But the pact was not concluded till a proviso had been added. 'Let this be an understanding between us. You make no advances, and do not aim at becoming aught other than my housekeeper. Because I let you put on her gown last night, that is no reason why I should let you step into her shoes. Keep your place, and I am satisfied. Otherwise—there is the door.'
Thus the compact was concluded.
As there was nothing that the girl could do, her mother bade her amuse herself. Winefred was therefore able to spend the beautiful day in rambles.
The river Axe sweeps to the sea through a trough that has been scooped out of the superior beds of chalk and cherty sandstone, and out to the red sands below. But the chalk stands up to right and left in noble cliffs, of which Haven Ball forms the eastern jamb, and White Cliff that to the west. From Haven Ball the coast forms one continuous white precipice to Lyme Regis, above a sea in summer of peacock blue.
But, as every tyro in geology knows, the chalk is built up over the green sand, below which are impervious beds of clay. The rain soaking down through the faults in the chalk reaches the argillaceous stratum, and, unable to descend farther, forms innumerable land springs such as come forth at the base of most chalk hills. But where the chalk cliffs rise out of the sea, the water converts the gravelly stratum into a quicksand, and that is liable to be carried into the sea, and this causes subsidences, much as would occur if you lay on a water-bed that had in it a rent out of which would rush that which swelled the mattress.
There had been no sinkages of any importance along this coast within the memory of man. Nevertheless, an observant eye would have noticed that Captain Rattenbury's cottage stood on the undercliff, and was on a lower level than the down, but was nevertheless cut off from the sea by a sheer face of precipice. This undercliff formed an irregular terrace that overhung the sea. It was reached by an easy descent from the down above, and lay sufficiently below it to be sheltered from the north winds. His garden was consequently a warm spot even in mid-winter; whenever the sun shone, primroses starred the ground there even at the end of January, and crane's-bill there was never out of flower. The entire undercliff, raised three hundred feet above the sea, had a ruffled and chopped surface, was broken into ridges and depressed into basins, and was densely overgrown with thorns, brambles of gigantic growth, ivy and thickets of elder. About Rattenbury's cottage was a patch that had been cleared, which served as kitchen garden, and a good but small orchard.
Rattenbury occupied himself that languid November day in pruning his apple-trees. The cottage was of chalk and flint cobbles, with a brick chimney, and was thatched. It leaned against a face of rock, in a manner that would have ensured damp had not that rock been chalk.
The entire undercliff, except for the clearing about the cottage, was a jungle, not to be threaded with impunity by any one wearing serge or broadcloth, for the thornbushes were armed with spines of prodigious strength, and the briars threw about their tentacles set with claws to arrest and tear the intruder. The girl wandered about, diving under the arches of the brambles, peering into the thickets of elders, everywhere disturbing countless birds.