CHAPTER IX
BIDEABOUT
The words were hardly spoken before a twinge of conscience made Mrs. Verstage aware that she had given pain to the girl who had been to her as a daughter.
Yet she justified herself to herself with the consideration that it was in the end kindest to cut down ruthlessly any springing expectation that might have started to life at the words of Simon Verstage. The hostess cast a glance at Mehetabel, and saw that her face was quivering, that all color had gone out of her cheeks, that her hands were contracted as with the cramp.
"I had no wish to hurt you," said the landlady; "but facks are facks, and you may pull down the blinds over 'em wi'out putting them out o' existence. There's Laura Tickner – got a face like a peony. She sez it's innade modesty; but we all knows it's arrysippelas, and Matthew Maunder tells us his nose comes from indigestion; but it's liquor, as I've the best reason to know. Matabel, I love you well, but always face facks. You can't get rid of facks any more than you can get rid of fleas out o' poultry."
Mrs. Verstage disappeared through the doorway. Mehetabel seated herself on the bench. She could not follow the hostess, for her limbs trembled and threatened to give way.
She folded her arms on her lap, and leaned forward, with her eyes on the ground.
"A charity girl! Only a charity girl!"
She said the words to herself again and again. Her eyes burnt; a spray hung on her eyelids. Her lips were contracted with pain, spasms ran through her breast.
"Only a charity girl! She'd never, never a'sed that had she loved me. She don't." Then came a sob. Mehetabel tried to check it, but could not, and the sound of that sob passed through the house. It was followed by no other.
The girl recovered herself, leaned back against the wall, and looked at the twilight sky.
There was no night now. The season was near midsummer: —
"Barnaby bright,
All day and no night."
Into the luminous blue sky Mehetabel looked steadily, and did battle with her own self in her heart.
That which had been said so shortly was true; had it been wrapped up in filagree – through all disguise the solid unpleasant truth would remain as core. If that were true, then why should she be so stung by the few words that contained the truth?
It was not the words that had hurt her – she had heard them often at school – it was that "Mother" had said them. It was the way in which they had been uttered.
Mrs. Verstage had ever been kind to the girl; more affectionate when she was quite a child than when she became older. Gradually the hostess had come to use her, and using her as a servant, to regard her in that light.
Susanna Verstage was one of those women to whom a baby is almost a necessity, certainly a prime element of happiness. As she philosophically put it, "Men likes 'baccy; wimin likes babies; they was made so;" but the passion for a baby was doubly strong in the heart of the landlady. As long as Mehetabel was entirely dependent, the threads that held her to the heart of the hostess were very strong, and very many, but so soon as she became independent, these threads were relaxed. The good woman had a blunt and peremptory manner, and she at times ruffled the girl by sharpness of rebuke; but never previously had she alluded to her peculiar position and circumstances in such a galling manner.
Why had she done this now? Why gone out of her way to do so?
Mehetabel thought how wonderful it was that she, a stranger, should be in that house, treated almost, though not wholly, as its child, whereas the son of the house was shut out from it, – that against him only was the door fast, which was held open with invitation to every one else.
It was the thought of this contrast, perhaps, that had been working in Mrs. Verstage's mind, and had provoked the impatience and occasioned the cruel words.
"Well," said Mehetabel to herself, "I must face it. I have only the name that Iver gave me in the barn. I have no father, no mother, and no other name than that which I am given in charity." She looked at her gown. "I owe that to charity;" at her hands – "My flesh is nourished out of charity." She wiped her eyes – the very kerchief was a gift to her in charity. "It is so," she said. "I must bear the thought and get accustomed to it. I was given a name in charity, and in charity my father was granted a grave. All I can look to as in some fashion my own – and yet they are not my own – be the headstone in the churchyard to show how my real father was killed, and the gallows on Hind Head, with the chains, to tell where those hung who killed him. 'Tain't every one can show that." She raised her head with a flash of pride. Human Nature must find something on which to plume itself. If nothing else can be found, then a murdered father and a gallows for the murderers served.
Mehetabel was a handsome girl, and she knew it. She could not fail to know it, situated as she was. The men who frequented the public house would not leave a girl long in doubt whether she were comely or the reverse.
But Mehetabel made small account of her appearance. No youth of the neighborhood had won his way into her heart; and she blew away the compliments lavished upon her as the men blew away the froth from their tankards. What mattered it whether she were good-looking or not, so long as she was only Mehetabel, without a surname, without kin, without a penny!
When Iver had run away from home she had done all that lay in her power to comfort the mother. She had relieved the landlady of half of her work; she had stayed up her heart when downcast, despondent. She had talked with her of the absent son, whose name the father would not allow to be mentioned in his hearing; had encouraged her with hopes, and, by her love, had sought to compensate for the loss.
It was due to her that the Ship Inn had a breath of youth and cheerfulness infused into it. But for her, the absence and indifference of the host, and the moroseness of the disappointed hostess, would have driven custom away.
Mrs. Verstage had found her useful, even necessary. She could hardly endure to be for an hour without her, and she had come to rely upon her more and more in the conduct of business, especially such as required sufficient scholarship to do correspondence and keep accounts.
The hostess was proud of the girl's beauty and engaging manner, and took to herself some of the credit of having her adopted daughter regarded as the belle of Thursley. She was pleased to see that the men admired her, not less than the women envied her. There was selfishness in all this. Mrs. Verstage's heart was without sincerity. She had loved Mehetabel as a babe, because the child amused her. She liked her as a girl, because serviceable to her, and because it flattered her vanity to think that her adopted daughter should be so handsome.
Now, however, that the suspicion was engendered that her own son might be set aside in favor of the adopted child, through Simon's partiality, at once her maternal heart took the alarm, and turned against the girl in resolution to protect the rights of Iver, Mehetabel did not understand the workings of Susanna Verstage's mind. She felt that the regard entertained for her was troubled.
She had heard Simon Verstage's remark about constituting her his heir, but had so little considered it as seriously spoken, and as embodying a resolution, that it did not now occur to her as an explanation of the altered conduct of the "mother" towards herself.
Mehetabel felt instinctively that a vein of truer love throbbed in the old host than in his wife; and now, with a hunger for some word of kindness after the rebuff she had sustained, she stood up and walked in the direction of the hayfield to meet Simon Verstage on his return journey.
As she stepped along she heard a footfall behind her. The step was quickened, and a hand was laid on her shoulder. She turned, and exclaimed sharply:
"Bideabout – what do you want?"
"You, Matabel."
A man stayed her: the Broom-Squire.
"What with me?"
"I want you to listen to what I have to say."
"I can spare you a minute, not more. I expect father. He has gone to look at the hay."
Mehetabel disengaged her shoulder from his grasp. She stepped back. She had no liking for the Broom-Squire. Indeed, he inspired her with a faint, undefined repugnance.
Jonas was now a middle-aged man, still occupying his farm in the Punch-Bowl, making brooms, selling holly, cultivating his patch of land, laying by money and still a bachelor.
He had rounded shoulders and a short neck; this made him thrust his head forward in a peering manner, like a beast of prey watching for a victim. His eyes were keen and restless. His hair was short-cut, and his ears projected from the sides of his head like those of a bat. Otherwise he was not a bad-looking man. His features were good, but his expression was unpleasant. The thin lip was curled contemptuously; and he had a trick of thrusting forth his sharp tongue to wet his lips before making a spiteful remark.
He was a frequent visitor at the Ship, and indeed his inclination for liquor was his one weakness.
Of late he had been much oftener at this inn than formerly. Latterly he had been profuse in his compliments to Mehetabel, which she had put aside, much as she brushed empty tankards, and tobacco ash off the table. He was no welcome guest. His bitter tongue was the occasion of strife, and a brawl was no infrequent result of the appearance of the Broom-Squire in the public house. Sometimes he himself became the object of attack, but usually he succeeded in setting others by the ears and in himself escaping unmolested. But on one of the former occasions he had lost two front teeth, and through the gap thus formed he was wont to thrust his tongue.
"I am glad to have caught you," said the Broom-Squire; "and caught you alone – it is hard to find you so – as it's hard to find a treacle cask without flies round it."
"What have you to say?"
"You have always slipped out of my way when I thought I had you."
"I did not know that you had a fancy to catch me alone." She made as if to proceed on her course.
"Stand still," said he imperiously. "It must come out. Do not look at me with that keep-your-distance air. I mean no incivility. I care a deal more for you than for any one else."
"That is not saying much."
"I care for you alone in all the world."
"Except yourself."
"Of course."
He breathed as though relieved of a burden.
"Look here, Mehetabel, I've not been a marrying man. Wife and family cost too much. I've been saving and not spending. But this can't go on forever. All good things come to an end some time. It has come to this, I must have a woman to mind the house. My sister and I have had a tiff. You know her, Sarah Rocliffe. She won't do as I like, and what I want. So I'll just shut the door in her face and make a long nose at her, and say, 'Got some one else now.'"
"So," exclaimed Mehetabel, the color rushing to her cheeks in anger, "you want me as your housekeeper that you may make a nose at your sister and deny her the house."
"I won't have any other woman in my house but yourself."
"You will have to wait a long time before you get me."
"I mean all fair and honorable," said Jonas. "I didn't say housekeeper, did I? I say wife. If any chap had said to me, Bideabout, you are putting your feet into a rabbit net, and will be caught, and – '" he made a sign as if knocking a rabbit's neck to kill it – "I say, had any one said that, I'd a' laughed at him as a fool."
"You may laugh at him still," said the girl. "No one that I know has set any net for you."
"You have," he sniggered. "Aye, and caught me."
"I!" laughed Mehetabel contemptuously, "I spread a net for you? It is you who pursue and pester me. I never gave you a thought save how to make you keep at arm's length."
"You say that to me." His color went.
"It is ridiculous, it is insulting of you to speak to me of netting and catching. What do I want of you save to be let go my way."
"Come, Mehetabel," said the Broom-Squire caressingly, "we won't quarrel about words. I didn't mean what you have put on me. I want you to come and be my wife. It isn't only that I've had a quarrel with my sister. There's more than that. There is something like a stoat at my heart, biting there, and I have no rest till you say – 'I'll have you, Jonas!'"
"The stoat must hang on. I can't say that."
"Why not?"
"I am not obliged to give a reason."
"Will you not have me?"
"No, Bideabout, I will not. How can I take an offer made in this way? When you ask me to enable you to be rude to your sister, when you speak of me as laying traps for you; and when you stay me on my road as if you were a footpad."
Again she made an attempt to go in the direction of the hayfield.
Her bosom was heaving with anger, her nostrils were quivering.
Again he arrested her.
"If you will not let me go," said she, "I will call for help. Here comes father. He shall protect me."
"I'll have you yet," said the Broom-Squire with a sneer. "If it ain't you that nets me, then it'll be I net you, Mehetabel."
CHAPTER X
INTO THE NET
"We must have cake and ale for the hayfield," said Mrs. Verstage.
"Of ale there be plenty in the house, but for cake, I must bake.
It ort to ha' been done afore. Fresh cakes goes twice as fast as
stale, but blessin's on us, the weather have been that changeable
I didn't know but I might put it off to anywhen."
This was said on the morrow of the occurrence just described.
Whilst Mrs. Verstage was engaged in the baking she had not time for much talk, but she asked abruptly: "What's that as to Bideabout? Father said he'd come on you and him, and you was both in a sort o' take on."
Mehetabel had no reason for reticence, and she told the hostess of the suit of the Broom-Squire, and of the manner in which he made his proposal. Mrs. Verstage said nothing at the time. She was occupied – too occupied for comments. But when the cake was in the oven, she seated herself at the kitchen table, with a sigh of relief, and beckoned to Mehetabel to do the same.
Mrs. Verstage was warm, both on account of the heat of the morning, but also because she had been hard at work. She fanned herself with a dish, and as she did so looked at the girl.
"So – the Broom-Squire offered himself, did he?"
Mehetabel made a sign in the affirmative.
"Well," continued the hostess, "if he weren't so good a customer here he would be suitable enough. But yet a good wife will soon cure him. A hudger (bachelor) does things as a married man don't allow himself."
Mehetabel looked questioningly at the landlady.
She said: "There must be good stuff in a man, or marriage won't bring it out."
"Who says there ain't good stuff in Bideabout?"
"I have never seen the glint of it."
"You don't see the iron ore as lies under the sand, but there it is, and when wanted it can be worked. I like a man to show his wust side forefront. There's many a man's character is like his wesket, red plush and flowers in front and calico in rags behind hid away under his coat."
Mehetabel was surprised, troubled. She made no response, but color drifted across her face.
"After all," pursued Mrs. Verstage, "he may ha' come here not after liquor, but drawed by you. Then you see he's been alone all these years, and scriptur' saith it ain't good for a man to be that. They goes sour and mouldy – men do if unmarried. I think you'd be fulfillin' your dooty, and actin' accordin' to the word o' God if you took him."
"I – mother! I!" The girl shrank back. "Mother, let him take some one else. I don't want him."
"But he wants you, and he don't want another. Matabel, it's all moonshine about leap year. The time never comes when the woman can ax the man. It's tother way up – and Providence made it so. Bideabout has a good bit o' land, for which he is his own landlord, he has money laid by, so folks tell. You might do worse. It's a great complerment he's paid you. You see he's well off, and you have nothin'. Men generally, nowadays, look out for wives that have a bit o' money to help buy a field, or a cow, or nothin' more than a hog. You see Bideabout's above that sort o' thing. If you can't have butter to your bread, you must put up wi' drippin."
"I'm not going to take Bideabout," said Mehetabel.
"I don't say you should. But he couldn't a took a fancy to you wi'out Providence ordainin' of it."
"And if I don't like him," threw in the girl, half angry, half in tears, "I suppose that is the doings of Providence too?"
Mrs. Verstage evaded a reply to this. She said: "I do not press you to take him. You are kindly welcome to stay on with us a bit, till you've looked about you and found another. We took you up as a babe and cared for you; but the parish allowance was stopped when you was fourteen. It shan't be said of us that bare we took you in and bare we turn you out. But marry you must. It's ordained o' nature. There's the difference atwixt a slug and a snail. The snail's got her own house to go into. A slug hasn't. When she's uncomfortable she must go underground."
The hostess was silent for awhile. Mehetabel said nothing. Her cheeks burned. She was choking.
Mrs. Verstage went on: "There was Betsy Purvis – she was a bit of a beauty, and gave herself airs. She wouldn't have Farmer James, as his legs was so long, he looked like a spider – and she wouldn't have Odger Kay, as his was too short – he looked like a dachs-dog. It came in the end she married Purvis, who had both his legs shot off in the wars, 'cos and why? she couldn't get another. She'd been too finical in choosin'."
"Are you tired of me?" gasped the girl. "Do you wish to be rid of me?"
"Not at all," answered the landlady. "It's becos we're so fond of you, father and I, that we want to see you well settled."
"And father – does he wish me to take Bideabout?"
Mrs. Verstage hesitated.
"He hasn't said that right out. You see he didn't know for certain Jonas were hoppin' about you. But he'd be tremendous pleased to have you well married."
"And you think I should be well married if I became Bideabout's wife?"
"Of course. He's a great catch for the likes of you, who belong to nobody and to no place, properly. Beggars mustn't be choosers."
Mehetabel sprang to her feet.
"It is so. I am a beggar. I am only a charity girl, nothing else."
She struck her head against the wall. "Let me beat my brains out if I am in your way. Why should I be thrown into the arms of any passer-by?
"You misjudge and misunderstand me," said Mrs. Verstage, hotly. "Because you have been with me so long, and because I love you, I want to see you settled. Because I can't give you a prince in spangles and feathers you fly out against me."
"I don't ask for a prince, only to be let alone. I am happy here, as a girl, working for you and father."
"But we shall not live forever. We are growing old, and shall have to give up. Iver may return any day, and then – "
The hostess became crimson to the temples; she knew how handsome the girl was, doubly handsome she seemed now, in her heat and agitation, and it occurred to Mrs. Verstage that Iver with his artistic appreciation of the beautiful, might also think her handsome, that the old childish fancy for each other might spring to new and to stronger life, and that he might even think of Mehetabel as a wife. That would never, never do. For Iver something better must be found than a girl without means, friends, and name.
"What then?" asked Mehetabel. "Suppose Iver do come here and keep the inn. I can go with you wherever you go, and if you become old, I can attend to you in your old age."
"You are good," said Mrs. Verstage; but although her words were gracious, her manner was chilling. "It is for us to think of you and your future, not you to consider for us. The Broom-Squire – "
"I tell you, mother, I don't like him."
"You must hear me out. You do not love him. Lawk-a-jimmeny! we can't all marry for love. You don't suppose I was in love with Simon when I took him? I was a good-looking wench in my day, and I had many admirers, and were more of tragedy-kings than Simon. But I had sense, and I took him for the sake of the Ship Inn and the farm. We have lived happy together, and if it hadn't been for that matter of Iver, there'd not ha' been a cloud between us. Love grows among married folk, like chickweed in a garden. You can't keep it out. It is thick everywhere, and is never out o' season. I don't say there ain't a ripping of it out one day – but it comes again, twice as thick on the morrow, and much good it does! I don't think I cared for Simon when I took him any more than you care for Jonas, but I took him, and we've fared well enough together." After a pause the hostess said, "Talkin' of marriage, I have a fine scheme in my head. If Iver comes back, as I trust he will, I want him to marry Polly Colpus."
"Polly Colpus, mother!"
"She's James Colpus's only child, and will come in for money.
James Colpus is a wonderful thrivin' man."
"But she has a moustache."
"What of that, if she have money?"
"But – Iver – if he couldn't bear an ugly signboard to the house, will he relish an ugly figure-head to his wife within it?"
"She has gold which will gild her moustache."
"I don't know," said Mehetabel; "Iver wouldn't take the business at his father's wish, will he take a wife of his mother's providing?"
"He will know which side his bread is buttered better than some persons I could name."
"I fancy when folk look out for wives, they don't borrow their mother's eyes."
"You cross me in everything to-day," said the hostess, peevishly.
Mehetabel's tears began to flow.
Mrs. Verstage was a woman who did not need much time or much balancing to arrive at a determination, and when she had formed her resolution, she clung to it with the same tenacity as her husband did to his.
Her maternal jealousy had been roused, and the maternal instinct is the strongest that exists in the female nature. Many a woman would allow herself to be cut to bits for her child. But not only will she sacrifice herself without hesitation, but also any one else who in any way hinders the progress of her schemes for the welfare of her child. Mrs. Verstage entertained affection for the girl, an affection very real, yet not to the extent of allowing it to blind her to the true interests of her own son. She was roused to jealousy by the partiality of Simon for his adopted daughter, to the prejudice of Iver. And now she was gravely alarmed lest on the return of Iver, the young affection of the two children for each other should take a new spell of life, assume a new form, and intensify into passion.
Accordingly she was resolved, if possible, to remove the girl from the Ship before the arrival of Iver. The proposal of the Broom-Squire was opportune, and she was anxious to forward his suit as the best means for raising an insuperable barrier between her son and the girl, as well as removing her from Simon, who, with his characteristic wrong-headedness, might actually do what he had proposed.
"I don't see what you're crying about," said Mrs. Verstage, testily. "It ain't no matter to you whether Iver takes Polly Colpus or a Royal Princess."
"I don't want him to be worried, mother, when he comes home with having ugly girls rammed down his throat. If you begin that with him he'll be off again."
"Oh! you know that, do you?"
"I am sure of it."
"I know what this means!" exclaimed the angry woman, losing all command over her tongue. "It means, in plain English, just this – 'I'm going to try, by hook or by crook, to get Iver for myself.' That's what you're driving at, hussy! But I'll put you by the shoulders out of the door, or ever Iver comes, that you may be at none of them tricks. Do you think that because he baptized you, that he'll also marry you?"
Mehetabel sprang through the door with a cry of pain, of wounded pride, of resentment at the injustice wherewith she was treated, of love in recoil, and almost ran against the Broom-Squire. Almost without power to think, certainly without power to judge, fevered with passion to be away out of a house where she was so misjudged, she gasped, "Bideabout! will you have me now – even now. Mother turns me out of doors."
"Have you? To be sure I will," said Jonas; then with a laugh out of the side of his mouth, he added in an undertone, "Don't seem to want that I should set a net; she runs right into my hands. Wimen is wimen!"