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

here," said the gardener. "Here's a nice plaid shawl, as belonged to my missus, and a wun'erful old bonnet of hers--as the cat has had kittens in since she went to her rest--and left me to mine. You are heartily welcome. I can't let you turn out in the cold with nothing on your head nor over your shoulders."

Mehetabel gladly accepted the articles of clothing offered her. She had already eaten of what the man had placed on the table for her, when he left the house. She could not burden him longer with her presence, as he was obviously nervous about his character, lest it should suffer should he harbor her. Thanking him, she departed, and walked back to Thursley through the gathering gloom.

Betty Chivers kept a dame's school, in which she had instructed the children of Thursley in the alphabet, simple summing, and in the knowledge and fear of God. With the march of the times we have abolished dames schools, and cut away thereby a means of livelihood from many a worthy woman; but what is worse, have driven the little ones into board schools, that are godless, where they are taught to despise manual labor, and to grow up without moral principle. Our schools are like dockyards, whence expensively-equipped vessels are launched provided with everything except ballast, which will prevent their capsizing in the first squall. The Vicar of Witley had been one of those men, in advance of his time, who had initiated this system.

Whatever of knowledge of good, and of discipline of conscience Mehetabel possessed, was obtained from Mrs. Susanna Verstage, or from old Betty Chivers.

We are told that if we cast our bread on the waters, we shall find it after many days. But simple souls are too humble to recognize it.

So was it with Goodie Chivers.

That Mehetabel, through all her trials, acted as a woman of principle, clung to what she knew to be right, was due very largely to the old dame's instructions, but Betty was too lowly-minded for one instant to allow this, even to suspect it.

Our Board School masters and mistresses have quite as little suspicion that they have sowed the seed which sprung up in the youths who are dismissed from offices for defalcation, and the girls who leave menial service to walk the streets.

Mrs. Chivers was glad to see Mehetabel when she entered. She had heard talk about her--that she had run away from her husband, and was wandering through the country with her babe; and having a tender heart, and a care for all her old pupils, she had felt anxious concerning her.

Mehetabel pleaded to be taken in for the night, and to this Mrs. Chivers readily consented. She would share her bed with the mother and the child, as well as her crust of bread and cup of thin tea. Of milk, in her poverty, the old woman allowed herself but a few drops, and of butter with her bread none at all.

Yet what she had, that she cheerfully divided with Mehetabel.

On the morrow, after a restful sleep, the young wife started for a silk mill on one of those Hammer ponds that occupied a depression in the Common. These ponds were formed at the time when iron was worked in the district, and the ponds, as their name implies, were for the storage of water to beat out the iron by means of large hammers, set in motion by a wheel. When these ponds were constructed is not known. The trees growing on the embankments that hold back the water are of great size and advanced age.

One of these ponds, at the time of our tale, was utilized for a silk mill.

On reaching the silk mill, she timidly asked for the manufacturer. She knew him slightly, as he had been occasionally to the "Ship," where he had lodged a guest at one time when his house was full, and at another to call on a fisherman who was an acquaintance, and who was staying there. He was a blunt man, with a very round head and a very flat face. His name was Lilliwhite. He had exchanged words with Mehetabel when she was at the inn, and had always been kindly in his address.

When she was shown into his office, as ill-luck would have it at once the child became fretful and cried.

"I beg your pardon," said Mehetabel. "I am sorry to trouble you, but I wish you would be so good, sir, as to let me do some work for you in the mill."

"You, Mehetabel! Why, what do you mean?"

"Please, sir, I have left the Punch-Bowl. I cannot stay there any longer. Do not ask me the reasons. They are good ones, but I had rather not tell them. I must now earn my own livelihood, and--" She was unable to proceed owing to the wailing of the infant.

"Look here, my dear," said the silk weaver, "I cannot hear you on account of the noise, and as I have something to attend to, I will leave you here alone for a few minutes, whilst I look to my business. I will return shortly, when the young dragon has ceased rampaging. I dare say it is hungry."

Then the good-natured man departed, and Mehetabel used her best endeavors to reduce her child to quiet. It was not hungry, it was not cold. It was in pain. She could feed it, she could warm it, but she knew not how to give it that repose which it so much needed.

After some minutes had elapsed, Mr. Lilliwhite looked in again, but as the child was still far from pacified, he retired once more.

Twenty minutes to half-an-hour had passed before the feeble wails of the infant had decreased in force, and had died away wholly, and then the manufacturer returned, smiling, to his office.

"'Pon my soul," said he, "I believe this is the first time my shop has been turned into a nursery. Come now, before the Dragon of Wantley is awake and roaring, tell me what you want."

Mehetabel repeated her request.

"There is no one I would more willingly oblige," said he. "You have ever conducted yourself well, and have been industrious. But there are difficulties in the way. First and foremost, the Dragon of Wantley."

"I beg your pardon, sir."

"I mean the child. What will you do with it? If you come here, engaged by me, you must be at the mill at seven o'clock in the morning. There is an hour for dinner at noon, and the mill hands are released at five o'clock in the afternoon in winter and six in summer. What will the Dragon do all the time its mother is spinning silk? You cannot have the creature here--and away, who will care for it? Who feed it?"

"I had thought of leaving my baby at Mrs. Chivers'."

"That is nonsense," said the silk weaver. "The Dragon won't be spoon-fed. Its life depends on its getting its proper, natural nourishment. So that won't do. As for having it here--that's an impossibility. Much you would attend to the spindles when the Dragon was bellowing. Besides, it would distract the other girls. So you see, this won't do. And there are other reasons. I couldn't receive you without your husband's consent. But the Dragon remains as the insuperable difficulty. Fiddle-de-dee, Matabel! Don't think of it. For your own sake, for the Dragon's sake, I say it won't do."


CHAPTER XL.


BY THE HAMMER POND.

Discouraged at her lack of success, Mehetabel now turned her steps towards Thursley. She was sick at heart. It seemed to her as if every door of escape from her wretched condition was shut against her.

She ascended the dip in the Common through which the stream ran that fed the Hammer ponds, and after leaving the sheet of water that supplied the silk mill, reached a brake of willow and bramble, through which the stream made its way from the upper pond.

The soil was resolved into mud, and oozed with springs; at the sides broke out veins of red chalybeate water, of the color of brick.

She started teal, that went away with a rush and frightened her child, which cried out, and fell into sobs.

Then before her rose a huge embankment; with a sluice at the top over which the pond decanted and the overflow was carried a little way through a culvert, beneath a mound on which once had stood the smelting furnace, and which now dribbled forth rust-stained springs.

The bank had to be surmounted, and in Mehetabel's condition it taxed her powers, and when she reached the top she sank out of breath on a fallen bole of a tree. Here she rested, with the child in her lap, and her head in her hand. Whither should she go? To whom betake herself? She had not a friend in the world save Iver, and it was not possible for her to appeal to him.

Now, in her desolation, she understood what it was to be without a relative. Every one else had some one tied by blood to whom to apply, who would counsel, assist, afford a refuge. A nameless girl, brought up by the parish, with--as far as she was aware--but one relative in the world, her mother's sister, whose name she knew not, and whose existence she could not be sure of--she was indeed alone as no other could be.

The lake lay before her steely and cold.

The chill wind hissed and sobbed among the bulrushes, and in the coarse marsh grass that fringed the water on all sides except that of the dam.

The stunted willows shed their broad-shaped leaves that sailed and drifted, formed fleets, and clustered together against the bank.

The tree bole on which she was seated was rotting away; a huge fleshy fungus had formed on it, and the decaying timber emitted a charnel-house smell.

Now the babe in Mehetabel's arms was quiet. It was asleep. She herself was weary, and quivering in all her limbs, hot and yet cold, with an aguish feeling. Her strength of purpose was failing her. She was verging on despair.

She could not remain with Betty Chivers without paying for her lodging and for her food. The woman did but just maintain herself out of the little school and the post-office. She was generous and kind, but she had not the means to support Mehetabel, nor could Mehetabel ask it of her.

What should she do? What the silk manufacturer had said was quite true. The babe stood in her way of getting employment, and the babe she must not leave. That little life depended on her, and her time, care, thought must be devoted to it.

Oh, if now she could but have had that fifteen pounds which Simon Verstage in his providence had given her on her wedding day! With that she would have been easy, independent.

When Jonas robbed her of the sum he cut away from her the chance of subsistence elsewhere save in his house--at all events at such a time as this.

She looked dreamily at the water, that like an eye exercised a fascination on her.

Would it not be well to cast herself into this pool, with her babe, and then both would be together at rest, and away from the cruel world that wanted them not, that rejected them, that had no love, no pity for them?

But she put the thought resolutely from