In the Roar of the Sea Part 68

But for your folly, I might have been from here, and in my own house, or rather in that given me for my use, Oth.e.l.lo 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 cla.s.s of criminals her father had regarded with the utmost horror.

Before she retired to bed, she picked up from under the fender the sc.r.a.p of paper on which Oliver's message had been written. It had lain there un.o.bserved 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 a.r.s.enic 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 a.r.s.enic about, Aunt Dionysia had done right in removing it. She had done wrong in doing so without speaking to Judith.

CHAPTER XLVI.

A SECOND LIE.

Next day, Miss Trevisa being gone, Judith had to attend to the work of the house. It was her manifest duty to do so. Hitherto she had shrunk from the responsibility, because she shrank from a.s.suming a position in the house to which she refused to consider that she had a right.

Judith was perfectly competent to manage an establishment, she had a clear head, a love of order, and a power of exacting obedience of servants without incessant reproof. Moreover, she had that faculty possessed by few of directing others in their work so that each moved along his or her own line and fulfilled the allotted work with ease.

She had managed her father's house, and managed it admirably. She knew that, as the king's government must be carried on, so the routine of a household must be kept going. Judith had sufficient acquaintance also with servants to be aware that the wheel would stop or move spasmodically, unless an authoritative hand were applied to it to keep it in even revolution. She knew also that whatever happened in a house--a birth, a death, a wedding, an uproar--the round of common duties must be discharged, the meals prepared, the bread baked, the milk skimmed, the beds made, the carpets swept, the furniture dusted, the windows opened, the blinds drawn down, the table laid, the silver and gla.s.s burnished. Nothing save a fire which gutted a house must interfere with all this routine. Miss Trevisa was one of those ladies who, in their own opinion, are condemned by Providence never to have good servants. A benign Providence sheds good domestics into every other house, save that which she rules. She is born under a star which inexorably sends the sc.u.m and dregs of servantdom under her sceptre.

Miss Trevisa regarded a servant as a cat regards a mouse, a dog regards a fox, and a dolphin a flying-fish, as something to be run after, snapped at, clawed, leaped upon, worried perpetually. She was incapable of believing that there could be any good in a servant, that there was any other side to a domestic save a seamy side. She could make no allowance for ignorance, for weakness, for lightheartedness. A servant in her eyes must be a drudge ever working, never speaking, smiling, taking a hand off the duster, without a mind above flue and tea-leaves, and unable to soar above a cobweb; with a temper perfect in endurance of daily, hourly fault-finding, nagging, grumbling, a mind unambitious also of commendation. Miss Trevisa held that every servant that a malign Providence had sent her was clumsy, insolent, slatternly, unmethodical, idle, wasteful, a gossip, a gadabout, a liar, a thief, was dainty, greedy, one of a cursed generation; and when in the Psalms, David launched out in denunciation of the enemies of the Lord, Miss Trevisa, when she heard or read these Psalms, thought of servantdom. Servants were referred to when David said, "Hide me from the insurrection of the wicked doers, who have whet their tongues like a sword, that they may privily shoot at him that is perfect," _i.e._, me, was Miss Trevisa's comment. "They encourage themselves in mischief; and commune among themselves how they may lay snares, and say, that no man shall see them." "And how," said Miss Trevisa, "can men be so blind as not to believe that the Bible is inspired when David hits the character of servants off to the life!"

And not the Psalms only, but the Prophets were full of servants'

delinquencies. What were Tyre and Egypt but figures of servantdom shadowed before. What else did Isaiah lift up his testimony about, and Jeremiah lament over, but the iniquities of the kitchen and the servants' hall. Miss Trevisa read her Bible, and great comfort did it afford her, because it did denounce the servant maids so unsparingly and prepared brimstone and outer darkness for them.

Now Judith had seen and heard much of the way in which Miss Trevisa managed Captain Coppinger's house. Her room adjoined that of her aunt, and she knew that if her aunt were engaged on--it mattered not what absorbing work, embroidery, darning a stocking, reading a novel, saying her prayers, studying the cookery book--if a servant sneezed within a hundred yards, or upset a drop of water, or clanked a dust-pan, or clicked a door-handle, Miss Trevisa would be distracted from her work and rush out of her room, just as a spider darts from its recess, and sweep down on the luckless servant to worry and abuse her.

Judith, knowing this, knew also that the day of Miss Trevisa's departure would be marked with white chalk, and lead to a general relaxation of discipline, to an inhaling of long breaths, and a general stretching and taking of ease. It was necessary, therefore, that she should go round and see that the wheel was kept turning.

To her surprise, on entering the hall, she found Captain Coppinger there.

"I beg your pardon," she said, "I thought you were out."

She looked at him and was struck with his appearance, the clay-like color of his face, the dark lines in it, the faded look in his eyes.

"Are you unwell?" she asked; "you really look ill."

"I am ill."

"Ill--what is the matter?"

"A burning in my throat. Cramp and pains--but what is that to you?"

"When did it come on?"

"But recently."

"Will you not have a doctor to see you?"

"A doctor!--no."

"Was the porridge as you liked it this morning? I made it."

"It was good enough."

"Would you like more now?"

"No."

"And to-morrow morning, will you have the same?"

"Yes--the same."

"I will make it again. Aunt said the new cook did not understand how to mix and boil it to your liking."

Coppinger nodded.

Judith remained standing and observing him. Some faces when touched by pain and sickness are softened and sweetened. The hand of suffering pa.s.ses over the countenance and brushes away all that is frivolous, sordid, vulgar; it gives dignity, purity, refinement, and shows what the inner soul might be were it not entangled and degraded by base a.s.sociation and pursuit. It is different with other faces, the hand of suffering films away the a.s.sumed expression of good nature, honesty, straightforwardness, and unmasks the evil inner man. The touch of pain had not improved the expression of Cruel Coppinger. It cannot, however, with justice be said that the gentler aspect of the man, which Judith had at one time seen, was an a.s.sumption. He was a man in whom there was a certain element of good, but it was mixed up with headlong wilfulness, utter selfishness, and resolution to have his own way at any cost.

Judith could see, now that his face was pain-struck, how much of evil there was in the soul that had been disguised by a certain dash of masculine overbearing and brusqueness.

"What are you looking at?" asked Coppinger, glancing up.

"I was thinking," answered Judith.

"Of what?"

"Of you--of Wyvill, of the wreck on Doom Bar, of the jewels of Lady Knighton, and last of all of Jamie's maltreatment."

"And what of all that?" he said in irritable scorn.

"That I need not say. I have drawn my own conclusions."

"You torment me, you--when I am ill? They call me Cruel, but it is you who are cruel."

Judith did not wish to be drawn into discussion that must be fruitless. She said, quietly, in altered tone, "Can I get you anything to comfort you?"

"No--go your way. This will pa.s.s. Besides, it is naught to you. Go; I would be left alone."

Judith obeyed, but she was uneasy. She had never seen Coppinger look as he looked now. It was other, altogether, after he had broken his arm. Other, also, when for a day he was crippled with bruises, after the wreck. She looked into the hall several times during the day. In the afternoon he was easier, and went out; his mouth had been parched and burning, and he had been drinking milk. The empty gla.s.s was on the table. He would eat nothing at mid-day. He turned from food, and left the room for his own chamber.

Judith was anxious. She more than once endeavored to draw Coppinger into conversation relative to himself, but he would not speak of what affected him. He was annoyed and ashamed at being out of his usual rude health.

"It is naught," he said, "but a bilious attack, and will pa.s.s. Leave me alone."

She had been so busy all day, that she had seen little of Jamie. He had taken advantage of Captain Coppinger not being about, to give himself more license to roam than he had of late, and to go with his donkey on the cliffs. Anyhow Judith on this day did not have him hanging to her skirts. She was glad of it, for, though she loved him, he would have been an enc.u.mbrance when she was so busy.

The last thing at night she did was to go to Coppinger to inquire what he would take. He desired nothing but spirits and milk. He thought that a milk-punch would give him ease and make him sleep. That he was weak and had suffered pain she saw, and she was full of pity for him.