Wastralls: A Novel, C. A. Dawson Scott [i love reading books TXT] 📗
- Author: C. A. Dawson Scott
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"'Twill be a pretty grand sight," pursued Tom, "with so much people. I bet 'twill be the finest funeral that 'av been for many a year."
Mrs. Tom saw the last loiterer on her way and, returning, sat down on the cushioned stool which was generally occupied by Smut. The old cat, thus dispossessed, sprang into her lap and pushed its little pointed face against her hand. But Mrs. Tom put it down. "No, Smutty, I 'aven't got the 'eart to take yer up to-night."
"Ah, mother," said Tom, fancying he had found the key to her haggard looks, "I'm afraid you're missin' poor S'bina. 'Tis a sad thing for yer. I don't believe there's a day gone but you've seen one another."
"Iss, I do miss 'er and I shall miss 'er." But her acquiescence, lacking fullness, showed him he had not reached the heart of the matter.
"Well and what is it?" he asked and in his rough full tones and his eyes, was the kind comprehension of which she stood in need.
"Tidn't 'er dyin' I'm thinkin' about, 'tis 'ow she did die."
"'Er goin' so suddint?" said Tom, cautiously.
"No, nor 'tidn't that uther but—well, it do look very funny and there's things I've seen—" she paused, gazing anxiously at her husband. "Old chap surely done something—between you and I."
"Old chap 'av?" Tom's face, expressive as was natural to one who helped out his words with gesture, showed a deepening interest. "You don't mean it? Why do 'ee think so?"
Thus encouraged she plunged into her tale and, though she told it in rambling fashion, with discursions and superabundant detail, it was convincing. The interpretation Isolda put on Byron's sleep-walking was one Tom could accept. Simple and primitive, such a deed did not seem to him impossible. It was wrong, it was wicked, but it might happen and his wife told him that it had. Poor Sabina, and she had had no idea what sort of a man she was marrying and what she was bringing on herself! A black heart if ever there was one, but what could you expect? Tom was visibly moved. He punctuated his wife's tale with exclamations of ruth and horror but he did not feel it as deeply, as emotionally, as she. Mrs. Tom thought of Byron vindictively and with a personal animus. She would have been glad to see him taken to gaol, to have had him hanged; but to Tom he was still what he had always been—an intruder. The willingness to ''eave 'alf a brick' at his head had been there from the beginning and Tom was of those who wait and do not trouble but who, if the opportunity occurs, will seize it.
"Well, do seem funny, sure, mother," he said as his wife made an end. "Nothin' 'scapes your eyes, I knaw."
But Mrs. Tom wanted more than generalities. "What should you do?"
"If 'e done it, 'twas tarr'ble wicked of'n."
"Tarr'ble, sure."
"But 'tis done now," he said slowly. "Poor S'bina can't be fetched back."
She caught at the suggestion. "I only wish she could then. 'Twould be a great blow for'n."
"Iss, 'twould, and any'ow if 'e've done what you think 'e 'av, she'll surely haunt'n."
"I don't believe 'e'll care even if 'e is haunted." In her desire for tangible punishment she showed a waning faith in other influences.
"No, p'raps 'e won't. But 'e knaw 'e've done it and the Lorrd knaw and 'e'll be brought to judgment."
"You think it'll come to light some day?" she asked eagerly.
"I dunno about that, God's ways bain't our ways."
"Well, what should you do about it?"
He considered. "I should 'old me tongue and say nothing about it, if I was you. 'Cos if't got to policeman's ears you'd be 'ad up for your words."
His caution, that of a law-ignoring folk who manage their own affairs and keep silence concerning them, did not satisfy her.
"But if he did do't," she persisted, "'e ought to be punished."
"You knaw, mother, there's no proof so 'tedn't no good to say anything about it."
"Well," she said sharply, "there's this—bottle's gone out of cupboard! What's become of it? I s'pose that won't be any proof? And Leadville seem to be very uneasy, but that won't be any proof uther? And I feel sure in me bones and veins 'e wanted for 'er to die, but that's no proof?"
Tom was not to be moved. "A still tongue," said he, "make a wise 'ead and anyway a craikin' tongue do often mean a sore one."
She gave up the attempt to influence him. "I s'pose then, I shall 'av to rest me 'eart content, but you've no idea 'ow desperate towards 'im I feel. Knowin', too, that 'e owes 'er everything, for what was 'e, nothing but a come-by-chance? And for 'im to serve 'er like 'e 'av!"
"I reckon 'e's like one of they cuckoos. They do say cuckoo hi-ists the other li'l birds out o' the nest."
She was paying but scant attention. "I don't feel I can bear to speak 'im civil. Tidn't," she added mysteriously, "for what 'e've done but for what 'e've tried to do. Doctor, 'e said she died of 'eart failure and I s'pose doctor ought to know."
Tom could not follow his wife's flying thought. "Well," he said in those rough full tones which contained the very body of sound, "I don't believe doctors knaw everything. If they did 'twould make a fine newspaper. Nobody told Dr. Derek about the cocoa. He thought she 'ad 'er supper as usual and then died off suddint in 'er sleep."
"Iss," said Mrs. Tom thoughtfully and passed a hand over Smut who, accepting the fact that her mistress was too much engrossed in making mouth-noises—the main occupation of human beings—to pet her, had climbed quietly back into her lap and gone to sleep. "Iss—doctor didn't know anything about the cocoa."
She, herself, knew more than any one but was disinclined to impart the knowledge. After all it was not the act that damned a man but the intention; and she did not want Tom to think Leadville less guilty than he seemed to her. She remained silent going back over their talk and, on the whole, she found it comforting. Tom, deprecating the idea of human interference, had given utterance to one pregnant sentence: "'E knaw 'e've done it and the Lorrd knaw and 'e'll be brought to judgment."
"Iss, the Lorrd knaw," she told herself, "and I can see as old chap won't 'av everything 'is own way; but I wanted more'n that, I—I wanted S'bina to git 'er own back." She hushed her vindictive longings with a common-sense reflection. "Well, don't s'pose she'd be any 'appier if she did."
CHAPTER XXII
As the funeral procession was to leave Wastralls at 1.30 P.M., by eleven that morning the road from Four Turnings was black with farmers' carts, with people from the hamlets of Church Town, of Shoppe and of Cottages, with people who had come from the distant towns of St. Columb and Wadebridge. For three generations Mrs. Byron's family had taken a leading part in the affairs of the district. The memory of man went back to Old Squire—a personality so pronounced that it had obliterated the more shadowy figures of its ancestry. From Old Squire, who had added acre to acre, to Sabina Byron the bold yet conservative farmer, was but a life and imagination had leaped it. Like her grandfather she was an outstanding figure, a woman of whom the countryside had been half proud, half envious. The lamentable tragedy of her accident, setting her apart from struggling humanity, had affected the popular opinion. Successful beyond the ordinary she had in a twinkling been reduced to helplessness and, before interest in her—the tenacious interest of the agricultural mind—had had time to wane, the last misfortune had overtaken her. The people would follow her to her grave, not only out of respect for the Rosevears, but as a protest against fate which, not content with the inevitable, the building up or the breaking down, must introduce into the affairs of man, a harsh caprice.
On ordinary occasions people approached Wastralls by way of the yard but this being one of ceremonial the visitors went past the blind wall at the end and up the weed-grown avenue of 'grubby elms.' The double-leaved door, studded with iron heads, stood hospitably open and, on the hearth, a hearth which had not been modernized, a pile of seasoned wood was burning. On the stone chequers of the floor lay some faded rugs, the colours of which were yet bright enough to throw the sombre figures of the mourners into relief. The dull Oriental reds made a strange setting for these men and women from whom work and time had stolen the young comeliness and who, in their harsh ill-fitting black, appeared so awkward and ill at ease. The proportions of the hall were good but man, who had dreamed it and set it up, seemed unworthy of it, a poorer thing than that which he had made.
Beyond the entrance hall the parlours, giving on the passage, showed also an inviting face. These rooms, owing to the thickness of their walls, the smallness and eastern aspect of the many-paned casements, were gloomy. They smelt, not of the sea but its pervading damp and of the mould which crept like leprosy over boot and book and furniture. In both, fires had been lighted but the smoke showed little liking for the damp chimneys and, in the grates, the sea-coal smouldered without flame. In the Big Parlour the best china, silver and glass had been set out and a meal laid; and the gleam of polished surface, the white glow of the freshly laundered damask, the colour of the plates and dishes made a pleasant impression. Mrs. Tom and Richbell, rising early, had helped to carry from the linhay the food piled on its shelves. Fowls were at one end of the table, beef and ham at the other and between stood mountains of splits, bowls of Cornish cream, junkets and cake and pastry. The mourners as they came in would help themselves and plates, with darkly bright knives and shining forks, were stacked in readiness. The Little Parlour had, as far as possible, been denuded of furniture; for the mourners after they had eaten, would form up there in couples, ready when the coffin should have been brought forth, to follow it.
Tom Rosevear had prophesied a large gathering and the event justified him. The many who could 'call cousin' with Sabina Byron came through the deep winding lanes to take part in her funeral and besides these persons—literally 'the mourners'—were a number who did not go up to the house but stood about on Trevorrick Sands, waiting. Though lacking the right conferred by kinship—and in the West you are not invited to a funeral, you go, if a relative, as a matter of course—they, too, would follow her and see her committed 'earth to earth'; and so numerous were they that it was said afterwards that the only person in Tregols parish who did not attend Mrs. Byron's funeral was an old 'bedlier' of the name of Hawken and she, poor soul, had been bedridden up 'in the teens of years.'
Byron had carried with him overstairs a mood of serenity and content; but when he awoke in the morning his mental weather had changed from Set Fair to an uncertain condition of the mercury which expressed itself in a heavy dull sensation at the pit of his stomach. Waves of excitement were flowing through him. This would be a great day. Before a crowd of witnesses—and already they were leaving their distant homes, crossing in the ferry from Rock, coming by train from Wadebridge, driving in from Treremborne and Trerumpford and Treginnegar—Sabina would be finally dispossessed of Wastralls. He who, for so long, had taken second place would come into his own. It was he who would receive them. They would eat his bread, follow him in the long
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