A REFUSAL
Winefred descended the path to meet her mother, who was slowly mounting
the path.
'You have been long,' said Jane.
'Yes, but I have got the choughs. Mother, I have been endeavouring to
make amends for a cruel wrong that has been done. I have been guilty in
risking a life for a fancy.'
'Amends! What amends? A guinea is what you offered. Have you made it
thirty shillings? That is ample and over-flowing.'
'No, mother. Let us turn and go home. When we are on the beach we will
talk; here we must walk in file, and the red marl is greasy.'
Jane Marley turned about and led the way; but she looked over her
shoulder to observe her daughter. She was not easy in her mind about
her. She was frightened at what the consequences might be of what she
had uttered in sudden alarm at seeing Jack Rattenbury on the brink of
a terrible death. At length they reached the bottom of the declivity.
Here lay the shingle beach before them, backed by Indian-red cliffs in
which lay the strips of curious verdigris shale, and all crowned with
intense green and rich vegetation. At intervals oozed a liquid like
blood, the drainage of the sandstone. No one was in sight; but owing to
the noise made by walking on the flint and chert pebbles, mother and
daughter could not converse in a low tone and be heard by one another.
It was necessary for them to speak aloud and in high-pitched voices.
'Well,' said Mrs. Marley, 'what amends, but money? I have offered him
help, and he threw my offer back in my face. As to the choughs――any lad
would risk his neck for guinea――you owe him nothing, now he is paid.'
'No other lad would take my offer, mother.'
'If he had fallen, it would have been his own doing. There is nothing
to be won without risk. My father risked his life and liberty――my
brother did the same, and lost his life.'
'I urged――I drove him to it, mother. If any catastrophe had happened, I
should have felt that I could not live longer. If Jack had been killed,
I would have thrown myself down.'
Her mother laughed scornfully.
'Once――and that for me, you would not face a fall over the cliffs, but
fought like a wild cat with teeth and nails. Now, for this clodpole you
are prepared to do it! I cannot understand you. What is this bumpkin to
you, that you should be in such a way about him?'
'That is what I desire to speak with you about, mother,' said Winefred,
and there was a ripple in her voice. 'I have tried to repair some of
the wrong done him by myself. Now I ask you――will not you do the like?'
Mrs. Marley looked sharply at her sideways.
'What do you mean?' she inquired in a low tone, so low that Winefred
could not hear the words, lost in the clicker of the pebbles displaced
by their feet; but she knew what her mother said, for she was observing
her face, and she read it in the movement of her lips.
'Mother,' she replied, 'you know what I mean. Recollect what the words
were that you uttered, when he had let slip the rope, and was preparing
to leap. Then you cried out――――'
'Do not repeat them. Bah! it was nonsense. I spoke any foolish words
that came at random into my head.'
'I do not believe you when you say this,' said Winefred. 'Then, when
off your guard, the truth came out.'
Jane Marley looked down. Her veins swelled, her face became dark.
'Mother,' continued the girl very gravely, 'I believe what you then
cried out. I believe that you found and kept the money that should have
belonged to Jack Rattenbury. I shall have no peace of mind till every
penny has been restored.'
'I have nothing of his.'
'Mother――you shall know something more. I cannot tell how it is, it
came over me like the bursting of a wave upon my head. I and Jack――that
is――I――I mean that I love him.'
Her cheeks had become suffused, and she turned her face to the red
rocks.
'What!'
Jane Marley stood still, and became rigid, with both arms extended at
her side, stiff, and her hands clinched. Every muscle in her face was
knotted.
'What! You――you and that fellow, Captain Rattenbury's son! Love _him_?
Him of all people! Are you mad? You can never take him.'
'No, mother, that is true, I cannot take him, so long as this wicked
injustice stands between us. I know that well enough. No, I cannot be
his. You have parted us.'
'It is well. I would he had broken his neck.'
'Then I would have died also. Of what profit would it be to you to have
and keep that which you have got, if through retaining it you were
crushed with the knowledge that you had wronged him, and that I, for
love of him whose death I had caused, had also perished?'
'I do not say that I have anything of his. But suppose it were as you
fancy. Do you think anything would have brought me to do it――but care
for you?'
'If for me you did what is wrong――for my sake now undo it.'
'I cannot.'
'Till that be done, he and I remain apart.'
'If for that alone――I will not do it.'
Then Winefred caught her mother's arm, and drawing her round so that
they faced each other, she said, in muffled, quivering tones, 'Mother,
I have held up my head, and scorned and flouted the folk at Axmouth,
because I believed that what they said was a lie. I did not, I would
not, suppose that you could commit such a wickedness. I was proud of
you. I believed in you. I held it to be a false accusation. I thought
you too good, too noble, too upright to be――to be――――' She hesitated.
'Say the word, to be a thief.'
'You gave way to temptation out of love for me. Out of love for me
restore what you took.' She panted for breath. She was white with the
deadly earnestness with which she pleaded.
'And you――to be brought up as a lady,' muttered Jane, scowling, 'and
to throw yourself away on a village lout――one, too, who has not the
manhood in him to take to the sea and be what his fathers have been.'
'I do not desire to be a lady.'
'I do――it is my one thought, my only ambition.'
'And at Bath,' pursued Winefred, 'everything about me is false. I am
expected to pass as one who has lost her mother. You are supposed to
be only a nurse! I hate it, I will not bear it any longer. No――not
although my father――no, not although you join with him to force me
to this deception. I will have the truth. I will not be false and
deceitful. Let all be honest and clear as sea-water, and nothing be
held back and muffled up in lies. I have hated it throughout. I have
felt like a fly tangled in a cobweb, like a fish in a draw-net. I will
not go back unless it be as your daughter. I was so proud of my dear
mother, she was poor but honest, and now――――' She burst into tears.
Jane continued looking down with knitted brows; she stirred the shingle
with one foot, playing with the pebbles, yet regarding them not.
'I do not admit anything,' she said sullenly. 'You are troubled with a
bad fancy. But even――――'
'It is no fancy. I could not mistake your words.'
'Suppose it has been as you think. I do not allow it, but let us say
that old Captain Job did leave a trifle of money, and that I found
and kept it. I had a right to it. It was money taken from my father,
squeezed out of his veins. It was the price of my brother's blood.'
'O mother, you do not know this.'
'I do know that my father worked for years under the captain, and
died penniless. I do know that my brother was shot when he set up for
himself apart from the captain.'
'But you do not know that Captain Rattenbury was responsible in either
case.'
'They were in the same business. The money stuck in some hands, and
none in those of my father.'
'Mother, dear, you owe all this to what Olver Dench has been saying to
you. What is his word worth?'
'Of all men none is so likely to know the truth as Olver.'
'But is he a man who speaks the truth?'
'I care not. You shall be a lady, and you shall marry a gentleman, a
real gentleman――such as was your father.'
'But were you happy with him?'
'We were ill-assorted. You shall be a lady.'
'Do not, for ever, dear mother, turn back like a wheel to the same
point. I have no wish to be a lady. I was happy as a poor girl, picking
up pebbles and grinding them. Mother, my heart is full of Jack. I
cannot endure that this wrong should have been done him.'
'What!' asked Mrs. Marley, looking up with a dark shadow in her eyes,
'you will tell him all?'
'No――that, never.'
'A girl in love is a fool; she blabs everything.'
'I can be silent. I shall not utter a word. What would it profit me
to say to him, Jack, you might be rich, but are poor, because we have
got your money. I am dressed out with coin that should be yours. I am
pushed with your money into a position in life above that to which I
was born. What would he think of me and of you if I were to say this? I
cannot possibly tell him my shame and yours. For your sake I will not.
No――never!'
Jane, with curling lip, said, 'What would folk exclaim suppose I were
to do as you desire?'
'It does not concern us what they would exclaim. Do what is right. Then
only is the barrier down between Jack and me.'
Mrs. Marley ground her heel among the rolled stones. Presently she
looked up, and said roughly, 'Come along.'
'Mother, what will you do?'
'I will not. You shall be a lady. It is my fixed purpose. I am not such
a fool as to cast away what I hold. Would you――if you found a rare
chalcedony, throw it into the sea?'
'If it belonged to another, I would put it into his hand. Mother, why
is it that dear Mrs. Jose has been so good to us? Why has she stood up
so stoutly for you against the whole neighbourhood, but because in her
honest heart she thought you could not have done such a thing.'
'Need she know it now? Will you set her against me?'
'I shall not breathe a word of it to her.'
'That fellow Jack――he shall not have you.'
'Mother, I am sure if Jack knew how he had been defrauded by us, he
could not love me. He does love me, because he cannot believe this to
be possible.'
'And yet you would tell him!'
'No, you and you alone must tell him the truth. Let him have what is
his own, and I am content to lose him.'
'Come on, enough of this.'
'You will not, mother?'
'No.'
Winefred heaved a despairing sigh. She knew the resolute character
of her mother. Suddenly she flung her arms about her, kissed her
passionately, and said, 'O mother, if you love me, if you love me at
all, do it.'
'No, because I love you; you shall be a lady. No, I will not.'