"I'm sure 'twould be 'er wish for yer to 'av something."
"I knaw. She was very kind." Many a piece of well-paid work had come
to him through Sabina but he was thinking of the woman herself. He was
not an introspective man. He could not have explained even to himself,
why the death of a person whom he rarely saw, should make so great a
difference. "She was very kind," he repeated heavily, "but I don't want
anything."
His three tall sons were at the table helping themselves; his wife,
almost tidy for once in her new black--trust Betsy to have nothing put
away for an occasion like the present--was talking to her brother, Mr.
John Brenton of St. Eval. They looked pleased with themselves and fate;
but the big miller, for all his comfortable girth and good broadcloth,
was as one who had lost his grip.
Mrs. Tom, obliged by her hospitable duties to leave him for a little,
carved and served and talked with the thought of him foremost in her
mind. She was listening for a certain expected sound and, though her
hearing was a little dulled, she did not miss it. The bearers, waiting
in the kitchen, had been fed on simpler fare than that provided for the
mourners. They were ready now and the irregular tramp of feet along the
passage told her that they were coming to take up their burden. She
went back to Con, for she could no longer trust herself to speak. The
back of her throat ached with the tears she was trying to restrain.
Sabina had been born in Wastralls, she had lived there all her days and
now she was to be carried out. Con, too, felt the full poignancy of the
moment. His eye met Mrs. Tom's a little wildly and he pulled at his
neckcloth to loosen it. Sabina's place would know her no more. She was
going and never would she come back to them. His heart was a wordless
protest. He rose unsteadily and the two, the man who loved her, the
woman who had been her friend, went into the hall.
At a Cornish funeral it is customary for the relatives to follow the
coffin--which is carried on poles by eight bearers--in a certain order.
Precedence is regulated by the degree of kinship and, to a certain
extent, by age. With the exception of old folks who, unable to walk so
far, follow in their gigs and carts, the mourners traverse the distance
from house to graveyard on foot. The arrangement of these couples, with
due regard to their individual claims, is a work requiring knowledge of
the family ramifications and in this Tom Rosevear shone.
When his wife, followed by Con, came out she found the work of assigning
their positions to the mourners was nearly finished. Couples lined one
side of the hall and yet others were waiting in the Little Parlour. An
air of sombre readiness pervaded the gathering. Henwood, carrying the
black crickets on which the coffin was to stand, hurried out of the
door. He planted them on a level space, the space which had been used
for that purpose since death first recognized that Wastralls had become
a human habitation. At a sign from her husband, Mrs. Tom went to the
head of the procession. As Sabina's nearest relative it was her place
to walk with Byron.
The door of the justice-room opened and the hinds, in dark suits and
black ties, came out. The poles, which they held against their breasts,
were slanted to allow for the narrowness of the opening and their faces
wore a look of purpose. They were anxious to get the varnished and
glittering coffin out of the room, round corners and through the hall,
without hitch or stumble and the task seemed to them bristling with
difficulties. They were thinking, not of what this long brightly
decorated box contained but of the trust reposed in them.
Mrs. Tom pulled down her veil and, for a moment, leaned her weight on
Constantine. To see Sabina carried feet foremost over the threshold of
her home was too much for her powers of self-control and, behind the
veil, her tears were flowing. Con, understanding but inarticulate,
pressed her arm. They two were the real mourners; of all that concourse
they alone would miss Sabina out of their daily lives. As the coffin
was earned past, a shiver ran through the man's large body. With Sabina
gone he, too, was in sight of the end. A week ago the thought would
have troubled him but to it he was now indifferent. So does life, taking
one by one the things we value, make us ready for its own putting off.
The bearers--and the sexton, once bullockman at Wastralls, was of their
number--set the coffin down on the black crickets. Behind them the
queue of mourners was receiving belated additions. Leadville had taken
his place beside Mrs. Tom, her husband was behind him with Betsy,
Constantine with Gray.
The day was calm with a tang of cold, a day when the gulls gathered in
the new-ploughed fields and, the sea being still, the murmur of other
waters could be heard. As the coffin was carried down the avenue under
the low wind-bent branches, the sexton started a hymn. Many present
being choir members, it was taken up at once and a volume of tuneful
sound went before the procession up the lane.
Sleep on beloved, sleep and take thy rest,
Lay down thy head upon thy Saviour's breast;
I love thee well, but Jesus loves thee best--
Good night, good night, good night.
Mrs. Tom had walked in many a similar procession. Only that summer she
had followed a brother to the grave and now, in obedience to Henwood's
signal, she moved forward after the bearers. She was at the moment too
much occupied with herself to realize that the long line was actually on
its way. Once in the open air, however, and the chill freshness of the
morning had its usual effect and, by the time the head of the black
serpent was pushing past St. Cadic, she was sufficiently recovered to
spare glance and thought--neither at all kindly--for the man keeping
step with her.
For Byron the morning had been chequered. Some of the mourners, in
particular those from a distance, had met him with an assumption of
friendliness. Though a stranger he was now the owner of Wastralls and,
in that capacity, they would meet him in the market-place and on public
business. One or two of the wives expressed the hope that he would look
in when passing. He was not only a substantial farmer but a widower
and, on the whole, a man who filled the eye. Even Mrs. Tom, embittered
and grudging, could not deny that at the head of the procession he
looked well. By no means the tallest man present, his heavy dignified
carriage made him appear bigger than he actually was. He walked, too,
with a certain arrogance. The men who followed him were mentally lesser
men and he was conscious of it. He was leading the way, was for the
first time in his proper place. The errand on which he was bound did not
occupy his attention. The coffin, when it passed him in the hall, had
roused in him a queer inexplicable emotion, a fleeting sense of
association, but not because of what it contained. Of Sabina he scarcely
thought. She belonged to the past, that past on which he had definitely
and thankfully turned his back. His face was towards the future, his
mind was crowded with the brick and scaffolding of the edifice he hoped
to rear; and he found in his breast such a consciousness of power that
he was fain to give it expression by joining in the hymn.
"I love thee well, but Jesus loves thee best," he rumbled in his deep
voice and Mrs. Tom, hearing him, stared. To her it was as if he were
uttering blasphemies.
"The shirkin' old villain," she thought indignantly, "walkin' there as
'e belong to walk. I dunno 'ow 'e dare. Actually singin' in the hymn
too, the two-faced dragon. 'Tis enough to bring a judgment on 'im, so it
is."
Winding out of the valley between hedges which, though it was December,
were still green, the procession came at last to Hilltop. Here the road
made a wide bend. The grey tower of the church was in sight and the
sexton, in order to toll the bell, took a short cut across the fields.
Mrs. Byron, though a chapel-goer would be buried by the parson of the
parish, laid beside Old Squire in the shadow of the church. To the
people this ritual, which for them had lost its potency, was still part
of the established order. The rector was appointed by powers outside
their knowledge and had his place. They neither welcomed nor objected
to him. He served his purpose.
Seen from above, the churchyard must have looked like a shallow vessel
filling with ink. So numerous were the mourners that, after crowding
the little old edifice to overflowing, they poured down the paths and
over the grassy mounds. About the Rosevear graves the couples and
groups had solidified into a mass. Their faces, like pink disks in a
dark setting, were shadowed by their veils and their black headgear.
They had turned towards the pit which had been digged; and the minds of
all were occupied with thoughts, not of the resurrection but of the
dampness and coldness of the body's last resting-place. Down in the
earth, pressed down by a weight of mould and stones, shut away for ever
from the fires and talk! During the night rain had fallen and the water
had not yet soaked away through the stiff clay of the grave. It lay,
covering the bottom, an inexpressibly dreary adjunct to the grey sides
and crumbling verge. The mourners' hearts vibrated with pity for the
woman who had looked her last on friendly faces, who was on her way to
lie, rain-water below, saturated clods above, in the chill unfriendly
bosom of the earth. When the coffin was brought out and 'Peace, Perfect
Peace' was raised, they joined in with a sense of relief. It could not
be that the Mrs. Byron, whom they all knew, was to lie there in the wet
and the dark. With an optimism as indestructible, as logical, as hers
had been, they promised themselves and her, not death but life.
As the signal was given to lower the coffin into the grave, out of the
clouded sky fell a quavering dazzle of sunlight, omen to these heavy
anxious hearts of better times in store. It fell on the brass handles,
the name-plate, and the two curving rows of cut clasps, scintillating
from the bright surfaces in a myriad tiny glints. Byron, standing
between Tom and Constantine Rosevear at the head of the grave, noticed
it, as did the others; and to him it was not only sunshine falling
unexpectedly on a coffin but something personal to himself.
He had gone mechanically through the service, had glanced with disfavour
at the wreaths and harps and other floral sacrifices, had even in his
heart made ribald comment on 'Peace, Perfect Peace, with loved ones far
away.' The mood of exultation in which he had left Wastralls had
changed to one of slowly mounting irritation. This burying was after
all a tedious business. The creak and strain of the ropes which
indicated that the coffin was being let down drew from him a sigh of
relief. In another minute he would be able to turn his back on this
place of sepulture.
The flash of sunlight, however, had caught his eye and had done more
than that. Its transient gleam had linked the fleeting sense of
familiarity he had felt, when the coffin had been carried past him out
of Wastralls, with other moments strung bead-like on the past. This was
the shape, those the infinitesimal glimmers, which he had seen in
visions. Again and again he had heard the hammer at work, seen the
glint of polished wood, the curve of the cut clasps. The lid of
Sabina's coffin! For years his dim familiar, it was now actual and
present. He shivered as if a breath laden with the odours, the dank
chill of the grave, had risen from its depths. That hammering--but it
was not he who had knocked in nail after nail.
Byron forgot, in sudden curiosity, that curiosity with which the vision
always inspired him, where he was and what he was doing. He must find
out whether the lines had been completed to the last nail. Something of
peculiar importance hung on this fact.
Con Rosevear, having moved a little, was now between him and the grave
and, in the dark oblong, the coffin was sinking out of sight. A moment
more and it would be too late. With one of the movements which, in a
man of his age and bulk were so surprisingly quick, Byron thrust the
other aside. The sun gleam had faded, the shadows of the wintry
afternoon, the shadows of the pit were closing over the coffin. Byron,
on the grassy verge, leaned forward in a perilous attempt to see and, to
the bystanders, it seemed as if the man, driven crazy by grief, were
about to throw himself into the grave. An emotional race, they were
prepared for such manifestations but, even as they closed with
Leadville, to pull him back into safety, they were conscious of
surprise, of a new almost grudged respect. They had not thought him
fond of his wife.
The sudden jerking of his arms, under the clutch of well-meaning but
mistaken fingers, prevented Byron from satisfying himself as to whether
the nails were all in place. This matter of the last nail had on a
sudden assumed a terrible importance. If it had been hammered home he
would be delivered from the obsession of this coffin which for so long
he had seen in preparation. In the making of it he had had no part--and
that was strange! Yes, all things considered it was very strange. He
had never been able to think of his vision as an illusion. It was real
and tangible but in some curious way out of reach. Now he had chanced
upon it. Chance? He had been walking towards it all the time! He must
know, however, whether the circles were complete, whether that last
nail...
He flung off the arresting hands and made a further effort to see, but
those busy with the ropes were using greater dispatch and others were
thrusting themselves between the graveside and the man. His strength
not being as the strength of ten he was forced to desist. Panting and
wild-eyed, he stood debating with himself whether he would not make one
more effort when Mrs. Tom, calling to him from behind, caught his
attention.
"Come now," she said, thinking he must have been moved to this
exhibition of feeling by a late remorse. "S'bina's gone and all the
cryin' and grievin' in the world'll never get 'er back."
"S'bina?" he echoed and the eagerness faded from his face, leaving it
curiously grey. "I wanted to see----"
He had turned his back on the grave and she noticed that his manner was
preoccupied. "I wanted to make sure. Was..." he scanned her face with
eyes which, as she said afterwards, should have warned her, "was the
nails all drived in?"
"The nails?" repeated Mrs. Tom, wondering what he meant but anxious to
humour him. "What be tellin' about? Of course they was drived in?"
Did he think Sabina had not been properly screwed down?
Drawing her out of the wondering group he bent to her ear. "They never
was all drived in before," he confided and looked at her inquiringly.
He had failed to see but she, yes, she might have been more fortunate.
"Well, they are now, I knaw."