I dont love you a bit. It is not fair. Papa is dead, so I ought not to have any more lessons. I hate rosa, rosæ! He kicked the legs of the chair peevishly with his heels. As his sister said nothing, seemed to be inattentive for she was weary and dispirited he slapped her cheek by raising his hand over his head.
What, Jamie, strike me, your only friend?
Then he threw his arms round her again, and kissed her. Ill love you; only, Ju, say I am not to do rosa, rosæ!
How long have you been working at the first declension in the Latin grammar, Jamie?
He tried for an instant to think, gave up the effort, laid his head on her shoulder, and said:
I dont know and dont care. Say I am not to do rosa, rosæ!
What! not if papa wished it?
I hate the Latin grammar!
For a while both remained silent. Judith felt the tension to which her mind and nerves had been subjected, and lapsed momentarily into a condition of something like unconsciousness, in which she was dimly sensible of a certain satisfaction rising out of the pause in thought and effort. The boy lay quiet, with his head on her shoulder, for a while, then withdrew his arms, folded his hands on his lap, and began to make a noise by compressing the air between the palms.
Theres a finch out there going chink! chink! and listen, Ju, I can make chink! chink! too.
Judith recovered herself from her distraction, and said:
Never mind the finch now. Think of what I say. We shall have to leave this house.
Why?
Of course we must, sooner or later, and the sooner the better. It is no more ours.
Yes, it is ours. I have my rabbits here.
Now that papa is dead it is no longer ours.
Its a wicked shame.
Not at all, Jamie. This house was given to papa for his life only; now it will go to a new rector, and Aunt Dunes2 is going to fetch us away to another house.
When?
To-day.
I wont go, said the boy. I swear I wont.
Hush, hush, Jamie! Dont use such expressions. I do not know where you have picked them up. We must go.
And my rabbits, are they to go too?
The rabbits? Well see about them. Aunt
I hate Aunt Dunes!
You really must not call her that; if she hears you she will be very angry. And consider, she has been taking a great deal of trouble about us.
I dont care.
My dear, she is dear papas sister.
Why didnt papa get a nicer sister like you?
Because he had to take what God gave him.
The boy pouted, and began to kick his heels against the chair-legs once more.
Jamie, we must leave this house to-day. Aunt is coming to take us both away.
I wont go.
But, Jamie, I am going, and the cook is going, and so is Jane.
Are cook and Jane coming with us?
No, dear.
Why not?
We shall not want them. We cannot afford to keep them any more, to pay their wages; and then we shall not go into a house of our own. You must come with me, and be a joy and rest to me, dear Jamie.
She turned her head over, and leaned it on his head. The sun glowed in their mingled hair all of one tinge and lustre. It sparkled in the tears on her cheek.
Ju, may I have these buttons?
What buttons?
Look!
He shook himself free from his sister, slid his feet to the ground, went to a bureau, and brought to his sister a large open basket that had been standing on the top of the bureau. It had been turned out of a closet by Aunt Dionysia, and contained an accumulation of those most profitless of collected remnants odd buttons, coat buttons, brass, smoked mother-of-pearl, shirt buttons, steel clasps buttons of all kinds, the gathering together made during twenty-five years. Why the basket, after having been turned out of a lumber closet, had been left in the room of death, or why, if turned out elsewhere, it had been brought there, is more than even the novelist can tell. Suffice it that there it was, and by whom put there could not be said.
Oh! what a store of pretty buttons! exclaimed the boy. Do look, Ju, these great big ones are just like those on Cheap Jacks red waistcoat. Here is a brass one with a horse on it. Do see! Oh, Ju, please get your needle and thread and sew this one on to my black dress.
Judith sighed. It was in vain for her to impress the realities of the situation on his wandering mind.
Hark! she exclaimed. There is Aunt Dunes. I hear her voice how loud she speaks! She has come to fetch us away.
Where is she going to take us to?
I do not know, Jamie.
She will take us into the forest and lose us, like as did Hop-o-my-Thumbs father.
There are no forests here hardly any trees.
She will leave us in the forest and run away.
Nonsense, Jamie!
I am sure she will. She doesnt like us. She wants to get rid of us. I dont care. May I have the basket of buttons?
Yes, Jamie.
Then Ill be Hop-o-my-Thumb.
CHAPTER V
THE BUTTONS
It was as Judith surmised. Mrs. Dionysia Trevisa had come to remove her nephew and niece from the rectory. She was a woman decided in character, especially in all that concerned her interests. She had made up her mind that the children could not be left unprotected in the parsonage, and she could not be with them. Therefore they must go. The servants must leave; they would be paid their months wage, but by dismissing them their keep would be economized. There was a factotum living in a cottage near, who did the gardening, the cinder-sifting, and boot-cleaning for the rectory inmates, he would look after the empty house, and wait on in hopes of being engaged to garden, sift cinders, and clean boots for the new rector.
As it was settled that the children must leave the house, the next thing to consider was where they were to be placed. The aunt could not take them to Pentyre Glaze; that was not to be thought of. They must be disposed of in some other way.
Mrs. Trevisa had determined on a sale of her brothers effects: his furniture, bedding, curtains, carpets, books, plate, and old sermons. She was anxious to realize as soon as possible, so as to know for certain what she could calculate upon as being left her for the support of Judith and her brother. To herself the rector had left only a ring and five guineas. She had not expected more. His decease was not likely to be a benefit, but, on the contrary, an embarrassment to her. He had left about a thousand pounds, but then Mrs. Trevisa did not yet know how large a bite out of this thousand pounds would be taken by the dilapidations on rectory, glebe, and chancel. The chancel of the church was in that condition that it afforded a wide margin for the adjudication of dilapidations. They might be set down at ten shillings or a thousand pounds, and no one could say which was the fairest sum, as the chancel was deep in sand and invisible. The imagination of the valuer might declare it to be sound or to be rotten, and till dug out no one could impeach his judgment.
In those days, when an incumbent died, the widow and orphans of the deceased appointed a valuer, and the incoming rector nominated his valuer, and these two cormorants looked each other in the eyes said to each other, Brother, what pickings? And as less resistance to being lacerated and cleaned to the bone was to be anticipated from a broken-hearted widow and helpless children than from a robust, red-faced rector, the cormorants contrived to rob the widow and the fatherless. Then that cormorant who had been paid to look after the interest of the widow and children and had not done it said to the other cormorant, Brother, Ive done you a turn this time; do me the like when the chance falls to you. Now, although nominally the money picked off the sufferers was to go to the account of the incomer, it was not allowed to pass till the cormorants had taken toll of it. Moreover, these cormorants were architects, builders, solicitors, or contractors of some sort, and looked to get something further out of the incoming man they favored, whereas they knew they could get nothing at all out of the departed man who was buried. Now we have pretended to change all this; let us persuade ourselves we have made the conduct of these matters more honest and just.
Aunt Dionysia did not know by experience what valuers for dilapidations were, but she had always heard that valuation for dilapidations materially diminished the property of a deceased incumbent. She was consequently uneasy, and anxious to know the worst, and make the best of the circumstances that she could. She saw clearly enough that the sum that would remain when debts and valuation were paid would be insufficient to support the orphans, and she saw also with painful clearness that there would be a necessity for her to supplement their reduced income from her own earnings. This conviction did not sweeten her temper and increase the cordiality with which she treated her nephew and niece.
Now, hoity-toity! said Aunt Dionysia; Im not one of your mewlers and pewkers. I have my work to do, and cant afford to waste time in the luxury of tears. You children shall come with me. I will see you settled in, and then Balhachet shall wheel over your boxes and whatever we want for the night. I have been away from my duties longer than I ought, and the maids are running wild, are after every one who comes near the place like horse-flies round the cattle on a sultry day. I will see you to your quarters, and then you must shift for yourselves. Balhachet can come and go between the rectory and Zachie Menaida as much as you want.
Are we going to Mr. Menaidas, aunt? asked Judith.
Did I not say Zachie Menaida! If I said Zachie Menaida I suppose I meant what I said, or are you hard of hearing? Come time to me is precious. Bustle bustle dont keep me waiting while you gape.
After a while Mrs. Trevisa succeeded in getting her nephew and niece to start. Judith, indeed, was ready at the first suggestion to go with her aunt, glad to get over the pang of leaving the house as quickly as might be. It was to be the rupture of one thread of the tie that bound her to the past, but an important thread. She was to leave the house as a home, though she would return to it again and again to carry away from it such of her possessions as she required and could find a place for at Zachary Menaidas. But with Jamie it was otherwise. He had run away, and had to be sought, and when found coaxed and cajoled into following his aunt and sister.
Judith had found him, for she knew his nooks and dens. He was seated in a laurel bush playing with the buttons.
Look, Ju! there is some broken mirror among the buttons. Stand still, and I will make the sun jump into your eyes. Open your mouth, and I will send him down your throat. Wont it be fun; Ill tease old Dunes with it.
Then come along with me.
He obeyed.
The distance to Zachary Menaidas cottage was about a mile and a quarter, partly through parish roads, partly through lanes, the way in parts walled and hedged up against the winds, in others completely exposed to every breath of air where it traversed a down.
Judith walked forward with her aunt, and Jamie lagged. Occasionally his sister turned her head to reassure herself that he had not given them the slip; otherwise she attended as closely as she was able to the instructions and exhortations of her aunt. She and her brother were to be lodged temporarily at Uncle Zachies, that is to say, with Mr. Menaida, an elderly, somewhat eccentric man, who occupied a double cottage at the little hamlet of Polzeath. No final arrangement as to the destination of the orphans could be made till Aunt Dunes knew the result of the sale, and how much remained to the children after the fathers trifling debts had been paid, and the considerable slice had been cut out of it by the valuers for dilapidations. Mrs. Trevisa talked fast in her harsh tones, and in a loud voice, without undulation or softness in it, and expected her niece to hear and give account for everything she told her, goading her to attention with a sharp reminder when she deemed that her mind was relaxed, and whipping her thoughts together when she found them wandering. But, indeed, it was not possible to forget for one moment the presence and personality of Dionysia, though the subject of her discourse might be unnoticed.
Every fibre of Judiths heart was strung and strained to the uttermost, to acutest feeling, and a sympathetic hand drawn across them would have produced a soft, thrilling, musical wail. Her bosom was so full to overflow that a single word of kindness, a look even that told of love, would have sufficed to make the child cast herself in a convulsion of grief into her aunts arms, bury her face in her bosom, and weep out her pent-up tears. Then, after perhaps half an hour, she would have looked up through the rain into her aunts 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 Judiths 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 mens lives.
I am sorry for what Jamie has done. I will pick up the things he has thrown down.