Mehalah: A Story of the Salt Marshes

by S. Baring-Gould

How did he manage to time his visits so as not to meet her? She would find out when he was last at the Ray Farm. She sprang up, and went out of the door, unlocking it to let herself go forth; and she called Abraham. There was no answer. The old man was already turned into his loft over the cowhouse, and asleep.

She called him again, but with equal want of success. Not a thunderbolt falling on the thorns beside the house would rouse him. Mehalah knew that, and went back to her seat by the fire, relocking the door. 'I will ask him in the morning. He must know.'

She drew off her shoes, and put her bare feet on the warm hearth. She was without her guernsey and cap, for she did not wear them when she went to Colchester.

She fell, as was her wont, to thinking. Since the death of George, she had been accustomed to sit thus over the fire, after her mother had retired. She was not thinking of him now, she was thinking of Elijah. His words, his strange, mad, fierce words, came back to her. Was there a destiny shaping her life against her will, and forcing her into his arms? She shuddered at the thought. To hate and love, and love and hate, year out, year in, that was what they were fated to do, according to him. That he was drawn towards her by some attractive power exercised against her will, she knew full well, but she would not allow that he exercised the least attraction on her. Yet she did feel that there was some sort of spell upon her. Hate him as she did and would, she knew that she could not altogether escape him, she had an instinctive consciousness that she was held by him, she did not understand how, in his hands. Perhaps it was her destiny to hate and fight him; for how long? Love him she never could, she never would. There was an assurance in his manner and tone which impressed her against her better judgment. He spoke as though it were but a matter of time before she yielded herself wholly to him, and came under his roof and joined her lot with his, for life and for death. What right had he to assume this? What grounds had he for this confidence? None but a blind, dogged conviction in his own mind that destiny had ordained them for each other. Then she thought of the story of Grim's Hoe, of the two who loved and hated, embraced and fought eternally therein, those two destined from their mother's womb to be together in life and death, with twin souls and bodies, who had they lived in love might have rested in death, but as they fought must fight on. There they were, in the old hollow womb of the ship down in the earth in darkness, loving one another as brothers, fighting each other as rivals; the conflict lasting till one shall master the other, a thing that never can be, for both were born with equal strength, and equal purpose, and equal stubbornness of will. The fumes of the spilled spirits hung in the air, and stimulated Mehalah's brain. Instead of stupefying, they quickened her mind into activity. Her heart beat. She felt as if she were in the ship hold watching the eternal conflict, and as if she must take a part with one or the other; as if her so doing would determine the victory. But which should she will to conquer, when each was the counterpart of the other? She could not bear this thought, she could not endure the fumes of the spirit, it suffocated her. She sprang up. The full moon was glaring in at the window from a cloudless sky.

She opened the door. The air was cold, but there was little wind. She could see on the south-east horizon, at the highest point of the island, the great Hoe crowned with black pines.

The moon was at full. The old warriors were now hewing at one another, and the dim, frightened captive maid looked on with her hands on her heart, her great eyes gleaming like glow-worms in the decaying ship hold. Ha! at each sword stroke the sparks flashed. Ha! the cut flesh glimmered like phosphorescent fish, and the blood ran like blue fire. Was the story true? Could anyone hear the warriors shout and smite, who chose to listen at the full of the moon? The distance to Grim's Hoe was not over two miles. Mehalah thought she must go there and listen with her own ears. She would go.

Once more she returned to her mother's room, and saw that Mrs. Sharland was asleep. Then she drew on her shoes, her guernsey, and her red cap, went out, locked the door, and put the key in her pocket.

'Who went there?' She started. She thought she saw something—some one, move; but then laughed. The moon was so bright that it cast her shadow on the wall, distinct and black as if it were a palpable body. She stood still, listened, and looked round. She could see the stretch of the saltings as distinctly as if it were day, only that the shadows were inky black, not purple as by sunlight. Not a sound was to be heard.

'I will go,' she said, and she strode off towards the causeway.

The path over the marshes was perfectly distinct. She walked fast, the earth crackled under her feet, the frost was keen. Her eyes rose ever and anon to Grim's Hoe. The pines on it did not stir, they stood like mourners above a grave.