He remained some time on the cliff, but finally shook himself, picked up his bundle and descended into Beer.
He had taken lodgings with a widow at the higher end of the village, in a picturesque cottage that leaned against the hill and faced every way except into the rock against which it leaned.
This was near his work and away from the harbour, a double advantage, as he was not favourably eyed by the boatmen, who regarded him as a deserter from the cause of free trade, and as weak-spirited in abandoning a life of adventure for an office stool. Not only could he go to his work from the cottage without running the gauntlet of the inhabitants of the village, but he was also able with the same immunity to go to Seaton or ramble on the cliffs. Jack was not timid, but every lad is thin-skinned and sensitive to ridicule, and when it was possible to avoid unpleasantness he very judiciously did so.
He had been resident in Beer before; put there by his ambitious father to be educated by the curate, so that he had many acquaintances in the place, but in his then temper of mind he preferred solitude; and in the evenings, when his work was over, in place of looking up friends in their homes, at the harbour, or in the public-house, he preferred to saunter alone on the downs. His friend and teacher, the curate, had recently departed to another cure.
When he rambled on the headland he often stood looking south, where sea and sky melted into each other in the evening haze, and his thoughts, his desires were altogether as indefinite as was that horizon.
He was angry with himself for thinking of Winefred. The sense of his folly in caring for her was as a hot coal in his heart that he laboured to eject, but always ineffectually.
If he sat on the top of the White Cliff his eyes often turned in the direction of Bindon Undercliff, though Winefred, as he knew well enough, was not there; yet there were spots there associated with her in his memory.
No single lad of Axmouth or Beer had any suspicion of what passed in his mind. None would have credited it, had they been assured that he who had been robbed by Winefred's mother had set his heart on the girl.
Moreover, in the opinion of these lads there was nothing to attract in Miss Winefred, except her money, and that was ill-gotten. The rustic youth has not a discriminating eye for beauty. He is blind to those points and lines and colours which draw the admiration of the man with the artistic faculty. In the country the ugly girl stands as good a chance of securing a lover as does a beauty, if only she possess an attractive character and pleasant ways. The shy mind of the peasant boy starts back from the ready wit and the nimble tongue. That Winefred was good-looking would have been admitted with listless indifference; that she was a spiteful minx was a conclusion to which all would have leaped and to which held. A bumpkin would handle the girl ready at repartee with as great reluctance as a fisherman would handle an electric eel.
On Sunday Jack had an excuse for crossing the water. He must see Mrs. Jose and report to her how he got on.