"I am glad to hear it, Mr. Menaida. You have not seen him for many years."
"Not for ten."
"It will be a veritable feast to you. Does he remain long in England?"
"I cannot say. If his employers find work for him at home, then at home he will tarry, but if they consider themselves best served by him at Oporto, then to Portugal must he return."
"Will you honor me by taking a seat near me--under the trellis?" asked Judith. "It will indeed be a pleasure to me to have a talk with you; and I do need it very sore. My heart is so full that I feel I must spill some of it before a friend."
"Then indeed I will hold out both hands to catch the sweetness."
"Nay--it is bitter, not sweet, bitter as gall, and briny as the ocean."
"Not possible; a little salt gives savor."
She shook her head, took up the stocking, did a couple of st.i.tches, and put it down again. The sea-breeze that tossed the pink bunches of tamarisk waved stray tresses of her red-gold hair, but somehow the brilliancy, the burnish, seemed gone from it. Her eyes were sunken, and there was a greenish tinge about the ivory white surrounding her mouth.
"I cannot work, dear Mr. Menaida; I am so sorry that I should have played badly that sonata last night. I knew it fretted you, but I could not help myself, my mind is so selfishly directed that I cannot attend to anything even of Beethoven"s in music, nor to stocking-knitting even for Jamie."
"And what are the bitter--briny thoughts?"
Judith did not answer at once, she looked down into her lap, and Mr.
Menaida, whose pipe was choked, went to the tamarisks and plucked a little piece, stripped off the flower and proceeded to clear the tube with it.
Presently, while Uncle Zachie"s eyes were engaged on the pipe, Judith looked up, and said hastily, "I am very young, Mr. Menaida."
"A fault in process of rectification every day," said he, blowing through the stem of his pipe. "I think it is clear now."
"I mean--young to be married."
"To be married! Zounds!" He turned his eyes on her in surprise, holding the tamarisk spill in one hand and the pipe in the other, poised in the air.
"You have not understood that I got Jamie off the other day only by taking full charge of him upon myself and relieving my aunt."
"But--good gracious, you are not going to marry your brother."
"My aunt would not transfer the guardianship to me unless I were qualified to undertake and exercise it properly, according to her ideas, and that could be only by my becoming engaged to be married to a man of substance."
"Goodness help me! what a startlement! And who is the happy man to be?
Not Scantlebray, senior, I trust, whose wife is dying."
"No--Captain Coppinger."
"Cruel Coppinger!" Uncle Zachie put down his pipe so suddenly on the bench by him that he broke it. "Cruel Coppinger! never!"
She said nothing to this, but rose and walked, with her head down, along the bank, and put her hands among the waving pink bunches of tamarisk bloom, sweeping the heads with her own delicate hand as she pa.s.sed. Then she came back to the boat arbor and reseated herself.
"Dear me! Bless my heart! I could not have credited it," gasped Mr.
Menaida, "and I had such different plans in my head--but there, no more about them."
"I had to make my election whether to take him and qualify to become Jamie"s guardian, or refrain, and then he would have been s.n.a.t.c.hed away and imprisoned in that odious place again."
"But, my dear Miss Judith--" the old man was so agitated that he did not know what he was about; he put the stick of tamarisk into his mouth in place of his pipe, and took it out to speak, put down his hand, picked up the bowl of his pipe, and tapped the end of the tamarisk spill with that; "mercy save me! What a world we do live in.
And I had been building for you a castle--not in Spain, but in a contiguous country--who"d have thought it? And Cruel Coppinger, too!
Upon my soul I don"t want to say I am sorry for it, and I can"t find in my heart to say I"m glad."
"I do not expect that you will be glad--not if you have any love for me."
The old man turned round, his eyes were watering and his face twitching.
"I have, Heaven knows! I have--yes--I mean Miss Judith."
"Mr. Menaida," said the girl, "you have been so kind, so considerate, that I should like to call you what every one else does--when speaking of you to one another--not to your face--Uncle Zachie."
He put out his hand, it was shaking, and caught hers. He put the ends of the fingers to his lips; but he kept his face averted, and the water that had formed in his eyes ran down his cheeks. He did not venture to speak. He had lost command over his voice.
"You see, uncle, I have no one of whom to ask counsel. I have only aunt, and she--somehow--I feel that I cannot go to her, and get from her the advice best suited to me. Now papa is dead I am entirely alone, and I have to decide on matters most affecting my own life, and that of Jamie. I do so crave for a friend who could give me an opinion--but I have no one, if you refuse."
He pressed her hand.
"Not that now I can go back from my word. I have pa.s.sed that to Aunt Dionysia, and draw back I may not; but somehow, as I sit and think, and think, and try to screw myself up to the resolution that must be reached of giving up my hand and my whole life into the power of--of that man, I cannot attain to it. I feel like one who is condemned to cast himself down a precipice and shrinks from it, cannot make up his mind to spring, but draws back after every run made to the edge. Tell me--uncle--tell me truly, what do you think about Captain Coppinger?
What do you know about him? Is he a very wicked man?"
"You ask me what I think, and also what I know," said Mr. Menaida, releasing her hand. "I know nothing, but I have my thoughts."
"Then tell me what you think."
"As I have said, I know nothing. I do not know whence he comes. Some say he is a Dane, some that he is an Irishman. I cannot tell, I know nothing, but I think his intonation is Irish, and I have heard that there is a family of that name in Ireland. But this is all guesswork.
One thing I do know, he speaks French like a native. Then, as to his character, I believe him to be a man of ungovernable temper, who, when his blood is roused will stick at nothing. I think him a man of very few scruples. But he has done liberal things--he is open-handed, that all say. A hard liver, and with a rough tongue, and yet with some of the polish of a gentleman; a man with the pa.s.sions of a devil, but not without in him some sparks of divine light. That is what I think him to be. And if you ask me further, whether I think him a man calculated to make you happy--I say decidedly that he is not."
Rarely before in his life had Mr. Menaida spoken with such decision.
"He has been kind to me," said Judith. "Very kind."
"Because he is in love with you."
"And gentle--"
"Have you ever done aught to anger him!"
"Yes. I threw him down and broke his arm and collar-bone."
"And won his heart by so doing."
"Uncle Zachie, he is a smuggler."
"Yes--there is no doubt about that."