In the Roar of the Sea
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It was a question also whether proceedings could be taken relative to the exhibition of lights that had misguided the merchantman. The coast-guard had come on Mr. Menaida and Judith on the downs with a light, but he was conducting her to her new house, and there could be entertained against them no suspicion of having acted with evil intent.
“Do you know, father,” said Oliver, after he was rested, had slept and fed, “I am pretty sure that the scoundrel who attacked me was Captain Coppinger. I cannot swear. It is many years now since I heard his voice, and when I did hear it, it was but very occasionally. What made me suspect at the time that I was struggling with Captain Cruel was that he had my head back over the gunwale and called for an axe, swearing that he would treat me like Wyvill. That story was new when I left home, and folk said that Coppinger had killed the man.”
Mr. Menaida fidgeted.
“That was the man who was at the head of the entire gang. He it was who issued the orders which the rest obeyed; and he, moreover, was the man who required the passengers to deliver up their purses and valuables before he allowed them to enter the boat.”
“Between ourselves,” said Uncle Zachie, rubbing his chin and screwing up his mouth, “between you and me and the poker, I have no doubt about it, and I could bring his neck into the halter if I chose.”
“Then why do you not, father? The ruffian would not have scrupled to hack off my head had an axe been handy, or had I waited till he had got hold of one.”
Mr. Menaida shook his head.
“There are a deal of things that belong to all things,” he said. “I was on the down with my little pet and idol, Judith, and we had the lantern, and it was that lantern that proved fatal to your vessel.”
“What, father! We owe our wreck to you?”
“No, and yet it must be suffered to be so supposed, I must allow many hard words to be rapped out against me, my want of consideration, my scatterbrainedness. I admit that I am not a Solomon, but I should not be such an ass, such a criminal, as on a night like the last to walk over the downs above the cliffs with a lantern. Nevertheless I cannot clear myself.”
“Why not?”
“Because of Judith.”
“I do not understand.”
“I was escorting her home, to her husband’s – ”
“Is she married?”
“’Pon my word, I can’t say; half and half – ”
“I do not understand you.”
“I will explain, later,” said Mr. Menaida. “It’s a perplexing question, and though I was brought up at the law, upon my word I can’t say how the law would stand in the matter.”
“But how about the false lights?”
“I am coming to that. When the Preventive men came on us, led by Scantlebray – and why he was with them, and what concern it was of his, I don’t know – when the guard found us, it is true Judith had the lantern, but it was under her cloak.”
“We, however, saw the light for some time.”
“Yes, but neither she nor I showed it. We had not brought a light with us. We knew that it would be wrong to do so, but we came on someone driving an ass with a lantern affixed to the head of the brute.”
“Then say so.”
“I cannot – that person was Judith’s brother.”
“But he is an idiot.”
“He was sent out with the light.”
“Well, then, that person who sent him will be punished and the silly boy will come off scot free.”
“I cannot – he who sent the boy was Judith’s husband.”
“Judith’s husband! Who is that?”
“Captain Coppinger.”
“Well, what of that? The man is a double-dyed villain. He ought to be brought to justice. Consider the crimes of which he has been guilty. Consider what he has done this past night. I cannot see, father, that merely because you esteem a young person, who may be very estimable, we should let a consummate scoundrel go free, solely because he is her husband. He has brought a fine ship to wreck, he has produced much wretchedness and alarm. Indeed, he has been the occasion of some lives being lost, for one or two of the sailors, thinking we were going to Davy Jones’s locker, got drunk and were carried overboard. Then, consider, he robbed some of the unhappy, frightened women as they were escaping. Bless me!” Oliver sprang up and paced the room. “It makes my blood seethe. The fellow deserves no consideration. Give him up to justice; let him be hung or transported.”
Mr. Menaida passed his hand through his hair, and lit his pipe.
“’Pon my word,” said he, “there’s a good deal to be said on your side – and yet – ”
“There is everything to be said on my side,” urged Oliver, with vehemence. “The man is engaged on his nefarious traffic. Winter is setting in. He will wreck other vessels as well, and if you spare him now, then the guilt of causing the destruction of other vessels and the loss of more lives will rest in a measure on you.”
“And yet,” pleaded Menaida, senior, “I don’t know – I don’t like – you see – ”
“You are moved by a little sentiment for Miss Judith Trevisa, or – I beg her pardon – Mrs. Cruel Coppinger. But it is a mistake, father. If you had had this sentimental regard for her, and value for her, you should not have suffered her to marry such a scoundrel, past redemption.”
“I could not help it. I told her that the man was bad – that is to say – I believed he was a smuggler, and that he was generally credited with being a wrecker as well. But there were other influences – other forces at work – I could not help it.”
“The sooner we can rid her of this villain the better,” persisted Oliver. “I cannot share your scruples, father.”
Then the door opened and Judith entered.
Oliver stood up. He had reseated himself on the opposite side of the fire to his father, after the ebullition of wrath that had made him pace the room.
He saw before him a delicate, girlish figure – a child in size and in innocence of face, but with a woman’s force of character in the brow, clear eyes, and set mouth. She was ivory white; her golden hair was spread out about her face – blown by the wind, it was a veritable halo, such as is worn by an angel of La Fiesole in Cimabue. Her long, slender, white throat was bare; she had short sleeves, to the elbows, and bare arms. Her stockings were white, under the dark-blue gown. Oliver Menaida had spent a good many years in Portugal, and had seen flat faces, sallow complexions, and dark hair – women without delicacy of bone and grace of figure – and, on his return to England, the first woman he saw was Judith – this little, pale, red-gold-headed creature, with eyes iridescent and full of a soul that made them sparkle and change color with every change of emotion in the heart and of thought in the busy brain.
Oliver was a fine man, tall, with a bright and honest face, fair hair, and blue eyes. He started back from his seat and looked at this child-bride who entered his father’s cottage. He knew at once who she was, from the descriptions he had received of her from his father in letters from home.
He did not understand how she had become the wife of Cruel Coppinger. He had not heard the story from his father, still less could he comprehend the enigmatical words of his father relative to her half-and-half marriage. As now he looked on this little figure, that breathed an atmosphere of perfect purity, of untouched innocence, and yet not mixed with that weakness which so often characterizes innocence – on the contrary blended with a strength and force beyond her years – Oliver’s heart rose with a bound and smote against his ribs. He was overcome with a qualm of infinite pity for this poor, little, fragile being, whose life was linked with that of one so ruthless as Coppinger. Looking at that anxious face, at those lustrous eyes, set in lids that were reddened with weeping, he knew that the iron had entered into her soul, that she had suffered and was suffering then; nay, more, that the life opening before her would be one of almost unrelieved contrariety and sorrow.
At once he understood his father’s hesitation when he urged him to increase the load of shame and trouble that lay on her. He could not withdraw his eyes from Judith. She was to him a vision so wonderful, so strange, so thrilling, so full of appeal to his admiration and to his chivalry.
“Here, Ju! here is my Oliver, of whom I have told you so much!” said Menaida, running up to Judith. “Oliver, boy! she has read your letters, and I believe they gave her almost as great pleasure as they did me. She was always interested in you. I mean ever since she came into my house, and we have talked together about you, and upon my word it really seemed as if you were to her as a brother.”
A faint smile came on Judith’s face; she held out her hand and said:
“Yes, I have come to love your dear father, who has been to me so kind, and to Jamie also; he has been full of thought – I mean kindness. What has interested him has interested me. I call him uncle, so I will call you cousin. May it be so?”
He touched her hand; he did not dare to grasp the frail, slender white hand. But as he touched it, there boiled up in his heart a rage against Coppinger, that he – this man steeped in iniquity – should have obtained possession of a pearl set in ruddy gold – a pearl that he was, so thought Oliver, incapable of appreciating.
“How came you here?” asked Judith. “Your father has been expecting you some time, but not so soon.”
“I am come off the wreck.”
She started back and looked fixedly on him.
“What – you were wrecked? – in that ship last night?”
“Yes. After the fog lifted we were quite lost as to where we were, and ran aground.”
“What led you astray?”
“Our own bewilderment and ignorance as to where we were.”
“And you got ashore?”
“Yes. I was put across by the Preventive men. I spent half the night on Doom Bar.”
“Were any lives lost?”
“Only those lost their lives who threw them away. Some tipsy sailors, who got at the spirits, and drank themselves drunk.”
“And – did any others – I mean did any wreckers come to your ship?”
“Salvors? Yes; salvors came to save what could be saved. That is always so.”
Judith drew a long breath of relief; but she could not forget Jamie and the ass.
“You were not led astray by false lights?”
“Any lights we might have seen were sure to lead us astray, as we did not in the least know where we were.”
“Thank you,” said Judith. Then she turned to Uncle Zachie.
“I have a favor to ask of you.”
“Anything you ask I will do.”
“It is to let Jamie live here, he is more likely to be well employed, less likely to get in wrong courses, than at the Glaze. Alas! I cannot be with him always and everywhere, and I cannot trust him there. Here he has his occupation; he can help you with the birds. There he has nothing, and the men he meets are not such as I desire that he should associate with. Besides, you know, uncle, what occurred last night, and why I am anxious to get him away.”
“Yes,” answered the old man; “I’ll do my best. He shall be welcome here.”
“Moreover, Captain Coppinger dislikes him. He might in a fit of anger maltreat him; I cannot say that he would, but he makes no concealment of his dislike.”
“Send Jamie here.”
“And then I can come every day and see him, how he is getting on, and can encourage him with his work, and give him his lessons as usual.”
“It will always be a delight to me to have you here.”
“And to me – to come.” She might have said, “to be away from Pentyre,” but she refrained from saying that. With a faint smile – a smile that was but the twinkle of a tear – she held out her hand to say farewell.
Uncle Zachie clasped it, and then, suddenly, she bent and kissed his hand.
“You must not do that,” said he, hastily.
She looked piteously into his eyes, and said, in a whisper that he alone could hear – “I am so lonely.”
When she was gone the old man returned to the ingle nook and resumed his pipe. He did not speak, but every now and then he put one finger furtively to his cheek, wiped off something, and drew very vigorous whiffs of tobacco.
Nor was Oliver inclined to speak; he gazed dreamily into the fire, with contracted brows, and hands that were clenched.
A quarter of an hour thus passed. Then Oliver looked up at his father, and said: “There is worse wrecking than that of ships. Can nothing be done for this poor little craft, drifting in fog – aimless! – and going on to the rocks?”
Uncle Zachie again wiped his cheek, and in his thoughtlessness wiped it with the bowl of his pipe and burnt himself. He shook his head.
“Now tell me what you meant when you said she was but half married,” said Oliver.
Then his father related to him the circumstances of Judith’s forced engagement, and of the incomplete marriage of the day before.
“By my soul!” exclaimed Oliver. “He must – he shall not treat her as he did our vessel.”
“Oh, Oliver! if I had had my way – I had designed her for you.”
“For me!”
Oliver bent his head and looked hard into the fire, where strange forms of light were dancing – dancing and disappearing.
Then Mr. Menaida said, between his whiffs: “Surely a change of wind, Oliver. A little while ago, and she was not to be considered; justice above all, and Judith sacrificed, if need be – now it is Judith above all.”
“Yes,” musingly, “above all.”
CHAPTER XXXIX
A FIRST LIE
As a faithful, as a loving wife almost, did Judith attend to Coppinger for the day or two before he was himself again. He had been bruised, that was all. The waves had driven him against the boat, and he had been struck by an oar; but the very fact that he was driven against the boat had proved his salvation, for he was drawn on board, and his own men carried him swiftly to the bank, and, finding him unable to walk, conveyed him home. On reaching home a worse blow than that of the oar had struck him, and struck him on the heart, and it was dealt him by his wife. She bade him put away from him for ever the expectation, the hope, of her becoming his in more than name.
Pain and disappointment made him irritable. He broke out into angry complaint, and Judith had much to endure. She did not answer him. She had told him her purpose, and she would neither be bullied nor cajoled to alter it.
Judith had much time to herself; she wandered through the rooms of Pentyre during the day without encountering anyone, and then strolled on the cliffs; wherever she went she carried her trouble with her, gnawing at her heart. There was no deliverance for her, and she did not turn her mind in that direction. She would remain what she was – Coppinger’s half-wife, a wife without a wedding-ring, united to him by a most dubiously legal ceremony. She bore his name, she was content to do that; she must bear with his love turned to fury by disappointment. She would do that till it died away before her firm and unchangeable opposition.
“What will be said,” growled Coppinger, “when it is seen that you wear no ring?”
“I will wear my mother’s, and turn the stone within,” answered Judith, “then it will be like our marriage, a semblance, nothing more.”
She did appear next day with a ring. When the hand was closed, it looked like a plain gold wedding hoop. When she opened and turned her hand, it was apparent that within was a small brilliant. A modest ring, a very inexpensive one, that her father had given to her mother as a guard. Modest and inexpensive because his purse could afford no better; not because he would not have given her the best diamonds available, had he possessed the means to purchase them.
This ring had been removed from the dead finger of her mother, and Mr. Peter Trevisa had preserved it as a present for the daughter.
Almost every day Judith went to Polzeath to give lessons to Jamie, and to see how the boy was going on. Jamie was happy with Mr. Menaida, he liked a little desultory work, and Oliver was kind to him, took him walks, and talked to him of scenes in Portugal.
Very often, indeed, did Judith, when she arrived, find Oliver at his father’s. He would sometimes sit through the lesson, often attend her back to the gate of Pentyre. His conduct toward her was deferential, tinged with pity. She could see in his eyes, read in his manner of address, that he knew her story, and grieved for her, and would do anything he could to release her from her place of torment, if he knew how. But he never spoke to her of Coppinger, never of her marriage, and the peculiar features that attended it. She often ventured on the topic of the wreck, and he saw that she was probing him to discover the truth concerning it, but he on no occasion allowed himself to say anything that could give her reason to believe her husband was the cause of the ship being lost, nor did he tell her of his own desperate conflict with the wrecker captain on board the vessel.
He was a pleasant companion, cheerful and entertaining. Having been abroad, though not having travelled widely, he could tell much about Portugal, and something about Spain. Judith’s eager mind was greedy after information, and it diverted her thoughts from painful topics to hear and talk about orange and lemon groves, the vineyards, the flower-gardens, the manners and customs of the people of Portugal, to see sketches of interesting places, and of the costumes of the peasantry. What drew her to Oliver specially was, however, his consideration for Jamie, to whom he was always kind, and whom he was disposed to amuse.
The wreck of the merchantman on Doom Bar had caused a great commotion among the inhabitants of Cornwall. All the gentry, clergy, and the farmers and yeomen not immediately on the coast, felt that wrecking was not only a monstrous act of inhumanity, but was a scandal to the county, and ought to be peremptorily suppressed, and those guilty of it brought to justice. It was currently reported that the merchantman from Oporto was wilfully wrecked, and that an attempt had been made to rob and plunder the passengers and the vessel. But the evidence in support of this view was of little force. The only persons who had been found with a light on the cliffs were Mr. Menaida, whom every one respected for his integrity, and Judith, the daughter of the late rector of St. Enodoc, the most strenuous and uncompromising denouncer of wrecking. No one, however malicious, could believe either to be guilty of more than imprudence.
The evidence as to the attempt of wreckers to invade the ship, and plunder it and the passengers also broke down. One lady alone could swear that her purse had been forcibly taken from her. The Portuguese men could hardly understand English, and though she asserted that she had been asked for money, she could not say that anything had been taken from her. It was quite possible that she had misunderstood an order given her to descend into the boat.
The night had been dark, the lady who had been robbed could not swear to the identity of the man who had taken her purse, she could not even say that it was one of those who had come to the vessel, and was not one of the crew. The crew had behaved notoriously badly, some had been drunk, and it was possible that one of these fellows, flushed with spirits, had demanded and taken her money.
There were two or three St. Enodoc men arrested because found on the ship at the time, but they persisted in the declaration that, hearing signals of distress, they had kindled a light and set it in the tower window of the church as a guide to the shipwrecked, and had gone to the vessel aground on Doom Bar, with the intention of offering every assistance in their power to the castaways. They asserted that they had found the deck in confusion. The seamen drunk and lost to discipline, the passengers helpless and frightened, and that it was only owing to them that some sort of order was brought about, or attempted. The arrival of the coast-guard interfered with their efforts to be useful.
The magistrates were constrained to dismiss the case, although possessed with the moral conviction that the matter was not as the accused represented. The only person who could have given evidence that might have consigned them to prison was Oliver, and he was not called upon to give witness.
But, although the case had broken down completely, an uneasy and angry feeling prevailed. People were not convinced that the wreck was accidental, and they believed that but for the arrival of the guard, the passengers would have been robbed and the ship looted. It was true enough that a light had been exhibited from St. Enodoc tower, but that served as a guide to those who rushed upon the wreck, and was every whit as much to their advantage as to that of the shipwrecked men. For, suppose that the crew and passengers had got off in their boats, they would have made, naturally, for the light, and who could say but that a gang of ruffians was not waiting on the shore to plunder them as they landed.
The general feeling in the county was one of vexation that more prompt action had not been taken, or that the action taken had not been more successful. No man showed this feeling more fully than Mr. Scantlebray, who hunted with the coast-guard for his own ends, and who had felt sanguine that in this case Coppinger would be caught.
That Coppinger was at the bottom of the attempt, which had been partly successful, few doubted, and yet there was not a shadow of proof against him. But that, according to common opinion, only showed how deep was his craft.
The state of Judith’s mind was also one of unrest. She had a conviction seated in her heart that all was not right, and yet she had no sound cause for charging her husband with being a deliberate wrecker. Jamie had gone out with his ass and the lantern, that was true, but was Jamie’s account of the affair to be relied on? When questioned he became confused. He never could be trusted to recall, twenty-four hours after an event, the particulars exactly as they occurred. Any suggestive queries drew him aside, and without an intent to deceive he would tell what was a lie, simply because he could not distinguish between realities and fleeting impressions. She knew that if she asked him whether Coppinger had fastened the lantern to the head of his donkey, and had bidden him drive the creature slowly up and down the inequalities of the surface of the cliffs, he would assent, and say it was so; but, then, if she were to say to him, “Now, Jamie, did not Captain Coppinger tell you on no account to show the light till you reached the shore at St. Enodoc, and then to fix it steadily,” that his face would for a moment assume a vacant, then a distressed expression, and he would finally say that he believed it really was so. No reliance was to be placed on anything he said, except at the moment, and not always then. He was liable to misunderstand directions, and by a stupid perversity to act exactly contrary to the instructions given him.
Judith heard nothing of the surmises that floated in the neighborhood, but she knew enough to be uneasy. She had been somewhat reassured by Oliver Menaida; she could see no reason why he should withhold the truth from her. Was it, then, possible after all that Captain Coppinger had gone to the rescue of the wrecked people, that he had sent the light not to mislead, but to direct them aright?
It was Judith’s fate – so it seemed – to be never certain whether to think the worst of Coppinger, or to hold that he had been misjudged by her. He had been badly hurt in his attempt to rescue the crew and passengers – according to Aunt Dionysia’s account. If she were to believe this story, then he was deserving of respect.
Judith began to recover some of her cheerfulness, some of her freshness of looks. This was due to the abatement of her fears. Coppinger had angrily, sullenly, accepted the relation which she had assured him must subsist between them, and which could never be altered.
Aunt Dionysia was peevish and morose indeed. She had been disappointed in her hope of getting into Othello Cottage before Christmas; but she had apparently received a caution from Coppinger not to exhibit ill-will toward his wife by word or token, and she restrained herself, though with manifest effort. That sufficed Judith. She no longer looked for, cared for love from her aunt. It satisfied her if Miss Trevisa left her unmolested.
Moreover, Judith enjoyed the walk to Polzeath every day, and, somehow, the lessons to Jamie gave her an interest that she had never found in them before. Oliver was so helpful. When Jamie was stubborn, he persuaded him with a joke or a promise to laugh and put aside his ill-humor, and attack the task once more. The little gossiping talk after the lesson with Oliver, or with Oliver and his father, was a delight to her. She looked forward to it, from day to day, naturally, reasonably, for at the Glaze she had no one with whom to converse, no one with the same general interests as herself, the same knowledge of books, and pleasure in the acquisition of information.