In the Roar of the Sea

by S. Baring-Gould

The hand that had written this letter had shaken, the letters were hastily and imperfectly formed. Was this the hand of Judith who had taught Jamie caligraphy, had written out his copies as neatly and beautifully as copper-plate?

Judith had sent him this answer by her brother, and Jamie had been stopped, forced to deliver up the missive, which Coppinger had opened and read. Oliver did not for a moment doubt whence the danger sprang with which he was menaced. Coppinger had suffered the warning to be conveyed to him with contemptuous indifference—it was as though he had scored across the letter—“Be forewarned, take what precautions you will—you shall not escape me.”

The first challenge had come from old Menaida, but Coppinger passed over that as undeserving of attention, but he proclaimed his readiness to cross swords with the young man. And Oliver could not deny that he had given occasion for this. Without counting the cost, without considering the risk; nay, further, without weighing the right and wrong in the matter, Oliver had allowed himself to slip into terms of some familiarity with Judith, harmless enough were she unmarried, but hardly calculated to be so regarded by a husband. They had come to consider each other as cousins, or they had pretended so to consider each other, so as to justify a half-affectionate, half-intimate association, and before he was aware of it Oliver had lost his heart. He could not and he would not regard Judith as the wife of Coppinger, because he knew that she absolutely refused to be so regarded by him, by herself, by his father, though by appearing at the ball with Coppinger, by living in his house, she allowed the world to so consider her. Was she his wife? He could not suppose it when she had refused to conclude the marriage ceremony, when there was no documentary evidence for the marriage. Let the question be mooted in a court of law; what could the witnesses say, but that she had fainted, and that all the latter portion of the ceremony had been performed over her when unconscious, and that on her recovery of her faculties she had resolutely persisted in resistance to the affixing of her signature to the register.

With respect to Judith’s feelings toward himself Oliver was ignorant. She had taken pleasure in his society, because he had made himself agreeable to her, and his company was a relief to her after the solitude of Pentyre and the association there with persons with whom she was wholly out of sympathy.

His quarrel with Coppinger had shifted ground. At first he had resolved, should occasion offer, to conclude with him the contest begun on the wreck, and to chastise him for his conduct on that night. Now, he thought little of that cause of resentment, he desired to punish him for having been the occasion of so much misery to Judith. He could not now drive from his head the scene of the girl’s wan face at the window, looking up at the moon.

Oliver would shrink from doing anything dishonorable, but it did not seem to him that there could be aught wrong and unbecoming a gentleman in endeavoring to snatch this hapless child from the claws of the wild beast that had struck it down.

“No, father,” said he hastily, as the old fellow was pouring out a pretty strong dose of his great specific and about to administer it to Jamie, “no father, it is not that the boy wants; and remember how strongly Judith objects to his being given spirits.”

“Dear, dear!” exclaimed Uncle Zachie, “to be sure she does, and she made me promise not to give him any. But this is an exceptional case.”

“Let him come to me, I will soothe him. The child is frightened, or stay, get him to help you with that kittiwake. Jamie, father can’t get the bird to look natural; his head does not seem to me to be right. Did you ever see a kittiwake turn his neck in that fashion? I wish you would put your fingers to the throat, and bend it about, and set the wadding where it ought to be. Father and I can’t agree about it.”

“It is wrong,” said Jamie. “Look, this is the way.” His mind was diverted. Always volatile, always ready to be turned from one thing to another, Oliver had succeeded in interesting him, and had made him forget for a moment the terrors that had shaken him.