Wastralls: A Novel, C. A. Dawson Scott [i love reading books TXT] 📗
- Author: C. A. Dawson Scott
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Leadville swayed from side to side in a long uncertainty and it was evident that his trouble grew. His face twitched, those unseeing eyes of his stared anxiously; and at last in a voice, hoarse and smothered, he uttered with immense effort two words:
"The ... jug..."
Startled by this desolate and abominable sound, Mrs. Tom shrank back from him. The words had come from those depths in which was lurking the guilty spirit of the man, they had come in spite of the swaddling bands of sleep, they had come laden and heavy laden. He wanted—a jug; and her thoughts flew to the jug that had stood on the table by Sabina's bed, the brown high-girdled jug which, after supper, was always placed on the oven-top that the contents might be kept warm until she was ready to drink them. Mrs. Tom remembered his expression when she had offered to brew cocoa for his supper—''Twas S'bina that drinked the cocoa.'
Byron had torn the veil from his deed. Mrs. Tom knew what was kept in the wall cupboard and where. She knew upon what bottle his hand had fallen. Presently she would make sure but she already knew. The measure meted to the old and damaged and useless of the farm animals had been meted to Sabina; and the hand that poured the poison had been the one which owed her everything.
After that exclamation which seemed to have been torn from some remote corner of his being, Leadville's agitation began to pass. His disappointment, even his purpose was forgotten and, for some time, he stood quietly by the range, his face wearing a fixed but no longer an intent look. The impulse that had driven him remorselessly, which had reconstructed for him the scene of the preceding night, which had shown that, like Zimri, there was for him no peace, was fading.
The chill of the night had begun to invade the kitchen and the sleep-walker seemed to be dully conscious of discomfort. He shivered slightly, stirred and then slowly, heavily, turned away. During the last few minutes he had lost vitality, grown older; and it was a man shouldering the full burthen of his years who went out of the kitchen and up the shallow treads of the stair.
CHAPTER XXI
The day following Sabina's death had been to Byron as a tract of hilly and dangerous country. He had traversed it, as he believed, without more than an occasional stumble and, at the day's end, had seen from the mountain-tops of sleep a vision of rich lands under the suns of fair to-morrows, a vision not altogether dispersed when he awoke. Springing out of bed he surveyed with eager hope the yellowing dawn. Mrs. Tom, being in no mind to trouble herself about him, he had been allowed to sleep on and, exhausted by the emotions, by the mental gymnastics of the previous day, he had done so until the eastern horizon was afire. From his upper window he looked up Trevorrick River, now December-full and purring over a wide bed of slates and quartz. The day was mild and still. A girl, in a blue coat and carrying a can, was crossing the stepping-stones and he recognized her as Jenifer Bate. The cloak hung in straight lines about her swelling figure and on her head was a gooky bonnet—a sort of winter sun-bonnet—which had belonged to her dead mother. She had brought Mrs. Bate down to Wastralls and was returning with milk for the people at Cottages. "She think weather'll be catchy," he said to himself with the joyous feeling that she was mistaken. The wind had dropped till not a breath stirred the beaded tamarisk but, far overhead, clouds were drifting lazily from the north. As long as they sailed the sky in that direction there would be no rain.
Below stairs the women were busy roasting chickens and otherwise preparing for the morrow. Sunday in the West is a time of rest from labour; of gathering in the chapels for friendly intercourse; but death, with a high hand, substitutes for local custom a universal law and not one of Mrs. Tom's helpers had failed her. In a corner of the kitchen a meal had been prepared for Byron and he slipped quietly into the chair set in readiness. For the first time since his wife's death he was conscious of flavour in the food. Breakfast was the good beginning of a good day and he ate and drank with relish. His mind had been like the sands at low water, a place of quags and pools and unsuspected rocks but now the tide of life had risen and he had forgotten what lay below. Yesterday was wholly gone and before him lay long hours—hours of realization, of happiness such as he had never before known. The women moved quietly about and in the midst of that orderly bustle Byron sat, speaking now and then in answer to some remark but always as if his mind were preoccupied. The meal ended, he made perfunctory offer of his services but was relieved to find the work had been so arranged that his room was more desired by the women than his help.
"That one's glad to be gone out of it," said Mrs. Con as his heavy figure passed the window on its way to the waste lands; and all could see that Byron was no longer slouching along in the mooning and indifferent manner to which they were accustomed.
"He'm like Parson's Fool, like everything that's good, but don't want to work for't," remarked Aunt Louisa, her big scissors going 'crusp, crusp' through some black material that was spread over the table.
Mrs. Tom repeated in an indifferent voice, the old tag:
She was looking ill and, when the women commented on her appearance, had spoken of a sleepless night. She was in fact oppressed by the horror of her late experience. As she went about the tasks of the moment she was as if in a cloud, a cloud on which the scene of the previous night was reflected, now from one point of view, now from another.
Unable to forget it she threw herself into the work with an energy which aroused the admiration of the other women and made Aunt Louisa wonder. "She don't work 'ome like that," mumbled the old woman over her mouthful of pins, "nor I don't believe 'tis cos she was so fond of S'bina. That one know more'n we think she do," and throughout the day which, for Mrs. Tom, was unbearably long, a haunted miserable day, Aunt Louisa kept a thoughtful eye upon her.
Byron, striding out of the yard, struck across the wide spread of shallow water and up the natural rock embankment which, on that side of Trevorrick valley, prevented the sea from overrunning the 'wastralls.' The turf, cropped closely by his bullocks, clipping into the bright yellow green of marsh, breaking into grey spire-grass towards the west, stretched before him up the coast. With his happy feet he meant to beat the boundaries of the farm, of the goodly acres which, after a time of waiting longer than that of Jacob, were his. A tamarisk hedge ran north and south between the commons—which a century ago had been arid sand—and Hember fields. Byron, walking by this, looked across the undulating ground to the sandy ramparts on the sea-edge. Piled by forgotten tides they resembled in their tiny crests and hollows, their unexpectedness, their general conformation, the huddle of a mountain range. By them the plain behind was protected from the worst rigours of the Atlantic and Byron saw them as a useful factor in his plan for the development of the commons. At present cattle pastured on the turf, rabbits flickered through the spire-grass and the wide space was quiet and at rest. It lay, peacefully, under the eye of day and that which moved on its green bosom moved as if time did not exist. But Byron meant to alter this, to change the face of the dunes. He would tear up the turf which fitted to the land as curling hair fits to a man's head and he would plant the seaward side with a sea-plant, with asparagus. Farther in, he would have strawberries. He knew they did well on the south coast, on the sandy strip beyond Southampton; and he planned a journey which should enable him to observe the methods of other men, which should teach him how to turn the sand beneath his feet into gold. As he walked by a clump of hawthorn and bramble he touched a rabbit gin and, with a sinister snap, the teeth came together. Byron pulled it out and reset it. He meant to rid the land of its rabbits and it pleased him to mark his intention; but gins and guns were ridiculously inadequate, his trapping would be of a more efficacious kind. It should exterminate.
Returning to the house for a midday meal he once more made perfunctory offer of his services.
"Funeral being to-morrow," said Mrs. Tom, and her glance gave him a momentary, quickly banished qualm, "of course there's things to be arranged out-of-doors as well as in. You'll 'av to clear the yard to make room for all the carts; and 'tis a pity there hain't time to give front door a coat of paint. 'Tis looking terrible grimy."
"I know the paint's rubbed off but there 'edn't time to do't now," said Byron and, lest she should have other suggestions to make, hurried through his meal and went out. A glance round the yard showed that old George was at work preparing the place for the influx expected on the morrow, an influx which would be welcome to Byron when it came but the thought of which was momentarily disturbing. Sufficient unto the hour the emotion thereof. This was the day of anticipation, the day between the end of the old order and the beginning of the new. He would not have it broken in upon by claims from either side. Shaking off thoughts of yesterday and to-morrow, as a man shakes raindrops from his coat, Byron turned out of the yard. This time he went uphill. Dark Head lay before him to the south and from its crest he could survey the good lands that sloped from the ridge—the cornfields and the cider orchard, the meadows between which Trevorrick River wound its way and above which St. Cadic Mill lifted a grey tower. Byron's heart sang to the rhythm of his striding feet and his mind busied itself with schemes. If the hinds would not work the land as he wished he would advertise for strangers, experienced men. He would find them cottages, there were some on the farm, Hindoo Cottage, Hesselwood, Towan Veals. The men would keep each other in countenance. For all he was himself a 'foreigner,' he knew how the country people would look on these strangers. But in the end, when he was reaping his fat harvests, when one field was bringing in what would cover the rent of a farm, the folks about would change their note. He saw himself on the crest of the wave, a man who had fought his way to the top, who had deserved what he had won. And how much more than the material award would that winning be!
From where he stood on the landward slope of Dark Head, the slope that was washed by the morning and the midday sun, his glance fell naturally on the square outstanding block of Hember, the cheery ugly house, grey but with its many bright windows set in white cement, the house which had some far-off look of a hive and about which was always the murmur of life. A sunny garden, sunk between stone walls, between black wind-bent firs, ran down to the road and in it a girl was moving from patch to patch of earth. His heart leapt for, as her hair gave out no dazzle of light beneath the sun, he knew it must be Gray. He would have known without that indication, without any; his blood would have recognized her in the dark. His 'little umuntz!' The significant black gown gave her an unfamiliar look but, in his eager pleasure at the sight of her, he missed the difference, missed too another difference, that change that comes to fruit when, after hanging green upon the bough, the sun has warmed it to ripeness and
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