He laughed contemptuously. "Ah, but you would 'av me, if I was a
widower, a widower wi' Wastralls for my own."
Putting down the pat, Gray turned at that in a sudden ruffle of
indignation.
"Take an' 'old your tongue," she commanded. "I'm ashamed of 'ee to talk
like that."
"Well," he persisted, only anxious for her to realize that he meant to
make her mistress of all he hoped for in life--Wastralls. "I may be
before long. I don't believe the missis'll live very long."
"I hate that kind of talk!"
Her anger, a spark in the dark eye, a flush on the soft cheek, became
her and he stared admiringly. Her wrath was like the peck of a captive
bird and, whatever she might say, from henceforth she would know that
his pursuing love was no light matter. "I do love 'ee so," he pleaded,
his voice dropping to an intimate compelling whisper. "I tremble when
you come into the room. But I can't set 'ere and not touch 'ee; I 'ave
to go out on cliff 'till I've walked it down. Seems sometimes at night
as if you was near me and I put out my 'and--ah, if you was there I
should die of joy. You'm mine and I've waited so long. I can't bear
it. I can't eat or drink or sleep. I'm in a fever and I ache with
longing for 'ee till I feel as if I should go mad----"
Gray caught her breath in a sob, as a soft trundling sound came from the
next room. Unable to speak she pointed shakily at the door.
Leadville also heard the sound, a scrooping noise as of rubber-tyred
wheels being turned about. Sabina was in the kitchen, could hear every
word, would probably, in another minute, roll herself in at the linhay
door. His face grew savage and rage rose in a black flood about his
heart. Was it to be always like this, was this poor remnant of
humanity, feeble, distorted, ageing, always to come between him and
Gray? His mind grew blurry with a wild spindrift of menace. Green
withes or new ropes, fools to think he could be bound by either law or
convention, he whom only the lustreless black hair of one woman might
hold. Love had come late, but it had come in overwhelming force and he
would break every convention, every law that stood in his way! Laws?
As he stood, stricken dumb by his wife's nearness, but on the edge of
passionate revolt he became conscious of a peculiar change in his
surroundings. Silence fell, a thick silence like a wall, a silence that
shut out the cackle of a hen in the yard and the distant baa-ing that
came irregularly from the hillside. The man was alone behind this wall
of soundlessness, shut away by it from the homely noises of the indoor
and the out. When it had lasted for a bewildering second, it was
succeeded by a faint far-off sound. The sound came out of a red
distance and grew rapidly louder, resolving itself at last into the
regular tap-tap of a hammer which is being used for knocking in nails.
This hammering was to Byron a familiar sound. It had been heard by him
at other times of stress and strain, at other moments when raging
passions seemed about to drive him over some dark verge. The sound was
arresting. It went as he well knew with flashes of vision, during which
he would see a piece of light wood and the glint of brass-headed tacks.
As the wood appeared out of the white mist which surrounded him, Byron
passed into another state of consciousness. His mind, abruptly
disconnected, was filled with a queer eagerness and curiosity. His
wife, Gray, Wastralls, everything, were momentarily forgotten. What was
it, this knocking? No carpenter was at work in the houses and courts;
and the wood too, a full curve narrowing to an angle, was a curious
shape. He stared about him, seeking an explanation and his eye fell on
the girl at her work.
"Did you 'ear?" he said, turning on her a face from which the tide of
emotion had ebbed.
Gray, thankful for the respite which had followed her aunt's entry, had
seized the pats and, with feverish industry was cutting pounds and half
pounds off the mass of butter.
"I heard Aunt S'bina in the kitchen," she answered coldly.
"I wasn't speaking of 'er. I meant the knockin'."
"What knocking?"
"I didn't know as the mason was comin' to-day to put up the new pigs'
'ouse?"
"He isn't coming till after Christmas."
"Well, I'm sure I 'eard some one 'ammerin' in nails."