In the Roar of the Sea

by S. Baring-Gould

“Heaven forgive me that I forgot that for one moment,” he answered, with vehemence. “Happy—happy—happiest of any in this vile world is the man for whom you will think, and scheme and care and dare—as you do for Jamie.”

“There is none such,” said Judith.

“No—I know that,” he answered, gloomily, and strode forward with his head down.

Ten minutes had elapsed in silence, and Polzeath was approached. Then suddenly Coppinger let go his hold of Judith, caught the rein of Black Bess, and arrested her. Standing beside Judith, he said, in a peevish, low tone:

“I touched your hand, and said I was subject to a queen.” He bent, took her foot and kissed it. “You repulsed me as subject; you are my mistress!—accept me as your slave.”

CHAPTER XXVIII.
AN EXAMINATION.

Some days had elapsed. Judith had not suffered from her second night expedition as she had from the first, but the intellectual abilities of Jamie had deteriorated. The fright he had undergone had shaken his nerves, and had made him more restless, timid, and helpless than heretofore, exacting more of Judith’s attention and more trying her endurance. But she trusted these ill effects would pass away in time. From his rambling talk she had been able to gather some particulars, which to a degree modified her opinion relative to the behavior of Mr. Obadiah Scantlebray. It appeared from the boy’s own account that he had been very troublesome. After he had been taken into the wing of the establishment that was occupied by the imbeciles, his alarm and bewilderment had grown. He had begun to cry and to clamor for his release, or for the presence of his sister. As night came on, paroxysms of impotent rage had alternated with fits of whining. The appearance of his companions in confinement, some of them complete idiots, with half-human gestures and faces, had enhanced his terrors. He would eat no supper, and when put to bed in the common dormitory had thrown off his clothes, torn his sheets, and refused to lie down; had sat up and screamed at the top of his voice. Nothing that could be done, no representations would pacify him. He prevented his fellow inmates of the asylum from sleeping, and he made it not at all improbable that his cries would be overheard by passers-by in the street, or those occupying neighboring houses, and thus give rise to unpleasant surmises, and perhaps inquiry. Finally, Scantlebray had removed the boy to the place of punishment, the Black Hole, a compartment of the cellars, there to keep him till his lungs were exhausted, or his reason gained the upper hand, and Judith supposed, with some justice, that Scantlebray had done this only, or chiefly, because he himself would be up, and about the cellars, engaged in housing his supplies of brandy, and that he had no intention of locking the unhappy boy up for the entire night, in solitude, in his cellars. He had not left him in complete darkness, for a candle had been placed on the ground outside the Black Hole door.

As Judith saw the matter now, it seemed to her that though Scantlebray had acted with harshness and lack of judgment there was some palliation for his conduct. That Jamie could be most exasperating, she knew full well by experience. When he went into one of his fits of temper and crying, it took many hours and much patience to pacify him. She had spent long time and exhausted her efforts to bring him to a subdued frame of mind on the most irrational and trifling occasions, when he had been angered. Nothing answered with him then save infinite forbearance and exuberant love. On this occasion there was good excuse for Jamie’s fit, he had been frightened, and frightened out of his few wits. As Judith said to herself—had she been treated in the same manner, spirited off, without preparation, to a strange house, confined among afflicted beings, deprived of every familiar companion—she would have been filled with terror, and reasonably so. She would not have exhibited it, however, in the same manner as Jamie.

Scantlebray had not acted with gentleness, but he had not, on the other hand, exhibited wanton cruelty. That he was a man of coarse nature, likely on provocation to break through the superficial veneer of amiability, she concluded from her own experience, and she did not doubt that those of the unfortunate inmates of the asylum who overstrained his forbearance met with very rough handling. But that he took a malignant pleasure in harassing and torturing them, that she did not believe.