In the Roar of the Sea
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“It seems to me – but I may be uncharitable,” said Oliver, grimly, “that the opinion given was this way or that way according as I showed myself interested for the legality or against the legality of the marriage. Both of those to whom I applied regarded the case as interesting and deserving of being thrashed out in a court of law, and gave their opinions so as to induce me to embark in a suit. You understand what I mean, father? When I seemed urgent that the marriage should be pronounced none at all, then the verdict of the consulting barrister was that it was no marriage at all, and very good reasons he was able to produce to show that. But when I let it be supposed that my object was to get this marriage established against certain parties keenly interested in disputing it, I got an opinion that it was a good and legal marriage, and very good reasons were produced to sustain this conclusion.”
“I could have told you as much – and this has cost you money?”
“Yes – naturally.”
“And left you without any satisfaction?”
“Yes.”
“No satisfaction is to be got out of law – that is why I took to stuffing birds.”
“What is that noise at the door?” asked Oliver.
“There is some one trying to come in, and fumbling at the hasp,” said his father.
Oliver went to the door and opened it – to find Jamie there, trembling, white, and apparently about to faint. He could not speak, but he held out a note to Oliver.
“What is the matter with you?” asked the young man.
The boy, however, did not answer, but ran to Mr. Menaida, and crouched behind him.
“He has been frightened,” said the old man. “Leave him alone. He will come round presently and I will give him a drop of spirits to rouse him up. What letter is that?”
Oliver looked at the little note given him. It had been sealed, but torn open afterward. It was addressed to him, and across the address was written in bold, coarse letters with a pencil, “Seen and passed. C. C.” Oliver opened the letter and read as follows:
“I pray you leave me. Do not trouble yourself about me. Nothing can now be done for me. My great concern is for Jamie. But I entreat you to be very cautious about yourself where you go. You are in danger. Your life is threatened, and you do not know it. I must not explain myself, but I warn you. Go out of the country – that would be best. Go back to Portugal. I shall not be at ease in my mind till I know that you are gone, and gone unhurt. My dear love to Mr. Menaida – Judith.”
The hand that had written this letter had shaken, the letters were hastily and imperfectly formed. Was this the hand of Judith who had taught Jamie caligraphy, had written out his copies as neatly and beautifully as copper-plate?
Judith had sent him this answer by her brother, and Jamie had been stopped, forced to deliver up the missive, which Coppinger had opened and read. Oliver did not for a moment doubt whence the danger sprang with which he was menaced. Coppinger had suffered the warning to be conveyed to him with contemptuous indifference – it was as though he had scored across the letter – “Be forewarned, take what precautions you will – you shall not escape me.”
The first challenge had come from old Menaida, but Coppinger passed over that as undeserving of attention, but he proclaimed his readiness to cross swords with the young man. And Oliver could not deny that he had given occasion for this. Without counting the cost, without considering the risk; nay, further, without weighing the right and wrong in the matter, Oliver had allowed himself to slip into terms of some familiarity with Judith, harmless enough were she unmarried, but hardly calculated to be so regarded by a husband. They had come to consider each other as cousins, or they had pretended so to consider each other, so as to justify a half-affectionate, half-intimate association, and before he was aware of it Oliver had lost his heart. He could not and he would not regard Judith as the wife of Coppinger, because he knew that she absolutely refused to be so regarded by him, by herself, by his father, though by appearing at the ball with Coppinger, by living in his house, she allowed the world to so consider her. Was she his wife? He could not suppose it when she had refused to conclude the marriage ceremony, when there was no documentary evidence for the marriage. Let the question be mooted in a court of law; what could the witnesses say, but that she had fainted, and that all the latter portion of the ceremony had been performed over her when unconscious, and that on her recovery of her faculties she had resolutely persisted in resistance to the affixing of her signature to the register.
With respect to Judith’s feelings toward himself Oliver was ignorant. She had taken pleasure in his society, because he had made himself agreeable to her, and his company was a relief to her after the solitude of Pentyre and the association there with persons with whom she was wholly out of sympathy.
His quarrel with Coppinger had shifted ground. At first he had resolved, should occasion offer, to conclude with him the contest begun on the wreck, and to chastise him for his conduct on that night. Now, he thought little of that cause of resentment, he desired to punish him for having been the occasion of so much misery to Judith. He could not now drive from his head the scene of the girl’s wan face at the window, looking up at the moon.
Oliver would shrink from doing anything dishonorable, but it did not seem to him that there could be aught wrong and unbecoming a gentleman in endeavoring to snatch this hapless child from the claws of the wild beast that had struck it down.
“No, father,” said he hastily, as the old fellow was pouring out a pretty strong dose of his great specific and about to administer it to Jamie, “no father, it is not that the boy wants; and remember how strongly Judith objects to his being given spirits.”
“Dear, dear!” exclaimed Uncle Zachie, “to be sure she does, and she made me promise not to give him any. But this is an exceptional case.”
“Let him come to me, I will soothe him. The child is frightened, or stay, get him to help you with that kittiwake. Jamie, father can’t get the bird to look natural; his head does not seem to me to be right. Did you ever see a kittiwake turn his neck in that fashion? I wish you would put your fingers to the throat, and bend it about, and set the wadding where it ought to be. Father and I can’t agree about it.”
“It is wrong,” said Jamie. “Look, this is the way.” His mind was diverted. Always volatile, always ready to be turned from one thing to another, Oliver had succeeded in interesting him, and had made him forget for a moment the terrors that had shaken him.
After Jamie had been in the house for half an hour, Oliver advised him to return to the Glaze. He would give him no message, verbal or written. But the thought of having to return renewed the poor child’s fears, and Oliver could hardly allay them by promising to accompany him part of the way.
Oliver was careful not to speak to him on the subject of his alarm, but he gathered from his disjointed talk that Judith had given him the note and impressed on him that it was to be delivered as secretly as possible; that Coppinger had intercepted him, and suspecting something, had threatened and frightened him into divulging the truth. Then Captain Cruel had read the letter, scored over it some words in pencil, given it back to him, and ordered him to fulfil his commission, to deliver the note.
“Look you here, Jamie,” was Mr. Menaida’s parting injunction to the lad as he left the house, “there’s no reason for you to be idle when at Pentyre. You can make friends with some of the men and get birds shot. I don’t advise your having a gun, you are not careful enough. But if they shoot birds you may amuse your leisure in skinning them, and I gave Judith arsenic for you. She keeps it in her workbox, and will let you have sufficient for your purpose as you need it. I would not give it to you, as it might be dangerous in your hands as a gun. It is a deadly poison, and with carelessness you might kill a man. But go to Judith when you have a skin ready to dress and she will see that you have sufficient for the dressing. There, good-by, and bring me some skins shortly.”
Oliver accompanied the boy as far as the gate that led into the lane between the walls enclosing the fields of the Pentyre estate. Jamie pressed him to come farther, but this the young man would not do. He bade the poor lad farewell, bid him divert himself as his father had advised, with bird stuffing, and remained at the gate watching him depart. The boy’s face and feebleness touched and stirred the heart of Oliver. The face reminded him so strongly of his twin sister, but it was the shadow, the pale shadow of Judith only, without the intelligence, the character, and the force. And the helplessness of the child, his desolation, his condition of nervous alarm roused the young man’s pity. He was startled by a shot, that struck his gray hat simultaneously with the report.
In a moment he sprang over the hedge in the direction whence the smoke rose, and came upon Cruel Coppinger with a gun.
“Oh, you!” said the latter, with a sneer, “I thought I was shooting a rabbit.”
“This is the second time,” said Oliver.
“The first,” was Coppinger’s correction.
“Not so – the second time you have levelled at me. The first was on the wreck when I struck up your hand.”
Coppinger shrugged his shoulders. “It is immaterial. The third time is lucky, folks say.”
The two men looked at each other with hostility.
“Your father has insulted me,” said Coppinger. “Are you ready to take up his cause? I will not fight an old fool.”
“I am ready to take up his cause, mine also, and that of – ” Oliver checked himself.
“And that of whom?” asked Coppinger, white with rage, and in a quivering voice.
“The cause of my father and mine own will suffice,” said Oliver.
“And when shall we meet?” asked Captain Cruel, leaning on his gun and glaring at his young antagonist over it.
“When and where suits me,” answered Oliver, coldly.
“And when and where may that be?”
“When and where! – when and where I can come suddenly on you as you came on me upon the wreck. With such as you – one does not observe the ordinary rules.”
“Very well,” shouted Coppinger. “When and where suits you, and when and where suits me – that is, whenever we meet again – we meet finally.”
Then each turned and strode away.
CHAPTER XLIV
THE WHIP FALLS
For many days Judith had been as a prisoner in the house, in her room. Some one had spoken to Coppinger and had roused his suspicions, excited his jealousy. He had forbidden her visits to Polzeath; and to prevent communication between her and the Menaidas, father and son, he had removed Jamie to Pentyre Glaze.
Angry and jealous he was. Time had passed, and still he had not advanced a step, rather he had lost ground. Judith’s hopes that he was not what he had been represented, were dashed. However plausible might be his story to account for the jewels, she did not believe it.
Why was Judith not submissive? Coppinger could now only conclude that she had formed an attachment for Oliver Menaida – for that young man whom she singled out, greeted with a smile, and called by his Christian name. He had heard of how she had made daily visits to the house of his father, how Oliver had been seen attending her home, and his heart foamed with rage and jealousy.
She had no desire to go anywhere, now that she was forbidden to go to Polzeath, and when she knew that she was watched. She would not descend to the hall and mix with the company often assembled there, and though she occasionally went there when Coppinger was alone, took her knitting and sat by the fire, and attempted to make conversation about ordinary matters, yet his temper, his outbursts of rancor, his impatience of every other topic save their relations to each other, and his hatred of the Menaidas, made it intolerable for her to be with him alone, and she desisted from seeking the hall. This incensed him, and he occasionally went up-stairs, sought her out and insisted on her coming down. She would obey, but some outbreak would speedily drive her from his presence again.
Their relations were more strained than ever. His love for her had lost the complexion of love and had assumed that of jealousy. His tenderness and gentleness toward her had been fed by hope, and when hope died they vanished. Even that reverence for her innocence and the respect for her character that he had shown was dissipated by the stormy gusts of jealousy.
Miss Trevisa was no more a help and stay to the poor girl than she had been previously. She was soured and embittered, for her ambition to be out of the house and in Othello Cottage had been frustrated. Coppinger would not let her go till he and his wife had come to more friendly terms. On her chimney-piece were two bunches of lavender, old lavender from the rectory garden of the preceding year. They had become so dry that the seeds fell out, and they no longer exhaled scent unless pressed.
Judith stood at her chimney-piece pressing her finger on the dropped seeds, and picking them up by this means to throw them into the small fire that smouldered in the grate. At first she went on listlessly picking up a seed and casting it into the fire, actuated by her innate love of order, without much thought – rather without any thought – for her mind was engaged over the letter of Oliver and his visit the previous night outside. But after a while, while thus gathering the grains of lavender, she came to associate them with her trouble, and as she thought – “Is there any escape for me, any happiness in store?” – she picked up a seed and cast it into the fire. Then she asked: “Is there any other escape for me than to die – to die and be with dear papa again, now not in S. Enodoc Rectory garden, but in the garden of Paradise?” And again she picked up and cast away a grain. Then, as she touched her fingertip with her tongue and applied it to another lavender seed, she said: “Or must this go on – this nightmare of wretchedness, of persecution, of weariness to death without dying, for years?” And she cast away the seed shudderingly. “Or” – and again, now without touching her finger with her tongue, as though the last thought had contaminated it – “or will he finally break and subdue me, destroy me and Jamie, soul and body?” Shivering at the thought she hardly dare to touch a seed, but forced herself to do so, raised one, and hastily shook it from her.
Thus she continued ringing the change, never formulating any scheme of happiness for herself – certainly, in her white, guileless mind, not in any way associating Oliver with happiness, save as one who might by some means effect her discharge from this bondage – but he was not linked, not woven up with any thought of the future.
The wind clickered at the casement. She had a window toward the sea; another, opposite, toward the land. Hers was a transparent chamber, and her mind had been transparent. Only now, timidly, doubtfully, not knowing herself why, did she draw a blind down over her soul, as though there were something there that she would not have all the world see, and yet which was in itself innocent. Then a new fear woke up in her, lest she should go mad. Day after day, night after night, was spent in the same revolution of distressing thought, in the same bringing up and reconsidering of old difficulties, questions concerning Coppinger, questions concerning Jamie, questions concerning her own power of endurance and resistance. Was it possible that this could go on without driving her mad?
“One thing I see,” murmured she; “all steps are broken away under me on the stair, and one thing alone remains for me to cling to – one only thing – my understanding. That” – she put her hands to her head – “that is all I have left. My name is gone from me. My friends I am separated from. My brother may not be with me. My happiness is all gone. My health may break down, but to a clear understanding I must hold; if that fails me I am lost – lost indeed.”
“Lost indeed!” exclaimed Coppinger, entering abruptly. He had caught her last words. He came in in white rage, blinded and forgetful in his passion, and with his hat on. There was a day when he entered the boudoir with his head covered, and Judith, without a word, by the mere force of her character shining out of her clear eyes, had made him retreat and uncover. It was not so now. She was careless whether he wore the hat or not when he entered her room. “So!” said he, in a voice that foamed out of his mouth, “letters pass between you! Letters – I have read that you sent. I stayed your messenger.”
“Well,” answered Judith, with such composure as she could muster. She had already passed through several stormy scenes with him, and knew that her only security lay in self-restraint. “There was naught in it that you might not read. What did I say? That my condition was fixed – that none could alter it; that is true. That my great care and sorrow of heart is for Jamie; that is true. That Oliver Menaida has been threatened; that also is true. I have heard you speak words against him of no good.”
“I will make good my words.”
“I wrote, and hoped to save him from a danger, and you from a crime.”
Coppinger laughed. “I have sent on the letter. Let him take what precautions he will. I will chastise him. No man ever crossed me yet but was brought to bite the dust.”
“He has not harmed you, Captain Coppinger.”
“He! Can I endure that you should call him by his Christian name, while I am but Captain Coppinger? That you should seek him out, laugh, and talk, and flirt with him – ”
“Captain Coppinger!”
“Yes,” raged he, “always Captain Coppinger, or Captain Cruel, and he is dear Oliver! sweet Oliver!” He well-nigh suffocated in his fury.
Judith drew herself up and folded her arms. She had in one hand a sprig of lavender from which she had been shaking the over-ripe grains. She turned deadly white.
“Give me up his letter. Yours was an answer!”
“I will give it to you,” answered Judith, and she went to her workbox, raised the lid, then the little tray containing reels, and from beneath it extracted a crumpled scrap of paper. She handed it calmly, haughtily to Coppinger, then folded her arms again, one hand still holding the bunch of lavender.
The letter was short. Coppinger’s hand shook with passion so that he could hardly hold it with sufficient steadiness to read it. It ran as follows:
“I must know your wishes, dear Judith. Do you intend to remain in that den of wreckers and cut-throats? or do you desire that your friends should bestir themselves to obtain your release? Tell us, in one word, what to do, or rather what are your wishes, and we will do what we can.”
“Well!” said Coppinger, looking up. “And your answer is to the point – you wish to stay.”
“I did not answer thus. I said – leave me.”
“And never intended that he should leave you,” raged Coppinger. He came close up to her with his eyes glittering, his nostrils distended and snorting and his hands clinched.
Judith loosened her arms, and with her right hand swept a space before her with the bunch of lavender. He should not approach her within arm’s length; the lavender marked the limit beyond which he might not draw near.
“Now, hear me!” said Coppinger. “I have been too indulgent. I have humored you as a spoilt child. Because you willed this or that, I have submitted. But the time for humoring is over. I can endure this suspense no longer. Either you are my wife or you are not. I will suffer no trifling over this any longer. You have as it were put your lips to mine, and then sharply drawn them away – and now offer them to another.”
“Silence!” exclaimed Judith. “You insult me.”
“You insult and outrage me!” said Coppinger, “when you run from your home to chatter with and walk with this Oliver, and never deign to speak to me. When he is your dear Oliver, and I am only Captain Coppinger; when you have smiles for him you have black looks for me. Is not that insulting, galling, stinging, maddening?”
Judith was silent. Her throat swelled. There was some truth in what he said; but, in the sight of heaven, she was guiltless of ever having thought of wrong, of having supposed for a moment that what she had allowed herself had not been harmless.
“You are silent,” said Coppinger. “Now hearken! With this moment I turn over the page of humoring your fancies and yielding to your follies. I have never pressed you to sign that register – I have trusted to your good sense and good feeling. You cannot go back. Even if you desire it, you cannot undo what has been done. Mine you are, mine you shall be – mine wholly and always. Do you hear?”
“Yes.”
“And agree?”
“No.”
He was silent a moment, with clinched teeth and hands looking at her, with eyes that smote her, as though they were bullets.
“Very well,” said he. “Your answer is no.”
“My answer is no, so help me God.”
“Very well,” said he, between his teeth. “Then we open a new chapter.”
“What chapter is that?”
“It is that of compulsion. That of solicitation is closed.”
“You cannot, whilst I have my senses. What!” She saw that he had a great riding-whip in his hand. “What – the old story again! You will strike me?”
“No – not you. I will lash you into submission – through Jamie.”
She uttered a cry, dropped the lavender, that became scattered before her, and held up her hands in mute entreaty.
“I owe him chastisement. I have owed it him for many a day – and to-day above all – as a go-between.”
Judith could not speak. She remained as one frozen – in one attitude, in one spot, speechless. She could not stir, she could not utter a word of entreaty, as Coppinger left the room.
In another minute a loud and shrill cry reached her ears from the court into which one of her windows looked. She knew the cry. It was that of her twin brother, and it thrilled through her heart, quivered in every nerve of her whole frame.
She could hear what followed; but she could not stir. She was rooted by her feet to the floor, but she writhed there. It was as though every blow dealt the boy outside fell on her: she bent, she quivered, her lips parted, but cry she could not, the sweat rolled off her brow; she beat with her hands in the air. Now she thrilled up with uplifted arms, on tip-toe, then sank – it was like a flame flickering in a socket before it expires: it dances, it curls, it shoots up in a tongue, it sinks into a bead of light, it rolls on one side, it sways to the other, it leaps from the wick high into the air, and drops again. It was so with Judith – every stroke dealt, every scream of the tortured boy, every toss of his suffering frame, was repeated in her room, by her – in supreme, unspeaking anguish, too intense for sound to issue from her contracted throat.
Then all was still, and Judith had sunk to her knees on the scattered lavender, extending her arms, clasping her hands, spreading them again, again beating her palms together, in a vague, unconscious way, as if in breathing she could not gain breath enough without this expansion and stretching forth of her arms.
But, all at once, before her stood Coppinger, the whip in his hands.
“Well! what now is your answer?”
She breathed fast for some moments, laboring for expression. Then she reared herself up and tried to speak, but could not. Before her, threshed out on the floor, were the lavender seeds. They lay thick in a film over the boards in one place. She put her finger among them and drew No.
CHAPTER XLV
GONE FROM ITS PLACE
There are persons, they are not many, on whom Luck smiles and showers gold. Not a steady daily downpour of money but, whenever a little cloud darkens their sky, that same little cloud, which to others would be mere gloom, opens and discharges on them a sprinkling of gold pieces.
It is not always the case that those who have rich relatives come in for good things from them. In many cases there are such on whom Luck turns her back, but to those of whom we speak the rain of gold, and the snow of scrip and bonds come unexpectedly, but inevitably. Just as Pilatus catches every cloud that drifts over Switzerland, so do they by some fatality catch something out of every trouble, that tends materially to solace their feelings, lacerated by that trouble. But not so only. These little showers fall to them from relatives they have taken no trouble to keep on good terms with, from acquaintances whom they have cut, admirers whose good opinion they have not concerned themselves to cultivate, friends with whom they have quarrelled. Gideon’s fleece, on one occasion, gathered to itself all the dew that fell, and left the grass of the field around quite dry. So do these fortunate persons concentrate on themselves, fortuitively it seems, the dew of richness that descends and might have, ought to have, dropped elsewhere; at all events, ought to have been more evenly and impartially distributed. Gideon’s fleece, on another occasion was dry, when all the glebe was dripping. So is it with certain unfortunates, Luck never favors them. What they have expected and counted on they do not get, it is diverted, it drops round about them on every side, only on them it never falls.