In the Roar of the Sea Part 59

"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 a.s.sociate 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 pa.s.sed. Then Oliver looked up at his father, and said: "There is worse wrecking than that of s.h.i.+ps. 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 circ.u.mstances 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 x.x.xIX.

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 s.h.i.+p 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 pa.s.sengers 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 s.h.i.+p, and plunder it and the pa.s.sengers 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 a.s.serted 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 ident.i.ty 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 s.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+pwrecked, and had gone to the vessel aground on Doom Bar, with the intention of offering every a.s.sistance in their power to the castaways. They a.s.serted that they had found the deck in confusion. The seamen drunk and lost to discipline, the pa.s.sengers 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 pa.s.sengers would have been robbed and the s.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+pwrecked men.

For, suppose that the crew and pa.s.sengers 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 sh.o.r.e 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.