Wastralls: A Novel, C. A. Dawson Scott [i love reading books TXT] 📗
- Author: C. A. Dawson Scott
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From the low window of the kitchen Mrs. Byron had watched the scene. Jim's handsome head had been bent over the mare's shiny coat as he thrust the tongues of the buckles through the brass. He moved easily and well, for life had not yet taken advantage of his strength and she saw him as a proper lad. When Gray came out, Mrs. Byron felt a motherly pride in the little rounded figure, the soft fair face between the furs of cap and necklet. "An' she've pinned they vi'lets on, trust her for that."
Leadville's appearance cast a shadow on the scene. In the bright winter sunshine he loomed up, a threatening unhappy figure, the incarnation of a desire which might not be gratified. The light fell on his uncovered head with its thick black hair, on his muscular figure, growing heavy with years but still a wonder for its strength, on his eager face. Sabina, in a reaction from the blow she had received, felt that the time was come for her to assert herself. Anxious not to drive him farther away she had played a gentle self-obliterating part and she felt that in doing so she had made a mistake. She would grasp her nettle more firmly, let him know that Gray was bespoken. Conscious, as she went, of envy, she began to push herself towards the porch. What a thing it was to have an old body, a body that had 'gone abroad' and a young heart! Jim and Leadville hung about Gray with the same hope. Sabina, for all her vitality and strength, had no longer anything to give. She was old and done, while Gray, to them and every man, was incarnate promise.
The wagon was turning out of the gate as Mrs. Byron reached her husband's side and the off-wheel rose over a stone. The body of the cart swayed and lurched and Gray, with a little cry, caught at Jim Rosevear's arm.
Byron swore fiercely. "If anything 'appen to her I'll wring his neck."
"You needn' fear. He'll take care of she."
The man turned and stared at the distorted figure in the cone of basket-work. He had not heard her come up but his mind was too deeply occupied with other matters for him to be startled. "Why?"
"Because they'm courtin'."
She had thought it would be difficult to tell him but the words sprang out of her resentment at the way in which she, struggling with difficulties, she who should have met with consideration from her husband, had been treated.
"Courtin'?" repeated Leadville and his swarthy skin turned a dull grey. The wagon was rattling up the road at a good pace, the cheery sound of hoofs and wheels and voices growing fainter as it turned towards Hember. The man stared after it and about him was the falling of dream castles, of built-up theories, false hopes. He had heard the truth and could not turn his back on it, could not refuse it credence. He knew, now, that Gray's response that morning had been to Jim Rosevear and not to himself. The pieces of the puzzle fitted. He was momentarily stunned by the revelation. Only when he realized that they were driving away together did he come to himself. The vision of their propinquity was intolerable and he started to run towards the gate.
"I won't let'n go with 'er."
Sabina raised her voice. "'Bain't a bit of good for 'ee to interfere. They'm to 'Ember by this time."
From the gate he could see the wagon had been stopped and that Tom Rosevear was lifting down his daughter. The family had gathered in the road and the younger girls were talking to Jim, doubtless giving him Christmas commissions. A little air of festivity pervaded the group, an air which as Leadville did not understand it, he found ominous. He wanted to rush up the road and seize and carry Gray off from among them, carry her away from Trevorrick, out of the complications of life there and, above everything, carry her away from Jim. For a desperate situation, desperate remedies. He did not mean to sit down under misfortune, to accept tamely the blows of destiny. All things come—not to those who wait, but to those who fight; and he who cannot fight for his mate is no man.
"They've been courtin' for months," said Sabina. "Anybody but you would have seen it, but you're never 'ome. You can't expect to know things when you'm out mumpin' around the cliffs like an old dog."
Gray had gone into the house, the big bold house on the hillside, with her mother; and Leadville turned back from the yard gate.
"I'll send 'un off neck and crop," he cried, ragingly. "He shall go to-night. He shall never stay 'ere on the place another night." His words came stammeringly, like liquid out of a bottle that is too sharply tilted. "I'll send'n goin' neck an' crop out of this, then we shall see."
"Iss, my dear," returned Sabina bitterly, "then we shall see. They'm courtin' and before long they'll be married—then we shall see; and when they'm married they'll live 'ere along with we, then we shall see."
But the unhappy man, unable to endure her words, had rushed blindly away.
CHAPTER X
Beyond Wastralls rose a line of black cliffs culminating in the high ground of Dark Head and, towards them, Leadville turned. No roads crossed these solitudes. Sheep cropped the fine herbage, sea-gulls built on the inaccessible ledges, tumuli and earthworks showed that man too had once sheltered here. Far inland an occasional grey homestead, in its nest of farm-buildings, could be discerned, while in clear weather the daymark was visible on Stepper Point. Otherwise the eye was given only the wide spaces of sky and sea and earth.
On the storm which had strewn the coast with wreckage had followed a land wind; and this had brought in the weed with which the coast-dwellers manure their sandy fields. The sea, in big unquiet rollers, fell heavily against the walls and islands of rock. It was dark with the slippery oreweed and, when the tide went out, the coves and bays would be ankle-deep in shining olive-brown masses. In that treeless wind-swept land however, the people look to the sea-harvest for more than weed. To the beaches drift beams that can be split into gate shivers; hatches, which put together, make a reasonable pig's house; chests and spars and miscellaneous wreckage. From cottage and hamlet the folks converge upon the coast and, at any other time, Byron would have stopped above the nearest sandy cove to shout down an offer for some of the piles of wood. Now he strode by, unconscious of the tiny carts being filled with planks and boxes, of the little figures intent on their grim work of salvage. The man was fleeing from the intolerable revelation that had been thrust upon him. He was closing his ears, his mind, his heart, seeking to delay the inevitable moment when he must give heed; yet with him, in the depths of his being, was carrying that from which he fled.
So obsessed was he with the desire to get away, to put space between him and that terrible prophetic voice, that he did not realize his solitudes had been invaded. He pressed on, crossing cliff-faces and climbing steeps. The crags, the wide prospect, the sea-unrest were familiar to him, this waif and foreigner who had come up out of the deep and could claim no place as home, no human being as of his blood. He was as safe among the crags as if he had been born to wings. The people, labouring far below, saw the grey figure on the heights and craned their necks to watch his perilous progress; and the salving of a good ship's bones went on more slowly because Leadville Byron, on a ledge six inches wide and cut away underneath, a ledge of black and crumbling slate, was risking a possession dear to no one but himself.
The man was coming to Dark Head as a hurt child rushes blindly to its mother. Hither had he fled after every difference with Sabina and here had he found a vastness, a changelessness, an impersonal peace upon which he could rest his little and tortured soul. His trouble was greater now. He was in the grip of powers which, if he could not escape from them, might break him. By climbing peaks on which cormorants had nested in a confidence hitherto secure, by ploughing through deep sands and up the slippery shale, by crazy leaps and a wild expenditure of force, he tried to exhaust himself. By so doing he might avoid, not only knowledge, but the sinister possibilities of his nature.
Dark Head is a narrow peninsula of rock which stands knee-deep in water. A green mane of turf ripples to the black edge and Leadville, scourged across the waste, came at last to a softness of thick untrodden grass. This was the world's end and behind lay the amazing cruelty of life. The great spaces were clean and they were sweet. The man strode to the sloping edge but, because he was not yet ready to surrender his atom of consciousness, drew back. For a moment he stood, looking vacantly across the breathing sea, then turned and flung himself upon the bed the ages had prepared. The grass, wind-swept and deep, yielded a little, closing about his heavy figure like the displaced water of a pool.
On a rock below, an oyster-catcher chattered disapproval but the gulls and shyer cormorants came back to their resting-places. The man was harmless and after the storm they must make the most of the sunshine. They stood about, preening themselves in the red light and above the southern hills but near them, the sun made the half-circle of the sky.
In moments of overwhelming emotion Byron, when the strain grew too intense, had hitherto passed into another state of consciousness. The sound of hammering had as it were, opened a door, beyond which was a bewildering peace. Forgetfulness had fallen on him like a garment and when he came back it was, always, to begin afresh. Sabina's words however, though they roused him to a frenzy of feeling, had not had the usual effect. He had not been able to escape.
Drowned in an agony that was elemental he lay on the cliff-top, supine and motionless; Sabina's bitter revelation had been like the pouring of vitriol over his heart. Loving for the first time in his life, loving with the passion of a highly emotional temperament, the hopelessness of his love had been thrust suddenly upon him. A disappointment so elemental, so profound, put him beside himself. His instinct was, somehow, to escape the ultimate pangs. He had fled before the flood, fled from himself, scrambled and sobbed himself across the cliffs until he came to rest, deep in the deep grass of the headland.
His exhaustion was so great that for some time he lay supine as the wreckage on the sands below. As the moments passed, however, consciousness began to return and with it, through the darkness of his mind flitted unhappy thought, a greyness here and there, a
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