The Broom-Squire, Sabine Baring-Gould [books to read this summer txt] 📗

remained inactive. Iver!--she saw him, as he stood before her in the Ship, extending his hands to her. She almost felt his grasp again.

Mehetabel brushed back the hair that had fallen over her face; and as she did so a tear ran down her cheek.

Then she heard her husband's voice; he was speaking with Samuel Rocliffe, his nephew; and it struck her as never before, how harsh, how querulous was his intonation.

During the day, Mrs. Rocliffe came in, looked about inquisitively, and pursed up her lips when she saw the change effected, and conjectured that more was likely to follow.

"I suppose nuthin' is good enough as it was--but you must put everything upside down?"

"On the contrary, I am setting on its feet everything I have found topsy-turvy."

To the great surprise of all, on the following Sunday, Bideabout, in his best suit, accompanied Mehetabel to church. He had never been a church-goer. He begrudged having to pay tithes. He begrudged having to pay something for his seat in addition to tithes to the church, if he went to a dissenting chapel. If religious ministrations weren't voluntary and gratuitous, "then," said Jonas, "he didn't think nuthin' of 'em."

Jonas had been disposed to scoff at religion, and to work on Sundays, though not so openly as on other days of the week. He went to church now because he was proud of his wife; not out of devotion, but vanity.

Some days later arrived a little tax-cart driven by Iver, with Mrs. Verstage in it.

The hostess had already discovered what a difference it made in her establishment to have in it a raw and dull-headed maid in the room of the experienced and intelligent daughter. She did not regret what she had done--she had removed Mehetabel out of the reach of Iver, and had no longer any anxiety as to the disposal of his property by Simon. For her own sake she was sorry, as she plainly saw that her life was likely to run less smoothly in the future in her kitchen and with her guests. Now that Mehetabel was no longer dangerous, her heart unfolded towards her once more.

The young wife received Mrs. Verstage with pleasure. The flush came into her cheeks when she saw her, and for the moment she had no eyes, no thoughts, no welcome for Iver.

The landlady was not so active as of old, and she had to be assisted from her seat. As soon as she reached the ground she was locked in the embrace of her daughter by adoption.

Then Mehetabel conducted the old woman over the house, and showed her the new arrangements she had made, and consulted her on certain projected alterations.

Jonas had come to the door when the vehicle arrived; he was in his most gracious mood, and saluted first the hostess and then her son, with unwonted cordiality.

"Come now, Matabel," said Mrs. Verstage, when both she and the young wife were alone together, "I did well to push this on, eh? You have a decent house, and a good farm. All yours, not rented, so none can turn you out. What more could you desire? I dare be sworn Bideabout has got a pretty nest egg stuck away somewhere, up the chimney or under the hearth. Has he shown you what he has? There was the elder Gilly Cheel was a terrible skinflint. When he died his sons hunted high and low for his money and couldn't find it. And just as they wos goin' to bury him, the nuss said she couldn't make a bootiful corpse of him, he were that puffed in his mouth. What do you think, Matabel? The old chap had stuffed his money into his mouth when he knew he was dyin'. Didn't want nobody to have it but himself. Don't you let Bideabout try any of them games."

"Have you missed me greatly, dear mother?" asked Mehetabel, who had heard the story of Giles Cheel before.

Mrs. Verstage sighed.

"My dear, do you know the iron-stone bowl as belonged to my mother. The girl broke it, and hadn't the honesty to say so, but stuck it together wi' yaller soap, and thought I wouldn't see it. Then one of the customers made her laugh, and she let seven pewters fall, and they be battered outrageous. And she has been chuckin' the heel taps to the hog, and made him as drunk as a Christian. She'll drive me out of my seven senses."

"So you do miss me, mother?"

"My dear--no--I'm not selfish. It is all for your good. There wos Martha Lintott was goin' to a dance, and dropped her bustle. Patty Pickett picked it up, and thinkin' she couldn't have too much of a good thing, clapped it on a top of her own and cut a fine figure wi' it--wonderful. And Martha looked curious all up and down wi'out one. But she took it reasonable, and said, 'What's one woman's loss is another woman's gain.' O, my dear life! If Iver would but settle with Polly Colpus I should die content."

"Is not the match agreed to yet?"

"No!" Mrs. Verstage sighed. "I've got my boy back, but not for long. He talks of remaining here awhile to paint--subjects, he calls 'em, but he don't rise to Polly as I should like. Polly is a good girl. Master Colpus was at your weddin', and was very civil to Iver. I heard him invite the boy to come over and look in on him some evening--Sunday, for instance, and have a bite of supper and a glass. But Iver hasn't been nigh the Colpuses yet; and when I press him to go he shrugs his shoulders and says he has other and better friends he must visit first."

Mrs. Verstage sighed again.

"Well, perhaps he doesn't fancy Polly," said Mehetabel.

"Why should he not fancy her? She will have five hundred pounds, and old James Colpus's land adjoins ours. I don't understand Iver's ways at all."

Mehetabel laughed. "Dear mother, you cannot expect that; he did not think with his father's head when a boy. He will think only with his own head now he is a man."

"Look here, Matabel. I'll leave Iver to you for half-an-hour. Show him the cows. I'll make Bideabout take me to his sister. I want to have it out with her for not coming to the wedding. I'm not the person to let these things pass. Say a word to Iver about Polly, there is a dear. I cannot bring them together, but you may, you are so clever."

Meanwhile Iver and Jonas had been in conversation. The latter had been somewhat contemptuous about the profession of an artist, and was not a little astonished when he heard the prices realized by pictures. Iver told the Broom-Squire that he intended making some paintings of the Punch-Bowl, and that he had a mind to draw Kink's farm.

In that case, said Bideabout, a percentage of the money such a picture fetched would be due to him. He didn't see that anyone had a right to take a portrait of his house and not pay him for it. If Iver were content to draw his house, he must, on no account, include that of the Rocliffes, for there was a mortgage on that, and there might be trouble with the lawyers.

Mrs. Verstage proposed to Bideabout that she should go with him to his sister's house, and he consented.

"Look here, Matabel," said he, "there is Mister Iver thinks he can make a pictur' of the spring, if you'll get a pitcher and stand by it. I dare say if it sells, he'll not forget us."

"I wish I could take Mehetabel and her pitcher off your hands, and not merely the portrait of both," laughed Iver, to cover the confusion of the girl, who reddened with annoyance at the grasping meanness of Jonas.

When Iver was alone with her, as they were on their way to the spring, he said, "Come, this will not do at all. For the first time we are free to chat together, as in the old times when we were inseparable friends. Why are you shy now, Matabel?"

"You must be glad to be home again with the dear father and mother," she said.

"Yes, but I miss you; and I had so reckoned on finding you there."

"You will remain at the Ship now," urged she.

"I don't know that. I have my profession. I have leisure during part of the summer and fall, making studies for pictures--but I take pupils; they pay."

"You must consider the old folk."

"I do. I will visit them occasionally. But art is a mistress, and an imperious one. When one is married one is no longer independent."

"You are married?" asked Mehetabel, with a flush in her cheeks.

"Yes, to my art."

"Oh! to paints and brushes! Tell me true, Iver! Has no girl won your heart whilst you have been from home?"

"I have found many to admire, but my heart is free. I have had no time to think of girls' faces--save as studies. Art is a mistress as jealous as she is exacting."

Mehetabel drew a long breath. There went up a flash of light in her mind, for which she did not attempt to account. "You are free--that is famous, and can take Polly Colpus."

Then she laughed, and Iver laughed.

They laughed long and merrily together.

"This is too much," exclaimed Iver. "At home father is at me to exchange the mahl-stick for an ox-goad, and mother wearies me with laudation of Polly Colpus. I shall revolt and run away, as I did not expect you to lend a hand with Polly."

"You must not run away," said Mehetabel, earnestly. "Iver! I was all those years at the Ship, with mother, after you went, and I have seen how her heart has ached for you. She is growing old. Let her have consolation during the years that remain for the sorrow of those that are past."

"I cannot take to farming, nor turn publican, and I will not have Polly Colpus."

"Here is the spring," said Mehetabel.

She set the pitcher beside the water, leaned back in the hedge, musing, with her finger to her chin, her eyes on the ground, and her feet crossed.

"Stand as you are. That is perfect. Do not stir. I will make a pencil sketch."

The spring gushed from under a bank, in a clear and copious jet. It had washed away the sand, and had buried itself in a nook among ferns and moss. On the top of the bank was a rude shed, open at the side, with a cart at rest in it. Wild parsnips in full flower nodded before the water.

"I could desire nothing better," said Iver, "and that pale blue skirt of yours, the white stockings, the red kerchief round your head--in color as in arrangement everything is admirable."

"You have not your paints with you."

"I will come another day and bring them. Now I will only sketch in the outline."

Presently Iver laughed. "Matabel! If I took Polly she would be of no use to me whatever, not even as a model."

Presently the Broom-Squire returned with Mrs. Verstage, and looked over the shoulder of the artist.

"Not done much," he said.

"I shall have to come again and yet again, to put in the color," said Iver.

"Come when and as often as