A DANGEROUS GIFT.
"I do love a proper muddle, cruel bad, I do," said Jump, and had what
she loved, for the preparations for Judith's marriage threw Mr.
Menaida's trim cottage into a "proper muddle." There were the cakes to
be baked, and for a while the interior of the house was pervaded by
that most delicious aroma of baking bread superior to frangipani,
jockey club, and wood violet. Then came the dusting, and after that
the shaking and beating of the rugs and sofa and chairs. Then it was
discovered that the ceilings and walls would be the better for white
and color-wash. This entailed the turning out of every thing
previously dusted and tidied and arranged. Neither Mr. Menaida nor
Jump had any other idea of getting things into order than throwing all
into a muddle in the hopes that out of chaos, exactness and order
might spring.
A dressmaker had been engaged and material purchased, for the
fabrication of a trousseau. This naturally interested Jamie vastly,
and Jump paid repeated visits to the dressmaker, whilst engaged on her
work. On one such occasion she neglected the kitchen and allowed some
jam to become burnt. On another she so interested the needlewoman and
diverted her attention from her work, whilst cutting out that the
latter cut out two right arms to the wedding gown. This involved a
difficulty, as it was not practicable either to turn the one sleeve,
and convert it into a left arm, nor to remove Judith's left arm and
attach it to the right side of her body, and so accommodate her to the
gown. The mercer at Camelford was communicated with, from whom the
material had been procured, but he was out of it, he however was in
daily expectation of a consignment of more of the same stuff. A
fortnight later he was able to supply the material, sufficient for a
left sleeve, but unfortunately of a different color. The gown had to
be laid aside till some one could be found of Judith's size and
figure with two right arms, and also who wanted a wedding dress, and
also would be disposed to take this particular one at half the cost of
the material, or else to let the gown stand over till after the lapse
of a century or thereabouts, when the fashion would prevail for ladies
to wear sleeves of a different substance and color from their bodies
and skirts.
"'Taint a sort o' a courtin' as I'd give a thankee for," said Jump.
"There was Camelford goose fair, and whether he axed her to go wi' him
and pick a goose I can't tell, but I know her never went. Then o'
Sundays they don't walk one another out. And he doesn't come arter her
to the back garden, and she go to him, and no whisperings and
kissings. I've listened a score o' times a hoping and a wishing to see
and hear the likes, and never once as I'm a Christian and a female.
There were my sister Jane, when she was going to be married, her got
that hot and blazin' red that I thought it were scarletine, but it was
naught but excitement. But the young mistress, bless 'ee, her gets
whiter and colder every day, and I'd say, if such a thing were
possible, that her'd rather her never was a going to be married. But
you see that ain't in natur', leastways wi' us females. I tell 'ee I
never seed him once put his arm round her waist. If this be courtin'
among gentlefolks, all I say is preserve and deliver me from being a
lady."
It was as Jump, in her vulgar way, put it. Judith alone in the house
appeared to take no interest in the preparations. It was only after a
struggle with her aunt that she had yielded to have the wedding in
November. She had wished it postponed till the spring, but Cruel
Coppinger and Aunt Dionysia were each for their several ends desirous
to have it in the late autumn. Coppinger had the impatience of a
lover; and Miss Trevisa the desire to be free from a menial position
and lodged in her new house before winter set in. She had amused
herself over Othello Cottage ever since Judith had yielded her
consent, and her niece saw little of her accordingly.
It suited Coppinger's interest to have a tenant for the solitary
cottage, and that a tenant who would excite no suspicions, as the
house was employed as a store for various run goods, and it was
understood between him and Miss Trevisa, that he was still to employ
the garret for the purposes that suited him.
Had Othello Cottage remained long unoccupied, it was almost certain to
attract the attention of the Preventive men, awake their suspicions,
and be subjected to a visit. Its position was convenient, it was on
the cliff of that cove where was the cave in which the smugglers'
boats were concealed.
Coppinger visited Polzeath and saw Judith whenever he came to Mr.
Menaida's house, but his wooing met with no response. She endured his
attentions, shrinking from the slightest approach to familiarity, and
though studiously courteous was never affectionate. It would take a
heavy charge of self-conceit to have made the Captain blind to the
fact that she did not love him, that in truth she viewed her
approaching marriage with repugnance. Coppinger was a proud, but not a
conceited man, and her coldness and aversion aroused his anger, for it
galled his pride. Had he been a man of noble impulse, he would have
released her, as she had already told him, but he was too selfish, too
bent on carrying out his own will to think of abandoning his suit.
Her lack of reciprocation did not abate his passion, it aggravated it.
It enlisted his self-esteem in the cause, and he would not give her
up, because he had set his mind upon obtaining her, and to confess his
defeat would have been a humiliation insufferable to his haughty
spirit. But it was not merely that he would not, it was also that he
could not. Coppinger was a man who had, all his life long, done what
he willed, till his will had become in him the mainspring of his
existence, and drove him to execute his purposes in disregard of
reason, safety, justice, and opposition. He would eat out his own
furious heart in impotent rage, if his will were encountered by
impossibility of execution. And he was of a sanguine temperament.
Hitherto every opposition had been overthrown before him, therefore he
could not conceive that the heart of a young girl, a mere child, could
stand out against him permanently. For a while it might resist, but
ultimately it must yield, and then the surrender would be absolute,
unconditional.
Every time he came to see her, he came with hopes, almost with
confidence, that the icy barrier would dissolve, but when in her
presence the chill from it struck him, numbed his heart, silenced his
tongue, deadened his thoughts. Yet no sooner was he gone from the
house, than his pulses leaped, his brain whirled, and he was consumed
with mortified pride and disappointed love. He could not be rough,
passionate or imperious with her. A something he could not understand,
certainly not define, streamed from her that kept him at a distance
and quelled his insolence. It was to him at moments as if he hated
her; but this hate was but the splutter of frustrated love. He
recalled the words she had spoken to him, and the terms she had
employed in speaking of the relation in which they stood to each
other, the only relations to her conceivable in which they could stand
to each other, and each such word was a spark of fire, a drop of
flaming phosphorus on his heart, torturing it with pain, and
unquenchable. A word once spoken can never be recalled, and these
words had been thrown red hot at him, had sunk in and continued to
consume where they had fallen. He was but a rapacious bird and she the
prey, he the fire and she the fuel, he the wrecker and she the wreck.
There could be no reciprocity between them, the bird in the talons of
the hawk, rent by his beak could do no other than shiver and shriek
and struggle to be free. The fuel could but expect to be consumed to
ashes in the flames; and the wrecked must submit to the wrecker. He
brooded over these similes, he chafed under the conviction that there
was truth in them, he fought against the idea that a return of his
love was impossible--and then his passion raged and roared up in a
fury that was no other than hatred of the woman who could not be his
in heart. Then, in another moment, he cooled down, and trusted that
what he dreaded would not be. He saw before him the child, white as a
lily, with hair as the anthers of the lily--so small, so fragile, so
weak; and he laughed to think that one such, with no experience of
life, one who had never tasted love, could prove insensible to his
devouring passion. The white asbestos in the flame glows, and never
loses its delicacy and its whiteness.
And Judith was, as Jump observed, becoming paler and more silent as
her marriage drew on. The repugnance with which she had viewed it
instead of abating intensified with every day. She woke in the night
with a start of horror, and a cold sweat poured from her. She clasped
her hands over her eyes and buried her face in her pillow and
trembled, so that the bed rattled. She lost all appetite. Her throat
was contracted when she touched food. She found it impossible to turn
her mind to the preparations that were being made for her wedding, she
suffered her aunt to order for her what she liked, she was indifferent
when told of the blunder made by the dressmaker in her wedding-gown.
She could not speak at meals. When Mr. Menaida began to talk, she
seemed to listen, but her mind was elsewhere. She resumed lessons with
Jamie, but was too abstracted to be able to teach effectually. A
restlessness took hold of her and impelled her to be out of doors and
alone. Any society was painful to her, she could endure only to be
alone; and when alone, she did nothing save pluck at her dress, or rub
her fingers one over the other--the tricks and convulsive movements of
one on the point of death.
But she did not yield to her aversion without an effort to accustom
herself to the inevitable. She rehearsed to herself the good traits
she had observed in Coppinger, his kindness, his forbearance toward
herself, she took cognizance of his efforts to win her regard, to
afford her pleasure, his avoidance of everything that he thought might
displease her. And when she knew he was coming to visit her, she
strove with herself; and formed the resolution to break down the
coldness, and to show him some of that semblance of affection which he
might justly expect. But it was in vain. No sooner did she hear his
step, or the first words he uttered, no sooner did she see him, than
she turned to stone, and the power to even feign an affection she did
not possess left her. And when Coppinger had departed, there was
stamped red hot on her brain the conviction that she could not
possibly endure life with him.
She prayed long and often, sometimes by her father's grave, always in
bed when lying wakeful, tossing from side to side in anguish of mind;
often, very often when on the cliffs looking out to sea, to the dark,
leaden, sullen sea, that had lost all the laughter and color of
summer. But prayer afforded her no consolation. The thought of
marriage to such a man, whom she could not respect, whose whole nature
was inferior to her own, was a thought of horror. She could have
nerved herself to death by the most excruciating of torments, but for
this, not all the grace of heaven could fortify her.
To be his mate, to be capable of loving him, she must descend to his
level, and that she neither could nor would do. His prey, his fuel,
his wreck--that she must become, but she could be nothing
else--nothing else. As the day of her marriage approached her nervous
trepidation became so acute that she could hardly endure the least
noise. A strange footfall startled her and threw her into a paroxysm
of trembling. The sudden opening of a door made her heart stand still.
When her father had died, poignant though her sorrow had been, she had
enjoyed the full powers of her mind. She had thought about the
necessary preparations for the funeral, she had given orders to the
servants, she had talked over the dear father to Jamie, she had wept
his loss till her eyes were red. Not so now; she could not turn her
thoughts from the all-absorbing terror; she could not endure an
allusion to it from anyone, least of all to speak of it to her
brother, and the power to weep was taken from her. Her eyes were dry;
they burnt, but were unfilled by tears.
When her father was dead she could look forward, think of him in
paradise, and hope to rejoin him after having trustily executed the
charge imposed on her by him. But now she could not look ahead. A
shadow of horror lay before her, an impenetrable curtain. Her father
was covering his face, was sunk in grief in his celestial abode; he
could not help her. She could not go to him with the same open brow
and childish smile as before. She must creep to his feet, and lay her
head there, sullied by association with one against whom he had warned
her, one whom he had regarded as the man that had marred his sacred
utility, one who stood far below the stage of virtue and culture that
belonged to his family and on which he had firmly planted his child.
What was in her heart Judith could pour out before none; certainly not
before Aunt Dionysia, devoid of a particle of sympathy with her niece.
Nor could she speak her trouble to Uncle Zachie, a man void of
resources, kind, able for a minute or two to sympathize, but never to
go deeply into any trouble and understand more of a wound than the
fester on the surface. Besides, of what avail to communicate the
anguish of her heart to anyone, when nothing could be done to alter
the circumstances. She could not now draw back. Indeed it never
occurred to her to be possible to go back from her undertaking. To
save Jamie from an idiot asylum she had passed her word to give her
hand at the altar to Cruel Coppinger, and her word was sacred. Aunt
Dionysia trusted her word. Coppinger held to it, knowing that she gave
it on compulsion and reluctantly, yet he showed his perfect confidence
in its security.
"My dear Judith," said Mr. Menaida, "I am so sorry about losing you,
and what is more, losing Jamie, for I know very well that when he is
at the Glaze he will find plenty to amuse him without coming to see
me, or anyhow, coming to work with me."
"I hope not, dear uncle."
"Yes, I lose a promising pupil." Then turning to the boy, he said:
"Jamie, I hope you will not give up stuffing birds, or, if you have
not the patience to do that, that you will secure the skins and
prepare them for me."
"Yes, I will," said Jamie.
"Yes, yes, my dear boy," said Menaida, "but don't you fancy I am going
to trust you with arsenic for preparing the skins. I shall give that
to your sister and she will keep the supply, eh, will you not,
Judith?"
"Yes. I will take charge of it."
"And let him have it as needed; never more than is needed."
"Why not?" asked Jamie.
"Because it is a dangerous thing to have lying about." Menaida ran
into the workshop, and came back with a small tin box of the poison.
"Look here! here is a little bone spoon. Don't get the powder over
your fingers. Why, a spoonful would make a man very ill, and two would
kill him. So, Judith, I trust this to you. When Jamie has a skin to
prepare he will go to you, and you will let him have only so much as
he requires."
"Yes, uncle."
She took the little tin of arsenic and put it in her workbox, under
the tray that contained reels and needles.