In the Roar of the Sea Part 16

"And the two agreements or estimates you signed."

Scantlebray gave him the letter.

"The agreements also."

Nervously the surveyor groped again, and reluctantly produced them.

Captain Coppinger opened them with his available hand.

"What is this? Five pounds in pencil added to each, and then summed up in the total? What is the meaning of that, pray?"

Mr. Scantlebray again endeavored to disappear behind the curtain.

"Come forward!" shouted Captain Cruel, striking the window-sill with the pistol.

Scantlebray jumped out of his retreat at once.

"What is the meaning of these two five pounds?"

"Well, sir--Captain--it is usual; every one does it. It is my--what d'y' call it!--consideration for accepting the estimates."

"And added to each, and then charged to the orphans, who pay you to act in their interest--so they pay wittingly, directly, and unwittingly, indirectly. Well for you and for Mrs. Scantlebray that I release you of your obligation to act for Mother Dunes--I mean Miss Trevisa."

"Sir," said Cargreen, "under the circ.u.mstances, under intimidation, I decline to sully my fingers with the business. I shall withdraw."

"No, you shall not," said Cruel Coppinger, resolutely. "You shall act, and act as I approve; and in the end it shall not be to your disadvantage."

Then, without a word of farewell, he stood up, slipped the pistol back into his pocket, and strode away.

Mr. Cargreen had become white, or rather, the color of dough. After a moment he recovered himself somewhat, and, turning to Scantlebray, with a sarcastic air, said--

"I hope _you_ enjoy the jessamine. They don't smell particularly sweet to me."

"Orful!" groaned Scantlebray. He shook himself--almost shaking off all his limbs in the convulsion--"Old man--them jessamines is orful!"

CHAPTER XII.

THE CAVE.

Some weeks slipped by without bringing to Judith any accession of anxiety. She did not go again to Pentyre Glaze, but her aunt came once or twice in the week to Polzeath to see her. Moreover, Miss Dionysia's manner toward her was somewhat less contrary and vexatious, and she seemed to put on a conciliatory manner, as far as was possible for one so angular and crabbed. Gracious she could not be; nature had made it as impossible for her to be gracious in manner as to be lovely in face and graceful in movement.

Moreover, Judith observed that her aunt looked at her with an expression of perplexity, as though seeking in her to find an answer to a riddle that vexed her brain. And so it was. Aunt Dunes could not understand the conduct of Coppinger toward Judith and her brother. Nor could she understand how a child like her niece could have faced and defied a man of whom she herself stood in abject fear. Judith had behaved to the smuggler in a way that no man in the whole countryside would have ventured to behave. She had thrown him at her feet, half killed him, and yet Cruel Coppinger did not resent what had been done; on the contrary, he went out of his way to interfere in the interest of the orphans. He was not the man to concern himself in other people's affairs; why should he take trouble on behalf of Judith and her brother? That he did it out of consideration for herself, Miss Trevisa had not the a.s.surance to believe.

Aunt Dunes put a few searching questions to Judith, but drew from her nothing that explained the mystery. The girl frankly told her of her visit to the Glaze and interview with the crippled smuggler, of his offer to her of some of his spoil, and of her refusal to receive a present from him. Miss Trevisa approved of her niece's conduct in this respect. It would not have befitted her to accept anything. Judith, however, did not communicate to her aunt the closing scene in that interview. She did not tell her that Coppinger had kissed her hand, nor his excuse for having done so, that he was offering homage to a queen.

For one thing, Judith did not attach any importance to this incident.

She had always heard that Coppinger was a wild and insolent man, wild and insolent in his dealings with his fellow-men, therefore doubtless still more so in his treatment of defenceless women. He had behaved to her in the rude manner in which he would behave to any peasant girl or sailor's daughter who caught his fancy, and she resented his act as an indignity, and his excuse for it as a prevarication. And, precisely, because he had offended her maidenly dignity, she blushed to mention it, even to her aunt, resolving in her own mind not to subject herself to the like again.

Miss Trevisa, on several occasions, invited Judith to come and see her at Pentyre Glaze, but the girl always declined the invitation.

Judith's estimate of Cruel Coppinger was modified. He could not be the utter reprobate she had always held him to be. She fully acknowledged that there was an element of good in the man, otherwise he would not have forgiven the injury done him, nor would he have interfered to protect her and Jamie from the fraud and extortion of the "dilapidators." She trusted that the stories she had heard of Coppinger's wild and savage acts were false, or overcolored. Her dear father had been misled by reports, as she had been, and it was possible that Coppinger had not really been the impediment in her father's way that the late rector had supposed.

Jamie was happy. He was even, in a fashion, making himself useful. He helped Mr. Menaida in his bird-stuffing on rainy days; he did more, he ran about the cliffs, learned the haunts of the wild-fowl, ascertained where they nested, made friends with Preventive men, and some of those fellows living on sh.o.r.e, without any very fixed business, who rambled over the country with their guns, and from these he was able to obtain birds that he believed Mr. Menaida wanted. Judith was glad that the boy should be content, and enjoy the fresh air and some freedom. She would have been less pleased had she seen the companions Jamie made.

But the men had rough good-humor, and were willing to oblige the half-witted boy, and they encouraged him to go with them shooting, or to sit with them in their huts.

Jamie manifested so strong a distaste for books, and lesson time being one of resistance, pouting, tears, and failures, that Judith thought it not amiss to put off the resumption of these irksome tasks for a little while, and to let the boy have his run of holidays. She fancied that the loss of his father and of his old home preyed on him more than was actually the case; and believed that by giving him freedom till the first pangs were over, he might not suffer in the way that she had done.

For a fortnight or three weeks Judith's time had been so fully engaged at the parsonage, that she could not have devoted much of it to Jamie, even had she thought it desirable to keep him to his lessons; nor could she be with him much. She did not press him to accompany her to the rectory, there to spend the time that she was engaged sorting her father's letters and memoranda, his account-books and collection of extracts made from volumes he had borrowed, as not only would it be tedious to him, but he would distract her mind. She must see that he was amused, and must also provide that he was not at mischief. She did take him with her on one or two occasions, and found that he had occupied himself in disarranging much that she had put together for the sale.

But she would not allow him wholly to get out of the way of looking to her as his companion, and she abandoned an afternoon to him now and then, as her work became less arduous, to walk with him on the cliffs or in the lanes, to listen to his childish prattle, and throw herself into his new pursuits. The link between them must not be allowed to become relaxed, and, so far as in her lay, she did her utmost to maintain it in its former security. But, with his father's death, and his removal to Mr. Menaida's cottage, a new world had opened to Jamie; he was brought into a.s.sociation with men and boys whom he had hardly known by sight previously, and without any wish to disengage himself from his sister's authority, he was led to look to others as comrades, and to listen to and follow their promptings.

"Come, Jamie," said Judith, one day. "Now I really have some hours free, and I will go a stroll with you on the downs."

The boy jumped with pleasure, and caught her hand.

"I may take Tib with me?"

"Oh yes, certainly, dear."

Tib was a puppy that had been given to Jamie by one of his new acquaintances.

The day was fresh. Clouds driving before the wind, now obscuring the sun and threatening rain, then clearing and allowing the sun to turn the sea green and gild the land. Owing to the breeze the sea was ruffled and strewn with breakers shaking their white foam.

"I am going to show you something I have found, Ju," said the boy.

"You will follow, will you not?"

"Lead the way. What is it?"

"Come and see. I found it by myself. I shan't tell any one but you."

He conducted his sister down the cliffs to the beach of a cove. Judith halted a moment to look along the coast with its mighty, sombre cliffs, and the sea glancing with sun or dulled by shadow to Tintagel Head standing up at the extreme point to the northeast, with the white surf lashing and heaving around it. Then she drew her skirts together, and descended by the narrow path along which, with the lightness and confidence of a kid, Jamie was skipping.

"Jamie!" she said. "Have you seen?--there is a ship standing in the offing."

"Yes; she has been there all the morning."

Then she went further.

The cove was small, with precipitous cliffs rising from the sand to the height of two to three hundred feet. The seagulls screamed and flashed to and fro, and the waves foamed and threw up their waters lashed into froth as white and light as the feathers on the gulls. In the concave bay the roar of the plunging tide reverberated from every side. Neither the voice of Jamie, when he shouted to his sister from some feet below, nor the barking of his little dog that ran with him, could be distinguished by her.

The descent was rapid and rugged, yet not so precipitous but that it could be gone over by a.s.ses or mules. Evidence that these creatures had pa.s.sed that way remained in the impression of their hoofs in the soil, wherever a soft stratum intervened between the harder shelves of the rock, and had crumbled on the path into clay.

Judith observed that several paths--not all mule-paths--converged lower down at intervals in the way by which she descended, so that it would be possible, apparently, to reach the sand from various points in the down, as well as by the main track by which she was stepping to the beach.

"Jamie!" called Judith, as she stood on the last shoulder of rock before reaching the beach over a wave-washed and smoothed surface.