CHAPTER XLI
THE WHITE CLIFF
In the dead of night, Jane Marley came to the side of her daughter's bed, and asked: 'Why are you tossing so unceasingly?'
'I cannot sleep.'
'What disturbs you?'
'O mother! I have done wrong. I was desirous of procuring a pair of choughs. No one would trouble himself, and risk his neck to get them for me but Jack Rattenbury, and he will go over the White Cliff in search for them. If anything were to happen to him——' she choked.
'Nothing will happen to him,' said her mother. 'Compose yourself. He would not risk himself for either of us. He hates us too heartily. He probably knows where are some birds easily reached, or he is fooling you with a promise to do that which he has no intention of performing. He will run into no danger on our account, be certain of that.'
Somewhat relieved in mind, Winefred lay quieter. There was reason in her mother's words. She herself would adventure nothing for Jack, and why should he run into danger on her account?
Nevertheless she was not wholly reassured, and rising before daybreak unperceived by her mother, she went down to the ferry, crossed with a couple of women bound for Seaton with eggs, and made her way to the White Cliff along the beach; then, turning up a cleft at the junction of the chalk and the red sandstone, she ascended to the summit, which rises four hundred and twenty-five feet above the sea, not perpendicularly, but so as to overhang.
A haze covered the water, and the bald white crag stood up as a horn of the moon issuing from the clouds.
Winefred was out of breath from the ascent, which was steep, and a catch came in her throat when she saw three figures, of which one was Jack, by an old thornbush that grew close to the edge.