Mehalah. S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
I have bought the Ray for eight hundred pounds. The Ray is mine, I tell you. Mistress Sharland, you will henceforth have to pay me the rent, to me and to none other. I am your landlord, and Michaelmas is next week.'
'The rent shall be paid, Elijah!' said the widow.
'The Ray is mine,' pursued Rebow, swelling with pride. 'I have bought it with my own money—eight hundred pounds. I could stubb up the trees if I would. I could cart muck into the well and choke it if I would. I could pull down the stables and break them up for firewood if I chose. All here is mine, the Ray, the marshes, and the saltings,[1] the creeks, the fleets, 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.'
[1] A salting is land occasionally flooded, otherwise serving as pasturage. A marsh is a reclaimed salting, enclosed within a sea-wall.
'That never,' said the girl stepping forward, and confronting him with dauntless eye and firm lips and folded arms.
'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. And your mother and you are mine.'
'Never,' repeated the girl.
'But I say yes.'
'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, 'and when she fares to say or do a thing, there is no staying tongue or hand. 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 of his resolve flung at her from his dark eyes, and she parried it dauntlessly with her pride.
'By God!' he said at last, 'I have never seen anywhere else 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, true as steel, and as tough in fibre.'
'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! You cannot escape me. Give me your hand.'
She remained motionless, with folded arms. He laid his heavy palm on her shoulder.
'Give me your hand, and mine is light; I will help you. Let me lay it on you and it will crush you. Escape it you cannot. This way or that. My hand will clasp or crush.'
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.'
'So can I, and so can anyone,' said the girl haughtily.
'Let them try it on,' said Elijah; 'I am not one to be trifled with, as the world well knows. I will bear no poaching here. I have bought the Ray, and the fish are mine, and the fowl are mine, and you are mine also. Let him touch who dares.'
'The wild 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, and so also all that lives on my estate is mine.' 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, I could not do it,' answered the woman. 'I've lived all my life on the marshes, and I cannot quit them. But this is a healthy spot, and not like the marshes of Dairy House where once we were, and 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:—That chair in which your mother shivers, those dishes yonder, the bed you sleep in, the sprucehutch[2] in which you keep your clothes. I could pluck the clock, the heart of the house, out of it. I could tear that defiant red cap off your head. I could drive you both out without a cover into the whistling east wind and biting frost.'
[2] Cypress-chest.
'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 with "Gloriana" right across the breast. I'll pull it off and draw it on myself.' He ground his teeth. 'I will have it, if only to wrap me in, in my grave. I will cross my arms over it, as you do now, and set my teeth, and not a devil in hell shall tear it off me.'
'I tell you we will pay.'
'Let me alone, let me talk. This is better than money. I will rip the tiling off the roof and fling it down between the rafters, if you refuse to stir; I will cast it at your mother and you, Glory. The red cap will not protect your skull from a tile, will it? And yet you say, I am not your master. You do not belong to me, as do the marshes and the saltings, and the wild duck.'
'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. Then 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. But she does, and you do, and so does that chair, and the log that smoulders on the hearth, and the very hearth itself, with its heat, the hungry ever-devouring belly of the house. I've bought the Ray and all that is on it for eight hundred pounds. I saw it on the paper, it stands in writing and may not be broke through. Lawyers' scripture binds and looses 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 in a Christian land. We are not slaves to be bought and sold like cattle.'
'If you cannot pay the rent, I can take everything from you. I can throw you out of this chair down on those bricks. I can take the crock and all the meat in it. I can take the bed on which you sleep. I can take the clothes off your back.' Turning suddenly round on the girl he glared, 'I will rip the jersey off her, and wear it till I rot. I will pull the red cap off her head and lay it on my heart to keep it warm. None shall say me nay. Tell me, mistress, what are you, what is she, without house and bed and clothing? I will take her gun, I will swamp her boat. I will trample down your garden. I will drive you both down with my dogs upon the saltings at the spring tide, at the full of moon. You shall not shelter here, on my island, if you will not pay. I tell you, I have bought the Ray. I gave for it eight hundred pounds.'
'But Elijah,' protested the old woman, 'do not be so angry. We are sure to pay.'
'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 saw and 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 struck, perhaps broken, her wrist.