A PASSAGE OF ARMS
For a while a feverish delight and pride in her new possession filled
Jane Marley to the exclusion of every other sensation. For the first
time in her life she was mistress of a house of her own. Her former
cottage had been rented, and rented cheaply, because of its precarious
position.
But if proud, that pride circled about her child, and had nothing to
do with herself except so far as that Winefred was her own. It was of
the girl she thought when she had the house put in order. She sent for
mason, plasterer, carpenter, and paperhanger, and not only put it into
repair, but transformed the interior. It was with a bounding heart that
she brought Winefred to see the cottage when the tradesmen had left it.
She had not suffered her to go to it whilst in their hands.
It had been largely refurnished. The windows were curtained, the front
kitchen converted into a parlour, and papered and ceiled. The house
was clean and bright, and in Mrs. Marley's eyes a fit residence for a
princess.
'O mother,' exclaimed Winefred, 'this must have cost a great deal of
money. How did you get it?' And when Jane hesitated, then the girl
answered herself, 'I know: Mrs. Jose told me that it came from my
father. But, O mother, the people do not believe this. They are wicked
and cruel. They say that you stole the money from Captain Rattenbury
when he was sick. It is shameful. As if my own dear mother could do
such a thing!' And with a sudden impulse of affection, she threw her
arms about her mother's neck, and kissed her passionately. 'Mother, do
not mind what they say! When I hear these spiteful, false words, I give
it them back again, and make them jump, I assure you.'
The abrupt change in Mrs. Marley's condition had, in fact, excited
comment. It formed the main topic of discussion in Axmouth, Seaton,
and Beer. It was disputed over in tavern and in kitchen.
The Beer men, who had had extensive dealings with Rattenbury, spread
over a good many years, declared that it was preposterous that he
should die without leaving money, and money to a considerable amount.
He had not spent much at the village shops, but had dealt with
wholesale merchants. No concealment had been attempted when freighting
at Beer or Seaton for the French coast. The English Government was not
called upon to investigate too minutely into the destination of goods
shipped for the Continent. But concealment was sought on the return
voyage, when the boats were laden with spirits from France, or China
teas from the Channel Isles.
The Excise men were of the same opinion as their adversaries at Beer.
Captain Rattenbury was undoubtedly a man of substance. He had defied
them too long with impunity not to have made a good thing out of his
business. If there had been now and then a run of ill luck, and some
cargoes had been confiscated, he had recouped himself over and over
again by others that had been successfully landed. He had been a
slippery man, and a most successful one. That he should die and leave
no assets was incredible.
The matter was looked at from every light, discussed by all, whether
competent or incompetent to form an opinion, and Mrs. Jose was the only
person who accepted Jane Marley's explanation of her sudden accession
to what was, comparatively speaking, wealth.
Most loud and decided in his verdict was Olver Dench. His red face
flamed when the subject was broached, and he spoke with a vehemence and
quivering emotion that betokened rage――rage that his friend had been
robbed and his friend's son left destitute.
The ferryman had ostentatiously offered hospitality to Jack, who had
accepted it, just because he would be near the cottage till it was
sold, and after that he continued to remain with Dench, because he had
nowhere else whither he might go till he found for himself a suitable
situation.
And being daily associated with the ferryman he had the opinion drummed
into him, till his previous scepticism as to his father's wealth
yielded, and he came to accept the view that he had been defrauded of
his patrimony. But when and by what means Mrs. Marley had appropriated
it remained obscure.
Every evening over their grog and pipes the matter was brought up and
debated, but always without their arriving any nearer to a solution,
till at last Jack became weary of the topic. Not so Dench, who was
possessed with it, and could turn his thoughts to no other.
What perhaps conduced to lead Jack to believe in Jane's having robbed
him was not so much Olver's arguments as her own conduct.
One day she came to him on the cliff when he was by himself, and said,
'Jack, I am sorry for you. You have been left in poor circumstances.
But the case is not so bad as you suppose. The captain was good to me.
When every other door was shut against my child and me, then he took
us in, warmed and fed and lodged us. I was then desperately poor and
wholly friendless. Now I am better off and not quite alone. I will do
what I can to assist you, and I will gladly give you a hundred pounds.'
'A hundred pounds!' echoed Jack, taken aback. Then, after a moment's
consideration, he said, with constraint in his manner, 'I thank you for
the offer, whether in way of gift or loan, but I will not be holden to
any one but myself. I shall fight my own way. I thank you, but decline
positively.'
He turned and walked away musing on this offer. To Dench he spoke of
it. The ferryman blazed at once like powder on which a spark has fallen.
'That settles it,' said he. 'She would not have offered the money
unless uneasy in mind. Mark you, if she be so ready to give you a
hundred pounds, she keeps back three times as much for herself and that
kid of hers. That makes four hundred, and next she will be offering
me another hundred to bottle up my thoughts and not let them fizz out
at my mouth. Is it reasonable that Winefred's father should put down
a solid lump sum?――put so much money into the hands of an ignorant,
half-crazed woman, who has heretofore never had a piece of gold
wherewith to bless herself? Not likely, is it? Consider what the father
would do in such a case as she pretends――that he has repented of his
wrong and is making amends. I do not say he has. I do not believe in
her story at all. But let us suppose that he did come here, see Jane
Marley and Winefred, and promised to do his best for them. He would
undertake to furnish them with a little money paid quarterly, but would
not give three, or four or five hundred pounds to her to play ducks and
drakes with. That is not likely. Moreover, he is not worth so much as
that.'
'You know Winefred's father?'
'I know something about him. He has been Governor of a place called
Tierra del Fuego, and I do not suppose his pay has been so good as
that he can put his hand in his pocket and say, There are a few
hundreds,――take, and I will give more when you have thrown these away.'
'But he gave the girl a gold watch.'
'How do you know that? The woman Marley says so. That watch may form
part of the plunder of which you have been robbed.'
'Then, again,' said Olver, 'what inducement had the woman to offer you
such a sum?'
'Because my father was kind to her and took her in.'
'Pshaw! He did that. Because he offered her his situation to be
maid-of-all-work, to cook his meals, clean the house, make the fire; in
return for which she was to be taken in, together with the girl, and to
receive half-a-crown a week, is that it? That is no ground for such a
fit of generosity coming upon her. No, no. She has stolen the captain's
money, and would salve over her conscience that tortures and stings
with one hundred pounds given to you. I see it clear as daylight.'
'It looks bad,' said Jack in a tone of discouragement. 'But, Olver, not
a word about this to any one else.'
'You should have closed with the offer. Half a loaf is better than no
bread.'
'I could not do it,' answered Jack, and so the matter dropped.
The feeling that pervaded the neighbourhood made itself very evident
to Jane Marley and to Winefred. The mother was indifferent, but it
provoked the liveliest resentment in the girl. Winefred was fired with
indignation that her mother should be thought capable of dishonesty,
and she winced and chafed at the gibes cast at her, or at the
insinuations she could not openly resent.
The neighbourhood had conspired to hold aloof from them. No one save
good Mrs. Jose would speak to either, except on matters necessitating
exchange of words. When mother or daughter came into Axmouth or Seaton
heads were turned aside, or they were stared at insolently and remarks
made behind their backs, perfectly audible and never complimentary.
Jane held up her head the highest, became harsher in manner and more
peremptory――even with her child.
Winefred complained to her of the slights to which she was subjected.
'When we were poor,' said Mrs. Marley, with darkened brow, 'then we
were cast out. Now we are rich, we are hated. As they cannot take our
money from us, they slander us. We can rub along very comfortably
without them. I would leave the place had I not bought the house. I
would not have bought it had I thought it would come to this. You shall
have richer dresses than any other girl in Axmouth, and go to church to
let them see it.'
This was not the way to allay suspicion and disarm hostility. Winefred
felt it, and shrank from the display her mother forced her to make.
She was eminently unhappy; she had not been so continuously wretched
before. The imputations cast on her mother angered her. There was an
ever open sore; she was sensitive, hearkening for a word, observant for
a look or gesture that referred disrespectfully to her mother.
Winefred had never made friends. Her mother had sufficed. To her she
had clung, to her looked up, in her believed. To hear this mother
spoken of as a vulgar thief, a woman taken compassionately into a
house, and using her opportunity to rob the man who had shown her
mercy――this was intolerable to the high-principled, keenly sensitive
child.
Knowing that to speak on the matter to her mother only served to make
the latter more irritable, Winefred at last shut up her trouble in her
breast; but it haunted her by night, it accompanied and overshadowed
her by day, and this served to embitter her against the little world
that surrounded her. The sole person in whom she could confide was Mrs.
Jose, and on her sympathetic bosom she shed floods of tears, whilst the
good woman patted and soothed her.
But although Mrs. Jose might comfort her she could not drive back the
growing sense of resentment wherewith Winefred encountered every one
else. Not only was the girl wounded by finding her mother charged with
dishonesty, but a new self-esteem had been quickened in her, born of
the insistence of her mother that she was a gentleman's daughter, and
was destined to be a lady, and to occupy a position high above the
heads of those who now depreciated her.
A lonely child is liable to become proud, and a wronged child waxes
resentful. Hitherto Winefred had been sharp with her tongue, with a
good-humoured tartness, but now the cutting words she uttered shot from
an angry heart. She must fight her mother's battles, and defend her
mother's character with what weapons she possessed.
The cottage that had been owned by Captain Job, and was now the
property of Mrs. Marley, stood, as has already been said, on a sort of
terrace a few feet below the level of the down. This terrace had been
formed at some unknown period by a sinkage. It was not extensive; it
comprised an abrupt dip and a congeries of isolated humps and prongs of
chalk, lost in dense thickets of ivy, thorn, and briar, above all of
elder. In spring the depression showed like a sea of white blossom, and
in autumn it was purple with the berries.
So sheltered was the spot from every wind, save that wafted from the
south over the sea, that flowers grew thereon throughout the winter
even, and the sap began to return in the hollow elder-sticks in January.
Jack Rattenbury came there one day, a warm winter's day, impelled by
recollections of his childhood, for among these rocks and brakes he had
been wont to play.
He was in low spirits, as he was out of employ. His future was
uncertain. He had been given no definite direction for his energies.
Into the smuggling trade he would not enter, and he was half inclined
to offer for the British Navy; but a common sailor's life at that
date was not attractive, and the European war being over, many of the
crews of our men-of-war had been discharged. Moreover, he was, by
inclination, disposed to take some situation in which his education
would be of service to him.
He had picked a bit of elder and was chewing it, as he sauntered into a
little dell in the midst of the thicket, where the turf was broad, and
which had been to him in the old days a garden of wild strawberries.
Hearing a movement, he turned his head, and next moment Winefred burst
through the bushes and was upon him.
She was better dressed than he had been accustomed to see her in the
past. She wore a winter bonnet trimmed with turquoise-blue ribbon, and
a navy-blue gown.
She was a handsome girl, with full dark eyes, arched brows, a straight,
well-moulded nose, the face somewhat long, mouth and chin firm, and
expressive of resolution, the forehead wide and rounded, and her hair
dark.
Her cheeks were glowing; they deepened in colour when she saw him.
'Why are you hiding here?' she asked. 'Have you come to spy on us?'
'I am not hiding. If you are suspicious, I take it you have something
you are afraid may be seen.'
'I saw you stalking on the down.'
'Oh, then you have tracked me!'
'I――come after you!' exclaimed Winefred contemptuously. 'Well, if I
have, it is to warn off trespassers.'
'I am not trespassing. This was my father's land once, and my
playground.'
'It is yours no longer.'
'You are right, no――I believe this is no-man's-land, and that
which my father owned and your mother bought does not include this
thicket. If it be hers now, she must have laid out some more of that
mysteriously-got money to purchase it from some other proprietor.'
'Mysteriously-got money,' said Winefred angrily. 'Speak openly, or say
nothing.'
'I have my thoughts.'
'Yes,' said the girl; 'you, bred in dishonesty, a sneaking,
night-prowling smuggler, who would have been kicking his heels in
prison at this present hour but for me, one such as you thinks that
none can have money which has not been crookedly hooked in.'
'Have done, Winefred, I owe you something.'
'We are quits. You helped me out of the cave, but I could have
scratched my way forth without your aid, and I warned you and helped
you to slip out of the net spread to take you. You owe me nothing, and
I owe you nothing. The account is settled between us. I do not desire
to be indebted to a smuggler. You, like all the rest, wonder that your
father left nothing when he died. But ill-gotten gold makes itself
wings.'
'In that case all my father's gold will come swarming out of your
mother's pocket, like ants on an August day when they get their wings
and desert their heap.'
'You are a coward, to insult a defenceless woman,' said Winefred
passionately. Her face paled with anger, and she turned sharply and ran
away.
Jack swung himself after her, caught her by the arm and flung her back
into an elder-bush.
'You little fool,' he said, 'you were dashing right over the brink. You
see, whether you will or no, you must owe something to me.'
It was a fact. He had rescued her from plunging over the precipice
concealed only by some bushes. She looked, saw that what he said was
the truth, and without thanking him went sullenly away.
But Jack, as he sauntered from the spot, was dissatisfied with himself.
'I have been too sharp with her,' he said. 'If there be a fault it lies
with her mother, not with Winnie. I did wrong. With a girl one should
not attempt a passage of arms.'