EXIT JOB
When the doctor arrived he gave no hope of permanent improvement. The
captain, said he, must be kept quiet; supposing that nothing were
allowed to agitate him, he might in part recover his faculties, but
this was rather to be desired than to be anticipated.
Mrs. Jose carried off Winefred. It was advisable that the girl should
not be in the house, and Jack and Mrs. Marley undertook to sit up with
the patient during the night, taking their watches alternately; Jack to
wake the first part.
Between twelve and one the young man roused Mrs. Marley and retired
to bed. His father was in much the same condition, apparently; he had
remained perfectly quiet, and had slept.
Jane left her bed on being summoned. She had not taken off her clothes.
She found the fire made up and the kettle on the boil at the side. Jack
had been sitting before the grate, and had made some grog, sufficient
to moisten his throat, and to help him to spend the hours, but he had
taken a moderate amount only.
Jane seated herself near the sick-bed and took her knitting. The
captain's eyes were closed, not shut, and she could see the glitter of
the eyeballs under the lashes; but whether he slept imperfectly, or
whether he was half-awake and was observing her, she could not decide.
There is no occupation like knitting for breeding thought. A man smokes
to encourage concentration of his mental faculties; but a woman, when
she knits, diffuses her thoughts, they spread like the antennæ of a
sea-anemone in all directions, and lay hold of everything that drifts
by in the current of memory, to draw it in, twist, distort, magnify it,
take it into the innermost receptacles, and there suffer indigestion
from it, often in the acutest form.
As Jane worked with nimble fingers her mind was busy, busy mainly over
Job's accumulations.
Not for an instant did she question the suggestion that they were
acquired by defrauding her father and brother, nor did she doubt that
her brother's death had been procured by the man now lying powerless
in her presence. She had not inquired of others whether what Dench had
thrown out was an opinion generally entertained, whether it had any
foundation whatever. She accepted the assumption as a self-evident
fact, and started from it.
Jane Marley was in no little degree concerned about her own future
and that of her child. The captain would not last many days, and she
would then have to leave the Undercliff, as the house would pass to
Jack. It was a freehold, acquired originally by squatting on the land a
generation ago.
To be on the trudge again was not a prospect Jane relished. It was
true that Mrs. Jose had offered to take her and Winefred in――but that
was not intended to be for a permanency, only whilst the maid was
recovering from white swelling. Moreover, Jane knew so much of herself
as to be aware that by temper she was disqualified to live as one of
an establishment with other servants. Indeed, the mistress who did not
fall out speedily with Jane must be of a peculiarly forbearing temper.
Jane was wilful, unyielding, and passionate. She knew it.
Whither, then, was she to go? What was she to do?
Her husband had been in the neighbourhood, but had not visited her, and
had vanished again, after seeing and speaking to his child. She could
not build on the hope of obtaining assistance from him, even had not
her pride revolted against the thought of soliciting it.
In a day or two she would have to make up her bundle and leave; then
Jack Rattenbury would take up his residence there. The house would be
his own, with all the money it contained; and he would take his ease,
rattle the coin in his pocket, fling it about, and be what his father
intended――a gentleman.
It is a hard thing for one who has land and home, an income and
kindred, to enter into the feeling of desolation and hopelessness that
possesses the heart of one who is absolutely adrift in life, without a
single attachment, without a single point in the outlook, on which to
fix the eye and to which aim.
Jane Marley's life had been broken at an early period――made purposeless
by no fault of her own. If she staggered, it was not that her head was
light, but that the ground gave way under her feet.
When young, when possessed of the elasticity of youth to carry her
forward, and form for herself a future, she had been cruelly wronged.
Now she had passed the turn of life, the sap was withdrawing, the
forces of her soul were in decline, and her heart became sick at a
prospect without an elevation in it――a future that was all cloud.
For herself she felt little concern, her life had been a failure,
and to that she submitted. As she knitted and observed the ball of
worsted at her feet, she thought that this wool was being used up with
a purpose and to a profitable end, whereas the thread of her life
had been involved in a hopeless tangle. Winefred was on the verge of
womanhood, and promised to be handsome, but this very fact was fraught
with danger, and might occasion her ruin, as it had been that of her
mother before.
Jane's heart was on fire. She was prepared to do anything, everything
in her power to assure to her child a healthy and a happy life, but
the means of obtaining this were not available. She had harrowed and
cross-harrowed her brain, tearing up all her experiences, searching
after what she could not find. She had lived hitherto a precarious
existence, tramping over the country, hawking ribbons, pins, needles,
tapes, and ballads. On the mean profits she had maintained herself and
her child. She had done more. She had been so intent on qualifying
Winefred to take a position superior to her own that she had sent her
to school, and had kept her there. Was it not, said she, due to her own
defective education that she had been unable to retain her husband's
affection?
But she had not been able to save money. She had no little store on
which to fall back.
She had received offers for Winefred from farmers' wives to take her
as a servant; but these she had refused. Partly for a selfish reason,
because she could not endure to be separated from her daughter,
but also because she did not choose that Winefred, the child of a
gentleman, should definitely adopt a menial life in a farmhouse till
every chance was gone of placing her in a superior situation. The poor
mother could find no gate out of her difficulties.
As her fingers worked, tremulous with the fever of her brain,
the thought of the meeting of Winefred with her father rose into
prominence. It had been unsatisfactory, in that he had made no promise
to the child, he had done nothing for her, save give her a watch,
unsuitable to her position, were her position to be one of poverty. But
was not this gift an earnest of a purpose to do something more? It
was well that he had seen her, for he must have observed that she was
educated, and altogether other from what her mother had been.
If only some opportunity were to arise whereby the girl might be lifted
to a higher shelf, so as to show J. H. what she really was, what
capabilities were in her, what cause he would have to be proud of her,
then Jane would be ready to efface herself, or remain far away in the
background and in obscurity.
Why should Captain Job be able to convert his cub into a gentleman, and
she be debarred from raising her child? What had Rattenbury himself
been? What had been his wife's birth? Both came of the seafaring class,
neither had derived from gentle blood. They had occupied a position
to which they had been born. Why then should Jack be promoted? On
the other hand Winefred had a real gentleman for her father, and had
therefore a half claim to be a lady.
Moreover, Jack was to obtain his advantages and advancement by means
of money accumulated by the old smuggling adventurer through the
despoiling of others, even of her father, and by the sacrifice of her
brother.
She had a right to some of the store. It did not belong to Captain Job
because it was under his roof, and in his cupboard; it belonged to the
men who by their blood and sweat had earned it, and she entered into
their inheritance, acquired their rights. Olver had spoken the truth.
In all common equity the money was hers. Dench had forfeited his rights
by the betrayal of his mates. She was shrewd enough to see that Olver
could only have known of the expedition, and of the attempt to trap
those taking part in it, by having been first privy to it and then by
having betrayed it. To herself Jane said that the sum she required
was not large, just sufficient to enable her to tide over her present
difficulties, to secure a home, to establish herself in a little
business――a small shop, perhaps. Thus furnished, her future would be
secure, and there would be a prospect open for her child.
This――the having a shop――had long been an object of ambition, so as not
to be compelled to tramp over the country exposed to every weather,
away from her child, carrying her pack.
How much had Captain Job saved during his long career? Surely it could
be no robbery if she were to deduct from it the modest sum that she so
greatly required, and to which she had a moral right.
She stood up, laid her knitting down on the chair, and went to the
wardrobe, then halted, and going to the window closed the shutters.
Then she stood, with her finger to her lip, listening to make sure that
Jack was asleep upstairs.
She heard his heavy breathing. He was young――sleep sealed up eyes and
ears so soon as his head was laid on the pillow.
She took the candle from the table, and holding it aloft looked at the
captain.
He lay as he had lain for many hours, motionless, apparently
unconscious.
Then she replaced the candle and went again towards the wardrobe.
Something caught and lightly restrained her feet. She looked down, they
were entangled in the worsted of her knitting. She stooped to disengage
them. Next she lightly opened the doors of the wardrobe, and putting
her hands to the pegs drew the rack forward.
She could not well look into the drawer without a stool. She therefore
sought this; it had been thrust into a corner. She brought it forward
and placed it before the range of dangling garments. Then she stepped
upon it to examine the contents of the drawer. She had previously
seen purses, bags, and boxes. She opened one of the latter, and found
that it contained banknotes. She untied a bag, it was stuffed with
sovereigns. In a purse were a number of old guineas. She lifted the lid
of a small japanned case――it contained jewels. The value of the stones
she could not guess. She took up a brooch and held it so that it shone
in the feeble glimmer of the candle. 'Ah!' thought she, 'how well this
would become my Winefred!'
All at once she started, and her heart stood still. She was plucked
from behind.
In a moment she turned, and was frozen with fear. The palsied man had
rolled himself from the bed to the floor, and with a supreme effort had
wormed himself along it till he reached where she stood. With one hand
he had stretched forth and laid hold of her dress that he might drag
her away from his store.
But the effort had been the last of which he was capable, and when Jane
stooped to wrench her garment out of the hand that clutched it, it was
already that of a dead man.