How Mother Goodhugh missed her Revenge.
“Dead, and they’ve buried her!” cried the old woman, as she stood beside the bed, whereon she had lain Mace. “Dead, and they’ve buried her; and Jeremiah Cobbe can feel now what it be to lose one that he loves!”
“Let him feel it,” she snarled, “let him feel it, and gnaw his heart for a time. I’ll tell him naught.”
Then she glanced uneasily at the door, and drew the curtain that screened her bed.
“No one can see her now,” she muttered. “I’ll keep her as long as I can. She be weak and half-childish with what she has gone through. Let her rest; but I’m glad she be not killed.”
A feeling of satisfaction glowed for a time in the old woman’s heart, but it was mingled with annoyance that, after all, Jeremiah Cobbe would know rest, while she could never recall her dead.
As the days glided by, to her surprise Mother Goodhugh found that Mace did not recover. She partook of food mechanically when it was offered to her, but she did not speak, only looked vacantly about her, and seemed to be without even the power to think.
“Why should I lose my revenge?” thought the old woman. “Why should I even let him think that she lives? It will be another to keep until he finds her out, and that may be months first, if she stops as she be now. But I can keep her easily,” she said with a chuckle, “since corn grows on the moonbeams, and meal can be had for all my wants from out the earth.”
A month had gone by, and Mace showed no sign of being roused from her dull, apathetic state. She made no attempt to move, but sat where she was placed, gazing straight before her, and never a word passed her lips. Whether the old woman was by her or she was away on some errand, it was all the same, Mace stayed where she was left, unseen by a soul, for since the explosion at the Pool-house no one had cared to go near Mother Goodhugh, and but for her foresight she might have starved.
But the old woman had a means of keeping body and soul together that people little dreamed of, for one day, while herb-gathering in the woodlands, far away behind the founder’s house, she had kicked against a fragment of iron, which proved to be a portion of a shell; and, passing further in search of more, she came upon a hole in the sandstone rock beside the scarped mass that rose behind the Pool-house.
Such a place had its interest for her; for, by the fragments of iron about and the blackened appearance of the rock, she could tell that it was the work of one of Jeremiah Cobbe’s pieces of ordnance.
Parting the ferns and tangled growth with her stick, and muttering a curse or two upon him and his belongings, the old woman found that there was an opening large enough to pass through; and, investigating further, she could see that the great shell had broken through what was but a thin crust of rock, and that within there was a narrow passage-like opening, worn apparently by the waters of some ancient stream.
Another day she examined further, for the place interested her, and she penetrated some distance and returned.
Another time she came, and brought a lanthorn to search further, for anything bordering on mystery was valuable to her, ending, after winding in and out for some distance, by coming to the conclusion that this was the place of which Abel Churr had spoken—that she had long sought in vain, and that she knew Gil Carr’s secret, having hit upon another entrance to his store.
It was a long and tedious way in, but that mattered little to her; while, ignorant of the fact that he had been the means of breaking a way into his own treasure-house, Gil Carr duly, as he believed, sealed it up and set sail.
Here one night, when the fear was upon her that Mace might be discovered at her cottage, and the malignant fit was stronger than usual, Mother Goodhugh brought the helpless girl. A touch of the hand was sufficient to lead her where her gaoler willed, and, docile as a child, Mace accompanied her to what was hereafter to be her prison, whose dark shadows seemed to accord with her helpless state; and here she would sit and seem to doze away her life.
It was a safe place, only visited by the old woman at night, and she found it easy to feed her prisoner from the ship-stores; but now and then a fit of remorse would seize upon her, and she would, on leaving the place, resolve to restore the poor girl to her home.
A dozen times over she threw herself in Jeremiah Cobbe’s way to tell him all, but the sight of the founder seemed to raise up gall and bitterness in her heart, and she went away chuckling and laughing.
“Let him suffer a little longer—a little longer,” was her cry. “Some day the girl will recover her senses, then I’ll speak.”
But the time flew by, and sense was as it were dead in Sweet Mace’s brain; while, having gone so far, Mother Goodhugh dreaded at last to bring her back. There were strange rumours afloat about her, and her position was not so safe as it had been of yore. So in utter fear she would fasten up her cottage and take refuge in Gil’s store for days together, dreading lest ill should befall her; but at the end of a week passed in this gloomy abode she would be ready to revile herself for her cowardice, and go back. At these times she was more than ever prepared to own that she could not restore Mace to her father.
“Let him suffer, as I have done,” she would cry again. “She can stay till Gil Carr comes back. Let him take the poor stricken idiot if he will. I’ve had revenge, and a sweet one after all.”
In this spirit Mother Goodhugh would return to her cottage, and the tale of her evil doings grew longer, for there were those who said that she disappeared for days together—none knew where; and that she had always meal in plenty, while the miller swore none ever came from him, and that she was a witch indeed.