Shame on you, Mother Goodhugh, shame! cried a voice; and pale, and with eyes red with recent weeping, Mace Cobbe ran forward to throw one arm across her fathers breast, and stand between him and the old woman, as if to shield him from her anger, as, advancing with upraised stick and her eyes flashing with excitement, she seemed no inapt representative of a modern sibyl.
Ah, you here, young Jezebel? cried the woman, beside herself now, as she worked herself into a fierce rage. Listen, good people; listen once more, as I tell you that the day will come when Jeremiah Cobbe shall curse the hour when he was born, when he shall gaze down upon the blackened corpse of this his miserable spawn, even as I gazed upon the burned and fire-scarred body of my dear; and I tell you that the day shall come when in his misery and God-forgotten despair he shall hurl himself into yonder Pool, and be swept down beneath his devilish wheel to be taken out dead dead, do you hear? as they drew out my boy.
Oh, shame, Mother Goodhugh, shame! cried Mace again. Come away, father, come away.
Nay, child, he said, calmly. Ill face the storm like a man. It will be the sooner over.
Never! cried the old woman, with the foam gathering on her dry lips, as she rolled her red and bloodshot eyes. Ill pursue you to your death. Curse you! curse you!
Oh, shame, old woman, said Sir Mark, angrily. Think of your own end, and how curses come home to roost.
Ah, yes, cried the old woman, turning upon him. I had forgotten you, poor showy dunghill Tom, in your feathers and spurs. You are to be caught, I suppose, for a husband for Miss Jezebel there. But keep away; go while your life is safe. There be death and destruction and misery there. Flee from the wrath to come, for in wedding that dressed-up-doll you tie yourself to the cursed, and may die as well. Hear me, good people, and judge between us; mark me that it will all come true.
Shame on you, Mother Goodhugh, cried Mace, with her pale cheeks flushing; and judge between them, all of you, she said, addressing the little crowd of workmen and their wives who had gradually gathered round. You all know how it was an accident when poor Luke Goodhugh fell into the Pool, when fishing against my dear fathers orders, and was drowned.
Yes,
yes, that be a true word, mistress, rose in chorus.
And how my dear father grieved when that sad explosion came which killed poor Goodhugh, our best workman, through the folly of one who would smoke.
That be true enough. Yes, it be true, Mother Goodhugh.
You know all that, cried Mace, with her handsome young face lighting up more and more, ignorant the while of Sir Marks admiring gaze. You know all that, she repeated, but you dont know that ever since that luckless day
There, there, child, enough said, cried the founder, as Mother Goodhugh stood muttering and mouthing in impotent malice at the speaker, who had robbed her of her audience for the time.
Nay, father, dear, but they shall hear now, cried Mace, speaking with energy, and her face flushing up with pride. Judge between them all of you, when I tell you that from that dreadful day my fathers hand has always been open to this woman; his is the hand that has fed and clothed and sheltered her, when otherwise she must have gone forth a wanderer and a beggar upon the face of the earth.
Tut, tut, child! cried the founder; be silent.
Not yet, dear father, cried Mace. And for this, she continued, while he has fed her with bread, and had his heart sore with pity for her solitary fate, she has never ceased to shower down curses on his head.
Yes, cried the old woman, breaking in again, gives me bread to smother my curses, and she shook her stick menacingly, and I curse again. Give me back my boy give me back my dear. When he does that, I will take back my curses and ill-wishings to myself, and bury them beneath the earth. Till then they will cling to him; and mark me, all, ill will come to this roof. It is builded on the sandrock, she cried, pointing to how the house stood in a niche of the scarped rock, which ran right behind the building, towering up with the broom and gorse and purple heather, dotting the open spaces where the pine and hornbeam ceased to grow, a pleasant-timbered gabled house, where it seemed, with its climbing roses and blushing flowers, that sorrow could never come it is builded on the sandrock, but it shall be rent asunder, and dissolve in flame, and smoke, and ruin, and destruction, and then then she cried hoarsely.
Why then, Mother Goodhugh, said the founder, well build it up afresh, for theres stone and timber enough about for a dozen such houses, and close at hand.
Nay, cried the old woman, nay, she croaked, for her voice had gone, and she spoke now in a hoarse whisper; listen, all of you: the very stones of the ruins will be cursed, and all the trade, and no man shall lay hands upon them to build again, lest he be accursed himself.
In spite of her brave true heart, Mace felt a chill strike through her as the old woman walked hurriedly away, thumping her crutch-stick on the ground, and stopping to turn and shake it threateningly at the Pool-house even stopping by the gate to spit towards the door before she went on muttering and gesticulating, with her grey hood thrown back on her shoulders, her linen cap in her hand, and her hair streaming in the soft summer breeze, which came to the little crowd standing gazing after her as she went.