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

go by contraries."

"Then what about me?"

"I dreamt of your marriage."

"Then that means death."

He caught her to him, and kissed her lips.

"We are brother and sister," he said, in self-exculpation. "Where is the harm?"

She disengaged herself hastily.

She heard a cough and looked round, to see the mocking face of Sarah Rocliffe, who had followed and had just emerged from the curdling fog below.


CHAPTER XVIII.


REALITIES.

Iver was gone.

The light that had sparkled in Mehetabel's eyes, the flush, like a carnation in her cheek, faded at once. She was uneasy that Mrs. Rocliffe had surprised her and Iver, whilst he gave her that ill-considered though innocent parting salute.

What mischief she might make of it! How she might sow suspicion of her in the heart of Jonas, and Iver would be denied the house! Iver denied the house! Then she would see him no more, have no more pleasant conversations with him. Indeed, then the cold, clammy fog into which she descended was a figure of the life hers would be, and it was one that no sun's rays could dissipate.

After she had returned to the house she sank in a dark comer like one weary after hard labor, and looked dreamily before her at the floor. Her hands and her feet were motionless.

A smile that every moment became more bitter sat on her lips. The muscles of her face became more rigid.

What if through jealousy, open discord broke out between her and Jonas? Would it make her condition more miserable, her outlook more desperate? She revolved in thought the events that were past. She ranged them in their order--the proposal of Jonas, her refusal, the humiliation to which she had been subjected by Mrs. Verstage which had driven her to accept the man she had just rejected, the precipitation with which the marriage had been hurried on, then the appearance of Iver on her wedding day.

She recalled the look that passed over his face when informed that she was a bride, the clasp of his hands, and now--now--his kiss burned on her lips, nay, had sunk in as a drop of liquid fire, and was consuming her heart with anguish and sweetness combined.

Was the kiss that of a brother to a sister? Was there in it, as Iver said, no harm, no danger to herself? She thought of the journey home from the Ship on her wedding evening, of the fifteen pounds of which she had been robbed by her husband, the money given her by "father" against the evil day. She had been deceived, defrauded by the man she had sworn to honor, love, and obey. She had not acquired love for him. Had he not by this act forfeited all claim to both love and honor?

She thought again of Iver, of his brown, agate-like eyes, but eyes in which there was none of the hardness of a stone. She contrasted him with Jonas. How mean, how despicable, how narrow in mind and in heart was the latter compared with the companion of her youth.

Mehetabel's face was bathed in perspiration. She slid to her knees to pray; she folded her hands, and found herself repeating. "Genesis, fifty chapters; Exodus, forty; Leviticus, twenty-seven; Numbers, thirty-six; Deuteronomy, thirty-four; these are the books that constitute the Pentateuch. The Book of Joshua--"

Then she checked herself. In her distress, her necessity, she was repeating the lesson last acquired in Sunday-school, which had gained her a prize. This was not prayer. It brought her no consolation, it afforded her no strength. She tried to find something to which to cling, to stay her from the despair into which she had slipped, and could only clearly figure to herself that "the country of the Gergesenes lay to the southeast of the Sea of Tiberias and that a shekel weighed ten hundred-weights and ninety-two grains, Troy weight, equal to in avoirdupois--" her brain whirled. She could not work out the sum. She could not pray. She could recall no prayer. She could look to nothing beyond the country of the Gergesenes. And yet, never in her life had she so needed prayer, strength, as now, when this new guilty passion was waking in her heart.

Shuddering at the thought of revolt against her duty, unable altogether to abandon the hope, the longing to see Iver again, filled with vague terror of what the future might bring forth, she remained as struck with paralysis, kneeling, speechless, with head bowed, hands fallen at her side, seeing, hearing, knowing nothing; and was roused with a start by the voice of Jonas who entered, and asked--,

"Wot's up now?"

She could not answer him. She sprang to her feet and eagerly flew to the execution of her domestic duties.

Iver returned from his visit to the Punch-Bowl with a mind occupied and ill at ease.

He had allowed himself, without a struggle, to give way to the impression produced on him by the beauty of Mehetabel. He enjoyed her society--found pleasure in talking of the past. Her mind was fresh; she was intelligent, and receptive of new ideas. She alone of all the people of Thursley, whom he had encountered, was endowed with artistic sense--was able to set the ideal above what was material. He did not ask himself whether he loved her. He knew that he did, but the knowledge did not trouble him. After a fashion, Mehetabel belonged to him as to none other. She was associated with his earliest and sunniest recollections.

Mehetabel could sympathize with him in his love for the beautiful in Nature. She had ever been linked with his mother in love for him. She had been the vehicle of communication between him and his mother till almost the last moment; it was through her that all tidings of home had reached him.

When his father had refused to allow Iver's name to be mentioned in his presence, for hours daily the thoughts of him had been in the hearts of his mother and this girl. With united pity and love, they had followed his struggles to make his way.

There was much obstinacy in Iver.

Resolution to have his own way had made him leave home to follow an artistic career, regardless of the heartache he would cause his mother, and the resentment he would breed in his father.

Thus, without consideration of the consequences to himself, to Mehetabel, to Jonas, he allowed his glowing affection for the young wife to gather heat, without attempt to master or extinguish it.

There is a certain careless happiness in the artistic soul that is satisfied with the present, and does not look into the future. The enjoyment of the hour, the banquet off the decked table, the crown of roses freshly blown, suffice the artist's soul. It has no prevision of the morrow--makes no provision for the winter.

That the marriage of Mehetabel with Jonas had raised barriers between them was hardly considered. That the Broom-Squire might resent having him hover round his young flower, did not enter into Iver's calculations; least of all did it concern him that he was breaking the girl's heart, and forever making it impossible for her to reconcile herself to her position.

As Iver walked home over the common, and enjoyed the warmth and brilliancy of the sun, he asked himself again, why his mother had not prepared him for the marriage of Mehetabel.

Mehetabel had certainly not taken Jonas because she loved him. She was above sordid considerations. What, then, had induced her to take the man? She had been happy and contented at the Ship; why, then, did she leave it?

On reaching home, he put the question to his mother. "It is a puzzle to me, which I cannot unravel, why has Matabel become Bideabout's wife?"

"Why should she not?" asked his mother in return. "It was a catch for such as she--a girl without a name, and bare of a dower. She has every reason to thank me for having pushed the marriage on."

Iver looked at his mother with surprise.

"Then you had something to do with it?"

"Of course I had," answered she. "I did my duty. I am not so young as I was. I had to think for Matabel's future. She is no child of mine. She can expect nothing from your father nor from me. When a good offer came, then I told her to accept and be thankful. She is a good girl, and has been useful in the house, and some people think her handsome. But young men don't court a girl who has no name, and has had three men hanged because of her."

"Mother! what nonsense! The men were executed because they murdered her father."

"It is all one. She is marked with the gallows. Ill-luck attaches to her. There has been a blight on her from the beginning. I mind when her father chucked her down all among the fly-poison. Now she has got the Broom-Squire, she may count herself lucky, and thank me for it."

"Good heavens!" exclaimed Iver. "Then this marriage is your doing?"

"Yes--I told her that, before you came here, I must have her clear out of the house."

"Why?"

A silence ensued. Mrs. Verstage looked at her son--into his great, brown eyes--and what she saw there alarmed her. Her lips moved to speak, but she could utter no words. She had let out her motive without consideration in the frankness that was natural to her.

"I ask, mother, why did you stop Matabel from writing, and take up the correspondence yourself at last; and then, when you did write to me at Guildford, you said not one word about Mehetabel being promised to the Broom-Squire?"

"I could not put all the news of the parish into my letter. How should I know that this concerned you?"

"We were together as children. If ever there were friends in the world, it was we."

"I am a bad writer. It takes me five minutes over one word, just about. I said what I had to say, and no more, and I were a couple o' days over that."

"Why did you ask me to postpone my coming home?--why seek to keep me away till after Mehetabel's marriage?"

"There was a lot to do in the house, preparation for the weddin'--her gownds--I couldn't have you here whilst all the rout was on. I wanted to have you come when all was quiet again, and I could think of you. What wi' preparations and schemin' my head was full."

"Was that the only reason, mother?"

She did not answer. Her eyes fell.

Iver threw his hat on the table, and went to his room. He was incensed against his mother. He guessed the reason why she had urged on the marriage, why she had kept him in ignorance of the engagement, why she had delayed his return to Thursley.

She had made her plans. She wished to marry him to Polly Colpus, and she dreaded his association with Mehetabel as likely to be prejudicial to the success of her cherished scheme, now that the girl was in the ripeness of her beauty and to Iver invested with the halo of young associations, of boy romance.

If his mother had told him! If she had not bidden him postpone his coming home! Then all would have turned out well. Mehetabel would not have been linked to an undesirable man, whom she could not love; and he would have been free to