CHAPTER XLVII

THE CURTAIN DRAWN

Jane Marley was unaccountably restless.

She sat at needlework, but could not remain at it. A disquiet that was inexplicable kept her on the move throughout the day.

Her daughter had left her precipitately, had gone back to Bath, without a word of explanation as to her purpose, whether to remain there or to return.

Jane could not sound Winefred's heart. She was in doubt whether the girl intended to abandon her and adhere to her father, or whether she proposed to pay her occasional visits. The girl had been reticent towards her regarding Jack Rattenbury. From what she had said, and this was not much, Jane judged that Winefred acknowledged that union with him was not possible, and yet adhered to her resolution not to banish him from her heart. Jane was well aware that the two had met on the downs almost every evening.

The girl was altered in her demeanour towards her mother since the discovery of the appropriation of Captain Rattenbury's hoard. Jane could have bitten out her tongue with mortification at having blurted forth the truth. But in the moment of excessive agitation, under the pang of remorse, of fear lest Jack's life should be sacrificed, she had lost control over her words. Her conscience had cried out in audible tones, and though the words had been few, the accent had sufficed to convey to Winefred the revelation of the fraud committed. And yet, as Jane reasoned with herself, Winefred must have arrived at the truth shortly by another road.

If she got into conversation with her father about the past he was certain to mention to her, in self-exculpation, how that her mother had haughtily, resentfully refused assistance from him; how that from the day that he left her she had not accepted a stiver from him.

When Winefred learned this she would at once ask, whence then came the money that had enabled her mother to purchase the Undercliff, and to send her to be educated in a private family of some pretensions?

And Winefred was not one to leave such a question unanswered. She would work at it till she had arrived at a satisfactory explanation. When the girl discovered that no money had been transmitted to her mother from Mr. Holwood, her mind would at once fasten on the rumours that circulated relative to what her mother had done. She could come to no other possible conclusion save that there was some good ground for the suspicion so generally entertained.

That Winefred did resent such an appropriation of the savings of a dead man Jane could understand, but not why she did not accept those excuses for it with which Jane salved her own conscience. The fable about the murder of her brother at the instigation of Job Rattenbury, and that of her father having been defrauded of his legitimate gains by the same man, she had accepted as certain truths, and clung to them as such with tenacity.

She had not that sharpness of vision in the matter of right and wrong, nor that fineness of texture of conscience that had Winefred. Like a vast number of other people, any pretext served as an excuse for the commission of a wrong; a colourable pretext was the cocaine with which moral sensation was benumbed. Various causes had combined to make Winefred high principled as she was.

Unquestionably there was natural downrightness in her character from the outstart; this had been accentuated by her work in selecting and polishing stones for the lapidary. Too often had she been deceived by a pebble that promised well, and which only after laborious grinding and smoothing had revealed itself to be worthless. This had contributed to foster in her resentment against an exterior that did not correspond with what was within. She had been obliged to deal with shifty personages, and had seen through their evasions. Further, she had enjoyed that supreme advantage of having been taught in a dame's school where the two duties were made the basis of all instruction, and the mind was educated instead of being taught.

But it was not trouble of mind concerning Winefred that alone allowed Jane Marley no rest. There was a something indescribable, sensible but inexplicable, that set all her nerves in a tingle, that impressed her with a feeling of insecurity.

Once and again, haunted by an unreasonable dread, she went to the wardrobe to examine the range of crooks and pendent garments and assure herself that they had not been touched. Once and again she started as though the ground beneath her feet had given way suddenly, and when she recovered herself it was to be seized with fear lest her brain was reeling. Then there came over her a qualm, and she sank on a seat with sickness at her heart and a spinning in her head.

As she shut the wardrobe door after one of these looks at her secret drawer, she saw the shadow of a man pass the window, and this was followed by a sharp rap at the door. Without awaiting an answer, a preventive man entered unceremoniously.

'Missus,' said he, 'I advise you to budge. Something is going to take place; we don't know what, and I've had orders to give you warning.'

'I do not understand you.'

'Come and see for yourself.'

Jane followed the officer, and he led her from the house, through the bushes, to a point on the edge of the cliff that commanded the beach and the sea some three hundred feet beneath.

She was silent.

No wind was stirring. The moment was that of the turn of the tide. At a distance of half a mile from the shore the surface of the water heaved like the bosom of a sleeper in rhythmic throb. There were no rollers, no white horses.

But nearer land the sea was boiling. Volumes of muddy water surged up in bells as from a great depth, and spread in glistening sheets, that threw out wavelets which clashed with the undulations of the tide. Moreover, there appeared something like a mighty monster of the deep, ruddy brown, heaving his back above the water.

'That which is coming in is sweet water,' said the man. 'One of our chaps has ventured down and tasted it. It is not the fountains of the deep that are broken up, but the land springs are feeding the ocean. Did you ever witness the like?'

'Yes,' said Jane, 'there was something of the kind took place, but only in a small way, before the crack formed when my old cottage was ruined.'

'Exactly, missus. And there is going to happen something of the same sort here, but on a mighty scale, to which that was but as nothing. Where it will begin, how far it will extend, all that is what no mortal can guess. Now you know why I have been sent to tell you to clear out as fast as you can. If you want my help, you are welcome to it.'

'My house!――I have but just bought it.'

'The sea and the fresh-water springs were not parties to the agreement, I reckon,' said the preventive officer.

'But this new house of mine is some way from the edge.'

'For all that you must shift. It is unsafe to remain in it another hour.'

'Whither shall I go?'

'Mrs. Jose, I reckon, will gladly receive you.'

He was in the right. Some appalling convulsion was threatening. To what extent the coast would be affected, and for how far inland it would extend, none could predict.

The sky overhead was grey, the air tranquil. A filmy mist lay over everything so fine as hardly to obscure the sight of any object, certainly not the upheaving volumes of turbid water and the bulging shoals of mud.

Jane turned, terrified at the prospect, aghast――not knowing what to do.

How was she to remove her store of money in broad daylight, before all eyes? and already she saw that spectators were gathering on the common in expectation of witnessing a great convulsion of nature.

She declined the assistance of the man so civilly proffered, and, locking her door, ran towards Bindon. On reaching the farm she threw herself breathless on a form by the kitchen table, panting, and entreated to be afforded shelter.

'My dear Jane,' said the kind farmer's wife, 'what do you want? Take what is ours and welcome. There was a cow once――――'

'Oh, never mind about the cow now. What am I to do about all the things in my house?'

'About your furniture and clock and bedding?'

'I must remove first of all the things of greatest value that are in the smallest compass. Give me some box that I can lock them in, or a strong drawer.'

Mrs. Jose showed Jane a stout cypress chest in a room over the porch.

'You may have that and welcome,' she said. 'But I reckon you will require something in which to carry your traps. Here is an old-fashioned carpet-bag that I will lend you. Shall I go with you and assist you? Shall I summon the men?'

'No――no. I must go first. Later, I shall be glad of assistance.'

'You know best, Jane; but look here. There was the most curious sight imaginable this morning. The rabbits have come off the common on to our land in flocks as of sheep; they are all over our fields now.'

'And the birds have deserted the cliffs. Something is certainly going to happen.'

'We, thank God, are well inland at Bindon, and on the safe side of the hill.'

'There is no time to be lost,' said Jane in feverish unrest and impatience, 'I must go.'

Then she hurried from the house.

The number of persons assembled on the down had increased. Most stood at a considerable distance from the cliffs, but a few audacious boys dashed forward to the brink, and were screamed at by their mothers, and sworn at by the coastguardsmen, who bellowed to them to return.

'Has there been any change?' asked Jane as she came among the spectators.

'Nothing so far, but something will happen before very long. Hush! Did you hear that?'

No――there was no sound, either from sea or land.

'You are surely not going back to your house?' said one of those looking on, as Jane passed him.

'I must go. I have all my little possessions there.'

'However got,' threw in one hard by.

Jane Marley accelerated her pace to be away from the crowd and to reach her home.

None seemed to know whence the menace came, and where danger would be found. Some individuals more timid than others lurked behind hedges, putting a bank and quickset between themselves and danger. Others held to gates and rails. Others again looked out for a clear space in rear, over which to beat a precipitate retreat, if necessary.

After Jane had pushed through the line of onlookers, she descended to the Undercliff, reached her door, looked about her, listened, and entered.

When she had gone forth with the preventive man, half an hour previously, she had not observed a face watching her from behind a rock. When she traversed the bushes, she had not seen how a man stole forth from his place of concealment. She had not suspected, whilst she stood on the cliff observing the tumescent waters, that this man had slipped in at her door left unlocked, and had secreted himself within the house.

When Jane now entered her habitation, she carefully locked the door on the inside. By so doing she had, unconsciously, locked herself in with this man.

On finding herself within, she looked around her. Everything was as she had left it. Nothing had been in the smallest degree deranged. No one was to be seen. Not a sound was to be heard. She looked up. The clock had ceased to tick. There was nothing to lead her to suppose that she was not alone.

So little did she conceive this as possible, that she at once went to the window, pulled down the blind, and then drew the curtain, lest that by any chance, any one might see what she purposed doing behind the locked door and the shrouded window.