Baring-Gould Sabine
In the Roar of the Sea
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.
Now, Miss Trevisa cannot be said to have belonged to either of these classes. To the latter she had pertained till suddenly, from a quarter quite unregarded, there came down on her a very satisfactory little splash. Of relatives that were rich she had none, because she had no relatives at all. Of bosom friends she had none, for her bosom was of that unyielding nature, that no one would like to be taken to it. But, before the marriage of her brother, and before he became rector of S. Enodoc, when he was but a poor curate, she had been companion to a spinster lady, Miss Ceely, near S. Austell. Now the companion is supposed to be a person without an opinion of her own, always standing in a cringing position to receive the opinion of her mistress, then to turn it over and give it forth as her own. She is, if she be a proper companion, a mere echo of the sentiments of her employer. Moreover, she is expected to be amiable, never to resent a rude word, never to take umbrage at neglect, always to be ready to dance attendance on her mistress, and with enthusiasm of devotion, real or simulated, to carry out her most absurd wishes, unreasoningly. But Miss Trevisa had been, as a companion, all that a companion ought not to be. She had argued with Miss Ceely, invariably, had crossed her opinions, had grumbled at her when she asked that anything might be done, raised difficulties, piled up objections, blocked the way to whatever Miss Ceely particularly set the heart on having executed. The two ladies were always quarrelling, always calling each other names, and it was a marvel to the relatives of Miss Ceely that she and her companion hung together for longer than a month. Nevertheless they did. Miss Trevisa left the old lady when Mr. Peter Trevisa became rector of S. Enodoc, and then Miss Ceely obtained in her place quite an ideal companion, a very mirror – she had but to look on her face, smile, and a smile was repeated, weep, and tears came in the mirror. The new companion grovelled at her feet, licked the dust off her shoes, fawned on her hand, ran herself off her legs to serve her, grew gray under the misery of enduring Miss Ceely’s jibes and sneers and insults, finally sacrificed her health in nursing her. When Miss Ceely’s will was opened it was found that she had left nothing – not a farthing to this obsequious attendant, but had bequeathed fifteen hundred pounds, free of legacy duty, and all her furniture and her house to Miss Trevisa, with whom she had not kept up correspondence for twenty-three years. It really seemed as if leathery, rusty Aunt Dionysia, from being a dry Gideon’s fleece, were about to be turned into a wet and wringable fleece. No one was more astounded than herself.
It was now necessary that Miss Trevisa should go to S. Austell and see after what had come to her thus unsolicited and unexpectedly. All need for her to remain at Pentyre was at an end.
Before she departed – not finally, but to see about the furniture that was now hers, and to make up her mind whether to keep or to sell it – she called Judith to her.
That day, the events of which were given in last chapter, had produced a profound impression on Jamie. He had become gloomy, timid, and silent. His old idle chatter ceased. He clung to his sister, and accompanied her wherever she went; he could not endure to be with Coppinger. When he heard his voice, caught a glimpse of him, he ran away and hid. Jamie had been humored as a child, never beaten, scolded, put in a corner, sent to bed, cut off his pudding, but the rod had now been applied to his back and his first experience of corporal punishment was the cruel and vindictive hiding administered, not for any fault he had committed but because he had done his sister’s bidding. He was filled with hatred of Coppinger, mingled with fear, and when alone with Judith would break out into exclamations of entreaty that she would run away with him, and of detestation of the man who held them there, as it were prisoners.
“Ju,” said he, “I wish he were dead. I hate him. Why doesn’t God kill him and set us free!”
At another time he said, “Ju, dear! You do not love him. I wish I were a big strong man like Oliver, and I would do what Captain Cruel did.”
“What do you mean?”
“Captain Cruel shot at Oliver.”
This was the first tidings Judith had heard of the attempt on Oliver’s life.
“He is a mean coward,” said Jamie. “He hid behind a hedge and shot at him. But he did not hurt him.”
“God preserved him,” said Judith.
“Why does not God preserve us! Why did God let that beast – ”
“Hush, Jamie!”
“I will not – that wretch – beat me? Why did He not send lightning and strike him dead?”
“I cannot tell you, darling. We must wait and trust.”
“I am tired of waiting and trusting. If I had a gun I would not shoot birds, I would go behind a hedge and shoot Captain Coppinger. There would be nothing wrong in that, Ju?”
“Yes there would. It would be a sin.”
“Not after he did that to Oliver.”
“I would never – never love you, if you did that.”
“You would always love me whatever I did,” said Jamie. He spoke the truth, Judith knew it. Her eyes filled, she drew the boy to her passionately and kissed his golden head.
Then came Aunt Dionysia and summoned her into her own room. Jamie followed.
“Judith,” began Aunt Dunes, in her usual hard tones, and with the same frozen face, “I wish you particularly to understand. Look here! You have caused me annoyance enough while I have been here. Now I shall have a house of my own at S. Austell, and if I choose to live in it I can. If I do not, I can let it, and live at Othello Cottage. I have not made up my mind what to do. Fifteen hundred pounds is a dirty little sum, and not half as much as ought to have been left me for all I had to bear from that old woman. I am glad for one thing that she has left me something, though not much. I should have despaired of her salvation had she not. However her heart was touched at the last, though not touched enough. Now what I want you to understand is this – it entirely depends on your conduct whether after my death this sum of fifteen hundred pounds and a beggarly sum of about five hundred I have of my own, comes to you or not. As long as this nonsense goes on between you and Captain Coppinger – you pretending you are not married, when you are, there is no security for me that you and Jamie may not come tumbling in upon me and become a burden to me. Captain Coppinger will not endure this fooling much longer. He can take advantage of your mistake. He can say – I am not married. Where is the evidence? Produce proof of the marriage having been solemnized – and then he may send you out of his house upon the downs in the cold. What would you be then, eh? All the world holds you to be Mrs. Coppinger. A nice state of affairs, if it wakes up one morning to hear that Mrs. Coppinger has been kicked out of the Glaze, that she never was the wife. What will the world say, eh? What sort of name will the world give you, when you have lived here as his wife.”
“That I have not.”
“Lived here, gone to balls as his wife when you were not. What will the world call you, eh?”
Judith was silent, holding both her hands, open against her bosom. Jamie beside her, looking up in her face, not understanding what his aunt was saying.
“Very well – or rather very ill!” continued Miss Trevisa. “And then you and this boy here will come to me to take you in, come and saddle yourselves on me, and eat up my little fund. That is what will be the end of it, if you remain in your folly. Go at once to the rector, and put your name where it should have been two months ago, and your position is secure, he cannot drive you away, disgusted at your stubbornness, and you will relieve me of a constant source of uneasiness. It is not that only, but I must care for the good name of Trevisa, which you happen to bear, that that name may not be trailed in the dust. The common sense of the matter is precisely what you cannot see. If you are not Coppinger’s wife you should not be here. If you are Coppinger’s wife, then your name should be in the register. Now here you have come. You have appeared in public with him. You have but one course open to you, and that is to secure your position and your name and honor. You cannot undo what is done, but you can complete what is done insufficiently. The choice between alternatives is no longer before you. If you had purposed to withdraw from marriage, break off the engagement, then you should not have come on to Pentyre, and remained here. As, however, you did this, there is absolutely nothing else to be done, but to sign the register. Do you hear me?”
“Yes.”
“And you will obey?”
“No.”
“Pig-headed fool,” said Miss Trevisa. “Not one penny will I leave you. That I swear, if you remain obstinate.”
“Do not let us say anything more about that, aunt. Now you are going away, is there anything connected with the house you wish me to attend to? That I will do readily.”
“Yes, there are several things,” growled Miss Trevisa, “and, first of all, are you disposed to do anything, any common little kindness for the man whose bread you eat, whose roof covers you?”
“Yes, aunt.”
“Very well, then. Captain Coppinger has his bowl of porridge every morning. I suppose he was accustomed to it before he came into these parts, and he cannot breakfast without it. He says that our Cornish maids cannot make porridge properly, and I have been accustomed to see to it. Either it is lumpy, or it is watery, or it is saltless. Will you see to that?”
“Yes, aunt, willingly.”
“You ought to know how to make porridge, as you are more than half Scottish.”
“I certainly can make it. Dear papa always liked it.”
“Then you will attend to that. If you are too high and too great a lady to put your hand to it yourself, you can see that the cook manages it aright. There is a new girl in now, who is a fool.”
“I will make it myself. I will do all I can do.”
“Then take the keys. Now that I go, you must be mistress of the house. But for your folly, I might have been from here, and in my own house, or rather in that given me for my use, Othello Cottage. I was to have gone there directly after your marriage, I had furnished it, and made it comfortable, and then you took to your fantastic notions, and hung back, and refused to allow that you were married, and so I had to stick on here two months. Here, take the keys.” Miss Trevisa almost flung them at her niece. “Now I have two thousand pounds of my own, and a house at S. Austell, it does not become me to be doing menial service. Take the keys. I will never have them back.”
When Miss Trevisa was gone, and Judith was by herself at night, Jamie being asleep, she was able to think over calmly what her aunt had said. She concerned herself not the least, relative to the promise her aunt had made of leaving her two thousand pounds, were she submissive, and her threat of disinheriting her, should she continue recalcitrant, but she did feel that there was truth in her aunt’s words when she said that she, Judith, had placed herself in a wrong position – but it was a wrong position into which she had been forced, she had not voluntarily entered it. She had, indeed, consented to become Coppinger’s wife, but when she found that Coppinger had employed Jamie to give signals that might mislead a vessel to its ruin she could not go further to meet him. Although he had endeavored to clear himself in her eyes, she did not believe him. She was convinced that he was guilty, though at moments she hoped, and tried to persuade herself that he was not. Then came the matter of the diamonds. There, again, the gravest suspicion rested on him. Again he had endeavored to exculpate himself, yet she could not believe that he was innocent. Till full confidence that he was blameless in these matters was restored, an insuperable wall divided them. Never would she belong to a man who was a wrecker, who belonged to that class of criminals her father had regarded with the utmost horror.
Before she retired to bed, she picked up from under the fender the scrap of paper on which Oliver’s message had been written. It had lain there unobserved where Coppinger had flung it, now, as she tidied her room, and arranged the fire-rug, she observed it. She smoothed it out, folded it, and went to her workbox to replace it where it had been before.
She raised the lid, and was about to put the note among some other papers she had there, a letter of her mother’s, a piece of her father’s writing, some little accounts she had kept, when she was startled to see that the packet of arsenic Mr. Menaida had given her was missing.
She turned out the contents of her workbox. It was nowhere to be found, either there, or in her drawers. Her aunt must have been prying into the box, have found and removed it, so Judith thought, and with this thought appeased her alarm. Perhaps, considering the danger of having arsenic about, Aunt Dionysia had done right in removing it. She had done wrong in doing so without speaking to Judith.
