In the Roar of the Sea/Chapter 32
CHAPTER XXXII.
A DANGEROUS GIFT.
"I do love a proper muddle, cruel bad, I do," said Jump, and had what she loved, for the preparations for Judith's marriage threw Mr. Menaida's trim cottage into a "proper muddle." There were the cakes to be baked, and for a while the interior of the house was pervaded by that most delicious aroma of baking bread superior to frangipani, jockey club, and wood violet. Then came the dusting, and after that the shaking and beating of the rugs and sofa and chairs. Then it was discovered that the ceilings and walls would be the better for white and color-wash. This entailed the turning out of every thing previously dusted and tidied and arranged. Neither Mr. Menaida nor Jump had any other idea of getting things into order than throwing all into a muddle in the hopes that out of chaos, exactness and order might spring.
A dressmaker had been engaged and material purchased, for the fabrication of a trousseau. This naturally interested Jamie vastly, and Jump paid repeated visits to the dressmaker, whilst engaged on her work. On one such occasion she neglected the kitchen and allowed some jam to become burnt. On another she so interested the needlewoman and diverted her attention from her work, whilst cutting out that the latter cut out two right arms to the wedding gown. This involved a difficulty, as it was not practicable either to turn the one sleeve, and convert it into a left arm, nor to remove Judith's left arm and attach it to the right side of her body, and so accommodate her to the gown. The mercer at Camelford was communicated with, from whom the material had been procured, but he was out of it, he however was in daily expectation of a consignment of more of the same stuff. A fortnight later he was able to supply the material, sufficient for a left sleeve, but unfortunately of a different color. The gown had to be laid aside till some one could be found of Judith's size and figure with two right arms, and. also who wanted a wedding dress, and also would be disposed to take this particular one at half the cost of the material, or else to let the gown stand over till after the lapse of a century or thereabouts, when the fashion would prevail for ladies to wear sleeves of a different substance and color from their bodies and skirts.
"'Taint a sort o' a courtin' as I'd give a thankee for," said Jump. "There was Camelford goose fair, and whether he axed her to go wi' him and pick a goose I can't tell, but I know her never went. Then o' Sundays they don't walk one another out. And he doesn't come arter her to the back garden, and she go to him, and no whisperings and kissings. I've listened a score o' times a hoping and a wishing to see and hear the likes, and and never once as I'm a Christian and a female. There were my sister Jane, when she was going to be married, her got that hot and blazin' red that I thought it were scarletine, but it was naught but excitement. But the young mistress, bless 'ee, her gets whiter and colder every day, and I'd say, if such a thing were possible, that her'd rather her never was a going to be married. But you see that aint in natur, leastways wi' us females. I tell 'ee I never seed him once put his arm round her waist. If this be courtin' among gentlefolks, all I say is preserve and deliver me from being a lady."
It was as Jump, in her vulgar way, put it. Judith alone in the house appeared to take no interest in the preparations. It was only after a struggle with her aunt that she had yielded to have the wedding in November. She had wished it postponed till the spring, but Cruel Coppinger and Aunt Dionysia were each for their several ends desirous to have it in the late autumn. Coppinger had the impatience of a lover; and Miss Trevisa the desire to be free from a menial position and lodged in her new house before winter set in. She had amused herself over Othello Cottage ever since Judith had yielded her consent, and her niece saw little of her accordingly.
It suited Coppinger's interest to have a tenant for the solitary cottage, and that a tenant who would excite no suspicions, as the house was employed as a store for various run goods, and it was understood between him and Miss Trevisa, that he was still to employ the garret for the purposes that suited him.
Had Othello Cottage remained long unoccupied, it was almost certain to attract the attention of the Preventive men, awake their suspicions, and be subjected to a visit. Its position was convenient, it was on the cliff of that cove where was the cave in which the smugglers' boats were concealed.
Coppinger visited Polzeath and saw Judith whenever he came to Mr. Menaida's house, but his wooing met with no response. She endured his attentions, shrinking from the slightest approach to familiarity, and though studiously courteous was never affectionate. It would take a heavy charge of self-conceit to have made the Captain blind to the fact that she did not love him, that in truth she viewed her approaching marriage with repugnance. Coppinger was a proud, but not a conceited man, and her coldness and aversion aroused his anger, for it galled his pride. Had he been a man of noble impulse, he would have released her, as she had already told him, but he was too selfish, too bent on carrying out his own will to think of abandoning his suit.
Her lack of reciprocation did not abate his passion, it aggravated it. It enlisted his self-esteem in the cause, and he would not give her up, because he had set his mind upon obtaining her, and to confess his defeat would have been a humiliation insufferable to his haughty spirit. But it was not merely that he would not, it was also that he could not. Coppinger was a man who had, all his life long, done what he willed, till his will had become in him the mainspring of his existence, and drove him to execute his purposes in disregard of reason, safety, justice, and opposition. He would eat out his own furious heart in impotent rage, if his will were encountered by impossibility of execution. And he was of a sanguine temperament. Hitherto every opposition had been overthrown before him, therefore he could not conceive that the heart of a young girl, a mere child, could stand out against him permanently. For a while it might resist, but ultimately it must yield, and then the surrender would be absolute, unconditional.
Every time he came to see her, he came with hopes, almost with confidence, that the icy barrier would dissolve, but when in her presence the chill from it struck him, numbed his heart, silenced his tongue, deadened his thoughts. Yet no sooner was he gone from the house, than his pulses leaped, his brain whirled, and he was consumed with mortified pride and disappointed love. He could not be rough, passionate or imperious with her. A something he could not understand, certainly not define, streamed from her that kept him at a distance and quelled his insolence. It was to him at moments as if he hated her; but this hate was but the splutter of frustrated love. He recalled the words she had spoken to him, and the terms she had employed in speaking of the relation in which they stood to each other, the only relations to her conceivable in which they could stand to each other, and each such word was a spark of fire, a drop of flaming phosphorus on his heart, torturing it with pain, and unquenchable. A word once spoken can never be recalled, and these words had been thrown red hot at him, had sunk in and continued to consume where they had fallen. He was but a rapacious bird and she the prey, he the fire and she the fuel, he the wrecker and she the wreck. There could be no reciprocity between them, the bird in the talons of the hawk, rent by his beak could do no other than shiver and shriek and struggle to be free. The fuel could but expect to be consumed to ashes in the flames; and the wrecked must submit to the wrecker. He brooded over these similes, he chafed under the conviction that there was truth in them, he fought against the idea that a return of his love was impossible—and then his passion raged and roared up in a fury that was no other than hatred of the woman who could not be his in heart. Then, in another moment, he cooled down, and trusted that what he dreaded would not be. He saw before him the child, white as a lily, with hair as the anthers of the lily—so small, so fragile, so weak; and he laughed to think that one such, with no experience of life, one who had never tasted love, could prove insensible to his devouring passion. The white asbestos in the name glows, and never loses its delicacy and its whiteness.
And Judith was, as Jump observed, becoming paler and more silent as her marriage drew on. The repugnance with which she had viewed it instead of abating intensified with every day. She woke in the night with a start of horror, and a cold sweat poured from her. She clasped her hands over her eyes and buried her face in her pillow and trembled, so that the bed rattled. She lost all appetite. Her throat was contracted when she touched food. She found it impossible to turn her mind to the preparations that were being made for her wedding, she suffered her aunt to order for her what she liked, she was indifferent when told of the blunder made by the dressmaker in her wedding-gown. She could not speak at meals. When Mr. Menaida began to talk, she seemed to listen, but her mind was elsewhere. She resumed lessons with Jamie, but was too abstracted to be able to teach effectually. A restlessness took hold of her and impelled her to be out of doors and alone. Any society was painful to her, she could endure only to be alone; and when alone, she did nothing save pluck at her dress, or rub her fingers one over the other—the tricks and convulsive movements of one on the point of death.
But she did not yield to her aversion without an effort to accustom herself to the inevitable. She rehearsed to herself the good traits she had observed in Coppinger, his kindness, his forbearance toward herself, she took cognizance of his efforts to win her regard, to afford her pleasure, his avoidance of everything that he thought might displease her. And when she knew he was coming to visit her, she strove with herself; and formed the resolution to break down the coldness, and to show him some of that semblance of affection which he might justly expect. But it was in vain. No sooner did she hear his step, or the first words he uttered, no sooner did she see him, than she turned to stone, and the power to even feign an affection she did not possess left her. And when Coppinger had departed, there was stamped red hot on her brain the conviction that she could not possibly endure life with him.
She prayed long and often, sometimes by her father's grave, always in bed when lying wakeful, tossing from side to side in anguish of mind; often, very often when on the cliffs looking out to sea, to the dark, leaden, sullen sea, that had lost all the laughter and color of summer. But prayer afforded her no consolation. The thought of marriage to such a man, whom she could not respect, whose whole nature was inferior to her own, was a thought of horror. She could have nerved herself to death by the most excruciating of torments, but for this, not all the grace of heaven could, fortify her.
To be his mate, to be capable of loving him, she must descend to his level, and that she neither could nor would do. His prey, his fuel, his wreck—that she must become, but she could be nothing else—nothing else. As the day of her marriage approached her nervous trepidation became so acute that she could hardly endure the least noise. A strange footfall startled her and threw her into a paroxysm of trembling. The sudden opening of a door made her heart stand still.
When her father had died, poignant though her sorrow had been, she had enjoyed the full powers of her mind. She had thought about the necessary preparations for the funeral, she had given orders to the servants, she had talked over the dear father to Jamie, she had wept his loss till her eyes were red. Not so now; she could not turn her thoughts from the all-absorbing terror; she could not endure an allusion to it from anyone, least of all to speak of it to her brother, and the power to weep was taken from her. Her eyes were dry; they burnt, but were unfilled by tears.
When her father was dead she could look forward, think of him in paradise, and hope to rejoin him after having trustily executed the charge imposed on her by him. But now she could not look ahead. A shadow of horror lay before her, an impenetrable curtain. Her father was covering his face, was sunk in grief in his celestial abode; he could not help her. She could not go to him with the same open brow and childish smile as before. She must creep to his feet, and lay her head there, sullied by association with one against whom he had warned her, one whom he had regarded as the man that had marred his sacred utility, one who stood far below the stage of virtue and culture that belonged to his family and on which he had firmly planted his child. What was in her heart Judith could pour out before none; certainly not before Aunt Dionysia, devoid of a particle of sympathy with her niece. Nor could she speak her trouble to Uncle Zachie, a man void of resources, kind, able for a minute or two to sympathize, but never to go deeply into any trouble and understand more of a wound than the fester on the surface. Besides, of what avail to communicate the anguish of her heart to anyone, when nothing could be done to alter the circumstances. She could not now draw back. Indeed it never occurred to her to be possible to go back from her undertaking. To save Jamie from an idiot asylum she had passed her word to give her hand at the altar to Cruel Coppinger, and her word was sacred. Aunt Dionysia trusted her word. Coppinger held to it, knowing that she gave it on compulsion and reluctantly, yet he showed his perfect confidence in its security.
"My dear Judith," said Mr. Menaida, "I am so sorry about losing you, and what is more, losing Jamie, for I know very well that when he is at the Glaze he will find plenty to amuse him without coming to see me, or any-how, coming to work with me."
"I hope not, dear uncle."
"Yes, I lose a promising pupil." Then turning to the boy, he said: "Jamie, I hope you will not give up stuffing birds, or, if you have not the patience to do that, that you will secure the skins and prepare them for me."
"Yes, I will," said Jamie.
"Yes, yes, my dear boy," said Menaida, "but don't you fancy I am going to trust you with arsenic for preparing the skins. I shall give that to your sister and she will keep the supply, eh, will you not, Judith?"
"Yes. I will take charge of it."
"And let him have it as needed; never more than is needed."
"Why not?" asked Jamie.
"Because it is a dangerous thing to have lying about." Menaida ran into the workshop, and came back with a small tin box of the poison. "Look here! here is a little bone spoon. Don't get the powder over your fingers. Why, a spoonful would make a man very ill, and two would kill him. So, Judith, I trust this to you. When Jamie has a skin to prepare he will go to you, and you will let him have only so much as he requires."
"Yes, uncle."
She took the little tin of arsenic and put it in her workbox, under the tray that contained reels and needles.