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

he said. "I will step after you."

Presently she looked behind her, and saw him swinging his right hand, in which was the lump of ironstone.

"Why do you turn your head?" he asked.

"I look for you."

"Are you afraid of me?"

"I am sorry for you, Jonas."

"Sorry--because of my arm?"

"Because you are unable to believe a true woman's word."

"I do not understand you."

"No--I do not suppose you can."

Then he screamed, "No, I do not believe." He leaped forward, and struck her on the head with the nodule of iron, and felled her at his feet.

"There," said he; "with this stone you sought my death, and with it I cause yours."

Then he knelt where she lay motionless, extended, in the marsh, half out of the water, half submerged.

He gripped her by the throat, and by sheer force, with his one available arm, thrust her head under water.

The moonlight played in the ripples as they closed over her face; it surely was not water, but liquid silver, fluid diamond.

He endeavored to hold her head under the surface. She did not struggle. She did not even move. But suddenly a pang shot through him, as though he had been pierced by another bullet. The bandage about his wound gave way, and the hot blood broke forth again.

Jonas reeled back in terror, lest his consciousness should desert him, and he sank for an instant insensible, face foremost, into the water.

As it was, where he knelt, among the water-plants, they were yielding under his weight.

He scrambled away, and clung to a distorted pine on the summit of a sand-knoll.

Giddy and faint, he laid his head against the bush, and inhaled the invigorating odor of the turpentine. Gradually he recovered, and was able to stand unsupported.

Then he looked in the direction where Mehetabel lay. She had not stirred. The bare white arms were exposed and gleaming in the moonlight. The face he did not see. He shrank from looking towards it.

Then he slunk away, homewards.


CHAPTER XXV.


AN APPARITION.

When Bideabout arrived in the Punch-Bowl, as he passed the house of the Rocliffes, he saw his sister, with a pail, coming from the cow-house. One of the cattle was ill, and she had been carrying it a bran-mash.

He went to her, and said, "Sally!"

"Here I be, Jonas, what now?"

"I want you badly at my place. There's been an accident."

"What? To whom? Not to old Clutch?"

"Old Clutch be bothered. It is I be hurted terr'ble bad. In my arm. If it weren't dark here, under the trees, you'd see the blood."

"I'll come direct. That's just about it. When she's wanted, your wife is elsewhere. When she ain't, she's all over the shop. I'll clap down the pail inside. You go on and I'll follow."

Jonas unlocked his house, and entered. He groped about for the tinder-box, but when he had found it was unable to strike a light with one hand only. He seated himself in the dark, and fell into a cold sweat.

Not only was he in great pain, but his mind was ill at ease, full of vague terrors. There was something in the corner that he could see, slightly stirring. A little moonlight entered, and a fold flickered in the ray, then disappeared again. Again something came within the light. Was it a foot? Was it the bottom of a skirt? He shrank back against the wall, as far as possible from this mysterious, restless form.

He looked round to see that the scullery door was open, through which to escape, should this thing move towards him.

The sow was grunting and squealing in her stye, Jonas hailed the sound; there was nothing alarming in that. Had all been still in and about the house, there might have come from that undefined shadow in the comer a voice, a groan, a sigh--he knew not what. With an exclamation of relief he saw the flash of Sally Rocliffe's lantern pass the window.

Next moment she stood in the doorway.

"Where are you, Jonas?"

"I am here. Hold up the lantern, Sarah. What's that in the corner there, movin'?"

"Where, Jonas?"

"There--you are almost touchin it. Turn the light."

"That," said his sister; "why don'ty know your own old oilcloth overcoat as was father's, don'ty know that when you see it?"

"I didn't see it, but indistinct like," answered Jonas.

His courage, his strength, his insolence were gone out of him.

"Now, what's up?" asked Sarah. "How have you been hurted?"

Jonas told a rambling story. He had been in the Marsh. He had seen the deer, but in his haste to get within range he had run, caught his foot in a bramble, had stumbled, and the gun had been discharged, and the bullet had entered his arm.

Mrs. Rocliffe at once came to him to examine the wound.

"Why, Jonas, you never did this up yourself. There's some one been at your arm already. Here's this band be off Matabel's petticoat. How came you by that?"

He was confounded, and remained silent.

"And where is the gun, Jonas?"

"The gun!"

He had forgotten all about it in his panic. Mehetabel had been carrying it when he beat her down. He had thought of it no more. He had thought of nothing after the deed, but how to escape from the spot as speedily as possible.

"I suppose I've lost it," he said. "Somewhere in the Moor. You see when I was wounded, I hadn't the head to think of anything else."

Mrs. Rocliffe was examining his arm. The sleeve of his coat had been cut.

"I don't understand your tale a scrap, Jonas," she said. "Who used his knife to slit up your sleeve? And how comes your arm to be bandaged with this bit of Matabel's dress?"

Bideabout was uneasy. The tale he had told was untenable. There was a necessity for it to be supplemented. But his condition of alarm and pain made him unable readily to frame a story that would account for all, and satisfy his sister.

"Jonas," said Sarah, "I'm sure you have seen Matabel, and she did this for you. Where is she?"

Bideabout trembled. He thrust his sister from him, saying, irritably, "Why do you worrit me with questions? My arm wants attendin' to."

"I can't do much to that," answered the woman. "A doctor should look to that. I'll go and call Samuel, and bid him ride away after one."

"I won't be left alone!" exclaimed the Broom-Squire, in a sudden access of terror.

Sarah Rocliffe deliberately took the lantern and held it to his face.

"Jonas," she said, "I'll do nuthin' more for you till I know the whole truth. You've seen your wife and there's somethin' passed between you. I see by your manner that all is not right. Where is Matabel? You haven't been after the deer on the Moor. You have been to the Ship."

"That is a lie," answered Bideabout. "I have been on the Moor. 'Tis there I got shot, and, if you will have it all out, it was Matabel who shot me."

"Matabel shot you?"

"Yes, it was. She shot me to prevent me from killin' him."

"Whom?"

"You know--that painter fellow."

"So that is the truth? Then where is she?"

The Broom-Squire hesitated and moved his feet uneasily.

"Jonas," said his sister, "I will know all."

"Then know it," he answered angrily. "Somehow, as she was helpin' me along, her foot slipped and she fell into the water. I had but one arm, and I were stiff wi' pains. What could I do? I did what I could, but that weren't much. I couldn't draw her out o' the mire. That would take a man wi' two good arms, and she was able to scramble out if she liked. But she's that perverse, there's no knowing, she might drown herself just to spite me."

"Why did you not speak of that at once?"

"Arn't I hurted terr'ble bad? Arn't I got a broken arm or somethin' like it? When a chap is in racks o' pain he han't got all his wits about him. I know I wanted help, for myself, first, and next, for her; and now I've told you that she's in the Moor somewhere. She may ha' crawled out, or she may be lyin' there. I run on, so fast as possible, in my condition, to call for help."

"Where is she? Where did you leave her?"

"Right along between here and Thor's Stone. There's an old twisted Scotch pine with magpies' nests in it--I reckon more nests than there be green stuff on the tree. It's just about there."

"Jonas," said the sister, who had turned deadly white, and who lowered the lantern, unable longer to hold it to her brother's face with steady hand, "Jonas, you never ort to ha' married into a gallus family; you've ketched the complaint. It's bad enough to have men hanged on top o' Hind Head. We don't want another gibbet down at the bottom of the Punch-Bowl, and that for one of ourselves."

Then voices were audible outside, and a light flickered through the window.

In abject terror the Broom-Squire screamed "Sally, save me, hide me; it's the constables!"

He cowered into a corner, then darted into the back kitchen, and groped for some place of concealment.

He heard thence the voices more distinctly. There was a tramp of feet in his kitchen; a flare of fuller light than that afforded by Mrs. Rocliffe's lantern ran in through the door he had left ajar.

The sweat poured over his face and blinded his eyes.

Bideabout's anxiety was by no means diminished when he recognized one of the voices in his front kitchen as that of Iver.

Had Iver watched him instead of returning to the Ship? Had he followed in his track, spying what he did? Had he seen what had taken place by the twisted pine with the magpies' nests in it? And if so, had he hasted to Thursley to call out the constable, and to arrest him as the murderer of his wife.

Trembling, gnawing the nails of his right hand, cowering behind the copper, he waited, not knowing whither to fly.

Then the door was thrust open, and Sally Rocliffe came in and called to him: "Jonas! here is Master Iver Verstage--very good he is to you--he has brought a doctor to attend to your arm."

The wretched man grasped his sister by the wrist, drew her to him, and whispered--"That is not true; it is the constable."

"No, Jonas. Do not be a fool. Do not make folk suspect evil," she answered in an undertone. "There is a surgeon staying at the Ship, and this is the gentleman who has come to assist you."

Mistrustfully, reluctantly, Jonas crept from his hiding place, and came behind his sister to the doorway, where he touched his forelock, looked about him suspiciously, and said--"Your servant, gentlemen. Sorry to trouble you; but I've met with an accident. The gun went off and sent a bullet into my arm. Be you a doctor, sir?" he asked, eyeing a stranger, who accompanied Iver.

"I am a surgeon; happily, now lodging at the Ship, and Mr. Verstage informed me of what had occurred,