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 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. I left the Ray as soon as all was settled, and I got home across the fields as quickly as I could, but was not here till after eleven. Mother 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. I laid hold of the rope that hangs there, and then souse over me came the water. 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."
"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."
"Do you keep the ladder down day and night?" asked Glory.
"No. It is always hauled up directly I come home. We are as safe in the Pandora as you are at the Ray."
Phoebe 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, galliwanting 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 was awe-struck by the appearance of Mrs. De Witt. However, at a sign from George she went down, and was followed by Mehalah. They 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 beaten 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.
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 was just the daughter she fancied. 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 was a saving woman, and spent little money on her personal adornment. "What coin I drop," she would say, "I drop in rum, and smuggled rum is cheap."
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 guests, but minus gentle Zephyr.
"Will you take a chair?" she said obsequiously to Phoebe placing one for her, 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. 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 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. But I will have my boy respectable, I can promise you. I combed his head wall 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 stare him full in the eyes she sat
