In the Roar of the Sea

CHAPTER XIX

A GOLDFISH

Next day – just in the same way as the day before – when Judith was risen and dressed, the door was thrown open, and again Coppinger was revealed, standing outside, looking at her with a strange expression, and saying no word.

But Judith started up from her chair and went to him in the passage, put forth her delicate white hand, laid it on his cuff, and said: “Mr. Coppinger, may I speak to you?”

“Where?”

“Where you like – down-stairs will be best, in the hall if no one be there.”

“It is empty.”

He stood aside and allowed her to precede him.

The staircase was narrow, and it would have been dark but for a small dormer-window through which light came from a squally sky covered with driving white vapors. But such light as entered from a white and wan sun fell on her head as she descended – that head of hair was like the splendor of a beech-tree touched by frost before the leaves fall.

Coppinger descended after her.

When they were both in the hall, he indicated his arm-chair by the hearth for her to sit in, and she obeyed. She was weak, and now also nervous. She must speak to the smuggler firmly, and that required all her courage.

The room was tidy; all traces of the debauch of the preceding night had disappeared.

Coppinger stood a few paces from her. He seemed to know that what she was going to say would displease him, and he did not meet her clear eyes, but looked with a sombre frown upon the floor.

Judith put the fingers of her right hand to her heart to bid it cease beating so fast, and then rushed into what she had to say, fearing lest delay should heighten the difficulty of saying it.

“I am so – so thankful to you, sir, for what you have done for me. My aunt tells me that you found and carried me here. I had lost my way on the rocks, and but for you I would have died.”

“Yes,” he said, raising his eyes suddenly and looking piercingly into hers, “but for me you would have died.”

“I must tell you how deeply grateful I am for this and for other kindnesses. I shall never forget that this foolish, silly, little life of mine I owe to you.”

Again her heart was leaping so furiously as to need the pressure of her fingers on it to check it.

“We are quits,” said Coppinger, slowly. “You came – you ran a great risk to save me. But for you I might be dead. So this rude and worthless – this evil life of mine,” he held out his hands, both palms before her, and spoke with quivering voice – “I owe to you.”

“Then,” said Judith, “as you say, we are quits. Yet no. If one account is cancelled, another remains unclosed. I threw you down and broke your bones. So there still remains a score against me.”

“That I have forgiven long ago,” said he. “Throw me down, break me, kill me, do with me what you will – and – I will kiss your hand.”

“I do not wish to have my hand kissed,” said Judith, hastily, “I let you understand that before.”

He put his elbow against the mantel-shelf, and leaned his brow against his open hand, looking down at her, so she could not see his face without raising her eyes, but he could rest his on her and study her, note her distress, the timidity with which she spoke, the wince when he said a word that implied his attachment to her.

“I have not only to thank you, Captain Coppinger, but I have to say good-by.”

“What – go?”

“Yes – I shall go back to Mr. Menaida to-day.”

He stamped, and his face became blood-red. “You shall not. I will it – here you stay.”

“It cannot be,” said Judith, after a moment’s pause to let his passion subside. “You are not my guardian, though very generously you have undertaken to be valuer for me in dilapidations. I must go, I and Jamie.”

He shook his head. He feared to speak, his anger choked him.

“I cannot remain here myself, and certainly I will not let Jamie be here.”

“Is it because of last night’s foolery you say that?”

“I am responsible for my brother. He is not very clever; he is easily led astray. There is no one to think for him, to care for him, but myself. I could never let him run the risk of such a thing happening again.”

“Confound the boy!” burst forth Coppinger. “Are you going to bring him up as a milk-sop? You are wrong altogether in the way you manage him.”

“I can but follow my conscience.”

“And is it because of him that you go?”

“Not because of him only.”

“But I have spoken to your aunt; she consents.”

“But I do not,” said Judith.

He stamped again, passionately.

“I am not the man who will bear to be disobeyed and my will crossed. I say – Here you shall stay.”

Judith waited a moment, looking at him steadily out of her clear, glittering iridescent eyes, and said slowly, “I am not the girl to be obliged to stay where my common-sense and my heart say Stay not.”

He folded his arms, lowered his chin on his breast, and strode up and down the room. Then, suddenly, he stood still opposite her and asked, in a threatening tone:

“Do you not like your room? Does that not please your humor?”

“It has been most kind of you to collect all my little bits of rubbish there. I feel how good you have been, how full of thought for me; but, for all that, I cannot stay.”

“Why not?”

“I have said, on one account, because of Jamie.”

He bit his lips – “I hate that boy.”

“Then most certainly he cannot be here. He must be with those who love him.”

“Then stay.”

“I cannot – I will not. I have a will as well as you. My dear papa always said that my will was strong.”

“You are the only person who has ever dared to resist me.”

“That may be; I am daring – because you have been kind.”

“Kind to you. Yes – to you only.”

“It may be so, and because kind to me, and me only, I, and I only, presume to say No when you say Yes.”

He came again to the fireplace and again leaned against the mantel-shelf. He was trembling with passion.

“And what if I say that, if you go, I will turn old Dunes – I mean your aunt – out of the house?”

“You will not say it, Mr. Coppinger; you are too noble, too generous, to take a mean revenge.”

“Oh! you allow there is some good in me?”

“I thankfully and cheerfully protest there is a great deal of good in you – and I would there were more.”

“Come – stay here and teach me to be good – be my crutch; I will lean on you, and you shall help me along the right way.”

“You are too great a weight, Mr. Coppinger,” said she, smiling – but it was a frightened and a forced smile. “You would bend and break the little crutch.”

He heaved a long breath. He was looking at her from under his hand and his bent brows.

“You are cruel – to deny me a chance. And what if I were to say that I am hungry, sick at heart, and faint. Would you turn your back and leave me?”

“No, assuredly not.”

“I am hungry.”

She looked up at him, and was frightened by the glitter in his eyes.

“I am hungry for the sight of you, for the sound of your voice.”

She did not say anything to this, but sat, with her hands on her lap, musing, uncertain how to deal with this man, so strange, impulsive, and yet so submissive to her, and even appealing to her pity.

“Mr. Coppinger, I have to think of and care for Jamie, and he takes up all my thoughts and engrosses all my time.”

“Jamie, again!”

“So that I cannot feed and teach another orphan.”

“Put off your departure – a week. Grant me that. Then you will have time to get quite strong, and also you will be able to see whether it is not possible for you to live here. Here is your aunt – it is natural and right that you should be with her. She has been made your guardian by your father. Do you not bow to his directions.”

“Mr. Coppinger, I cannot stay here.”

“I am at a disadvantage,” he exclaimed. “Man always is when carrying on a contest with a woman. Stay – stay here and listen to me.” He put out his hand and pressed her back into the chair, for she was about to rise. “Listen to what I say. You do not know – you cannot know – how near death you and I – yes, you and I were, chained together.” His deep voice shook. “You and I were on the face of the cliff. There was but one little strip, the width of my hand” – he held out his palm before her – “and that was not secure. It was sliding away under my feet. Below was death, certain death – a wretched death. I held you. That little chain tied us two – us two together. All your life and mine hung on was my broken arm and broken collar-bone. I held you to me with my right arm and the chain. I did not think we should live. I thought that together – chained together, I holding you – so we would die – so we would be found – and my only care, my only prayer was, if so, that so we might be washed to sea and sink together, I holding you and chained to you, and you to me. I prayed that we might never be found; for I thought if rude hands were laid on us that the chain would be unloosed, my arm unlocked from about you, and that we should be carried to separate graves. I could not endure that thought. Let us go down together – bound, clasped together – into the depths of the deep sea, and there rest. But it was not to be so. I carried you over that stage of infinite danger. An angel or a devil – I cannot say which – held me up. And then I swore that never in life should you be loosed from me, as I trusted that in death we should have remained bound together. See!” He put his hand to her head and drew a lock of her golden hair and wound it about his hand and arm. “You have me fast now – fast in a chain of gold – of gold infinitely precious to me – infinitely strong – and you will cast me off, who never thought to cast you off when tied to you with a chain of iron. What say you? Will you stand in safety on your cliff of pride and integrity and unloose the golden band and say, ‘Go down – down. I know nothing in you to love. You are naught to me but a robber, a wrecker, a drunkard, a murderer – go down into Hell?’”

In his quivering excitement he acted the whole scene, unconscious that he was so doing, and the drops of agony stood on his brow and rolled – drip – drip – drip from it. Man does not weep; his tears exude more bitter than those that flow from the eyes, and they distil from his pores.

Judith was awed by the intensity of passion in the man, but not changed in her purpose. His vehemence reacted on her, calming her, giving her determination to finish the scene decisively and finally.

“Mr. Coppinger,” she said, looking up to him, who still held her by the hair wound about his hand and arm, “it is you who hold me in chains, not I you. And so I – your prisoner – must address a gaoler. Am I to speak in chains, or will you release me?”

He shook his head, and clenched his hand on the gold hair.

“Very well,” said she, “so it must be; I, bound, plead my cause with you – at a disadvantage. This is what I must say at the risk of hurting you; and, Heaven be my witness, I would not wound one who has been so good to me – one to whom I owe my life, my power now to speak and entreat.” She paused a minute to gain breath and strengthen herself for what she had to say.

“Mr. Coppinger – do you not yourself see that it is quite impossible that I should remain in this house – that I should have anything more to do with you? Consider how I have been brought up – what my thoughts have been. I have had, from earliest childhood, my dear papa’s example and teachings, sinking into my heart till they have colored my very life-blood. My little world and your great one are quite different. What I love and care for is folly to you, and your pursuits and pleasures are repugnant to me. You are an eagle – a bird of prey.”

“A bird of prey,” repeated Coppinger.

“And you soar and fight, and dive, and rend in your own element; whereas I am a little silver trout – ”

“No” – he drew up his arm wound round with her hair – “No – a goldfish.”

“Well, so be it; a goldfish swimming in my own crystal element, and happy in it. You would not take me out of it to gasp and die. Trust me, Captain Coppinger, I could not – even if I would – live in your world.”

She put up her hands to his arm and drew some of the hair through his fingers, and unwound it from his sleeve. He made no resistance. He watched her, in a dream. He had heard every word she had said, and he knew that she spoke the truth. They belonged to different realms of thought and sensation. He could not breathe – he would stifle – in hers, and it was possible – it was certain – that she could not endure the strong, rough quality of his.

Her delicate fingers touched his hand, and sent a spasm to his heart. She was drawing away another strand of hair, and untwisting it from about his arm, passing the wavy, fire-gold from one hand to the other. And as every strand was taken off, so went light and hope from him, and despair settled down on his dark spirit.

He was thinking whether it would not have been better to have thrown himself down when he had her in his arms, and bound to him by the chain.

Then he laughed.

She looked up, and caught his wild eye. There was a timid inquiry in her look, and he answered it.

“You may unwind your hair from my arm, but it is woven round and round my heart, and you cannot loose it thence.”

She drew another strand away, and released that also from his arm. There remained now but one red-gold band of hair fastening her to him. He looked entreatingly at her, and then at the hair.

“It must indeed be so,” she said, and released herself wholly.

Then she stood up, a little timidly, for she could not trust him in his passion and his despair. But he did not stir; he looked at her with fixed, dreamy eyes. She left her place, and moved toward the door. She had gone forth from Mr. Menaida’s without hat or other cover for her head than the cloak with its hood, and that she had lost. She must return bare-headed. She had reached the door; and there she waved him a farewell.

“Goldfish!” he cried.

She halted.

“Goldfish, come here; one – one word only.”

She hesitated whether to yield. The man was dangerous. But she considered that with a few strides he might overtake her if she tried to escape. Therefore she returned toward him, but came not near enough for him to touch her.

“Hearken to me,” said he. “It may be as you say. It is as you say. You have your world; I have mine. You could not live in mine, nor I in yours.” But his voice thrilled. “Swear to me – swear to me now – that while I live no other shall hold you, as I would have held you, to his side; that no other shall take your hair and wind it round him, as I have – I could not endure that. Will you swear to me that? – and you shall go.”

“Indeed I will; indeed, indeed I will.”

“Beware how you break this oath. Let him beware who dares to seek you.” He was silent, looking on the ground, his arms folded. So he stood for some minutes, lost in thought. Then suddenly he cried out, “Goldfish!”

He had found a single hair, long – a yard long – of the most intense red-gold, lustrous as a cloud in the west over the sunken sun. It had been left about his arm and hand.

“Goldfish!”

But she was gone.

CHAPTER XX

BOUGHT AND SOLD

Cruel Coppinger remained brooding in the place where he had been standing, and as he stood there his face darkened. He was a man of imperious will and violent passions; a man unwont to curb himself; accustomed to sweep out of his path whoever or whatever stood between him and the accomplishment of his purpose; a man who never asked himself whether that purpose were good or bad. He had succumbed, in a manner strange and surprising to himself, to the influence of Judith – a sort of witchery over him that subdued his violence and awed him into gentleness and modesty. But when her presence was withdrawn the revolt of the man’s lawless nature began. Who was this who had dared to oppose her will to his? a mere child of eighteen. Women were ever said to be a perverse generation, and loved to domineer over men; and man was weak to suffer it. So thinking, chafing, he had worked himself into a simmering rage when Miss Trevisa entered the hall, believing it to be empty. Seeing him, she was about to withdraw, when he shouted to her to stay.

“I beg your pardon for intruding, sir; I am in quest of my niece. Those children keep me in a whirl like a teetotum.”

“Your niece is gone.”

“Gone! where to?”

“Back – I suppose to that old fool, Menaida. He is meet to be a companion for her and that idiot, her brother; not I – I am to be spurned from her presence.”

Miss Trevisa was surprised, but she said nothing. She knew his moods.

“Stand there, Mother Dunes!” said Coppinger, in his anger and humiliation, glad to have some one on whom he could pour out the lava that boiled up in his burning breast. “Listen to me. She has told me that we belong to different worlds – she and I – and to different races, kinds of being, and that there can be no fellowship betwixt us. Where I am she will not be. Between me and you there is a great gulf fixed – see you? and I am as Dives tormented in my flame, and she stands yonder, serene, in cold and complacent blessedness, and will not cross to me with her finger dipped in cold water to cool my tongue; and as for my coming near to her” – he laughed fiercely – “that can never be.”

“Did she say all that?” asked Miss Trevisa.

“She looked it; she implied it, if she did not say it in these naked words. And, what is more,” shouted he, coming before Aunt Dionysia, threateningly, so that she recoiled, “it is true. When she sat there in yonder chair, and I stood here by this hearthstone, and she spoke, I knew it was true; I saw it all – the great gulf unspanned by any bridge. I knew that none could ever bridge it, and there we were, apart for ever, I in my fire burning, she in Blessedness – indifferent.”

“I am very sorry,” said Miss Trevisa, “that Judith should so have misconducted herself. My brother brought her up in a manner to my mind, most improper for a young girl. He made her read Rollin’s ‘Ancient History,’ and Blair’s ‘Chronological Tables,’ and really upon my word, I cannot say what else.”