In all likelihood he would see Winefred no more. She had gone to Bath; there she would make new friends, form new associations, and forget Axmouth and its vexations together with those who had occasioned them. This, again, should have relieved his mind; on the contrary, it depressed it further.
Certainly he was unhappy, without being able to account for his unhappiness. What was Winefred to him but one with whom he measured swords whenever they met? What could Winefred be to him in the future? A recollection, an unpleasant one, and nothing other. Why did he think of her? Why did her angry eyes haunt his soul? Why did her stabbing words still make his heart tingle?
He seated himself on the chalk cliff above the harbour of Beer, this latter a snip taken by the sea out of the soft and crumbling rocks.
The choughs were flying beneath his feet, building in the crags that overhung the beach.
Below was the pebble strand. Boats were drawn up on it. A thread of weed marked the retreat of the tide from the shore, a fringe of foam on the grey water a few yards from the land told also that the sea was in ebb.
Gulls chattered and fluttered and dropped to secure some little fish left stranded. The evening was closing in, and a pale light hung over the sea, that looked dull as lead, but gave to the chalk cliffs a moonlight whiteness.
At the flagstaff where the Beer streamlet trickled into the shingle and lost itself were fisher lads congregated in idleness. When nothing can be done at sea, none more listless, inert, pictures of dolce far niente than those who live by the harvest of the water. They will occupy a bench by the harbour hour after hour, smoking, occasionally talking, but doing absolutely nothing with hand or foot or brain.
These fisher lads, several hundred feet below where sat Jack, were chattering, laughing, and sometimes singing.
Then a boy's clear voice sounded: