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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
Set against the haunting landscapes of the English Fens, Sabine Baring-Gould's "Mehalah" is a compelling narrative that weaves together themes of love, superstition, and social injustice. Written in a rich, descriptive prose that captures the stark beauty of rural life in the late 19th century, the novel delves deep into the complexities of human relationship and the harsh realities of class struggle. Baring-Gould's acute observations of the local dialects and customs elevate the text, placing it firmly within the tradition of regional literature that sought to bring authentic voices and experiences to the forefront of English narrative. Sabine Baring-Gould was a multifaceted figure; he was not only a novelist but also an accomplished folklorist, antiquarian, and clergyman. His extensive knowledge of folklore and the societal fabric of his time profoundly influenced his writing. "Mehalah" reflects Baring-Gould's fascination with the lives of ordinary people and his commitment to exploring existential themes, likely inspired by his own experiences and studies of rural communities across Britain. For readers seeking a richly woven tale that explores the depths of human emotion set against a vivid historical backdrop, "Mehalah" offers an unforgettable journey. Baring-Gould's masterful storytelling invites exploration of the shimmering intersections between love and fate, making it an essential read for those interested in the complexities of character and social criticism in literature. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020
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Mehalah
Table of Contents
Introduction
Across the wind-bitten salt marshes of the Essex coast, a fiercely self-reliant young woman discovers that possession, duty, and the undertow of place surge and recede like the tide, pressing her to choose between the integrity of her spirit and the encircling will of those who would shape her life.
Mehalah: A Story of the Salt Marshes by Sabine Baring-Gould is a Victorian novel first published in the 1880s, set amid the creeks and saltings of coastal Essex. Part regional romance and part brooding psychological study, it immerses readers in a landscape where elemental weather and shifting waters govern daily existence. Baring-Gould, an Anglican clergyman and prolific author, draws on local detail to make setting inseparable from character. The marshes become both cradle and crucible, a world whose austerity refines the book’s drama into stark lines of desire, obligation, and endurance without the comforts of drawing-room society.
At its center stands Mehalah, whose hard-won independence is tested when a dominant local figure exerts a possessive interest that threatens to close around her like fog. The novel’s early movements chart a life shaped by tides, labor, and community codes of survival, in which strength is learned rather than declared. Without revealing later turns, the premise steadily tightens: autonomy comes at a cost, and shelter—whether emotional, social, or material—may demand impossible bargains. Readers can expect an atmospheric, slow-building narrative that privileges mood, moral pressure, and the intimate scale of village and waterway.
Baring-Gould writes with an unsentimental lyricism that keeps the marshes ever-present: mudflats glimmer, channels twist, and the horizon narrows to a blade. Yet the style is not mere description; it is a steady, exacting gaze that binds human tempers to the weather. The voice balances toughness and poignancy, avoiding melodrama even as passions run high. Scenes unfold with tactile specificity—boats, tides, wind, and reed-bed paths—so that action feels fated by geography. The result is a reading experience at once immersive and austere, where character is revealed not by epigrammatic speech but by choices ground out against elemental constraints.
Themes of power, consent, and self-possession give the book a moral spine as firm as its terrain is unstable. Mehalah’s struggle for agency unfolds alongside questions of class, land, and the informal hierarchies that flourish in isolated communities. The novel probes how love can shade into coercion, how protection can mask control, and how belonging can become a net. It also asks what forms of freedom are possible when economic, familial, and geographic pressures converge. Without prescribing answers, it invites readers to weigh resolve against compassion and to consider the costs of integrity in an unforgiving environment.
Although rooted in a precise locale, the story resonates beyond its marsh-bound boundaries. Readers today may recognize its exploration of gendered expectation, emotional dependency, and the politics of small communities where every gesture is seen and remembered. Its refusal to idealize rural life feels contemporary: nature is magnificent but not benign, and community is sustaining yet capable of enforcing silence. The book’s power arises from this doubleness—beauty and bleakness, tenderness and force—held in tension. Such contrasts make the novel a compelling companion for anyone drawn to place-driven fiction that tests characters against the grain of their world.
Approach Mehalah for a drama measured in tides rather than minutes, and for a heroine whose resolve is more than a slogan—it is a habit of being. Baring-Gould offers an elemental romance stripped of ornament but rich in atmosphere, one that rewards patient reading with accumulating pressure and insight. Without disclosing later developments, it is enough to say that the opening situation grows darker, stranger, and more intimate as landscape, power, and will intersect. For those who value strong sense of place, moral complexity, and a tone at once severe and luminous, this novel remains strikingly alive.
Synopsis
Mehalah, a novel by Sabine Baring-Gould, unfolds on the Essex salt-marshes, a landscape of tidal flats, creeks, and isolated homesteads. The heroine, Mehalah Sharland, lives on the Ray, a lonely farm on the saltings, where she manages hard labor and cares for her ailing mother. The community of dredgermen, farmers, and occasional smugglers forms a rough, self-contained world shaped by tides and weather. From the outset, the narrative emphasizes Mehalah’s competence, independence, and loyalty to her home. The stark setting, with its sudden fogs and treacherous channels, frames a story in which willpower, duty, and survival contend against a harsh environment and human ambition.
Early chapters trace Mehalah’s routine and her protective bond with her mother, establishing their precarious security under a tenancy that could be withdrawn. Rumors of debts and contested rights to the Ray unsettle this fragile stability. Into this tension steps Elijah Rebow, master of Red Hall, a powerful, solitary figure whose influence extends over the marsh people. He takes an interest in Mehalah that blends protection with control. His intervention offers material relief, yet the terms and tone of his help are ambiguous. The novel begins aligning individual fates with property, law, and the shifting ground of marshland ownership.
Rebow’s presence grows, and with it the suggestion that aid can become a lever. He exerts a landlord’s authority, hints at claims that exceed mere tenancy, and expects obedience. Red Hall, looming over the creeks, symbolizes his reach, while the marshes’ labyrinth makes movement dependent on permission and knowledge he commands. Mehalah resists intrusion, valuing her independence and the Ray’s hard-won security. Her refusals, frank speech, and practical skill set her apart in a community inclined to deference. As tensions sharpen, Baring-Gould shows how the environment magnifies power dynamics: isolation limits choices, and tides can close off escape as surely as law.
A second force enters with George De Witt, a seafaring man connected to the marsh community and to Mehalah’s past. His return brings warmth, straightforward affection, and a different vision of companionship than Rebow’s possessive guardianship. Conversations, shared tasks, and modest acts of kindness establish a bond that remains cautious under the eyes of neighbors and the shadow of Red Hall. The triangle that forms is not merely romantic; it is also a contest of values and modes of life. Mehalah’s sense of duty to her mother and homestead weighs against the pull of friendship, protection, and the promise of a broader world.
Pressure mounts through legal and economic maneuvers. Questions of lease, arrears, and title tighten around the Ray, making every harvest and tide a calculation. Rebow’s influence with local authorities complicates any appeal, and his network among boatmen and laborers makes defiance conspicuous. Hints of illicit trading and nighttime movements across the saltings add risk to ordinary labor. Festive gatherings and church occasions punctuate the narrative, revealing public loyalties and private promises without resolving the underlying conflict. Mehalah’s resolve hardens: she will preserve her mother’s safety and the Ray’s continuity, even as the means of doing so seem to fall increasingly into Rebow’s hands.
A sudden catastrophe, shaped by the marsh’s hazards and human design, alters the balance of obligations. The event deepens Mehalah’s responsibilities and narrows her options, binding survival to agreements she would once have refused. Rebow’s role during and after the disaster intensifies his claim to indispensability, while also drawing criticism and fear. George seeks to assist, but circumstances and warnings impede him. The aftermath changes social perceptions of Mehalah, turning her from an independent farmer into a figure whose choices are watched, interpreted, and sometimes constrained by a community quick to judge and slow to intervene against power.
The middle movement of the novel becomes a sustained contest of wills. Mehalah negotiates terms, sets conditions, and insists on boundaries even within arrangements she cannot fully control. The psychological terrain is as perilous as the creeks: misread motives, pride, and half-spoken threats make every meeting consequential. Red Hall’s history and Rebow’s past emerge in fragments, suggesting long-standing grievances and solitary habits that have hardened into possessiveness. Scenes of winter tides, fog, and ice mirror an interior climate of endurance and vigilance. Through it all, Mehalah’s character remains constant: steadfast, practical, and unflinching about the costs of keeping faith.
As events accelerate, clandestine passages by boat, a tense public confrontation, and the growing attention of the law push private tensions into open crisis. Rebow’s hold reaches a peak, and attempts to bypass him carry immediate danger. George’s position becomes precarious, testing loyalty and caution alike. Without detailing the resolution, the novel reveals crucial truths about promises made under pressure, the nature of ownership and belonging on the marsh, and the limits of coercion. Choices made in darkness, on shifting ground and under changing tides, determine paths that cannot easily be undone and prepare the ground for the final reckoning.
The closing chapters deliver reckonings that fit the novel’s stark world: debts paid, claims tested, and bonds defined by action rather than declaration. The salt-marsh setting shapes outcomes as surely as any character, imposing a measure of justice that is concrete, costly, and unsentimental. Without disclosing final turns, the conclusion affirms a central theme: integrity demands sacrifice, yet offers a form of freedom that intimidation cannot secure. Mehalah’s story stands as a study of power and resistance, of love contrasted with ownership, and of a community’s customs under strain. Baring-Gould’s portrait of the marsh people endures through its detail, restraint, and atmospheric force.
Historical Context
Sabine Baring-Gould’s Mehalah is set in the salt marshes and estuarine islands of the Essex coast, especially around the Blackwater and Colne estuaries, near West Mersea, Peldon, Salcott, and Tollesbury. The time is mid-nineteenth century, when tidal creeks, saltings, and sea-walled grazing marshes shaped a semi-isolated, hard-working maritime culture. The geography—mudflats, reed-beds, and channels like the Ray—fostered fisheries, wildfowling, barge traffic, and small-scale farming, but also petty crime and clandestine trade. Access to the mainland often depended on causeways vulnerable to tides and weather, reinforcing a distinctive local autonomy. This setting lends the novel its stark realism, social friction, and the constant presence of the sea as livelihood and threat.
Smuggling and its suppression form a critical historical backdrop. During and after the Napoleonic Wars (ended 1815), high duties encouraged organized smuggling along the Essex creeks. The Preventive Water Guard (1809) and the national Coast Guard (formed 1822; placed under the Board of Customs in 1831 and the Admiralty in 1856) tightened surveillance of inshore waters. In the Blackwater and Colne, watch-houses, patrol boats, and informers increasingly challenged local networks. Mehalah’s portrayal of coercive, semi-lawless marsh authority and nocturnal movements across creeks mirrors this long transition from clandestine coastal economies to regulated shores, capturing the tension between local resilience and the encroaching state.
The native oyster fishery was the dominant maritime industry in the Colne and Blackwater, anchoring community life and conflict. Colchester’s oyster ground—worked from Wivenhoe, Rowhedge, Brightlingsea, Tollesbury, and Mersea—relied on dredging smacks, seasonal labor, and strict customary rules. The Sea Fisheries Act of 1868 enabled the grant of Several and Regulated Fishery Orders, and in the 1870s local authorities and companies secured orders to control parts of the Colne and Blackwater beds, formalizing tenure, seasons, and gear. Dredging typically concentrated between autumn and spring, with smacks rushing catches to Billingsgate Market in London (whose grand new market opened in 1877), increasingly via rail links from Colchester and Wivenhoe. Periodic stock collapses, poaching raids, and jurisdictional disputes—often pitting parishes and companies against each other—produced patrols, seizures, and litigation. Rivalries between Brightlingsea and Mersea dredgermen, and tensions over layings and seed-oyster relays, created a culture of vigilance and occasional violence. These dynamics filtered into everyday life: debt to merchants, dependence on tides, and the peril of a bad season could crush a household. In Mehalah, the estuary’s codes—who may cross which channel, whose word rules a salting, who controls access to a wharf—map closely onto oyster-rights mentalities. Authority in the marshes resembles the fishery’s blend of customary privilege and newly legalized monopoly. The novel’s conflicts echo the fishery’s anxieties about enclosure of common resources, the policing of nocturnal movement on creeks, and the harsh economics of perishable, tide-driven work, giving social specificity to its atmosphere of constraint, rivalry, and survival.
A centuries-long regime of marshland reclamation and sea-wall maintenance under the Essex Commissions of Sewers (rooted in the Statute of Sewers, 1531) framed rural power along the Blackwater and Colne. Parishes such as Peldon, Salcott, Tollesbury, and the Mersea villages were bound to raise rates, repair breaches, and litigate responsibilities for walls, sluices, and drains. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century improvements converted tidal flats into valuable pasture, but recurring storms and failures imposed heavy, unequal burdens on tenants and smallholders. Mehalah mirrors this legal and financial web: the authority exercised by wall-owners and marsh landlords over grazing, passage, and the use of creeks resonates with the novel’s depiction of coercion tied to land and water control.
The Poor Law Amendment Act (1834) reorganized relief through unions and workhouses, reshaping rural Essex. The Lexden & Winstree Union (established 1835) served West Mersea and nearby parishes, with a workhouse at Stanway opened in 1837; Tollesbury and adjacent Blackwater parishes were within the Maldon Union, whose workhouse system operated from the late 1830s. Outdoor relief was curtailed, pushing the poor toward institutional aid under deterrent conditions. Fear of the workhouse and the stigma of pauperism intensified dependence on precarious fisheries and seasonal farm labor. Mehalah’s households, constrained by debt and subsistence strategies, reflect this order—where a failed catch, an illness, or a landlord’s demand could precipitate institutional poverty.
Agricultural transformation and the Great Depression of British Agriculture (circa 1873–1896) shaped Essex livelihoods. Cheaper North American grain flooded markets after the early 1870s, with British wheat prices sliding from roughly the mid-50s shillings per quarter in the early 1870s to the low 30s by the mid-1890s. Essex’s arable counties contracted; some marshland shifted toward grazing and dairying, but wages fell and casual labor expanded. Out-migration to London and emigration overseas accelerated. The estuary communities, already balancing dredging, stock tending, and barge work, felt the squeeze of falling farm incomes and uncertain markets. Mehalah channels the atmosphere of contraction: tight credit, brittle hierarchies, and hard bargains in an economy where every tide and shilling count.
Epidemics and livestock disease unsettled mid-century Essex. Cholera waves struck England in 1832 and 1849, with outbreaks recorded in towns like Colchester; sanitary reforms lagged in rural fringes. The cattle plague (rinderpest) of 1865–1867 devastated herds nationwide—over 400,000 animals lost—prompting the Cattle Diseases Prevention Acts (1866) and aggressive slaughter and movement controls. Marsh graziers around the Blackwater who relied on saltings for summer feeding faced quarantine costs and stock losses. Mehalah’s persistent threat of destitution, the bodily toll of wetland labor, and the fragility of household economies align with a world periodically shocked by contagion, culls, and market closures that could erase a year’s gains in weeks.
Through its focus on coercive local power, tenancy insecurity, and the price of survival in a regulated estuary, the novel functions as a social critique of Victorian rural governance. It exposes how customary rights could be enclosed under new statutes, how sea-wall and fishery authorities disciplined movement and labor, and how poor-law deterrence amplified dependence on landlords and merchants. The book highlights class divides between marsh magnates and precarious workers, condemning the exploitation masked as protection. By dramatizing the collision of state enforcement, privatized resource control, and poverty, Mehalah indicts a system that made legality and livelihood instruments of domination rather than community welfare.
Mehalah
Mehalah: A Story of the Salt Marshes
Chapter 1 The Ray
BETWEEN the mouths of the Blackwater and the Colne, on the east coast of Essex, lies an extensive marshy tract veined and freckled in every part with water. At high tide the appearance is that of a vast surface of Sargasso weed[1] floating on the sea, with rents and patches of shining water traversing and dappling it in all directions. The creeks, some of considerable length and breadth, extend many miles inland, and are arteries whence branches out a fibrous tissue of smaller channels, flushed with water twice in the twenty-four hours. At noontides, and especially at the equinoxes, the sea asserts its royalty over this vast region, and overflows the whole, leaving standing out of the flood only the long island of Mersea, and the lesser islet, called the Ray. This latter is a hill of gravel rising from the heart of the marshes, crowned with ancient thorntrees, and possessing, what is denied the mainland, an unfailing spring of purest water. At ebb, the Ray can only be reached from the old Roman causeway, called the Strood[2], over which runs the road from Colchester to Mersea Isle, connecting formerly the city of the Trinobantes with the station of the count of the Saxon shore. But even at ebb, the Ray is not approachable by land unless the sun or east wind has parched the ooze into brick; and then the way is long, tedious and tortuous, among bitter pools and over shining creeks. It was perhaps because this ridge of high ground was so inaccessible, so well protected by nature, that the ancient inhabitants had erected on it a rath, or fortified camp of wooden logs, which left its name to the place long after the timber defences had rotted away.
A more desolate region can scarce be conceived, and yet it is not without beauty. In summer, the thrift mantles the marches with shot satin, passing through all gradations of tint from maiden's blush to lily white. Thereafter a purple glow steals over the waste, as the sea lavender bursts into flower, and simultaneously every creek and pool is royally fringed with sea aster. A little later the glasswort, that shot up green and transparent as emerald glass in the early spring, turns to every tinge of carmine.
When all vegetation ceases to live, and goes to sleep, the marshes are alive and wakeful with countless wild fowl. At all times they are haunted with sea mews and roysten crows; in winter they teem with wild duck and grey geese. The stately heron loves to wade in the pools, occasionally the whooper swan sounds his loud trumpet, and flashes a white reflection in the still blue waters of the fleets. The plaintive pipe of the curlew is familiar to those who frequent these marshes, and the barking of the brent geese as they return from their northern breeding places is heard in November.
At the close of the eighteenth century there stood on the Ray a small farmhouse built of tarred wreckage timber, and roofed with red pan-tiles. The twisted thorntrees about it afforded some, but slight, shelter. Under the little cliff of gravel was a good beach, termed a 'hard.'
On an evening towards the close of September, a man stood in this farmhouse by the hearth, on which burnt a piece of wreckwood, opposite an old woman, who crouched shivering with ague in a chair on the other side. He was a strongly built man of about thirty-five, wearing fisherman's boots, a brown coat and a red plush waistcoat. His hair was black, raked over his brow. His cheekbones were high; his eyes dark, eager, intelligent, but fierce in expression. His nose was aquiline, and would have given a certain nobility to his countenance, had not his huge jaws and heavy chin contributed an animal cast to his face.
He leaned on his duck-gun, and glared from under his penthouse brows and thatch of black hair at a girl who stood behind, leaning on the back of her mother's chair, and who returned his stare with a look of defiance from her brown eyes.
The girl might have been taken for a sailor boy, as she leaned over the chairback, but for the profusion of her black hair. She wore a blue knitted guernsey covering body and arms, and across the breast, woven in red wool, was the name of the vessel, Gloriana. The guernsey had been knitted for one of the crew of a ship of this name, but had come into the girl's possession. On her head she wore the scarlet woven cap of a boatman.
The one-pane window at the side of the fireplace faced the west, and the evening sun lit her brown gipsy face, burnt in her large eyes, and made coppery lights in her dark hair.
The old woman was shivering with the ague, and shook the chair on which her daughter leaned; every now and then she raised a white faltering hand to wipe the drops of cold sweat away that hung on her eyebrows like rain on thatching.
"I did not ketch the chill here," she said. "I ketched it more than thirty years ago when I was on Mersea Isle, and it has stuck in my marrow ever since. But there is no ague on the Ray. This is the healthiest place in the world, Mehalah has never caught the ague on it. I do not wish ever to leave it, and to lay my bones elsewhere."
"Then you will have to pay your rent punctually," said the man in a dry tone, looking at her daughter.
"Please the Lord so we shall, as we ever have done," answered the woman; " � but when the chill comes on me � "
"Oh, curse the chill," interrupted the man; "who cares for that except perhaps Glory yonder, who has to work for both of you. Is it so, Glory?"
The girl did not answer, but folded her arms on the chairback, and leaned her chin upon them. She seemed like a wary cat watching a threatening dog, and ready to show her claws in desperate battle, not out of malice, but in self-defence.
"Why, but for you sitting there, sweating and jabbering, Glory would not be bound to this place, but would go out and see the world, and taste life. She grows here like a mushroom; she does not live. Is it not so, Glory?"
The girl's face was no longer lit by the declining sun, which had glided further north-west, but the flames of the driftwood flickered in her large eyes that met those of the man, and the cap was still illuminated by the evening glow, a scarlet blaze against the indigo gloom.
"Have you lost your tongue, Glory?" asked the man.
"Why do you not speak, Mehalah?" said the mother, turning her wan wet face aside, to catch a glimpse of her daughter.
"I've answered him fifty times," said the girl.
" No," protested the old woman feebly, "you have not spoken a word to Master Rebow."
"By God, she is right," broke in the man. "The little devil has a tongue in each eye, and she has been telling me with each a thousand times that she hates me. Eh, Glory?"
The girl rose erect, set her teeth, and turned her face aside, and looked out at the little window on the decaying light.
Rebow laughed aloud.
"She hated me before, and now she hates me worse, because I have become her landlord. Mistress Sharland, you will have to pay me the rent. I am your landlord, and Michaelmas is next week."
"The rent shall be paid, Elijah!" said the widow.
"The Ray is mine[1q], " pursued Rebow, swelling with pride. "I have bought it with my own money � eight hundred pounds. All here is mine, the Ray, the marshes, and the saltings, the creeks, the fleets, and the farm. That is mine," said he, striking the wall with his gun, "and that is mine," dashing the butt end against the hearth; "and you are mine, and Glory is mine."
"That never," said the girl stepping forward, and confronting him.
"Eh! Gloriana! have I roused you?" exclaimed Elijah Rebow, with a flash of exultation in his fierce eyes. "I said that the house and the marshes, and the saltings are mine. I have bought them."
"We are your tenants, Elijah," observed the widow nervously interposing. "Do not let Mehalah anger you. She has been reared here in solitude, and she does not know the ways of men. She means nothing by her manner."
"I do," said the girl, "and he knows it."
"She is a headlong child, "pursued the old woman. "Do not mind her, master."
The man paid no heed to the woman's words, but fixed his attention on the girl. Neither spoke. It was as though a war of wills was proclaimed and begun. He sought to beat down her defences with the force from his dark eyes, and she parried it with her pride.
"By God!" he said at last, "I have never seen a girl of your sort. There is none elsewhere. I like you."
"I knew it," said the mother with feeble triumph in her palsied voice, "She is a right good girl at heart."
"I have bought the house and the pasture, and the marshes and the saltings," said Elijah sulkily, "and all that thereon is. You are mine, Glory! Give me your hand."
She remained motionless, with folded arms. He laid his heavy palm on her shoulder.
"Give me your hand; I will help you."
She did not stir.
"The wild fowl that fly here are mine, the fish that swim in the fleets are mine," he went on; "I can shoot and net them."
"The fowl are free for any man to shoot, the fish are free for any man to net," said the girl scornfully.
"That is not my doctrine," answered Elijah. "What is on my soil and in my waters is mine. I may do with them what I will." Returning with doggedness to his point, "As you live in my house and on my land, you are mine."
"Mother," said the girl, "give him notice, and quit the Ray."
"I could not do it, Mehalah," answered the woman. "I've lived all my life on the marshes. This is a healthy spot, and not like the marshes of Dairy House where I ketched the chill."
"You cannot go till you have paid me the rent," said Rebow.
"That," answered Mehalah, " we will do assuredly."
"So you promise, Glory!" said Rebow. "But should you fail to do it, I could take every stick here. I could tear that defiant red cap off your head. I could drive you both out without a cover into the wind and frost. "
"I tell you, we can and we will pay."
"But should you not be able at any time, I warn you what to expect. I've a fancy for that jersey you wear. I'll pull it off and draw it on myself." He ground his teeth.
"I tell you we will pay."
"I will rip the tiling off the roof and fling it down between the rafters, if you refuse to stir. And yet you say, I am not your master."
"I tell you we will pay," repeated the girl passionately, as she wrenched her shoulder from his iron grip.
"You don't belong to me!" jeered Elijah. Slapping the arm of the widow's chair, and pointing over his shoulder at Mehalah, he said scornfully: "She says she does not belong to me, as though she believed it. I've bought the Ray and all that is on it for eight hundred pounds. I saw it on the paper. Lawyers scripture binds as Bible scripture. I will stick to my rights, to every thread and breath of them. She is mine."
"But, Elijah, be reasonable," said the widow, lifting her hand appealingly. The fit of ague was passing away. "We are not slaves to be bought and sold like cattle."
"If you cannot pay the rent, I can take everything from you."
"We will pay him, mother, and then he cannot open his mouth against us." At that moment the door flew open, and two men entered, one young, the other old.
"There is the money," said the girl, as the latter laid a canvas bag on the table.
"We've sold the sheep � at least Abraham has," said the young man joyously, as he held out his hand. "Sold them well, too, Glory!"
The girl's entire face was transformed. The cloud that had hung over it cleared, the hard eyes softened, and a kindly light beamed from them. The set lips became flexible and smiled. Elijah noted the change, and his brow grew darker, his eye more threatening.
Mehalah strode forward, and held out her hand to clasp that offered her. Elijah swung his musket suddenly about, and unless she had hastily recoiled, the barrel would have broken her wrist.
"You refused my hand," he said, "although you are mine. I bought the Ray for eight hundred pounds." Then turning to the young man with sullenness, he asked, "George De Witt, what brings you here?"
"Why cousin, I've a right to be here as well as you."
"No, you have not. I have bought the Ray, and no man sets foot on this island against my will."
The young man laughed good-humouredly.
"You won't keep me off your property then, Elijah, so long as Glory is here.
Elijah restrained himself with an effort. His eyes followed every movement of Mehalah Sharland. She pointed to the canvas bag on the table and said, "There is the money. Will you take the rent at once?"
I will not touch it till it is due, next Thursday. You will bring it me then to Red Hall."
"Is the boat all right?" asked the young man.
"Yes, George!" answered the girl, " she is on the hard where you anchored her this morning. What have you been getting in Colchester today?"
"I bought some groceries for mother," he said, "and there is a present for you. Help me to thrust the boat off, will you, Glory?"
"She is afloat now. I must give Abraham his supper first."
"Thank ye," said the old man. "George De Witt and me stopped at the Rose and had a bite. I must go after the cows." He went out.
"Will you sup with us, George?" asked the widow. "There is something in the pot will be ready directly."
"Thank you all the same," he replied, "I want to be back as soon as I can; besides you and Glory have company." Then turning to the girl, "Help me with my boat."
"Don't be gone for long, Mehalah!" said her mother.
"I shall be back directly."
Elijah Rebow did not utter a word, but watched Glory go out with De Witt, and then a grim smile curdled his rugged cheeks. He seated himself opposite the widow, and spread his great hands over the fire. The shadow of his strongly featured face and expanded hands was cast on the opposite wall, as the flame flickered, the shadow hands seemed to open and shut, to stretch and grasp.
The gold had died out of the sky and only a pearly twilight crept in at the window. The old woman remained silent. She was afraid of the new landlord. She had long known him, and she had never liked him, and she liked less to have him now in a place of power over her.
Presently Rebow rose from his seat, and laying aside his gun said, "I too have brought a present, but not for Glory. She must know nothing of this; it is for you. I put the keg outside the door under the whitethorn. I knew a drop of spirits was good for the ague. We get spirits cheap, or I would not give you any." He was unable to do a gracious act without marring its merit by an ungracious word. "I will fetch it in."
He went out and returned with a little keg under his arm. "Where is it to go?" he asked.
"Oh, Master Rebow! this is good of you, and I am thankful. My ague does pull me down sorely."
"Damn your ague, who cares about it!" he said surlily. "Where is the keg to go?"
"Let me roll it in," said the old woman, jumping up. "There are better cellars and storeplaces here than anywhere between this and Tiptree Heath."
"Saving mine at Red Hall, and those at Salcot Rising Sun," interjected the man.
"You see, Rebow, in times gone by, a great many smuggled goods were stowed away here; but much does not come this way now," with a sigh.
"It goes to Red Hall instead," said Rebow. "Ah! if you were there, your life would be a merry one. There! take the keg. I have had trouble enough bringing it here. Stow it away where you like; and draw me a glass � I am dry."
He flung himself in the chair again, and let the old woman take the keg to some secure hiding-place where, in days gone by, many much larger barrels had been stored away. She soon returned.
"I have not tapped this," she said. "The liquor will be muddy. I have drawn a little from the other that you gave me."
Elijah took the glass and tossed it off, chuckling to himself.
"You will say a word for me to Glory."
"Rely on me, Elijah. None has given me anything for my chill but you. But Mehalah will find it out, I reckon; she suspects already."
He paid no heed to her words.
"So she is not mine," he muttered derisively to himself. He rose again, and took his gun.
"I'm off," he said, and strode to the door.
At the same moment Mehalah appeared at it, her face clear and smiling.
"Well!" snarled Rebow, "what did he give you?"
"That is no concern of yours," answered the girl, and tried to pass. He put his fowling piece across the door and barred the way.
"What did he give you?" he asked in his dogged manner.
"I might refuse to answer," she said carelessly, "but I do not mind your knowing; the whole world may know. This!" She produced an Indian red silk kerchief which she flung over her shoulders and knotted under her chin. With her rich complexion, hazel eyes, dark hair and scarlet cap, lit by the red fire flames, she looked a gipsy, and splendid in her beauty. Rebow lowered his gun, thrust her aside furiously, and flung himself out of the door.
"He is gone at last!" said the girl with a gay laugh.
Rebow put his head in again. His lips were drawn back and his white teeth glistened.
"You will pay the rent next Thursday. I give no grace."
Then he was gone.
Chapter 2 The Rhyn
"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! You must keep it yourself."
"It is mine, is it not?[2q]"
"No, child; 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, 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, but was so much in the habit of yielding to her daughter, that she was unable to maintain her opposition. She crept out of the room to fetch the article demanded of her.
When she returned, Mehalah was standing before the fire.
"There is it," grumbled the old woman. "But it must not go out of the family. Keep it yourself, Mehalah."
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[3], 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. 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 in her bosom.
"I must light a candle," she said. 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."
"Where did he get it?"
"Don't you think such a man as he 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. I insist on being told how you came by them."
The old woman made feeble and futile attempts to evade answering 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 ofrum.
"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 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."
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. Now let me count the money." She lit a candle at the hearth, seated herself at the table, untied the pouch, and poured the contents upon the board.
She sprang to her feet with a cry. 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 pennypieces, and a few bullets.
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, "Abraham has given you the wrong sack."
"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."
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.
On the fidelity of Abraham Dowsing, Mehalah felt assured she might rely. He was guiltless. She relied on him to sell the sheep to the best advantage, for he was grasping and keen to drive a bargain. But when he had the money she knew that less confidence could be reposedon 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 for anything beside.
"Mother," said Mehalah suddenly, "has the canvas bag been touched since Abraham brought it here?"
"No."
"You have been in your seat all the while?"
"Of course I have. There was no one here but Rebow. You do not suspect him, do you?"
"No, I have no reason to do so."
Mehalah dropped her brow again on her hands. It was in vain to question Abraham. His thick and addled brain would baffle enquiry.
