In the Roar of the Sea. Baring-Gould Sabine
tears. Then, after perhaps half an hour, she would have looked up through the rain into her aunt’s face, and have smiled, and have loved that aunt passionately, self-sacrificingly, to her dying day. She was disposed to love her – for was not Dionysia the only relative she had; and was she not the very sister of that father who had been to her so much? But Mrs. Trevisa was not the woman to touch the taught cords with a light hand, or to speak or look in love. She was hard, angular, unsympathetic; and her manner, the intonations of her voice, her mode of address, the very movements of her body, acted on the strained nerves as a rasping file, that would fret till it had torn them through.
Suddenly round a corner, where the narrow road turned, two hundred yards ahead, dashed a rider on a black steed, and Judith immediately recognized Coppinger on his famous mare Black Bess; a mare much talked of, named after the horse ridden by Dick Turpin. The recognition was mutual. He knew her instantly; with a jerk of the rein and a set of the brow he showed that he was not indifferent.
Coppinger wore his slouched hat, tied under his chin and beard, a necessary precaution in that gale-swept country; on his feet to his knees were high boots. He wore a blue knitted jersey, and a red kerchief about his throat.
Captain Cruel slightly slackened his pace, as the lane was narrow; and as he rode past his dark brow was knit, and his eyes flashed angrily at Judith. He deigned neither a glance nor a word to his housekeeper, who courtesied and assumed a fawning expression.
When he had passed the two women he dug his spurs into Black Bess and muttered some words they did not hear.
Judith, who had stood aside, now came forward into the midst of the roadway and rejoined her aunt, who began to say something, when her words and Judith’s attention was arrested by shouts, oaths, and cries in their rear.
Judith and her aunt turned to discover the occasion of this disturbance, and saw that Coppinger was off his horse, on his feet, dragging the brute by the rein, and was hurling his crop, or hunting-whip, as he pursued Jamie flying from him with cries of terror. But that he held the horse and could not keep up with the boy, Jamie would have suffered severely, for Coppinger was in a livid fury.
Jamie flew to his sister.
“Save me, Ju! he wants to kill me.”
“What have you done?”
“It is only the buttons.”
“Buttons, dear?”
But the boy was too frightened to explain.
Then Judith drew her brother behind her, took from him the basket he was carrying, and stepped to encounter the angry man, who came on, now struggling with his horse, cursing Bess because she drew back, then plunging forward with his whip above his head brandished menacingly, and by this conduct further alarmed Black Bess.
Judith met Coppinger, and he was forced to stay his forward course.
“What has he done?” asked the girl. “Why do you threaten?”
“The cursed idiot has strewn bits of glass and buttons along the road,” answered the Captain, angrily. “Stand aside that I may lash him, and teach him to frighten horses and endanger men’s lives.”
“I am sorry for what Jamie has done. I will pick up the things he has thrown down.”
Cruel Coppinger’s eyes glistened with wrath. He gathered the lash of his whip into his palm along with the handle, and gripped them passionately.
“Curse the fool! My Bess was frightened, dashed up the bank, and all but rolled over. Do you know he might have killed me?”
“You must excuse him; he is a very child.”
“I will not excuse him. I will cut the flesh off his back if I catch him.”
He put the end of the crop handle into his mouth, and, putting his right hand behind him, gathered the reins up shorter and wound them more securely about his left hand.
Judith walked backward, facing him, and he turned with his horse and went after her. She stooped and gathered up a splinter of glass. The sun striking through the gaps in the hedge had flashed on these scraps of broken mirror and of white bone, or burnished brass buttons, and the horse had been frightened at them. As Judith stooped and took up now a buckle, then a button, and then some other shining trifle, she hardly for an instant withdrew her eyes from Coppinger; they had in them the same dauntless defiance as when she encountered him on the stairs of the rectory. But now it was she who retreated, step by step, and he who advanced, and yet he could not flatter himself that he was repelling her. She maintained her strength and mastery unbroken as she retreated.
“Why do you look at me so? Why do you walk backward?”
“Because I mistrust you. I do not know what you might do were I not to confront you.”
“What I might do? What do you think I would do?”
“I cannot tell. I mistrust you.”
“Do you think me capable of lashing at you with my crop?”
“I think you capable of anything.”
“Flattering that!” he shouted, angrily.
“You would have lashed at Jamie.”
“And why not? He might have killed me.”
“He might have killed you, but you should not have touched him – not have thought of touching him.”
“Indeed! Why not?”
“Why not?” She raised herself upright and looked straight into his eyes, in which fire flickered, flared, then decayed, then flared again.
“You are no Dane, or you would not have asked ‘Why not?’ twice. Nay, you would not have asked it once.”
“Not a Dane?” His beard and mustache were quivering, and he snorted with anger.
“A Dane, I have read in history, is too noble and brave to threaten women and to strike children.”
He uttered an oath and ground his teeth.
“No; a Dane would never have thought of asking why not? – why not lash a poor little silly boy?”
“You insult me! You dare to do it?”
Her blood was surging in her heart. As she looked into this man’s dark and evil face she thought of all the distress he had caused her father, and a wave of loathing swept over her, nerved her to defy him to the uttermost, and to proclaim all the counts she had against him.
“I dare do it,” she said, “because you made my own dear papa’s life full of bitterness and pain – ”
“I! I never touched him, hardly spoke to him. I don’t care to have to do with parsons.”
“You made his life one of sorrow through your godless, lawless ways, leading his poor flock astray, and bidding them mock at his warnings and despise his teachings. Almost with his last breath he spoke of you, and the wretchedness of heart you had caused him. And then you dared – yes – you dared – you dared to burst into our house where he lay dead, with shameful insolence to disturb its peace. And now – ” she gasped, “and now, ah! you lie when you say you are a Dane, and talk of cutting and lashing the dead father’s little boy on his father’s burial day. You are but one thing I can name – a coward!”
Did he mean it? No! But blinded, stung to madness by her words, especially that last, he raised his right arm with the crop.
Did she mean it? No! But in the instinct of self-preservation, thinking he was about to strike her, she dashed the basket of buttons in his face, and they flew right and left over him, against the head of Black Bess, a rain of fragments of mirror, brass, steel, mother-of-pearl, and bone.
The effect was instantaneous. The mare plunged, reared, threw Coppinger backward from off his feet, dashed him to the ground, dragged him this way, that way, bounded, still drawing him about by the twisted reins, into the hedge, then back, with her hoofs upon him, near, if not on, his head, his chest – then, released by the snap of the rein, or through its becoming disengaged, Bess darted down the lane, was