In the Roar of the Sea

by S. Baring-Gould

Then each turned and strode away.

CHAPTER XLIV.
THE WHIP FALLS.

For many days Judith had been as a prisoner in the house, in her room. Some one had spoken to Coppinger and had roused his suspicions, excited his jealousy. He had forbidden her visits to Polzeath; and to prevent communication between her and the Menaidas, father and son, he had removed Jamie to Pentyre Glaze.

Angry and jealous he was. Time had passed, and still he had not advanced a step, rather he had lost ground. Judith’s hopes that he was not what he had been represented, were dashed. However plausible might be his story to account for the jewels, she did not believe it.

Why was Judith not submissive? Coppinger could now only conclude that she had formed an attachment for Oliver Menaida—for that young man whom she singled out, greeted with a smile, and called by his Christian name. He had heard of how she had made daily visits to the house of his father, how Oliver had been seen attending her home, and his heart foamed with rage and jealousy.

She had no desire to go anywhere, now that she was forbidden to go to Polzeath, and when she knew that she was watched. She would not descend to the hall and mix with the company often assembled there, and though she occasionally went there when Coppinger was alone, took her knitting and sat by the fire, and attempted to make conversation about ordinary matters, yet his temper, his outbursts of rancor, his impatience of every other topic save their relations to each other, and his hatred of the Menaidas, made it intolerable for her to be with him alone, and she desisted from seeking the hall. This incensed him, and he occasionally went up-stairs, sought her out and insisted on her coming down. She would obey, but some outbreak would speedily drive her from his presence again.

Their relations were more strained than ever. His love for her had lost the complexion of love and had assumed that of jealousy. His tenderness and gentleness toward her had been fed by hope, and when hope died they vanished. Even that reverence for her innocence and the respect for her character that he had shown was dissipated by the stormy gusts of jealousy.

Miss Trevisa was no more a help and stay to the poor girl than she had been previously. She was soured and embittered, for her ambition to be out of the house and in Othello Cottage had been frustrated. Coppinger would not let her go till he and his wife had come to more friendly terms. On her chimney-piece were two bunches of lavender, old lavender from the rectory garden of the preceding year. They had become so dry that the seeds fell out, and they no longer exhaled scent unless pressed.

Judith stood at her chimney-piece pressing her finger on the dropped seeds, and picking them up by this means to throw them into the small fire that smouldered in the grate. At first she went on listlessly picking up a seed and casting it into the fire, actuated by her innate love of order, without much thought—rather without any thought—for her mind was engaged over the letter of Oliver and his visit the previous night outside. But after a while, while thus gathering the grains of lavender, she came to associate them with her trouble, and as she thought—“Is there any escape for me, any happiness in store?”—she picked up a seed and cast it into the fire. Then she asked: “Is there any other escape for me than to die—to die and be with dear papa again, now not in S. Enodoc Rectory garden, but in the garden of Paradise?” And again she picked up and cast away a grain. Then, as she touched her fingertip with her tongue and applied it to another lavender seed, she said: “Or must this go on—this nightmare of wretchedness, of persecution, of weariness to death without dying, for years?” And she cast away the seed shudderingly. “Or”—and again, now without touching her finger with her tongue, as though the last thought had contaminated it—“or will he finally break and subdue me, destroy me and Jamie, soul and body?” Shivering at the thought she hardly dare to touch a seed, but forced herself to do so, raised one, and hastily shook it from her.