Read Ebook: Winefred: A Story of the Chalk Cliffs by Baring Gould S Sabine Bundy Edgar Illustrator

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Ebook has 3363 lines and 123495 words, and 68 pages

'I have come,' said Jane Marley, 'and have brought my Winefred. Our house is going to pieces under our feet, over our heads, and we are homeless. I desire that you take my child and me. I do not ask it as a favour. Look at my arms. I can work, and will be an ostler for you, and she shall serve in the inn.'

'I really do not require you,' said Mrs. Warne. 'I am sorry for your misfortunes, but I cannot help. You do not belong to this parish.'

'And are love and mercy never to travel beyond parish bounds?' asked the woman, with her vehemence again breaking out. 'Is the tide of charity to flow on one side of the hedge and not on the other? Is the dew of heaven to moisten the wool on the fleece of the parish sheep only?'

'Jane, be reasonable. Our duties are limited by the parish boundaries, but not our charity.'

'Then extend some charity to Winefred and me, not alms, mind you, only consideration.'

'Charity must be governed by circumstances,' said Mrs. Warne.

'Oh, yes,' retorted Jane scornfully. 'It is like a canal, so much of it let out through the sluices as the dock-keeper thinks well.'

'If you will be patient,' said the hostess, a woman rubicund, plump and good-humoured, at the moment impatient to be back with the commercials, especially with one who had an engaging eye and tongue. 'If you will be patient, I will tell you how I can oblige you. I do not mind taking on Winefred.'

'But Tom Man, your ostler, is dead.'

'Well, but I must have a man in the stables, not a woman.'

Mrs. Warne bridled up.

'Bagmen, indeed! Tut, woman, surely you may trust me?'

'I can trust none. You are not her mother. You must take us both.'

'I cannot receive you both. I have made you a fair offer. If you will not accept, go over the river to your own parish.'

Then Mrs. Warne retreated into the bar, shut the door, drew down the window, and went to the fire and the commercials. Jane Marley left the Red Lion. The cloud darkened on her brow.

She said no word to her daughter, but directed her way up the street to a small shop, in which already a light was burning.

In the greensand beds about Seaton, or rather on the beach, washed from them, are found chalcedonies, green and yellow, red jasper, and moss agates, also brown petrified wood that takes a high polish. There was a little dealer in these at Seaton, an old man who polished and set them, and sold them as memorials to visitors coming there for sea-bathing and air. To this man, Thomas Gasset by name, the distressed woman betook herself.

He was sitting at his work-table, with a huge pair of spectacles in horn rims over his nose, engaged in mounting a chalcedony as a seal.

He looked up.

'Got some stones for me, Mrs. Marley?' he asked. 'I hope good ones this time. Those Winefred brought last were worthless.'

'No, Mr. Gasset, they were not,' said the girl. 'I know a stone as well as you.'

'Thomas Gasset,' said the mother, 'I come to you with a proposal. Will you take Winefred and me into your service? That is to say, let us both lodge with you. She shall collect the precious pebbles, and as she says she knows one that is good from another that is worthless, she can help polish; turn the grindstone, if you will; and I will go about the country selling them, instead of tapes and papers of pins--or with them.'

'My dear good creature,' gasped the jeweller--as this dealer in such stones as jasper and agate elected to be called--more correctly a lapidary--'the business would not maintain all three. The season here is short, and I sell in that only.'

He looked out of the corners of his eyes at his wife, who was darning where she could profit by his lamp. She pursed up her lips and drew her brows together.

'The business is a starving, not a living,' said Mrs. Marley, 'because it is not pushed. I have just been in at the Red Lion--there are commercials, them travelling for some habberdash or hosiery firm--they work up the trade. It pays to employ them. You make me your traveller, I will go about with your wares to Dorchester, to Weymouth, to Exeter--wherever there be gentlefolk with loose money to spend in such things. It will pay you over and over again. If this sort of working a business can keep those commercials in the lap of luxury in Mrs. Warne's bar, drinking spirits and dining off roast goose, it will keep me who never take anything stronger than milk, and am content with a crust and dripping. Let me travel for you and look to this as my home, where Winefred is.'

'No,' said Mrs. Gasset, snapping the answer from her husband's mouth; 'no, indeed, we take none under our roof who cannot produce her marriage lines.'

'Then I will lodge elsewhere if you will take my child, Mr. Gasset. You may trust her. Your goods will be safe with me. I will render account for every stone. You will have as security what is more to me than silver or gold--my Winefred.'

The man again peered out of the corners of his eyes at his wife, and again she answered for him.

'No,' she said. 'I don't doubt your honesty. You have been honest always save once. But there are reasons why it cannot be. That is final.'

And she snapped her mouth, and at the same moment broke her darning-needle.

Jane Marley left the shop.

When her back was turned Mrs. Gasset flew at her husband.

'You'd have given way--I saw it by the way you twitched the end of your nose.'

'Oh! much you thought of your business. It was her great brown eyes--not your agates.'

'The older a man is, the more of a fool he becomes.'

'Well, well, my honey-bee, I didn't.'

'No, you didn't, because I was by,' retorted the honey-bee, and put forth her sting. 'If I had been underground, you'd have taken her in. I know you; yah!'

And in the little parlour behind the bar, the comfortable Mrs. Warne settled herself before the fire, and drew up her gown so as not to scorch it, and looked smilingly at the more attractive bagman of the two, and said, 'Ah! Mr. Thomson, if you only knew from what I have saved you.'

'From what, my dearest Mrs. Warne?'

'From fascinations you could not have resisted. There has been here a peculiarly handsome woman wanting a situation--as ostler. If she had come, there would have been no drawing you from the stables.'

'Madame--elsewhere perhaps--but assuredly not here.'

The women were all against Jane Marley because she was still good-looking.

ON THE VERGE

Jane Marley wrapped her shawl about her; her head was bowed, her lips set, her grip on her daughter unrelaxed.

She turned from the village, and walked along the shingly way to the water's edge. The Axe flows into the sea through a trough washed out of the blood-red sandstone that comes to the surface between the hills of chalk; but the fresh water does not mingle with the brine unopposed. A pebble ridge has been thrown up by the sea at the mouth, that the waves labour incessantly to complete, so as to debar the Axe from discharging its waters into it. Sometimes high tide and storm combine to all but accomplish the task, and the river is strangled within a narrow throat; but this is for a time only. Once more the effluent tide assists the river to force an opening which the inflowing tide had threatened to seal.

One of the consequences of this struggle ever renewed is that the mouth has shifted. At one time the red Axe discharged to the west, but when a storm blocked that opening it turned and emptied itself to the east.

On the farther side, that to the rising sun, the chalk with dusky sandstone underneath rears itself into a bold headland, Haven Ball, that stands precipitously against the sea, as a white, cold shoulder exposed to it. Up a hollow of this hill, a combe as it is called, a mean track ascends to the downs which overhang the sea, and extend, partly in open tracts, in part enclosed, as far as Lyme Regis.

There is no highway. The old Roman coast-road lies farther to the north, but there is a track, now open, now between blasted hedges, always bad, and exposed to the gale from the sea and the drift of the rain.

But to reach this, the Axe estuary must be crossed. This is nowadays a matter of one penny, as there is a toll-bridge thrown from one bank to the other. But at the time of my story transit was by a ferry-boat, and the boat could ply only when there was a sufficiency of water.

Jane Marley seated herself on a bench by the landing-stage, and drew her daughter down beside her.

The wind was from the south-east, and spat cold rain in their faces. She passed her shawl round Winefred, regardless of herself.

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