CHAPTER XXVII

MOTHER AND DAUGHTER

When Winefred entered the cottage where her mother was, she seated herself on a chair against the wall, and let her hands drop on her knees.

Her mother, who was knitting, looked up, and said, 'Back so soon!'

Winefred did not reply, and the woman continued at her work, but she jerked the worsted, and let slip a needle that fell upon the floor.

'Why are you returned so soon?' she asked, after she had stooped, picked up the fallen pin, and recovered the dropped stitches.

'I had enough of it,' answered the girl shortly.

Jane looked at her, but Winefred turned aside that her mother might not see her face.

'You are not cold, I reckon,' said Jane, 'so you do not come to the fire. Have you danced?'

'No.'

'Have you supped?'

'No.'

'Why did you leave without your supper?'

'I have had enough of it,' again answered the girl.

Mrs. Marley rose, went into the kitchen to the larder, and brought in food, which she set on the table, but Winefred made a motion of refusal. 'I am not hungry, I cannot eat.'

'Something has gone wrong,' said her mother. 'Tell me what it is.'

'There is nothing to tell.'

Her mother did not press her. She knew the ways of her child, knew that her heart was full, and that she feared to speak lest she should expose herself and distress her mother.

She resumed her work and allowed the food to remain on the table. Ever and anon she looked from the stocking she was knitting at the girl seated with her back to the wall.

Jane Marley had not changed her style of dress with her altered circumstances. She wore the same plain stuffs simply put together as heretofore, but her face had undergone a change; it had become harder, more lined, more gloomy.

After a quarter of an hour passed in silence, and the situation had become irksome, Mrs. Marley said, 'Winnie, this will not do. Something has happened to offend you. Are you angry because you have not had a dance?'

'I do not wish to dance. I would not dance with one of them.'

'Why not? Is it because you are above them?'

'It is because I will not touch the hand or speak in friendly way with any one who says that you are wicked.'

'Winnie, you should not be too haughty with them.'

'I am not haughty. I care nothing for my smart dress. You know, mother, that I was against putting one on. It is not that.'

'This cannot go on. I have had a talk with Mrs. Jose; she thinks that there must be a change.'

'Let there be a change. Let them acknowledge that you are an honest woman.'

'There is nothing for it,' said Jane hastily, and her hands trembled; 'but this――you must go to school.'

'To school!'

'Yes, a boarding-school.'

'Will you come with me?'

'No, of course not.'

'Well, then, you are the most wonderful mother that ever was. Once you would have thrown me over the cliffs――――'

'No more of that.'

'Because you could not bear to be parted from me.'

'Now it is necessary. Mrs. Jose thinks so――I feel it.'

'I will not go.'

'You must go. It will be for your good. You are to be brought up as a lady. I have been turning it over in my head, and see that it must be so. You are too good for these clods, and not good enough for gentlefolk. You must be set to learn the manners of those with whom you will associate.'

'I do not wish to leave you, mother.'

'You will have to do so. It is I, not you, who will suffer. You will be among young people, and share their games, and learn their lessons. I shall sit here knitting, thinking, my head turning and my heart aching――alone.'

'You must not be alone.'

'My child. It is my place to think for you, and to endure what must be for your benefit. The time will arrive when you will be married. You have been made to feel in a fashion what it means to stand alone, and to have no man by you to fight your battles. There is no farm lad you would take, and no gentlemen who would take you.'

'But, mother, my father had no such thoughts.'

'And what came of it? He deserted me because I did not belong to his class. It would be the same with you――and that shall never, never be.' Her face became darker, sterner. 'I have known what desertion means. I once loved and trusted, and tied up all my hopes to one man. And for nineteen years I have eaten out my heart in wrath and resentment because I have been forsaken. I have not slept, I have tossed on my bed, night after night; I have had a fire here, in my bosom, burning me, week after week, month after month, expecting, desiring, and never seeing him return, never hearing of him save that he had gone away, gone out of England, so as to be removed from me, put the wide ocean between us, lest I should go after him; and there, where he is, I doubt not he has found some other woman better suited to him than myself.'

'But, mother, he is in England again.'

'Yes――in England, but will not return to me. You he may receive, but me――never. And I did him no wrong――never, never, in word or act or deed. Only I was a poor, ignorant, and common girl――that was my sole wrong.'

Her fingers worked rapidly. 'I have no hope, no care for myself. All I think or hope for concerns you. Winefred, I would throw you over the cliffs rather than that should happen to you which was my lot. You must learn to become that which I never was and never could have been, and so you will not only find a husband, but also keep him.'

'I do not wish to be married.'

'Marry you must. You cannot stand alone. You are a well-grown and a handsome girl, but unless you have education all that does more harm than good. I was――so all said――a very handsome girl, and what came of it? I caught the fancy of a gentleman, and he married me――whether it was a right and good marriage or not I do not know, but I have begun to think it must have been good and holding, or he would not have run away so far to escape from me. After a while he grew cool, and shook me off, shook himself free of me as Samson shook off the cords of flax, as though burnt with fire, wherewith the Philistines had bound him. He never came near me again.'

'But, mother, you say that it is he who is finding the money for buying this house and for my education as a lady.'

Mrs. Marley looked down suddenly, and her colour deepened. She did not answer directly, but after some pause, said, in a hesitating manner, 'He has not come near me. He may care for you, because he can make a lady of you, but for me he cares not, he can make nothing now of me. It is too late. If you get a husband who is a gentleman, you must be able to hold him fast. He will not run away from you if you have money and retain the purse, but, above all――not if you have education. It was not because I was poor, but because I was untaught that _he_ left me. It has been as a worm in my brain. To school you must go, and so escape that misery which would be yours if, like me, you were no scholar.'

'O mother! If I must go away, do you come also. You cannot be happy here.'

'I cannot leave now. I have bought this house. I hold to what is mine. As to the people and what they say, I heed them not. It frets me only when it hurts you. There is nothing they can say or do that will either lift me up or cast me down. I must bear my woes.'

'Are you really unhappy, mother?'

'I am what I am. Do not concern yourself about me. I have my sorrows and my shame. You are free. What they say falls on me, not on you, and I wish that you should be away from their chatter and their fangs. You have a future, I have none. Me they are welcome to tread and knead into the dirt if only you go unspotted. My life has not been so happy that I care what befalls me in what remains of it. I value it only for you. But your life is just opening like a June rose, and I must shelter it from the wind. Understand me, Winnie, whilst you are here, you are the butt of every girl who is inclined to be spiteful. Where all seek to hurt, you cannot escape without bruises. When you are elsewhere you will make new friends, get into another class, and begin a fresh life that I do not understand, but this is what I have set my heart upon, and this is the ambition that fills me.'

Winefred stood up, flew to her mother, and they were locked in each other's embrace, sobbing on each other's shoulder.

High as heaven, deep as hell, is mother's love, self-effacing, capable of all self-sacrifice; and infinitely tender, clinging is that of the child to the mother, when that child has neither brother nor sister, nor father, on whom love may be dissipated.

Jane Marley was the first to recover herself.

'Dear child,' she said, 'I live but for you――and for that very reason I part with you. I send you away.'

'I will go,' answered Winefred through her tears.

Then she departed to her room. Her mother had appointed for her that recently occupied by the captain, but it had been ceiled, renovated, transformed, and turned into a bright and pretty bedroom fit for a girl.

She extinguished her candle. She did not undress and go to bed. She sat at the casement.

The room was warm. It was above the parlour, in which the fire burned all day. There was no necessity for artificial light, as the moon shone brightly.

Sitting at the window, she looked out on the chalk rocks, dazzling white in the moon, then disappearing as a cloud passed over the face of the luminary, but again shortly to flash out again. Winefred looked indeed at these white prongs of rock, but she did not notice them.

The bitter expression had faded from her lips. Her brows were no longer knit; her hands were pressed to the temples, for her pulses throbbed painfully.

She was alone. But not so solitary as others might be, even as Jack Rattenbury. She had her mother to fly to, to rest upon, to hold in her arms, but he――he――poor lad, had none.

She regretted that she had spoken to him with harshness.