Produced by Al Haines.
*Wastralls*
*A Novel*
By
C. A. Dawson-Scott
Author of
"The Story of Anna Beames"
"Mrs. Noakes" etc.
London
William Heinemann
_London: William Heinemann_, 1918
DEDICATED TO
ALICE TIPPETT
TO WHOSE KIND HELP ON MANY A SUNDAY
AFTERNOON I OWE THE WEST-
COUNTRY TALK
*PROLOGUE*
*CHAPTER I*
Trevorrick River was but a little stream to have fretted so deep a cleft
between the hills as that which sloped from the main road of Tregols
parish to the sea. From the source to the engulfing sands was barely a
mile, and the twinkling waters, if full and fierce in winter, showed a
summer fear of their own broad stepping-stones. Nevertheless the sharp
declivities, the juttings of rock, even the shelves and crags and walls
of Dark Head, had been formed by the gnawing of this tiny but persistent
flow.
The valley ran east and west. The sun, rising beyond St. Cadic Mill,
poured its noon warmth over Hember and sank behind the sheltered plateau
on which stood the old home of the Rosevears. The dying beams, however,
could not reach the deep-set windows of Wastralls, for the crest of Dark
Head reared itself between the farmstead and the harsh threat of the
Atlantic. The house lay in a fold of land, hidden equally from those
who moved upon the face of the waters, and those who might be said,
though their habitations were at a distance, to neighbour it. As a
refuge in troublous times, the position had its value, and there were
indications that this shelf of rock had been, many centuries ago, the
nest of some wild brood.
Upon their heels had followed as descendants or conquerors--the script
is too nearly obliterated to be read--men who in their own strong person
represented the law. The gate-posts of Wastralls were crowned with the
egg-shaped stones which indicated that it was a manor-house, and that
its owner had the right to dispense justice. Within the house, and
occupying a space from wall to wall, was the ancient Justice Room; but
its stately uses had long been abated, its irrevocable decisions had
lost their force, in the autumn of its days it had become a lumber-room
and more lately a bedchamber.
A century ago, from the mill at the head of the valley to the Wreckers'
Hut on the foreshore, Trevorrick had been the property of one man. Of
peasant stock, how Freathy Rosevear came by land and money was matter of
surmise. 'He had gone out one morning a poor man, and had come home
rich.' Little need, however, to invent tales of hidden treasure,
witchcraft, divination, when the caves in Morwen Cove made so safe a
store-house: when the Wreckers' Hut stood behind the teeth of the Mad
Rip: when the lanes that converged upon the towns--the towns in which
queer commodities could always be sold--were so deep and secret.
Whatever the sources of his income, as fortunes went, in that remote
district, Freathy Rosevear was accounted wealthy. He was also a man to
take the eye. Big, florid, fair, he might have stepped out of a Holbein
canvas, and tales of his unusual strength were told and retold of a
winter's evening in the cottages. Did his wife complain the store of
wreck was running low? Forthwith he had gone out, caught the first of
the homing donkeys, and carried it, load and all, into her presence,
with "A fardel for my Lady"--so the story.
The man was as Saul to a kingless folk, a head and shoulders above the
multitude. Like the last of the Tudor monarchs he brought the people
among whom he lived material well-being, and, like other outstanding
personalities, stamped his impress on the current coin. Before he died
he was "Old Squire" and, as such, he lived in the long memory of the
countryside. Not that to them his death was the final exit from the
stage of his influence and activities. Though they followed him to his
burying, though they saw the sods falling earth to earth, they could not
believe that abundant, penetrating, imperial vitality could be resolved
into its elements. Recognizing that neither heaven nor hell was the
fitting place for it, they showed their faith in the life after death by
a hardy belief that Old Squire, though rendered invisible, was still
among them.
When this man's grip upon Trevorrick relaxed, the land fell to his three
legitimate sons: for his other children, and he had done his part in
peopling the neighbourhood, he had provided during his life. The
legitimate sons, Freathy, Constantine, and Tom, were good farmers all,
but cast in an ordinary mould. They lived, they replenished the earth
and, in the fullness of time, went back to it, dust to dust. A younger
Constantine now owned the mill, a younger Tom tilled the fat slopes of
Hember, and Wastralls, the cradle of the race, was become the property
of Freathy's only child, his daughter Sabina. Every rood of land in the
valley was still Rosevear property, and the cousins, shut in by their
hill boundaries, formed a community conscious at once of its kinship and
its isolation.
Of the three farms, Wastralls was the largest and most important.
Across the valley were wide commons--the wastralls--once bare, blown
sand, but now converted by spire grass into turf for the fattening of
red-brown bullocks. On the heavy land between the house and the little
stream were orchards and cornfields, while behind the cliffs, tethered
in pairs to prevent them being blown over the edge, a flock of sheep
nibbled the short grass. The manor itself was a low two-storied oblong
of country stone and, with its courts and outhouses, seemed as much an
excrescence of the rocky ground as more solid outcroppings. A grey
irregularity by day, it sank, when twilight fell, into its surroundings.
At dawn St. Cadic Mill was a black tower against the saffron; at dusk
Hember windows flamed with reflections of the west; but both at dawn and
dusk Wastralls was more a presumption than a fact. The house was older
than Hember, older than the mill, and its obscurity suggested that the
forgotten builder had hoped the Storm-god might take Wastralls in his
stride, that Death might fail, among so many grey swells and hummocks,
to distinguish it.
The place had been built to house two families. A dividing wall cut the
fine chambers on the western front from the low-pitched rooms that
looked across the yard. A green door, stout and with a heavy lock, was
set in the dividing wall to allow of communication between the old-time
lord of the manor and the bailiff who tilled his fields; but the
families, living back to back, having different modes of egress and
ingress, the one taking the field path, the other the road, preserved
each its privacy. When Old Squire brought a wife to Wastralls, she,
preferring the homeliness of the farmstead, had made it their
dwelling-place. From thenceforward the life of the house centred in the
roomy, whitewashed kitchen; and the fine chambers, swept and shuttered,
were only used on ceremonial occasions. Old Squire had no use for state
or trappings and when his son Freathy reigned in his stead, the lesser
man asked no greater luxury than had satisfied his sire.
This second Freathy married a woman so indistinct that it was a wonder
he had seen her sufficiently well to fall in love. She ruled Wastralls
with a boneless hand, and used her knees for praying rather than
scrubbing. Of this vague, colourless creature was born the vital
bright-haired Sabina. Her father welcomed her as a beginning, "first a
maid and then a child," but his wife's effort left her exhausted. The
tonic air of the valley made it difficult for her to die, but she failed
a little, month by month, until, unnoticed, she was able to slip into
her grave. Freathy's thought was "must marry again, try to get a boy;
'twon't do to let a maid be heir of the land." But he was comfortable
as a widower, more comfortable than he had been during Dusha's pious,
slatternly existence and, Time, the inexorable, drew the daisy quilt
about his neck, while he yet procrastinated.
For lack of a son Freathy had taken his daughter with him about the
farm. His thoughts being of the cattle-market, of soils and crops, it
was of such matters that he spoke; and Sabina picked up the lore of the
seasons as naturally as another child learns to sew and cook. Her
father was a man who drank, not continuously, but at intervals which,
like a perspective of posts, showed diminishing interspaces. The child
accepted his habits as she accepted rain and shine and, when he was
under the influence of liquor, did her young best to grapple with his
duties. By the time he died--from the effects of a night spent
inadvertently in the open--she had gathered a little store of
experience, had indeed been farming Wastralls for over a year. Freathy,
intending to remarry and leave hearty sons, had not troubled to make a
will and the girl of one-and-twenty succeeded to an unencumbered
freehold of five hundred acres, the manor-house and what remained of Old
Squire's savings.
Offers of help came from both Hember and St. Cadic. Each was willing to
work Wastralls with his own land, each hoped Sabina might listen to a
cousinly tale of love. She, however, having inherited the robust
confidence of her grandfather, was determined to undertake on her own
account the adventure of farming. Nor were Tom and Constantine Rosevear
altogether surprised. They had not played with her as children without
recognizing her quality; and if they wondered 'what hand she'd make of
it,' it was as those whose hearts prophesy unto them.
The brothers who had inherited Hember and St. Cadic had died young, but
each had left a son. Tom, the owner of Hember, thought that as its
fields marched with those of Wastralls, he ought to marry his cousin;
while Constantine sought her because the glint of her bright hair had
dazzled him. A fine maid was Sabina, blue eyes flush with rounded
cheeks, not the passionate eyes of Old Squire, but the blue of
ice-depths when the sun is shining in a clear sky; and when it was a
question of marriage she found the straight sticks who offered
themselves for weapon and support were of a too familiar wood. She
would go a little farther into the forest.
_Arise up, Maid, all in your gown of green_
_For summer is a-come into day;_
_You are as fine a lady as wait upon the queen_
_In the merry morning of May._
_Arise up, Maid, out of your bed_
_For summer is a-come into day;_
_Your chamber shall be strewed with the white rose and the red_
_In the merry morning of May_ [*]
[*] Padstow Hobby-horse song.
The green waves of the Atlantic roll strange flotsam into the sandy bays
of that bitter coast; and the sea, hungry though it be, can give up more
than the dead. One summer on the bosom of a forgotten sunset, a boat had
drifted into Morwen Cove, to strand, when the tide turned, amid the weed
and rubbish of the foreshore. In it, swollen with cold, unconscious,
nearly dead, lay a waif, the survivor of some obscure wreck. Leadville
Byron, a hind who with his childless wife lived over the disused
fish-cellars at Wastralls, chanced upon the boat. Its contents stirred
the father in him and, as he carried home the bit of human waste, his
anxiety was lest it might be reclaimed; indeed he never quite lost his
fear that what the sea had given the land, that unknown of towns and
country beyond the hills, might take. If inquiries were made, however,
they did not reach Trevorrick and the child, a lusty, black-browed
youngster, grew to manhood, without further change in his surroundings.
His native tongue had been unintelligible to the villagers and he could
not give himself a name. His foster-parents, therefore, felt themselves
justified in calling him Leadville. If his name were ever discovered he
could return to it, meanwhile he was buttressed against the curiosity of
strangers. As was only natural the Byrons bred him to work on the land;
and at eighteen, Wastralls--the delectable hillside, the edge of cliff,
the tumuli of the ancient folk--were all he knew; indeed, it required a
cataclysm to prove to him that he was not a clod of Wastralls earth.
In outward seeming the lad was not unlike the people among whom he
lived. A little more swarthy, with a more sombre expression in his dark
eyes, a broader chest than was often seen, he might have passed for a
Cornishman. The difference was one of temperament and it was a
difference so great, that never to the end of his life was he to be
other to them than a 'foreigner.'
One autumn, after a rainy, reedy summer, a summer of losses, Mr.
Rosevear was forced to believe he could work the farm with fewer
labourers; and young Byron, being the last to join the little band of
hinds, must be the first to go. The lad took his dismissal hardly. By
dewing the land with his sweat he had made it his and, against his will,
a deep and narrow will, he could not be disinherited. He considered
himself as much part of Wastralls as a bush of tamarisk in the hedge.
As, however, he must go, he listened to his foster-father's suggestion
and returned temporarily to the great waters which had spewed him up.
He went, but in every ship's wake, in the reek of foreign cities, in the
wind that blew from home, he saw visions of those few fields which to
him were the world. He had the inward eye of the dreamer and, as the
year turned, saw spring drawing her green skirts over the hillside and
hanging the orchard with her gossamers. He saw the dandelions starring
the thick grass by the river, the lush dark grass in which he had rolled
himself moved by the ecstasy of life; and to him the salt sea was barren
and unprofitable, a desert upon which he must go to and fro until the
days of his pilgrimage were accomplished. The death of old Byron
brought the wanderer back to Hindoo Cottage--as the fish-cellars were
called--only to find that the wife had followed her man; and that
he--Leadville the younger--was again without even the semblance of a
human tie. He had not loved the old couple, love did not at any time
come easily to him and all the emotion of which he was capable had long
been concentrated upon Wastralls; but he was anxious to secure his
foster-father's berth as teamster. To the outpourings of the neighbours
he listened unheeding and presently took his way to the farmhouse, there
to learn that Rosevear had been laid in a neater ditch than that of his
inadvertent choice and that Sabina--big, ripe, fair, a woman who might
have stepped out of the Elizabethan age--reigned in his stead.
The opportunity was self-evident and Byron, back in his place and once
more happy, soon realized that his heart's desire was within reach. It
was not Sabina that he wanted but Wastralls; and that, again, not for
ambition's sake, but because his late experience had taught him the
value of security. Asking no more of life than permission to spend his
youth, his strength, his passion on the land, he found consent in
Sabina's awakening interest. She had disdained the easy-kindled fires
of Tom, of Constantine, and of the Tregols lads, but the sombre glow in
Byron's eyes was disturbing. It moved her as something unknown and full
of a strange promise, that promise which is in the rising sap and
germinating seed. The neighbours expressed a kindly apprehension, for
though marriage between persons of different race may be eugenically
sound, it seldom brings happiness to the individual; but Sabina was
beyond reason, for in the stranger she had found her mate.
Within a month the banns were called and a little later the oddly
assorted couple pushed off into matrimony. Whereas, however, Byron
believed himself to be marrying Wastralls--the good farm and the waste
lands by the sea--making it for ever flesh of his flesh, his in
indissoluble union, Sabina did not intend to endow her lover with her
worldly goods. She held the land by right of inheritance and by a
worthier right, that of the farmer who deals understandingly with her
fields. Although she cultivated the farm in the way that had brought
prosperity to the family, her stock was pedigree and realized good
prices, her seed was the best procurable and she was always ready to try
new manures and dressings. She was not a woman of ideas, neither was
she reactionary but a fold of Old Squire's mantle hung from her
shoulders and, as the neighbours said, "to give the maid her due, her's
a first-rate farmer." She loved her farm, but as a sportsman loves a
good dog. She exacted from it the utmost it could give and was its
considerate master, but she could have no conception of Leadville's
attitude. If it had been explained to her that he loved the land as a
man loves a woman, she would have doubted her informant, and if
convinced have thought her husband a fool for his pains. As it was,
when he attempted to assert his new rights, as he did immediately after
their marriage, she stared in surprise.
"'Oo told you to give the orders to the 'inds when I've got a tongue of
me own?"
"I thought I was savin' of 'ee a lot of trouble."
"I don't want yer to do my work for me. I can do it meself."
"I should think you got enough to do indoors without goin' outdoors
workin'. I don't see what a woman want to be out in all weathers for."
Sabina laughed good-humouredly. "My dear feller, I always bin outdoor.
Rain or fine don't make any difference to me."
"Well, my dear, you'll lose all they good looks o' yours. I don't like
to see women all burned up. You'll be an old woman before you'm a young
one."
"I don't care what I be, and I don't believe a word you say is true.
Ony'ow I shall chance it."
"Well, 'tis the man's place to teel the land."
"A fine mess you'd make of it, too. Look at the Mill fields! If Con
turned the ditches out they wouldn't be so wet; even Tom don't keep 'is
fields so clean as mine."
"I don't care 'bout that, 'bain't a woman's work."
"Aw, git away. 'Tidn't all women that want to farm; but those that do,
let'm 'av it. 'Tis just whether they can farm or can't."
"Well, I think it's my business as I'm yer 'usband. You ought to let me
'av it."
"What's the good to let you 'av it, you dunno nothing about farmin'.
You bin to sea most all yer life. 'Tis years an' years since you
ploughed a bit o' ground."
A dark colour came into the bridegroom's cheek. "'Ow can you say that
when I was brought up on the land. I knaw all about farm work. 'Aving
married you, to 'av the farm's my due."
Sabina sat very straight in her chair. "Now once for all," said she,
"let's settle this matter. Wastralls is mine, and I dare you to so much
as lay a finger on it. If you want to farm so much as all that, Higher
Polnevas is to let, and its fields are joinin' ours. Why don't you go
over and take that? I'll let you 'av the money for that, but you won't
'av Wastralls."
Byron had not expected opposition. Sabina, being a woman, would
naturally be glad to have the outdoor work taken off her hands. His
surprise at her attitude was so intense that he stared at her in a
helpless silence, until she clinched the matter by exclaiming in her
hearty, fresh-air voice, "'Tis no good for 'ee to think anything about
it."
This phrase opened the flood-gates. Usually somewhat silent, he had
moods when the words tumbled over each other in a multitude beyond
counting. Perceiving he had miscalculated he set to work to retrieve
his error and, during the course of the evening, learnt many things but
not how to make Sabina change her mind. The poor man, desperately
afraid, did all he knew. He entreated and she smiled, he blustered and
she laughed, he cajoled and she warmed to him but, though she warmed,
she did not weaken. Her first word was her last: "'Tis no good for 'ee
to think anything about it."
Byron was helpless. He could not win her to his will, neither could he
break her. She was capable, as she let him see, of separating from him.
If he appealed to the hinds, they would side with her. Her cousins at
Hember and St. Cadic, the neighbours in the adjacent valleys, would take
her part.
Turning the matter over, however, he perceived that time, by giving
Sabina fresh interests, fresh cares, might prove his friend. Nurslings
tie the mother to the house and when the babies came his wife would have
her hands full. She must let go what she could not hold; and he would
be ready to pick up, bit by bit, what she let fall.
In this hope he settled to his new life. It was unthinkable that he
should attempt to farm Higher Polnevas, when his mind was filled with
Wastralls. Of a brooding nature, through which at times flames of
emotion broke, he was content to spend his days thinking out and
dwelling on the changes he would make when his opportunity came.
Sabina's farming, cautious and well-considered, chafed him. He wanted
the land to bring forth a hundredfold where she now gave a mere return.
He was her lover asking of her all that she could give, eager only to
have the exploiting of her possibilities. To make her fruitful was to
be his work. He saw the seed swell in her bosom, the silent marvel of
growth, the harvest that should reward his husbandry; and, because out
of the heart the mouth speaketh, when he talked it was of intensive
farming, of the money that lay in sugar-beet, strawberries, asparagus,
of market-gardening and the use of glass. Thereby he damaged his cause;
for Sabina, listening, came to the conclusion that she had married an
unpractical dreamer. If he believed in his theories why did he not rent
land and prove them? That he only talked, satisfied her that she had
been right in her refusal to let him farm Wastralls and her grip on the
land tightened. The kindly fields deserved better of her than that she
should put them at the mercy of a dreamer.
Whether or no the man's life that she led did her disservice, it is
certain that no children came to modify the situation. In the loft, the
carved wooden cradle lay with only the wind to set it a-rock; below, the
rooms were as empty of new life as is a whispering conch. The bustle of
the farm was like the swish of water about a rock islet, that little
spot of sterility and stagnation at the heart of multitudinous life.
Sabina, who had natural instincts, who had mothered a bibulous father
and many a bit of life from the fields and hedges, was disappointed; but
her feeling was mild compared with that of her husband. His children
were to have delivered Wastralls into his hand, assuaged at last the
long ache of his passion; but the years turned on their axes, going as
they had come. At first Byron bore himself with a good courage. After
the unprofitable days of his seafaring it was enough to watch the
tamarisk stems warming into red life, to spend the daylight wandering
over the well-known ground, to return at night to the grey house on its
shelf of rock. If, after a while, these delights palled, it was because
they led nowhither.
Meanwhile, under Sabina's judicious management, the farm prospered.
Neither cared to spend, the one because she had no wants, the other
because what he desired could not be bought. With every year the bank
stocking grew heavier, also the man's heart; and every year found his
thoughts fixed more bitterly upon his disappointment. Sabina saw but
without understanding. Her man was moody, foolish too with his perpetual
harping on his rights, but she was not thereby alienated, for, wise or
unreasonable, he was her man. Though she envied Tom his houseful of
daughters and Constantine his big sons, her own lack left her the more
leisure to care for her husband's comfort. The standard of living at
Wastralls was higher than that of the surrounding farms. Byron ate
according to his fancy and lay soft; was given indeed those things to
which he was indifferent, and denied that after which he hungered.
"I'm kep' like a prize bullock," he said morosely, "when what I want is
to be workin' and doin' for meself."
"Well, my dear, 'oo told you not to work? There's plenty to do, there's
that four-acre field, why don't yer go and plough up that, 'stead of in
'ere mumpin' about?"
"As though I was yer 'ind?"
"What, still wantin' to be maister?"
"Iss, an' shall be till I die."
"Now look 'ere. If you want money to buy Polnevas you can 'av it, but
Wastralls you will never 'av."
"Well, if I can't 'av Wastralls I won't 'av nothing; but you mark my
words"--he bent towards her and brought one hand with a thump into the
palm of the other--"if I can't 'av it by 'itch, I will by crook."
"Not so long as I live then, any'ow."
Byron was slightly underhung, a formation which gives the face a look of
strength and purpose. "We shall see, some day, which of us is the
strongest of the two."
The woman, happy in her work and with her main affection satisfied,
could answer with reasonable good-humour: "Well, my dear feller, 'tis my
land and I must do my duty by it. 'Tis I'm responsible, not you, to the
folks up yonder," and a movement of her bright head indicated the
burial-ground at Church Town. "I'm sorry you're disappointed, but I
can't 'elp it."
"Oh, hang it--sorry?"
"Well, I be sorry. I'd like for 'ee to 'av everything to make yer
'appy; but Wastralls I can't give." She smiled at him in her friendly
fashion, a sweet inviting smile. "I do my best to make it up to yer in
other ways and that you know."
"Iss, I want bread and you do give me a stone." He turned away, leaving
her, as ever, uncomprehending. It was impossible for her to think of him
as other than a child, who for his own sake must be denied and
prevented, who was hers to care for and, in ways that could not harm
him, to indulge. The truth to her, as to so many of us, would have been
unbelievable.
The break-up of the situation was due to an accident. Sabina had driven
a young horse to the fair at St. Columb Major and this animal, excited
by the unwonted traffic, the smells and the noise, became unmanageable.
Plunging down the hill, he came into collision with a heavy van. The
prancing feet slipped and he fell, shooting his driver over the shafts.
Though clear of horse and cart, she was flung with considerable violence
against the front wheel of the van. This startled the van horses and
the heavy lumbersome creatures, with a prodigious clatter, started up
the street. Sabina, rendered unconscious by the blow she had received,
had fallen between the wheels and the van, lurching forward, passed over
her.
It was thought at first that she was killed but the crushed woman who,
later that afternoon, was admitted to the little hospital at Stowe, was
still breathing. As the case seemed hopeless, the husband was sent for,
and Byron, in a ferment of excitement, came pounding in on the heels of
the messenger. His horse was in a lather when he checked him at the
hospital gate. "Poor Sabina, poor old girl, it was a terrible thing for
her to die as she lived; away from home like that. No doubt 'er 'ead
was full of the farmin', never once thought of dyin', but the Lorrd
would be merciful."
"If she's goin' to die, don't 'ee keep it from me," he said to Dr.
Derek, who was in charge of the case. "I'd rather knaw the worst."
"And," as he explained to the neighbours, on his return home, after
being allowed to glance at the unconscious face on the pillow, "the poor
doctor 'ee couldn't give me no encouragement."
*CHAPTER II*
The sight of Sabina, her florid face grey against the white bandages,
her pale lips open to facilitate the drawing of difficult breath, had
convinced her husband that she could not possibly recover. That evening
he called the hinds together, told them what had happened, and for the
first time gave them their orders. As he went back into the house, old
George Biddick, who had been many years on the farm, and was of a
noticing disposition, drew the attention of a new-come labourer to the
receding figure.
"Speaks as though 'e'd been maister all the time, don't 'e? An' carries
'isself pretty straight, too, considerin' as 'e'm bowed wi' grief."
"I don't s'pose 'e realize things yet," said Jim, a Rosevear from across
the hills. "Must 'av been tarr'ble shock for'n."
The other man glanced sideways out of small brown eyes, and gave a
non-committal grunt. He was queerly shaped, with a high-shouldered
short body and long legs and, being related to most of the cottagers,
was known generally as "Uncle George!"
"Dunno so much about that. Missus is so strong as a dunkey," he said,
as he returned to his work of bedding down the horses, "an' she may
chate the crows yet."
But Jim Rosevear was not listening, his thoughts had run before him up
the road, to where, at the stone stile, a maid would be waiting. The
rest of the world might be concerned with death; but he was young and
his concern was with life, more life.
When, on the following day, Byron rode over to the hospital, he was told
that his wife still breathed; but that an operation had become
necessary, an operation which it was scarcely possible she could
survive. He found it difficult to understand why it must be.
"Why punish 'er so? Wouldn't it be better to let 'er die quiet than to
'ack 'er about?"
The wheel of the van had gone over both legs, crushing together bone and
flesh and the surgeon proposed to amputate. The limbs were injured
beyond hope of saving; and it was explained that their removal might
give the patient a chance.
"Do you think then, sir," said the anxious husband, "that she'll be
better if she 'av the operation?"
"She may. The condition is critical and unless the operation is
performed she might at any moment take a turn for the worse." He was
afraid blood-poisoning might set in.
"I shouldn't 'av thought she'd be strong enough to bear it."
Dr. Derek's opinion was that Sabina would probably die on the
operating-table and this, without putting it into so many words, he
managed to convey. As soon as Byron understood, although the idea of
the amputation was curiously repugnant to him, he gave leave for it to
be attempted. Sabina had to die, poor soul, and it was hard on her that
the doctors should think it necessary to try their experiments on her,
should not be able to leave her in possession of her limbs. Still ...
theirs the responsibility.
Byron was allowed to remain in the hospital till the result of the
operation was known. He sat in an austerely furnished waiting-room and,
through his mind, coursed dim memories of Sabina, handsome and active,
Sabina vaulting the gates and climbing like a boy, Sabina with her free
gait and her hearty open-air voice. From the other side of the picture,
the Sabina whose mangled limbs were at that moment being cut from her
body, he sedulously turned his gaze. That she should be thus mutilated
was abhorrent to him.
Dr. Derek, his spick-and-span brightness a little dimmed and his eyes
tired, came in at last. "She's still alive, Byron."
"I didn't think she would be, sir."
The doctor hummed and hawed. The operation had been long and delicate
and he was weary; but he could not let the man take away with him an
illusory hope.
"We have to reckon," he said gravely, "with the shock to the system."
"You don't think," returned Byron in his deep rumbling bass, "as there's
much chance for 'er then, sir?"
"The condition is very serious."
"I shall be lost without 'er, even as 'tis--" he stared before him out
of the window and the melancholy of his rough, unkempt appearance
impressed the other man.
"Are you alone at Wastralls?" he asked, contrasting in a mind as neat as
his body, his trim, small house on the main street of Stowe, with the
grey homestead and irregular outbuildings of the lonely farm.
"I've a woman that do the housework but she go 'ome by night."
"Sounds a bit dreary." Dr. Derek was essentially a town bird. The
noise of footsteps on the pavement, of voices in the street, was music
to him.
"Well, it's what we'm accustomed to," said Byron carefully, "an' after
all we'm pretty and busy. O' course I got the farm to see to as Missus
is 'ere.'
"Yes, yes, of course."
"I was wonderin', sir, if you could send out and let me knaw 'ow she's
gettin' on. Course, I should be delighted to set by 'er if she knawed
me; but, seein' as poor sawl's gone past that, and I've so much to do,
I'm better off 'ome--till I'm wanted."
"I've no doubt it could be arranged. I'll speak to Matron about it."
"Thank you, sir; an', of course, anything she want she can 'av, only
send in and let me knaw. Money's no object when it's 'er life."
"You can trust me, Byron. Everything possible will be done for her,"
said the other gravely, "only, I'm afraid..."
The first bulletin that reached Wastralls told Byron to prepare for the
worst. His wife was still alive but sinking.
That day he went about the farm in a ferment of emotion. Poor Sabina,
poor soul, but if she had to die, better now when he was in his prime.
She had had a good time and now it was his turn. He trod the fields as
blessed souls may walk in Paradise. The dear land, the land he loved
deep as Dozmare, was his and he had got it fairly; he had not pushed his
wife out of it. Accident had befriended him--oh, happy accident!
When he came in from his work, he took down a well-thumbed list and
wrote an order for glass, for frames, for certain much-advertised
manures and for young plants. The season was advanced and, if he hoped
for a speedy result, he must not lose time. The next bulletin, dropping
on his happy absorption, gave but little hope that Sabina would see
another dawn. She was alive and no more.
Byron, who was at breakfast, found his hunger easily satisfied. The
letter had been meat and drink. Thoughts, indeed, of a day spent
striding over the Cornish moors, of a night in the sacred, haunted
solitudes of Rowtor passed through his mind; but, while he was
considering them, his glance fell upon the honeysuckle of the porch.
Long the pride of Sabina's heart, its untidy growth had been to him an
eyesore. Here then was the outlet for his passionate elation, an outlet,
too, symbolic of his mood. With his own hands he pulled it up, digging
out the roots so that nothing remained from which a fresh shoot might
spring. Jealousy, an old jealousy, the jealousy of the brooding years
was in the action.
Wastralls, which had been Sabina's, was to affront him with no memories
of a past humiliation. The new Wastralls was always to have been his.
At the end of the week he was surprised to learn that Sabina still
hovered between life and death. Riding into Stowe, he sought out Dr.
Derek and was reassured to find he took a pessimistic view of the case.
Though acknowledging that Mrs. Byron showed great vitality the surgeon
did not think she would outlive the week. He condoled with the farmer
and Byron, satisfied that all was well, went back to his work.
A wagon, drawn by three great brown horses, had brought from Wadebridge
the various articles which the farmer, lavish for the first time in his
life, had ordered. Having Sabina's savings upon which eventually to draw
he had commanded glass, manures, plants, in abundance. The little band
of labourers, accustomed to Mrs. Byron's caution, looked on with the
stolid disapproval of men averse to change. The delicate processes of
market-gardening were new to them and they did not think the new scheme
should have been inaugurated while she lay on her death-bed. The farmer
found them irritatingly slow, but did not realize that this seeming
stupidity was the cautious expression of their unwillingness. If the
mistress died this man would be their employer, therefore their wisest
course was to be outwardly docile but a little hard to teach. They
talked among themselves, however, and, what is more, spread the tale of
Byron's doings over the countryside.
Wind of it had already been wafted up the valley. At Hember and St.
Cadic the cousins, after trying the one for Sabina's land, the other for
her love, had long since settled to a second choice. Tom Rosevear,
indeed, had gone back to an earlier fancy, a girl with whom both he and
Sabina had been at school. Isolda Raby was the daughter of a fishseller
and her marriage with the prosperous farmer had been for her a rise in
life. Since the time they had sat on the same school bench, she had
been Sabina's most intimate crony--the only interruption to their
friendship being caused by the frailty, the land-hunger of man! But
Tom, after some plain speaking on Sabina's part, had returned to his
Isolda and the friendship had not only been revived, but placed on a
wider, more satisfactory basis.
When Sabina met with her accident Mrs. Tom's heart was wrung. An
imaginative, tender-hearted woman, she felt an anxious desire to be a
stay and a comfort, to do something, however small, to mitigate her
friends sufferings. There was at first little that she could do beyond
keeping an eye on poor Sabina's household and seeing that Leadville did
not lack food or service. After the first anxious days, however, she
was allowed into the hospital and from that time, her eldest daughter
being able to 'tend house' in her stead, she spent as many hours at her
friend's bedside as the rules of the place permitted. At first Sabina
was for long periods unconscious. She took nourishment, she drowsed,
she suffered many and various discomforts; but it seemed to her that
whenever she came to the surface her glance fell on the comforting
vision of Isolda, the same pretty matronly Isolda, who with kind talk
and kinder offices had for so long pervaded her daily life. Sabina was
so badly injured, in such incessant pain, so low in herself, that she
took little interest in her surroundings. To hear the familiar click of
the knitting-needles, to open her weary eyes on that understanding
smile, was, however, some sort of pleasure.
When Mrs. Tom heard that Byron was busy with carpenters and masons,
putting up glass-houses and introducing a new system of tillage, she was
not so much surprised as indignant. She had not gone in and out of
Wastralls every day for so many years without becoming aware of the
husband's disappointment and impatience. She understood that he, like
her own Tom, had loved the land not the woman. He, however, had not
been able to adapt himself and his life was a daily weariness. Though
she allowed that the result was a judgment on him, she found it in her
kind heart to wish that he could have had his way. The mad impatience
which made him inaugurate far-reaching changes in anticipation of his
wife's death, met, however, with scant sympathy from Mrs. Tom. A woman
of moderate councils, whose very civility sprang from a sincere
kindliness, the fact that Byron went so far as to tear up Sabina's
honeysuckle while she yet breathed, put him beyond the pale.
When the talk reached Mrs. Tom's ears, Sabina was still undecided
whether to attempt the weary climb back to health or slip quietly away.
The loss of her limbs inclined her to the latter course. She could not
bear to contemplate life as a cripple. The thought of the fields over
which she had ridden, of the market-place in which she had bought and
sold, of the whole familiar countryside, was unbearable. Better lie
quiet up at Church Town than go limping where she had once leaped and
run. Mrs. Tom, coming into the ward at a moment when Sabina, with "I
don't want any o' that old traaede," was refusing good nourishment,
decided that the truth might be as good for her as a tonic.
"How be 'ee to-day, S'bina, how be gettin' on?"
The injured woman looked at her with weary bloodshot eyes. "I dunno. I
don't feel very special."
Isolda seated herself on a cane chair facing the patient and took out
her knitting. As she made not only her husband's stockings but those of
her five daughters, she had always one on hand. "What do 'ee feel
like?"
"My dear life, I suffer like a Turk. I'd soon be dead as livin'."
Mrs. Tom's face expressed her sympathy. "'Av 'ee got much pain?"
"Yes, I ache something awful--in my legs."