Wastralls: A Novel, C. A. Dawson Scott [i love reading books TXT] 📗

a matter of indifference he made no answer and Gray turned to Mrs. Byron. "Anyhow, auntie, you'll come as far as the gate with me, won't you?"

"Why, of course I will. I did last night and the night before, didn't I?" said the other innocently. From the yard gate the road was in sight as far as Hember.

"Yes and I like for you to be there. It's company till I get home."

"I'll give you my company," said Leadville abruptly, "without you askin' me for't."

Gray turned a face, from which all expression had been banished, on the speaker. "I think you better stay with Aunt S'bina."

"Oh, she don't want me," he answered, a touch of pleading in his manner.

"Iss, Leadville," said the wife tranquilly, "I'm glad for 'ee to stay in wi' me. Let the young ones go, they don't want we old 'uns followin' of them up. We've 'ad our day."

The man turned on her quickly. "Me old?" he cried with manifest irritation. "I'll tell yer about old. I bain't old."

"You'm in yer prime; but that seem old to a young maid."

"Do I seem old to you, Gray?" demanded he, and his eyes were both pleading and threatening, eyes so hungry that the girl had some ado to give him an unmoved reply. Not that she felt any sympathy with him in what she looked on as a tiresome aberration, but that under the quiet surface she was a little stirred and a little afraid. "You'm older than dad," she said at last.

"I'm ten times the man your father is!" He stretched his arms and expanded his deep chest. He was desperately anxious to prove to her his unabated virility, while she, timid, and on the threshold of awakening sensation, would have avoided the thought of it. His strength, present with her, and always desirous, was a subtle menace to the young happiness which her bosom shrined. "There isn't a feller for miles round can wrestle me or box me. You know I can carry four hundredweight on my shoulders where other chaps take two. I hain't old."

The girl, moved by her longing to escape, had risen and drawn nearer to her aunt. Here was, at least, protection, protection from all but that dim admission of her own heart that Leadville Byron was indeed all he claimed to be and more. For he was not only strong he was persistent, he was forcible. "Don't make no difference to me," she said, in a voice she tried to render careless, "whether you're old or not." And she spoke the truth. It was not his age that mattered.

When she came to Wastralls she had been prepared to find Leadville devoted to his wife's interests and deeply thankful she had been spared to him. By degrees it dawned on her simplicity that his thoughts were otherwise busy, that Sabina was a matter of indifference to him, or worse, that he was living a dream life of which she, Gray, was the centre. An unhappy little centre! She had had her share of attention from the young men of the scattered community, a little sighing, a soft pursuit, a hot word and the end. But Leadville was a stranger and his pursuit was not soft but fierce. He did not sigh but she could not be in the room with him without feeling that his brawny chest, his strong arms were aching with the longing to lay hold of her. She could not touch him accidentally without feeling the thrill of his desire. She was enveloped by his thoughts; and she struggled, resenting this emotion which threatened to overwhelm her and the bright prospects of her youth. For Gray was in need, not of a conflagration, but of a little fire upon the hearth.

With the man, matters were gradually coming to a head. He had not loved the old couple who had adopted him, he had been only mildly attracted by his wife, but he had in him a fund of passion which, through the fallow years, had been growing in concentration and of which the fuse had at length been lighted. His love for Gray was as overwhelming to himself as it might prove to its object. He had not known what a furnace was smouldering at the heart of him and, when the flame broke forth, to resist was impossible. He did not attempt it. On the contrary he gave himself up to these new sensations that ran through him, wave after wave, like a burning but not scarifying fire. His new passion pushed Wastralls for the time being into the background. He could not contain more than one absorbing emotion. He had been the persistent, passionate lover of the land, so but with more fever, did he love Gray. Wonderful as to him were these new feelings, he found them almost too poignant. When she entered a room in which he sat his throat went dry, he could hardly speak and the brief contacts of skirt or hand proved unendurably sweet. He turned from these moments of a troubling ecstasy to the languorous long intervals when she was absent and he, recalling her face, could dwell on it and imagine the fulfilling, tender, fiery, wonderful, of his every hope.

During the first months that Gray was living at Wastralls, Byron spent much of his time on Dark Head; but in the end he woke to a desire for more than dreams could give, a desire which grew in intensity after the manner of Jack the Giant-killer's bean. He began to haunt the young girl's steps and her honest attempts to discourage him passed with him for a sort of tantalizing encouragement. He could not believe that the object of a feeling so intense could be unresponsive, that these troubling sensations were not mutual; and when Gray avoided him, escaped from him, even, when protected by Sabina, flouted him with a little angry ruffling, he smiled with the conviction that his hour was at hand.

Steady untiring pursuit is apt to demoralize the victim and while Sabina thought the summer heats had washed the colour out of Gray's cheek, Mrs. Tom, uneasy as a hen when hawks are hovering, went to the root of the matter.

"Do 'ee like being to Wastralls, Gray?" she asked that evening when, having left Sabina stationed at the yard gate, the girl had run up the road, to arrive breathless and panting.

"Oh yes, mammy, I do dearly love Aunt S'bina."

"Why was you runnin' so just now?"

Gray hesitated. Very few girls confide such matters to a mother's ear. Experience shall not teach. Each generation will make its own mistakes and gather its handful of treasures and keep its secrets. Gray was however very doubtful and unhappy and, having no girl of her own age to consult, she turned to her mother.

"It's Uncle Leadville. He's always wanting to come with me and I don't want'n. I dunno—" she paused.

"Iss?" said Mrs. Tom quietly.

"I dunno as Jim'll be agreeable."

"My dear, why don't you wear the ring that 'e give you?"

"I don't know, I don't like to. I"—she smiled anxiously, yet with a glimmering of humour—"I don't believe Uncle Leadville would like to see me wearin' a ring."

Having said so much, Gray was willing to make further admissions. "I feel afraid of Unde Leadville, he's always after me and his eyes seem to be watching me as if they was coming out of his sockets. I can't sleep by night, mammy, I—I'm always thinking about him and," she looked shyly away, unable in this moment of revelation to meet her mother's understanding eye, "I don't want to, I'm—" her voice sank, "I'm afraid."

"'Tis a shame," said Mrs. Tom warmly. She knew how compelling are strength and intensity but thought it wisest not to let her knowledge appear. The susceptibilities of young people are easily ruffled.

"I think it's wicked of him, mammy." She was righteously indignant that he should be making life so difficult, "and auntie is so good to him."

"Iss," sighed the matron, "but men's so, they can't help theirselves—poor old villains. Why don't you come 'ome with me for a bit and leave Richbell go down with your auntie?"

Gray's face brightened hopefully, then she shook her head. "I don't think Aunt S'bina would like it."

"Well, I'll talk to yer auntie about it an' tell 'er what I think."

"Don't you say nothing about what I've told you," cried youth, anxious as to the discretion of gossiping middle-age.

"You can trust me," and Gray, looking into the kind shrewd face, felt that she might.

"You know she see Uncle Leadville's tiresome but she don't think he mean anything."

"Poor sawl, no she wouldn't, of course, bein' 'is wife. He'll say one thing to she an' another thing to you."

Gray nodded. That was the way of it.

"And she'll believe what 'e say."

"He'd tell her I was making a fuss about nothing. Yes, he would."

"There's Jim comin' up the road," said Mrs. Tom, who was sitting by the window; "I wonder 'e and Leadville get on."

"They don't see but very little of each other. If I was to be with Jim when Uncle Leadville come, I believe they'd fight; and the fear of that keeps me on pins and needles when I'm with Jim. It's all horrid."

"Well, dearie, I'll see what I can do with yer auntie. 'Twould be better if you could say as you was engaged to Jim, but I suppose you can't?"

"I daren't, mammy." Her large eyes, softly black, filled with tears. Courting-time is April weather but Gray felt that more showers than sunshine were falling to her share. "I'm frightened of Uncle Leadville and his old gun. We often say we'll do things but we don't after all; I got an idea he would."

Mrs. Tom took from behind the door a purple knitted bonnet and a cloak. The evenings were dark and the wind from the sea cold. She did not stay to take off her apron but went as she was, in her dark gown and with her kind face bright between the flaps of the woollen bonnet.

Sabina, lonely, because the husband who should have been sitting opposite to her at the end of the day was gone out, gave her a warmer greeting than was her wont. She was tired and the peace and good-fellowship to which she was looking forward seemed long in coming. She, also, would be glad of a chat.