Winefred: A Story of the Chalk Cliffs

One grey, uncertain afternoon in November, when the vapour-laden skies were without a rent, and the trailing clouds, without a fringe, were passing imperceptibly into drizzle, that thickened with coming night, when the land was colourless, and the earth oozed beneath the tread, and the sullen sea was as lead――on such a day, at such a time of day, a woman wandered through Seaton, then a disregarded hamlet by the mouth of the Axe, picking up a precarious existence by being visited in the summer by bathers.

The woman drew her daughter about with her. Both were wet and bedraggled.

The wind from the east soughed about the caves, whistled in the naked trees, and hissed through the coarse sea-grass and withered thrift; whilst from afar came the mutter of a peevish sea. The woman was tall, had fine features of a powerful cast, with eyes in which slumbered volcanic fire. Her cheeks were flushed, her rich, dark hair, caught by the wind and sopped by the mist, was dishevelled under her battered hat. She was not above thirty-six years old.

The girl she held and drew along was about eighteen. She partook of her mother's fineness of profile and darkness of eye. If there were in her features some promise or threat of the resolution that characterised her mother's countenance, it was tempered by a lurking humour that would not suffer them to set to hardness.

This woman, holding her daughter with a grip of iron, stood in the doorway of a farm, talking with, or rather at, the farmer.

'Why not? Have I not hands, arms? Can I not work? Will not she work? Prove us. I ask why you cannot take us in?'

'My good woman, we require no one.'

'But you do. You have needed me. When your wife was ill, and your hussy of a maid had run away――did you not send for me? Did I hesitate to go to you? I left then my huckstering that I might be useful in your house. That was the hour of your need. Now it is mine. Did I not at that time do my work well? Perhaps over well. Your wife said I had scrubbed the surface off the table and rubbed into holes the clothes I washed. Anyhow I did naught by halves. And your drones, they guzzle and sleep, and when you are in straits――there is sickness, disaster――then they run away. Take me and Winefred.'

'My dear Mrs. Marley, it is of no avail your persisting to thrust yourself on us. You can't stable more horses than you have stalls. I have no vacancy.'

'Your missus has turned away Louie Herne.'

'And has engaged one in her place.'

'Then give us leave to sleep in your barn, and I'll work in the fields for you, hoeing, weeding, gathering up stones――ay, better than can a man.'

'No, thank you. I do not care to have my barn burnt down. You have too much fire in you to be safe among straw.'

The woman quivered with disappointment and rage. Erect, with rigid arms and stiff neck, she flared out: 'Ay! I could tear down your stacks, or fire them. I am "Dear Jane Marley" when you need me. "Out, you vagabond," when I am in need.'

'If you dared do what you threaten,' said the farmer, suddenly becoming harsh in tone and manner, 'into prison you should go, and then, indeed, your Winefred would be a vagabond, and all through you.'

The woman shut her mouth, but sparks scintillated in her eyes.

'Mother, let us go elsewhere,' said the girl and endeavoured to draw her mother away.

'Not yet,' answered the woman impatiently. 'Do you not know, Moses Nethersole, that I and my Winefred are homeless? My cottage has gone to pieces, and the whole cliff is crumbling away. The wall is down already, and the lime-ash floor is buckled up and splitting. No one now may go nigh the place. It needs but the hopping of a wagtail to send the whole bag of tricks into the sea. And you――you have the heart to deny us shelter and bread, and work whereby to earn both.'

'Bread you shall have and a cup of milk.'

'I will have neither as an alms. I ask no charity. I desire to work for my meat and for my housing. Have I not done so like an honest woman hitherto? Would you make a beggar of me? Give me work, I ask. I seek nothing more.'

'Mother, come away,' pleaded the girl.

'I will,' said the woman curtly, and turned round with an abrupt action. Then suddenly she stooped, stripped off her shoes, and, running forward as the farmer backed, she beat the soles against the doorposts.

'There,' she said, 'there is Scripture for you. I cannot shake off the dust o' my feet as testimony against you, but I can the mud and the oozing of the water from the sodden leather. May that cling there till the Day of Judgment, and bring the blight to your wheat, the rot to your sheep, to your cattle, the worm and canker to your store, and fester into your blood. It is the curse of the widow and the fatherless that will lie on you.'

The farmer slammed his door in her face, and retreated to the kitchen. He was a phlegmatic and amiable man, but the fury of the woman, and her denunciation of woes had shaken him; his ruddy face was mottled, and his hand shook as he let himself down into the settle.

'By my soul, she's a vixen!' he gasped.

'Moses,' said his wife, 'you've done right. If I hadn't been minding ironing of your shirt-front for Sunday, I'd have gone out and given that same vixen a bit of my mind.'

'I wish you had, Mary――I'm no match for the likes o' she.'

'If I had heard the smallest mite o' wavering in your voice, I would have done so for certain,' said Mrs. Nethersole; 'and so you call her "dear Jane," do you? Things come out unexpected at times, and "Mistress Marley" is she? You know as well as I do that she is no honest woman, howsomever she may brag of her honesty. She is just a wild lostrel as has got no belongings, save that girl as never ought to have come into this world of wickedness.'

'Mary, perhaps it's all along of it being a world of a wickedness that she did come. Jane Marley's case is a sad one. She has been driven from her cottage.'

'Turned out?'

'The cliff has given way. You know where it stood.'

'Not I――it is on the other side of the water.'

'It was on the edge of the cliff, and the rock has been breaking away for some time――that is how she had it cheap. Now it is part down, and they say there be a great crack right along the ground――and the whole cliff will go over, and be munched by the waves.'

'That's no concern of ours, Moses; she does not belong to the parish.'

'True, but she has worked for us when we were short and in difficulties.'

'And was paid for it――and we wiped our hands of her.'

'Mary, you are over hard.'

'And you like butter on dog-days. I know you men. Dear Jane, indeed!'

Mrs. Marley, with labouring bosom, heaving after the storm, drew her daughter with her into the village street, to the village inn, the Red Lion, kept by Mrs. Warne.

She walked in, with a manner almost defiant, and encountered the landlady issuing from the cosy parlour behind the bar, in which a good fire burnt, and where sat a couple of commercial travellers.