Most loud and decided in his verdict was Olver Dench. His red face flamed when the subject was broached, and he spoke with a vehemence and quivering emotion that betokened rage—rage that his friend had been robbed and his friend's son left destitute.
The ferryman had ostentatiously offered hospitality to Jack, who had accepted it, just because he would be near the cottage till it was sold, and after that he continued to remain with Dench, because he had nowhere else whither he might go till he found for himself a suitable situation.
And being daily associated with the ferryman he had the opinion drummed into him, till his previous scepticism as to his father's wealth yielded, and he came to accept the view that he had been defrauded of his patrimony. But when and by what means Mrs. Marley had appropriated it remained obscure.
Every evening over their grog and pipes the matter was brought up and debated, but always without their arriving any nearer to a solution, till at last Jack became weary of the topic. Not so Dench, who was possessed with it, and could turn his thoughts to no other.
What perhaps conduced to lead Jack to believe in Jane's having robbed him was not so much Olver's arguments as her own conduct.
One day she came to him on the cliff when he was by himself, and said, 'Jack, I am sorry for you. You have been left in poor circumstances. But the case is not so bad as you suppose. The captain was good to me. When every other door was shut against my child and me, then he took us in, warmed and fed and lodged us. I was then desperately poor and wholly friendless. Now I am better off and not quite alone. I will do what I can to assist you, and I will gladly give you a hundred pounds.'
'A hundred pounds!' echoed Jack, taken aback. Then, after a moment's consideration, he said, with constraint in his manner, 'I thank you for the offer, whether in way of gift or loan, but I will not be holden to any one but myself. I shall fight my own way. I thank you, but decline positively.'
He turned and walked away musing on this offer. To Dench he spoke of it. The ferryman blazed at once like powder on which a spark has fallen.
'That settles it,' said he. 'She would not have offered the money unless uneasy in mind. Mark you, if she be so ready to give you a hundred pounds, she keeps back three times as much for herself and that kid of hers. That makes four hundred, and next she will be offering me another hundred to bottle up my thoughts and not let them fizz out at my mouth. Is it reasonable that Winefred's father should put down a solid lump sum?—put so much money into the hands of an ignorant, half-crazed woman, who has heretofore never had a piece of gold wherewith to bless herself? Not likely, is it? Consider what the father would do in such a case as she pretends—that he has repented of his wrong and is making amends. I do not say he has. I do not believe in her story at all. But let us suppose that he did come here, see Jane Marley and Winefred, and promised to do his best for them. He would undertake to furnish them with a little money paid quarterly, but would not give three, or four or five hundred pounds to her to play ducks and drakes with. That is not likely. Moreover, he is not worth so much as that.'