CHAPTER XXIII

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.'