The Story of Jael/Chapter X

the author was a child his nurse was wont to tell him stories. They began well, they proceeded well, but presently—as his little heart palpitated with wonder, sympathy, interest—a chill came over it, as he perceived that all the dramatis personæ of the tale were converging, by various paths, towards one point, and that point was a bridge, and he knew that inevitably the end of the stories would be ‘The bridge bended And so my story ended.’ However well they began, however skilfully they were worked to a climax, the miserable conclusion in all was the same, with pitiful detested uniformity— ‘The bridge bended And so my story ended.’ How he would writhe on his nurse’s knee, and hold up his hands entreatingly, and plead with earnest eyes, and try to stay the words on her lips, or divert her thoughts into another channel, that there might be some variety in the conclusions, that Jack and Jill, and Tom and Poll, and Launcelot and Guinever, might not all put their feet on that unstable bridge, and so their story go down in a tragic, yet impotent conclusion. ‘It is of no use, my dear boy,’ said nurse, ‘it can’t be otherwise. It is impossible for me to change the dénouement.’—no! she did not use that word, I forget the word she employed. There is but one end permissible, but one conceivable ‘The bridge bended And so my story ended.’ When the author of this tale had written the heading to this final chapter, a qualm came over him; he knew that to some of his readers reminiscences would arise of nursery tales, and with a scream they would start from the perusal, run away with their hands over their eyes, and shriek, ‘We know it— ‘“The bridge bended And so my story ended.”’ But, dear readers, have patience. The writer is not your nurse. He is emancipated from the thraldom of those rules once believed inexorable; he is not bound to end his story by the pattern prescribed in the nursery.

When Clovis came to his baptism, St Remigius thus addressed the haughty king: ‘Bend thy head, Sigambrian! Adore what thou hast burned! burn what thou hast adored!’

Alas! Are we not all doing this—going clean contrary to our ancient belief, defying to-day the rules to which we bowed yesterday, adoring what we scorned, and scorning what we adored?

Well, let the reader be content. The author has gone through his baptism—his literary baptism—and he does not conclude all his tales by the inexorable rule of the nursery.

Jael walked along the railway bank towards her home; the fog was thick, it drove up the river like steam, but it was cold and it smelt ill, for it bore with it the exhalation of decaying weed and shell-fish in the ooze.

Jael did not, however, feel the cold any more than the engine which rushes along the rails, for, like the locomotive, she had a fire within her. She had not by word or sign allowed Jeremiah and Julia to discover who had been their disregarded companion in the van. She had heard all, and her heart was in flames, and the smoke of the fire within and the heat and sparks mounted to her brain, and set that on fire also.

If she had hated Jeremiah before, she hated him with a tenfold—nay, a hundredfold hatred now. She hated Julia also, but in a less degree; she despised her too deeply to hate her with strength; but for Jeremiah she entertained no other feeling than intense, implacable hate, a rage at her weakness in being unable to punish him as he deserved.

As she walked on her feet went fast, because her pulses galloped, and she would have run, keeping time with her feet to the throb of her heart, had she been on other ground than the iron path of the engine. She thought of nothing but Jeremiah. She forgot about her father, Mrs Bagg, her own self. Oh, if but the means were in her hands to revenge herself on Jeremiah. Oh! that when he struck her she had stabbed him! She would have danced up the scaffold steps, and clapped her hands and sung as the fatal noose was adjusted.

All at once she stood still and knelt down, and through the cold fog raised her eyes and hands to heaven, and prayed as she had never prayed before, that she might be given the opportunity and the strength to mete out to Jeremiah the measure he deserved.

As she prayed she saw flames nickering in a field by the side of the railway, a little way up the land side. She knew what occasioned them. There was a seed farm there, and the old flowers, sticks, and stems and leaves were being consumed.

She rose from her knees and walked on, with the same throbbing pulse, the same fire in her heart, and came to the cottage of her father, and saw a light shining through the window, dully, because a curtain was drawn down between the glass and the lamp. She put her hand on the door and tried it. It was locked. Then she knocked.

A voice from within asked who was there?

Jael did not answer. Now she began to tremble.

She stood on the doorstep, with a hand on each shoulder, clasping her shawl, pressing her arms over her bosom, restraining it, lest it should burst with emotion.

‘Who is there? Can’t you answer?’ asked the voice again.

Then the lock was turned, and the door was cautiously unclosed. Jael put forth her right hand and thrust it back, but took no step forward.

‘Mrs Bagg!’ she exclaimed.

‘Ah! It is you, is it?’ asked the widow. ‘Bagging me, indeed?—when I am Mrs Tapp, lawfully banned and wedded at Brightlingsea Church. Did you mean to insult me by it? It is you, is it? What has brought you here?’

‘Where is my father?’

‘Mr Tapp? Now don’t you take a step in here——’

‘I am not doing so. Where is my father?’

‘Mr Tapp has gone into Colchester. There is an exhibition or a concert of live niggers, and he grew that desperate, there was no constraining him. He have took with him a bit of a sponge, and he’ll make his way out of the hindermost seats for’ards, up to the platform, and try his wet sponge on those niggers. He will—he’d never be quiet till he knew the rights about them; “for,” said he, “we must know whether reason is given to man to be his guide, or the contrary.” As for the bridge,’ continued the new Mrs Tapp, ‘with this sea-fog there’ll be no ships wanting to come up the creek; and even if they wanted, they must wait. Sham-gar might never have such another chance to sponge a nigger. Now, you stay where you are. I’m mistress of the house, not you—and afore ever I let you in——’

‘I will not come in,’ said Jael peremptorily. ‘I will not pass through the door till I have seen my father.’

‘Then,’ said Mrs Tapp, ‘you may wait outside till he comes home from sponging them niggers.’

She slammed the door upon her and locked it.

Jael turned away. Every particle of gentleness and love in her was gone; in her heart boiled only rage and bitterness. She was shut out from her home and was cast adrift, with nowhere to go. When her father came home, would he be more pitiful than the woman who now ruled in his house? Would he be able to withstand her will, alter her decision?

Then Jael laughed and said, ‘I am to be homeless. I will go and see the home Jeremiah has prepared for his Julia;’ and she walked across the bridge. She walked slowly now, with her head down, and her arms folded on her breast. Her dark eyes, hard as polished stones, looked before her at the rails, and marked each sleeper through the fog, as she came to it, on which she was to plant her foot. She heard the tide rushing in through the channel below, swirling about the posts. It was cold in the fog—colder below in the water, she thought. Then she turned and looked back, and saw still the flicker of the flower-stalk bonfire, magnified in the mist to an immense conflagration. She walked on, and no longer turned or halted till she came to the outskirts of Brightlingsea, then crossed a field, and stood before the house. There was a bright light within, a lamp on the table, a fire burning in the grate; the window was uncurtained, the house door was ajar. No one was within. Mrs Mustard, Jeremiah’s mother, had gone into the town to buy some groceries necessary for the supper and the reception of her daughter-in-law. Jael stood at the door looking in. How cosy the house was! How pleasant would be Julia’s reception.

Jael thrust the door a little further open, and as she stood hesitating at it, looked back along the line to the glare of the fire of flower-stalks. How that fire throbbed and swelled and then contracted. Then her heart leaped and swelled, and then grew tight and still. How if she were to set fire to that little wooden house, and so—Jeremiah would bring his wife, the woman who had supplanted her, to glowing, smoking embers! She snapped her teeth at the thought, and went in.

There were muslin curtains to the window. There was a table-cloth laid ready for supper. She tore down the curtains and plucked off the cloth, and looked about for other things that might burn.

Then she saw a cat by the fire with its kittens, little things—there were three of them—that were old enough to see, and were playing over their mother’s back, and the cat patted them and threw them down, and they leaped on her back again, and she purred and rolled over, and pawed at them.

‘If I burn the house,’ said Jael, ‘I will not burn them,’ and she went to the little family to remove it.

But instantly the kittens started from her, and ran and hid themselves beneath an oak chest against the wall, and the mother ran after them and dived also beneath it. In vain did Jael try to allure them forth, then to drive them out. The kittens would not allow themselves to be cajoled or scared away. As soon as Jael left the box she saw their comical little heads and bright eyes peering out at her from beneath it. Then she stamped angrily and turned away.

‘I cannot,’ she said, ‘I cannot burn the cat and her kittens.’ And she left the house.

She walked hastily back, angry with the kittens, angry with herself, till she came to the bridge, and then stood and listened to the gurgling water sweeping in. The night had become much darker. The fire of stalks had gone down as suddenly as it had flashed up. The fog rolled about her cold and deathly.

Then she heard the Brightlingsea church clock strike ten.

Ten! At ten o’clock Jeremiah would start with the train of empty trucks, he driving the engine, with Julia at his side.

She stepped on, putting forth her hand and touched the crank that opened the bridge. Then instantly all the sky, all the earth, the rushing tide, were alight about her, in a blaze such as that she had seen on the night when she stood under the bridge, but this light was red—red as blood. There was no lightning in the sky that thus illumined all things; the lightning was within; it was caused by the rush of blood to her brain; and that rush was occasioned by the thought that now—now at last, her opportunity was come. God had answered the prayer she had made kneeling on the rails.

Instantly she threw herself on the crank and worked it, and felt that the bridge was opening. She worked with all her strength, with feverish haste. Hark! A snap! It mattered not; a cog had given way. A little more, a few more turns, and now she let go. The bridge was in half and the train that came on would leap headlong into the cold, inrushing tide below, and sink into the deep ooze be neath it.

Then she leaned back against the bridge rail, in her old attitude, with her hands behind her back, and her feet planted on a sleeper, and waited. She would see the end. She would see her revenge accomplished, her prayer fulfilled to its Amen. She snorted with excitement. The bonnet compressed her head, and her head was swelling. She put up her hand and tore it off; she had become heated by her exertions at the crank; the fog, the sea air that puffed it inland, was grateful to her hot face, was pleasant to inhale into lungs that were on fire.

Ha, ha! that should be the home to which the happy pair would go—that cold, slimy bottom of Gull-Fleet. Here it was that Jeremiah had spoken to her, and persuaded her to go away with him, and here she would send him before the Judge who would condemn him for his treachery.

Hark! She heard a whistle, muffled by the fog, but audible from the direction of Wyvenhoe. It was the whistle of the train of empty trucks. Jeremiah had started, and every moment brought him nearer destruction. The whistle continued.

‘I know why that is,’ she said. ‘Because of the fog, and to give warning about the bridge.’

She listened, and the whistle shrilled louder, in fits, palpitations, screams, and it shook her nerves.

All at once—how she knew not—the horror of what she was meditating came over her—of the crime. It was the whistle—the shrieking, appealing whistle—that caused the revulsion, but the revulsion was instantaneous. The passion for revenge went out, as had that fire of dry turf and stalks, and in its place surged up a sea of terror, self-reproach, agony, and pity. She threw herself on the crank, and strove to bring the bridge back into its place, but failed. A cog had been broken, and the crank would no longer work.

She beat her head. What could she do? Still that piercing scream, waxing louder. Not a moment was to be lost. She ran towards the cottage, and struck at the door. ‘Open!’ she shrieked, ‘for God’s sake! The red light! the red lamp!’

But Mrs Tapp, her stepmother, did not understand what she said. She knew the voice, and muttered, ‘She’ll bust in with violence, will she? She’s going to be mistress in this house, is she? We’ll see which is strongest. And if the bolts and hinges give way, over my body must she go.’ Then she took her chair, and set it against the door, and planted herself therein with her back to the door, and her arms folded, and a pleasant smile on her face, murmuring, ‘Will she! Let her try it on. We’ll see which is mistress here!’

And Jael, almost flat against the door, beat and cried, ‘The red light! the red lamp!’ and looked up the line.

She saw the red light through the fog. It was coming on. Not the red lamp she asked for, but that set in front of the engine. It was coming on quickly, in a very little span it would be extinguished, and two other lights—the lights of life—would go out with it. Then Jael left the door at which she had vainly battered and cried, and leaped on to the line, and ran forward towards the coming eye of ruby fire, towards that screaming monster—by no other means could it be arrested, by no other means those lives be saved.

‘Jerry,’ said Julia, standing beside her husband on the engine, ‘I suppose it is all right with the bridge?’

‘Of course it is,’ answered he. ‘How could it be otherwise? No mortal ship would venture up in such a fog as this, and without a ship is passing, the bridge is never opened. In a few minutes we shall be home—Then—Halloo! we’ve run over something. Drat it! I must reverse the engine. I do hope the Irish stew won’t be overdone.’

An hour later Mr Tapp came home on foot. He was heated and excited.

As he entered his cottage, ‘There!’ shouted he to his wife, ‘I said as much. Look at the sponge. I made up to ’em, and quite unexpected wiped the face of him with the banjo. And it came off. I have it here on the sponge. I brought it away with me. Burnt cork, or lamp smut. The human reason is given to be his guide—’

‘Hush!’ said Mrs Tapp. She was white and trembling.

‘What are you a-hushing of me for? You forget I ain’t a baby.’

‘Hush!’ said Mrs Tapp. She held the table; she was nearly fainting. ‘Up-stairs. In her room. Run over by the engine.’

‘What—who?’

‘Jael.’