'Do you know, mistress, why Captain Job has taken you both into his house?'
She made no other answer than a shrug of the shoulder.
'I will tell you: I will lift a corner of the crust and let you see what is the meat in the pie. Was not your father, Topsham Marley, associated with him in most of his ventures? What did he gain by that? Did he leave you comfortably off? I always heard tell that there was money to bury him, but nothing over. Your brother Philip, he was with him also. What profit came to him out of the partnership? When Philip thought that he was pulling the chestnuts out of the fire for Job—he getting the burns and none of the nuts—Philip and he came to words and they parted company, and Philip started on his own account. He was at once betrayed and shot. Take my word for it, certain big men with large dealings will not allow the little men to succeed. The iron pot breaks all the cloam pipkins that float on the same water.'
'You do not dare to tell me that the captain caused my brother's death?'
'I do not say that I know he did. All that I pretend to say is that I was not the only man who noticed the curious coincidence. No sooner did Philip start on his own bottom than he was put out of the running. It is a singular thing, if you are interested in such matters, to observe how the wholesale dealers go free, and how the little retailers get nabbed. What profit had Topsham, what had Philip out of their ventures? Did your brother leave anything? I reckon it was the same tale with Philip, the son, as with Topsham, the father—enough to bury him and not a penny over. Now look at Job Rattenbury. He has bought and is fitting out a cutter for his son Jack, and is going to set him up as a gentleman. He does not spare money where Jack is concerned. Cash seems as plentiful with the captain as elderberries on the undercliff. He has made a fortune where others have failed. Some have sown, but all the harvest goes into his barns. If right were done all round, your father ought to have died a rich man, and your brother would have been alive this day, and you and your child not be homeless and destitute.'
'As to Philip,' said Jane in a quivering voice, 'it is well known he was killed in a scuffle with the preventive men.'
'Yes. But how did they know when and where to drop upon him? And why, if they did come on him, did they shoot him instead of running him into prison?'
He was silent now for a while, to allow what he had said to sink in and produce the desired effect. He watched the woman's face; the muscles were working, and her cheek glowed. Her eyes he could not see.
After a long pause he proceeded, 'It is rough on us men that we should get, not kicks only, but leaden bullets put into us, and he all the ha'pence; but it is a crying iniquity that his son Jack should be brought up to be a gentleman and your Winefred should be left a beggar. Answer me this. Did not your father and brother endure the labours, the buffeting of wind and wave, the risk from the gaugers? What for? That Jack should have a spick-and-span painted cutter with gilt figure-head, and spout Latin grammar. He will rattle the guineas in his pocket, and when Winefred holds out her hand will cast a copper into the dirt and bid her bend and pick it up.'