself to some rum, 'you may as well make your mind easy on this point. If George be not dead where can he be?'

'That I do not take on myself to say.'

'He is nowhere on Mersea, is he?'

'Certainly not.'

'He did not go along the Colchester road beyond the Strood?'

'No, or I should have heard of him.'

'Moreover, he told me he purposed going to the Ray.'

'To be sure he did.'

'And he never reached the Ray.'

'No, for certain.'

'Then it is obvious he must have been lost between Mersea and the Ray.'

'There is something in what you say, Elijah; there is what we may term argument in it.'

'There was a reason why he should go to the Ray.'

'I suppose there was.'

'He had quarrelled with Glory, and desired to make it up that night.'

'I know there had been a squall.'

'Then do not flatter yourself with false hopes. George is gone past recall; you and Glory must give him up for ever.'

Mrs. De Witt shook her head, wiped her eyes with the frill of her cap, looked sorrowfully into her glass and said, 'Pore me!'

'You are poor indeed,' said Elijah, 'but how poor I suspect rather than know. What have you got to live upon?'

'That is just it,' answered Mrs. De Witt; 'my head has been like the Swin light, a rewolving and a rewolving. But there is this difference, the Swin rewolves first light and then dark alternately, whereas in my head there has been naught rewolving but warious degrees of darkness.'

'What do you propose doing?'

'Well, I have an idea.' Mrs. De Witt hitched her chair nearer to her nephew, and breathed her idea and her spirit together into his ear. 'I think I shall marry.'

'You——!'

'Yes, I. Why not? There is the billyboy running to waste, rotting for want of use, crying out for a master to take her out fishing. There are as many fisher-boys on shore as there are sharks in the ocean, ready to snap me up were I flung to them. I have felt them. They have been a-nibbling round me already. Consider, Elijah! there is the "Pandora," good as a palace for a home, and the billyboy and the boat, and the nets, and the oyster garden, and then there is my experience to be thrown in gratis, and above all,' she raised herself, 'there is my person.'

Rebow laughed contemptuously.

'What have these boys of their own?' asked Mrs. De Witt, laying down the proposition with her spoon. 'They have nothing, no more than the sea-cobs. They have naught to do but swoop down on whatever they can see, sprats, smelt, mullet, whiting, dabs, and when there is naught else, winkles. Their thoughts do not rise that proudly to me, and I must stoop to them. I tell you what, Elijah, if I was to be raffled for, at a shilling a ticket, there would be that run among the boys for me, that I could make a fortune. But I won't demean myself to that. I shall choose the stoutest and healthiest among them, then I can send him out fishing, and he can earn me money, as did George, and so I shall be able to enjoy ease, if not opulence.'

'But suppose the lads decline the honour.'

'I should like to see the impertinence of the lad that did,' said Mrs. De Witt firmly. 'I have had experience with men, and I know them in and out that familiarly that I could find my way about their brains or heart, as you would about your marshes, in the dark. No, Elijah, the question is not will they have me, but whether I will be bothered with any more of the creatures. I will not unless I can help it. I will not unless the worst comes to the worst. But a woman must live, Elijah.'

'How much have you got for current expenses?'

'Only a few pounds.'

'There are five and twenty pounds owed you by the Sharlands. You are not going to let them have it as a present?'

'No, certain, I am not.'

'Do you expect to get it by waiting for it?'

'To tell you the truth, Elijah, I hadn't given that five and twenty pounds a thought. I will go over to the Ray and claim the money.'

'You will not get it.'

'I must have it.'

'They cannot possibly pay.'

'But they shall pay. I want and will have my money.'

'Mehalah will pretend that George gave her the money.'

'No, she will not. She acknowledged the debt to me before George's face. She promised repayment as soon as she had sufficient.'

'If you do not seize on their goods, or some of them, you will never see the colour of the coin again.'

'I must and will have it.'

'Then follow my advice. Put in an execution. I will lend you my men. All you have to do is to give notice on this island when the sale is to be, get together sufficient to bid and buy, and you have your money. You must have an auction.'

'Can I do so, Elijah?'

'Of course you can. Go over to the Ray at once and demand your money. If they decline to pay, allow them a week's grace, more if you like. I'll go with you, when the sale is to take place, and perhaps bid. We will have a Dutch auction.'

'By cock! I'll do it. I will go there right on end.'

At once, with her natural impetuosity, the old woman started. Before departing, however, to heighten her importance, and give authority and sternness to her appearance, she donned her red coat. In token of mourning she wrapped a black rag round her left arm. Over her cap she put a broad-brimmed battered straw hat, in front of which she affixed with a hair-pin the large black bow that had figured on her cap. Thus arrayed she entered her boat and rowed to the Ray.

The demand for the money filled Mrs. Sharland with dismay. It was a demand as unexpected as it was embarrassing. She and Mehalah were absolutely without the means of discharging the debt. They had, indeed, a few pounds by them, which had been intended to serve to carry them through the winter, and these they offered Mrs. De Witt, but she refused to receive a portion on account when she wanted the whole of the debt.

Mrs. Sharland entreated delay till spring, but Mrs. De Witt was inexorable. She would allow no longer than a week. She departed, declaring that she would sell them up, unless the five and twenty pounds were produced.

Since the death or disappearance of George De Witt, Mehalah had gone about her usual work in a mechanical manner. She was in mourning also. But she did not exhibit it by a black bow on her cap or a sable rag round her arm, like the mother of the lost lad. She still wore her red cap, crimson kerchief and blue jersey. But the lustre was gone from her eyes, the bloom from her cheek, animation from her lips. There was no spring in her step, no lightness in her tone. The cow was milked as regularly as usual, and foddered as attentively as before. The house was kept as scrupulously clean, Mrs. Sharland ministered to with the same assiduity, but the imperiousness of Mehalah's nature had gone. The widow found to her astonishment that she was allowed to direct what was to be done, and that her daughter submitted without an objection.

It is the way with strong natures to allow their griefs no expression, to hide their sorrows and mask their wounds. Glory did not speak of George. She did not weep. She made no lamentation over his loss; more wonderful still in her mother's eyes, she uttered no reproaches against anyone for it. A weak nature always exhausts its troubles in reproaches of others; a strong one eats out its own heart. Mehalah listened with a dull ear to her mother's murmurs, and made no response. Mrs. Sharland set her down as unfeeling. A feeble querulous woman like her was quite unable to measure the depth of her daughter's heart, and understand its working. The result was that she read them wrong, and took false soundings.

When her mother was in bed and asleep, then Mehalah sat at the hearth, or leaned at the window looking at the stars, hour by hour, immovable, uttering no sound, not building castles in the clouds, not weaving any schemes for her future, not hoping for anything, not imagining anything, but exhaling her pain. As the turned earth after the plough may be seen in a sudden frost to smoke, so was it with that wounded heart, it smoked, gave up its fever heat, and in silence and solitude cooled. There was something, which yet was no thing, to which her weary soul stretched, in dim unconsciousness. There was a communing without words, even without the thoughts which form into words, with that Unseen which is yet so surely felt. It was the spirit—that infinite essence so mysteriously enclosed within bounds, in strange contradiction to its nature, asserting its nature and yearning for Infinity.

The human heart in suffering is like the parched soil in summer; when its sky is overcast and it cannot see beyond the cloud that lies low over it, then it must harbour its heat, and gape with fever. But, should a rent appear in the earthborn vaporous veil, through which it can look into unfathomable space, at once it radiates the ardour that consumes it, casts off the fever that consumes it, and drinks in, and is slaked by, the dew of heaven.

CHAPTER X.

STRUCK COLOURS.

Woman is the natural enemy of woman. When one woman is over thirty or plain, and the other is young or beautiful, the enmity on one side is implacable and unqualified by mercy. A woman can be heroically self-sacrificing and behave with magnificent generosity towards man, but not towards one of her own sex. She is like the pillar that accompanied the Israelites and confounded the Egyptians; she is cloud and darkness to these, but light and fire to those. She will remorselessly pursue, and vindictively torment a sister who offends by having a better profile and less age. No act of submission will blunt her spite, no deed of kindness sponge up her venom. There is but one unpardonable sin in the sight of Heaven; there are two in the eyes of a middle-aged woman, youth and beauty. She is unconscious of fatigue in the pursuit, and without compunction in the treatment of the member of her sex who has sinned against her in one particular or other. The eternal laws of justice, the elementary principles of virtue, are set aside as inappropriate to the world of women. Generosity, charity, pity are unknown quantities in the feminine equation. As the Roman tyrant wished that mankind had but one neck which he might hack through, so woman would like that womankind had but one nose which she might put out of joint. Every woman is a kill-joy to every other woman, a discord in the universal harmony. Her ideal world is that of the bees, in which there is but one queen, and all other shes are stung to death. Eve was the only woman who tasted of happiness unalloyed, because in Eden she had no sisters.

The iron maid of Nuremberg was sweet and smiling externally, but a touch revealed the interior bristling with spikes, and the victim thrust into her embrace was only released a corpse to drop into an oubliette. All women are Nuremberg maidens, with more or fewer spikes, discovered perhaps by husbands, unsuspected by the rest of men, but known to all other women, who are scarred from their embraces.

Mehalah knew that no leniency was to be looked for in Mrs. De Witt. She thought that lady exceptionally rigorous and exacting; she thought so because she knew nothing of the world. Her mother spent her breath in repinings that could not help, and in hopes which must be frustrated. The extremity of the danger roused Mehalah from her dreams. There was no pity to be expected from the creditor, and there was no means that she could see of defraying the debt. She considered and tried to find some road out of the difficulty, but could discover none. Now more than ever did she need the advice, if not the help, of him who was gone. There was nothing on the farm that could be sold without leaving them destitute of means of carrying it on and defraying the next half-year's rent. The cow, the ewes, her boat, were necessary to them. The furniture in the house was of little value, and it was impossible for her to transport it to Colchester for sale.

She sat thinking of the situation one evening over the fire opposite her mother, without uttering a word. Her hands with her knitting needles lay in her lap; she could not work, she was too fully engrossed in the cares which pressed on her.

Presently her mother roused her from her reverie, by saying, 'There is no help for it, Mehalah, you must go to Wyvenhoe, and find out my cousin, Charles Pettican. He is my only relative left;—at least as far as I know, and him I have not seen for fifteen or sixteen years. I do not even know if he be yet alive. We haven't had a chance of meeting. I go nowhere, I am imprisoned on this island, and he is cut off from us by the river Colne. I see no way out of our trouble but that of borrowing money from him. He was a kind-hearted lively fellow when young, but what he is now that he is old I cannot tell. You must go and try what you can do with him. He is well off, and would not miss twenty pounds more than twenty pence.'

Mehalah greatly disliked the idea of going to a stranger, to one who, though a connection, was quite unknown to her, and begging a loan of him. It galled her pride and wounded her independence. It lowered her in her own eyes. She would rather have worked her fingers to the bone than so stoop, but no work of hers could raise twenty pounds in a week. The thought was altogether so intolerable to her, that she fought against it as long as she could. She would herself cheerfully have gone out of her home and left the farm rather than do this, but she was obliged to consider her mother. She yielded at last most reluctantly; and with tears of mortification filling her eyes, and her cheeks burning with shame, she threw aside her customary costume, and dressed herself in dark blue cloth gown, white kerchief, and a bonnet, and took her way to Wyvenhoe. She had to walk some seven miles. Her road led her to the top of high ground overlooking the mouth of the Colne.

The blue water was dotted with sails. Beyond the river on a height rose from above trees the lofty tower of Brightlingsea. Up a winding creek she looked, and at the head could distinguish the grey priory of St. Osyth, then the seat of the Earl of Rochford, at the entrance to a noble park. She descended the hill, and by a ferry crossed the river to the village of Wyvenhoe.

On her walk she had mused over what she should say to Mr. Charles Pettican, without coming to any determination. Her mother had let fall some hints that her cousin had once been her fond admirer, but that they had been parted by cruel parents. Mrs. Sharland's reminiscences were rather vague, and not much reliance could be placed on them; however, Mehalah hoped there might be some truth in this, and that old recollections might be stirred in the breast of Mr. Pettican, and stimulate him to generosity. The river was full of boats, and on the landing were a number of people. 'We're lively to-day,' said the ferryman who put her over, 'the regatta is on. It is late this season, but what with one thing and another, we couldn't have it earlier no way.'

'Will Mr. Pettican be there?'

'Lor bless you, no,' answered the man, 'that's impossible.'

Glory asked her way to the house of her mother's cousin. He was, or rather had been, a shipbuilder. He occupied a little compact wooden house painted white, on the outskirts of the village. It was a cheerful place. The shutters were after the French fashion, external, and painted emerald green. The roof was tiled and looked very red, as though red ochred every morning by the housemaid after she had pipeclayed the walls. Over the door of the house was a balcony with elaborate iron balustrades gilt; against these leaned two figureheads, females, with very pink and white complexions, and no expression in their faces.

There was a sanded path led from the gate to the door, and there were two green patches of turf, one on each side of it. In the centre of that on the left was another figure-head—a Medusa with flying serpent locks, but with a face as passionless and ordinary as that of a milliner's block. In the midst of the other plot rose a mast. On this day, when all Wyvenhoe was en fête, a flag ought properly to be flying from the mast. Every other in the village and on the water was adorned with its bunting, but that of Mr. Pettican alone ignored the festival.

As Mehalah ascended the walk, a gull with its wings clipped uttered a fierce scream, and rushing across the garden with outspread pinions, dashed at her foot with his sharp beak, and then falling back, threw out his breast, elevated his bill, and broke into a long succession of discordant yells, whoops, and gulps.

At the same moment one pane in the window on the right of the door opened, a little dry face peered through and nodded.

'If you're going to knock, don't. Come in, and make no noise about it. It's very kind. She's out.'

The gull made a second assault at Mehalah's foot.

'Kick him,' said the face; 'don't fear you will hurt him. He is as good as a watch dog. Open the door, and when you are in the hall turn to the right-hand.'

Then the pane was slammed to, and Mehalah turned the handle of the front door. She found herself in a narrow passage with a flight of very steep stairs before her, and a door on each hand. Over each of these on a bracket stood a ship fully rigged, with all her sail on.

She entered the room on the right as directed, and found herself in a little parlour with very white walls, and portraits of ships, some in worsted work on canvas, others painted in oils, others again in water-colours, covering the walls.

In the window, half sat, half reclined, an old man, with a scrubby grey head, a pair of very lively eyes, but with a trembling feeble mouth.

He wore very high shirt-collars, exceedingly stiff, and thick folds of black silk round his neck. His blue coat had a high black velvet collar. The little man seemed to draw his head in between his blinkers and beneath his coat-collar, and lose his face in his cravat, then at will to project his head from them, as though he were a tortoise retiring into or emerging from his shell.

As Glory came in, the little wizened face was scarce perceptible, save that the bright eyes peeped and twinkled at her from somewhere in a chaos of black velvet, blue cloth, white linen, and black silk; then all at once the head shot forward, and a cheery voice said, 'I can't rise to meet you, Mary,' he made at the same time a salutation with his hand, 'or I would throw myself at your feet. Glad to see you. How are you, Lizzy, my dear.'

'My name is neither Mary nor Lizzy, but Mehalah.'

'Let it be Methuselah or Melchisedek, or what you like, it is all one to me. I don't care for the name you give a wine when it is good, I drink it and smack my lips, whether you call it Port, or Tarragona, or Roussillon; and I don't bother about a girl's name. If she is sweet and sunny, and bright and pretty as'—he made a little bow and a great flourish of his hand as a salute—'as you are, I see her and listen to her, and admire her.'

'My name's——'

'I have told you it don't matter. I never yet met with a girl's name that wasn't pretty, except one, and I thought that pretty once.'

'What name?'

'Admonition.'

'Why do you not like it?'

The little man looked out of the window, along the walls, then turned his head round and sighed. 'Never mind. Do you see that figure-head out there? It belonged to a wessel I built; she was called the "Medusa." Bad luck attended her. She was always fouling other wessels. She ran down a Frenchman once, but that was no matter, and she did the same by a Dutchman. Well, at last she got such a character that I was forced to change her head and her name, but then she fared worse than before. Changing their names don't always mend wessels and women. Well!' with another sigh, 'we will leave unpleasant topics, and laugh and be jolly while we may. You haven't told me how you are. This is very kind of you to drop in on me. It is like old times; my halcyon days, as I think they call 'em. I haven't had such a wisit since,' he waved towards his flagstaff, 'since I lowered my flag.'

'But, sir,' said Mehalah, 'you must let me explain my purpose in coming here; and to do that, I must tell you who I am, and whence I come.'

'I don't want to hear it. I don't care a bit about it. Be jolly and gather the rosebuds while you may. She ain't out for long, and we must be joyful at such opportunities as are afforded us. I know as well as you do why you have come. You have come in the goodness of your female heart to cheer a poor crippled wretch like me.'

'I did not know you were a cripple, sir!'

'You didn't. Give me my crutches. Look at this.' He placed his crutches under his arms, swung himself dexterously off his chair, and stumped round the room, dragging his lower limbs behind him, as though they did not belong to him. They were lifeless. When he returned to his seat he threw himself down. 'Now, Jemima, put up my legs on that chair. I can't stir them myself. I couldn't raise them an inch if you was to promise me a kiss for my pains. There, thank ye; now sit down and be jolly.'

'Sir,' said Mehalah, 'you remember my mother, Mistress Sharland.'

'What! Liddy Vince, pretty cousin Liddy! I should think I did remember her. Why, it is only the other day that she married.'

'I am her daughter, and my age is nineteen.'

'I haven't seen her for—well, never mind how many years. Years don't tell on a man as they do on a woman; they mellow him, but wither her. So you are her daughter, are you? Stand round there by my feet where I can see you.'

He drew his head down among his clothes and peered at her from between his tall white collars. 'You are an uncommon fine girl,' he said, when his observation was completed, 'but not a bit like Liddy. You are more like her mother—she was the deuce of a splendid woman, such eyes, such hair—but she was a——' he hesitated, his courtesy forbade his saying what rose to the tongue.

'A gipsy;' Mehalah supplied the words.

'Well, she was, but she couldn't help it, you know. But that is not what I was about to say. I intended to observe that she was a—little before my time. She was old when I knew her, but I've heard what a beauty she was, and her eyes always remained large and noble, and her hair luxuriant. But women don't improve with age as does good port, and as do men. Well, now, tell me your name.'

'Mehalah.'

'A regular Essex marshland name. I hope I shall remember it. But I have to carry so many names of nice-looking girls in my head, and of ships I have built, that they run one another down, and I cannot be sure to recall them. My memory is not going. Don't suppose that. Why, bless your dear heart, I can remember everything your mother and I said to one another when we were sweet upon each other. That don't look like a failing memory, does it? But you see, as we go on in life, every day brings something more to remember, and so this head gets choke full. A babe a year old has some three hundred and sixty-five things to recollect, that is if he remembers only one thing per diem, and a man of fifty has over eighteen million of things stuffed away in this little warehouse,' tapping his head; 'so he has to rummage and rout before he can find the particular article he wants. His memory don't go with age, but gets overchoked. Now, to change the topic, why haven't you been to see me before?'

'Sir! I could not. I did not know you, and you live a long way from the Ray. Mother cannot walk so far.'

'And I can't neither, but not from age but from accident. So your mother can't walk a matter of seven miles. Dear me! How women do deteriorate either with age or with marriage! I could; I would think nothing of it but for my accident. Now tell me what has brought you here, Mehalaleel?'

'I have come,' answered Mehalah, looking down, 'because driven by necessity to apply to you, as our only relative.'

'Bless my soul! Want my help! How? I wish I could as easily apply for yours. My dear girl, I am past help. I've hauled down my flag. All is up with me. I'm drawn up on the mud and put to auction. They are breaking me up. Tell your mother so. Tell her that time was—but let bygones be bygones. How is she looking? Are the roses altogether faded?'

'She is very feeble and suffering. She is greatly afflicted with ague.'

'She had it as a girl. One day as I was courting her and whispering pretty things in her ear, she was going to blush and smile, when all at once the fit of shivers came on her, and she could do nought but chatter her teeth and turn green and stream with cold sweat. So she is very feeble, is she?'

'She is weak and ailing.'

'Women never do improve, like men, by ripening,' said Mr. Pettican. 'Girls are angels up to one and twenty, some a little bit later, but after that they deteriorate and become old cats. They are roses up to marriage and after that are hips, with hard red skins outside and choke and roughness within. Men are quite the reverse. They are louts to twenty-five, as unformed in body as young colts, and in mind as young owls; after that they begin to ripen, and the older they get the better they grow. A man is like a medlar, only worth eating when rotten. A young man is raw and hard and indigestible, but a man of forty is full of juice and sweetness. Now don't tell your mother what I have said about old women.'

'I will not.'

'Sit ye down, sit ye down, and be jolly. Don't stand. It does not fare to be comfortable.'

'Sir, I must mention the object of this visit.'

'All in good time. But first let us be jolly. Give me some fun, I haven't had any since—since,' he pointed sadly to his flagless staff and shook his head. 'It is all up with me, save when a stray gleam of liveliness and mirth shoots athwart my gloomy sky. But that is rarely the case now.'

'Thank you, sir,' said Mehalah, taking a chair. 'Now to the point.'

'First be jolly. I have enough of mouths drawn down at the corners—but never mind now. Begone dull care, thou canker. Come! I should like your mother to know all about me. You will tell her how young I am looking. You will say that I would be sure to come tripping over to see her but for my accident.'

'I will tell her how I have seen you.'

'You needn't dwell on the crutches; but she knows, she has heard of that affliction of mine, it was the talk of the county, thousands of tender hearts beat in sympathy with me. My accident is one of long standing. I won't say when it happened. I have not a good head for dates, but anyhow it was not quite last year, or the year before that. It has told on me. I look older than I really am, and yet I am hearty and well. I have such an appetite. Just pull me up, dear, in the chair, and I will tell you what I eat. I had a rasher of bacon and a chop for breakfast, and a pewter of homebrewed beer; that don't look like a failing digestion, does it. And I shall eat,—Lord bless you! You would laugh to see me at my dinner, I eat like a ploughboy. That is not like the decay of old age attacking the witals, is it, my pretty? Now listen to me, and I will tell you all about it. Do you chance to notice here and there a little grey in my hair? Just as though a few grains of salt had dropped among black pepper? They come of care, dearest, not of years. I never had a grizzled hair on my head till—till I struck my colours. Now I'll tell you all about it, and you tell your mother. She will pity me. One day in my yard I stumbled over a round of timber and fell on my back on it, and hurt my spine, and I've been a cripple ever since. It is a sad pity—such a fine, strapping, manly fellow as I, in the prime of age, to be laid by like an old condemned wessel! Well! here I have had to lie in my window, looking out, and not seeing much to interest me. But the girls of Wyvenhoe, bless their kind hearts,—they are angels up to one and twenty—used to come to the window, and wish me a good day, and ask after my health, and have pleasant little gossips, and be altogether jolly. Next, whenever they could, some one or two would bring her knitting or needlework, and come in, and sit here and spend an hour or so, talking, laughing and making fun. That was pleasant, wasn't it? It is wonderful what a lot those dear girls had to say for themselves; they became quite confidential with me, and told me all their love affairs, and how matters stood, and who their sweethearts were. It was worth while being ill and laid on one's back to enjoy such society. Whenever I was dull and wanted some chat, I sent my man to hoist the flag, and the next girl that went by, "Ah!" said she, "there's that poor fellow would like my society," and in she came and sat talking with me as long as she was able. Then sometimes I had a dish of tea brought in, or some cakes, or fruit. It was a pleasant time. I wish it were to come over all again. Tell your mother all this. I was quite the pet of all the kind-hearted young folks in Wyvenhoe. Now that is over. I'll tell you about it.' He sighed and passed a shaking hand over his bright, twinkling eyes. 'You must explain it all to your mother—Liddy that was. You see, I don't forget her name. Now tell me yours again; it is gone from me.'

'Mehalah.'

'I'll write it down in my note-book and then I shall remember it. My memory is overstocked, and it takes me a deal of time to find in it what I want. But your mother's name don't get buried, but lies at hand on the top. You'll tell her so. Now about my troubles. There was one damsel, who was called Admonition; and she was very particularly pleasant and attentive to me, and many a little teasing and joking I had with her about her name. She was the girl fullest of fun, she regularly brimmed over with it, and it ran down her sides. She was a milliner, and had to work for her living. She had no relations and no money of her own. It is curious what a lot of cousins she has now, mostly in the sea-faring line, and all young. Then she was always ready for a chat. She would bring her needlework and sit with me by the hour. I thought it vastly pleasant, and how much more pleasant it would be if she were always by my side to keep me laughing and chirpy. I must tell you that I go down some degrees when alone,—not that my spirits fail me with age,—it is constitutional. I was so as a boy.—Bless me! it seems to me only the other day when I was a romping lout of a lad—I'm crisp and crackly like seaweed in an East wind when I am in female society, that is, female society up to one and twenty—but I'm like the same seaweed in a Sou'wester when I'm alone. One day the flag was flying, but no visitor came except Admonition. It was the day of the Regatta. She said, and the tears came into her eyes, that she was a lone girl, with no one to accompany her, so she had come to sit with me. She tried to cheer up and laugh, but she felt her loneliness so that my heart was touched, and I proposed and we were married.' There ensued a long pause. Mr. Pettican looked out of the window. 'I had a queer sort of premonitory feeling when I said, "I take thee Admonition to my wedded wife," but it was too late then to retract. Now the flag that has braved a thousand breezes is down. It has not flown since that day.'

'Where is Mrs. Pettican now?' asked Mehalah.

'At the Regatta,' answered the cripple. 'You'll tell your mother how I am situated. She will drop a tear for poor Charlie. I will tell you what, Me——' he looked at his note-book, 'Mehalah; men fancy all girls sultana raisins, but when they bite them they get very hard pips between their teeth. There's a Methodist preacher here has been haranguing on conversion, and persuading Admonition that she is a new creature. I know she is. She was converted on the day of the marriage ceremony; but the conversion was not something to boast of. Matrimony with women is what jibbing is with ships, they go through a movement of staggering and then away they start off on a tack clean contrary to the course they were sailing before. Marriage, Mehalah, is like Devonshire cream; it is very rich and tasty, but it develops a deal of bile. Look here, my pretty!' In a moment he was off his chair, stumping in his crutches round the room, dragging his paralysed limbs after him. He returned to his chair. 'Put up my legs, dear,' he begged; then said, 'That is the state of my case; my better half is Admonition, the poor paralysed, helpless, dead half is me.'

He did not speak for some moments, but brushed his eyes with his feeble hand. At last he said, 'I've unburdened my soul. Tell your mother. Now go ahead, and let me know what you want.'

Mehalah told Mr. Pettican the circumstances. She said that her mother wanted a loan of fifteen or twenty pounds. If she could not procure the sum, she would have her cow taken from her, then they would be unable to pay the rent next Lady Day, and be without milk for the winter. They would be turned out of the little farm on which her mother had lived so long, in quiet and contentment, and this would go far to break her mother's heart. She told him candidly that the loan could only be repaid in instalments.

The old man listened patiently, only passing his hand in an agitated manner across his face several times.

'I wish I could help you,' he said, when she had done; 'I have money. I have laid by some. There is plenty in the box and more at the bank, but I can't get at it.'

'Sir!'

'Before I struck my colours, Mehalah, I did what I liked with my money; on market days my man went into Colchester, and I always gave him a little sum to lay out in presents for my kind visitors. Bless you; a very trifle pleased them. It is different now. I don't spend a penny myself. The money is spent for me. I don't keep the key of my cashbox. Admonition has it.'

'Then,' said Mehalah, rising from her seat, 'all is over with us. My mother, your cousin, will in her old age be cast destitute into the world. But, if you really wish to help her, be a man, use your authority, and do what you choose with your own.'

'Bless me!' exclaimed Mr. Pettican touching his brow with his trembling hand, 'I will be a man. Am I not a man! If I don't exert my authority, people will say I am in my dotage. I—I—in my flower and cream of my age—in the dotage! Go, Me——' he looked in his note-book, 'Mehalah, fetch me my cashbox, it is in the bedroom cupboard upstairs, on the right, over this. Bring the box down. Stay though! Before you come down just feel in my wife's old dress pocket. She may have forgotten to take her keys with her to the Regatta. It is just possible.'

'I cannot do that.'

'Well, no, perhaps you had better not. Do you happen to have a bunch of keys with you?'

'No, sir.'

'Well, never mind. Bring me the case. I will be a man. I will show the world I am not in my dotage. I will be of the masculine gender, dative case, if it pleases me, and Admonition may lump it if she don't like it.'

Mehalah obeyed. She found the box, which was of iron, brought it downstairs, and placed it on the table by Mr. Pettican. 'I've been turning the matter over in my mind,' said he, 'and I see a very happy way out of it without a row. Give me the poker. You will find a cold chisel in that drawer.'

'I will tell you my idea. Whilst I am left here all alone, burglars have broken into the house, knowing my helpless condition, and have ransacked the place, found my cashbox and broken it open.' He chuckled and rubbed his hands. 'I shall be able accurately to describe the ruffians. One has a black moustache, and the other a red beard, and they look like foreigners and speak a Dutch jargon.'

He put the chisel to the lid, and struck at it with the poker, starting the hinges by the blow.

At that moment the door was flung wide, and in swam a dashing young woman in very gay colours, on the arm of a yachtsman.

'Charles!' she cried; 'what are you after?' then turning abruptly on Mehalah, 'And pray what are you doing here, in my house?' Mr. Pettican's head, which had been craned forward in eagerness over the box, retreated amidst the collar and cravat, and almost disappeared.

'Who are you?' she asked of Mehalah, with an insulting air. 'Out of this house with you at once!'

'My dear Monie!' pleaded Mr. Pettican, lifting his shaking hands into an attitude of prayer.

'No "My dears" and "Monies" to me,' said the wife. 'I want to know what you are after with my cashbox? Ho, ho! trying to prize it open and squander my little sums laid aside for household expenses on—Heaven knows whom.'

'Mr. Pettican is my mother's cousin,' said Mehalah.

'Cousin, indeed! never heard Mr. Pettican speak of you. Cousins are sure to turn up when money is wanted.'

'Mr. Pettican,' said Mehalah, refusing to notice the insolent woman, 'be a man and let me have the money you promised.'

'I should like to be a man, oh! I wish I were a man! But I can't, I can't indeed, dear. I haven't been myself since I hauled down my flag.'

'Charles, hold out your hand, and invite my cousin Timothy to dinner. He has kindly consented to stay a fortnight with us.'

'Timothy!' echoed Mr. Pettican, 'I did not know you had such a cousin.'

'Do you think you know anything of my relations?' exclaimed Admonition; 'I should hope not, they are a little above your sphere. There are lots more cousins!'

The poor little man sat shrinking behind his blinkers, peering piteously now at Mehalah, and then at his wife.

'Be a man,' said Mehalah, grasping him by both hands. 'Save us from ruin.'

'Can't do it, Pretty, can't. I have struck my colours.'

CHAPTER XI

A DUTCH AUCTION.

Mehalah returned sadly to the Ray. The hope that had centred in help from Wyvenhoe had been extinguished.

Her mother was greatly disappointed at the ill-success of the application, but flattered at her cousin's recollection of her.

'If it had not been for that woman's coming in when she did, we should have had the money,' said Mrs. Sharland. 'What a pity she did not remain away a little longer. Charles is very well disposed, and would help us if he could pluck up courage to defy his wife. Suppose you try again, Mehalah, some other day, and choose your time well.'

'I will not go there again, mother.'

'If we do get turned out of this place we might settle at Wyvenhoe, and then choose our opportunity.'

'Mother, the man is completely under his wife's thumb. There is no help to be found there.'

'Then, Mehalah, the only chance that remains, is to get the money from the Mersea parson.'

'He cannot help us.'

'There is no harm trying.'

The day on which Mrs. De Witt had threatened to come had passed, without her appearing. True it had blown great guns, and there had been storms of rain. Mrs. Sharland hoped that the danger was over. The primitive inhabitants of the marshes had dwelt on piles, she built on straws. Some people do not realise a danger till it is on them and they cannot avert it. Mrs. Sharland was one of these. She liked her grievance, and loved to moan over it; if she had not a real one she invented one, just as children celebrate funerals over dolls. She had been so accustomed to lament over toy troubles that when a real trouble threatened she was unable to measure its gravity.

She was a limp and characterless woman. Mehalah had inherited the rich red blood of her grandparents, and Mrs. Sharland had assimilated only the water, and this flowed feebly through her pale veins. Her nature was parasitic. She could not live on her own root, but must adhere to a character stronger than herself. She had hung on and smothered her husband, and now she dragged at her daughter. Mehalah must stand upright or Mrs. Sharland would crush her to the ground. There are women like articles of furniture that will 'wobble' unless a penny or a wedge of wood be put under their feet. Mrs. Sharland was always crying out for some trifle to steady her.

Mehalah did not share her mother's anticipations that the danger had passed with the day, that Mrs De Witt's purpose had given way to kinder thoughts; she was quite sure that she would prove relentless and push matters to extremities. It was this certainty which drove her to act once more on her mother's suggestion, and go to the Mersea Rectory, to endeavour to borrow the sum of money needed to relieve them from immediate danger.

She found the parson in his garden without his coat, which hung on the hedge, making a potatoe pie for the winter.

He was on all fours packing the tubers in straw. His boots and gaiters were clogged with clay.

'Hallo!' he exclaimed as Mehalah came up. 'You are the girl they call Glory? Look here. I want you to see my kidneys. Did you ever see the like, come clean out of the ground without canker. Would you like a peck? I'll give them you. Boil beautiful.'

'I want to speak with you, sir.'

'Speak then by all means, and don't mind me. I must attend to my kidneys. A fine day like this is not to be wasted at this time of the year. Go on. There is an ashtop for you. I don't care for the potatoe as a potatoe. It don't boil all to flour as I like. You can have a few if you like. Now go on.'

Down went his head again, and was buried in a nest of straw. Mehalah waited. She did not care to address his back and legs, the only part of his person visible.

'You can't be too careful with potatoes,' said the parson, presently emerging, very red in the face, and with a pat of clay on his nose. 'You must make them comfortable for the winter. Do to others as you would they should do to you. Keep them well from frost, and they will boil beautiful all the winter through. Go on with your story. I am listening,' and in went the head again.

Mehalah lost heart. She could not begin thus.

'Pah! how I sweat,' exclaimed the parson, again emerging. 'The sun beats down on my back, and the black waistcoat draws the heat. And we are in November. This won't last. Have you your potatoes in, Glory?'

'We have only a few on the Ray.'

'You ought to have more. Potatoes like a light soil well drained. You have gravel, and with some good cow-dung or sheep-manure, which is better still, with your fall, they ought to do primely. I'll give you seed. It is all nonsense, as they do here, planting small whole potatoes. Take a good strong tuber, and cut it up with an eye in each piece; then you get a better plant than if you keep the little half-grown potatoes for seed. However, I'm wasting time. I'll be back in a moment. I must fetch another basket load. Go on with your story all the same: I can hear you. I shall only be in the shed behind the Rectory.'

Parson Tyll was a curate of one parish across the Strood and of the two on the island. The rector was non-resident, on the plea of the insalubrity of the spot. He had held the rectory of one parish and the vicarage of the other thirty years, and during that period had visited his cures twice, once to read himself in, and on the other occasion to exact some tithes denied him.

'All right,' said Mr. Tyll, returning from the back premises, staggering under a crate full of roots. 'Go on, I am listening. Pick up those kidneys which have rolled out. Curse it, I hate their falling and getting bruised; they won't keep. There now, you never saw finer potatoes in your life than these. My soil here is the same as yours on the Ray. Don't plant too close, and not in ridges. I'll tell you what I do. I put mine in five feet apart and make heaps round each. I don't hold by ridges. Hillocks is my doctrine. Go on, I am listening. Here, lend me a hand, and chuck me in the potatoes as I want them. You can talk all the same.'

Parson Tyll crept into his heap and seated himself on his haunches. 'Chuck away, but not too roughly. They mustn't be bruised. Now go on, I can stack the tubers and listen all the same.'

'Sir,' said Mehalah, out of heart at her reception, 'we are in great trouble and difficulty.'

'I have no doubt of it; none in the world. You don't grow enough potatoes. Now look at my kidneys. They are the most prolific potatoes I know. I introduced them, and they go by my name. You may ask for them anywhere as Tyll's kidneys. Go on, I am listening.'

'We owe Mrs. De Witt a matter of five and twenty pounds,' began Mehalah, red with shame; 'and how to pay her we do not know.'

'Nor I,' said the parson. 'You have tried to go on without potatoes, and you can't do it. Others have tried and failed. You should keep geese on the saltings, and fowls. Fowls ought to thrive on a sandy soil, but then you have no corn land, that makes a difference. Potatoes, however, especially my kidneys, ought to be a treasure to you. Take my advice, be good, grow potatoes. Go on, I am listening. Chuck me some more. How is the stock in the basket? Does it want replenishing? Look here, my lass, go to the coach-house and bring me some more. There is a heap in the corner; on the left; those on the right are ashtops. They go in a separate pie. You can talk as you go, I shall be here and harkening.'

Mehalah went sullenly to the place where the precious roots were stored, and brought him a basketful.

'By the way,' said the parson, peeping out of his mole-hill at her, 'it strikes me you ought not to be here now. Is there not a sale on your farm to-day?'

'A sale, sir?'

'A sale, to be sure. Mrs. De Witt has carried off my clerk to act as auctioneer, or he would be helping me now with my potatoes. She has been round to several of the farmers to invite them to attend and bid, and they have gone to see if they can pick up some ewes or a cow cheap.'

Mehalah staggered. Was this possible?

'Go on with your story, I'm listening,' continued the parson, diving back into his burrow, so that only the less honourable extremity of his vertebral column was visible. 'Talk of potatoes. There's not one to come up to Tyll's kidneys. Go on, I am all attention! Chuck me some more potatoes.'

But Mehalah was gone, and was making the best of her way back.

Parson Tyll was right. This fine November day was that which it had struck Mrs. De Witt was most suitable for the sale, that would produce the money.

Mehalah had not long left the Strood before a strange procession began to cross the Marshes.

Mrs. De Witt sat aloft in a tax-cart borrowed of Isaac Mead, the publican, by the side of his boy who drove. Behind, very uncomfortably, much in the attitude of a pair of scissors, sat the clerk, folded nearly double in the bottom of the cart; his head reclined on Mrs. De Witt's back and the seat of the vehicle, his legs hung over the board at the back, and swung about like those of a calf being carried to market or to the butcher's. Mrs. De Witt wore her red coat, and a clean washed or stiffly starched cap. She led the way. The road over the Marshes was bad, full of holes, and greasy. A recent tide had corrupted the clay into strong brown glue.

The farmers and others who followed to attend the sale had put up their gigs and carts at the cottage of the Strood keeper, and pursued their way on foot. But Mrs. De Witt was above such feebleness of nerve. She had engaged the trap for the day, and would take her money's worth out of it. The boy had protested at the Strood that the cart of his master could not go over the marshes, that Isaac Mead had not supposed it possible that it would be taken over so horrible and perilous a road. Mrs. De Witt thereupon brought her large blue gingham umbrella down on the lad's back, and vowed she would open him like an oyster with her pocket-knife unless he obeyed her. She looked quite capable of fulfilling her threat, and he submitted.

The cart jerked from side to side. The clerk's head struck Mrs. De Witt several sharp blows in the small of her back. She turned sharply round, pegged at him with the umbrella, and bade him mind his manners.

'Let me get out. I can't bear this, ma'am,' pleaded the man.

'It becomes you to ride to the door as the officer of justice,' answered she. 'If I can ride, so can you. Lie quiet,' and she banged at him with the umbrella again.

At that moment there came a jolt of a more violent description than before, and Mrs. De Witt was suddenly precipitated over the splash-board, and, after a battle in the air, on the back of the prostrate horse, with her feet, hands and umbrella she went into a mud hole. The horse was down, but the knees of the clerk were up far above his head. He struggled to rise, but was unable, and could only bellow for assistance.

Mrs. De Witt picked herself up and assisted the boy in bringing the horse to his feet again. Then she coolly pinned up her gown to her knees, and strode forward. The costume was not so shocking to her native modesty as might have been supposed, nor did it scandalise the farmers, for it was that adopted by the collectors of winkles on the flats. The appearance presented by Mrs. De Witt was, however, grotesque. In the mud her legs had sunk to the knees, and they looked as though she wore a pair of highly polished Hessian boots. The skirt and the red coat gave her a curious nondescript military cut, as half Highlander. Though she walked, she would not allow the clerk to dismount. She whacked at the pendant legs when they rose and protested, and bade the fellow lie still; he was all right, and it was only proper that he, the functionary on the occasion, should arrive in state, instead of on his own shanks.

'If you get up on the seat you'll be bobbed off like a pea on a drum. Lie in the bottom of the cart and be peaceful, as is your profession,' said Mrs. De Witt, with a dig of the umbrella over the side.

They formed a curious assemblage. There were the four brothers Marriage of Peldon, not one of whom had taken a wife. Once, indeed, the youngest, Herbert, had formed matrimonial schemes; but on his ventilating the subject, had been fallen on by his three brothers and three unmarried sisters who kept house for them, as though he had hinted the introduction of a cask of gunpowder into the cellars. He had been scolded and lectured, and taunted, as the apostate, the profligate, the prodigal, who was bent on the ruin of the family, the dissipation of the accumulated capital of years of labour, the introducer of discord into a united household. And yet the household was only united in theory, in fact the brothers were always fighting and swearing at one another about the order of the work to be executed on the farm, and the sisters quarrelled over the household routine.

There was Joshua Pudney, of Smith's Hall, who loved his bottle and neglected his farm, who grew more thistles than wheat, and kept more hunters than cows, a jolly fat red-faced man with white hair, always in top boots. Along with him was Nathaniel Pooley, who combined preaching with farming, was noted for sharp practice in money matters, and for not always coming out of pecuniary transactions with clean hands. Pudney cursed and Pooley blessed, yet the labourers were wont to say that Pudney's curses broke no bones, but Pooley's blessings did them out of many a shilling. Pudney let wheat litter in his stubble, and bid the gleaners go in and be damned, when he threw the gate open to them. Pooley raked the harvest field over thrice, and then opened the gleaning with an invocation to Providence to bless the widow, the fatherless, and the poor who gathered in his fields.

Farmer Wise was a gaunt, close-shaven man, always very neatly dressed, a great snuff-taker. He was a politician, and affected to be a Whig, whilst all the rest of his class were Tories. He was argumentative, combative, and cantankerous, a close, careful man, and reported a miser.

A dealer, riding a black pony, a wonderful little creature that scampered along at a flying trot, came up and slackened rein. He was a stout man in a very battered hat, with shabby coat; a merry man, and a good judge of cattle.

The proceedings of the day were, perhaps, hardly in accordance with strict English law, but then English law was precisely like Gospel precepts, made for other folk. On the Essex marshes people did not trouble themselves much about the legality of their proceedings; they took the law into their own hands. If the law suited them they used it, if not they did without it. But, legally or not legally, they got what they wanted. It was altogether inconvenient and expensive for the recovery of a small debt to apply to a solicitor and a magistrate, and the usual custom was, therefore, to do the thing cheaply and easily through the clerk of the parish constituted auctioneer for the occasion, and the goods of the defaulter were sold by him to an extemporised assembly of purchasers on any day that suited the general convenience. The clerk so far submitted to legal restrictions that he did not run goods up, but down; he began with an absurdly high figure, instead of one preposterously low.

When the cart and its contents and followers arrived at the Ray, the horse was taken out, and the vehicle was run against a rick of hay, into which the shafts were deeply thrust, so as to keep the cart upright, that it might serve as a rostrum for the auctioneer.

'We'll go and take stock first,' said the clerk; 'we've to raise twenty-five pounds for the debt and twenty shillings my costs. What is there to sell?'

'Wait a bit, gaffer,' said the cattle jobber; 'you're a trifle too quick. The old lady must demand the money first.'

'I'm agoing to do so, Mr. Mellonie,' said Mrs. De Witt; 'you teach your grandmother to shell shrimps.' Then, looking round on about twenty persons who had assembled, she said, 'Follow me. Stay! here comes more. Oh! it is Elijah Rebow and his men come to see fair play. Come by water have you, Elijah? We are not going to sell anything of yours, you needn't fear.'

She shouldered her umbrella like an oar, and strode to the house door. Mrs. Sharland was there, white and trembling.

'Have you got my money?' asked Mrs. De Witt.

'Oh, mistress,' exclaimed the unfortunate widow, 'do have pity and patience. Mehalah has just gone to get it.'

'Gone to get it?' echoed Mrs. De Witt. 'Why, where in the name of wonder does she expect to get it?'

'She had gone to Parson Tyll to borrow it.'

'Then she won't get it,' said the drover. 'There's no money to be wrung out of empty breeches pockets.'

'Let me into the house,' said Mrs. De Witt. 'Let us all see what you have got. There's a clock. Drag it out, and stick it up under the tree near the cart. That is worth a few pounds. And take that chair.'

'It is my chair. I sit in it, and I have the ague so bad.'

'Take the chair,' persisted Mrs. De Witt, and Rebow's men carried it forth. 'There's some good plates there. Is there a complete set?'

'There are only six.'

'That is better than none. Out with them. What have you got in the corner cupboard?'

'Nothing but trifles.'

'We'll sell the cupboard and the dresser. You can't move the dresser, Elijah. We'll carry it in our heads. Look at it,' she said to the clerk; 'see you don't forget to put that up. Now shall we go into the bedrooms, or go next to the cowhouse?'

'Leave the bedroom,' said Mellonie, 'you can't sell the bed from under the old woman.'

'I can though, if I don't raise enough,' said Mrs. De Witt. 'I've slept on a plank many a time.'

'Oh dear! Oh dear!' moaned the widow Sharland; 'I wish Mehalah had returned; perhaps she has the money.'

'No chance of that, mistress,' said Rebow. 'You are sold up and done for past escape now. What will you do next, you and that girl Glory, I'd like to know?'

'I think she will get the money,' persisted the widow.

Elijah turned from her with a sneer.

'Outside with you,' shouted Mrs. De Witt. 'The sale is going to begin.'

The men—there were no women present except Mrs. De Witt—quickly evacuated the house and pushed into the stable and cowhouse.

There was no horse, and only one cow. The sheep were on the saltings. There was no cart, and very few tools of any sort. The little farm was solely a sheep farm, there was not an acre of tillage land attached to it.

The clerk climbed up into the cart.

'Stop, stop, for Heaven's sake!' gasped Mehalah dashing up. 'What is this! Why have we not been warned?'

'Oh yes! forewarned indeed, and get rid of the things,' growled Mrs. De Witt. 'But I did tell you what I should do, and precious good-natured I was to do it.'

Mehalah darted past her into the house.

'Tell me, tell me!' cried the excited mother, 'have you the money?'

'No. The parson could not let me have it.'

'Hark! they have begun the sale. What is it they are crying now?'

'The clock, mother. Oh, this is dreadful.'

'They will sell the cow too,' said the widow.

'Certain to do so.'

'There! I hear the dresser's put up. Who has bought the clock?'

'Oh never mind, that matters nothing. We are ruined.'

'Oh dear, dear!' moaned Mrs. Sharland, 'that it should come to this! But I suppose I must, I must indeed. Run, Mehalah, run quick and unrip the belt of my green gown. Quick, fetch it me.'

The girl hastily obeyed. The old woman got her knife, and with trembling hand cut away the lining in several parts of the body. Shining sovereigns came out.

'There are twenty here,' she said with a sigh, 'and we have seven over of what George let us have. Give the wretches the money.'

'Mother, mother!' exclaimed Mehalah. 'How could you borrow! How could you send me——!'

'Never mind, I did not want to use my little store till every chance had failed. Run out and pay the money.'

Mehalah darted from the door.

The clerk was selling the cow.

'Going for twenty-five pounds. What? no one bid, going for twenty-five pounds, and dirt cheap at the money, all silent! Well I never, and such a cow! Going for twenty-three——'

'Stop!' shouted Mehalah. 'Here is Mrs. De Witt's money, twenty-five pounds.'

'Damnation!' roared Elijah, 'where did you get it?'

'Our savings,' answered Mehalah, and turned her back on him.

CHAPTER XII.

A GILDED BALCONY.

Mehalah was hurt and angry at her mother's conduct. She thought that she had not been fairly treated. When the loss sustained presumably by Abraham Dowsing's carelessness had been discovered, Mrs. Sharland had not hinted the existence of a private store, and had allowed De Witt to lend her the money she wanted for meeting the rent. Glory regarded this conduct as hardly honest. It jarred, at all events, with her sense of what was honourable. On the plea of absolute inability to pay the rent, they had obtained five and twenty pounds from the young fisherman. Then again, when Mrs. De Witt reclaimed the debt, Mehalah had been subjected to the humiliation of appealing to Mr. Pettican and being repulsed by Admonition. She had been further driven to sue a loan of the parson; she had not, indeed, asked him for the money, but that was only because he avoided, intentionally or not she could not say, giving her the chance. She had gone with the intention of begging, and his manner, and the accidental discovery that the sale was already taking place, had alone prevented her from undergoing the shame of asking and being refused.

She did not like to charge her mother with having behaved dishonourably, for she felt instinctively that her mother's views and hers were not coincident. Her brow was clouded, and an unpleasant gleam flickered in her eyes. She resisted the treatment she had been subjected to as unnecessary. It was only justifiable in an extreme emergency, and no such emergency had existed. Her mother would rather sacrifice her daughter's self-respect than break in on the little hoard.

'Charles said he had money in the bank, did he?' asked Mrs. Sharland.

'Yes.'

'To think of that! My cousin has an account in the bank, and can write his cheques, and one can cash cheques signed Charles Pettican! That is something to be proud of, Mehalah.'

'Indeed, mother?'

'And you say he has a beautiful house, with a verandah. A real gilt balcony. Think of that! And Charles is my cousin, the cousin of your own mother. There's something to think of, there. I couldn't sleep last night with dreaming of that house with its green shutters and a real balcony. I do believe that I shall die happy, if some day I may but see that there gilded—you said it was gilded—balcony. Charles Pettican with a balcony! What is the world coming to next! A real gilded balcony, and two figureheads looking over—there's an idea! Did you tell me there was a sofa in his sitting-room; and I think you said the dressing-table had a pink petticoat with gauze over it. Just think of that. I might have been Mrs. Charles Pettican, if all had gone well, and things had been as they should have, and then I should have had a petticoat to my dressing-table and a balcony afore my window. I am glad you went, it was like the Queen of Sheba visiting Solomon and seeing all his glory, and now you've come back into your own land, and filled me with your tidings.'

Mehalah let her mother meander on, without paying any attention to what she said. Mrs. Sharland had risen some stages in her self-importance since she had heard how prosperous in a pecuniary sense her relation was. It shed a sort of glory on her when she thought that, had fate ruled it so, she might have shared with him this splendour, instead of being poor and lonely on the desolate Ray. Mrs. Sharland would have loved a gossip, but never got a chance of talking to anyone with a similar partiality. Had she married Mr. Charles Pettican she would have been in the vortex of a maelstrom of tittle-tattle. It was something to puff her up to think that if matters had taken another turn this would have been her position in Wyvenhoe.

'I don't think Mrs. De Witt had any notion how rich and distinguished my relatives are, when she came here asking for her five and twenty pounds. I'll take my oath on it, she has no cousin with a balcony and a sofa. I don't suppose we shall be troubled much now, when it is known that my cousin draws cheques, and that the name of Charles Pettican is honoured at the bank.'

'You forget we got, and shall get, no help from him.'

'I do not forget it, Mehalah. I remember perfectly how affably he spoke of me—his Liddy Vince, his pretty cousin. I do not forget how ready he was to lend the money. Twenty pounds! if you had asked fifty, he'd have given it you as readily. He was about to break open his cash-box, as he hadn't the key by him, and would have given me the money I wanted, had not a person who is no relation of mine interposed. That comes of designing women stepping in between near relatives. Charles Pettican is my cousin, and he is not ashamed to acknowledge it; why should he? I have always maintained myself respectable, and always shall.'

'Mother,' said Mehalah, interrupting this watery wash of vain twaddle, 'you should not have borrowed the money of George De Witt. That was the beginning of the mischief?'

'Beginning of what mischief?'

'The beginning of our trouble.'

'No, it was not; Abraham's carelessness was the beginning.'

'But, mother, I repeat it, you did wrong in not producing your hidden store instead of borrowing.'

'I did not borrow. I never asked George De Witt for his money, he proposed to let us have it himself.'

'That is indeed true; but you should have at once refused to take it, and said it was unnecessary for us to be indebted to him, as you had the sum sufficient laid by.'

'That is all very well, Mehalah, but when a generous offer is made me, why should I not accept it? Because there's still some milk of yesterday in the pan, do you decline to milk the cow to-day? I was glad of the opportunity of keeping my little savings untouched. Besides, I always thought George would make you his wife.'

'I thought so too,' said Mehalah in a low tone, and her face became sad and blank as before; she went off into a dream, but presently recovered herself and said, 'Then, when Mrs. De Witt asked for her money, why did you not produce it, and free us of her insults and annoyance?'

'I did not want to part with my money. And it has turned out well. If I had done as you say, we should not have revived old acquaintance, and obtained the valuable assistance of Charles Pettican.'

'He did not assist us.'

'He did as far as he was able. He would have given us the money, had not untoward circumstances intervened. He as good as let us have the twenty pounds. That is something to be proud of—to be helped by a man whose name is honoured at the bank—at the Colchester Bank.'

'But, mother, you have given me inexpressible pain!'

'Pained you!' exclaimed Mrs. Sharland. 'How could I?'

Her eyes opened wide. Mehalah looked at her. They had such different souls, that the girl saw it was of no use attempting to explain to her mother what had wounded her; her sensations belonged to a sense of which her mother was deprived. It is idle to speak of scarlet to a man who is blind.

'I did it all for you,' said Mrs. Sharland reproachfully. 'I was thinking and caring only for you, Mehalah, from beginning to end, from first to last.'

'Thinking and caring for me!' echoed Glory in surprise.

'Of course I was. I put those gold pieces away, one a quarter from the day you were born, till I had no more savings that I could put aside. I put them away for you. I thought that when I was gone and buried, you should have this little sum to begin the world upon, and you would not say that your mother died and left you nothing. Nothing in the world would have made me touch the hoard, for it was your money, Mehalah—nothing but the direst need, and you will do me the justice to say that this was the case to-day. It would have been the worst that could have happened for you to-day had the money not been paid, for you would have sunk in the scale.'

'Mother!' exclaimed Mehalah, intensely moved, 'you did all this for me; you thought and cared for me—for me!'

The idea of her mother having ever done anything for her, ever having thought of her, apart from herself, of having provided for her independently of herself, was too strange and too amazing for Mehalah to take it in at once. As long as she remembered anything she had worked for her mother, thought for her, and denied herself for her, without expecting any return, taking it as a matter of course that she should devote herself to her mother without the other making any acknowledgment.

And now the thought that she had been mistaken, that her mother had really cared for and provided for her, overwhelmed her. She had not wept when she thought that George De Witt was lost to her, but now she dropped into her chair, buried her face in her arms, and burst into a storm of sobs and tears.

Mrs. Sharland looked at her with a puzzled face. She never had understood Mehalah, and she was content to be in the dark as to what was passing in her breast now. She settled back in her chair, and turned back to the thoughts of Charles Pettican's gilt balcony, and petticoated dressing-table.

By degrees Mehalah recovered her composure, then she went up to her mother and kissed her passionately on the brow.

'Mother dear,' she said in a broken voice, 'I never, never will desert you. Whatever happens, our lot shall be cast together.'

Then she reared herself, and in a moment was firm of foot, erect of carriage, rough and imperious as of old.

'I must look after the sheep on the saltings,' she said. 'Abraham's head is turned with the doings here to-day, and he has gone to the Rose to talk and drink it over. The moon is full, and we shall have a high tide.'

Next moment Mrs. Sharland was alone.

The widow heaved a sigh. 'There is no making heads or tails of that girl, I don't understand her a bit,' she muttered.

'I do though,' answered Elijah Rebow at the door. 'I want a word with you, mistress.'

'I thought you had gone, Elijah, after the sale.'

'No, I did not leave with the rest. I hung about in the marshes, waiting a chance when I might speak with you by yourself. I can't speak before Glory; she flies out.'

'Come in, master, and sit down. Mehalah is gone down to the saltings, and will not be back for an hour.'

'I must have a word with you. Where has Glory been? I saw her go off t'other day in gay Sunday dress towards Fingringhoe. What did she go after?'

Mrs. Sharland raised herself proudly. 'I have a cousin lives at Wyvenhoe, and we exchange civilities now and then. I can't go to him and he can't come to me, so Mehalah passes between us.'

'What does she go there for?'

'My cousin, Mr. Charles Pettican—I dare say you have heard the name, it is a name that is honoured at the bank——' she paused and pursed up her lips.

'Go on, I have heard of him, an old shipbuilder.'

'He made his fortune in shipbuilding,' said Mrs. Sharland. 'He has laid by a good deal of money, and is a free and liberal man with it, among his near relatives.'

'Curse him,' growled Elijah, 'he let you have the money?'

'I sent Mehalah to my cousin Charles, to ask him to lend me a trifle, being for a moment inconvenienced,' said Mrs. Sharland with stateliness.

'She—Glory—went cringing for money to an old shipbuilder!' exclaimed Rebow with fury in his face.

'She did not like doing so,' answered the widow, 'but I entreated her to put her prejudices in her pocket, and do as I wished. You see, Master Rebow, this was not like asking strangers. Charles is my cousin, my nearest living relative, and some day, perhaps, there is no knowing——' she winked, and nodded, and ruffled up in her pride. 'We are his nearest of kin, and he is an old man, much older than I am. I am young compared to him, and he is half-paralysed.'

'He gave the money without any difficulty or demur?' asked Elijah, his face flaming.

'He was most willing, anxious, I may say, to help. You see, Master Rebow, he is well off, and has no other relatives. He is a man of fortune, and has a gilt balcony before his house, and a real sofa in his sitting-room. His name is engraved on brass on a plate on the door, it commands respect and receives honour at the Colchester Bank.'

'So you are fawning on him, are you?' growled Elijah.

'He has real oil-paintings on his walls. There's some in water-colours, and some in worsted work, but I make no count of them, but real oils, you know; there's something to think of in that. A man don't break out into oil unless he has money in the bank at command.'

Mrs. Sharland was delighted with the opportunity of airing her re-discovered cousin, and exalting his splendour before some one other than her daughter.

'A valance all round his bed—there's luxury!' said the widow, 'and that bed a whole tester. As for his dressing-table, it wears a better petticoat than I, pink calico that looks like silk, and over it gauze, just like a lady at an assembly ball, a real quality lady. My cousin is not one to see his Liddy—he calls me his pretty cousin Liddy—my name before I was married was Vince, but instead of Sharland it might have been Pettican, if all had been as it ought. I say cousin Charles is not the man to see his relatives sold up stick and stock by such as Mrs. De Witt.'

'You think if you can't pay me my rent, he will help you again?'

'If I feel a little behind-hand, Master Rebow, I shall not scruple sending Mehalah to him again. Charles is a man of kind and generous heart, and it is touching how he clings to his own flesh and blood. He has taken a great affection for Mehalah. He calls her niece, and wants her to look on him as an uncle, but you know that is not the real relationship. He was my mother's only brother's son, so we was first cousins, and he can only be a cousin of some sort to Mehalah, can he?'

'Oh curse your cousinships!' broke in Elijah angrily. 'To what an extent can you count on his help?'

'To any amount,' said the widow, too elated to care to limit her exaggeration.

'How is Mehalah? Is she more inclined to think of me?'

Mrs. Sharland shook her head.

'She don't love me?' said Elijah with a laugh.

'I fear not, Elijah.'

'She won't be disposed to take up her quarters at Red Hall?'

Mrs. Sharland sighed a negative.

'Nor to bear with me near her all day?'

'No, Elijah.'

'No, she won't,' said he with a jerky laugh, 'she won't till she is made to. She won't come to Red Hall till she can't help it. She won't live with me till I force her to it. Damn that cousin! He stands in my path. I will go see him. There comes Mehalah, back from the saltings. I must be off.'

'My cousin is a man of importance,' observed Mrs. Sharland, bridling up at Elijah's slighting remark. 'He is not accustomed to be cursed. Men with names that the bank honours, and who have gilded balconies over their doors, don't like it, they don't deserve it.'

CHAPTER XIII.

THE FLAG FLIES.

A month after the interrupted auction, Elijah Rebow appeared one day before Mr. Pettican's door at Wyvenhoe. The gull was screaming and flying at his feet. His stick beat a loud summons on the door, but the noise within was too considerable for the notices of a visitor to be heard and responded to.

Elijah remained grimly patient outside, with a sardonic smile on his face, and amused himself with tormenting the gull.

Presently the door flew open, and a dashing young woman flung out, with cherry-coloured ribands in her bonnet, and cherry colour in her cheeks.

'All right, Monie?' asked a voice from the balcony, and then Elijah was aware of a young man in a blue guernsey and a straw hat lounging over the balustrade, between the figureheads, smoking a pipe.

'He has learned his place at last,' answered Admonition; 'I never saw him so audacious before. Come along, Timothy.' The young man disappeared, and presently emerged at the door. At the same time a little withered face was visible at the window, with a dab of putty, as it seemed, in the middle of it, but which was probably a nose flattened against the glass. Two little fists were also apparent shaken violently, and a shrill voice screamed imprecations and vowed vengeance behind the panes, utterly disregarded by Admonition and Timothy, who stared at Elijah, and then struck down the gravelled path without troubling themselves to ask his business.

The door was left open, and Elijah entered, but stood on the threshold, and looked after the pair as they turned out of the garden-gate, and took the Colchester road, laughing and talking, and Admonition tossing her saucy head, in the direction of the face at the window, and then taking the sailor's arm.

A wonderful transformation had taken place in Mrs. Pettican's exterior as well as in her manner since her marriage.

She had been a soft demure little body with melting blue eyes and rich brown hair very smoothly laid on either side of her brow—a modest brow with guilelessness written on it—and the simplest little curls beside her round cheeks. She wore only black, in memory of a never-to-be-forgotten mother, and a neat white cap and apron. If she allowed herself a little colour, it was only a flower in her bosom. Poor Charles Pettican! How often he had supplied that flower!

'I can't pick one myself, Admonition,' he had said; 'you go into my garden and pluck a rose.'

'But you must give it me,' she had invariably said on such occasions, with a shy eye just lifted, and then dropped again.

And of course Mr. Pettican had presented the flower with a compliment, and an allusion to her cheek, which had always deepened the modest flush in it.

Now Admonition affected bright colours—cherry was her favourite. She who had formerly dressed below her position, now dressed above it; she was this day flashing through Wyvenhoe in a straw broad-brimmed hat with crimson bows, lined with crimson, and in a white dress adorned with carnation knots, and a red handkerchief over the shoulders worn bare in the house. There was no doubt about it, that Admonition looked very well thus attired, better even than in her black.

Her hair was now frizzled over her brow, and she wore a mass of curls about her neck, confined in the house by a carnation riband. The soft eyes were now marvellously hard when directed upon the husband, and only retained their velvet for Timothy. The cheek now blushed at nothing, but flamed at the least opposition.