Jane's whole frame trembled.
'So it is—the widow and the orphan are robbed, we underlings must not complain that we are badly served. But it makes me mad to hear how he swells and brags over what he is going to make of his boy Jack. And there are you and your Winney have to curtsey and say, Thank you, sir, when he offers you a crust of bread and pulls a bit of his thatch over your heads of a November night. We should combine to get our rights; combine against wrong and robbery.'
'How can we combine?'
'I will tell you. The captain is a rich man. I know it. He admits it. Whence came all his money? From the sweat and blood of men like your father, brother, and me. I also worked under him once, but I would not endure the injustice. Glad I was to get out of the concern and take a ferryboat, and thankful I am when I get a score of passengers to put across in the day. Look you, Jane; if that ferry were worked the way he does the other business, at the end of the day he would say to me, "Here, Olver, is one ha'penny, but nineteen pence ha'penny goes into my pocket, and I'm going to lay it out in picture-books for my Jack."'
'How can we combine?' she asked again.
'I'll make you a proposal,' said Olver, but he spoke hesitatingly, and seemed reluctant to deliver it till he had further worked on the mother's passions, and blinded her with anger and envy. 'I say that what the captain has accumulated ought of rights to be divided into four equal parts. I allow that he has a claim to one-quarter, but I have to another—that I do assert; and then, if you had what properly belongs to you, the two remaining quarters should be yours, as the shares of your father Topsham, and your brother Philip, who was not married, and so his share comes to you—for Winefred.'
He paused, cleared his throat, and set a hand on each knee.
'Now, Jane, I bargain that you and I combine to secure our lawful property, of which we have been defrauded. Lord! what thieves go to prison and what rogues run free! It makes my bile run over to think that his nipper Jack should be toasting in the bar whilst we sit on the doorstep in the cold. We must put our heads together. There is naught done without combination.'
'How—what is to be done?'
'That is just the secret. Can you guess why the captain houses you and the girl? It is because he knows that he has wronged the widow and the fatherless, and his conscience gives him a pinch now and again. He thinks to hush it by allowing you such scraps as he would cast to a dog, Towler, if he kept one—which he don't. Jane'—Olver spoke slowly, and with his eye fixed on her—'Jane, you are on the spot, and I looks on it as the wonderful ways of Providence bringing you here. You keep your eye wakeful, and keep an eye in the back of your head also. You discover where he hides his piles of money. Hidden it is somewhere, sure as I sit here. Now, Jane, I want us not only to put our heads together but to join hands.'