DON'T
Winefred went down the street in the direction of the curate's house.
She encountered the reverend gentleman. He was somewhat shabby in
dress, his boots were worn, and his neckcloth far from fresh starched.
He had a depressed, crushed look.
The girl went up to him confidently, and asked for Jack Rattenbury.
'My child,' answered the parson, 'he is not at my house, nor at his
lodgings.'
'I have a pair of socks for him knitted by his father.'
'I can give them to him.'
'Thank you, a message goes with them. Where is he, sir?'
'I believe on the White Cliff.'
'What, wool-gathering? Is he doing that when supposed to be at his
studies?'
'You have a pert tongue. He likes to watch the birds.'
'Thank you, sir. I will look for him there. It is all on my way back.'
Winefred, instead of taking the short lane, now made the circuit of the
down, ascending by the last house of the long street above the tiny
bay, where were a flagstaff and benches, on which latter in almost all
weathers fishermen and boys sat and yarned, disputed and smoked.
She asked them about Jack, and learned that he was on the down. 'I have
socks for him from his father,' she explained.
Her way led under and around fragmentary masses of chalk crag belted
with flints; and where the flints had fallen out, leaving the surface
pockmarked, gulls and guillemots flew about chattering and screaming,
and now and again a nimble tern, the swallow of the sea, glanced by.
White Cliff was, in fact, a paradise of birds. The tooth of the storm
had gnawed into its friable surface, and bitten out chunks, and scooped
caves so as to afford for the birds dry and abundant, and, above all,
secure lodging-places where to breed. The brow overhung, rendering
their nesting shelves inaccessible from above, and from below a
scramble up the lower sandstone beds was absolutely impracticable owing
to their friability.
The white face of the cliff was incessantly changing, though by slow
degrees; masses fell off, fresh indentations were formed, and at the
base lay a mass of broken rock about which the waves churned; under
which and over which, by tunnels and by furrows, the water rushed and
returned of a milky tinge.
Upon the headland, looking seaward, was the youth of whom the girl was
in quest. He paid no attention to her as she approached, indeed did not
appear to observe her till she named him, when he turned and confronted
her.
'What! Winny, the peddler woman's child?'
Somewhat nettled, the girl stiffened her neck. 'It is more honourable
to peddle than to lounge,' she said. 'The peddler does something, and
if she were away would be missed, but the loafer is no good to any one,
and is bad company to himself.'
'You are sharp of tongue,' said the lad, laughing. 'I am an unstrung
bow just now. If you had been kept with your nose to a Latin grammar,
you would wish to lift it to sniff the sea breeze.'
'Well,' she said, and laughed also, 'I have been idling all the
morning, and my work now is no more than to bring you a pair of socks
from your father, and with it a message.'
'Thank him from me for the socks.'
'Oh! and no thanks for the message?'
'I have not heard it.'
'Well――he says you are to shut up the Latin grammar for a bit, and sit
under David Nutall and take instructions from him.'
An expression of dissatisfaction came over the boy's face.
'And,' continued Winefred, looking straight into his eye, 'Thursday
night at eleven, at Heathfield Cross.'
'I thought as much,' muttered Jack.
'Well, am I to have thanks for the message?'
'I don't know,' he returned, brooding.
'Jack,' said Winefred, 'put your foot down and say――I won't.'
'What do you mean?' he asked, looking at her in surprise.
'I know――or can guess what it is about. I have not been up and down
peddling here and hawking there, and not heard a thing or two. My ears
are pointed, and I catch a good deal. Your father is just thrusting you
on the same road as he has walked. It is my belief that if the little
one of the flat fish said, I will swim straight, he would come out
without crooked eyes, and not become a flounder, but be a mackerel. If
once you begin to go in and out at the back door, you'll never take to
that in the front of the house.'
'You do not understand――my father is not a man to be disobeyed.'
'I'd peddle before I did it,' said Winefred with vehemence. 'A peddling
woman is honest, and carries her wares slung in front of her, and
a――you know what――bears his behind his back. A peddling woman goes
about by day along the high road, and is not caught slinking in
bye-lanes of a night. You are a fine fellow with your Latin grammar,
and learning to be a gentleman, to turn up your nose at my mother
because she hawks laces, and then sneak away to cheat the government
over spirits. I don't know whether it be a matter of right and wrong,
all I know is it don't look honest, and I hate crooked ways.'
'I do not see what right you have to dictate to me.'
'I am advising only. Why, I will tell you.'
She turned her peddler's box round under her arm.
'Last night mother and I were going over the down, and it was dark.
Mother had her notions as to the way, and she was all wrong. She was
making direct for the edge of the cliff; my eyes are younger, and I saw
it, and I would go this way when she persisted in going that. Mother is
an obstinate woman, and she would go her course; and because I stuck to
it she was wrong, she caught me up and was going to carry me along her
way. If we had gone three steps farther, we should have bounced into
kingdom come, and our bodies would be washing now against the pebble
ridge. As good luck would have it, up came your father with a lantern,
and he saved us. I would return the favour. You are being drawn along
the wrong path by him, and so I turn on you the lantern of common-sense
and say, Go right instead of going wrong. That is my advice; take or
leave it as you will.'
Then Winefred shifted her package again and trudged away.
When she reached the cottage on the undercliff, she found that Job
Rattenbury was out.
Her mother sat by the fire on a stool engaged in needlework, at the
same time that she watched a pot that was boiling.
Winefred laid the case of wares aside, and stood drawing in the scent
of cooking through her nose.
'Good!' said she, 'uncommon――the smell of onions is all over the place;
I believe there is going to be beefsteak pudding.'
'You are right,' said Jane.
'Thanks be to me for it,' said Winefred.
Her mother looked up.
'You have been out amusing yourself; I cut up the meat and onions and
made the pastry.'
'But you would not have done it, nor have been here to enjoy beefsteak
pudding if I had not kicked and squealed last night. Listen to me,
mother.'
Winefred got on the table and seated herself there, with her feet drawn
under her.
'Hearken to what I've got to say. But for me, we, both of us, instead
of counting the minutes till the beefsteak pudding is ready for us to
eat, would be serving as meals for the fishes. Mother, you are too
hasty. Because the rain began to trickle down your back, and your nose
was blue, you sought to throw yourself and me into the sea. Now learn a
lesson. Don't be hasty again. Winefred and beefsteak pudding for ever!
Hurrah!'
'Be serious, child.'
'I am. It is a deadly serious question whether I shall eat or be eaten.
I give you fair warning, mother, that is not a question I will have put
to me again. I will not go over the cliffs however much rain trickles
down your back.'
'You have no love for me.'
'I have so great a love for you, mother, that with teeth and claws, and
yells and kicks, I will prevent you from ever casting yourself away or
me either. I am in a haranguing, lecturing mood to-day. I have been
giving my mind to Jack Rattenbury, and now I give it to you; and I am
in downright earnest with both. I don't like crooked ways.'
'Forget what is past,' said Jane, in a subdued tone.
'Yes, but I shall take care of myself in the future.'