In the Roar of the Sea

by S. Baring-Gould

“I hope you enjoy the jessamine. They don’t smell particularly sweet to me.”

“Orful!” groaned Scantlebray. He shook himself—almost shaking off all his limbs in the convulsion—“Old man—them jessamines is orful!”

CHAPTER XII.
THE CAVE.

Some weeks slipped by without bringing to Judith any accession of anxiety. She did not go again to Pentyre Glaze, but her aunt came once or twice in the week to Polzeath to see her. Moreover, Miss Dionysia’s manner toward her was somewhat less contrary and vexatious, and she seemed to put on a conciliatory manner, as far as was possible for one so angular and crabbed. Gracious she could not be; nature had made it as impossible for her to be gracious in manner as to be lovely in face and graceful in movement.

Moreover, Judith observed that her aunt looked at her with an expression of perplexity, as though seeking in her to find an answer to a riddle that vexed her brain. And so it was. Aunt Dunes could not understand the conduct of Coppinger toward Judith and her brother. Nor could she understand how a child like her niece could have faced and defied a man of whom she herself stood in abject fear. Judith had behaved to the smuggler in a way that no man in the whole countryside would have ventured to behave. She had thrown him at her feet, half killed him, and yet Cruel Coppinger did not resent what had been done; on the contrary, he went out of his way to interfere in the interest of the orphans. He was not the man to concern himself in other people’s affairs; why should he take trouble on behalf of Judith and her brother? That he did it out of consideration for herself, Miss Trevisa had not the assurance to believe.

Aunt Dunes put a few searching questions to Judith, but drew from her nothing that explained the mystery. The girl frankly told her of her visit to the Glaze and interview with the crippled smuggler, of his offer to her of some of his spoil, and of her refusal to receive a present from him. Miss Trevisa approved of her niece’s conduct in this respect. It would not have befitted her to accept anything. Judith, however, did not communicate to her aunt the closing scene in that interview. She did not tell her that Coppinger had kissed her hand, nor his excuse for having done so, that he was offering homage to a queen.

For one thing, Judith did not attach any importance to this incident. She had always heard that Coppinger was a wild and insolent man, wild and insolent in his dealings with his fellow-men, therefore doubtless still more so in his treatment of defenceless women. He had behaved to her in the rude manner in which he would behave to any peasant girl or sailor’s daughter who caught his fancy, and she resented his act as an indignity, and his excuse for it as a prevarication. And, precisely, because he had offended her maidenly dignity, she blushed to mention it, even to her aunt, resolving in her own mind not to subject herself to the like again.

Miss Trevisa, on several occasions, invited Judith to come and see her at Pentyre Glaze, but the girl always declined the invitation.

Judith’s estimate of Cruel Coppinger was modified. He could not be the utter reprobate she had always held him to be. She fully acknowledged that there was an element of good in the man, otherwise he would not have forgiven the injury done him, nor would he have interfered to protect her and Jamie from the fraud and extortion of the “dilapidators.” She trusted that the stories she had heard of Coppinger’s wild and savage acts were false, or overcolored. Her dear father had been misled by reports, as she had been, and it was possible that Coppinger had not really been the impediment in her father’s way that the late rector had supposed.