Page:In the Roar of the Sea.djvu/359

Rh But if Judith allowed the truth to come out, then her husband would have no such compunction. It would be an opportunity for him to get rid of the boy he detested, and even if he did not have him consigned to jail, then it would be only because he would send him to an asylum.

Judith went out on the cliffs. The sea was troubled, far as the horizon, strewn with white horses shaking their manes, pawing and prancing in their gallop landward. There was no blue, no greenness in the ocean now. The dull tinctures of winter were in it. The Atlantic wore its scowl, was leaden and impatient. The foam on the rocks was driven up in spouts into the air and carried over the downs, it caught in the thorn bushes like flocks of wool, and was no cleaner. It lay with the thin melting snow and melted with it into a dirty slush. It plastered the face of Othello Cottage as though, in brutal insolence, Ocean had been spitting at the house that was built of the wreck he had failed to gulp down, though he had chewed the life out of it. The foam rested in flakes on the rushes where it hung and fluttered like tufts of cotton-grass. It was dropped about by the wind for miles inland as though the wind were running in a paper chase. It was as though sky and sea were contending in a game of pelting the land, the one with snow, the other with foam, the one sweet, the other salt. Judith walked where, near the edge of the cliffs, where there was no snow, and looked out at the angry ocean. All without was cold, rugged, ruffled, wretched; and within her heart burned a fire of apprehension, distress, almost of despair. All at once she came upon Mr. Desiderius Mules, walking in an opposite direction, engaged in wiping the foam-flakes out of his eyes.

"Halloo! you here Mrs. Coppinger?" exclaimed the rector; "glad to see you. I'm not here like S. Anthony preaching to the fishes, because I am a practical man. In the first place, in such a disturbed sea the fishes would have enough to do to look after themselves and would be ill-disposed to lend me an ear. In the next place the wind is on shore, and they would not hear me were I to lift up my voice. So I don't waste words and over-strain my larynx. If the bishop were a mile or a mile and a half inland, it might be different, he might admire my zeal. And what brings you here?"