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

"Indeed, it is not that, but somehow I fell, and I suppose with fright, and a blow I got in falling, every event got so mixed with fancies and follies that I don't know where truth begins and fancy ends. For that reason I do not wish to speak."

"Now look here," said Mrs. Verstage, "I've brought you a present such as I wouldn't give to any one. It's a cookery book, as was given me. See what I have wrote, or got Simon to write for me, on the fly-leaf.

"'Susanna Verstage, her book,
Give me grace therein to look.
Not only to look, but to understand,
For learning is better than houses and land.
When land is gone, and money is spent,
Then learning is most excellent.'

"And the reason why I part with this Matabel, is because of that little conversation we had together the other day at the Ship. I don't believe as how you and Bideabout get along together first rate. Now I know men, their ins and outs, pretty completely, and I know that the royal road to their affections is through their stomachs. You use this book of receipts, they're not extravagant ones, but they are all good, and in six months Jonas will just about worship you."

"Mother," said Mehetabel, after thanking her, "you are very kind."

"Not at all. I've had experience in husbands, and you're, so to speak, raw to it. They are humorous persons, are men, you have to give in a little here and take a good slice there. If you give up to them there's an end to all peace and quietness. If you don't give in enough the result is the same. What all men want is to make their wives their slaves. You know, I suppose, how Gilly Cheel, the younger, got his name of Jamaica?"

"I do not think I do."

"Why he and his Bessy are always quarrelling! Neither will yield to the other. At last, by some means, Gilly got wind that in West Indies, there are slaves, and he thought, if he could only get out there with Bess that he'd be able to enslave her and make her do what he wished. So he pretended that he'd got a little money left him in Jamaica, and must needs go out there and settle. She said she wouldn't go, and he had no call to go there, except just for the sake of getting her under control. Then he talked big of the beautiful climate, and all the cooking done by the sun, and no washing needed, because clothing are unnecessary, and not only no washing, but no mending neither, no stockings to knit, no buttons to put on--a Paradise for wimen, said Gilly--but still he couldn't get Bessy to hear of going out to the West Indies. At last, how it was, I can't say, but she got wind of the institootion of slavery there, and then she guessed at once what was working in Gilly's mind. Since that day he's always gone by the name of Jamaica, and fellows that want to tease him shout, 'Taken your passage yet for you and Bessy to Jamaica?'"

"My dear mother," said Mehetabel, "I should not mind being a slave in my husband's house, and to him, if there were love to beautify and sanctify it. But it would not be slavery then, and now I am afraid that you, mother, have perhaps took it unkind that I did not tell you more about that shot. If so, let me make all good again between us by telling you a real secret. There's no one else knows it."

"What is that?" asked the hostess eagerly.

Mehetabel was nervous and colored.

"May I tell you in your ear?"

Mrs. Verstage extended an ear to her, she would have applied both to Mehetabel's mouth had that been feasible.

The young wife, with diffidence, whispered something.

A beam of satisfaction lit up the old woman's face.

"That's famous. That's just as it ort. With that and with the cookery book, Jonas'll just adore you. There's nuthin' like that for makin' a home homely."

"And you'll come to me?"

"My dear, if alive and well, without fail."


CHAPTER XXVII.


POISON.

The Broom-Squire did not recover from his wound with the rapidity that might have been expected. His blood was fevered, his head in a whirl. He could not forget what his sister had said to him relative to Mehetabel and Iver. Jealousy gnawed in his heart like a worm. That the painter should admire her for her beauty--that was nothing--who did not admire her? Had she not been an object of wonder and praise ever since she had bloomed into womanhood at the Ship? That he was envied his beautiful wife did not surprise him. He valued her because begrudged him by others.

He looked at himself in a broken glass he had, and sneered and laughed when he saw his own haggard face, and contrasted it with that of the artist. It was true that he had seen nothing to render him suspicious, when Iver came to his house, but he had not always been present. He had actually forced his wife against her wishes to go to the tavern where Iver was, had thrust her, so to speak, into his arms.

He remembered her call in the Marsh to the spirits to rid her of some one, and he could not believe her explanation. He remembered how that to save Iver, she had thrust the muzzle of the gun against her own side, and had done battle with him for mastery over the weapon. Incapable of conceiving of honor, right feeling, in any breast, he attributed the worst motives to Mehetabel--he held her to be sly, treacherous, and false.

Jonas had never suffered from any illness, and he made a bad patient now. He was irritable, and he spared neither his wife, who attended to him with self-denying patience, nor his sister, who came in occasionally. Mehetabel hoped that his pain and dependence on her might soften his rancorous spirit, and break down his antagonism towards her and every one. The longer his recovery was delayed, the more unrestrained became his temper. He spared no one. It seemed as though his wife's patience and attention provoked into virulent activity all that was most venomous and vicious in his nature. Possibly he was aware that he was unworthy of her, but could not or would not admit this to himself. His hatred of Iver grew to frenzy. He felt that he was morally the inferior of both the artist and of his own wife. When he was at their mercy they had spared his life, and that life of his lay between them and happiness. Had he not sought both theirs? Would he have scrupled to kill either had one of them been in the same helpless position at his feet?

He had come forth in sorry plight from that struggle, and now he was weakened by his accident, and unable to watch Mehetabel as fully as he would have wished.

The caution spoken by the surgeon that he should not retard his recovery by impatience and restlessness was unheeded.

He was wakeful at night, tossing on his bed from side to side. He complained of this to the surgeon, who, on his next visit, brought him a bottle of laudanum.

"Now look here," said he; "I will not put this in your hands. You are too hasty and unreliable to be entrusted with it. Your wife shall have it. It is useful, if taken in small quantities, just a drop or two, but if too much be taken by accident, then you will fall into a sleep from which there is no awaking. I can quite fancy that you in your irritable mood, because you could not sleep, would give yourself an overdose, and then--there would be the deuce to pay."

"And suppose that my wife were to overdose me?" asked the sick man suspiciously.

"That is not a suspicion I can entertain," said the surgeon, with a bow of his head in the direction of Mehetabel, "I have found her thoughtful, exact, and trustworthy. And so you have found her, I will swear, Mr. Kink, in all your domestic life?"

The Broom-Squire muttered something unintelligible, and turned a way.

When the laudanum arrived, he took the bottle and examined it. A death's head and crossbones were on the label. He took out the cork, and smelt the contents of the phial.

Though worn out with want of sleep he refused to touch any of the sedative. He was afraid to trust Mehetabel with the bottle, and afraid to mix his own portion lest in his nervous excitement he might overdo the dose.

Neither would he suffer the laudanum to be administered to him by his sister. As he said to her with a sneer, "A drop too much would give you a chance of my farm, which you won't have so long as I live."

"How can you talk like that?" said Sally. "Haven't you got a wife? Wouldn't the land go to her?"

The land, the house--to Mehetabel, and with his removal, then the way would be opened for Iver as well.

The thought was too much for Jonas. He left his bed, and carried the phial of opium to a little cupboard he had in the wall, that he kept constantly locked. This he now opened, and within it he placed the bottle. "Better endure my sleepless nights than be rocked to sleep by those who have no wish to bid me a good morrow."

Seeing that Mehetabel observed him he said, "The key I never let from my hands."

He would not empty the phial out of the window, because--he thought on the next visit of the surgeon he might get him to administer the dose himself, and he would have to pay for the laudanum, consequently to waste it would be to throw away two shillings.

It chanced one day, when the Broom-Squire was somewhat better, and had begun to go about, that old Clutch was taken ill. The venerable horse was off his feed, and breathed heavily. He stood with head down, looking sulky.

Bideabout was uneasy. He was attached to the horse, even though he beat it without mercy. Perhaps this attachment was mainly selfish. He knew that if old Clutch died he would have to replace him, and the purchase of a horse would be a serious expense. Accordingly he did all in his power to recover his steed, short of sending for a veterinary surgeon. He hastened to his cupboard in the upper chamber, and unlocked it, to find a draught that he might administer. When he had got the bottle, in his haste, being one-handed, he forgot to re-lock and remove the key. Possibly he did not observe that his wife was seated in the window, engaged in needlework. Indeed, for some time she had been very busily engaged in the making of certain garments, not intended for herself nor for her husband. She worked at these in the upper chamber, where there was more light than below in the kitchen, where, owing to the shade of the trees, the room was somewhat dark, and where, moreover, she was open to interruption.

When Bideabout left the room, Mehetabel looked up, and saw that he had not fastened the cupboard. The door swung open, and exposed the contents. She rose, laid