In the Roar of the Sea

by S. Baring-Gould

“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.