"Go--go away?" she stammered, as if his previous words had been a
meaningless ejaculation. "Go right away? Whatever for?"
"I bin 'ere all these years and I 'aven't been 'appy. A man want a
little 'appiness in's life."
"Oh, Leadville, don't say such things. I've done my best to make you
'appy and comfortable."
"You couldn't do it," he said and added with finality, "you wasn't the
right one."
The tears were running down her face, her poor quivering face which to
his eyes looked so old, so unattractive. "I've done my best--my best."
"If I was to clear out of this..." he said, returning to what occupied
his mind. Why could she not believe him, realize that for her own sake,
she must let him go? Even now it was not too late. He glanced at the
brown jug on the stove--not too late yet.
"No," she cried, "no, don't 'ee go away."
"One of us got to go, then."
But she had found the answer, the word of power. "Not--not till death us
do part," she responded.
"Aw," he said, "and that's it. Till death us do part," and he repeated
the words as if they were the chorus of a song already sung, the refrain
of a chant known long ago and until then forgotten. "Till death us do
part."
He had spoken throughout as if hardly conscious of his words, but now a
spurt of irritation, irritation at her folly, shook him. "You and your
ways!" he cried harshly. "'Tis you that's responsible. You drove me to
do things I wouldn't do."
Relieved by his return to this more ordinary mood Sabina's courage rose.
"'Tis your own self that 'arnessed the 'arse," she said with greater
confidence. "I've 'ad nothing to do with it. My 'ands is clean."
The man's inconsequent attention was caught by her last words. Glancing
stupidly at his hands he saw to his surprise, and swiftly growing
consternation, that they were dark with blood. The minor events of the
afternoon--the slaughter of the seal, its skinning, the 'running out' of
the oil, had been forgotten. He could see no reason, no reason but the
one, for this significant stain. "Mine 'edn't," he cried shaking them as
if he would shake it off. "Can't think whatever this is!"
"Looks as tho' you got blood on them."
His first shuddering dismay changed to fear. He glanced at her
sidelong. "'Ow 'av I got blood on my 'ands, can yer tell me?"
"No, I can't." She also had forgotten the trifling incident of the
seal. "But 'tis certainly blood."
To a man in Leadville's confusion of mind, a confusion shot with flashes
of clear thought, the age of miracles was not past. That the dark
intention of his spirit should have been made supernaturally visible,
did not seem impossible, not even improbable.
"Get out--blood?" he cried furiously. "'Tis only dirt. I'll go and
wash them."
Hurrying into the linhay he began to pump water over his hands, washing
and re-washing them till they were red with cold, till not a speck of
the betraying colour remained. The flow of the water, bright and
unbroken, had a soothing effect on him. He watched it falling from the
round mouth of the pump on to the grating, listened dreamily to it
running out by the conduit under the flags; and with it his horror
drained away, leaving him at peace. As the flow thinned to a trickle,
like a child at innocent but mischievous play, he raised the green
handle and brought another rush. The winter rains had filled the well
and Mrs. Byron, though she wondered mildly what he might be doing, was
too much occupied with her griefs to pay much attention.
However stout a woman's common sense it crumbles before such simplicity
as that of Leadville. Alleging a long unhappiness, he had begged for
the freedom which should straighten out the tangle of his life. "If I
was to clear out of this--" he had said.
To accord it, was not in her. If their marriage was a mistake as he
averred, and she could not grant that it was, the mistake once made must
be accepted. They must, as she had said, 'make the best of a bad
bargain.' Gray married and out of reach, Leadville would surely
remember that when he had wandered into Trevorrick, like some flying
creature into a garden, she had been the one, of all those rooted there
who, opening her heart, had given him shelter. She could not take
seriously that desire of his to spread his wings and lift himself once
more into the blue. What was there for him, now that he was no longer
young, but the security of the garden, the sheltering walls of that one
heart?
Sabina, hungry for an old age of peace and affection, turned in thought
to a couple well known in Tregols, the Henwoods of Curyarnon. Married
after a long courtship and the father of boys and girls, Mr. Henwood had
yet had two sons by a woman of the village. Though the scandal was open
the wife had chosen to ignore it and, in the end, he had gone back to
her. Now, an example of senile devotion, they were tottering hand in
hand down the gradual hill. Sabina envied them. Like Mrs. Henwood she
felt that she could wait and, when the time came, forgive.
The kitchen was always tidy, but some of the parcels that had been
brought from Stowe still lay on the side-table and, rolling herself, in
tired fashion, across the room she began to sort them. Cottons,
needles, a roll of flannel, unbleached calico for the hams and a new
account-book, they were speedily drafted into drawers and work-box; but
behind the parcel of drapery lay an object, the purchase of which she
had forgotten. For a moment she looked at it in sadness and
uncertainty; then, with the faint dawnings of a smile. Gray had
executed the commission with which she had been charged. She had bought
the pipe, a good one with an amber mouthpiece, and it lay before Sabina
on the blue and red table-cloth. Leadville smoked by fits and starts
and, for some days, his foul and blackened pipe had lain untouched on
the mantelshelf. With the thought of the man's material welfare she put
the new pipe by the old. Let him go? Go where? He had no trade, no
money and he was getting 'up in years.' Her kind heart saw him drifting
on the tides of poverty, saw him submerged and she shook her head. For
this reason and for every other, she must not let him have the freedom
that he asked--it was too late.
For a moment the oppression that was clouding her mind lifted on a
sunset thought. She could imagine his surprise when he found the new
pipe by the old, his pleasure and the word of thanks she would be
accorded. By then he would know Gray was out of reach and though his
vanity might suffer--not even now could the wife believe it was more
than vanity--the pipe smoked and smoking sweetly, must remind him of the
tried companion who for so many years had looked after his creature
comforts, and given him with one exception, everything he asked.
She must have patience.
She was so tired that if she did not go to bed she felt she would sink
away through cone and trolly, sink into nothingness. Lifting the jug of
cocoa from the stove and carrying it with her, she went out of the
kitchen and down the long passage to her room.
"Good night!" she called.
*CHAPTER XIV*
Sabina's voice, not having been modified by the habit of rooms, had a
resonant, carrying note. "Good night!" she had said and the sound,
travelling out to the linhay, fell on Leadville's ears.
Through the skylight in the high sloping roof, the moon was dimly
sketching shelves and barrels, and the absorbed figure of the man. He
stood, his eyes fixed on the swelling and diminishing flow of the water,
his hand on the pump. The bell-like voice calling Good night, a good
night to new days and the following years, broke the spell. The two
short sounds did not, however, reach his mind as a word with a certain
meaning. They were to him the beginning of a familiar sequence of
sound. Tap, tap, tap, the hammer was at work again. A puzzled look
came into his eyes and he drew his black brows together in the effort to
understand who was knocking in--not nails, no, but large-headed brass
tacks. He became aware, in some inward manner which yet was convincing,
of a polished surface of light wood on which were two curving rows of
round brass heads, two complete rows. The shaped board with the rows of
cut clasps was oddly familiar. He had seen it before, but where? He
struggled to retain the vision, to see more, but it broke into
innumerable yellow points, specks of dancing light. He shook his rough
head as if the lights were dazzling him and, turning away, began to dry
his hands. From time to time he had had glimpses of wood and even of
brass nails, but never so clear a vision. He wondered whether, now that
the rows were complete to the last round head, the knocking would cease,
this knocking which had haunted him for so long.
In order to husband the lamp-oil Sabina, before going to bed, had
lowered the wick, but Byron had a dislike of shadows and obscurity.
Before he turned up the light, however, a furtive glance assured him the
brown jug was gone from the stove.
Its disappearance, though expected, gave him a shock. While he, in the
linhay, had been oddly forgetful of the event he had prepared, the
moment had come and passed, that moment so heavily charged with
possibilities, the moment of the last chance. It was as if, having laid
the train, another had touched off the fuse. The matter had been taken
out of his hands and, though startled, he was conscious of relief. The
thing was done.
Old Squire's chair, which stood during the day to the right of the
hearth, had been pushed against the wall. Sabina, tidying the room, had
supposed that her husband would soon go to bed; he, however, was no more
conscious of a desire for rest than if it had been morning. Replenishing
the fire he sat down, but though the maker of the chair had shaped it
cunningly, Byron neither leaned back in it nor relaxed his limbs.
The catch of the door opening into the house was weak and, suddenly, the
long passage that began at the kitchen and ended at the justice-room,
was filled with whispering sounds. A breeze, wandering in, had lost
itself in the darkness. It pulled at the handle until Leadville,
sitting forward, his head sunk between his shoulders in the attitude of
a bird of prey, his mind concentrated on the approaching and dreadful
and longed-for end, looked up. For him the breeze was winged with fear.
He fancied that the handle moved. Could Sabina be coming back for
something she had forgotten? She had a fancy that she suffered from
cold feet, that she must have a flagon of hot water in the bed. To
Leadville this fancy had seemed part of her general unreasonableness.
"Yer laigs are gone," he had said irritably.
"As long as they're above ground-'they bain't gone."
"Any'ow you can't 'av cold feet."
"I tell yer, I can't sleep for 'em."
"Well, what's the good of a 'ot jar at the bottom of the bed when you'm
to the top?"
"I put the bottle," she had said obstinately, "where I feel my feet's
to. That's where I feel cold."
He remembered to have seen on the linhay shelf the old Hollands jar
which was used as a hot-water bottle. Was she returning to fetch it?
Was it her fingers that were moving the little brass door-knob? His
fear grew until it mastered him. He had done with Sabina and she must
not come back. He could not stand it. If she swung in on that loathly
trolly and began to potter about, heating water, looking for the flagon,
he felt that some containing wall would bulge and give and what was held
up by it fall into the open.
"I should 'av to tell her," he said, staring at the handle. "Shouldn't
be able to keep it in. 'Twould be out of me mouth before I knawed."
On that coast a gale may be blowing great guns one moment and the next
drop into silence. The land wind which had piled cove and bay with the
welcome oreweed had died down during the day and, out of the north, had
come a flock of small white clouds. They trailed on their unknown
errand across the sky and behind them, like a sheep-dog, ran a fitful
wind. It sang in the ears of the old house and Leadville, made aware of
it, turned his eyes contemptuously from the spasmodically moving
door-knob. "That's only the wind," he muttered.
The rocky shelf on which Wastralls was built, lying behind Dark Head and
lower than the ridges of the valley, lay also below the wind. A
thickness on the turning earth it lay in an unnatural hush. On the
beaches the tides roared and thundered. Above, but divided from the
homestead by wide, clean, moonlighted space, the winds shrieked a
warning; but the house, except for that one breath of disturbed and
whispering sound, was very still. It kept a vigil. Byron, motionless in
Old Squire's chair, knew that he too was waiting.
A board, in which were bolt-holes, which had indeed been part of a ship
wrecked long ago, creaked loudly, startling the watcher. With whirring
note the old clock had told the hour, once, twice, but he had not marked
it. He had been like one turned to stone. In him only one tract of
consciousness had burned with life and this glow, fierce and steady,
burned in the innermost place, in the darkness and silence that are
beyond thought. Recalled to the surface, the man became conscious of
numb limbs and an aching back. He stretched himself, a little and very
cautiously. He was not anxious to draw attention to himself. With the
same caution he put another log on the sinking fire. He had been
waiting, for what he hardly knew; but the dream, the old secret dream to
which his clumsy hands had given form and substance, was rising through
the blackness and the silence, changing into a fact. As he leaned back
in the Windsor chair, he was being shown a picture, a picture from
which, if he could, he would have turned his eyes. He was looking into
the big shadowy justice-room at the end of the passage, the room in
which Sabina lay.
He saw the grey walls, the little old windows curtained with white
dimity and the four-poster which, for so long, had been the bed of
bridal and of birth, the death-bed of a family. In it Old Squire had
lain him down to sleep and then to die. In it his childless descendant
was drawing her last breaths. Her last breaths! Byron saw them coming
slowly, a mist on the cold air, more slowly and then no mist. Sabina
was about to die. Die? He said the word softly to himself. His wife,
the woman at whose side he had lived for so many years, was about to
die. He shook his head over the word as something of which the meaning
escaped him, which was portentous, which stirred him in a dim elemental
way, but which he could not grasp. Sleep he could understand. Sabina
asleep was something he had often seen. A healthy creature, once she
had shut her eyes, she did not stir till morning. He was different,
found it difficult to lose himself, slept lightly as a cat and dreamed.
Day-dreams and night-dreams, he had lived in dreams; but Sabina...
She was asleep now. She was sleeping dreamlessly and from this empty
sleep she would not rouse. Daylight would broaden in the east, the
farmyard stir with life, and feet would come and go in the house. Do
what they might, however, she would not waken. He frowned, knitting his
brows over the to-morrow which was about to dawn, the to-morrow in which
Sabina had no part. That she who was so vigorously alive should thus
have been wiped out, that she should have gone, not for a little time
but for ever, was unthinkable and yet...
A nerve vibrated with relief, with a slow thick satisfaction. Gone was
she? In their long struggle then, he was the victor? He had come into
the open, fought for the woman that he loved, the bit of land that was
his 'by rights.' He had always had it in him to fight but not until
driven to extremities had he shown his mettle. At long last he had
proved that he and not Sabina was the one who counted, that
fundamentally he was the stronger.
And yet...
The shallows of his mind were alive with darting thoughts. The long
long contest had been declared in his favour, the adversary was not so
much beaten as destroyed and yet, on the heels of his rejoicing, crept
little yapping doubts.
The vision of the justice-room, of that quiet figure in the quiet
chamber, was for him repellently interesting. As long as he could
imagine the fine mist of her breath, the rising and falling of her
breast, he was only conscious of his approaching triumph. Time,
however, brought a change, for now Sabina was more than quiet, she was
still. Her blue eyes were frozen, she rested in a peace deeper than that
of sleep and, whereas the sleeper is harmless...
Though he did not yet understand, his satisfaction began to dwindle. He
drew nearer to the hearth, to the warm living fire. The wind still
shrieked a warning overhead but on the house, especially the part beyond
the kitchen, a hush had fallen. Byron found the silence oppressive. If
a mouse had come out of the wainscot and flitted bright-eyed about the
floor, he would have welcomed it, but the place was empty even of minute
and furtive life. The thick walls leaned together, brooding over
stagnant space, over the dust of dead hopes, the smell and the suspicion
of mould, of more than mould. They shut the man in with his dry husk of
satisfaction, bade him observe it shrivelling before a new growth, a
growth at which he dared not look, it seemed so closely to resemble
fear.
Yet--fear?
In the unhappy past he had borne himself stoutly on the assumption that
he was the stronger, that he had only to rise and assert himself. That
very day he had put this contention to the proof and now Sabina, in her
new stillness, was threatening--what was she threatening?
If he were to smoke a pipe he would be more at ease! Pipes were
associated in his mind with long dreams of Gray, when he had wandered
over the springy turf of the headland, seen her hair in the brown weed
of the pools, the curve of her brow in the gull's wing; when he had sat
by the fire and his vision had been broken, like water, by the light
passing of her feet. Smoking, he might be able to banish the stark
figure in the great four-poster and the crowding thoughts connected with
it, might be able to replace them with Gray. He rose to fetch the
tobacco-jar. It stood among the bottles on the cupboard shelf and to get
it he must turn his back upon the door into the passage, upon that door
behind which lay a something against which, though he could put no name
to it, he must be on his guard. For a moment he hung irresolute on one
foot, then sank back in the chair. He could not go. Though such a
brave fellow and so strong, he did not dare.
During his intermittent labours he had slaughtered, as part of his work,
every sort of farm creature. Sheep, pigs, bullocks, old and diseased
animals, the wild-fowl that came over Trevorrick in the winter, the
seals that haunted Morwen Cove. He had slaughtered as a duty. The
creatures were, to him, food or refuse and he had killed them. He had
also killed Sabina.
He tried to think of her as so much dead flesh, an old animal, maimed,
useless, and perverse; but though the distorted trunk of Sabina might be
dead, the dominant spirit with which he had been for so many years in
conflict, that he had not killed. The vision of Sabina's dead body and
frozen eyes began to fade. Worse things were about than bodies and
glazed sightless eyes.
His wife had shown her affection for him by a cheery liking for his
society, by an occasional shy caress. Although she used round terms she
had been easy-tempered and if it had not been for Wastralls, that bone
of contention, he would have had a good life with her. Sharp with the
hinds, direct of speech, he had never seen her roused to wrath. She had
told him once "It was not worth while being angry."
"I don't believe as you could, not to say, lose yer temper."
"Oh couldn't I, there's them that know; but it would be fulish to lose
it for a trifle."
From the respect with which the labourers treated her, Byron had
realized that her cheeriness must cover depths. She had impressed the
men with a sense of power that had been limited, comfortably, by the
flesh.
He found that he was trembling, that it needed all his strength to
prevent his teeth from chattering. The fire had sunk to a heap of
glowing ash and the December night was cold. With wary eye upon the
door, he piled the grate high with logs, the last logs in the box.
In the past he had often taken sly and secret advantage of Sabina's
trust. With a word here, a gesture there, he had tried to undermine her
authority, turn local feeling in his favour. He had not dared an open
break for that would have meant, or he believed it would, the severance
of their relations. At last, however, his furtive tentatives had been
laid aside and the accumulated unhappiness of the years had found vent
in one soul-satisfying dastard blow.
In her blithe confidence Sabina had shut her eyes to the small
disloyalties of the past. If she were aware of them she had, in her
large-hearted way, forgiven. Now, in that grey and white room at the
end of the passage, the parting of spirit from body must unroll before
her the sordid past. She must learn that, after eating and drinking in
domestic trust the food she had prepared, he had dropped poison in her
cup.
Once more he found that he was trembling. He glanced at the fire but
blue and purple flames were licking round the logs; the dank air was
shot with an increasing warmth and, in the centre of each little
window-pane, was a star of gold light. He had shivered, not because he
was cold, not because the wind out of the north was mourning as it
fleeted with cloud and moonshine overhead; but because he realized that
having slain the body he was afraid of the spirit he had released.
Byron had not lived in the West without absorbing the beliefs of the
countryside. He knew who in the hamlet had been 'piskie-led'n,' whose
best horse had been inexplicably found dead, which bit of woodland was
haunted. He had listened to the little feet that patter behind the
wayfarer yet leave no prints on the soft sand and he had watched for the
white rabbit that leaps and gambols on the bit of clear road by the
graveyard, the rabbit that can be neither shot nor snared. With other
of his neighbours, he did not care to pass sombre low-lying Treglyn
after dark. The little ghost of an inconvenient child was said to rise
out of the garden earth and Byron, at least, never caught sight of the
house--a lurking house, set round with tamarisks--without remembering
what of crime and horror had happened there, what still happened when
the moon was at the full.
Such a man was at the mercy of superstitious fear. The quietude in
which at first he had waited had been due to weariness, to a reaction
from the intense emotion which had preceded his act. This expectant
calm, however, had gradually become shot with doubt. His mind had
wakened to a new aspect of the matter. Attempting to wrest Wastralls
from a hand of flesh and blood, he found in its place the clasp of
spectral fingers.
Byron, looking into the future saw a ghostly presence in the ancient
house, saw it gliding on the old errands, pervading the rooms and
passages. Would others see it too; would they, perhaps, perceive
without seeing? He wondered whether Gray...?
Would that dim ghost avenge itself on him by trying to come between him
and Gray, by intruding on their tender _tete-a-tete_, by filling the
maid's mind with foul suspicion?
No tie is so close as that of blood and the women were of one family.
Would Gray be sensitive to that flitting shadow? Behind the veils of
the flesh, would spirit be able to communicate with spirit? Would the
truth, whispered in every corner of the house, grow into a following
fate? In time, when the maid had come to love him, she would glory in
his having stopped at nothing to win her. But a first flicker is easily
extinguished.
The hour was late and, in his growing discomfort, his growing fear,
Byron thought of his chill room at the top of the house. He went there
for sleep and sleep meant the laying by of dread, it meant escape. He
glanced at the door which hung, quivering now and again under the
uncertain onslaught of the wind, between his lighted shelter and the
dark. He was thinking of another door, the one that shut Sabina into
the justice-room. If ne tried to make for his burrow, for that safe
place he knew of, he must pass it. Could he? His mind answered the
challenge with a quick defiance. Could he? Of course he could..
He put his hands on the arms of the chair and sought to rise. He swayed
his body forward, big head and broad deep-chested bulk; but under him
his limbs failed. They hung leaden, lifeless. Not only had it become
impossible for him to pass that farther door which stood sentinel by the
foot of the stairs, but even to move. Escape through the gates of sleep?
No, not by any gate.
She, to whom the injury had been done, was become his judge. She knew,
at last, that she had been married for her inheritance; endured as a man
endures the mole on his face and finally, for the sake of another woman,
pushed into the grave. Events, stripped of life's concealing leafage,
would be bare to her informed considering eye. Sabina had been wronged
from the first day of their meeting to the last. Always a swift clear
creature, he thought of her as running through the midnight passage,
intent on vengeance, merciless.
The latch rattled suddenly, increasing the man's dread. He forgot the
fitful wind, the faulty lock. His vivid imagination showed him,
instead, a hand upon the door-knob, outlined for him in the night of the
passage, a dim and bodiless greyness, told him the frail barrier of wood
was all that stood between him and a just but awful vengeance. No
wonder that mere flesh and blood shrank cowering, that to the guilty
creature it was as if his parts were falling away from him, as if he
were sinking into the thin unprotected shell of himself.
A gust of wind tore across the wide peace of the sky; and a loose tile
slipped to fall crashing on the roof of the porch. The sharp smash of
glass let in the night, let in the wind and the heavy roar of the sea.
Byron, drowning in superstitious terror strained his ears to catch,
among the many sounds, that which should fulfil his dread anticipation;
and as he waited, as he listened, the latch of the door slipped over the
catch.
Slowly the green door swayed to an impulse from the farther side. Cold
air poured into the room from all the unwarmed chambers beyond the
kitchen, from that great room at the end. The narrow strip of black
began to widen ominously and, in Byron's guilty breast, it was as if his
heart had ceased to beat. Between his lips, his dry tongue made a
hoarse feeble sound, neither a cry nor a groan, but the utterance of a
man in his extremity. The door swung creaking on its hinges and the
flame in the ill-fed lamp leapt up and died. Above the other sounds,
above that distant roar and the creaks and murmurs of an old draughty
house, rose a heavy stumbling, the crash of a fall. The outer edge of
fear, the limit of endurance had been passed and Byron had fallen in a
swoon across the hearth.
*CHAPTER XV*
Behind the hurrying clouds the moon had risen into a clear space of sky
and now hung low, her chill yet faithful breast towards her mate. The
light fell on the yard of Wastralls, on the still pond in the corner and
the geese sleeping beside it, on the irregular outline of the houses and
courts, and on the windows of the farmstead.
At one corner a little casement, that looked towards the morning sun,
was swinging open, its white curtain flowing in the stream of air; and
on the porch, through the black aperture of a broken pane, the light
poured over winter-nipped geraniums. It poured too, through the
diamonds of the kitchen window and lay in bright squares on table and
floor. The ill-fed lamp, expiring in the sudden draught from the porch,
had tainted the air and time had drawn over the face of the fire a veil
of ash.
What looked like a heap of rags had been flung across the desecrated
hearth. It lay beyond the square of moonlight and below the faint glow
of the smouldering logs and, but for its density, might have been a
companion shadow to those whispering in the corners of the wide low
room.
With a clash of metal upon metal a door swung to, failed to catch and
banged again. The huddle of clothes, as if recalled to life by the
broken irritating sounds moved a little, and presently dragged itself
with evident difficulty into a sitting posture. Byron, falling across
the fender, had bruised himself against the steel edge; and he came out
of nothingness into dull but growing discomfort. His shoulder, having
struck the boss of the oven door, pained him; his head, having hit the
stone floor, ached. What had happened? How had he hurt himself? Why
was he lying on the kitchen floor? His heavy head swung round till his
gaze was caught by the fitful movement of the door. He knitted his dark
brows but the memories connected with it escaped him. A current of air
was passing through some open window into Wastralls and, in obedience to
its impulse, the door was swinging. The man's mind, alive to the
practical, went from window to window on the ground-floor, until it
found the one of which the fastening was insecure. He settled on it
with a feeling of satisfaction and, making a further effort, dragged
himself to his feet.
In spite of the low fire and the thin current of wintry air flowing in
from the passage, the atmosphere of the kitchen was warm and pleasant.
The moonlight made the few pieces of furniture, the high glazed china
cupboard, the press, the tables, dimly visible. Byron, his hand to an
aching back, was conscious of the homely comfortable nature of his
surroundings.
He had forgotten the extremity of terror out of which he had slipped
into a merciful unconsciousness, but he was still confused, still sore
and, in the familiar aspect of the room, he found a certain solace.
This was his home, his place, his for as long as he should live. He had
a feeling that something had happened which made the place more
indubitably, absolutely, his, than hitherto and, balancing himself first
on one foot then on the other, he stared about him, heavily content.
The thick walls, the many-paned windows, the plain familiar black of the
rafters and white-wash of the walls! His! His till the end of time! He
smiled to himself and the smile on that haggard, blood-stained face, was
that of a child who after long waiting has been given the plaything it
desires.
The arms of the big chair wooed him to comfort, but out of the void
Byron had brought the conviction that his work was not yet finished. In
a dull bemused way, the way of a man conscious of little but physical
weariness, he pondered the effort which was required of him. What was
it he had to do, before he could slouch away to bed?
His glance swung from side to side, questioning the friendly faces of
the furniture, pausing eventually on the still swinging door. That
door, yes. He considered its dark oblong and shining handle. The round
brass knob, bright in the general dimness, a tiny moon against the
blackness of the door, drew him; yet, deep in himself, was a stiff
reluctance. He groped in the confusion of his mind for understanding,
until suddenly, like an Icelandic geyser, memory tore its way out.
He remembered! They--a vague they of several personalities--had goaded
him to desperation. He saw himself crossing a room, taking a bottle out
of the cupboard, pouring the contents into a jug. One moment he had
been innocent of this tremendous act, in the next it was accomplished.
He stood amazed at this new vision of himself, the doer of deeds. The
lack of hesitation, the steadiness, the decision surprised him. He had
not known of what he was capable and, for a moment, he was wholly
pleased.
Further recollections showed a falling off. He had become gradually
conscious of guilt, he had grovelled in superstitious terror. Guilt?
He shook his head, like a dog shaking drops of water from its coat. A
man may do what he can. His deeds are between him and his soul; and the
fear of punishment is a survival from the times when he was subservient
to the will of another. Whatever the quality of a man's deeds, the
doing of them proves him. Byron, his back to the dying fire, his dark
head rising above the mantelshelf, drew himself up. He had been
humiliated and he resented it. Living by faith, he had long cherished
the difficult belief that of the two personalities, his and Sabina's,
his was the stronger. True, he had wasted his energies in a daydream
while she ordered their lives; but he had known that this must come to
an end and, behold, when the crucial moment arrived, he had played a
man's part. If she were able to see the past in true perspective she
must acknowledge the provocation given; must see that he had been
driven, that no other course was open to him. A longer endurance on his
part would have been weakness and would have justified her in
withholding the land. She must, at long last, see how wrongly she had
acted.
If, on the contrary, she were to resent his snatching from her that poor
fag-end of life, if she were incapable to seeing his point of view, if
in unsaintly rancour she decided to haunt her old home, he decided that
he would not care. A spirit hand cannot strike, nor a ghostly whisper
vex. She might wander through Wastralls, wail in the keyholes and the
chimneys, but it should make no difference. She would be but a fancy of
the dusk, a shade flitting from room to room, a presence. If Gray
became conscious of it, she would only voice a regret which had already
lost its poignancy. Sabina could not interfere with their possession of
her house and property. She might 'walk' but, as he did not believe she
could divulge the secret of her death, 'walk' she might.
Moreover, if she haunted Wastralls, it would only be to see come to pass
what she least desired. Another would farm the land, another take her
place indoors. For her to haunt them would only bring her additional
pain. She, not they, would suffer. Byron laughed hoarsely, for by
killing her he had indeed avenged her treatment of him; but, in that
contented laughter, was still a note of surprise. He had known that he
could act with decision, yet was surprised to find that he had done so.
A thin wave of self-gratulation flowed over his weary mind. He had
justified himself; yet--had he--altogether?
A man is not looked on as a 'foreigner' by his neighbours without
knowing and resenting it. Only by an assumption of superiority can he
equalize matters. For many years Byron had been contemptuous of the
opinions held by the community. At last his contempt had found concrete
expression. He had dared and he knew that no man of that community, no
Rosevear, Brenton or Old would dare as much. Yes, he had shown a
courage such as they, if they knew of it, must secretly envy and yet...
He had not been altogether brave. Though he had taken life he had been
abjectly afraid. Unable to recapture the ecstasy of that anguish he
looked back in shame and doubt. Unseemly terror had given shape to a
black nothing and that nothing had been stronger than he. Before he
could be at peace with himself he must rise above this humiliation,
prove it to have been momentary, a lapse.
Stiffening himself, he gazed at the door which had now swung wide,
uncovering the black mouth of the passage. What a fool he had been to
think that Sabina had come in search of him. And even if she had?
Afraid of a dead woman? He set his teeth yet felt his heart leaping and
the blood singing in his ears. Afraid? He would show--himself--that
nothing, neither apparition nor invisible presence, could daunt him.
Let Sabina have her will, she was only Sabina. He grasped eagerly at
the new thought. Only Sabina! Not some unknown unimaginable terror,
but the tame convenient Sabina with whom he had lived in domestic
intimacy for so long. How could he have fancied that by dying she had
become invested with horrific power? He cursed his folly; and the words
that came to his tongue were big-sounding foreign words that he had
already uttered once that night, words which had come to him out of the
days when he had sailed with strange men in strange waters. The curses
were echoed back to him out of the passage and, for a moment, the sound
once more stirred his blood with the cold finger of fear. This time he
only swore more loudly, and the old words, evoking the atmosphere of
daredevilry with which he had been once familiar, gave him courage.
Memories that lay at the back of his mind, memories of lands where human
life is of less importance than that of a sheep, of dangers and
adventures, recurred to him. His voice was no longer a hoarse threat.
It filled the kitchen with a round full sound, dominating the seen and
the unseen, stiffening him until he knew there was nothing he would not
dare. He would even walk down the passage between the kitchen and the
justice-room and open that green door at the end.
Those roistering nights in South American cities had been a reaction
from the pent life on shipboard, had been spiced with hot dangers, mad
loves and sudden death; but this last adventure was one on which no man
would willingly embark. Byron, with his heart cold and middle age in
his limbs, would go as a man goes on direful errand. He would go because
he must prove his courage, his right to take Sabina's place, to own
Wastralls, to play the lover. This was his hour and, if he avoided the
issue, he must admit that those--he said 'those' but he meant one
only--who had held him of no account were right. Byron's outer life had
for many years been eventless; but his dreams had been a shifting drama
full of colour, a play enacted for one spectator, himself. Now that
dissatisfied one was insisting on reality instead of dreams and, in his
state of dull-reaction from the terrors of the supernatural, he was
willing. He saw, however, that what was to do, should be done at once.
The courage of flesh and blood is a poor thing at best and, if he stayed
upon his going, likely to run out at the finger-tips.
His hands, as he took a candle from the linhay shelf and lighted it,
were cold. Drawing water, he braced himself by drinking great gulps of
the icy fluid; and, thus invigorated, returned to the kitchen with his
head up. Nor, indeed, until he reached the door did he hesitate and
then it seemed to him that the room was a snug place and quite
peculiarly safe. In leaving it he was courting danger, leaving himself
without a wall to set his back against!
The candle flame leaping in a cross-current of air, revealed the door at
the end of the passage, and Byron saw with relief that it was shut.
This to his mind proved the hollowness of his late fears. A spirit
should be able to pass through the wood of a shut door, to slip through
crack or keyhole; but the contrary is maintained by those who claim to
know. Doors, they say, may be burst open, handles may turn without
visible agency; but, once the bolt is shot or the key turned, the haunt
must remain on the other side. That closed green door proved to Byron
that the disembodied Sabina had not left her room, that his terrors had
been without foundation. With his lips twisted in a contemptuous grin
he stepped into the passage.
His nailed boots struck the stones with a clash that echoed up the
staircase. Wastralls was so resoundingly empty that the brave sound was
heard whispering away in the attics, whispering as do the monuments of
extinct families in the week-day quiet of a church. Step by step, for
the air seemed to him of the consistency of mud, the man pushed his way.
To left of him were doors, doors without significance, doors which
opened upon innocent and commonplace parlours. He passed these without
seeing them and came at last to the heavy door of the old justice-room.
This door had a strong lock and was of stout wood. Nevertheless, it was
being shaken from within and, for a moment, Byron's courage failed.
Remembering the draught in which his candle had flared, however, the
cold air which had poured into the kitchen, he understood. A wind was
tearing at the door, a draught from some window which had been blown
open. He suspected the little Gothic casement in the eastern wall, the
wood of which he knew to be worm-eaten and the fastening worn. It
occurred to him, that, if for no other reason, he must have come in to
close that window. As he pushed open the door, the waiting wind swooped
on the candle flame and left him in darkness. A noise of banging and
howling assailed his ears; but the countryman, his superstitious fears
held at arm's length for the nonce, recognized it. He had been right.
The Gothic window, which a sun-lover had set in the three-foot wall, was
open and knocking against the plaster. Byron, forcing himself to walk
with deliberate steps, crossed the room and shut it. At once the old
stillness fell over the place, the silence that is more alarming than
any sound. Byron, his back to the window, listened but the hush was
unbroken. Nothing moved, nothing even breathed. He relighted the
candle and a host of shadows darted away. The room, which had been a
mere cavern of the winds, showed an accustomed face, the shining
features of old furniture, the outline of a monumental bed. He looked
about, anxious to establish a feeling of friendly relationship. These
objects, giving service for house-room, had shared the place with him.
They were older than he, so old they seemed to him part of Wastralls.
The familiar shapes were pleasing to him. He raised the candle but, as
he did so, became vaguely aware of change. The furniture wore a new
look. The faint life that dwelt behind its wooden surfaces seemed,
suddenly, to have grown less remote. He felt that the pieces were
watchful and no longer friendly. He had lived with them in a long peace
but, on that night, a pact had been broken. They knew and from being
household goods had changed to household gods, the guardians of the
home. No longer fitting obscurely into their appointed places, they had
an air of purpose. They seemed on the verge of movement. Byron,
startled by their covert hostility, yet drew his brows together. "Pack
o' nonsense for me to think like that," he muttered, and thereby sealed
their doom. When he brought Gray home he would send this old stuff to
the dealer and buy new furniture, light woods, mirrors, bamboo. In
spite of his stout heart, however, he stepped away rather hastily from
the tall-boy. It appeared, in the uncertain light, to be leaning
treacherously forward, to be about to fall and, with its weight of
mahogany, to crush whatever was within reach.
The covert malignancy of these shining and familiar faces impressed
Byron, but a man can conquer the inanimate, he can rend and smash and
burn; at least he can if, aware of hostility, he were careful to strike
first.
With an effort, he steadied himself. Before him, vast and shadowy, the
great bed of 'Old Squire' stood out from the wall and Byron turned
towards it with a tread that shook the ancient floor. Sabina had taken
a housewifely pride in this bed. Every spring it had been stripped of
curtains and valances, of ceiling and headcloths and of padded
foot-cover. These when washed had been restretched, backaching job, to
retain that stiff spotlessness for a twelvemonth. Sabina had never
omitted an iota of this ritual. As the bed had been handed down to her,
so it should be kept. The spring cleansing and restretching were part
of the mysterious rhythm of life.
Beside the curtain stood that piece of mechanism which had enabled
Sabina to move about the house and from which every night she swung
herself into bed. On the other side was a small table on which lay a
candlestick and the brown cocoa-jug.
As he approached the bed, the man forgot the dim hostility by which he
was surrounded, in a practical doubt. How if the poison had proved
insufficient and she should open her eyes, those ice-blue eyes and ask
what had brought him thither? For a moment he stood humbly at the foot
of her bed. He dared not look.
The candle-light fell on a quiet face, on closed eyes, on shut lips.
She had said--"Good night."
Sabina lay on her back, a squat figure, occupying in that great bed but
a little space. The bright silk quilt had been folded neatly back over
the mahogany foot and her covering was as white as the hangings. It
swept in a generous curve over her breast, this breast which no longer
rose and fell.
The man ventured, at last, to look and his heart leapt with relief, with
more than relief, with a primitive and savage joy. In the long struggle
between them he had won.
The rose had faded from Sabina's cheek, but her lips were curving as if
over a pleasant thought. She had taken with her into the dark the hope
that she and her husband might soon be reconciled, that years of concord
lay before them and this sweet expectation had given her a look of
unfathomable peace. The serenity of her dead face was that of the blue
night, the night that is beyond the clouds of earth. She was no longer
the successful farmer, the stoutest heart in Tregols, but something
infinitely remote. In dying she had proved that if life is transitory
and insignificant, death hides behind closed lips, an intriguing
mystery. Byron, vaunting the folly of a mad moment, of a dark dream
interpretated in terms of earth, became slowly conscious of it. Drop by
drop, the passion of his exultation fell. This was not the workaday
woman he had known, the woman whose obstinacy and unreasonableness had
so angered him, but a creature spiritually changed. He could not feel
that she would bear any resentment against the instrument of what was,
undoubtedly, a release. Life had chained and prevented her, now she was
free and he no longer counted with her in any way. She was afar off.
Human interests had dwindled to the humming of a hive and he, whom she
had cherished, was become one among many. The conviction of this was
not only humbling, it brought a sense of loss. The place where he had
been wont to sit at ease had been shut against him and the door locked
and bolted. He was outside and unimportant and forgotten.
The last dregs of his excitement ran out leaving him with a sense of
emptiness. Sabina was dead and death had raised a barrier between them
which should have given him a sense of security. But from such a one as
the woman, folded in ineffable peace, who lay before him, was no need of
escape. This Sabina was a development of the other, the generous
large-souled creature for whom the mean and the sordid had no existence.
Byron had come to face Sabina and prove himself the stronger, but he
stood before her like a child that had lost its way. For some minutes
he waited in desolate silence, his heart sinking, his sense of
inexorable loss growing more poignant. Sabina was dead, she had set out
upon a journey from which she was never to return and he was left. The
great chest heaved suddenly and a sob burst from him. Stumbling, and
with the hardly wept tears of manhood rolling over his cheeks, he turned
away. The door slammed behind him as he made for the shallow stairs
that led to his room. Once in his refuge he flung himself on the bed,
muffling his tempestuous weeping in the pillow--as he had done, when, as
a boy, he had fled the fatherly corrections of the elder Leadville.
On the morrow he would awaken to the old life of narrow interests and
lusts and scheming; but that night he mourned with exceeding grief,
mourned that golden bowl which had been his and which he had cast down
and broken. The bed shook under his sobs and the little hours before
the dawn scurried up, dragging after them a new and reluctant day.
Byron was a weary man, overwrought both in body and mind; and by degrees
the noisy gulps, the long shudders, the groans grew less frequent. He
sank into broken sleep, started from it with a catch of the breath and a
sudden desolate cry, but fell back again. His slumbers deepened until
he lay quiescent, his heavy frame thrown across the bed, his arms
outstretched. At intervals a quiver passed over his body, but he had
drifted out upon quiet seas and was--poor miserable wight--at rest.
*CHAPTER XVI*
In the bright moonlight Mrs. Tom stood at her garden gate to watch Mrs.
Constantine Rosevear--or Mrs. Conny, as she was called--walk up the
road. A big strong woman was Bessie Rosevear but full of nervous fears;
and she had professed herself unable to go back to the mill unless some
one 'put 'er 'ome.' The revelry of the evening, though sober and
moderate, had carried the party into the small hours. Tom had gone off
to bed and it fell, therefore, to one of the five maidens to accompany
her aunt.
"Aw poor sawl, I'm pretty and sorry for 'er bein' so nervous," thought
Mrs. Tom, making kindly allowance. "One of 'er boys should 'av come down
to put 'er 'ome. They are always rangin' about in the evenings after the
maidens, but any'ow Richbell was glad of a mouthful of fresh air."
The breath of the night, though tempered by the sea, was cool and she
had thrown round her an old blue cloak lined with home-cured skins.
They crackled slightly as she leaned against the low stone wall,
thinking the warm and wandering thoughts of motherhood.
The voices of aunt and niece were blown back to her on that cool breath.
Bessie was a slatternly creature and her house the untidiest in the
parish, but she had bred tall sons, sons who, as long as she fed them
well, seemed indifferent to the discomfort of their home. Mrs. Tom,
listening contentedly to Richbell's voice with its clear laugh, found
her thoughts straying from the handsome creature whose fortune was to
seek to that one of the brood whose choice was made. As the mother of
'a long tail,' she was well pleased her eldest should be marrying so
early and so well. Jim's 'auntie' would leave him what she had, 'while,
whatever happened to Wastralls, S'bina would see they didn't want for
nothing while she was livin'. The young couple would have every chance
of gettin' on in the world; and the mother who had been a fish-seller's
daughter, living from hand to mouth, took stock of their future with a
grateful heart. She had done well for herself and Gray, 'with a
good-livin' 'ard-workin' feller like Jim, might do even better.' She
hoped the other maidens would follow their sister's example; but with
the hope, a doubt, a doubt of Richbell, threaded itself darkly through
the loose gold of her meditations. Richbell, the pretty madcap, was just
the one to leap before she looked and, of the lads who wanted her, to
take the least promising. Mrs. Tom shook her own still pretty head.
The world would be a happier, more comfortable place, if parents had the
arranging of their children's future, at least in matrimony.
From where she stood, a stretch of bright water was visible. The sea
was calling in a hoarse undertone, a sort of thunderous roar which yet
did not deaden other sounds and, looking down, Mrs. Tom's glance rested
on the courts and outhouses of Wastralls. If Sabina had her way, Gray
and her young husband would live there. Again the wise woman shook her
head. 'Leadville might prove a snake in the grass. S'bina was a good
sort but she wasn't sensible. If she 'ad been she would 'av left the
farmin' to 'er man.' Mrs. Tom was sorry for Leadville 'mumpin' round
like an ole dog and 'e wi' the finest farm in the valley and just
longin' to put 'is strength into the workin' of it. A woman's place was
in the house, making the butter and feeding the fowls and no good ever
came of she takin' on a man's work. 'Twas bad for both of 'em and
worse'n ever now she'd lost her laigs, poor sawl. It must make the man
feel mad, 'er 'oldin' to the reins when 'e ought to 'av 'em!' Mrs. Tom,
her time fully occupied with housewifely and maternal duties, could see
the mistakes her neighbours were making and the proper remedy; but, as
she could not hope to alter circumstances which had made those mistakes
inevitable, she preserved the indulgent kindliness of her attitude.
The wind, sweeping round by the gate, made her fold herself more closely
in the blue cloak. She thought of Gray in her new happiness and
shivered a little as if conscious of a creeping chill. Her work was
pretty near done. One by one each little bird would spread its young
wings and fly away until, in the end, only the empty nest would remain
to her. She would have been glad if Tom, sleeping deeply, had been at
hand with his comfortable "Well, mother, tired be 'ee? Take and come on
in and talk to me a bit."
The moonlight revealed the empty stretch of road, the sharp shadows of
the hedges and, at the top, the rounded tower of the mill. A patch of
moving blackness could presently be descried. Through the windy stir
came the light patter of running feet and, in a minute, Richbell,
breathless and gay, almost fell into her mother's arms.
"Now, Wild-e-go, where you gwine in such a hurry?" protested Mrs. Tom.
"Oh, mammy, I dunno. I'm so delighted I dunno what to do wi' meself."
"Av 'ee enjoyed yourself this evening then?"
"Ah, I should think I had!" With two lads glowering at each other
across the harmonium, Richbell had been entirely happy.
"You'm a proper flirt."
"I can't help it. I don't ask the boys to come."
The mother passed a rough hand over the girl's curly mop. She was proud
of Richbell's ''ead of 'air,' bronze hair with warm lights. "Did I hear
you sayin' you was goin' to Percy 'Olman's place to tea?"
"Well, I'd nothing to do to keep me home."
"I'd sooner it was Will Brenton."
"Well, mammy, if I don't like him, what's the good for you to talk?"
Mrs. Rosevear sighed, for Will was heir to a good farm while Percy was a
sailor, dependent for his prospects on an uncle who had other nephews.
"My dear, you can't live with the man alone, you must 'av something to
live on."
"I don't care. If I don't have grand things I must have others."
"As you make your bed, my dear, so you must lie. I 'ad to fight my way
in the world and so must you, that's all; but--Will Brenton's a steady
decent chap."
"Well, so he is, but I don't want to get married yet. Half the young
girls that's married now, don't see no young life but I mean to."
Mrs. Tom was not to be turned from the point she was making. "An'
Percy's always after the maidens."
Richbell laughed. She knew her power over the lads.
Mrs. Tom understood the laugh. "'E bain't always 'ome," she said,
answering its young complacency. "Percy's a sailor and they say sailors
'av a wife in every port."
But Richbell's self-confidence was not to be shaken. "Oh, it's only a
bit of chaff. Why, mammy, I like a bit of chaff myself."
"Yes, but you'll find, my dear, that what's good for the goose bain't
always good for the gander. Maidens see a thing one way and wives
another."
But the girl was not one to take advice. "I shall only be young once,"
she said, "and I shall travel me own road. You talk about me, didn't
you have chaps after you? You haven't got the first man you went with,
have you?"
She had carried the war into the enemy's country. From sage maturity
Mrs. Tom fell back a score of years, fell back to the days when she too
must make her choice.
"Did you now, mammy?" insisted the girl.
"My dear," Mrs. Tom was groping for her mislaid dignity, "your father
was my first sweetheart!"
"Well, then," youth had caught a word here and a glance there, enough
lime for her mortar, "well, then, he wasn't always your sweetheart."
"I was to Plymouth in service and he was 'ere. We didn't care for
letter-writin'."
"Who was that chap in Plymouth, then?"
Mrs. Tom gave way. "Oh, a sailor, like they all are. 'E've done very
well for 'isself. 'E's a captain now."
"Mammy!" Out of two hints Richbell had evolved a fact. "'Twasn't that
man that left the impudent message for daddy last summer, was it?"
"Take and 'old yer tongue, do!" But recollection had lighted Mrs. Tom's
eyes with laughter.
"Well, was it?"
"Iss. 'E said, 'Is ole Tom livin' yet? I'm waitin' for 'e to die. I
want 'is shoes.'"
"He isn't married yet?"
"'E say 'e's waitin' for me."
"Why didn't you have him?"
"Because I liked your father best." Remembering the lesson she had been
trying to inculcate, she added more soberly, "'E 'ad the promise of a
good farm."
"That had nothing to do with it," said youth shrewdly. "You liked him."
"Well, I did." And she continued happily, "I 'eard 'e was goin' wi'
Nina Old and I came 'ome to see."
"And was he?"
"I run right against them up to Four Turnin's and I gived 'im a look."
"I know," laughed Richbell delightedly. "I know how you looked."
"'An 'e lifted 'is 'at to me." She paused meditatively. "'Good
evening,' he says and come straight over to me."
"Left her?"
"There and then."
"Iss, mammy?"
"We was married in a month from that day; but come, my dear, 'tis
blowin' up for a storm and we better go in now. You got to go down to
Wastralls early to-morrow mornin'."
They glanced along the road and, from Hember standing boldly out from
the hillside, it was as if Wastralls lay in a hollow.
"Why," said Richbell, with suddenly awakened interest, "look, mammy,
some one's still up down there. There's a light in the kitchen window."
"'Tis late, too."
The girl shivered and drew nearer to her mother. "I expect it's Uncle
Leadville cleaning that old gun of his. I can't abide to see him rubbing
away at it. That's all he do, all day long."
"Poor old sawl, that's all 'e 'av got to do."
"Mammy," her voice had lost its gaiety and self-confidence. She was a
young creature, obscurely frightened. "I wish I wasn't going down
there."