In the Roar of the Sea Part 60

The state of Judith's mind was also one of unrest. She had a conviction seated in her heart that all was not right, and yet she had no sound cause for charging her husband with being a deliberate wrecker. Jamie had gone out with his a.s.s and the lantern, that was true, but was Jamie's account of the affair to be relied on? When questioned he became confused. He never could be trusted to recall, twenty-four hours after an event, the particulars exactly as they occurred. Any suggestive queries drew him aside, and without an intent to deceive he would tell what was a lie, simply because he could not distinguish between realities and fleeting impressions. She knew that if she asked him whether Coppinger had fastened the lantern to the head of his donkey, and had bidden him drive the creature slowly up and down the inequalities of the surface of the cliffs, he would a.s.sent, and say it was so; but, then, if she were to say to him, "Now, Jamie, did not Captain Coppinger tell you on no account to show the light till you reached the sh.o.r.e at St. Enodoc, and then to fix it steadily," that his face would for a moment a.s.sume a vacant, then a distressed expression, and he would finally say that he believed it really was so. No reliance was to be placed on anything he said, except at the moment, and not always then. He was liable to misunderstand directions, and by a stupid perversity to act exactly contrary to the instructions given him.

Judith heard nothing of the surmises that floated in the neighborhood, but she knew enough to be uneasy. She had been somewhat rea.s.sured by Oliver Menaida; she could see no reason why he should withhold the truth from her. Was it, then, possible after all that Captain Coppinger had gone to the rescue of the wrecked people, that he had sent the light not to mislead, but to direct them aright?

It was Judith's fate--so it seemed--to be never certain whether to think the worst of Coppinger, or to hold that he had been misjudged by her. He had been badly hurt in his attempt to rescue the crew and pa.s.sengers--according to Aunt Dionysia's account. If she were to believe this story, then he was deserving of respect.

Judith began to recover some of her cheerfulness, some of her freshness of looks. This was due to the abatement of her fears.

Coppinger had angrily, sullenly, accepted the relation which she had a.s.sured him must subsist between them, and which could never be altered.

Aunt Dionysia was peevish and morose indeed. She had been disappointed in her hope of getting into Oth.e.l.lo Cottage before Christmas; but she had apparently received a caution from Coppinger not to exhibit ill-will toward his wife by word or token, and she restrained herself, though with manifest effort. That sufficed Judith. She no longer looked for, cared for love from her aunt. It satisfied her if Miss Trevisa left her unmolested.

Moreover, Judith enjoyed the walk to Polzeath every day, and, somehow, the lessons to Jamie gave her an interest that she had never found in them before. Oliver was so helpful. When Jamie was stubborn, he persuaded him with a joke or a promise to laugh and put aside his ill-humor, and attack the task once more. The little gossiping talk after the lesson with Oliver, or with Oliver and his father, was a delight to her. She looked forward to it, from day to day, naturally, reasonably, for at the Glaze she had no one with whom to converse, no one with the same general interests as herself, the same knowledge of books, and pleasure in the acquisition of information.

On mountain sides there are floral zones. The rhododendron and the gentian luxuriate at a certain level, above is the zone of the blue hippatica, the soldanella, and white crocus; below is the belt of mealy primula and lilac clematis. So is it in the world of minds--they have their levels, and can only live on those levels. Transplant them to a higher or to a lower zone and they suffer, and die.

Judith found no one at Pentyre with whom she could a.s.sociate with pleasure. It was only when she was at Polzeath with Uncle Zachie and Oliver that she could talk freely and feel in her element.

One day Oliver said to her, "Judith"--for, on the understanding that they were cousins, they called each other by their Christian names--"Judith! are you going to the ball at Wadebridge after Christmas?"

"Ball, Oliver, what ball?"

"That which Mr. Mules is giving for the restoration of his church."

"I do not know. I--yes, I have heard of it; but I had clean forgotten all about it. I had rather not."

"But you must, and promise me three dances, at least."

"I do not know what to say. Captain Coppinger"--she never spoke of her husband by his Christian name, never thought of him as other than Captain Coppinger. Did she think of Oliver as Mr. Menaida, junior?

"Captain Coppinger has not said anything to me about it of late. I do not wish to go. My dear father's death----"

"But the dance is after Christmas. And, you know, it is for a sacred purpose. Think, every whirl you take puts a new stone on the foundations, and every setting to your partner in quadrille adds a pane of gla.s.s to the battered windows."

"I do not know," again said Judith, and became grave. Her heart fluttered. She would like to be at the ball--and dance three dances with Oliver--but would Captain Coppinger suffer her? Would he expect to dance with her all the evening? If that were so, she would not like to go. "I really do not know," again she said, clasped her hands on her knees, and sighed.

"Why that sigh, Judith?"

She looked up, dropped her eyes in confusion, and said faintly, "I do not know," and that was her first lie.

CHAPTER XL.

THE DIAMOND b.u.t.tERFLY.

Poor little fool! Shrewd in maintaining her conflict with Cruel Coppinger--always on the defensive, ever on guard, she was sliding unconsciously, without the smallest suspicion of danger, into a state that must eventually make her position more desperate and intolerable.

In her inexperience she had never supposed that her own heart could be a traitor within the city walls. She took pleasure in the society of Oliver, and thought no wrong in so doing. She liked him, and would have reproached herself had she not done so.

Her relations with Coppinger remained strained. He was a good deal from home; indeed, he went on a cruise in his vessel, the Black Prince, and was absent for a month. He hoped that in his absence she might come to a better mind. They met, when he was at home, at meals; at other times not at all. He went his way, she went hers. Whether the agitation of men's minds relative to the loss of the merchantman, and the rumors concerning the manner of its loss, had made Captain Cruel think it were well for him to absent himself for a while, till they had blown away, or whether he thought that his business required his attention elsewhere, or that by being away from home his wife might be the readier to welcome him, and come out of her vantage castle, and lay down her arms, cannot be said for certain; probably all these motives combined to induce him to leave Pentyre for five or six weeks.

While he was away Judith was lighter in heart. He returned shortly before Christmas, and was glad to see her more like her old self, with cheeks rounder, less livid, eyes less sunken, less like those of a hunted beast, and with a step that had resumed its elasticity. But he did not find her more disposed to receive him with affection as a husband. He thought that probably some change in the monotony of life at Pentyre might be of advantage, and he somewhat eagerly entered into the scheme for the ball at Wadebridge. She had been kept to books and to the society of her father too much, in days gone by, and had become whimsical and prudish. She must learn some of the enjoyments of life, and then she would cling to the man who opened to her a new sphere of happiness.

"Judith," said he, "we will certainly go to this ball. It will be a pleasant one. As it is for a charitable purpose, all the neighborhood will be there. Squire Humphrey Prideaux of Prideaux Place, the Matthews of Roscarrock, the Molesworths of Pencarrow, and every one worth knowing in the country round for twelve miles. But you will be the queen of the ball."

Judith at first thought of appearing at the dance in her simplest evening dress; she was shy and did not desire to attract attention.

Her own position was anomalous, because that of Coppinger was anomalous. He pa.s.sed as a gentleman in a part of the country not very exacting that the highest culture should prevail in the upper region of society. He had means, and he owned a small estate. But no one knew whence he came, or what was the real source whence he derived his income. Suspicion attached to him as engaged in both smuggling and wrecking, neither of which were regarded as professions consonant with gentility. The result of this uncertainty relative to Coppinger was that he was not received into the best society. The gentlemen knew him and greeted him in the hunting-field, and would dine with him at his house. The ladies, of course, had never been invited, because he was an unmarried man. The gentlemen probably had dealings with him about which they said nothing to their wives. It is certain that the Bodmin wine-merchant grumbled that the great houses of the north of Cornwall did not patronize him as they ought, and that no wine-merchant was ever able to pick up a subsistence at Wadebridge. Yet the country gentry were by no means given to temperance, and their cellars were being continually refilled.

It was not their interest to be on bad terms with Coppinger, one must conjecture, for they went somewhat out of their way to be civil to him.

Coppinger knew this, and thought that now he was married an opportunity had come in this charity ball for the introduction of Judith to society, and that to the best society, and he trusted to her merits and beauty, and to his own influence with the gentlemen, to obtain for her admission to the houses of the neighborhood. As the daughter of the Rev. Peter Trevisa, who had been universally respected, not only as a gentleman and a scholar, but also as a representative of an ancient Cornish family of untold antiquity, she had a perfect right to be received into the highest society of Cornwall, but her father had been a reserved and poor man. He did not himself care for a.s.sociating with fox-hunting and sporting squires, nor would he accept invitations when he was unable to return them.

Consequently Judith had gone about very little when at St. Enodoc rectory. Moreover, she had been but a child, and was known only by name to those who lived in the neighborhood. She was personally acquainted with none of the county people.

Captain Cruel had small doubt but that, the ice once broken, Judith would make friends, and would be warmly received. The neighborhood was scantily peppered over with county family-seats, and the families found the winters tedious, and were glad of any accession to their acquaintance, and of another house opened to them for entertainment.

If Judith were received well, and found distraction from her morbid and fantastic thoughts, then she would be grateful to him--so thought Coppinger--grateful for having brought her into a more cheerful and bright condition of life than that in which she had been reared.

Following thereon, her aversion for him, or shyness toward him, would give way.

And Judith--what were her thoughts? Her mind was a little fluttered, she had to consider what to wear. At first she would go simply clad, then her aunt insisted that, as a bride, she must appear in suitable garb, that in which she had been married, not that with the two sleeves for one side, which had been laid by. Then the question of the jewellery arose. Judith did not wish to wear it, but yielded to her aunt's advice. Miss Trevisa represented to her that, having the diamonds, she ought to wear them, and that not to wear them would hurt and offend Captain Coppinger, who had given them to her. This she was reluctant to do. However, she consented to oblige and humor him in such a small matter.

The night arrived, and Judith was dressed for the ball. Never before had Coppinger seen her in evening costume, and his face beamed with pride as he looked on her in her white silk dress, with ornaments of white satiny bugles in sprigs edging throat and sleeves, and forming a rich belt about the waist. She wore the diamond b.u.t.terfly in her bosom, and the two earrings to match. A little color was in her delicately pure cheeks, brought there by excitement. She had never been at a ball before, and with an innocent, childish simplicity she wondered what Oliver Menaida would think of her in her ball-dress.

Judith and Coppinger arrived somewhat late, and most of those who had taken tickets were already there. Sir William and Lady Molesworth were there, and the half-brother of Sir William, John Molesworth, rector of St. Breock, and his wife, the daughter of Sir John S. Aubyn. With the baronet and his lady had come a friend, staying with them at Pencarrow, and Lady Knighton, wife of an Indian judge. The Matthews were there; the Tremaynes came all the way from Heligan, as owning property in St. Enodoc, and so, in duty bound to support the charity; the Prideauxs were there from Place; and many, if not all, of the gentry of various degrees who resided within twelve to fifteen miles of Wadebridge were also there.

The room was not one of any interest, it was long, had a good floor, which is the main thing considered by dancers, a gallery at one end for the instrumentalists, and a draught which circulated round the walls, and cut the throats of the old ladies who acted as wall-fruit.

There was, however, a room to which they could adjourn to play cards.

And many of the dowagers and old maids had brought with them little silver linked purses in which was as much money as they had made up their minds to lose that evening.

The dowager Lady Molesworth in a red turban was talking to Lady Knighton, a lady who had been pretty, but whose complexion had been spoiled by Indian suns, and to her Sir William was offering a cup of tea.

"You see," said Lady Knighton, "how tremulous my hand is. I have been like this for some years--indeed ever since I was in this neighborhood before."

"I did not know you had honored us with a visit on a previous occasion," said Sir William.

"It was very different from the present, I can a.s.sure you," answered the lady. "Now it is voluntarily--then it was much the contrary. Now I have come among very dear and kind friends, then--I fell among thieves."

"Indeed!"

"It was on my return from India," said Lady Knighton. "Look at my hand!" She held forth her arm, and showed how it shook as with palsy.

"This hand was firm then. I even played several games of spellikins on board s.h.i.+p on the voyage home, and, Sir William, I won invariably, so steady was my hold of the crook, so evenly did I raise each of the little sticks. But ever since then I have had this nervous tremor that makes me dread holding anything."

"But how came it about?" asked the baronet.

"I will tell you, but--who is that just entered the room?" she pointed with trembling finger.

Judith had come in along with Captain Coppinger, and stood near the door, the light of the wax candles twinkling in her bugles, glancing in flashes from her radiant hair. She was looking about her, and her bosom heaved, she sought Oliver, and he was near at hand. A flush of pleasure sprang into her cheeks as she caught his eye, and held out her hand.

"I demand my dance!" said he.