Baring-Gould Sabine
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.”
“I do not care how it was,” said Coppinger. “But here stands the gulf.”
“Rollin is in sixteen octavo volumes,” said Aunt Dionysia; “and they are thick also.”
Coppinger strode about the room, with his hands in his deep coat pockets, his head down.
“My dear brother,” continued Miss Trevisa, apologetically, “made of Judith his daily companion, told her all he thought, asked her opinion, as though she were a full-grown woman, and one whose opinion was worth having, whereas he never consulted me, never cared to talk to me about anything, and the consequence is the child has grown up without that respect for her elders and betters, and that deference for the male sex which the male sex expects. I am sure when I was a girl, and of her age, I was very different, very different indeed.”
“Of that I have not the smallest doubt,” sneered Coppinger. “But never mind about yourself. It is of her I am speaking. She is gone, has left me, and I cannot endure it. I cannot endure it,” he repeated.
“I beg your pardon,” said Aunt Dionysia, “you must excuse me saying it, Captain Coppinger, but you place me in a difficult position. I am the guardian of my niece, though, goodness knows, I never desired it, and I don’t know what to think. It is very flattering and kind, and I esteem it great goodness in you to speak of Judith with such warmth, but – ”
“Goodness! kindness!” exclaimed Coppinger. “I am good and kind to her! She forced me to it. I can be nothing else, and she throws me at her feet and tramples on me.”
“I am sure your sentiments, sir, are – are estimable; but, feeling as you seem to imply toward Judith, I hardly know what to say. Bless me! what a scourge to my shoulders these children are: nettles stinging and blistering my skin, and not allowing me a moment’s peace!”
“I imply nothing,” said Coppinger. “I speak out direct and plain what I mean. I love her. She has taken me, she turns me about, she gets my heart between her little hands and tortures it.”
“Then surely, Captain, you cannot ask me to let her be here. You are most kind to express yourself in this manner about the pert hussy, but, as she is my niece, and I am responsible for her, I must do my duty by her, and not expose her to be – talked about. Bless me!” gasped Aunt Dunes, “when I was her age I never would have put myself into such a position as to worry my aunt out of her seven senses, and bring her nigh to distraction.”
“I will marry her, and make her mistress of my house and all I have,” said Coppinger.
Miss Trevisa slightly courtesied, then said, “I am sure you are over-indulgent, but what is to become of me? I have no doubt it will be very comfortable and acceptable to Judith to hear this, but – what is to become of me? It would not be very delightful for me to be housekeeper here under my own niece, a pert, insolent, capricious hussy. You can see at once, Captain Coppinger, that I cannot consent to that.”
The woman had the shrewdness to know that she could be useful to Coppinger, and the selfishness that induced her to make terms with him to secure her own future, and to show him that she could stand in his way till he yielded to them.
“I never asked to have these children thrust down my throat, like the fish-bone that strangled Lady Godiva – no, who was it? Earl Godiva; but I thank my stars I never waded through Rollin, and most certainly kept my hands off Blair. Of course, Captain Coppinger, it is right and proper of you to address yourself to me, as the guardian of my niece, before speaking to her.”
“I have spoken to her and she spurns me.”
“Naturally, because you spoke to her before addressing me on the subject. My dear brother – I will do him this justice – was very emphatic on this point. But you see, sir, my consent can never be given.”
“I do not ask your consent.”
“Judith will never take you without it.”
“Consent or no consent,” said Coppinger, “that is a secondary matter. The first is, she does not like me, whereas I – I love her. I never loved a woman before. I knew not what love was. I laughed at the fools, as I took them to be, who sold themselves into the hands of women; but now, I cannot live without her. I can think of nothing but her all day. I am in a fever, and cannot sleep at night – all because she is tormenting me.”
All at once, exhausted by his passion, desperate at seeing no chance of success, angry at being flouted by a child, he threw himself into the chair, and settled his chin on his breast, and folded his arms.
“Go on,” said he. “Tell me what is my way out of this.”
“You cannot expect my help or my advice, Captain, so as to forward what would be most unsatisfactory to me.”
“What! do you grudge her to me?”
“Not that; but, if she were here, what would become of me? Should I be turned out into the cold at my age by this red-headed hussy, to find a home for myself with strangers? Here I never would abide with her as mistress, never.”
“I care naught about you.”
“No, of that I am aware, to my regret, sir; but that makes it all the more necessary for me to take care for myself.”
“I see,” said Coppinger, “I must buy you. Is your aid worth it? Will she listen to you?”
“I can make her listen to me,” said Aunt Dunes, “if it be worth my while. At my age, having roughed it, having no friends, I must think of myself and provide for the future, when I shall be too old to work.”
“Name your price.”
Miss Trevisa did not answer for a while; she was considering the terms she would make. To her coarse and soured mind there was nothing to scruple at in aiding Coppinger in his suit. The Trevisas were of a fine old Cornish stock, but then Judith took after her mother, the poor Scottish governess, and Aunt Dunes did not feel toward her as though she were of her own kin. The girl looked like her mother. She had no right, in Miss Trevisa’s eyes, to bear the name of her father, for her father ought to have known better than stoop to marry a beggarly, outlandish governess. Not very logical reasoning, but what woman, where her feelings are engaged, does reason logically? Aunt Dunes had never loved her niece; she felt an inner repulsion, such as sprang from encountering a nature superior, purer, more refined than her own, and the mortification of being forced to admit to herself that it was so. Judith, moreover, was costing her money, and Miss Trevisa parted with her hard-earned savings as reluctantly as with her heart’s blood. She begrudged the girl and her brother every penny she was forced, or believed she would be forced, to expend upon them. And was she doing the girl an injury in helping her to a marriage that would assure her a home and a comfortable income?
Aunt Dionysia knew well enough that things went on in Pentyre Glaze that were not to be justified, that Coppinger’s mode of life was not one calculated to make a girl of Judith’s temperament happy, but – “Hoity-toity!” said Miss Trevisa to herself, “if girls marry, they must take men as they find them. Beggars must not be choosers. You must not look a gift horse in the mouth. No trout can be eaten apart from its bones, nor a rose plucked that is free from thorns.” She herself had accommodated herself to the ways of the house, to the moods and manners of Coppinger; and if she could do that, so could a mongrel Trevisa. What was good enough for herself was over-good for Judith.
She had been saddled with these children, much against her wishes, and if she shifted the saddle to the shoulders of one willing to bear it, why not? She had duties to perform to her own self as well as to those thrust on her by the dead hand of that weak, that inconsiderate brother of hers, Peter Trevisa.
Would her brother have approved of her forwarding this union? That was a question that did not trouble her much. Peter did what he thought best for his daughter when he was alive, stuffing her head with Rollin and Blair, and now that he was gone, she must do the best she could for her, and here was a chance offered that she would be a fool not to snap at.
Nor did she concern herself greatly whether Judith’s happiness were at stake. Hoity-toity! girls’ happiness! They are bound to make themselves happy when they find themselves. The world was not made to fit them, but they to accommodate themselves to the places in which they found themselves in the world.
Miss Trevisa had for some days seen the direction matters were taking, she had seen clearly enough the infatuation – yes, infatuation she said it was – that had possessed Coppinger. What he could see in the girl passed her wits to discover. To her, Judith was an odious little minx – very like her mother. Miss Trevisa, therefore, had had time to weigh the advantages and the disadvantages that might spring to her, should Coppinger persist in his suit and succeed; and she had considered whether it would be worth her while to help or to hinder his suit.
“You put things,” said Aunt Dionysia, “in a blunt and a discourteous manner, such as might offend a lady of delicacy, like myself, who am in delicacy a perfect guava jelly; but, Captain, I know your ways, as I ought to, having been an inmate of this house for many years. It is no case of buying and selling, as you insinuate, but the case is plainly this: I know the advantage it will be to my niece to be comfortably provided for. She and Jamie have between them but about a thousand pounds, a sum to starve, and not to live, upon. They have no home and no relative in the world but myself, who am incapable of giving them a home and of doing anything for them except at an excruciating sacrifice. If Judith be found, through your offer, a home, then Jamie also is provided for.”
He said nothing to this, but moved his feet impatiently. She went on: “The boy must be provided for. And if Judith become your wife, not only will it be proper for you to see that he is so, but Judith will give neither you nor me our natural rest until the boy is comfortable and happy.”
“Confound the boy!”
“It is all very well to say that, but he who would have anything to say to Judith must reckon to have to consider Jamie also. They are inseparable. Now, I assume that by Judith’s marriage Jamie is cared for. But how about myself? Is every one to lie in clover and I in stubble? Am I to rack my brains to find a home for my nephew and niece, only that I may be thrust out myself? To find for them places at your table, that I may be deprived of a crust and a bone under it? If no one else will consider me, I must consider myself. I am the last representative of an ancient and honorable family – ” She saw Coppinger move his hand, and thought he expressed dissent. She added hastily, “As to Judith and Jamie, they take after their Scotch mother. I do not reckon them as Trevisas.”
“Come – tell me what you want,” said Coppinger, impatiently.
“I want to be secure for my old age, that I do not spend it in the poor-house.”
“What do you ask?”
“Give me an annuity of fifty pounds for my life, and Othello Cottage that is on your land.”
“You ask enough.”
“You will never get Judith without granting me that.”
“Well – get Judith to be mine, and you shall have it.”
“Will you swear to it?”
“Yes.”
“And give me – I desire that – the promise in writing.”
“You shall have it.”
“Then I will help you.”
“How?”
“Leave that to me. I am her guardian.”
“But not of her heart?”
“Leave her to me. You shall win her.”
“How!”
“Through Jamie.”
