'Mother,' said Mehalah, 'are you better now?'
'Yes, the fit is off me, but I am left terribly weak.'
'Mother, will you give me the medal?'
'What? Your grandmother's charm? You cannot want it!'
'It brings luck, and saves from sudden death. I wish to give it to George.'
'No, Mehalah! This will not do. You must keep it yourself.'
'It is mine, is it not?'
'No, child; it is promised you, but it is not yours yet. You shall have it some future day.'
'I want it at once, that I may give it to George. He has made me a present of this red kerchief for my neck, and he has given me many another remembrance, but I have made him no return. I have nothing that I can give him save that medal. Let me have it.'
'It must not go out of the family, Mehalah.'
'It will not. You know what is between George and me.'
The old woman hesitated and excused herself, but was so much in the habit of yielding to her daughter, that she was unable in this matter to maintain her opposition. She submitted reluctantly, and crept out of the room to fetch the article demanded of her.
When she returned, she found Mehalah standing before the fire with her back to the embers, and her hands knitted behind her, looking at the floor, lost in thought.
'There it is,' grumbled the old woman. 'But I don't like to part with it; and it must not go out of the family. Keep it yourself, Mehalah, and give it away to none.'
The girl took the coin. It was a large silver token, the size of a crown, bearing on the face a figure of Mars in armour, with shield and brandished sword, between the zodiacal signs of the Ram and the Scorpion.
The reverse was gilt, and represented a square divided into five-and-twenty smaller squares, each containing a number, so that the sum in each row, taken either vertically or horizontally, was sixty-five. The medal was undoubtedly foreign. Theophrastus Paracelsus, in his 'Archidoxa,' published in the year 1572, describes some such talisman, gives instructions for its casting, and says: 'This seal or token gives him who carries it about him strength and security and victory in all battles, protection in all perils. It enables him to overcome his enemies and counteract their plots.'
The medal held by the girl belonged to the sixteenth century. Neither she nor her mother had ever heard of Paracelsus, and knew nothing of his 'Archidoxa.' The figures on the face passed their comprehension. The mystery of the square on the reverse had never been discovered by them. They knew only that the token was a charm, and that family tradition held it to secure the wearer against sudden death by violence.
A hole was drilled through the piece, and a strong silver ring inserted. A broad silk riband of faded blue passed through the ring, so that the medal might be worn about the neck. For a few moments Mehalah studied the mysterious figures by the fire-light, then flung the riband round her neck, and hid the coin and its perplexing symbols in her bosom.
'I must light a candle,' she said; then she stopped by the table on her way across the room, and took up the glass upon it.
'Mother,' she said sharply; 'who has been drinking here?'
The old woman pretended not to hear the question, and began to poke the fire.
'Mother, has Elijah Rebow been drinking spirits out of this glass?'
'To be sure, Mehalah, he did just take a drop.'
'Whence did he get it?'
'Don't you think it probable that such a man as he, out much on the marshes, should carry a bottle about with him? Most men go provided against the chill who can afford to do so.'
'Mother,' said the girl impatiently, 'you are deceiving me. I know he got the spirits here, and that you have had them here for some time. I insist on being told how you came by them.'
The old woman made feeble and futile attempts to evade answering her daughter directly; but was at last forced to confess that on two occasions, of which this evening was one, Elijah Rebow had brought her a small keg of rum.
'You do not grudge it me, Mehalah, do you? It does me good when I am low after my fits.'
'I do not grudge it you,' answered the girl; 'but I do not choose you should receive favours from that man. He has to-day been threatening us, and yet secretly he is making you presents. Why does he come here?' She looked full in her mother's face. 'Why does he give you these spirits? He, a man who never did a good action but asked a return in fourfold measure. I promise you, mother, if he brings here any more, that I will stave in the cask and let the liquor you so value waste away.'
The widow made piteous protest, but her daughter remained firm.
'Now,' said the girl, 'this point is settled between us. Be sure I will not go back from my word. I will in nothing be behoven to the man I abhor. Now let me count the money.' She caught up the bag, then put it down again. She lit a candle at the hearth, drew her chair to the table, seated herself at it, untied the string knotted about the neck of the pouch, and poured the contents upon the board.
She sprang to her feet with a cry; she stood as though petrified, with one hand to her head, the other holding the bag. Her eyes, wide open with dismay, were fixed on the little heap she had emptied on the table—a heap of shot, great and small, some penny-pieces, and a few bullets.
'What is the matter with you, Mehalah? What has happened?'
The girl was speechless. The old woman moved to the table and looked.
'What is this, Mehalah?'
'Look here! Lead, not gold.'
'There has been a mistake,' said the widow, nervously, 'call Abraham; he has given you the wrong sack.'
'There has been no mistake. This is the right bag. He had no other. We have been robbed.'
The old woman was about to put her hand on the heap, but Mehalah arrested it.
'Do not touch anything here,' she said, 'let all remain as it is till I bring Abraham. I must ascertain who has robbed us.'
She leaned her elbows on the table; she platted her fingers over her brow, and sat thinking. What could have become of the money? Where could it have been withdrawn? Who could have been the thief?
Abraham Dowsing, the shepherd, was a simple surly old man, honest but not intelligent, selfish but trustworthy. He was a fair specimen of the East Saxon peasant, a man of small reasoning power, moving like a machine, very slow, muddy in mind, only slightly advanced in the scale of beings above the dumb beasts; with instinct just awaking into intelligence, but not sufficiently awake to know its powers; more unhappy and helpless than the brute, for instinct is exhausted in the transformation process; not happy as a man, for he is encumbered with the new gift, not illumined and assisted by it. He is distrustful of its power, inapt to appreciate it, detesting the exercise of it.
On the fidelity of Abraham Dowsing, Mehalah felt assured she might rely. He was guiltless of the abstraction. She relied on him to sell the sheep to the best advantage, for, like everyone of low mental organisation, he was grasping and keen to drive a bargain. But when he had the money she knew that less confidence could be reposed on him. He could think of but one thing at a time, and if he fell into company, his mind would be occupied by his jug of beer, his bread and cheese, or his companion. He would not have attention at command for anything beside.
The rustic brain has neither agility nor flexibility. It cannot shift its focus nor change its point of sight. The educated mind will peer through a needlehole in a sheet of paper, and see through it the entire horizon and all the sky. The uncultured mind perceives nothing but a hole, a hole everywhere without bottom, to be recoiled from, not sounded. When the oyster spat falls on mud in a tidal estuary, it gets buried in mud deeper with every tide, two films each twenty-four hours, and becomes a fossil if it becomes anything. Mind in the rustic is like oyster spat, unformed, the protoplasm of mind but not mind itself, daily, annually deeper buried in the mud of coarse routine. It never thinks, it scarce lives, and dies in unconsciousness that it ever possessed life.
Mehalah sat considering, her mother by her, with anxious eyes fastened on her daughter's face.
The money must have been abstracted either in Colchester or on the way home. The old man had said that he stopped and tarried at the Rose inn on the way. Had the theft been there committed? Who had been his associates in that tavern?
'Mother,' said Mehalah suddenly, 'has the canvas bag been on the table untouched since Abraham brought it here?'
'To be sure it has.'
'You have been in the room, in your seat all the while?'
'Of course I have. There was no one here but Rebow. You do not suspect him, do you?'
Mehalah shook her head.
'No, I have no reason to do so. You were here all the while?'
'Yes.'
Mehalah dropped her brow again on her hands. What was to be done? It was in vain to question Abraham. His thick and addled brain would baffle enquiry. Like a savage, the peasant when questioned will equivocate, and rather than speak the truth invent a lie from a dim fear lest the truth should hurt him. The lie is to him what his shell is to the snail, his place of natural refuge; he retreats to it not only from danger, but from observation.
He does not desire to mislead the querist, but to baffle observation. He accumulates deception, equivocation, falsehood about him just as he allows dirt to clot his person, for his own warmth and comfort, not to offend others.
The girl stood up.
'Mother, I must go after George De Witt at once. He was with Abraham on the road home, and he will tell us the truth. It is of no use questioning the old man, he will grow suspicious, and think we are accusing him. The tide is at flood, I shall be able to catch George on the Mersea hard.'
'Take the lanthorn with you.'
'I will. The evening is becoming dark, and there will be ebb as I come back. I must land in the saltings.'
Mehalah unhung a lanthorn from the ceiling and kindled a candle end in it, at the light upon the table. She opened the drawer of the table and took out a pistol. She looked at the priming, and then thrust it through a leather belt she wore under her guernsey.
On that coast, haunted by smugglers and other lawless characters, a girl might well go armed. By the roadside to Colchester where cross ways met, was growing an oak that had been planted as an acorn in the mouth of a pirate of Rowhedge, not many years before, who had there been hung in chains for men murdered and maids carried off. Nearly every man carried a gun in hopes of bringing home wild fowl, and when Mehalah was in her boat, she usually took her gun with her for the same purpose. But men bore firearms not only for the sake of bringing home game; self-protection demanded it.
At this period, the mouth of the Blackwater was a great centre of the smuggling trade; the number and intricacy of the channels made it a safe harbour for those who lived on contraband traffic. It was easy for those who knew the creeks to elude the revenue boats, and every farm and tavern was ready to give cellarage to run goods and harbour to smugglers.
Between Mersea and the Blackwater were several flat holms or islands, some under water at high-tides, others only just standing above it, and between these the winding waterways formed a labyrinth in which it was easy to evade pursuit and entangle the pursuers. The traffic was therefore here carried on with an audacity and openness scarce paralleled elsewhere. Although there was a coastguard station at the mouth of the estuary, on Mersea 'Hard,' yet goods were run even in open day under the very eyes of the revenue men. Each public-house on the island and on the mainland near a creek obtained its entire supply of wine and spirits from contraband vessels. Whether the coastguard were bought to shut their eyes or were baffled by the adroitness of the smugglers, cannot be said, but certain it was, that the taverns found no difficulty in obtaining their supplies as often and as abundant as they desired.
The villages of Virley and Salcot were the chief landing-places, and there horses and donkeys were kept in large numbers for the conveyance of the spirits, wine, tobacco and silk to Tiptree Heath, the scene of Boadicaea's great battle with the legions of Suetonius, which was the emporium of the trade. There a constant fair or auction of contraband articles went on, and thence they were distributed to Maldon, Colchester, Chelmsford, and even London. Tiptree Heath was a permanent camping ground of gipsies, and squatters ran up there rude hovels; these were all engaged in the distribution of the goods brought from the sea.
But though the taverns were able to supply themselves with illicit spirits, unchecked, the coastguard were ready to arrest and detain run goods not destined for their cellars. Deeds of violence were not rare, and many a revenue officer fell a victim to his zeal. On Sunken Island off Mersea, the story went, that a whole boat's crew were found with their throats cut; they were transported thence to the churchyard, there buried, and their boat turned keel upwards over them.
The gipsies were thought to pursue over-conscientious and successful officers on the mainland, and remove them with a bullet should they escape the smugglers on the water.
The whole population of this region was more or less mixed up with, and interested in, this illicit traffic, and with defiance of the officers of the law, from the parson who allowed his nag and cart to be taken from his stable at night, left unbolted for the purpose, and received a keg now and then as repayment, to the vagabonds who dealt at the door far inland in silks and tobacco obtained free of duty on the coast.
What was rare elsewhere was by no means uncommon here, gipsies intermarried with the people, and settled on the coast. The life of adventure, danger, and impermanence was sufficiently attractive to them to induce them to abandon for it their roving habits; perhaps the difference of life was not so marked as to make the change distasteful. Thus a strain of wild, restless, law-defying gipsy blood entered the veins of the Essex marshland populations, and galvanised into new life the sluggish and slimy liquid that trickled through the East Saxon arteries. Adventurers from the Low Countries, from France, even from Italy and Spain—originally smugglers, settled on the coast, generally as publicans, in league with the owners of the contraband vessels, married and left issue. There were neither landed gentry nor resident incumbents in this district, to civilise and restrain. The land was held by yeomen farmers, and by squatters who had seized on and enclosed waste land, no man saying them nay. At the revocation of the Edict of Nantes a large number of Huguenot French families had settled in the 'Hundreds' and the marshes, and for full a century in several of the churches divine service was performed alternately in French and English. To the energy of these colonists perhaps are due the long-extended sea-walls enclosing vast tracts of pasture from the tide.
Those Huguenots not only infused their Gallic blood into the veins of the people, but also their Puritanic bitterness and Calvinistic partiality for Old Testament names. Thus the most frequent Christian names met with are those of patriarchs, prophets and Judaic kings, and the sire-names are foreign, often greatly corrupted.
Yet, in spite of this infusion of strange ichor from all sides, the agricultural peasant on the land remains unaltered, stamped out of the old unleavened dough of Saxon stolidity, forming a class apart from that of the farmers and that of the seamen, in intelligence, temperament, and gravitation. All he has derived from the French element which has washed about him has been a nasal twang in his pronunciation of English. Yet his dogged adherence to one letter, which was jeopardised by the Gallic invasion, has reacted, and imposed on the invaders, and the v is universally replaced on the Essex coast by a w.
In the plaster and oak cottages away from the sea, by stagnant pools, the hatching places of clouds of mosquitos, whence rises with the night the haunting spirit of tertian ague, the hag that rides on, and takes the life out of the sturdiest men and women, and shakes and wastes the vital nerves of the children, live the old East Saxon slow moving, never thinking, day labourers. In the tarred wreck-timber cabins by the sea just above the reach of the tide, beside the shingle beach, swarms a yeasty, turbulent, race of mixed-breeds, engaged in the fishery and in the contraband trade.
Mehalah went to the boat. It was floating. She placed the lanthorn in the bows, cast loose, and began to row. She would need the light on her return, perhaps, as with the falling tide she would be unable to reach the landing-place under the farmhouse, and be forced to anchor at the end of the island, and walk home across the saltings. To cross these without a light on a dark night is not safe even to one knowing the lie of the land.
A little light still lingered in the sky. There was a yellow grey glow in the west over the Bradwell shore. Its fringe of trees, and old barn chapel standing across the walls of the buried city Othona, stood sombre against the light, as though dabbed in pitch on a faded golden ground. The water was still, as no wind was blowing, and it reflected the sky and the stars that stole out, with such distinctness that the boat seemed to be swimming in the sky, among black tatters of clouds, these being the streaks of land that broke the horizon and the reflection.
Gulls were screaming, and curlew uttered their mournful cry. Mehalah rowed swiftly down the Rhyn, as the channel was called that divided the Ray from the mainland, and that led to the 'hard' by the Rose inn, and formed the highway by which it drew its supplies, and from which every farm in the parish of Peldon carried its casks of strong liquor. To the west extended a vast marsh from which the tide was excluded by a dyke many miles in length. Against the northern horizon rose the hill of Wigborough crowned by a church and a great tumulus, and some trees that served as landmarks to the vessels entering the Blackwater. In ancient days the hill had been a beacon station, and it was reconverted to this purpose in time of war. A man was placed by order of Government in the tower, to light a crescet on the summit, in answer to a similar beacon at Mersea, in the event of a hostile fleet being seen in the offing.
Now and then the boat—it was a flat-bottomed punt—hissed among the asters, as Mehalah shot over tracts usually dry, but now submerged; she skirted next a bed of bulrushes. These reeds are only patient of occasional flushes with salt water, and where they grow it is at the opening of a land drain, or mark a fresh spring. Suddenly as she was cutting the flood, the punt was jarred and arrested. She looked round. A boat was across her bows. It had shot out of the rushes and stopped her.
'Whither are you going, Glory?'
The voice was that of Elijah Rebow, the last man Mehalah wished to meet at night, when alone on the water.
'That is my affair, not yours,' she answered. 'I am in haste, let me pass.'
'I will not. I will not be treated like this, Glory. I have shot you a couple of curlew, and here they are.'
He flung the birds into her boat. Mehalah threw them back again.
'Let it be an understood thing between us, Elijah, that we will accept none of your presents. You have brought my mother a keg of rum, and I have sworn to beat in the head of the next you give her. She will take nothing from you.'
'There you are mistaken, Glory; she will take as much as I will give her. You mean that you will not. I understand your pride, Glory! and I love you for it.'
'I care nothing for your love or your hate. We are naught to each other.'
'Yes we are, I am your landlord. We shall see how that sentiment of yours will stand next Thursday.'
'What do you mean?' asked Mehalah hastily.
'What do I mean? Why, I suppose I am intelligible enough in what I say for you to understand me without explanation. When you come to pay the rent to me next Thursday, you will not be able to say we are naught to each other. Why! you will have to pay me for every privilege of life you enjoy, for the house you occupy, for the marshes that feed your cow and swell its udder with milk, for the saltings on which your sheep fatten and grow their wool.'
The brave girl's heart failed for a moment. She had not the money. What would Elijah say and do when he discovered that she and her mother were defaulters? However, she put a bold face on the matter now, and thrusting off the boat with her oar, she said impatiently, 'You are causing me to waste precious time. I must be back before the water is out of the fleets.'
'Whither are you going?' again asked Rebow, and again he drove his boat athwart her bows. 'It is not safe for a young girl like you to be about on the water after nightfall with ruffians of all sorts poaching on my saltings and up and down my creeks.'
'I am going to Mersea City,' said Mehalah.
'You are going to George De Witt.'
'What if I am? That is no concern of yours.'
'He is my cousin.'
'I wish he were a cousin very far removed from you.'
'Oh Glory! you are jesting.' He caught the side of the punt with his hand, for she made an effort to push past him. 'I shall not detain you long. Take these curlew. They are plump birds; your mother will relish them. Take them, and be damned to your pride. I shot them for you.'
'I will not have them, Elijah.'
'Then I will not either,' and he flung the dead birds into the water.
She seized the opportunity, and dipping her oars in the tide, strained at them, and shot away. She heard him curse, for his boat had grounded and he could not follow.
She laughed in reply.
In twenty minutes Mehalah ran her punt on Mersea beach. Here a little above high-water mark stood a cluster of wooden houses and an old inn, pretentiously called the 'City,' a hive of smugglers. On the shore, somewhat east, and away from the city, lay a dismasted vessel, fastened upright by chains, the keel sunk in the shingle. She had been carried to this point at spring flood and stranded, and was touched, not lifted by the ordinary tides. Mehalah's punt, drawing no draught, floated under the side of this vessel, and she caught the ladder by which access was obtained to the deck.
'Who is there?' asked George De Witt, looking over the side.
'I am come after you, George,' answered Mehalah.
'Why, Glory! what is the matter?'
'There is something very serious the matter. You must come back with me at once to the Ray.'
'Is your mother ill?'
'Worse than that.'
'Dead?'
'No, no! nothing of that sort. She is all right. But I cannot explain the circumstances now. Come at once and with me.'
'I will get the boat out directly.'
'Never mind the boat. Come in the punt with me. You cannot return by water to-night. The ebb will prevent that. You will be obliged to go round by the Strood. Tell your mother not to expect you.'
'But what is the matter, Glory?'
'I will tell you when we are afloat.'
'I shall be back directly, but I do not know how the old woman will take it.' He swung himself down into the cabin, and announced to his mother that he was going to the Ray, and would return on foot by the Strood.
A gurgle of objurgations rose from the hatchway, and followed the young man as he made his escape.
'I wouldn't have done it for another,' said he; 'the old lady is put out, and will not forgive me. It will be bad walking by the Strood, Glory! Can't you put me across to the Fresh Marsh?'
'If there is water enough I will do so. Be quick now. There is no time to spare.'
He came down the ladder and stepped into the punt.
'Give me the oars, Glory. You sit in the stern and take the lanthorn.'
'It is in the bows.'
'I know that. But can you not understand, Glory, that when I am rowing, I like to see you. Hold the lanthorn so that I may get a peep of your face now and then.'
'Do not be foolish, George,' said Mehalah. However, she did as he asked, and the yellow dull light fell on her face, red handkerchief and cap.
'You look like a witch,' laughed De Witt.
'I will steer, row as hard as you can, George,' said the girl; then abruptly she exclaimed, 'I have something for you. Take it now, and look at it afterwards.'
She drew the medal from her bosom, and passing the riband over her head, leaned forward, and tossed the loop across his shoulders.
'Don't upset the boat, Glory! Sit still; a punt is an unsteady vessel, and won't bear dancing in. What is it that you have given me?'
'A keepsake.'
'I shall always keep it, Glory, for the sake of the girl I love best in the world. Now tell me; am I to row up Mersea channel or the Rhyn?'
'There is water enough in the Rhyn, though we shall not be able to reach our hard. You row on, and do not trouble yourself about the direction, I will steer. We shall land on the Saltings. That is why I have brought the lanthorn with me.'
'What are you doing with the light?'
'I must put it behind me. With the blaze in my eyes I cannot see where to steer.' She did as she said.
'Now tell me, Glory, what you have hung round my neck.'
'It is a medal, George.'
'Whatever it be, it comes from you, and is worth more than gold.'
'It is worth a great deal. It is a certain charm.'
'Indeed!'
'It preserves him who wears it from death by violence.'
At the word a flash shot out of the rushes, and a bullet whizzed past the stern.
George De Witt paused on his oars, startled, confounded.
'The bullet was meant for you or me,' said Mehalah in a low voice. 'Had the lanthorn been in the bows and not in the stern it would have struck you.'
Then she sprang up and held the lanthorn aloft, above her head.
'Coward, whoever you are, skulking in the reeds. Show a light, if you are a man. Show a light as I do. and give me a mark in return.'
'For heaven's sake, Glory, put out the candle,' exclaimed De Witt in agitation.
'Coward! show a light, that I may have a shot at you,' she cried again, without noticing what George said. In his alarm for her and for himself, he raised his oar and dashed the lanthorn out of her hand. It fell, and went out in the water.
Mehalah drew her pistol from her belt, and cocked it. She was standing, without trembling, immovable in the punt, her eye fixed unflinching on the reeds.
'George,' she said, 'dip the oars. Don't let her float away.'
He hesitated.
Presently a slight click was audible, then a feeble flash, as from flint struck with steel in the pitch blackness of the shore.
Then a small red spark burned steadily.
Not a sound, save the ripple of the retreating tide.
Mehalah's pistol was levelled at the spark. She fired, and the spark disappeared.
She and George held their breath.
'I have hit,' she said. 'Now run the punt in where the light was visible.'
'No, Glory; this will not do. I am not going to run you and myself into fresh danger.' He struck out.
'George, you are rowing away! Give me the oars. I will find out who it was that fired at us.'
'This is foolhardiness,' he said, but obeyed. A couple of strokes ran the punt among the reeds. Nothing was to be seen or heard. The night was dark on the water, it was black as ink among the rushes. Several times De Witt stayed his hand and listened, but there was not a sound save the gurgle of the water, and the song of the night wind among the tassels and harsh leaves of the bulrushes.
'She is aground,' said De Witt.
'We must back into the channel, and push on to the Ray,' said Mehalah.
The young man jumped into the water among the roots of the reeds, and drew the punt out till she floated; then he stepped in and resumed the oars.
'Hist!' whispered De Witt.
Both heard the click of a lock.
'Down!' he whispered, and threw himself in the bottom of the punt.
Another flash, report, and a bullet struck and splintered the bulwark.
De Witt rose, resumed the oars, and rowed lustily.
Mehalah had not stirred. She had remained erect in the stern and never flinched.
'Coward!' she cried in a voice full of wrath and scorn, 'I defy you to death, be you who you may!'
The rent-paying day was bright and breezy. The tide was up in the morning, and Mehalah and her mother in a boat with sail and jib and spritsail flew before a north-east wind down the Mersea Channel, and doubling Sunken Island, entered the creek which leads to Salcot and Virley, two villages divided only by a tidal stream, and connected by a bridge.
The water danced and sparkled, multitudes of birds were on the wing, now dipping in the wavelets, now rising and shaking off the glittering drops. A high sea-wall hid the reclaimed land on their left. Behind it rose the gaunt black structure of a windmill used for pumping the water out of the dykes in the marsh. It was working now, the great black arms revolving in the breeze, and the pump creaking as if the engine groaned remonstrances at being called to toil on such a bright day. A little further appeared a tiled roof above the wall.
'There is Red Hall,' said Mehalah, as she ran the boat ashore and threw out the anchor. 'I have brought the stool, mother,' she added, and helped the old woman to land dry-footed. The sails were furled, and then Mehalah and her mother climbed the wall and descended into the pastures. These were of considerable extent, reclaimed saltings, but of so old a date that the brine was gone from the soil, and they furnished the best feed for cattle anywhere round. Several stagnant canals or ditches intersected the flat tract and broke it into islands, but they hung together by the thread of sea-wall, and the windmill drained the ditches into the sea.
In the midst of the pasture stood a tall red-brick house. There was not a tree near it. It rose from the flat like a tower. The basement consisted of cellars above ground, and there were arched entrances to these from the two ends. They were lighted by two small round windows about four feet from the ground. A flight of brick stairs built over an arch led from a paved platform to the door of the house, which stood some six feet above the level of the marsh. The house had perhaps been thus erected in view of a flood overleaping the walls, and converting the house for a while into an island, or as a preventive to the inhabitants against ague. The sea-walls had been so well kept that no tide had poured over them, and the vaults beneath served partly as cellars, and being extensive, were employed with the connivance of the owner as a storeplace for run spirits. The house was indeed very conveniently situated for contraband trade. A 'fleet' or tidal creek on either side of the marsh allowed of approach or escape by the one when the other was watched. Nor was this all. The marsh itself was penetrated by three or four ramifications of the two main channels, to these the sea-wall accommodated itself instead of striking across them, and there was water-way across the whole marsh, so that if a boat were lifted over the bank on one side, it could be rowed across, again lifted, and enter the other channel, before a pursuing boat would have time to return to and double the spit of land that divided the fleets. The windmill which stood on this spit was in no favour with the coastguard, for it was thought to act the double purpose of pump and observatory. The channel south of these marshes, called the Tollesbury Fleet, was so full of banks and islets as to be difficult to navigate, and more than once a revenue boat had got entangled and grounded there, when in pursuit of a smuggled cargo, which the officers had every reason to believe was at that time being landed on the Red Hall marshes, and carted into Salcot and Virley with the farmer's horses.
The house was built completely of brick, the windows were of moulded brick, mullions and drip stone, and the roof was of tile. How the name of Red Hall came to be given it, was obvious at a glance.
Round the house was a yard paved with brick, and a moat filled with rushes and weed. There were a few low outhouses, stable, cowsheds, bakehouse, forming a yard at the back, and into that descended the stair from the kitchen-door over a flying arch, like that in front.
Perhaps the principal impression produced by the aspect of Red Hall on the visitor was its solitariness. The horizon was bounded by sea wall; only when the door was reached, which was on a level with the top of the mound, were the glittering expanse of sea, the creeks, and the woods on Mersea Island and the mainland visible. Mehalah and her mother had never been at Red Hall before, and though they were pretty familiar with the loneliness of the marshes, the utter isolation of this tall gaunt house impressed them. The thorn-trees at the Ray gave their farm an aspect of snugness compared with this. From the Ray, village-church towers and cultivated acres were visible, but so long as they were in the pasture near the Hall, nothing was to be seen save a flat tract of grass land intersected with lines of bulrush, and bounded by a mound.
Several cows and horses were in the pasture, but no human being was visible. Mehalah and her mother hesitated before ascending the stair.
'This is the queerest place for a Christian to live in I ever saw,' said the widow. 'Look there, Mehalah, there is a date on the door, sixteen hundred and thirty-six. Go up and knock.'
'Do you see that little window in the sea face of the house, mother?'
'Yes. There is none but it.'
'I can tell you what that is for. It is to signal from with a light.'
'I don't doubt it. Go on.'
Mehalah slowly ascended the stair; it was without a balustrade. She struck against the door. The door was of strong plank thickly covered with nails, and the date of which the widow had spoken was made with nail-heads at the top.
Her knock met with no response, so she thrust the door open and entered, followed by her mother.
The room she stepped into was large and low. It was lighted by but one window to the south, fitted with lead lattice. The floor was of brick, for the cellarage was vaulted and supported a solid basement. There was no ceiling, and the oak rafters were black with age and smoke. The only ornaments decorating the walls were guns and pistols, some of curious foreign make.
The fire-place was large; on the oak lintel was cut deep the inscription:—
'WHEN I HOLD (1636) I HOLD FAST.'
Mehalah had scarce time to notice all this, when a trap-door she had not observed in the floor flew up, and the head, then the shoulders, and finally the entire body, of Elijah Rebow emerged from the basement. Without taking notice of his tenants, he leisurely ran a stout iron bolt through a staple, making fast the trap at the top, then he did the same with a bolt at the bottom.
At the time, this conduct struck Mehalah as singular. It was as though Rebow were barring a door from within lest he should be broken in on from the cellar.
Elijah slowly drew a leather armchair over the trap-door, and seated himself in it. The hole through which he had ascended was near the fire-place, and now that he sat over it he occupied the ingle nook.
'Well, Glory!' said he suddenly, addressing Mehalah. 'So you have not brought the rent. You have come with your old mother to blubber and beg compassion and delay. I know it all. It is of no use. Tears don't move me, I have no pity, and I grant no delay. I want my money. Every man does. He wants his money when it's due. I calculated on it, I've a debt which I shall wipe off with it, so there; now no excuses, I tell you they won't do. Sheer off.'
'Master Rebow—' began the widow.
'You may save your speech,' said Elijah, cutting her short. 'Faugh! when I've been down there.'—he pointed with his thumb towards the cellar—'I need a smoke.' He drew forth a clay pipe and tobacco-box and leisurely filled the bowl. Whilst he was lighting his pipe at the hearth, where an old pile was smouldering, and emitting an odour like gunpowder, Mehalah drew a purse from her pocket and counted the amount of the rent on the table. Rebow did not observe her. He was engaged in making his pipe draw, and the table was behind the chair.
'Well!' said he, blowing a puff of smoke, and chuckling, 'I fancy you are in a pretty predicament. Read that over the fire, cut yonder, do you see? "When I hold, I hold fast." I didn't cut that, but my fore-elders did, and we all do that. Why, George De Witt's mother thought to have had some pickings out of the marsh, she did, but my father got hold of it, and he held fast. He did not let go a penny; no, not a farthing. It is a family characteristic. It is a family pleasure. We take a pride in it. I don't care what it is, whether it is a bit of land, or a piece of coin, or a girl, it is all the same, and I think you'll find it is so with me. Eh! Glory! When I hold, I hold fast.' He turned in his chair and leered at her.
'There, there,' said she, 'lay hold of your rent, and hold fast till death. We want none of it.'
'What is that?' exclaimed Rebow, starting out of his seat, 'What money is that?'
'The rent,' said Mehalah; she stood erect beside the table in her haughty beauty, and laughed at the surprised and angry expression that clouded Rebow's countenance.
'I won't take it. You have stolen it.'
'Master Rebow,' put in the widow, 'the money is yours; it is the rent, not a penny short.'
'Where did you get the money?' he asked with a curse.
'You bid me bring the money on rent-day, and there it is,' said Mehalah. 'But now I will ask a question, and I insist on an answer.'
'Oh! you insist, do you?'
'I insist on an answer,' repeated the girl. 'How did you come to think we were without money?'
'Suppose I don't choose to answer.'
'If you don't—' she began, then hesitated.
'I will tell you,' he said, sulkily. 'Abraham Dowsing, your shepherd, isn't dumb, I believe. He talks, he does, and has pretty well spread the news all round the country how he was robbed of his money at the Rose.'
'Abraham has never said anything of the sort. He denies that he was robbed.'
'Then he says he is accused of being robbed, which is the same. I suppose the story is true.'
'It is quite true, Master Rebow,' answered the widow. 'It was a terrible loss to us. We had sold all the sheep we could sell.'
'Oh! a terrible loss, indeed!' scoffed the man. 'You are so flush of money, that a loss of ten or fifteen, or may be twenty pounds is nought to you. You have your little store in one of those cupboards in every corner of the old house, and you put your hand in, and take out what you like. You call yourself poor, do you, and think nothing of a loss like this?'
'We are very poor,' said the widow; 'Heaven knows we have a hard battle to fight to make both ends meet, and to pay our rent.'
'I don't believe it. You are telling me lies.'
He took the coin, and counted it; his dark brow grew blacker; and he ground his teeth. Once he raised his wolfish eyes and glared on Mehalah. 'That guinea is bad,' he said, and he threw it on the floor.
'It rings like a good one,' answered the girl, 'pick it up and give it to me. I will let you have another in its place.'
'Oh ho! your pocket is lined with guineas, is it? I will raise the rent of the Ray. I thought as much, the land is fatter than mine on this marsh. You get the place dirt cheap. I'll raise the rent ten pounds. I'll raise it twenty.'
'Master Rebow!' pleaded the widow, 'the Ray won't allow us to pay it.'
'Do not put yourself out, mother,' said Mehalah, 'we have a lease of twenty-one years; and there are seven more years to run, before Rebow can do what he threatens.'
'Oh, you are clever, you are, Glory! cursed clever. Now look here, Mistress Sharland, I'm going to have a rasher, and it's about dinner time, stop and bite with me; and that girl there, she shall bite too. You can't be back till evening, and you'll be perished with hunger.'
'Thank you, master,' answered the widow eagerly.
'And I'll give you a sup of the very primest brandy.'
'Mother, we must return at once. The tide will ebb, and we shall not be able to get away.'
'That's a lie,' said Elijah angrily, 'as you've got here, you can get away. There's plenty of water in the fleet, and will be for three hours. I knew you'd come and so I got some rashers all ready on the pan; there they be.'
'You're very kind,' observed the widow.
'A landlord is bound to give his tenantry a dinner on rent-day,' said Rebow, with an ugly laugh which displayed his great teeth. 'It's Michaelmas, but I have no goose. I keep plenty on the marshes. They do well here, and they pay well too.'
'I will have a witness that I have paid the rent,' said Mehalah. 'Call one of your men.'
'Go and call one yourself. I am going to fry the rashers.'
'That guinea is still on the floor,' said Mehalah.
'I have refused it. Pick it up, and give me another.'
'I will not pick it up; and I will not give you another till you have convinced me that the coin is bad.'
'Then let it lie.'
'Where are your men?'
'I don't know, go and find them. They're at their dinner now. I dare say near the pump.'
Mehalah left the house, but before she descended the steps, she looked over the flat. There was a sort of shed for cattle half a mile off, and she thought she saw some one moving there. She went at once in that direction.
Scarce was she gone when Elijah beckoned the widow to draw over a chair to the fire.
'You cook the wittles,' said he; 'I'm my own cook in general, but when a woman is here, why, I'm fain to let her take the job off my hands.'
The old woman obeyed with as much activity as she was mistress of. Whilst thus engaged, Elijah walked to the door, opened it, and looked out.
'She's going as straight as a wild duck,' he said, and laughed; 'she is a damned fine girl. Listen to me, mistress, that daughter of yours, Glory, is too good-looking to be mewed up on the Ray. You should marry her, and then settle yourself comfortably down for the rest of your days in your son-in-law's house.'
'Ah! Master Rebow, she is poor, she is, and now young men look out for money.'
'You don't want a very young man for such as she. Why, she is as wild as a gipsy, and needs a firm hand to keep her. He that has hold of her should hold fast.'
The widow shook her head. 'We don't see many folks on the Ray. She will have to marry a fellow on the water.'
'No, she won't,' said Rebow angrily. 'Damn her, she shall marry a farmer, who owns land and marshes, and saltings, and housen, and takes rents, and don't mind to drop some eight hundred pound on a bit of a farm that takes his fancy.'
'Such men are not easy to be got.'
'No, there you are right, mistress; but when you find one, why——' he drew his pipe over the inscription on the fireplace. 'I'm the man, and now you hold me, hold fast.'
'You, master!'
'Aye, I. I like the girl. By God! I will have Glory. She was born for me. There is not another girl I have seen that I would give an oystershell for, but she—she—she makes my blood run like melted lead, and my heart here gnaws and burns in my breast like a fiery rat. I tell you I will have her. I will.'
'If it only rested with me,' moaned the widow.
'Look here,' said Rebow. 'Lay that pan on one side and follow me. I'll show you over the house.' He caught her by the wrist, and dragged her from room to room, and up the stairs. When he had brought her back to the principal apartment in which they had been sitting, he chuckled with pride. 'Ain't it a good house? It's twenty times better than the Ray. It is more comfortable, and there are more rooms. And all these marshes and meadows are mine, and I have also some cornfields in Virley, on the mainland. And then the Ray is mine, with the saltings and all thereon;—I bought it for eight hundred pounds.'
'We are very much honoured,' said the widow, 'but you do not consider how poor Mehalah is; she has nothing.'
Elijah laughed. 'Not so very poor neither, I fancy. You lost the price of your sheep, and yet you had money in store wherewith to pay the rent.'
'Indeed, indeed we had not.'
'Where then did you get the money?'
'It was lent us.'
'Lent you, who by?' asked Elijah sharply.
'George De Witt was so good——'
Elijah uttered a horrible curse.
'Tell me,' he said furiously, coming up close to the old woman and scowling at her—into her eyes. 'Answer me without a lie; why, by what right did De Witt lend, or give you, the money? What claim had you on him?'
'Well, Elijah, I must tell you. Mehalah——'
'Here I am,' said the girl throwing open the door. 'Why am I the subject of your talk?' A couple of shepherds followed her.
'Look here,' she said, counting the coin; 'there is a guinea on the floor. Pick it up and try it, if it be good.'
'That's all right,' said one of the men, ringing the coin and then trying it between his teeth.
'This is the sum due for our half-year's rent,' she went on. 'Is it not so, Master Rebow? Is not this the sum in full?'
He sullenly gave an affirmative.
'You see that I pay this over to him. I don't want a written receipt. I pay before witnesses.'
Rebow signed to the men to leave, and then with knitted brow collected the money and put it in his pocket. The widow went on with the frying of the bacon.
'Come along with me, mother, to the boat. We cannot stay to eat.'
'You shall eat with me. You have come for the first time under my roof to-day, and you shall not go from under it without a bite.'
'I have no appetite.'
'But I have,' said the widow testily. 'I don't see why you are in such a hurry, Mehalah; and what is more, I don't see why you should behave so unpolitely to Master Rebow when he fares to be so civil.'
'Eat then, if you will, mother,' said Mehalah; 'but I cannot. I have no hunger,' after a pause, firmly, 'I will not.'
'Oh, you have a will indeed,' remarked Rebow with a growl. 'A will it would be a pleasure to break, and I'll do it.'
The bacon was fried, and the widow proceeded to dish it up. There was a rack in the next room, as Elijah told her, with plates in it, and there were knives and forks in the drawer.
Whilst the old woman was getting the necessary articles, Rebow was silent, seated in his leather chair, his elbows on his knees, with the pipe in one hand, and his head turned on one side, watching Mehalah out of his fierce, crafty eyes. The girl had seated herself on a chair against the wall, as far away from him as possible. Her arms were folded over her breast, and her head was bent, to avoid encountering his glance. She was angry with her mother for staying to eat with the man whom she hated.
During this quiet—neither speaking—a curious grating noise reached her ear, and then a clank like that of a chain. She could not quite make out whence the noise came. It was some little while before it sufficiently attracted her attention to make her consider about it; and before she had formed any conclusion, her mother returned, and spread the table, and placed the meat on a dish.
'I'll go and fetch the liquor,' said Rebow, and went away. Whilst he was absent, again the sound met the girl's ears. Neither she nor her mother had spoken, but now she said, 'Listen, mother, what is that sound?'
The old woman stood still for a moment, and then proceeded with her task.
'It is nothing,' she said indifferently, 'the sound comes up from below the floor. I reckon Master Rebow has cows fastened there.'
'By a chain,' added Mehalah, and dismissed the matter from her mind; the explanation satisfied her.
Rebow returned the next moment with a bottle.
'This is prime spirit, this is,' said he. 'You can't drink water here, it gives the fever. You must add spirits to it to make it harmless.'
'You have no beautiful spring here, as we have on the Ray,' observed the widow.
'Not likely to have,' answered the surly landlord. 'Now sit down and eat. Come, Glory.'
She did not move.
'Come, Mehalah, draw up your chair,' said her mother.
'I am not going to eat,' she answered resolutely.
'You shall,' shouted Elijah, rising impetuously, and thrusting his chair back. 'You are insulting me in my own house if you refuse to eat with me.'
'I have no appetite.'
'You will not eat, I heard you say so. I know the devilry of your heart. You will not, but I will? In his rage he stamped on the trap-door that he had uncovered, when removing the chair. Instantly a prolonged, hideous howl rose from the depths and rang through the room. Mistress Sharland started back aghast. Mehalah raised her head, and the colour left her cheek.
'Oh ho!' roared Elijah. 'You will join in also, will you?' He drew the bolts passionately back.
'Look here,' he cried to Mehalah. 'Come here!'
Involuntarily she obeyed, and looked down. She saw into a vault feebly illuminated by daylight through one of the circular windows she had noticed on approaching the house. There she saw looking up, directly under the trap, a face so horrible in its dirt and madness that she recoiled.