Jane seated herself near the sick-bed and took her knitting. The captain's eyes were closed, not shut, and she could see the glitter of the eyeballs under the lashes; but whether he slept imperfectly, or whether he was half-awake and was observing her, she could not decide.
There is no occupation like knitting for breeding thought. A man smokes to encourage concentration of his mental faculties; but a woman, when she knits, diffuses her thoughts, they spread like the antennæ of a sea-anemone in all directions, and lay hold of everything that drifts by in the current of memory, to draw it in, twist, distort, magnify it, take it into the innermost receptacles, and there suffer indigestion from it, often in the acutest form.
As Jane worked with nimble fingers her mind was busy, busy mainly over Job's accumulations.
Not for an instant did she question the suggestion that they were acquired by defrauding her father and brother, nor did she doubt that her brother's death had been procured by the man now lying powerless in her presence. She had not inquired of others whether what Dench had thrown out was an opinion generally entertained, whether it had any foundation whatever. She accepted the assumption as a self-evident fact, and started from it.
Jane Marley was in no little degree concerned about her own future and that of her child. The captain would not last many days, and she would then have to leave the Undercliff, as the house would pass to Jack. It was a freehold, acquired originally by squatting on the land a generation ago.
To be on the trudge again was not a prospect Jane relished. It was true that Mrs. Jose had offered to take her and Winefred in—but that was not intended to be for a permanency, only whilst the maid was recovering from white swelling. Moreover, Jane knew so much of herself as to be aware that by temper she was disqualified to live as one of an establishment with other servants. Indeed, the mistress who did not fall out speedily with Jane must be of a peculiarly forbearing temper. Jane was wilful, unyielding, and passionate. She knew it.
Whither, then, was she to go? What was she to do?
Her husband had been in the neighbourhood, but had not visited her, and had vanished again, after seeing and speaking to his child. She could not build on the hope of obtaining assistance from him, even had not her pride revolted against the thought of soliciting it.
In a day or two she would have to make up her bundle and leave; then Jack Rattenbury would take up his residence there. The house would be his own, with all the money it contained; and he would take his ease, rattle the coin in his pocket, fling it about, and be what his father intended—a gentleman.