MOST HEARTILY
Jack went his way, dissatisfied with himself, with Winefred, with the
whole world.
Why had the girl spoken to him, looked at him, defied him as she had
done?
It was perhaps natural, reasonable, excusable, that she should regard
him with an unfriendly eye, in consequence of what was rumoured
relative to her mother and his father.
If this story were baseless, as possibly it was, then both women must
feel acutely having so gross an act of dishonesty laid to their charge,
and be predisposed to look upon him as an instigator of the calumnies
that had caused them intolerable annoyance.
That Winefred was wretched Jack had read in her face. He pitied her,
and yet he was angry with her for the manner in which she treated him.
If the women were innocent, he said to himself, they did not act in
such a manner as to disarm suspicion.
And whether guilty or not they were not a pleasing couple, Jane
Marley with her furious temper, Winefred with her pride. The world
is a looking-glass. As is the face that you present to it, such is
the face that looks back at you. Assuredly Winefred made no attempt
by gentleness to win back for herself those who were alienated, not
through any fault of her own doubtless, but because of the suspicion
that dogged her mother. Had the girl possessed a good heart, would she
have spoken to Jack as she had done?
'Bah!' said he aloud, as he kicked before him the flints that strewed
the down and glistened in the moonlight, 'bah! What is she to me? I
will cast her out of my thoughts.'
But it is sometimes easier to form a resolution than to adhere to it.
He found himself reverting incessantly to the picture of the frowning
girl with clenched hands on her lap, seated in the barn, alone amidst
many, or to her in the moonlight menacing him with the thorn branch.
So he walked back to the ferryman's cottage, and, avoiding conversation
with Olver, threw himself on his bed. Dench had, indeed, sought to
detain him by asking questions as to where he had been, whether he had
obtained employment, and what he proposed for the morrow, but the boy
answered that he was wearied and indisposed to talk.
'He will be brought to it yet,' said the ferryman to himself. 'Those
Beer fellows, and, above all, David Nutall, are a bit shy of me and
suspect something. But if I have this greenhorn here, and can thrust
him in among them, I shall know all their movements, and can sell them
in a lump when I have a mind to.'
Since the disposal of the house that had belonged to his father, Jack
had not been up to it; he had avoided it. But on the morrow, after
another day of ineffectual search after employment, towards evening he
walked over the down at the head of the cliffs and descended to the
undercliff where the cottage stood.
It had been renovated, and in part remodelled since its purchase. The
walls had been whitewashed and the roof repaired. The fence before
the house had been put to rights, and the little garden had been dug
up. Brambles that had straggled across the path leading to it, and
overswaying boughs, had been pruned back.
Jack looked at the house. It was certainly a pleasanter dwelling now
than in his father's time. A house in which a woman is at once assumes
a neatness and a charm which one occupied by man only does not and
cannot possess.
A light sprang up in a window. Some one was within, and he saw the
shadow of an arm upon the pane that was raised to draw a curtain. He
beat a hasty retreat. He recalled how that on the preceding night
Winefred had accused him of running after her. He was fearful of being
seen near the house by some one either coming out of the door or
approaching from the down. It would not be easy for him to account for
his presence there. Winefred would be strengthened in her persuasion
that he spied on her actions. Then the blood rushed to his temples. She
might even conceivably suppose that he had taken a fancy for her, and
that it was her charms that drew him to the house.
He!――he take a fancy to her!
He hurried away, not by the path, lest he should encounter the girl or
her mother, but through the bushes, and he stumbled over stones, and
caught his foot in briars. He came upon the open space which he had
been wont to regard as his garden, and where he had had a brush with
Winefred. He stood still there and shook himself, but he could not
shake off the thoughts of that girl. The air there was charged with the
smell of decayed leaves and mouldering twigs. Every step was upon dead
vegetation, and every tread brought out an exhalation of death.
In vain did he force his mind to other matters; it would turn with
perverse persistency to Winefred, and he saw her in his fancy pursue
him with an angry light in her eyes, and every branch that smote him
seemed to him to be struck by her hand.
On the following day Dench absented himself and asked Jack to mind the
ferry.
When he had put a passenger across he returned, slightly dipping the
oars in the water, to fall into a dream and think of her. On that
afternoon he heard a call from the Axmouth side, and on going from the
cabin saw that Winefred was waiting to be put across.
He flushed crimson, and his heart fluttered. He was angry with himself
for feeling excitement. He crossed and held out his hand to assist her
on board, but she leaped into the boat unaided.
She took her place, and looked resolutely at the Chesil Bank, not once
at him, nor did she open her mouth to speak.
Again, on reaching the shore, did he offer his hand, and she dropped
into it a penny, but would not touch it.
In an hour she was back again, with some purchases she had made in
Seaton. She looked him in the face now, but with a stony eye, and
demanded to be put across.
Although whilst in the boat she would not look at him, yet he could see
by her uneasy movements on the bench that she knew that he was watching
her. He saw her bend her brows and purse her lips.
She left the boat hastily, casting the penny into it, and shortly after
Jack saw that in her hurry she had neglected to take up one of her
parcels. He hurried after her, caught her up, and presented it to her.
'I thank you,' said she coldly. 'Here is for your pains,' and offered
him twopence.
He coloured angrily and withdrew his hand.
'Take it,' she said. 'I refuse to be indebted to you for anything.'
'I will not take it.'
She threw the coppers on the ground and pursued her way.
Jack put his foot on them and ground them into the mud.
Occasionally he encountered her in a lane; when this was so he could
see by her manner that if it were possible for her to slip out of his
way down a sidepath, she would do it; if it were not, she tossed her
head and passed without a word.
However, on one occasion she halted, hesitated, seemed inclined to
speak――her lips moved; but she changed her mind and passed on her
course without a word.
One day the fancy took Jack Rattenbury to revisit the rift that had
been formed when Mrs. Marley's cottage had been ruined. The kegs that
had been secreted in the cave had all been removed. What induced Jack
to go there, whether it were curiosity to ascertain what alteration had
taken place in its aspect, or whether the association of the place with
the eventful night when he escaped by it from the preventive men drew
him there, he did not himself know.
He crossed the estuary and sauntered along the beach. The tide was
ebbing and leaving on the pebbles ribbons of weed and a thread of froth.
Turning sharply round an angle of the cliff he came on the mouth of the
chasm, and stood, breathless, not knowing whether to retreat or to go
forward, for there before him, on a mass of fallen chalk, sat Winefred,
her head in her hands, sobbing.
The lad, after a moment's hesitation, took a step towards her. She
looked up quickly, flushed, then turned pale, rose and faced him, with
defiance in her countenance.
'Again――spying!'
He was too surprised to speak. The sight of her tears had taken the
courage out of him.
'Now you have seen me,' she said, 'you can go again.'
'I did not come here to see you. I did not expect to find you here. I
came to look once more at the cave.'
'It is choked. You know it.'
'I did not know it. I have not been here since I helped you to get out.'
'That is false. You removed all the smuggled goods.'
'I did not. It was done by the others. I told them where they were
concealed.'
'I do not believe you.'
'I have my faults, but lying is not one of them.'
'But slander is. I know you tell lies of us.'
'You are mistaken. Never have I said a word against you.'
'But you have against my mother.'
'I cannot tell exactly what I may have said concerning her, when a
certain matter has been discussed, but I may say, and I do sincerely
assure you it is true, I have most generally spoken in her defence
rather than against her.'
Winefred was silent.
'I am sorry to see you in trouble,' said Jack. 'You have been crying.'
'I am angry at being followed and spied on.'
'You were in tears before I disturbed you.'
'Yes, I had been hearing an amusing story: it made me laugh and cry at
once.'
'Who speaks untruth now?'
'Am I to ask your leave and to curtsey before I am permitted to shed a
tear?'
'Oh, no! we have nothing to do with each other.'
'Nothing at all. I desire you to keep out of my way, but you are
continually running against me or running after me. Why do you do it?
Do you suppose that I carry about with me your father's gold?'
'Engage the Seaton crier to march before you wherever you go, and ring
his bell and call――Clear the way, fall on your faces, or hide. Miss
Holwood comes.'
She burst into tears again.
With an effort she mastered her emotion.
'If you will go and bray through the country that you have seen me cry,
say the reason why. I have been crying because I am going away, going
among strangers.'
'You are?'
'Yes.'
'I wish that were my luck.'
'To pry after me?'
'No, that I might find work. Why are you going away?'
'To be made into a lady. My father is a gentleman.'
'And where is this wonderful change to be made?'
'I will not tell you. Of one thing I am glad. For that I shed no tears.
I shall be relieved of your presence.'
'I cannot get away from Seaton. I am like one of the pebbles here,
rolled up and down, forward, backward――and always on the one ridge. Is
your mother leaving also?'
'She is not. This is Mrs. Jose's doing. That is to say, she has found
the place where I am to be. She has got distinguished relatives who
live in the best society. I am to go to them. They are to roll me up
and down, forward and backward, till all my roughness is rubbed away.'
'Ah! you――but you are a precious stone――chalcedony, a hard one. I――I am
rolled, but only to be ground to nothing.'
Winefred was slightly softened.
She said, 'Have you consulted Mrs. Jose? She is every one's friend,
and helpful to all in difficulties. But if she offers you the place of
button boy to her relatives, I shall refuse to go to them.'
'You must dislike me vastly.'
'I hate you.'
She looked steadily into his troubled face, and, after a pause, added,
'And do not you hate me?'
'Well――I suppose I do. Perhaps so. Yes, of course I do.'
'As I do, most heartily?'
'Yes, most heartily.'