Читать книгу Mehalah - S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould - Страница 5

CHAPTER V.

THE DECOY.

There was commotion on the beach at Mersea City.

A man-of-war, a schooner, lay off the entrance to the Blackwater, and was signalling with bunting to the coastguard ship, permanently anchored off the island, which was replying. War had been declared with France some time, but as yet had not interfered with the smuggling trade, which was carried on with the Low Countries. Cruisers in the Channel had made it precarious work along the South Coast, and this had rather stimulated the activity of contraband traffic on the East. It was therefore with no little uneasiness that a war ship was observed standing off the Mersea flats. Why was she there? Was a man-of-war to cruise about the mouth of the Colne and Blackwater continually? What was the purport of the correspondence carried on between the schooner and the coastguard? Such were the queries put about among those gathered on the shingle.

They were not long left in doubt, for a boat manned by coastguards left the revenue vessel and ran ashore; the captain sprang out, and went up the beach to his cottage, followed by a couple of the crew. The eager islanders crowded round the remainder, and asked the news.

The captain was appointed to the command of the schooner, the 'Salamander,' which had come from the Downs under the charge of the first lieutenant, to pick him up. The destiny of the 'Salamander' was, of course, unknown.

Captain Macpherson was a keen, canny Scot, small and dapper; as he pushed through the cluster of men in fishing jerseys and wading boots he gave them a nod and a word, 'You ought to be serving your country instead of robbing her, ye loons. Why don't you volunteer like men, there's more money to be made by prizes than by running spirits.'

'That won't do, captain,' said Jim Morrell, an old fisherman. 'We know better than that. There's the oysters.'

'Oysters!' exclaimed the captain; 'there'll be no time for eating oysters now, and no money to pay for them neither. Come along with me, some of you shore crabs. I promise you better sport than sneaking about the creeks. We'll have at Johnny Crapaud with gun and cutlass.'

Then he entered his cottage, which was near the shore, to say farewell to his wife.

'If there's mischief to be done, that chap will do it,' was the general observation, when his back was turned.

Attention was all at once distracted by a young woman in a tall taxcart who was endeavouring to urge her horse along the road, but the animal, conscious of having an inexperienced hand on the rein, backed, and jibbed, and played a number of tricks, to her great dismay.

'Oh, do please some of you men lead him along. I daresay he will go if his head be turned east, but he is frightened by seeing so many of you.'

'Where are you going, Phoebe?' asked old Morrell.

'I'm only going to Waldegraves,' she answered. 'Oh, bother the creature! there he goes again!' as the horse danced impatiently, and swung round.

'De Witt!' she cried in an imploring tone, 'do hold his head. It is a shame of you men not to help a poor girl.'

George at once went to the rescue.

'Lead him on, De Witt, please, till we are away from the beach.'

The young man good-naturedly held the bit, and the horse obeyed without attempting resistance.

'There's a donkey on the lawn by Elm Tree Cottage,' said the girl; 'she brays whenever a horse passes, and I'm mortal afeared lest she scare this beast, and he runs away with me. If he do so, I can't hold him in, my wrists are so weak.'

'Why, Phoebe,' said De Witt, 'what are you driving for? Waldegraves is not more than a mile and a half off, and you might have walked the distance well enough.'

'I've sprained my ankle, and I can't walk. I must go to Waldegraves, I have a message there to my aunt, so Isaac Mead lent me the horse.'

'If you can't drive, you may do worse than sprain your ankle, you may break your neck.'

'That is what I am afraid of, George. The boy was to have driven me, but he is so excited, I suppose, about the man-of-war coming in, that he has run off. There! take care!'

'Can't you go on now?' asked De Witt, letting go the bridle. Immediately the horse began to jib and rear.

'You are lugging at his mouth fit to break his jaw, Phoebe. No wonder the beast won't go.'

'Am I, George? It is the fright. I don't understand the horse. O dear! O dear! I shall never get to Waldegraves by myself.'

'Let the horse go, but don't job his mouth in that way.'

'There he is turning round. He will go home again. O George! save me.'

'You are pulling him round, of course he will turn if you drag at the rein.'

'I don't understand horses,' burst forth Phoebe, and she threw the reins down. 'George, there's a good, dear fellow, jump in beside me. There's room for two, quite cosy. Drive me to Waldegraves. I shall never forget your goodness.' She put her two hands together, and looked piteously in the young man's face.

Phoebe Musset was a very good-looking girl, fair with bright blue eyes, and yellow hair, much more delicately made than most of the girls in the place. Moreover, she dressed above them. She was a village coquette, accustomed to being made much of, and of showing her caprices. Her father owned the store at the city where groceries and drapery were sold, and was esteemed a well-to-do man. He farmed a little land. Phoebe was his only child, and she was allowed to do pretty much as she liked. Her father and mother were hard-working people, but Phoebe's small hands were ever unsoiled, for they were ever unemployed. She neither milked the cows nor weighed the sugar. She liked indeed to be in the shop, to gossip with anyone who came in, and perhaps the only goods she condescended to sell was tobacco to the young sailors, from whom she might calculate on a word of flattery and a lovelorn look. She was always well and becomingly dressed. Now, in a chip bonnet trimmed with blue riband, and tied under the chin, with a white lace-edged kerchief over her shoulders, covering her bosom, she was irresistible. So at least De Witt found her, for he was obliged to climb the gig, seat himself beside her, and assume the reins.

'I am not much of a steersman in a craft like this,' said George laughing, 'but my hand is stronger than yours, and I can save you from wreck.'

Phoebe looked slyly round, and her great blue eyes peeped timidly up in the fisherman's face. 'Thank you so much, George. I shall never, never forget your great kindness.'

'There's nothing in it,' said the blunt fisherman; 'I'd do the same for any girl.'

'I know how polite you are,' continued Phoebe; then putting her hand on the reins, 'I don't think you need drive quite so fast, George; I don't want to get the horse hot, or Isaac will scold.'

'A jog trot like this will hurt no horse.'

'Perhaps you want to get back. I am sorry I have taken you away. Of course you have pressing business. No doubt you want to get to the Ray.' A little twinkling sly look up accompanied this speech. De Witt waxed red.

'I'm in no hurry, myself,' he said.

'How delightful, George, nor am I.'

The young man could not resist stealing a glance at the little figure beside him, so neat, so trim, so fresh. He was a humble fellow, and never dreamed himself to be on a level with such a refined damsel. Glory was the girl for him, rough and ready, who could row a boat, and wade in the mud. He loved Glory. She was a sturdy girl, a splendid girl, he said to himself. Phoebe was altogether different, she belonged to another sphere, he could but look and admire—and worship perhaps. She dazzled him, but he could not love her. She was none of his sort, he said to himself.

'A penny for your thoughts!' said Phoebe roguishly. He coloured. 'I know what you were thinking of. You were thinking of me.'

De Witt's colour deepened. 'I was sure it was so. Now I insist on knowing what you were thinking of me.'

'Why,' answered George with a clumsy effort at gallantry, 'I thought what a beauty you were.'

'Oh, George, not when compared with Mehalah.'

De Witt fidgeted in his seat.

'Mehalah is quite of another kind, you see, Miss.'

'I'm no Miss, if you please. Call me Phoebe. It is snugger.'

'She's more—' he puzzled his head for an explanation of his meaning. 'She is more boaty than you are—'

'Phoebe.'

'Than you are,' with hesitation, 'Phoebe.'

'I know;—strides about like a man, smokes and swears, and chews tobacco.'

'No, no, you mistake me, M——.'

'Phoebe.'

'You mistake me, Phoebe.'

'I have often wondered, George, what attracted you to Mehalah. To be sure, it will be a very convenient thing for you to have a wife who can swab the deck, and tar the boat and calk her. But then I should have fancied a man would have liked something different from a—sort of a man-woman—a jack tar or Ben Brace in petticoats, to sit by his fireside, and to take to his heart. But of course it is not for me to speak on such matters, only I somehow can't help thinking about you, George, and it worries me so, I lie awake at nights, and wonder and wonder, whether you will be happy. She has the temper of a tom cat, I'm told. She blazes up like gunpowder.'

De Witt fidgeted yet more uneasily. He did not like this conversation.

'Then she is half a gipsy. So you mayn't be troubled with her long. She'll keep with you as long as she likes, and then up with her pack, on with her wading boots. Yo heave hoy! and away she goes.'

De Witt, in his irritation, gave the horse a stinging switch across the flank, and he started forward. A little white hand was laid, not now on the reins, but on his hand.

'I'm so sorry, George my friend; after your kindness, I have teased you unmercifully, but I can't help it. When I think of Mehalah in her wading boots and jersey and cap, it makes me laugh—and yet when I think of her and you together, I'm ashamed to say I feel as if I could cry. George!' she suddenly ejaculated.

'Yes, Miss!'

'Phoebe, not Miss, please.'

'I wasn't going to say Miss.'

'What were you going to say?'

'Why, mate, yes, mate! I get into the habit of it at sea,' he apologised.

'I like it. Call me mate. We are on a cruise together, now, you and I, and I trust myself entirely in your hands, captain.'

'What was it you fared to ask, mate, when you called "George"?'

'Oh, this. The wind is cold, and I want my cloak and hood, they are down somewhere behind the seat in the cart. If I take the reins will you lean over and get them?'

'You won't upset the trap?'

'No.' He brought up the cloak and adjusted it round Phoebe's shoulders, and drew the hood over her bonnet, she would have it to cover her head.

'Doesn't it make me a fright?' she asked, looking into his face.

'Nothing can do that,' he answered readily.

'Well, push it back again, I feel as if it made me one, and that is as bad. There now. Thank you, mate! Take the reins again.'

'Halloo! we are in the wrong road. We have turned towards the Strood.'

'Dear me! so we have. That is the horse's doing. I let him go where he liked, and he went down the turn. I did not notice it. All I thought of was holding up his head lest he should stumble.'

De Witt endeavoured to turn the horse.

'Oh don't, don't attempt it!' exclaimed Phoebe. 'The lane is so narrow, that we shall be upset. Better drive on, and round by the Barrow Farm, there is not half-a-mile difference.'

'A good mile, mate. However, if you wish it.'

'I do wish it. This is a pleasant drive, is it not, George?'

'Very pleasant,' he said, and to himself added, 'too pleasant.'

So they chatted on till they reached the farm called Waldegraves, and there Phoebe alighted.

'I shall not be long,' she said, at the door, turning and giving him a look which might mean a great deal or nothing, according to the character of the woman who cast it.

When she came up she said, 'There, George, I cut my business as short as possible. Now what do you say to showing me the Decoy? I have never seen it, but I have heard a great deal of it, and I cannot understand how it is contrived.'

'It is close here,' said De Witt.

'I know it is, the little stream in this dip feeds it. Will you show me the Decoy?'

'But your foot—Phoebe. You have sprained your ankle.'

'If I may lean on your arm I think I can limp down there. It is not very far.'

'And then what about the horse?'

'Oh! the boy here will hold it, or put it up in the stable. Run and call him, George.'

'I could drive you down there, I think, at least within a few yards of the place, and if we take the boy he can hold the horse by the gate.'

'I had rather hobble down on your arm, George.'

'Then come along, mate.'

The Decoy was a sheet of water covering perhaps an acre and a half in the midst of a wood. The clay that had been dug out for its construction had been heaped up, forming a little hill crowned by a group of willows. No one who has seen this ill-used tree in its mutilated condition, cut down to a stump which bristles with fresh withes, has any idea what a stately and beautiful tree it is when allowed to grow naturally. The old untrimmed willow is one of the noblest of our native trees. It may be seen thus in well-timbered parts of Suffolk, and occasionally in Essex. The pond was fringed with rushes, except at the horns, where the nets and screens stood for the trapping of the birds. From the mound above the distant sea was visible, through a gap in the old elm trees that stood below the pool. In that gap was visible the war-schooner, lying as near shore as possible. George De Witt stood looking at it. The sea was glittering like silver, and the hull of the vessel was dark against the shining belt. A boat with a sail was approaching her.

'That is curious,' observed George. 'I could swear to yon boat. I know her red sail. She belongs to my cousin Elijah Rebow. But he can have nought to do with the schooner.'

Phoebe was impatient with anything save herself attracting the attention of the young fisherman. She drew him from the mound, and made him explain to her the use of the rush-platted screens, the arched and funnel-shaped net, and the manner in which the decoy ducks were trained to lead the wild birds to their destruction.

'They are very silly birds to be led like that,' said she.

'They little dream whither and to what they are being drawn,' said De Witt.

'I suppose some little ducks are dreadfully enticing,' said Phoebe, with a saucy look and a twinkle of the blue eyes. 'Look here, George, my bonnet-strings are untied, and my hands are quite unable to manage a bow, unless I am before a glass. Do you think you could tie them for me?'

'Put up your chin, then,' said De Witt with a sigh. He knew he was a victim; he was going against his conscience. He tried to think of Mehalah, but could not with those blue eyes looking so confidingly into his. He put his finger under her chin and raised it. He was looking full into that sweet saucy face.

'What sort of a knot? I can tie only sailor's knots.'

'Oh George! something like a true lover's knot.'

Was it possible to resist, with those damask cheeks, those red lips, and those pleading eyes so close, so completely in his power? George did not resist. He stooped and kissed the wicked lips, and cheeks, and eyes.

Phoebe drew away her face at once, and hid it. He took her arm and led her away. She turned her head from him, and did not speak.

He felt that the little figure at his side was shaken with some hysterical movement, and felt frightened.

'I have offended you, I am very sorry. I could not help it. Your lips did tempt me so; and you looked up at me just as if you were saying, "Kiss me!" I could not help it. You are crying. I have offended you.'

'No, I am laughing. Oh, George! Oh, George!'

They walked back to the farm without speaking. De Witt was ashamed of himself, yet felt he was under a spell which he could not break. A rough fisher lad flattered by a girl he had looked on as his superior, and beyond his approach, now found himself the object of her advances; the situation was more than his rude virtue could withstand. He knew that this was a short dream of delight, which would pass, and leave no substance, but whilst under the charm of the dream, he could not cry out nor move a finger to arouse himself to real life.

Neither spoke for a few minutes. But, at last, George De Witt turned, and looking with a puzzled face at Phoebe Musset said, 'You asked me on our way to Waldegraves what I was thinking about, and offered me a penny for my thoughts. Now I wonder what you are lost in a brown study about, and I will give you four farthings for what is passing in your little golden head.'

'You must not ask me, George—dear George.'

'Oh mate, you must tell me.'

'I dare not. I shall be so ashamed.'

'Then look aside when you speak.'

'No, I can't do that. I must look you full in the face; and do you look me in the face too. George, I was thinking—Why did you not come and talk to me, before you went courting that gipsy girl, Mehalah. Are you not sorry now that you are tied to her?'

His eyes fell. He could not speak.

CHAPTER VI.

BLACK OR GOLD.

When De Witt drove up to the 'City' with Phoebe Musset, the first person he saw on the beach was the last person that, under present circumstances, he wished to see—Mehalah Sharland. Phoebe perceived her at once, and rejoiced at the opportunity that offered to profit by it.

For a long time Phoebe had been envious of the reputation as a beauty possessed by Mehalah. Her energy, determination and courage made her highly esteemed among the fishermen, and the expressions of admiration lavished on her handsome face and generous character had roused all the venom in Phoebe's nature. She desired to reign as queen paramount of beauty, and, like Elizabeth, could endure no rival. George De Witt was the best built and most pleasant faced of all the Mersea youths, and he had hitherto held aloof from her and paid his homage to the rival queen. This had awakened Phoebe's jealousy. She had no real regard, no warm affection for the young fisherman; she thought him handsome, and was glad to flirt with him, but he had made no serious impression on her heart, for Phoebe had not a heart on which any deep impression could be made. She had laid herself out to attract and entangle him from love of power, and desire to humble Mehalah. She did not know whether any actual engagement existed between George and Glory, probably she did not care. If there were, so much the better, it would render her victory more piquant and complete.

She would trifle with the young man for a few weeks or a month, till he had broken with her rival, and then she would keep him or cast him off as suited her caprice. By taking him up, she would sting other admirers into more fiery pursuit, blow the smouldering embers into flaming jealousy, and thus flatter her vanity and assure her supremacy. The social laws of rural life are the same as those in higher walks, but unglossed and undisguised. In the realm of nature it is the female who pursues and captures, not captivates, the male. As in Eden, so in this degenerate paradise, it is Eve who walks Adam, at first in wide, then in gradually contracting circles, about the forbidden tree, till she has brought him to take the unwholesome morsel. The male bird blazes in gorgeous plumage and swims alone on the glassy pool, but the sky is speckled with sombre feathered females who disturb his repose, drive him into a corner and force him to divide his worms, and drudge for them in collecting twigs and dabbing mud about their nest. The male glow-worm browses on the dewy blades by his moony lamp; it is the lack-light female that buzzes about him, coming out of obscurity, obscure herself, flattering and fettering him and extinguishing his lamp.

Where culture prevails, the sexes change their habits with ostentation, but remain the same in proclivities behind disguise. The male is supposed to pursue the female he seeks as his mate, to hover round her; and she is supposed to coyly retire, and start from his advances. But her modesty is as unreal as the nolo episcopari of a simoniacal bishop-elect. Bashfulness is a product of education, a mask made by art. The cultured damsel hunts not openly, but like a poacher, in the dark. Eve put off modesty when she put on fig-leaves; in the simplicity of the country, her daughters walk without either. The female gives chase to the male as a matter of course, as systematically and unblushingly in rustic life, as in the other grades of brute existence. The mother adorns her daughter for the war-path with paint and feathers, and sends her forth with a blessing and a smile to fulfil the first duty of woman, and the meed of praise is hers when she returns with a masculine heart, yet hot and mangled, at her belt.

The Early Church set apart one day in seven for rest; the Christian pagans set it apart for the exercise of the man hunt. The Stuart bishops published a book on Sunday amusements, and allowed of Sabbath hunting. They followed, and did not lead opinion. It is the coursing day of days when marriage-wanting maids are in full cry and scent of all marriageable men.

A village girl who does not walk about her boy is an outlaw to the commonwealth, a renegade to her sex. A lover is held to be of as much necessity as an umbrella, a maiden must not go out without either. If she cannot attract one by her charms, she must retain him with a fee. Rural morality moreover allows her to change the beau on her arm as often as the riband in her cap, but not to be seen about, at least on Sunday, devoid of either.

Phoebe Musset intended some day to marry, but had not made up her mind whom to choose, and when to alter her condition. She would have liked a well-to-do young farmer, but there happened to be no man of this kind available. There were, indeed, at Peldon four bachelor brothers of the name of Marriage, but they were grown grey in celibacy and not disposed to change their lot. One of the principal Mersea farmers was named Wise, and had a son of age, but he was an idiot. The rest were afflicted with only daughters—afflicted from Phoebe's point of view, blessed from their own. There was a widower, but to take a widower was like buying a broken-kneed horse.

George was comfortably off. He owned some oyster pans and gardens, and had a fishing smack.

But he was not a catch. There were, however, no catches to be angled, trawled or dredged for. Phoebe did not trouble herself greatly about the future. Her father and mother would, perhaps, not be best pleased were she to marry off the land, but the wishes of her parents were of no weight with Phoebe, who was determined to suit her own fancy.

As she approached the 'City,' she saw Glory surrounded by young boatmen, eager to get a word from her lips or a glance from her eyes. Phoebe's heart contracted with spite, but next moment swelled with triumph at the thought that it lay in her power to wound her rival and exhibit her own superiority, before the eyes of all assembled on the beach.

'There is the boy from the Leather Bottle, George,' said she, 'he shall take the horse.'

De Witt descended and helped her to alight, then directly, to her great indignation, made his way to Mehalah. Glory put out both hands to him and smiled. Her smile, which was rare, was sweet; it lighted up and transformed a face somewhat stern and dark.

'Where have you been, George?'

'I have been driving that girl yonder, what's-her-name, to Waldegraves.'

'What, Phoebe Musset? I did not know you could drive.'

'I can do more than row a boat and catch crabs, Glory.'

'What induced you to drive her?'

'I could not help myself, I was driven into doing so. You see, Glory, a fellow is not always his own master. Circumstances are sometimes stronger than his best purposes, and like a mass of seaweed arrest his oar and perhaps upset his boat.'

'Why, bless the boy!' exclaimed Mehalah. 'What are all these excuses for? I am not jealous.'

'But I am,' said Phoebe who had come up. 'George, you are very ungallant to desert me. You have forgotten your promise, moreover.'

'What promise?'

'There! what promise you say, as if your head were a riddle and everything put in except clots of clay and pebbles fell through. Mehalah has stuck in the wires, and poor little I have been sifted out.'

'But what did I promise?'

'To show me the hull in which you and your mother live, the "Pandora" I think you call her.'

'Did I promise?'

'Yes, you did, when we were together at the Decoy under the willows. I told you I wished greatly to be introduced to the interior and see how you lived.' Turning to Mehalah, 'George and I have been to the Decoy. He was most good-natured, and explained the whole contrivance to me, and—and illustrated it. We had a very pleasant little trot together, had we not, George?'

'Oh! this is what's-her-name, is it?' said Mehalah in a low tone with an amused look. She was neither angry nor jealous, she despised Phoebe too heartily to be either, though with feminine instinct she perceived what the girl was about, and saw through all her affectation.

'If I made the promise, I must of course keep it,' said George, 'but it is strange I should not remember having made it.'

'I dare say you forget a great many things that were said and done at the Decoy, but,' with a little affected sigh, 'I do not, I never shall, I fear.'

George De Witt looked uncomfortable and awkward. 'Will not another day do as well?'

'No, it will not, George,' said Phoebe petulantly. 'I know you have no engagement, you said so when you volunteered to drive me to Waldegraves.'

De Witt turned to Mehalah, and said, 'Come along with us, Glory! my mother will be glad to see you.'

'Oh! don't trouble yourself, Miss Sharland—or Master Sharland, which is it?'—staring first at the short petticoats, and then at the cap and jersey.

'Come, Glory,' repeated De Witt, and looked so uncomfortable that Mehalah readily complied with his request.

'I can give you oysters and ale, natives, you have never tasted better.'

'No ale for me, George,' said Phoebe. 'It is getting on for five o'clock when I take a dish of tea.'

'Tea!' echoed De Witt, 'I have no such dainty on board. But I can give you rum or brandy, if you prefer either to ale. Mother always has a glass of grog about this time; the cockles of her heart require it, she says.'

'You must give me your arm, George, you know I have sprained my ankle. I really cannot walk unsupported.'

De Witt looked at Mehalah and then at Phoebe, who gave him such a tender, entreating glance that he was unable to refuse his arm. She leaned heavily on it, and drew very close to his side; then, turning her head over her shoulder, with a toss of the chin, she said, 'Come along, Mehalah!'

Glory's brow began to darken. She was displeased. George also turned and nodded to the girl, who walked in the rear with her head down. He signed to her to join him.

'Do you know, Glory, what mother did the other night when I failed to turn up—that night you fetched me concerning the money that was stolen? She was vexed at my being out late, and not abed at eleven. As you know, I could not be so. I left the Ray as soon as all was settled, and as you put me across to the Fresh Marsh, I got home across the pasture and the fields as quickly as I could, but was not here till after eleven. Mother was angry, she had pulled up the ladder, but before that she tarred the vessel all round, and she stuck a pail of sea water atop of the place where the ladder goes. Well, then, I came home and found the ladder gone, so I laid hold of the rope that hangs there, and then souse over me came the water. I saw mother was vexed, and wanted to serve me out for being late; however, I would not be beat, so I tried to climb the side, and got covered with tar.'

'You got in, however?'

'No, I did not, I went to the public-house, and laid the night there.'

'I would have gone through tar, water, and fire,' said Glory vehemently. 'I would not have been beat.'

'I have no doubt about it, you would,' observed George, 'but you forget there might be worse things behind. An old woman after a stiff glass of grog, when her monkey is up, is better left to sleep off her liquor and her displeasure before encountered.'

'I would not tell the story,' said Mehalah; 'it does you no credit.'

'This is too bad of you, Glory! You ran me foul of her, and now reproach me for my steering.'

'You will run into plenty of messes if you go after Mehalah at night,' put in Phoebe with a saucy laugh.

'Glory!' said De Witt, 'come on the other side of Phoebe and give her your arm. She is lame. She has hurt her foot, and we are coming now to the mud.'

'Oh, I cannot think of troubling Mehalah,' said Phoebe sharply; 'you do not mind my leaning my whole weight on you, I know, George. You did not mind it at the Decoy.'

'Here is the ladder,' said De Witt; 'step on my foot and then you will not dirty your shoe-leather in the mud. Don't think you will hurt me. A light feather like you will be unfelt.'

'Do you keep the ladder down day and night?' asked Glory.

'No. It is always hauled up directly I come home. Only that one night did mother draw it up without me. We are as safe in the "Pandora" as you are at the Ray.'

'And there is this in the situation which is like,' said Phoebe, pertly, 'that neither can entice robbers, and need securing, as neither has anything to lose.'

'I beg your pardon,' answered George, 'there are my savings on board. My mother sleeps soundly, so she will not turn in till the ladder is up. That is the same as locking the door on land. If you have money in the till——'

'There always is money there, plenty of it too.'

'I have no doubt about it, Phoebe. Under these circumstances you do not go to bed and leave your door open.'

'I should think not. You go first up the ladder, I will follow. Mehalah can stop and paddle in her native mud, or come after us as suits her best.' Turning her head to Glory she said, 'Two are company, three are none.' Then to the young man, 'George, give me your hand to help me on deck, you forget your manners. I fear the Decoy is where you have left and lost them.'

She jumped on deck. Mehalah followed without asking for or expecting assistance.

The vessel was an old collier, which George's father had bought when no longer seaworthy for a few pounds. He had run her up on the Hard, dismasted her, and converted her into a dwelling. In it George had been born and reared. 'There is one advantage in living in a house such as this,' said De Witt; 'we pay neither tax, nor tithe, nor rate.'

'Is that you?' asked a loud hard voice, and a head enveloped in a huge mob cap appeared from the companion ladder. 'What are you doing there, gallivanting with girls all day? Come down to me and let's have it out.'

'Mother is touchy,' said George in a subdued voice; 'she gets a little rough and knotty at times, but she is a rare woman for melting and untying speedily.'

'Come here, George!' cried the rare woman.

'I am coming, mother.' He showed the two girls the ladder; Mrs. De Witt had disappeared. 'Go down into the fore cabin, then straight on. Turn your face to the ladder as you descend.' Phoebe hesitated. She was awestruck by the voice and appearance of Mrs. De Witt. However, at a sign from George she went down, and was followed by Mehalah. Bending her head, she passed through the small fore-cabin where was George's bunk, into the main cabin, which served as kitchen, parlour, and bedroom to Mrs. De Witt. A table occupied the centre, and at the end was an iron cooking stove. Everything was clean, tidy, and comfortable. On a shelf at the side stood the chairs. Mrs. De Witt whisked one down.

'Your servant,' said she to Phoebe, with more amiability than the girl anticipated. 'Yours too, Glory,' curtly to Mehalah.

Mrs. De Witt was not favourable to her son's attachment to Glory. She was an imperious, strong-minded woman, a despot in her own house, and she had no wish to see that house invaded by a daughter-in-law as strong of will and iron-headed as herself. She wished to see George mated to a girl whom she could browbeat and manage as she browbeat and managed her son. George's indecision of character was due in measure to his bringing up by such a mother. He had been cuffed and yelled at from infancy. His intimacy with the maternal lap had been contracted head downwards, and was connected with a stinging sensation at the rear. Self-assertion had been beat or bawled out of him. She was not a bad, but a despotic woman. She liked to have her own way, and she obtained it, first with her husband, and then with her son, and the ease with which she had mastered and maintained the sovereignty had done her as much harm as them.

If a beggar be put on horseback he will ride to the devil, and a woman in command will proceed to unsex herself. She was a good-hearted woman at bottom, but then that bottom where the good heart lay was never to be found with an anchor, but lay across the course as a shoal where deep water was desired. Her son knew perfectly where it was not, but never where it was. Mrs. De Witt in face somewhat resembled her nephew, Elijah Rebow, but she was his senior by ten years. She had the same hawk-like nose and dark eyes, but was without the wolfish jaw. Nor had she the eager intelligence that spoke out of Elijah's features. Hers were hard and coarse and unillumined with mind.

When she saw Phoebe enter her cabin she was both surprised and gratified. A fair, feeble, bread-and-butter Miss, such as she held the girl to be, was just the daughter she fancied. Were she to come to the 'Pandora' with whims and graces, the month of honey with George would assume the taste of vinegar with her, and would end in the new daughter's absolute submission. She would be able to convert such a girl very speedily into a domestic drudge and a recipient of her abuse. Men make themselves, but women are made, and the making of women, thought Mrs. De Witt, should be in the hands of women; men botched them, because they let them take their own way.

Mrs. De Witt never forgave her parents for having bequeathed her no money; she could not excuse Elijah for having taken all they left, without considering her. She found a satisfaction in discharging her wrongs on others. She was a saving woman, and spent little money on her personal adornment. 'What coin I drop,' she was wont to say, 'I drop in rum, and smuggled rum is cheap.'

But though an article is cheap, a great consumption of it may cause the item to be a serious one; and it was so with Mrs. De Witt.

The vessel to which she acted as captain, steward, and cook, was named the 'Pandora.' The vicar was wont to remark that it was a 'Pandora's' box full of all gusts, but minus gentle Zephyr.

'Will you take a chair?' she said obsequiously to Phoebe, placing the chair for h er, after having first breathed on the seat and wiped it with her sleeve. Then turning to Mehalah, she asked roughly, 'Well, Glory! how is that old fool, your mother?'

'Better than your manners,' replied Mehalah.

'I am glad you are come, Glory,' said Mrs. De Witt, 'I want to have it out with you. What do you mean by coming here of a night, and carrying off my son when he ought to be under his blankets in his bunk? I won't have it. He shall keep proper hours. Such conduct is not decent. What do you think of that?' she asked, seating herself on the other side of the table, and addressing Phoebe, but leaving Mehalah standing. 'What do you think of a girl coming here after nightfall, and asking my lad to go off for a row with her all in the dark, and the devil knows whither they went, and the mischief they were after. It is not respectable, is it?'

'George should not have gone when she asked him,' said the girl.

'Dear Sackalive! she twists him round her little finger. He no more dare deny her anything than he dare defy me. But I will have my boy respectable, I can promise you. I combed his head well for him when he came home, I did by cock! He shall not do the thing again.'

'Look here, mother,' remonstrated George; 'wash our dirty linen in private.'

'Indeed!' exclaimed Mrs. De Witt. 'That is strange doctrine! Why, who would know we wore any linen at all next our skin, unless we exposed it when washed over the side of the wessel? Now you come here. I have a bone to pick along with you, George!'

To be on a level with her son, and stare him full in the eyes, a way she had with everyone she assailed, she sat on the table, and put her feet on the chair.

'What has become of the money? I have been to the box, and there are twenty pounds gone out of it, all in gold. I haven't took it, so you must have. Now I want to know what you have done with it. I will have it out. I endure no evasions. Where is the money? Fork it out, or I will turn all your pockets inside out, and find and retake it. You want no money, not you. I provide you with tobacco. Where is the money? Twenty pounds, and all in gold. I was like a shrimp in scalding water when I went to the box to-day and found the money gone. I turned that red you might have said it was erysipelas. I shruck out that they might have heard me at the City. Turn your pockets out at once.'

George looked abashed; he was cowed by his mother.

'I'll take the carving knife to you!' said the woman, 'if you do not hand me over the cash at once.'

'Oh don't, pray don't hurt him!' cried Phoebe, interposing her arm, and beginning to cry.

'Dear Sackalive!' exclaimed Mrs. De Witt, 'I am not aiming at his witals, but at his pockets. Where is the money?'

'I have had it,' said Mehalah, stepping forward and standing between De Witt and his mother. 'George has behaved generously, nobly by us. You have heard how we were robbed of our money. We could not have paid our rent for the Ray had not George let us have twenty pounds. He shall not lose it.'

'You had it, you!—you!' cried Mrs. De Witt in wild and fierce astonishment. 'Give it up to me at once.'

'I cannot do so. The greater part is gone. I paid the money to-day to Rebow, our landlord.'

'Elijah has it! Elijah gets everything. My father left me without a shilling, and now he gets my hard-won earnings also.'

'It seems to me, mistress, that the earnings belong to George, and surely he has a right to do with them what he will,' said Mehalah coldly.

'That is your opinion, is it? It is not mine.' Then she mused: 'Twenty pounds is a fortune. One may do a great deal with such a sum as that, Mehalah; twenty pounds is twenty pounds whatever you may say; and it must be repaid.'

'It shall be.'

'When?'

'As soon as I can earn the money.'

Mrs. De Witt's eyes now rested on Phoebe, and she assumed a milder manner. Her mood was variable as the colour of the sea; 'I'm obliged to be peremptory at times,' she said; 'I have to maintain order in the wessel. You will stay and have something to eat?'

'Thank you; your son has already promised us some oysters,—that is, promised me.'

'Come on deck,' said George. 'We will have them there, and mother shall brew the liquor below.'

The mother grunted a surly acquiescence.

When the three had re-ascended the ladder, the sun was setting. The mouth of the Blackwater glittered like gold leaf fluttered by the breath. The tide had begun to flow, and already the water had surrounded the 'Pandora.' Phoebe and Mehalah would have to return by boat, or be carried by De Witt.

The two girls stood side by side. The contrast between them was striking, and the young man noticed it. Mehalah was tall, lithe, and firm as a young pine, erect in her bearing, with every muscle well developed, firm of flesh, her skin a rich ripe apricot, and her eyes, now that the sun was in them, like volcanic craters, gloomy, but full of fire. Her hair, rich to profusion, was black, yet with coppery hues in it when seen with a side light. It was simply done up in a knot, neatly not elaborately. Her navy-blue jersey and skirt, the scarlet of her cap and kerchief, and of a petticoat that appeared below the skirt, made her a rich combination of colour, suitable to a sunny clime rather than to the misty bleak east coast. Phoebe was colourless beside her, a faded picture, faint in outline. Her complexion was delicate as the rose, her frame slender, her contour undulating and weak. She was the pattern of a trim English village maiden, with the beauty of youth, and the sweetness of ripening womanhood, sans sense, sans passion, sans character, sans everything—pretty vacuity. She seemed to feel her own inferiority beside the gorgeous Mehalah, and to be angry at it. She took off her bonnet, and the wind played with her yellow curls, and the setting sun spun them into a halo of gold about her delicate face.

'Loose your hair, Mehalah,' said the spiteful girl.

'What for?'

'I want to see how it will look in the sun.'

'Do so, Glory!' begged George. 'How shining Phoebe's locks are. One might melt and coin them into guineas.'

Mehalah pulled out a pin, and let her hair fall, a flood of warm black with red gleams in it. It reached her waist, and the wind scattered it about her like a veil.

If Phoebe's hair resembled a spring fleecy cloud gilded by the sun, buoyant in the soft warm air, that of Mehalah was like an angry thunder shower with a promise of sunshine gleaming through the rain.

'Black or gold, which do you most admire, George?' asked the saucy girl.

'That is not a fair question to put to me,' said De Witt in reply; but he put his fingers through the dark tresses of Mehalah, and raised them to his lips. Phoebe bit her tongue.

'George,' she said sharply. 'See the sun is in my hair. I am in glory. That is better than being so only in name.'

'But your glory is short-lived, Phoebe; the sun will be set in a minute, and then it is no more.'

'And hers,' she said spitefully, 'hers—you imply—endures eternally. I will go home.'

'Do not be angry, Phoebe, there cannot be thunder in such a golden cloud. There can be nothing worse than a rainbow.'

'What have you got there about your neck, George?' she asked, pacified by the compliment.

'A riband.'

'Yes, and something at the end of it—a locket containing a tuft of black horsehair.'

'No, there is not.'

'Call me "mate," as you did when we were at the Decoy. How happy we were there, but then we were alone, that makes all the difference.'

George did not answer. Mehalah's hot blood began to fire her dark cheek.

'Tell me what you have got attached to that riband; if you love me, tell me, George. We girls are always inquisitive.'

'A keepsake, Phoebe.'

'A keepsake! Then I must see it.' She snatched at the riband where it showed above De Witt's blue jersey.

'I noticed it before, when you were so attentive at the Decoy.'

Mehalah interposed her arm, and placing her open hand on George's breast, thrust him out of the reach of the insolent flirt.

'For shame of you, how dare you behave thus!' she exclaimed.

'Oh dear!' cried Phoebe, 'I see it all. Your keepsake. How sentimental! Oh, George! I shall die of laughing.'

She went into pretended convulsions of merriment. 'I cannot help it, this is really too ridiculous.'

Mehalah was trembling with anger. Her gipsy blood was in flame. There is a flagrant spirit in such veins which soon bursts into an explosion of fire.

Phoebe stepped up to her, and holding her delicate fingers beside the strong hand of Mehalah, whispered, 'Look at these little fingers. They will pluck your love out of your rude clutch.' She saw that she was stinging her rival past endurance. She went on aloud, casting a saucy side glance at De Witt, 'I should like to add my contribution to the trifle that is collecting for you since you lost your money. I suppose there is a brief. Off with the red cap and pass it round. Here is a crown.'

The insult was unendurable. Mehalah's passion overpowered her. In a moment she had caught up the girl, and without considering what she was doing, she flung her into the sea. Then she staggered back and panted for breath.

A cry of dismay from De Witt. He rushed to the side.

'Stay!' said Mehalah, restraining him with one hand and pressing the other to her heart. 'She will not drown.'

The water was not deep. Several fisherlads had already sprung to the rescue, and Phoebe was drawn limp and dripping towards the shore. Mehalah stooped, picked up the girl's straw hat, and slung it after her.

A low laugh burst from someone riding in a boat under the side of the vessel.

'Well done, Glory! You served the pretty vixen right. I love you for it.'

She knew the voice. It was that of Rebow. He must have heard, perhaps seen all.