Baring-Gould Sabine
The Broom-Squire
CHAPTER XXI
THOR'S STONE
Mehetabel ran, neither along the way that led in the direction of
Portsmouth, nor along that to Godalming, but to the Moor.
"The Moor," is the marsh land that lies at the roots of the sandstone heights that culminate in Hind Head, Leith Hill, and the Devil's Jumps. As already said, the great mass of Bagshot sand lies upon a substratum of clay. The sand drinks in every drop of rain that falls on the surface. This percolates through it till it reaches the clay, which refuses to absorb it, or let it sink through to other beds. Thereupon the accumulated water breaks forth in springs at the base of the hills, and forms a wide tract of morass, interspersed with lagoons that teem with fish and wild fowl. This region is locally known as "Moor," in contradistinction to the commons or downs, which are the dry sandy upland.
"The Moor" is in many places impassable, but the blown sand has fallen upon it, and has formed slight elevations, has drifted into undulations, and these strips of rising ground, kept moist by the water they absorb, have become covered with vegetation. It is, moreover, possible by their means to penetrate to the heart of, and even thread, the intricacies, and traverse the entire region of the Moor.
But it is, at best, a wild and lonesome district, to be explored with caution, a labyrinth, the way through which is known only to the natives of the sandhills that dominate the marshy plain.
About thirty years ago a benevolent and beneficent landlord, in a time of agricultural distress, gave employment to a large number of men out of work in the construction of a causeway across the Thursley "Moor."
But the work was of no real utility, and it is now overgrown with weeds, and only trodden by the sportsman in pursuit of game and the naturalist in quest of rare insects and water plants.
A considerable lake, Pudmere, or Pug – Puckmere, lies in the Thursley marsh land, surrounded with dwarf willows and scattered pines. These latter have sprung from the wind-blown seeds of the plantations on higher ground. Throughout this part of the country an autumn gale always results in the upspringing of a forest of young pines, next year, to leeward of a clump of cone-bearing trees. In the Moor such self-sown woods come to no ripeness. The pines are unhealthy and stunted, hung with gray moss, and eaten out with canker. The excessive moisture and the impenetrable subsoil, and the shallowness of the congenial sand that encouraged them to root make the young trees decay in adolescence.
An abundant and varied insect world has its home in the Moor. The large brown hawkmoth darts about like an arrow. Dragon flies of metallic blue, or striped yellow and brown, hover above the lanes of water, lost in admiration of their own gorgeous selves reflected in the still surface. The great water-beetle booms against the head of the intruder, and then drops as a stone into the pool at his feet. Effets, saffron yellow bellied, with striped backs, swim in the ponds or crawl at their bottom. The natterjack, so rare elsewhere, differing from a toad in that it has a yellow band down its back, has here a paradise. It may be seen at eve perched on a stock of willow herb, or running – it does not hop – round the sundew, clearing the glutinous stamens of the flies that have been caught by them, and calling in a tone like the warning note of the nightingale. Sleeping on the surface the carp lies, and will not be scared save by a stone thrown into the still water in which it dreams away its life.
The sandy elevations are golden with tormintilla; a richer gold is that which lies below, where the marsh glows with bog asphodel. The flowering rush spreads its pale pink blossoms; a deeper crimson is the marsh orchis showing its spires among the drooping clusters of the waxy-pink, cross-leaved heath, and the green or pale and rosy-tinted bog-mosses.
Near Pudmoor Pool stands a gray block of ironstone, a solitary portion of the superincumbent bed that has been washed away. It resembles a gigantic anvil, and it goes by the name of Thor's Stone. The slopes that dip towards it are the Thor's-lea, and give their name to the parish that includes it and them.
At one time there was a similar mass of iron at the summit of
Borough Hill, that looks down upon the morasses.
To this many went who were in trouble or necessity, and knocking on the stone made known their requirements to the Pucksies, and it was asserted, and generally believed, that such applicants had not gone away unanswered, nor unrelieved.
It was told of a certain woman who one evening sought to be freed by this means from the husband who had made her life unendurable, that that same night – so ran the tale – he was returning from the tavern, drunk, and stumbling over the edge of a quarry fell and broke his neck. Thereupon certain high moralists and busybodies had the mass of stone broken up and carted away to mend the roads, with the expectation thereby of putting an end to what they were pleased to term "a degrading superstition."
To some extent the destruction of the Wishing Block did check the practice. But there continued to be persons in distress, and women plagued with drunken husbands, and men afflicted with scolding wives. And when the pilgrimage of such to Borough Hill ceased, because of the destruction of the stone on it, then was it diverted, and the current flowed instead to Thor's Stone – a stone that had long been regarded with awe, and which now became an object of resort, as it was held to have acquired the merits of the block so wantonly demolished on Borough Hill.
Nevertheless, the object of the high moralists and busybodies was partially attained, inasmuch as the difficulties and dangers attending a visit to Thor's Stone reduced the number of those seeking superhuman assistance in their difficulties. Courage was requisite in one who ventured to the Moor at night, and made a way to the iron-stone block, over tracts of spongy morass, among lines of stagnant ooze, through coppices of water-loving willows and straggling brier. This, which was difficult by day, was dangerous in a threefold degree at night. Moreover, the Moor was reputed to be haunted by spirits, shadows that ran and leaped, and peered and jabbered; and Puck wi' the lantern flickered over the surface of the festering bog.
If, then, the visits to Thor's Stone were not so many as to the stone on Borough Hill, this was due less to the waning of superstition than to the difficulties attending an expedition to the former. Without considering what she was doing, moved by a blind impulse, Mehetabel ran in the direction of Puck's Moor.
And yet the impulse was explicable. She had often thought over the tales told of visits to the habitation of the "Good Folk" on Borough Hill, and the transfer of the pilgrimage to Thor's Stone. She had, of late, repeatedly asked herself whether, by a visit thither, she might not gain what lay at her heart – an innocent desire – none other than that Iver should depart.
Now that he had made open show of his passion, that all concealment was over between them, every veil and disguise plucked away – now she felt that her strength was failing her, and it would fail completely if subjected to further trial.
One idea, like a spark of fire shooting through her brain, alone possessed her at this moment. Her safety depended on one thing – the removal of Iver. Let him go! Let him go! then she could bear her lot. Let her see him no more! then she would be able to bring her truant heart under discipline. Otherwise her life would be unendurable, her tortured brain would give way, her overtaxed heart would break.
She found no stay for her soul in the knowledge where was situated the country of the Gergesenes, no succor in being well drilled in the number of chapters in Genesis. She turned desperately, in her necessity, to Thor's Stone, to the spirits – what they were she knew not – who aided those in need, and answered petitions addressed to them.
The night had already set in, but a full golden moon hung in the sky, and the night was in no way dark and dreadful.
When she reached the Moor, Mehetabel ran among sheets of gold, leaped ribbons of shining metal, danced among golden filagree – the reflection of the orb in the patches, channels, frets of water. She sprang from one dark tuft of rushes to another; she ran along the ridges of the sand. She skipped where the surface was treacherous. What mattered it to her if she missed her footing, sank, and the ooze closed over her? As well end so a life that could never be other than long drawn agony.
Before leaving the heath, she had stooped and picked up a stone. It was a piece of hematite iron, such as frequently occurs in the sand, liver-shaped, and of the color of liver.
She required a hammer, wherewith to knock on Thor's anvil, and make her necessities known, and this piece of iron would serve her purpose.
Frogs were croaking, a thousand natterjacks were whirring like the nightjar. Strange birds screamed and rushed out of the trees as she sped along. White moths, ghostlike, wavered about her, mosquitoes piped. Water-rats plunged into the pools.
As a child she had been familiar with Pudmoor, and instinctively she walked, ran, only where her foot could rest securely.
A special Providence, it is thought, watches over children and drunkards. It watches also over such as are drunk with trouble, it holds them up when unable to think for themselves, it holds them back when they court destruction.
To this morass, Mehetabel had come frequently with Iver, in days long gone by, to hunt the natterjack and the dragon-fly, to look for the eggs of water fowl, and to pick marsh flowers.
As she pushed on, a thin mist spread over portions of the "Moor." It did not lie everywhere, it spared the sand, it lay above the water, but in so delicate a film as to be all but imperceptible. It served to diffuse the moonlight, to make a halo of silver about the face of the orb, when looked up to by one within the haze, otherwise it was scarcely noticeable.
Mehetabel ran with heart bounding and with fevered brain, and yet with her mind holding tenaciously to one idea.
After a while, and after deviations from the direct course, rendered necessary by the nature of the country she traversed, Mehetabel reached Thor's Stone, that gleamed white in the moonbeam beside a sheet of water, the Mere of the Pucksies. This mere had the mist lying on it more dense than elsewhere. The vapor rested on the surface as a fine gossamer veil, not raised above a couple of feet, hardly ruffled by a passing sigh of air. A large bird floated over it on expanded wings, it looked white as a swan in the moonlight, but cast a shadow black as pitch on the vaporous sheet that covered the face of the pool.
It was as though, like Dinorah, this bird were dancing to its own shadow. But unlike Dinorah, it was silent. It uttered no song, there was even no sound of the rush of air from its broad wings. When Mehetabel reached the stone she stood for a moment palpitating, gasping for breath, and her breath passing from her lips in white puffs of steam.
The haze from the mere seemed to rise and fling its long streamers about her head and blindfold her eyes, so that she could see neither the lake nor the trees, not even the anvil-stone. Only was there about her a general silvery glitter, and a sense of oppression lay upon her.
Mehetabel had escaped from the inn, as she was, with bare arms, her skirt looped up.
She stood thus, with the lump of ironstone resting on the block, the full flood of moonlight upon her, blinding her eyes, but revealing her against a background of foliage, like a statue of alabaster. Startled by a rustle in the bulrushes and willow growth behind her, Mehetabel turned and looked, but her eyes were not clear enough for her to discern anything, and as the sound ceased, she recovered from her momentary alarm.
She had heard that a deer was in Pudmoor that was supposed to have escaped from the park at Peperharow. Possibly the creature was there. It was harmless. There were no noxious beasts there. It was too damp for vipers, nothing in Pudmoor was hurtful save the gnats that there abounded. Then, with her face turned to the north, away from the dazzling glory of the moon, Mehetabel swung the lump of kidney iron she had taken as hammer, once from east to west, and once from west to east. With a third sweep she brought it down upon Thor's Stone and cried:
"Take him away! Take him away!"
CHAPTER XXII
IVER! COME
She paused, drew a long breath.
Again she swung the hammer-stone. And now she turned round, and passed the piece of iron into her left hand. She raised it and struck on the anvil, and cried: "Save me from him. Take him away." A rush, all the leaves of the trees behind seemed to be stirring, and all the foliage falling about her.
A hand was laid on her shoulder roughly, and the stone dropped from her fingers on the anvil. Mehetabel shrank, froze, as struck with a sudden icy blast, and cried out with fear.
Then said a voice: "So! you seek the Devil's aid to rid you of me."
At once she knew that she was in the presence of her husband, but so dazzled was she that she could not discern him.
His fingers closed on her arm, as though each were an iron screw.
"So!" said he, in a low tone, his voice quivering with rage, "like
Karon Wyeth, you ask the Devil to break my neck."
"No," gasped Mehetabel.
"Yes, Matabel. I heard you. 'Save me from him. Take him away.'"
"No – no – Jonas."
She could not speak more in her alarm and confusion.
"Take him away. Snap his spine – send a bullet through his skull; cast him into Pug's mere and drown him; do what you will, only rid me of Bideabout Kink, whom I swore to love, honor, and to obey."
He spoke with bitterness and wrath, sprinkled over, nay, permeated, with fear; for, with all his professed rationalism, Jonas entertained some ancestral superstitions – and belief in the efficacy of the spirits that haunted Thor's Stone was one.
"No, Jonas, no. I did not ask it."
"I heard you."
"Not you."
"What," sneered he; "are not these ears mine?"
"I mean – I did not ask to have you taken away."
"Then whom?"
She was silent. She trembled. She could not answer his question.
If her husband had been at all other than he was, Mehetabel would have taken him into her confidence. But there are certain persons to whom to commit a confidence is to expose yourself to insult and outrage. Mehetabel knew this. Such a confidence as she would have given would be turned by him into a means of torture and humiliation.
"Now listen to me," said Jonas, in quivering tones of a voice that was suppressed. "I know all now. I did not. I trusted you. I was perhaps a fool. I believed in you. But Sarah has told me all – how he – that painting ape – has been at my house, meeting you, befooling you, pouring his love-tales into your ears, and watching till my back was turned to kiss you."
She was unable to speak. Her knees smote together.
"You cannot answer," he continued. "You are unable to deny that it was so. Sarah has kept an eye on you both. She should have spoken before. I am sorry she did not. But better late than never. You encouraged him to come to you. You drew him to the house."
"No, Jonas, no. It was you who invited him."
"Ah! for me he would not come. Little he cared for my society. The picture-making was but an excuse, and you all have been in a league against me."
"Who – Jonas?"
"Who? Why, Sanna Verstage and all. Did not she ask to have you at the Ship, and say that the painting fellow was going or gone? And is he not there still? She said it to get you and him together there, away from me, out of the reach of Sarah's eyes."
"It is false, Jonas!" exclaimed Mehetabel with indignation, that for a while overcame her fear.
"False!" cried Bideabout. "Who is false but you? What is false but every word you speak? False in heart, false in word, and false in act." He had laid hold of the bit of ironstone, and he struck the anvil with it at every charge of falsehood.
"Jonas," said Mehetabel, recovering self-control under the resentment she felt at being misunderstood, and her action misinterpreted. "Jonas, I have done you no injury. I was weak. God in heaven knows my integrity. I have never wronged you; but I was weak, and in deadly fear."
"In fear of whom?"
"Of myself – my own weakness."
"You weak!" he sneered. "You – strong as any woman."
"I do not speak of my arms, Jonas – my heart – my spirit – "
"Weak!" he scoffed. "A woman with a weak and timorous soul would not come to Thor's Stone at night. No – strong you are – in evil, in wickedness, from which no tears will withhold you. And – that fellow – that daub-paint – "
Mehetabel did not speak. She was trembling.
"I ask – what of him? Was not he in your thoughts when you asked the Devil to rid you of me – your husband?"
"I did not ask that, Jonas."
"What of him? He has not gone away. He has been with you. You knew he was not going. You wanted to be with him. Where is he – this dauber of canvas – now?"
Then, through the fine gauze of condensing haze, came a call from a distance – "Matabel! Where are you?"
"Oh, ho!" exclaimed the Broom-Squire. "Here he comes. By appointment you meet him here, where you least expected that I would be."
"It is false, Jonas. I came here to escape."
"And pray for my death?"
"No, Jonas, to be rid of him."
Bideabout chuckled, with a sarcastic sneer in the side of his face.
"Come now," said he; "I should dearly like to witness this meeting. If true to me, as you pretend, then obey me, summon him here, and let me be present, unobserved, when you meet. If your wish be, as you say, to be rid of him, I will help you to its fulfilment."
"Jonas!"
"I will it. So alone can you convince me."
She hesitated. She had not the power to gather her thoughts together, to judge what she should do, what under the circumstances would be best to be done.
"Come now," repeated Jonas. "If you are true and honest, as you say, call him."
She put her trembling hand to her head, wiped the drops from her brow, the tears from her eyes, the dew from her quivering lips.
Her brain was reeling, her power of will was paralyzed.
"Come, now," said Jonas once more, "answer him – here am I."
Then Mehetabel cried, "Iver, here am I!"
"Where are you, Mehetabel?" came the question through the silvery haze and the twinkling willow-shoots.
"Answer him, by Thor's Stone," said Jonas.
Again she hesitated and passed her hand over her face.
"Answer him," whispered Jonas. "If you are true, do as I say. If false, be silent."
"By Thor's Stone," called Mehetabel.
Then all the sound heard was that of the young man brushing his way through the rushes and willow boughs.
In the terror, the agony overmastering her, she had lost all independent power of will. She was as a piece of mechanism in the hands of Jonas. His strong, masterful mind dominated her, beat down for a time all opposition. She knew that to summon Iver was to call him to a fearful struggle, perhaps to his death, and yet the faculty of resistance was momentarily gone from her. She tried to collect her thoughts. She could not. She strove to think what she ought to do, she was unable to frame a thought in her mind that whirled and reeled.
Bideabout stooped and picked up a gun he had been carrying, and had dropped on the turf when he laid hold of his wife.
Now he placed the barrel across the anvil stone, with the muzzle directed whence came the sound of the advance of Iver.
Jonas went behind the stone and bent one knee to the ground.
Mehetabel heard the click as he spanned the trigger.
"Stand on one side," said Jonas, in a low tone, in which were mingled rage and exultation. "Call him again."
She was silent. Lest she should speak she pressed both her hands to her mouth.
"Call him again," said Jonas. "I will receive him with a dab of lead in his heart."
She would not call.
"On your obedience and truth, of which you vaunt," persisted Jonas.
Should she utter a cry of warning? Would he comprehend? Would that arrest him, make him retrace his steps, escape what menaced?
Whether she cried or not he would come on. He knew Thor's Stone as well as she. They had often visited it together as children.
"If false, keep silence," said Jonas, looking up at her from where he knelt. "If true, bid him come – to his death, that I may carry out your wish, and rid you of him. If the spirits won't help you, I will."
Then she shrilly cried, "Iver, come!"
