Sabine Baring-Gould - In the Roar of the Sea

“Give me the agreements.”

“Not agreements exactly. They sent me in their estimates, and I accepted them, and set them to work.”

“Give me the estimates.”

Mr. Scantlebray flapped all his limbs, and shook his head.

“You don’t suppose I carry these sort of things about with me?”

“I have no doubt whatever they are in your pocket.” Scantlebray fidgeted.

“Cap’n, try this port – a little going back, but not to be sneezed at.”

Coppinger leaned forward through the window.

“Who is that man with you?”

“Mr. Cargreen.”

“What is he here for?”

“I am agent for the Reverend Mules, the newly appointed rector,” said Mr. Cargreen, with some dignity.

“Then I request you both to step to the window to me.”

The two men looked at each other. Scantlebray jumped up, and Cargreen followed. They stood in the window-bay at a respectful distance from Cruel Coppinger.

“I suppose you know who I am?” said the latter, fixing his eyes on Cargreen.

“I believe I can form a guess.”

“And your duty to your client is to make out as bad a case as you can against the two children. They have had just one thousand pounds left them. You are going to get as much of that away from them as you are permitted.”

“My good sir – allow me to explain – ”

“There is no need,” said Coppinger. “Suffice it that you are one side. I – Cruel Coppinger – on the other. Do you understand what that means?”

Mr. Cargreen became alarmed, his face became very blank.

“I am not a man to waste words. I am not a man that many in Cornwall would care to have as an adversary. Do you ever travel at night, Mr. Cargreen?”

“Yes, sir, sometimes.”

“Through the lanes and along the lonely roads?”

“Perhaps, sir – now and then.”

“So do I,” said Coppinger. He drew a pistol from his pocket, and played with it. The two “dilapidators” shrank back. “So do I,” said Coppinger; “but I never go unarmed. I would advise you to do the same – if you are my adversary.”

“I hope, Captain, that – that – ”

“If those children suffer through you more than what I allow” – Coppinger drew up his one shoulder that he could move – “I should advise you to consider what Mrs. Cargreen will have to live on when a widow.” Then he turned to Scantlebray, who was sneaking behind the window-curtain.

“Miss Trevisa’s letter, authorizing you to act for her?”

Scantlebray, with shaking hand, groped for his pocket-book.

“And the two agreements or estimates you signed.”

Scantlebray gave him the letter.

“The agreements also.”

Nervously the surveyor groped again, and reluctantly produced them. Captain Coppinger opened them with his available hand.

“What is this? Five pounds in pencil added to each, and then summed up in the total? What is the meaning of that, pray?”

Mr. Scantlebray again endeavored to disappear behind the curtain.

“Come forward!” shouted Captain Cruel, striking the window-sill with the pistol.

Scantlebray jumped out of his retreat at once.

“What is the meaning of these two five pounds?”

“Well, sir – Captain – it is usual; every one does it. It is my – what d’y’ call it! – consideration for accepting the estimates.”

“And added to each, and then charged to the orphans, who pay you to act in their interest – so they pay wittingly, directly, and unwittingly, indirectly. Well for you and for Mrs. Scantlebray that I release you of your obligation to act for Mother Dunes – I mean Miss Trevisa.”

“Sir,” said Cargreen, “under the circumstances, under intimidation, I decline to sully my fingers with the business. I shall withdraw.”

“No, you shall not,” said Cruel Coppinger, resolutely. “You shall act, and act as I approve; and in the end it shall not be to your disadvantage.”

Then, without a word of farewell, he stood up, slipped the pistol back into his pocket, and strode away.

Mr. Cargreen had become white, or rather, the color of dough. After a moment he recovered himself somewhat, and, turning to Scantlebray, with a sarcastic air, said —

“I hope you enjoy the jessamine. They don’t smell particularly sweet to me.”

“Orful!” groaned Scantlebray. He shook himself – almost shaking off all his limbs in the convulsion – “Old man – them jessamines is orful!”

Some weeks slipped by without bringing to Judith any accession of anxiety. She did not go again to Pentyre Glaze, but her aunt came once or twice in the week to Polzeath to see her. Moreover, Miss Dionysia’s manner toward her was somewhat less contrary and vexatious, and she seemed to put on a conciliatory manner, as far as was possible for one so angular and crabbed. Gracious she could not be; nature had made it as impossible for her to be gracious in manner as to be lovely in face and graceful in movement.

Moreover, Judith observed that her aunt looked at her with an expression of perplexity, as though seeking in her to find an answer to a riddle that vexed her brain. And so it was. Aunt Dunes could not understand the conduct of Coppinger toward Judith and her brother. Nor could she understand how a child like her niece could have faced and defied a man of whom she herself stood in abject fear. Judith had behaved to the smuggler in a way that no man in the whole countryside would have ventured to behave. She had thrown him at her feet, half killed him, and yet Cruel Coppinger did not resent what had been done; on the contrary, he went out of his way to interfere in the interest of the orphans. He was not the man to concern himself in other people’s affairs; why should he take trouble on behalf of Judith and her brother? That he did it out of consideration for herself, Miss Trevisa had not the assurance to believe.

Aunt Dunes put a few searching questions to Judith, but drew from her nothing that explained the mystery. The girl frankly told her of her visit to the Glaze and interview with the crippled smuggler, of his offer to her of some of his spoil, and of her refusal to receive a present from him. Miss Trevisa approved of her niece’s conduct in this respect. It would not have befitted her to accept anything. Judith, however, did not communicate to her aunt the closing scene in that interview. She did not tell her that Coppinger had kissed her hand, nor his excuse for having done so, that he was offering homage to a queen.

For one thing, Judith did not attach any importance to this incident. She had always heard that Coppinger was a wild and insolent man, wild and insolent in his dealings with his fellow-men, therefore doubtless still more so in his treatment of defenceless women. He had behaved to her in the rude manner in which he would behave to any peasant girl or sailor’s daughter who caught his fancy, and she resented his act as an indignity, and his excuse for it as a prevarication. And, precisely, because he had offended her maidenly dignity, she blushed to mention it, even to her aunt, resolving in her own mind not to subject herself to the like again.

Miss Trevisa, on several occasions, invited Judith to come and see her at Pentyre Glaze, but the girl always declined the invitation.

Judith’s estimate of Cruel Coppinger was modified. He could not be the utter reprobate she had always held him to be. She fully acknowledged that there was an element of good in the man, otherwise he would not have forgiven the injury done him, nor would he have interfered to protect her and Jamie from the fraud and extortion of the “dilapidators.” She trusted that the stories she had heard of Coppinger’s wild and savage acts were false, or overcolored. Her dear father had been misled by reports, as she had been, and it was possible that Coppinger had not really been the impediment in her father’s way that the late rector had supposed.