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 traäde,”
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.”

The other stared in surprise. “In yer legs? But
you ‘aven’t got any.”

“Well, seem like I ‘av them.”

Mrs. Rosevear laughed. “If that doesn’t beat everything!”

The sufferer moved restlessly on her pillow. “I’d
rather be out on Gool-land,[*] than like I be now.”

[*] Gulland, a barren islet off the north coast of Cornwall.

Looking at the hollows of the face once so apple-round,
Isolda’s heart misgave her.

“I feel,” continued Mrs. Byron in a dragging voice,
“that I can’t stand much more of this.”

“Nonsense, you’ll cheat the crows yet.”

“Don’t care whether I do or no. What is there for
a woman like me? I’ve neither chick nor chield.”

“Well, there’s Leadville to think about.”

Sabina sighed. “He’d cut a poor shine without me; but
there—I dunno…” her voice trailed away into silence.

Mrs. Tom’s heart began to beat more quickly. “Well,”
she ventured, “he’s workin’ pretty and ‘ard now.”

“He’s got to keep the thing going,” assented the wife.

“He’s doin’ more’n that.”

Sabina’s voice was still languid, but she showed a
little interest. “What’s ah doin’ then?”

“A cart come over from Wadebridge o’ Thursday piled
up wi’ boxes and bags. Now just let me turn this heel.”

“Boxes and bags?” murmured the wife. “Good
gracious! What’s ah going to do with that?”

After a few seconds given to her work, Mrs. Tom
looked up. “He’s teelin’ the li’l medder wi’ sugar-beet.”

The other’s mind, dulled by suffering and loss of blood,
took time to grasp the significance of this statement.
“Sugar-beet?” she said, slowly, “but I’m goin’ to ‘ave
the li’l medder teeled wi’ dredge-corn.”

“You bain’t there to give the orders.”

Sabina’s lips took a firmer line. “I won’t ‘av it teeled
wi’ that new-fangled traäde. You tell’n so.”

“Better tell’n yourself; I reckon—” She glanced
shrewdly at her friend, for Sabina’s unexpected illness
had put new thoughts into Mrs. Tom’s head. She was
not greedy, but the most self-effacing creature will
scheme a little for its young. “I reckon he’d do far
different if you wasn’t ‘ere.”

“You think so?” Sabina shut her eyes the better
to realize the situation. The news had been stimulating,
and when she spoke again her voice was stronger. “I
don’t think as I’m goin’ round land this time, Isolda.”

“I do hope an’ pray as you aren’t, my dear soul.”

“What else is ah doin’?”

“Tom went down to see’n last night, thought as ‘ee
might be lonely in that big ‘ouse all by ‘imself; and
Leadville was tellin’ ‘im he didn’t believe in the way
missis was farmin’. He’d like to try and see what the
land’d grow best. He said—terbacca.”

“Terbacca? I should think he was maäze. Never
heard tell of such a thing. Whatever next is he gwine
grow?”

“He think the land would grow vegetables as ’tis the
right sort o’ soil and that ’tis wasted in corn.”

Sabina gave a feeble snort. “What do ‘ee know about
soils—a sailor!” She shook her head. “As long as
I live he’ll never have nothing to do with Wastralls.”

Mrs. Rosevear’s needles clicked in agreement. “As
long as you do live, S’bina.”

“Iss, why not me livin’? I ‘ent older than he is,
and there’s no reason I should turn up my trotters first;
at least I don’t see why I should.”

“We’ll all live till we die, sure enough; but it’s been
touch and go lately with you.”

“I’ll live in spite of’n,” said Mrs. Byron.

“I hope you will, my dear, but sposin’ you don’t?”
Mrs. Byron returned her friend’s glance with a startled
look. “Ah, iss, sposin’.” She saw at last what her
death would have meant both to her husband and her
kinsfolk. “Well, I make no promises, but I do see now
where I’m to. Iss, I can see through a very small hole,
and I’m not too old to learn.”

Sabina had been effectually roused. Possessions that
are menaced increase in value and as long as Leadville
was making changes at Wastralls she would not want
to die.

“There’s things as you can’t alter,” she said, thinking
Sabina should be prepared for what could not now be
helped.

“What can’t I alter?”

“He’ve pulled up the honeysuckle by the porch.”

A fugitive colour dyed the wan cheeks. “Have ‘ee
now, the old villain? Whatever for? The honeysuckle
as my poor old mother planted.”

Sabina’s thoughts were finally diverted from her own
trials and, lame or not, she was now only too anxious
to stop this meddling with what was hers.

“He’s always after something new.” Leadville could
not have known that she treasured the climber. She
was sure he would not knowingly have hurt her feelings.
Whenever he did anything that to her was incomprehensible,
Sabina put it down, not to design, but want of
thought. She was of those who cannot see into the
heart of a matter.

“I like the old things best,” she continued, and her
eyes, those impersonal eyes, which were the blue of a
December sky, shone with new purpose. “We’ll have
no more of they doin’s. Where’s that traäde Nurse
wanted for me to take? I feel I could drink some now.”

Byron, busy putting his plans into execution, nearly
forgot on what their success hung. He had thrown
himself into the work with the eagerness of a man
in all ways extreme. He was living his dream and
he was happy. After one or two non-committal post
cards from Dr. Derek, however, came the news that,
though her husband would be wise not to build on it,
Mrs. Byron was holding her own. By this time some
of the glass-houses were up, and the land below the
house, which should have been in dredge-corn, was
planted with sugar-beet. For the first time Byron felt
a qualm of anxiety. He had not imagined it possible
Sabina could survive the amputation of her legs. In
giving leave for the operation to be performed, he had
believed that he was hastening—with the doctor’s kind
assistance—the inevitable end. With a sinking heart
he now began to wonder whether he had underestimated
her vitality. What if, after all, she should recover? She
was a sound, harmonious being, whom exposure and
a simple strenuous life had only toughened. If any one
could survive so terrible an accident, it would be she.

That day he did his work in perturbation of spirit.
He had no illusions as to what Sabina would think of
the changes he was making. She would be stubbornly
opposed to every one of them and Sabina’s stubbornness
was the force with which for so long he had had to reckon.
A gleam of hope came with the thought that even if she
recovered she would no longer be able to manage the
farm. A poor cripple could not get about the fields,
especially such up-and-down fields as those of Wastralls.
She would be obliged to appoint a deputy and who so
suitable as the man she had married?

He cursed the impatience which had led him astray.
If he had waited, the matter would have arranged itself
in accordance with his wishes. Now, if Sabina recovered,
it was only too likely that she would make it difficult
for him to carry out his schemes. He tried to imagine
what form her opposition would take, but though he
had lived beside her for so long, the writing on the wall
was in characters he could not interpret.

To add to his anxieties the man was finding himself
short of money. One of his counts against Sabina was
that when they married she had refused to have her
banking account put in their joint names. “Tedn’ a
woman’s business to sign cheques,” he had told her in
a futile attempt to bring her to his way of thinking.

She smiled as at a good joke. “I don’t think you
ever signed a cheque in your life.”

“I didn’ marry yer for yer money,” he assured her hastily.

“Don’t bother yerself about it, then. I done business
for my old dad all the time you was to sea; and I’d be
a pretty malkin if I didn’ knaw more about signin’ cheques
than you do.”

“I’m told I ought to be able to draw cheques on your
account.”

“Shouldn’t listen to all you ‘ear. If you want money,
go and work for’t. I’ll lend ‘ee any to start with.”

“There never ought to be two purses between man
and wife. They should share alike.”

“When you got something,” she assured him, “we will.”

In spite of her words she had not been niggardly. As
much as Byron asked for he received and, believing that
all was rightly his, he had taken as much as he wanted.
He had seen, however, no reason to save; and now found
himself unable to pay for what he had ordered. Sabina
was too ill to be approached, and when he took the tale
of his difficulties to Hember he found Tom Rosevear
civil, as usual, but evasive. He did not say much, but
it was evident the ‘improvements’ did not meet with
his approval; that he could not understand Byron’s
initiating them while his wife lay at death’s door. The
trifling loan which the farmer succeeded in raising did
not do more than pay the wages of the extra workmen,
the carpenters and masons he was employing; and, as
time passed, and his agent at Wadebridge began to press
for the money owing, Byron found himself awkwardly
placed. Money he must have, but when he tried to raise
it on his expectations he discovered that the security
was not considered good. The obvious course was to
tell Liddicoat to send the bills in to Sabina; but this,
as he well knew, would entail on him unpleasant
consequences. Meanwhile the injured woman was slowly
gaining ground. Isolda’s tale had roused in her, not
only the will to live, but the will to overcome, as far as
might be, the disabilities of her condition. In the days
when she was accounted handsome she had been without
self-consciousness; and she did not develop it now that
she knew herself to be “a poor remnant.” What were
looks when the heart was beating warmly and the mind
was clear? Her mutilation being the result of accident,
it did not occur to her that any one—any one to whom
she looked for love and tenderness—might find her
repulsive.

After the operation was performed Byron had inquired
after her welfare, but had not come to see her. Although
so happily occupied he felt at times a little uneasy.
Sabina’s attraction for him had been her flawless health
and the amputation aroused in him, not pity, but a faint
stirring of repugnance. He sent her a message that he
“must be on the spot to see to things,” and, undemonstrative
herself and not yet instructed as to the nature
of the “things,” she had accepted his excuse. A day
came, however, when he felt that he must overcome his
unwillingness to see for himself the difference in her
which the operation had made. Liddicoat was pressing
for payment, and he had other liabilities. He rode into
Stowe, therefore, rode at his usual breakneck pace and,
having stabled his horse, called at the hospital.

Although his visit was unexpected, Sabina had had the
long leisure of a slow convalescence in which to arrange
her thoughts and make plans for the future. Leadville
had tried to take advantage of her being ill. He had
thought that when she recovered she would accept the
changes he had introduced. He had acted like a child
without thought of the consequences. The foolish fellow!
Sabina was not angered. She had always been an
indulgent wife, and she could overlook this attempt to
steal a march on her, as she had overlooked his many
efforts to get the management of the farm into his hands.

Looking neither to the right nor to the left, Byron
dragged his reluctant feet up the ward. Sabina, who
disliked sewing, and did not care to read, had been
lying back on her pillows, her hands folded on the white
sheet. As she caught sight of the well-known figure;
a little flush of surprised pleasure spread over her pale
cheeks. She was very glad to see him. In her eyes
his breadth and heaviness, the strong growth of his
black hair, the jut of his square chin, were so many
attractions. She had always admired his strength; and
the evidences of it in deep chest and hairy skin were to
her taste. She could have wished, however, that he
would look up, would answer her ready smile, instead of
staring before him like a bull who is not quite certain
whether the people he is encountering are friend or foe.
She had no suspicion that every step her husband took
was more unwilling than the last.

The moment came when he must look at her. His
furtive glance swept in one unhappy second the bed
and its occupant, then he bent forward and gave her a
clumsy kiss. The truth was not as bad as he had feared.
By some deft arrangement of the clothes the bed gave
a false impression. As far as appearances went the
woman in it might have been in possession of her limbs.
Byron, escaping the shock he had expected, experienced,
however, one of a different kind. The face he touched
was indeed that of his wife, but it was changed. Sabina’s
red-gold hair, which had been rippling and abundant,
the very symbol of her gay vitality, had lost its colour.
When he last saw her a bandage had concealed it, now,
white as that bandage, it framed a face lined and haggard.

“Why—my dear life—” he stammered, staring, “‘ow
your ‘air ‘av altered.”

She put a hand to her head. “Yer didn’t know?
Well, can’t be ‘elped.”

“Yer ‘air was awful pretty.” The change troubled
him vaguely; he was not pleased to find that his wife,
who had kept her looks beyond the average, should have
aged.

“I reckon I’m as God made me, but I was never one
to trouble about my looks.” She sought for words to
express her thought. “Red ‘air or white, I’m the same.”

“Iss,” he said and continued to look at her thoughtfully.

She might be the same woman, but her effect upon
others, and in particular on himself, would be different.
“‘Ow be ‘ee?”

“I’ve ‘ad a prettily and draggin’ time, but now I’m
doin’ grand.”

He uttered a rough sound of no meaning, but she took
it to be congratulatory.

“I shall be up afore long.”

“Up?” he murmured, glancing sideways at the bed.

“I shall get Raby Gregor to make me a little trolly
so that I can get about.”

He pushed his chair farther away. In spite of
appearances she was not a woman, but the distorted remnant
of one. A shiver ran down his spine. “You bain’t
thinkin’ of—of tryin’ to get about?”

“Me not gettin’ about? Iss. You’ve never seen
me settin’ down wi’ me ‘ands folded.”

“But you’ll find things’ll be different now,” he stammered.
He thought of the trolly as some sort of wheel-chair.
He had no conception of his wife’s inventiveness
or of her indifference to comment. “You’ve been a
strong woman, but you can’t look to be that again.”

The resolute look he knew so well came into Sabina’s
eyes, and for a moment he doubted whether after all
she would not conquer her disabilities. “I bain’t strong
now,” she said, “but a month or two’ll make all the
difference. I’ll soon be up and about again.”

The momentary doubt passed. “I wouldn’t make too
sure of that, then,” he told her. The fact that Wastralls
had not so much flat land as would make a football
field was reassuring. No wheel-chair, whatever the
power of its directing will, could climb up and down
those fields.

“I’m hopin’,” said Sabina obstinately, “to teel
Wastralls as I ‘av before.”

“We must see ‘ow you do frame.”

“Bain’t a matter of gettin’ about,” she continued,
guessing his thoughts. “I know Wastralls like the palm
of my hand, every ‘itch and stitch of it, and the ‘inds’ll
carry out my orders. I can trust old George Biddick
to see as the others do their work. I’ve planned it all.”

“And me?” asked Leadville grimly.

“My dear feller, you don’t like farmin’, you wouldn’t
make no ‘and at it, you an’ your old rigmaroles.”

“I c’d teel Wastralls so as it brought in double what
you get now.”

She shook her head. “You bain’t goin’ to try.”

It was as well for her peace of mind that eyes cannot
speak. That this mutilated trunk of a woman should
still be in a position to withstand him! His great chest
heaved with bitter emotion, but he did not answer.

“Come,” said Sabina peaceably. “Tell me how things
is going.”

He stared out of the window until he had mastered
himself sufficiently to speak. “I came to ask mun for
what you aw Liddicoat.”

“Aw Liddicoat?” A smiling light came into her
eyes. “How much do I aw’n?”

“Couldn’t tell ‘ee for a pound or two; but if you was
to draw out a cheque for me I could full’n soon as I
get ‘ome.”

“You send me in the bill and I’ll pay’n after I’ve
checked’n.”

Byron’s face darkened. He would not be able to hide
from her much longer the changes he had attempted.
What did it matter? She could only be angry. He
thought he would be glad if she were. “There’s the
men’s money—three weeks ‘awin’.”

“I give’n Isolda yesterday. I expect she’s paid’n
by now.”

“You ought to ‘ave give it to me and I could ‘av paid’n.”

“So I should ‘av,” she answered peaceably, “if you’d
been in to see me. But I give it to Isolda instead.”

He was not to be placated. “Looks mighty queer
you don’t trust me with the money. I’ve to keep the
place goin’ and if I don’t pay the ‘inds who’s to know
I’m maister?”

“There’s no need, for you bain’t maister. You may
blate morning till night, you won’t ‘av Wastralls, no
never for, come to that, I don’t trust ‘ee.”

“S’bina!”

She held up her hand. “You do take too much on
your own ‘ead.”

He knew then that the tale of his imprudent labours
had run before him and that she was expressing her
disapproval. She was not angry with him; a mother
is not angry when she sequestrates a forbidden toy. “I
always thought,” he stammered, making no further
mystery of the matter, “that we should grow sugar-beet.”

“An’ you was welcome to try it—at Polnevas. Now
come, it bain’t too late to put the li’l medder in
dredge-corn. You’d better see to’t at once, or I’ll ‘av Tom
do’t.”

He cried out at that last humiliation and it was still
the same cry, the cry his wife thought so unreasonable.
“You’d put Tom Rosevear over me? You’d take away
what belong to me?”

“‘Long to you? I should like to know ‘ow it come yours.”

“You give it me, you give it me when we married.”

“Never.”

In his disappointment and rage he stumbled over his
words. “You’ll see, you’ll see! Iss, you’ll see whether
I won’t ‘av it or no.”

“‘Tis mazedness of ‘ee to think so,” she answered.
“Come, be sensible. I’ll pay for these old fads of yours
and you can pile’n away where you mind to. I’ll pay
this once, but ’twas a fulish game for ‘ee to play and
maybe you’ll see that before you’m done.”

CHAPTER III

Near St. Cadic Mill, at the head of the valley, a hamlet
had gathered, a few deep-set cottages built of cliff stone
and planted irregularly about a smithy. Sheltered by
a rise in the land from sea winds their gardens were rich
with produce. A green broadened from their little
gates and in the wall of the smithy had been set a scarlet
post-box, a flaring touch of the official in a land sufficient
unto itself.

In these, houses, which were known far and wide as
‘Cottages,’ dwelt a cobbler, who was also the barber
of the community: Mrs. Bate, the Stripper; her friend
Aunt Louisa Blewett, the seamstress: one or two
independent labourers, and an old sailor. Here, too, was
the Dolphin, where could be obtained a little muddy
cider and some home-brewed; also, the village shop.
The self-respecting and thrifty community was like a
family which, having grown up and married, had
continued to live in a group, separated only by the walls
of their homes and gardens. Ties, acknowledged and
unacknowledged, linked them, linked them also with
the farmer folk; and, as all respected the axiom that
you must not ‘step on a Cornishman’s tail,’ the hamlet
was to the outward eye an abode of peace.

Mrs. Byron’s accident had caught the imagination of
her humble neighbours. For years they had watched
her riding about, a wholesome hearty woman with a
ripe cheek and a commanding eye. Not one of them,
but had had experience of her vigour and capacity.
She was now reduced to a helplessness greater than that
of child or dotard and to her helplessness was added
the mystery of mutilation.

During the long light weeks the cottagers sat at their
doors of an evening and, while Charley Brenton trimmed
hair in the front garden, discussed the inopportune
event.

“I was almost sure there was ill luck comin’,” said
Mrs. Bate, the woman who was Stripper, or Nurse for
the hamlet, that is to say who laid out the dead.

The man upon whom the barber was operating was
a Brenton from the neighbouring valley of Polscore.
The gossip was new to him.

“‘Ow d’yer think so?” he asked.

“I b’lieve she was ill-wished. Never mind ‘ow I think
so, you wait an’ see. My belief, there’s they ‘av got an
evil eye on ‘er.”

Aunt Louisa Blewett looked up from her sewing. She
was a peculiarly neat and clean old woman, who spent
her time going from one house to another, mending
and making for the long families. She did not speak,
but her toothless mouth worked as if over a choice
morsel.

“I thought the witches were all gone years ago,”
remarked the stranger Brenton.

“Well, there is witches, only they don’t come out in
their true colour,” asserted Mrs. Bate, whose mother was
said to have been the last in Tregols.

“Besides,” urged old Hawken, the sailor, who was
sitting on a stone awaiting his turn at Charley Brenton’s
hands, “who’s goin’ to do Mrs. Byron any ‘arm? A
nicer woman never lived. She’s noted for ‘er kindness
at Christmas time or any other time.”

“Iss, iss, we knaw she’s well liked,” said Mrs. Bate
non-committally. Unlike Aunt Louisa she had still an
occasional milestone of tooth. The old women were
handsome now, and what must they have been when they
were the village belles? “Still, I b’lieve there’s one
that bear ‘er a grudge. I don’t mention any names but
you can think ‘oo you like.”

“Go along, you don’t think as ‘e’d do ‘er a mischief
do yer?”

“Hush!”

For some time the sound of approaching hoofs had
been carried to them on the still air of the evening; and
the voices died into silence as Leadville Byron, on his
black stallion, clattered by. The animal was as usual
flecked with foam, the master stained with the mud of
the road. Returning from his humiliating interview with
Sabina, he had found in the hard gallop up hill and down,
an outlet for his rage and disappointment. What did
he care if he lamed the horse? Whirling through the
hamlet he noticed the curious cottagers no more than
the birds in the hedges.

“‘Ow ‘e do ride,” said old Hawken, as the furious
figure melted into the growing dusk and only the beat
of the hoofs reached the listeners, a beat which in turn
was merged in the distant sound of the tide. “One of
these days ‘e’ll break ‘is neck.”

“‘Tis like ‘e’s tearin’ away from something,” said
Aunt Louisa suddenly.

“Do ‘ee think,” said Mrs. Bate, lowering her voice,
“do ‘ee think th’ Old Squire knaw what’s happenin’
above ground?”

“If ‘e do,” said Hawken, “‘e must find it terr’ble
‘ard for that feller to be in ‘is place.”

“And alterin’ things,” said Aunt Louisa.

“Old Squire,” said Mrs. Bate mysteriously, “can look
after’s own. You mark my words, thiccy feller ‘ont ‘av
all ‘is own way.”

Willie Brenton took the towel from his neck and handed
it to the sailor. “Your turn, Mr. ‘Awken.”

The old man got up painfully. “My feet’s terr’ble
knucklin’ to-day and my poor laigs is stiff with the
rheumatism; but still they’m better’n no laigs. I
wonder ‘ow poor Mrs. Byron’ll manage?”

This was a matter of interest to the cottagers. They
supposed that, for the cooking and cleaning, Mrs. Byron
would employ one of themselves. Mrs. Bate, who had
not been married, had yet grandchildren old enough to
go out to service.

“We’ve all worked there in an’ out,” she said, “but
now the poor thing’ll ‘av to ‘av some one there altogether.
She’ll be so helpless as a baby.”

“I bet she won’t,” said Aunt Louisa, folding together
a patched garment and preparing to go indoors for the
night. “Mrs. Byron’ll frighten us all yet for what she
can do.”

“I reckon she ‘ont ‘av the ‘eaft to go about the work
as she used to. My mind tell me she’s done for,” said
Hawken.

Aunt Louisa nodded her trim grey head in the direction
of Church Town. “Not till she’s laid alongside the Old
Squire,” she said and, going in, shut her door with the
precision of touch characteristic of her every movement.

At Wastralls, the following morning, Byron went as
usual into the yard. Two breeding sows, black as a
cave’s mouth, were wandering about and, on a heap of
straw in the sun, lay an old sheep-dog. The dog wagged
its tail but, unfortunately, did not rise and the man’s
sore heart registered its laziness as an affront.

“Shep’s gone past for work,” he said to George Biddick,
who was standing by waiting for orders.

“Iss, I b’lieve ‘e is. Gettin’ blind.”

“Better give’m a dose. You come to me at twelve and
I’ll ‘av it ready for ‘ee.” He cast a vindictive look at
the old dog. “And, Biddick…”

“Iss, sir?”

“I’ve changed my mind about the li’l medder. I’m
afraid ’tis too late for sugar-beet this year, I’ll ‘av it
teeled in dredge-corn.”

He went back to the kitchen, a roomy whitewashed
place, the rafters of which were dark above the blue
flagstones, stones which had been worn smooth by feet,
trampling for a little to and fro, then going as they had
come. In a wall-cupboard to the right of the
slab-range, the farmer kept such matters as ammunition,
packets of seed, medicaments for the stock. Crossing
the kitchen, with a step which was light for so
large-framed a man, he stood for a moment contemplating
the medley of articles—bluestone, cattle-salts, turpentine,
oak-marbles which had been through the coffee grinder,
bottles of Red Drink—which confronted him. By the
last named stood a small blue bottle with an orange
label. He had bought it some time ago, he had used
it on old and useless animals. He would pour out a
little now and give it to Biddick for the sheep-dog; but
the rest he would put by again. He felt that to rid the
place of Shep would be a satisfaction. If only other
things which stood in his way, which refused to recognize
his authority, could be got rid of as easily.

Sabina’s interview with her husband had made her
realize how necessary she was to him. She thought of
him as a foolish child who, the moment it was left to its
own devices, got into mischief. The conviction that
she stood between Leadville and disaster was soothing.
It increased her wish to live and was as good as a tonic.
Not that tonics were necessary, for once she had turned
the first difficult corner she made good progress and,
when Raby Gregor came to discuss with her the trolly
she had designed, he was agreeably surprised to find her
as cheerful as of old.

This trolly was for long the wonder of those who saw
it. On a three-wheeled stand, a cone of cushioned
basket-work, itself strengthened by iron stays, had been
set upright. Into this wicker receptacle Sabina, who
had strong arms, presently learnt to swing herself and,
once in place, the cushions supported her in comfort.
The front wheel of the trolly had a guiding handle and
she was thus enabled, as long as the ground was flat,
to go where she would.

“I want to be on a level with other people,” she said,
“so don’t make the stand too low. I can’t bear to be
down; ‘av to look up to everybody as I’m speaking to’m.”

The little contrivance, when finished, proved admirably
suited to her needs. The nurses, proud of her as a case,
helped her over the first difficulties; and, as the figure
she cut did not trouble her, she soon learnt to swing
herself in and out. Before long she was able to steer
herself about the ward and Mrs. Tom, coming in one
afternoon with eggs for the patients and saffron cake
for the nurses’ tea, found her pushing herself about as
contentedly as a child.

“I shall be comin’ ‘ome next week,” she said happily,
“so Leadville can send in the cart for me.”

“I shall be pretty and glad for ‘ee to come ‘ome again,
but why must ‘e send the old cart?”

“Why, to bring this ‘ome in.” She put her hands
to the sides of the trolly and sat erect, a smiling cheerful
woman. Her face, though pale from the long confinement,
had lost its lines, was indeed showing a tendency
to over-fullness and she looked older, but she was herself
again. “If I didn’t I should ‘av to lie down an’ I
don’t want to do that. I want to sit up and see all
there is to be seen. Besides I want for the people to
see I’m able to get about again, if I be a cripple.”

Mrs. Tom perceived that Sabina meant to celebrate
her recovery by a triumphal return. “Well, my dear,
I’ll tell Leadville to send in the cart for ‘ee.”

“This ‘ere thing do run so smooth as a die,” said
Sabina, returning to her happy absorption in the trolly.
“You’d never believe ‘ow easy I can get about in it,”
and she began, with her strong, illness-whitened hands,
to turn the wheels.

“Will it go uphill?” said the other, after observing
with interest the paces of this new steed.

Sabina’s face fell. “Lorrd bless me, I never thought
o’ that!”

“‘Owever will you manage?” Only the shelf on
which Wastralls—house, yard and garden—stood, was flat.

“I…” Sabina hesitated. The brightness had died
cut of her face. “I don’t know if Leadville will carry
out my wishes or no.”

“Well, you can ‘ardly expect ‘un to.”

“I dun’t see why ‘e shouldn’t. ‘Tis my land, why
shouldn’t ‘e do as I want for’n to do?”

“‘Cos ‘e’s so obstinate in ‘is way as you are in yours.”

“My dear life, I bain’t obstinate. ‘Ow can ‘ee say
so? I only do same as my father and granfer did.
I’m sure they wouldn’t like for me to alter it.”

“No, I don’t ‘spose they would,” said Mrs. Tom,
“still…”

Sabina was troubled, but not on account of Isolda’s
mistaken view of her character. That she had already
forgotten. “Well, I’ve got th’ old George Biddick.
I’m sure ‘e’ll do what I want for’n to do, if Leadville
won’t.”

“Still that isn’t like seein’ for yerself.”

“I shall ‘av to take the chance of that,” but she did
not seem happy about it. She mused with knit brow
for some seconds, then changed the subject. “Isolda,
I’d like for Mrs. Bate to put my bed up in the big room.”

This—the old Justice Room—occupied one end of the
house. For many years it had been used as a storeroom,
but underneath dust and litter lay evidence, in
painted panelling and marble mantelpiece, of former
state.

“‘Tis a proper old lumber-shop,” said Mrs. Tom,
“but that doesn’t matter.”

“You see,” explained Sabina, “I can’t go overstairs.”

“I wonder ‘ow Leadville’ll like sleepin’ on the ground
floor?”

“Well, he must like it or lump it.” She spoke with
the confidence of one whose marriage had been a success.
“We’ll get the room to rights for yer.”

“And Isolda, I don’t want to keep on Mrs. Bate, nor
I don’t want her Jenifer nor her Janey.”

“‘Ow’ll ‘ee manage then?”

“I want some one of my own flesh and blood. I
should love to ‘av one of your li’l maids. Why couldn’t
I ‘av Gray? We’ve always ‘greed like chickens.”

“Well, I don’t know I’m sure.” Mrs. Tom had been
expecting this, she had even schemed for it. She had
five daughters, pretty maidens all of them, and Gray
was the eldest. What more suitable than that she should
fill a daughter’s place at Wastralls? Nevertheless it
would not be wise to jump at the offer. “She’s young
to go from ‘ome.”

“Wastralls is only next door and she’ll be all right
with me.”

“An’ ‘as you’ve none of yer own,” agreed Mrs. Tom,
“Gray’s the nearest.”

Whatever Sabina’s intentions, however, she would not
promise to make the girl her heir. “‘Twill be for the
maid’s good,” she said vaguely.

“I’ll see what Tom got to say about it.” Gray was
eighteen and, with Richbell coming on, could well be
spared. No doubt Mrs. Constantine Rosevear would
think Wastralls ought eventually to go to one of her
sons; but, in this world, a hen scratched up what she
could for her own chicks.

“Gray think more ’bout ‘ome than Richbell,” Sabina
said thoughtfully. “She’s not after the chaps so much.”

The mother’s pride was touched. “Whenever she go
up round the parish, there’s always three or four pairs
of eyes lookin’ at Gray. She can always ‘av a chap if
she like, but she don’t trouble whether she do or no.”

“Is there any special young man, do ‘ee think?”

“Well now, I don’t care to say…”

Sabina’s curiosity was aroused. “Now Isolda, there’s
somethin’ gone on since I come in ‘ere. Who is it?”

Mrs. Rosevear had spent some of the happiest hours
of her life, discussing her children with this trusty friend.
“No stranger,” she said smilingly.

“Who then?”

“One of your ‘inds.”

The other opened her eyes. “My dear life, didn’t she
ought to be lookin’ for some one better off?”

“She don’t think anything of money.”

“They don’t at that age, we got to do that for’m.
Who is it then?”

“Why, Jim Rosevear, the yard-man.”

Mrs. Byron knitted her brows in an endeavour to
recall the young man’s face. “Jim Rosevear? He
come just before my accident. I can’t think who ‘ee is.”

“Why, iss you do. You know, Jack Rosevear of
Treketh’s son.”

“Jack Rosevear—th’ old chap who’s so contrary?”

“That’s of’m. When he get in a temper, you know,
‘ee take off ‘is ‘at, swing’n around, and fling’n down and
stamp on it.”

“Oh iss, I know, I remember.” She meditated.
“That ‘edn’t as bad after all.”

“No, ‘tedn’t bad, though ‘ee’ve quarrelled with’s
father. But Mrs. Andrews over to Gentle Jane is ‘is
auntie and, as she’s nobody of ‘er own and ‘er man’s
dead, there’s a farm there and Jim’s nothing to do but
go in and ‘ang up ‘is ‘at.”

“Then what’s ah doin’ at Wastralls?”

Isolda smiled, that secret smile of the mother. “Well,
you needn’t ask me that. Ed’n Wastralls next door to
Hember?”

“So that’s it, is it?”

“There was heaps o’ maidens after ‘im, for ‘e’s a
pretty boy and, at Christmas Tree last New Year, ‘e ad
some mistletoe in’s cap and they all astin’ for’t; but
Gray was the one ‘e gived it to. And that’s ‘ow ‘e come
to you as yard-man.”

“And do she think anything ’bout ‘im?”

“I believe she do, but she don’t go round and tell
everybody what she’s doin’. She’s so meek as a mouse.”

“Then tedn’t known?”

“You’re the first I’ve told anything to about it.”

Sabina nodded. “Then if Gray comes to me, it’ll
hurry matters up?”

“Well, I’m very ‘greeable for ‘er to ‘av ‘im, ‘cos I
think ‘e’s a nice boy.”

“And Gentle Jane is a nice farm and you’ve four other
maidens? Well, I dunno as I shall want to lose ‘er as
soon as I get ‘er, still we can settle that by and by.”

CHAPTER IV

A few days, spent in trundling herself about the ward,
and Mrs. Byron was ready for the long journey, over
Big Hill and down to the sea. Leadville, who saw in
her return the extinction of his last hope, had not the
heart to come for her.

“Pretty pickle I should look,” he said to Mrs. Tom,
“drivin’ missus ‘ome sittin’ up in that trolly, showin’
‘erself off like that. Better fit she should ‘av Mr. Brenton’s
covered cart and cover ‘erself up. Any one’d think she’d
want to ‘ide ‘er affliction.”

“You fancy S’bina ‘idin’ of it?” said Mrs. Tom, who
had suggested his going. “She’ll be quite proud for
people to see ‘er goin’ about with ‘er poor old stumps.
Leavin’ out ‘er laigs, you knaw, she’s as strong as ever.”

When he frowned Byron’s black brows came together
in an ominous line. “Strong as ever?” he said, “that’s
different from what Dr. Derek told me. He give me no
encouragement as she’ll make old bones.”

“I wouldn’t give much for that, then. She’ll be like
a barley weed, always dyin’ and never dead.” She had
been cleaning the house in readiness for Mrs. Byron’s
return; and now, her labours ended, was drinking a
cup of tea with the master of it. “They old Rosevears
was long-livin’ and they do say, she’s more like Old Squire
than either Tom or Constantine be. ‘Oo be ‘ee gwine
send in for ‘er?”

“Jim can go in for ‘er; there is two or three things
wanted into Shoppe”—this was another hamlet in the
widespread parish—”and ‘e can bring ’em ‘ome.”

“I’m sorry you bain’t goin’. You’re the one ought
to fetch ‘er.”

“I’ve got a very poor ‘eart for that sort of thing and
this’ll be worse than Hobby-horse goin’ to Traytor.”

“Iss,” nodded Mrs. Tom. “I bet everybody’ll turn
out to give S’bina a welcome ‘ome. After all, your ways
bain’t like our ways.”

Leadville could not let that pass. “I might ‘a ‘bin
born down east o’ Truro, still I can’t tell you whether I
was or no. But I feel in my bones an’ veins that I’m
no ‘foreigner.’ Couldn’t fancy this place as I do if it
wadn’t so.”

“‘Tis your misfortune,” said Mrs. Tom, taking her
cloak from the door-peg, “as you fancy it so. If you
was one of we, you’d act different.”

Mrs. Byron had a bright day for her journey, a day
with but one cloud. The staff of the hospital had gathered
to see her start and when, on her trolly, and followed
by her luggage and a certain long wooden box, oddly
suggestive of a shortened coffin, she rolled herself down
the hall and into the roadway, they broke into a cheer.
The gallant bearing of this mutilated creature had drawn
from them an emotional response. The beauty of it,
the poignancy, touched them. Men pressed forward to
offer their help and tears stood in the eyes of the women.
That was the spirit, this elemental courage, this defiance
of unhappy fate. Yes, Sabina was indeed true descendant
of Old Squire—he to whom men for so long had given
their respect.

In the road, drawn up and waiting, stood the farm
wagon. Jim Rosevear, with a proper sense of the
ceremonial nature of the occasion, had plaited the horses’
manes and tails with coloured worsteds. The brass
harness twinkled in the sun and the cart-horses had
been groomed until their coats were nearly as bright.
Sabina, occupied with her trolly, which was showing a
tendency to turn a little to the left, was not immediately
aware that the driver was not her husband. Not indeed
until the trolly had been lifted to its place on the floor
of the wagon and secured by ropes, was she at liberty
to look about.

When she saw who was come for her she leaned forward
in the cone. “Where’s the maister to?” she asked.

Jim, who was getting ready to start, looked over his
shoulder. “He’s gone fishin’.”

“Fishin’?” She had thought he might have gone
on business down one of the many crooked streets of
the little town, business from which he would return in
time to drive her home.

“Fishin’ for bass on the Head.”

“Whatever took’n in the ‘ead to do that to-day?”
she said and dwelt for a moment on the incomprehensible
nature of man. Strange that Leadville should not want
to share her triumph, the triumph of the woman who
belonged to him, who was flesh of his flesh; to share
this triumph which was, in part, his. She had been in
excellent spirits, but his absence dashed them. It required
the manifested goodwill of the people in the streets to
restore her equanimity.

In spite of this drawback, however, her progress was,
in its way, royal. Throned in the wagon she passed
slowly along the main road. Placed thus high and with
trunk and head emerging from the wicker cone like an
amazing flower, she was undoubtedly a queer figure;
but the people who came running up the lanes and out
of the houses along the route, to give her the blessing of
their good wishes, missed the queerness. They had known
her all the forty years of her life. She was part of the
setting in which they played their humble parts. A
little prejudiced in her favour through long association,
this display of primitive courage moved them. They
welcomed it as in keeping with the family tradition, as
something worthy, and they offered it the kind encouragement
of hearty handshakes and good words.

“I be pretty an’ glad to see yer come ‘ome again,
ma’am. Terrible, terrible accident, you must ‘av ‘ad;
still you don’t seem to make much of’t. Mary Elizabeth’s
brought ‘ee a few lilies.”

“That trolly be a clever thought of yours, Mrs. Byron.
I never see nothing like it before.”

“I reckon you’ve ‘ad a draggin’ time, ma’am. We’m
all glad to ‘av ‘ee back again.”

“Do ‘ee take and drink up this cup of milk and eat
a bit of yeller cake or ‘ee’ll be faintin’ before ‘ee come to
Trevorrick,” said a farmer’s wife.

“If ‘ee’d like a glass of wine now, you’ve only to say
the word, and you can ‘av it,” interposed the landlord
of the Dolphin; “I’d be proud to serve ‘ee.”

“I be come ‘ome,” said Sabina to her charioteer as
they jogged on and her voice had a contented ring.
She had forgotten the disappointment of Leadville’s
absence. She was come back to her own people and her
own place and she was welcome.

The young man lifted a smiling face and she
remembered that this was the ‘pretty boy’ who was courting
her niece. She looked at him with interest. He was
certainly good-looking, definitely so, a tall slim youth
with a fine profile, deeply-set dark-blue eyes, black hair
and a small tawny moustache. She wondered how the
courtship was progressing. Gray, with cloudy hair about
a wind-flower face, would make a charming bride.
Sabina’s thoughts ran nimbly forward. She saw the
young couple housed at Wastralls, Rosevear working
the farm under her direction and the old cradle once
more in use. The prospect promised her an autumn
happiness. Wonderful indeed, the way in which the
wind is tempered to the shorn!

When the farm cart turned off the highway by St. Cadic
Mill, Sabina found Constantine Rosevear and his
wife waiting by the roadside. The big florid man,
though he had wife and three grown sons, had never
been able to forget that Sabina was the woman he should
have married. His Betsey was all right but, about
Sabina, lingered the glamour of romance.

“I been in terrible fear,” he told her simply, “and
I’m ‘avin’ holiday to-day. If you don’t mind I’ll walk
down to Wastralls with you. You don’t know ‘ow glad
I be to see ye ‘ome again and lookin’ so well too.”

Sabina’s heart beat irregularly for a moment. If only
Leadville would talk to her like this! She comforted
herself with the thought that his being undemonstrative
did not mean he was unfeeling. Words did not come
easily to him, but still waters run deep.

The cottagers about the smithy threw more flowers
into the cart. “Might be May Day,” as Sabina said,
with her happy smile. At Hember, Tom Rosevear was
waiting with four of his daughters. “Mother’s down to
Wastralls wi’ Gray,” he said and the blooming girls,
the so-called nieces, raised their young voices in
affectionate greeting. ‘Aunt S’bina’ had been the fairy
godmother of the family, always willing to abet them in
any piece of innocent fun. They were sincerely glad to
have her back.

The drive had been long for one just out of hospital,
but the kindliness of friends and neighbours had proved
a stimulant. When the wagon turned into the yard of
Wastralls, however, Sabina was almost too tired to note
the changes that had been made. The absence of the
honeysuckle caused the porch to look bare, the old
sheepdog was no longer lying in the sun; but Leadville had
come back from the fishing and was ready to lift her
down. At sight of him the tired face brightened. “I’m
glad to come ‘ome again,” she said.

The man had been standing idly by the door. Having
drawn nothing out of the sea he had come back in a
mood which was not uninfluenced by his lack of success.
Everything had gone wrong, his hopes were dashed, his
plans had miscarried and he searched the landscape in
vain for any hope of change. Sabina was well again,
she had already asserted her will with regard to the
farm and before him lay a future as dreary as the past.

He lifted his eyes as the beflowered cortège rolled into
the yard. He had expected a sort of chair and the
trolly with its basket-work cone was an unpleasant
surprise; while the sight of his wife, in brightly coloured
gown and pink sunbonnet, swelling out of it like a
monstrous fruit, completed his dismay. She was a
figure of fun, a queer oddity, repellent as something out
of nature. The bravery that faced the sunshine as
simply as in the days of its strength did not appeal to
him, he was only conscious of the deformity. His heart
contracted, emptied itself of good-will, then slowly filled
again—but not with kindliness.

The business of unloading occupied the men for some
minutes and Mrs. Rosevear, taking the parcels, handed
them to her daughter.

“What a lovely lot o’ flowers. I should think every
garden for miles round will be bare.”

“Take care o’ that box,” cried Sabina, suddenly, as
they lifted out the case that was suggestive of a coffin.
“I value that.”

“Where be ‘ee gwine put it, auntie?”

“In the cupboard in the big parlour.”

“What ‘av ‘ee got in it?”

“Ah, my dear, ask me no questions and I tell ‘ee no lies.”

“‘Ere, I’ll take that,” said Mrs. Tom, intervening,
“I know where it got to be put. ‘Tis what you told
me of, S’bina?”

Mrs. Byron nodded. “Iss, I’ve brought it back wi’
me. Doctor said I was maäze to do it; but I said I
would, an’ I ‘av.”

A meal was ready on the kitchen table, a piece of
stout wood which had weathered the use and
elbow-grease of more than a century. This room had been
for three generations the gathering-place of the family.
Innumerable savoury meals had been cooked on the slab
range; hams in a succession longer than that of the
Kings of England had been lifted from the rafter hooks
and, after the buffetings of winter and the scorch of
summer, men had taken their ease on the bench while
women made and mended. Old tales had been told and
retold by deep voices, tales of witches, of wreckers, of
people ‘pisky-led’n’; and the sound of them lingered
in the dim corners. They were waiting for the new
generation which should utter once more the familiar
words and keep alive the traditions.

“I never thought I should ever be back ‘ere any
more,” said Sabina, contentedly, as she ran her trolly
up to the table and, by a contrivance similar to that
on a dentist’s chair, reduced her height to a sitting level.
“It do seem good to be ‘ome. Everything look so natural.”

“Well, ‘twould be funny if it didn’t,” said Mrs. Rosevear,
helping the meat.

“Don’t seem as if I’d been all that time away.”

“I expect it do to Leadville.”

His wife turned to him. “What do ‘ee think of my
invention?”

“I can’t abide it,” said the man, with the emphasis
of sincere feeling.

The others looked at him in surprise. “I’ll always
be thinking of what you was,” he added hastily.

Sabina’s face clouded, but only for a moment. “Let’s
make the best of things,” she said. “I’m goin’ to forget
about them times, I’m goin’ to live for the moment.”

“I’m not one as forgets,” said Leadville heavily.

Revived by food and rest Sabina was soon impatient
to begin a further progress. She trundled herself into
the linhay to inspect the milk and butter; then into
the two seldom-used rooms known as the Big and Little
Parlour. Beyond them lay the wide shallow stairs, the
door into the front part of the house and the long
Justice Room.

Mrs. Tom threw open the door of this and Sabina,
pushing the trolly in, uttered an exclamation of pleasure.
The litter of agricultural implements, broken harness,
bags and boxes, had been cleared away, the grates had
been blacked and the panelled wall painted a shadowy
grey. Between the two fireplaces stood a large bed, the
posts of which were carved with corn, fruit and other
emblems of fertility. On it lay a patchwork quilt, the
work of Sabina’s grandmother. Drift-wood fires flamed
under the white marble mantelpieces and the coverlet
shone with the glistening silks of other days. The
spacious room with its white-hung bed and its white
curtains, smelt of the sea and Sabina turned and smiled
at her husband.

“‘Av you moved your clothes down?” she asked.

“Not that I know of.”

“Well, you better make ‘aste an’ do’t.”

Looking past her into the beautiful room he thought
dimly that it was too large. “I shent like it down
‘ere,” he said and something ancestral moved in him,
assuring him that the upper parts of a house, the upper
branches, were secure from the marauding enemy, the
terror by night. “Never sleeped on the ground-floor.”

Laying a hand affectionately on his shoulder, the woman
looked into his face with a touch of softening and appeal.
Surely he would not leave her to sleep there alone?

To the man, this light touch was illuminating. “Oh,
leave’n go,” he muttered.

In the bedroom, Gray Rosevear was moving deftly to
and fro, unpacking Sabina’s clothes and laying them in
the drawers of the tall-boy. The man’s eyes followed
her light figure, at first unconsciously, but before long
with a strange quickening of emotion. If it had been
this girl who was asking him, he would have given up
his eyrie with an eager willingness. He did not
understand himself. What was Gray to him?

His wife’s voice when she spoke again, seemed a
whisper from far away. “I can’t go overstairs,” she
said pleadingly.

Byron turned his eyes deliberately from Gray’s wildflower
grace to the thick shortened figure in the trolly
and his incipient repugnance grew. Sleep with this
deformity? He could not bring himself to it. To live
in the same house with her would be difficult; at least
he would shut her out of his nights. Already he knew
instinctively what those nights, moon-silvered, star-set,
nights not of bitter brooding but of dreams, would be
to him.

“I can’t sleep ‘ere.”

Sabina sighed. The people had given her the froth
of sweet words but this was reality. “Well, my dear,
I can’t ‘elp it,” she said resignedly. “I can’t do much
nowadays.”

“Ah now, if ‘ee’d only reckernize that.”

The touch of opposition was a spur. “Still there’s a
lot as I can do. This trolly now, ‘ll ‘elp me a lot.”

He eyed it with distaste. “Oogly thing, can’t think
why ‘ee do want to be runnin’ round like a toad on a
red-‘ot shovel. Seein’ ‘ow you be, ‘twould be more to
your credit if you was to die down and be quiet, ‘stead o
goin’ about on an old thing like that. You’ll be the
laughing-stock of the parish.”

“Nothin’ ‘ud get done.”

“Oh, fiddlesticks, ‘ow won’t the things be done?
Can’t I do’t for yer?” For the moment Gray was
forgotten and he was back at the old gnawing bitterness.

“Whiles my ‘ead’s above ground, I’ll look after the
place myself,” said Sabina who, being tired, was a little
captious. She was disappointed that her welcome home
had been so commonplace. She had expected, she knew
not what, but something culminating.

“A pretty mess ‘ee’ll make of it,” muttered Leadville
and, turning about, walked off with himself. When he
and Sabina differed, which was not often—their differences
being fundamental, trifles took the subsidiary place so
seldom granted them—he invariably ended the discussion
by going out of the house. With all the open from which
to choose it was easy for him to get away from a woman’s
tiresomeness, to get back to his own quiet company and
his thoughts.

Sabina looked after the husband whom she had long
ago decided was difficult, but probably not more so than
other men, and her heart sank. She had so wanted
Leadville to rejoice with her over her recovery, to be
proud of her. Though she carried herself gallantly there
were periods when her poor heart acknowledged a weakness,
a lowness. She had longed sometimes to stay it
on a greater strength.

“Where’s Gray goin’ to sleep?” asked Mrs. Rosevear
who, standing quietly in the background, had been a
shrewd spectator.

“Gray?” said she, and a feeling seldom hitherto
experienced, awoke in her. If she had been as young
as Gray, soft-eyed as she, would it have made a difference?

“Twill be a bit lonely for ‘er upstairs,” said the
mother thoughtfully. “Though, of course, Leadville’ll
be near.”

But it was envy, not jealousy, that had been awakened
in Mrs. Byron. “Let her come in wi’ me. We’ll ‘av
a little bed put up, there’s plenty of room for ‘er.”

When Leadville came back, and he must in time grow
accustomed to the idea of sleeping on the ground-floor,
a fresh arrangement could be made. Meanwhile the
maid would be company. Sabina felt that the place was
peopled with the judges and judged of long ago and, to
her Celtic mind, the shadows moved. In the dark hours
it would be comforting to hear the movements, the
breathing, of some one still this side the grave.

From an upper chamber they brought the small bedstead
which, when Mrs. Byron was a girl, had been hers;
also a chest of drawers.

“Where’s your traäde to?” asked the mother.

“Jim’s bringin’ it down. I believe he’s out in the
kitchen now. I’ll go and see.”

As she went from the room Mrs. Rosevear sank into
the nearest chair. “I’m glad you’m back, S’bina. I
bin so whisht without ‘ee. Not a soul to speak to besides
Tom and you can’t tell a man very much.”

“No, they don’t understand.” Her thoughts wandered
for a moment. Leadville had been strange in his manner
but of course it was only that he did not understand.

“Now you’ve seen Jim,” continued Mrs. Rosevear,
“what do you think of him?”

Sabina roused herself. “I call ‘ee a proper chap,”
she said smilingly. “Lovely curly ‘air he ‘as.”

“Yes,” confided the mother, “and Gray’s as maäze
as a rattle about ‘im.”

Mrs. Tom’s confidences made Sabina feel as if she had
a share in the other’s happy motherhood. They sat
gossiping until the shadows began to fill the valley.
Jim was a long time on his way with Gray’s box—but
to every man and woman their hour!

Leadville, on leaving the house, had turned his face
towards the cliff. Beyond its dark wall was space and
light. He took the little path that led over the head,
passed the deep curves of what in prehistoric times had
been the earthworks of a stockaded hold and came out
upon a broad shelf of rock. The tide was in, large green
waves were rolling, with a break like gunfire, into the
caves below, and, facing him, was one of the strange
sunsets often seen on that coast. The western sky was
scarlet and across the light was a trail of black clouds.

“A red sky at night, is the shepherd’s delight,” muttered
the man, flinging himself down above the booming uproar
of the water. Below, the shags were nesting on
inaccessible ledges and a solitary seal was diving through
the crests of the green rollers. Byron felt unusually,
inexplicably cheerful. The glories of the sunset were in
keeping with his mood, a mood, as he realized, of the
incoming tide. On his shelf of rock he lay in a happy
dream. Hitherto he had loved nothing but a few acres
of land; he had hungered after fields and rocks, had
dragged out a dark existence of craving and disappointment.
Now his tormented spirit was at peace. The
wide expanse of heaven changed from scarlet to poppy-red,
the raven clouds grew more numerous and Leadville
looked on with happy eyes. In his breast was a ferment,
like the unresting ferment of the sea, but neither cold
nor lifeless. A wind was blowing steadily from the west,
but he did not feel it for he was warm. His spirit, with
its capacity for intense feeling, had crossed a boundary
line, beyond which was neither heat nor cold, hunger
nor thirst. He had loved Wastralls, now he was in the
power of a force stronger than that love, of a force the
strongest in the world.

THE BOOK

CHAPTER V

Mrs. Byron, wheeling her trolly through the “houses
and courts” of Wastralls, along the garden paths and
down the neglected drive, found that her creation had
a feeling for rises in the ground that was almost uncanny.
“Thus far shalt thou go,” said the trolly and Jim
Rosevear spent many a half-hour levelling surfaces which
Mrs. Byron had hitherto believed to be as flat as the
yard pond. On the whole she got about as much as
she had expected to; and far more than her husband
or even the hinds had believed possible.

The latter had served her well, partly because she,
being a good master, it was difficult for them to do
otherwise; but also because, being raised above them,
a woman and unfamiliar, she was in some dim way that
Golden Helen of all male dreams. For her part she
understood them as she understood the animals on the
farm, their idiosyncrasies, their capacity. She worked
them as she worked her horses, as kindly, with as much
consideration; but without feeling that they were nearer
to her in the scale of creation.

On her return to Wastralls she found that her long
absence and Leadville’s slack rule, hard work one day,
off shooting the next, had demoralized the little band.
They gave their employer a hearty welcome, vicariously,
proud of one who, though desperately injured, had
refused to give up the struggle which is life; but it soon
became evident that they believed her accident and
subsequent mutilation had changed her into something
weak and strange. Her orders were questioned.
Unconsciously the men were testing the power that for so
long had kept them subservient.

“George,” said she to Biddick, one bright June morning,
“you’d better cut that ‘ay in Cross Parks to-day.”

“I think I should leave it a day or two longer, missis.
I b’lieve we’re goin’ to ‘av some rain,” returned the old
fellow who, at the moment, had a job more to his liking.

Sabina’s voice rang out. “Never mind about that.
You get the men and ‘av it done at once. It’ll be done
before the rain come then.”

She had a sense of weather so keen that she had been
known to predict it for months, even seasons, ahead and
Biddick looked at her uneasily. When some days later,
he came for his week’s money, she spoke to him sharply.

“If you’m too old for yer work, better jack it up
and I’ll hire a younger man.”

“I thought missis, as we was in for a lot of rain.”

“I’m missis and I’ll ‘av things done my way.”

As she once said, “Don’t meet fear half-way, go all
the way and you’ll crush ‘un in the egg!”

But although Sabina asserted herself with promptitude
and decision, it was not in the old effortless way. Her
health was far from satisfactory. She held her own,
reduced her team to an obedience which for them was
happiness, but paid for her victory in restless nights, in
pain and weariness. She thought sometimes that it
would be impossible for her to carry on.

“I do ache so bad,” she told her faithful crony, “that
I feel I shall ‘av to give up and be a bed-lier.”

“My dear life,” said Mrs Tom, pursuing her old
tactics, “’tis just what Leadville’d like for ‘ee to be.”

“D’yer think ‘e would?”

“Iss, I’m sure ‘e would, ‘e’d wait on yer ‘and and foot.”

“I should like to see ‘un then.”

“I can’t fancy you being a bed-lier,” said Mrs. Tom
comfortably. “Did Gray tell ‘ee there’s a piece of hedge
down in the li’l medder?”

“No, she didn’t.” Sabina was interested. “An’ I
thinking to ‘av the sheep turned into the lower field!
I’ll send Jim down this afternoon to mend’n. ‘E’s a
good boy.”

“Farmer’s son and got farmin’ in’s veins.”

“I like to see the way he wait on Gray. I should be
glad for’m to live ‘ere after they’m married. The way
he’s goin’ he’ll do fine. Biddick’s gettin’ old and Jim
shall be foreman and teel Wastralls for me. He got an
eye for the stock and he’s a good-working li’l feller.
Oh iss, Gray’s a lucky maid.”

Mrs. Tom did not think the suggested arrangement
would prove satisfactory; but the young couple were
not yet married, were not even engaged and, if Sabina
could not see what was going on, it was not for others
to point it out to her.

“Jim’ll be agreeable,” she said non-committally, “’tis
all the same to him whether he go to his auntie at Gentle
Jane or whether he stay ‘ere. All ‘e think about is
Gray. Ah, my dear, I should like for ‘ee to get as far
as Hember and see they two sittin’ together wi’ us.
‘Tis so good as a picture.”

Sabina nodded. “Leadville was only sayin’ yesterday
he never seen a maid so fond of ‘er ‘ome as Gray. Soon
ever ‘er work’s done she’s off ‘ome like a bird.”

“I ‘ope she don’t leave ‘ee too much by yerself?”

“No, no, my dear, if she’d been my own daughter
she couldn’t do more for me,” and she sighed, feeling
that if Gray had been the child whose place she filled,
Leadville would have been able to rest his heart content.
She could see that the pseudo-relationship in which the
young girl stood to him was unsatisfactory and she
understood, though too vaguely to put it into words,
that for people to share a home they should be bound
by blood or sex.

“Well, I must do so well as I can,” she added, reverting
to the main topic of their wandering talk. “‘Tis live
from day to day and though I don’t feel very special,
I must be surely stronger than I was.”

“Iss,” said Mrs. Tom encouragingly, “I can see as
each month make a difference to ‘ee.”

Sabina might talk of becoming a ‘bed-lier,’ but only
the slightest spur was required to nerve her to fresh
effort; and by living, as she had said, from day to day
and leaning on the young strength of Gray, she won
through the summer. Indeed the glooms of autumn
were brightened for her by the conviction that she
would live usefully and might live long. Leadville on
the other hand saw his last hope fading. Dr. Derek
had declared that she could not stand the shock to her
system; that, if she survived, it would be as an invalid.
Sabina however had the will to live and the trolly—a
contrivance which Leadville both detested and
contemned—carried her from kitchen to linhay and from
barn to byre. Her husband looked on with growing
exasperation, opposing to her good-will a sulky silence.
At meal-times he sat with eyes fixed on his plate or
lifted them for a quick glance at Gray. When he went
out, he took his gun, the gun that hung on thongs over
the kitchen door and which, as he had inherited it from
old Leadville Byron, was the one possession he did not
owe his wife. When he came back it was to sit in Old
Squire’s big chair and spend his time cleaning and oiling
it. Whither he went, Sabina did not know. She sighed
over his withdrawal of himself, his dull hostility, but did
not lose heart. In the end Leadville, seeing that the
struggle was hopeless, must return to her. What else
could he do? He, too, was middle-aged and except
for her was alone in the world.

Although Mrs. Byron felt sure of the ultimate issue,
she had not missed the import of those quick glances
when Leadville, she and Gray sat at table together. He
would answer when the girl spoke and, if she were likely
to be making butter or plucking chickens, would hang
about and offer his help. When he brought in fish or
birds it was to Gray that he took them and, in the evening,
laying the gun across his knees, he would lean forward
and stare at her. The wife looked on, not indulgently
but with her usual robust common sense. Middle-aged
men were often transiently attracted by young relatives—nieces
or cousins—but the girls went to homes of their
own, the old fellows forgot and no harm was done. In
a better-managed world, the generations would be sharply
defined and each would be sufficient unto itself. Sabina
could not wonder that Leadville should prefer the delicacy
of tint, the soft dewy eyes of the maid to her own stale
and faded charms. She looked at herself in the glass,
at her white hair, the loose skin of her neck, the fixed
colour in her cheeks. She had been handsome and she
had not cared. Now that wrinkles had come about her
eyes she thought longingly of the pale smooth lids between
which she had so contentedly surveyed her world. The
mood, the regret, were new to her, an outcome of her
illness and she returned before long to the old comfortable
indifference. If she were in the forties so was
Leadville. His figure was heavy, his face lined and
weatherbeaten. Gray comparing him with Jim Rosevear
could not fail to mark the contrast.

“Aunt S’bina, you been in the house all day,” the
girl said one evening as they sat at tea.

“Well, my dear,” returned Mrs. Byron easily, “I’ve
been busy; I had the baking to do and this afternoon
I’ve cleaned out the rubbish your mammy put in the
stair-cupboard and after that”—she smiled and looked
hopefully at her husband—”I mended yer uncle’s
socks.”

Leadville, who was cutting himself a slice of ham,
threw the knife into the dish with a clatter. Why did
she meddle with his clothes? He’d rather wear them
all holes than have her mend them. ‘Your uncle,’
too! He wasn’t Gray’s uncle, he wasn’t even her cousin.
No, but—and he drifted out upon the wave that was
for ever lapping about his feet.

“Do you think you can spare me? I should like to
go home after tea,” pursued the girl.

“Iss, my dear, I can spare yer.”

“Why can’t you come too, Aunt S’bina?”

“Me go up that hill? Why, you know trolly won’t
take the least rise in the ground.”

“Well, I’ll push behind.”

“Don’t believe you’m strong enough.”

“Why not Uncle Leadville push it then?”

Byron returned from his dream to sweep a lowering
glance over the little platform of shivered wood. “I’d
like to see myself pushin’ that thing.”

“‘Twould do Aunt Sabina good to have a craik with
mammy.”

As this was to him a matter of indifference he made
no answer and Gray turned to Mrs. Byron. “Anyhow,
auntie, you’ll come as far as the gate with me, won’t
you?”

“Why, of course I will. I did last night and the
night before, didn’t I?” said the other innocently.
From the yard gate the road was in sight as far as
Hember.

“Yes and I like for you to be there. It’s company
till I get home.”

“I’ll give you my company,” said Leadville abruptly,
“without you askin’ me for’t.”

Gray turned a face, from which all expression had been
banished, on the speaker. “I think you better stay
with Aunt S’bina.”

“Oh, she don’t want me,” he answered, a touch of
pleading in his manner.

“Iss, Leadville,” said the wife tranquilly, “I’m glad
for ‘ee to stay in wi’ me. Let the young ones go, they
don’t want we old ‘uns followin’ of them up. We’ve
‘ad our day.”

The man turned on her quickly. “Me old?” he
cried with manifest irritation. “I’ll tell yer about
old. I bain’t old.”

“You’m in yer prime; but that seem old to a young maid.”

“Do I seem old to you, Gray?” demanded he, and
his eyes were both pleading and threatening, eyes so
hungry that the girl had some ado to give him an unmoved
reply. Not that she felt any sympathy with him in
what she looked on as a tiresome aberration, but that
under the quiet surface she was a little stirred and a
little afraid. “You’m older than dad,” she said at last.

“I’m ten times the man your father is!” He stretched
his arms and expanded his deep chest. He was desperately
anxious to prove to her his unabated virility, while she,
timid, and on the threshold of awakening sensation,
would have avoided the thought of it. His strength,
present with her, and always desirous, was a subtle
menace to the young happiness which her bosom shrined.
“There isn’t a feller for miles round can wrestle me or
box me. You know I can carry four hundredweight on
my shoulders where other chaps take two. I hain’t old.”

The girl, moved by her longing to escape, had risen
and drawn nearer to her aunt. Here was, at least,
protection, protection from all but that dim admission
of her own heart that Leadville Byron was indeed all
he claimed to be and more. For he was not only strong
he was persistent, he was forcible. “Don’t make no
difference to me,” she said, in a voice she tried to render
careless, “whether you’re old or not.” And she spoke
the truth. It was not his age that mattered.

When she came to Wastralls she had been prepared
to find Leadville devoted to his wife’s interests and deeply
thankful she had been spared to him. By degrees it
dawned on her simplicity that his thoughts were
otherwise busy, that Sabina was a matter of indifference to
him, or worse, that he was living a dream life of which
she, Gray, was the centre. An unhappy little centre!
She had had her share of attention from the young men
of the scattered community, a little sighing, a soft pursuit,
a hot word and the end. But Leadville was a stranger
and his pursuit was not soft but fierce. He did not
sigh but she could not be in the room with him without
feeling that his brawny chest, his strong arms were
aching with the longing to lay hold of her. She could
not touch him accidentally without feeling the thrill of
his desire. She was enveloped by his thoughts; and
she struggled, resenting this emotion which threatened
to overwhelm her and the bright prospects of her youth.
For Gray was in need, not of a conflagration, but of a
little fire upon the hearth.

With the man, matters were gradually coming to a
head. He had not loved the old couple who had adopted
him, he had been only mildly attracted by his wife,
but he had in him a fund of passion which, through the
fallow years, had been growing in concentration and of
which the fuse had at length been lighted. His love
for Gray was as overwhelming to himself as it might
prove to its object. He had not known what a furnace
was smouldering at the heart of him and, when the flame
broke forth, to resist was impossible. He did not attempt
it. On the contrary he gave himself up to these new
sensations that ran through him, wave after wave, like
a burning but not scarifying fire. His new passion
pushed Wastralls for the time being into the background.
He could not contain more than one absorbing emotion.
He had been the persistent, passionate lover of the land,
so but with more fever, did he love Gray. Wonderful
as to him were these new feelings, he found them almost
too poignant. When she entered a room in which he
sat his throat went dry, he could hardly speak and the
brief contacts of skirt or hand proved unendurably sweet.
He turned from these moments of a troubling ecstasy
to the languorous long intervals when she was absent
and he, recalling her face, could dwell on it and imagine
the fulfilling, tender, fiery, wonderful, of his every
hope.

During the first months that Gray was living at
Wastralls, Byron spent much of his time on Dark Head;
but in the end he woke to a desire for more than dreams
could give, a desire which grew in intensity after the
manner of Jack the Giant-killer’s bean. He began to
haunt the young girl’s steps and her honest attempts
to discourage him passed with him for a sort of tantalizing
encouragement. He could not believe that the object
of a feeling so intense could be unresponsive, that these
troubling sensations were not mutual; and when Gray
avoided him, escaped from him, even, when protected by
Sabina, flouted him with a little angry ruffling, he smiled
with the conviction that his hour was at hand.

Steady untiring pursuit is apt to demoralize the victim
and while Sabina thought the summer heats had washed
the colour out of Gray’s cheek, Mrs. Tom, uneasy as
a hen when hawks are hovering, went to the root of the
matter.

“Do ‘ee like being to Wastralls, Gray?” she asked
that evening when, having left Sabina stationed at the
yard gate, the girl had run up the road, to arrive breathless
and panting.

“Oh yes, mammy, I do dearly love Aunt S’bina.”

“Why was you runnin’ so just now?”

Gray hesitated. Very few girls confide such matters
to a mother’s ear. Experience shall not teach. Each
generation will make its own mistakes and gather its
handful of treasures and keep its secrets. Gray was
however very doubtful and unhappy and, having no
girl of her own age to consult, she turned to her mother.

“It’s Uncle Leadville. He’s always wanting to come
with me and I don’t want’n. I dunno—” she paused.

“Iss?” said Mrs. Tom quietly.

“I dunno as Jim’ll be agreeable.”

“My dear, why don’t you wear the ring that ‘e give you?”

“I don’t know, I don’t like to. I”—she smiled
anxiously, yet with a glimmering of humour—”I don’t
believe Uncle Leadville would like to see me wearin’ a
ring.”

Having said so much, Gray was willing to make further
admissions. “I feel afraid of Unde Leadville, he’s
always after me and his eyes seem to be watching me
as if they was coming out of his sockets. I can’t sleep
by night, mammy, I—I’m always thinking about him
and,” she looked shyly away, unable in this moment
of revelation to meet her mother’s understanding eye,
“I don’t want to, I’m—” her voice sank, “I’m afraid.”

“‘Tis a shame,” said Mrs. Tom warmly. She knew
how compelling are strength and intensity but thought
it wisest not to let her knowledge appear. The
susceptibilities of young people are easily ruffled.

“I think it’s wicked of him, mammy.” She was
righteously indignant that he should be making life so
difficult, “and auntie is so good to him.”

“Iss,” sighed the matron, “but men’s so, they can’t
help theirselves—poor old villains. Why don’t you come
‘ome with me for a bit and leave Richbell go down with
your auntie?”

Gray’s face brightened hopefully, then she shook her
head. “I don’t think Aunt S’bina would like it.”

“Well, I’ll talk to yer auntie about it an’ tell ‘er what
I think.”

“Don’t you say nothing about what I’ve told you,”
cried youth, anxious as to the discretion of gossiping
middle-age.

“You can trust me,” and Gray, looking into the kind
shrewd face, felt that she might.

“You know she see Uncle Leadville’s tiresome but
she don’t think he mean anything.”

“Poor sawl, no she wouldn’t, of course, bein’ ‘is wife.
He’ll say one thing to she an’ another thing to you.”

Gray nodded. That was the way of it.

“And she’ll believe what ‘e say.”

“He’d tell her I was making a fuss about nothing.
Yes, he would.”

“There’s Jim comin’ up the road,” said Mrs. Tom,
who was sitting by the window; “I wonder ‘e and
Leadville get on.”

“They don’t see but very little of each other. If I
was to be with Jim when Uncle Leadville come, I believe
they’d fight; and the fear of that keeps me on pins and
needles when I’m with Jim. It’s all horrid.”

“Well, dearie, I’ll see what I can do with yer auntie.
‘Twould be better if you could say as you was engaged
to Jim, but I suppose you can’t?”

“I daren’t, mammy.” Her large eyes, softly black,
filled with tears. Courting-time is April weather but
Gray felt that more showers than sunshine were falling
to her share. “I’m frightened of Uncle Leadville and
his old gun. We often say we’ll do things but we don’t
after all; I got an idea he would.”

Mrs. Tom took from behind the door a purple knitted
bonnet and a cloak. The evenings were dark and the
wind from the sea cold. She did not stay to take off
her apron but went as she was, in her dark gown and
with her kind face bright between the flaps of the woollen
bonnet.

Sabina, lonely, because the husband who should have
been sitting opposite to her at the end of the day was
gone out, gave her a warmer greeting than was her wont.
She was tired and the peace and good-fellowship to
which she was looking forward seemed long in coming.
She, also, would be glad of a chat.

CHAPTER VI

“She’ve a whisht ‘eart, poor Gray ‘as,” said the mother
in deprecation of Mrs. Byron’s stout advice that the maid
should wear her ring openly and tell Leadville to go hang.

“Whatever is she ‘fraid of?”

“Oh, I dunno, maids is like that sometimes.”

“She needn’t be afraid of Leadville, ‘e ‘edn’t goin’ do
nothing.”

“I don’t say ‘e ‘av so far,” was the cautious reply.

The wife laughed. “You don’t think I’ve lived with’n
all these years an’ don’t know ‘e’s all blow?”

But Mrs. Tom knew just how much justification there
was for Gray’s alarm. “Well, you know, Gray’s easily
frightened,” she said thoughtfully. “I don’t believe she’d
come down the lane at night for all the gold in Tregols.”

“Well, I never. Whatever is there to be afraid of?”

“You know she ‘ad a bit of a shock one night.”

“She didn’t say a word about it to me, then.”

“Well no, I s’pose she didn’t like to.”

“Whatever was it, then?”

“I don’t think she ‘ud like for me to say anything
about it.”

Mrs. Tom had successfully aroused her friend’s curiosity
and Sabina clapped her arm impatiently. “I’m sure
Gray wouldn’t mind you tellin’ me of’t.”

“No, p’raps she wouldn’t, still ’tis a awkward thing
to say to ‘ee.”

“Never mind for that. I reckon I can listen to what
you can say.”

“Well, my dear.” Mrs. Tom hitched her chair nearer
to the trolly and lowered her voice. “Jim ‘ad gone
over to Treketh to see his mother and the maid was to
home and she wouldn’t leave ‘er father see ‘er back
‘ere, said she’d be all right by ‘erself. An’ as she was
comin’ along, something rustled in the ‘edge. ‘Twas one
of they dark nights and she couldn’t see, but she thought
’twas a bullock.”

“Iss?” Sabina’s mind, by now ready for it, leaped
to the natural conclusion. Leadville was trying to meet
Gray on the quiet.

“And some one springed out and catched ‘old of er
and just about pulled the clothes off ‘er back, they did,”
was Mrs. Tom’s startling end to the story.

“My dear life! You don’t mean to say so?” This
was worse than she had feared; presented her, indeed,
with a new and surprising view of her husband.

“I dunno ‘owever she got away from ‘im.”

“Isolda!” and the fixed colour of her cheeks was
a dull red patch on the pallor, “you don’t mean to
say that ’twas really ‘im? You can’t mean ’twas?”

“Oh, my dear, don’t ‘e ask me.”

“I can’t ‘ardly believe,” said the wife miserably,
“that ‘e’d do such a thing. ‘E’s always been a good-livin’
feller, ‘e don’t drink and ‘e never seemed to be
after the maidens. Can’t think,” she said, surrendering
the point as proven, “whatever ail the man.”

The fact that Leadville was capable of using violence
to gain his ends had sunk into Mrs. Tom’s mind. She
was like an old hen when a hawk is in the blue. “I
don’t want to keep Gray ‘ome,” she said uneasily, “but
if Leadville worry the life out of ‘er…”

Mrs. Byron had rallied from her consternation. At
the bottom of her heart she preserved a little doubt.
The story was perhaps substantially true, true enough
to show in which direction the wind was blowing; but
Gray, being a timid maid, the tale had not lost in the
telling.

“‘Tis a pack o’ tommy-rot,” she said at last, anger
beginning to colour her unhappy amazement, “a man
of his years runnin’ after young maidens; but once
Gray’s married ‘e won’t think no more about it. ‘Tis
disgraceful of him; and, what’s more, ’tis madness
for’m to think she’s goin’ to ‘av anything to do wi’ an
old man like ‘e. Isolda, I do think ’tis time Gray was
married.”

“Iss, my dear, so do I.”

“Well—why don’t they?”

“It mean a good bit o’ money to get married, you
know,” said Mrs. Tom who, in spite of her alert mind,
was not capable of quick decisions, “and one thing
more, marrying isn’t horse-jocking.”

“Why don’t they put the banns in and get married
on the quiet?”

The other went off on a side issue. “You know,” she
said, uttering her thoughts aloud, “Leadville’s bound to
know one day.”

“If Gray was to walk in one morning and say ‘I’m
married,'” continued Mrs. Byron, “what could ‘e do
then? ‘E’d ‘av to ‘old ‘is tongue.”

The thought of Gray doing anything so bold brought
a smile to the mother’s lips. “I’m sure she wouldn’t
do that, S’bina.”

“Well, p’raps she wouldn’t.” Mrs. Byron had realized
that her friend, in revealing the incident of the lane, had
meant to convey a warning. The aunt did not wish to
have Gray replaced by the handsome more noisy Richbell
and yet… “I feel I belong to speak to Leadville
about it,” she said reluctantly. “But I don’t want for’n to
think I’m always watchin’ ‘im.” The little doubt as to his
having been as guilty as Isolda would have her think, had
grown. She could not believe his jumping out of the hedge
had been more than a trick, a practical joke. Gray, in
her alarm, must have magnified it. These inexperienced
girls were as easily frightened as a sheep! A way out
of the difficulty occurred to her. “My dear, ‘ow would
it be if Leonora was to come and stay for a few days?”

Mrs. Tom thought that Sabina was only postponing the
reckoning which in the long run she would be bound to
make, but aloud she gave consent.

“Well, Leonora can come for a bit and see ‘ow they
get on, but she’d ‘av to sleep ‘ome. She’d better come
down early in the mornin’, for ’tis breakfast-time, when
you’m in bed, that Leadville torment Gray.”

“Every month,” said Sabina hopefully, “I feel I shall
soon be able to get up early in the mornin’s; by spring,
I’m sure I shall be able to.”

“I hope by that time, please God,” said Mrs. Tom,
getting up to go, “the maid will be married.”

She felt it would be as well for Gray to have the
protection of a man, in love with her and constantly at her
side and, as she went uphill between the November
hedges, she considered what she should tell her husband.
Tom was a peaceable and cautious man, but his blood
was hot. The wife wondered whether he would be willing
for Gray to be married quietly? A good deal depended
on the girl. Since the time, as a little child, that she
had fallen into the pail of boiling pig’s meal and they
had nearly lost her, she had been her father’s pet. If
he understood that she was unhappy and that Leadville
was the cause, he would be certain to make himself
unpleasant. Mrs. Tom did not wish to stir up strife.

Leonora, when told she was to spend her days at
Auntie Sabina’s, shook back her curls and declared herself
delighted. One of a big household she knew the stint
of comparatively narrow means and a change would be
welcome. Before Gray was out of her aunt’s room the
following morning, impatient fingers were rattling at the
handle of the porch; and Leadville, stealing down as
usual in his stockinged feet, heard with surprise a sound
of voices in the kitchen. He stared when Leonora came
from the linhay carrying hog’s pudding and a frying-pan.

“I’ve come to breakfast,” she said, smiling up at him
with bright and friendly eyes, “and I be comin’ every
morning. I like comin’ ‘ere. Aunt S’bina says I shall
be company for Gray and I dearly love ‘og’s puddin’,
Uncle Leadville, don’t you?”

Leadville’s tortured spirit was in the gaze he turned
from the busy child to her sister. Was he to lose the
hour with Gray which had been the solace of lonely night
and empty day, the one hour out of the twenty-four that
was his? He did not answer Leonora but looked his
anxious question. Was Gray at the bottom of this? But
no, she could not be. It was a scheme of Sabina’s, of
Mrs. Tom’s, or simple accident.

Drawing Old Squire’s big elbow-chair up to the table
he took his customary seat. Leonora chattered of school,
of the little pigs that had had to be killed because they
had worms, such dear little pigs, all black; and Gray
served the breakfast. Leadville, sitting opposite to
her, drank in her morning freshness and looked forward
to the time when this flower should be blooming
for him.

A voice called from the Justice Room and Leonora
jumped up. “I’ll see what auntie wants.”

“No, dear, I’ll go.”

“Leave ‘er go,” rumbled Leadville in his compelling
bass and she was off on the wings of happy service. He
stared resentfully after the flying figure. “What’s she
doin’ ‘ere?”

Gray’s heart was aflutter. “I miss the children so.”

His eyes grew tender. “You do want a nest of your
own, my bird. I can see you in it, a li’l place away from
‘ere.”

She shook her head, repudiating the idea with courage
born of her sister’s nearness. “I don’t want never to
leave Trevorrick and mammy, and any of them.”

“You’d ‘av so much of your own things to think
about,” he murmured, his mind full of the nest he would
build for her, “you wouldn’t ‘av time to think upon ‘ome.”

Before she could answer, Leonora was back. “‘Tis
you auntie want, Gray.”

Suspicion flamed in Leadville’s eye. “If they’re
schemin’ to come between us,” he said angrily, “they’d
better look out. Don’t you go, Gray.”

But the girl, running on light feet down the long
dark passage, was glad to escape. When Uncle Leadville
looked at her like that, she had ever a fluttered feeling
that she must run away, or something, she knew not
what, but something terrible, would happen. Instinct
was warning her, instinct that is wiser even than experience
and Leadville might sit on in the kitchen, waiting
and waiting, but until he was gone, Gray would not return.

CHAPTER VII

The year ran mildly down to Christmas, but the wind with
its tang of cold did not fling a rose into Gray’s cheek or
buffet her into keener life and, when again the friends met
in council, it was to discuss changes which both saw to be
necessary.

“Jim’s taking the cart into Stowe, week before Christmas,”
said Mrs. Byron when they had talked the matter
over, “to bring ‘ome some coals and flour. P’raps that
day’ll suit Gray?”

“Well, I’ll talk to ‘er and see what she got to say.”

“Very well then, Friday before Christmas.”

“And you’ll ‘av Richbell till you see ‘ow things turn out?”

“Iss. She growin’ to a fine maid. They’m all pretty
but Richbell’s got the best colour. ‘Tis lovely an’ I
don’t wonder the boys is maäze about ‘er. Still,” she
sighed, “give me Gray.”

“We all know Gray’s the favourite here,” smiled Mrs. Tom,
sticking her needles into the stocking she was
knitting and looking round for her cloak. “Well, I
think we’m doing the best we can, seein’ Leadville’s so
teasy.”

“He’ll settle down right enough now. ‘Tedn’t as if ‘e
was a young man. When ‘e do realize ‘e’s out of the
running, ‘e’ll take it quiet and we’ll be all comfortable
again.”

“Well, my dear, I hope we shall. It ‘as been a draggin’
time for ‘ee since you was laid up.”

“‘Tis funny,” said Sabina, “‘ow you think ‘Now that’s
over and done with,’ but ‘tedn’t. I thought ‘Once I’m
out of ‘ospital I’ll soon put things to rights,’ but I ‘aven’t
done it yet.”

“Takes time, my dear.”

“Iss, and time’s life.”

Leadville had become so remote and unapproachable
that Sabina did not find an opportunity to tell him the
wagon would be going into Stowe the Friday before
Christmas and that Gray would be taking fowls, cream
and butter, to the market. Not even when the day dawned
did he realize that anything unusual was afoot. He had
come down to breakfast, stared with sullen aversion at
Leonora, as the cheerful child ran to and fro between
kitchen and linhay; and sought in his uninventive mind
for expedients which should leave him alone with her
sister for a blessed few minutes. He did this morning
after morning, sometimes successfully; but generally,
as Gray wished to keep the child near her, without its
making much difference. On this particular day Leonora,
chattering of Christmas festivities, the tree they were to
have at the chapel on New Year’s Eve, the tea the following
day, was eventually seen off to school and Gray,
turning a deaf ear to Leadville’s plea that she would
linger, went candle in hand, for the sun was still below
the eastern hill, to Sabina’s room. Her mind was brimful
of the practicalities of the day in Stowe. She had no
time for Byron, had forgotten even the fear with which
his hungry presence was wont to inspire her, was only
conscious of the many things to be done before she could
change her workaday raiment for clothes befitting the
occasion.

To Leadville all seemed as usual, though Gray was perhaps
unusually full of domestic business but, as Christmas
was the following week, that was to be expected. He heard
her low singing voice in the Justice Room as she flitted
about, tidying the place, putting what Sabina needed
ready to her hand; and he decided to smoke his morning
pipe in the yard. He enjoyed looking on critically while
the men worked. He told himself that if he had been
master they would have done as much again. He had
said so to Sabina more than once and she had smiled,
thinking that she knew better.

As he watched them that morning, idly content with the
fine weather and with his heart momentarily at rest, he
called to mind that on the previous day he had seen a seal
sporting in the surf beyond Morwen Cove. The end of an
Atlantic gale had been lashing the cliff-face and a
procession of monstrous waves had been rolling in out of the
grey distance. In that welter of far-sounding sea,
the living atom had been at play; and Byron, detecting
the springing shadow in the curl of a wave, the dark speck
in the racing tide of the Mad Rip, had reflected that the
last bottle of seal-oil had been sold. Remembering this,
he had thought the opportunity good and, returning to
the kitchen, had lifted his gun from the leathern thong
above the door. The room still lay in obscurity, the only
light being that of the frugal banked-up fire. Long
handling, however, had given the gun-butt a bright dark
polish which reflected the faint glow, and Leadville’s
hand had gone out instinctively. Crossing the kitchen
to the wall-cupboard on the right of the slab range he
took out the ammunition of which he stood in need.
Some empty bottles, not over-clean, stood on the top shelf,
bottles which were to hold the fresh supply of seal-oil,
a medicine for stock with which he did a trade among the
farmers of the neighbouring valleys. Already Treherne
Gaskis had sent once to ask for a pint. As Byron slipped
the pouch into his pocket, a sound broke the stillness which
lay like dust over the rooms.

“When the wind is off the hill

Flows the water to the mill…”

sang a voice in the linhay and, though West-country birds
sing sweetly, they cannot compare for music with
West-country maidens. This voice, though without much
volume, had a tender, joyous note as of one singing out of a
full heart and Leadville hardly recognized it as Gray’s.
A narrow gleam of candle-light, edged the dark oblong of
the door and, from beyond, came the brisk slap-smack of
a beater upon newly made butter.

As the man stood to listen, a look, human, eager, almost
happy, broke like a shining over his swarthy face. The
seal-hunt was forgotten, for the voice singing of the rain
had a thrill in it, the thrill of a love-call and the man’s
wild heart was assured the call was for him.

For a moment, the habit of years reasserting itself, he
glanced at the door on the other side of the kitchen. At
the end of the long dark passage his wife still lay abed,
or so he hoped. The swift glance had been unintentional,
the drag of a chain from which he was about to free himself.
He threw back his head, the brooding night of his deep-set
eyes quickened by emotion and, laying the gun on the
table among the breakfast crocks, pushed farther open
the door of the linhay.

This room, at once the scullery, larder and dairy of the
house, was high and narrow, with a sloping roof. A
pump stood by the outer door, and the place was lighted
from above; but, as the dawn had not broken, Gray was
butter-making by the light of a candle. The living jewel
of flame illumined faintly the high and shadowy place,
was reflected from the tiny surfaces of the wet butter and,
outlining Gray’s figure of a young and happy maid, shone
on her absorbed face. The butter had “come” quickly.
She struck it with the heavy beater until the milk ran
soundingly into the pail below and, as she worked, she
sang in that voice of infinite allure,

“When the wind is off the land

It brings the weed on to the sand.”

 

For some time Leadville, aware that his self-control was
limited, had been trying to get Gray to himself. Like a
wisp of blossomy tamarisk swaying in the bright upper
air, however, she remained tantalizingly out of reach. He
spent himself in the attempt to lay hands on her, to force
her to hear his suit; but Sabina’s presence was for ever
being thrust between him and his objective, until between
fury with his wife and baulked desire, the man was in a
dangerous mood. His highly strung temperament
prevented his being able to seize opportunity by the
forelock; but so often had he met with disappointment,
grasping shadows in place of a woman that, when he
realized Gray was alone and ignorant of his proximity, he
obeyed for once a natural prompting. Stepping quickly
across the linhay, he threw his arms round the busy girl
and sought her lips.

To his almost incredulous joy, Gray did not offer any
resistance. He had come up behind, had taken her
strongly in his arms and the soft young body yielded as
if his coming had been in answer to her own unexpressed
desire. Though the month was December, spring was in
the air and with an unmistakable murmur of content,
Gray abandoned herself. He bent to hers a transfigured
face and then, but not till then, did she realize she was in
Leadville Byron’s arms.

Her body stiffened suddenly and, uttering a cry of
horror, she began to struggle. “You!” she cried and
made a frantic effort to escape. So surprised was he by
this change of front that, with his mood in the balance
between love and rage, he let her go.

“My little umuntz,” he cried, “don’t ‘ee play with me.” A
moment before she had yielded herself, her voice had
been liquid with invitation, he had heard in it the mating
note. Now she stared at him from a safe distance with a
spark in her soft eye.

“If you don’t leave me alone,” she said angrily, “I
shall go home and never put foot inside this door no more,
whiles you’re here.”

Byron stood with his head bent. He too was angry.
He felt defrauded. Only a moment since she had lain
in his embrace, thrilled by his touch, a warm and
palpitating woman. Now she spoke as if her heart were
virgin.

“Don’t ‘ee play with me,” he said again. “I couldn’t
bear it, I’ve ‘ad as much as I can stand. ‘Ee knaw I
love ‘ee.”

“I—I don’t—I don’t want to.”

“Don’t want to? Don’t want to know that night
after night I can’t sleep for thinking of ‘ee?” He
struck his chest with a strong blunt-fingered hand.
“Here’s your place, love, and my arm’ll ache till I ‘old
‘ee again.”

Hot colour dyed her face. To think that she should
have lain in his arms! On that day, too, of all the days
in the year, of all the days in a lifetime! “‘Tis all a
mistake.”

“The day’ll come when you’ll worship the ground I
tread on.”

“No—never.”

“I’ll make ‘ee love me. I loved ‘ee from the first day
you come ‘ere. I’ve never wanted nobody but you and
I’ve wanted ‘ee ever since I did see your ‘andsome face
about Wastralls and heard you singin’, ‘appy as a
greybird. Wastralls an’ you, they go together in my mind.
I love ‘ee, Gray, and you know what that means to a
man like me, what cares for nobody and nothing. I’m
eaten up with the love of you. I’d do anything to get
‘ee. I must ‘av ‘ee and I will ‘av ‘ee.” He came a step
nearer, but she drew back.

“Leave me alone, leave me alone.”

“Leave ‘ee alone? I want to be kissin’ of ‘ee all the
day.”

The girl was trembling. She leant one arm upon the
stone slab behind her, and the shock of its coldness was a
steadying influence. “I bain’t gwine let you kiss me.
I’d rather slap yer face for yer. What d’yer think
then?”

He coaxed her tenderly. “Bain’t I worth ‘avin’ then?”

“I bain’t gwine ‘av nothing to do with ‘ee. I wouldn’t
‘ave ‘ee for the world.” Taking up one of the butter pats
she began mechanically shaping the mass.

“What’s the matter with me that you won’t ‘av nothing
to do with me?” Straightening himself, he opened out
unusually broad shoulders and the candlelight revealed a
face of black shadows and strong saliences. How strong,
how ruthless, how confident he looked! Gray felt her
old fear returning, she could not believe that this strange
man would be held in check by any of the received
standards.

“You’m married and old enough to be my father.”

She clinched the matter: “You’m married to Aunt S’bina.”

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.”

She shook her head. “I didn’t hear it.”

The noise of dishes being piled together on the breakfast
table caught Byron’s attention. He glanced at Gray
and the sight of youth, with a blush on the hot cheek, a
suggestion of tears on the long lashes, was to him as the
opening of a door. He came out of his preoccupation
and the knocking either died away or was forgotten.
Forgotten, too, were his rage and disappointment.

“What’s she doin’ out o’ bed so early for?”

“I’m going into Stowe with the butter and there’s a lot
to do.”

“‘Oo yer gwine with?” asked Byron, instantly on the alert.

“With Jim.”

“You needn’t go.” He was reluctant to have her out
of his reach, even for a morning. He wanted her at home
under his eye. He was going to renew his pleading as
soon as the moment was auspicious. “Rosevear can take
that in.”

“I want to go to-day.”

His mind examined the statement with that ever-ready
fear of the lover who is uncertain of his standing. “What
you want to go for?”

“Shopping!” said she and, with a smile that was
faintly malicious, enumerated the items, groceries,
liniment for her aunt, pitchers, cloam pans.

“Shopping?” But what he saw was that five-mile drive
over Big Hill into Stowe. He saw her beside Jim, driving
away from Wastralls, from him. “I’ll drive ‘ee in!”

Gray’s heart sank and she remained silent.

“Would ‘ee like me to?”

If she said ‘No,’ he would be all the more eager.
“Once I’m in Stowe I shall be that busy you wouldn’t
see anything of me.”

He laughed. “I’d take care of that. All right then,
’tis I as’ll drive ‘ee into Stowe and not the lad. I’ll not
trust Rosevear to drive ‘ee, I’ll do it myself.” He
looked back at her from the door, his dark face alight.
“My God, if I caught ‘ee with one of they, I’d—I’d break
his neck.”

The door banged to behind him, and Gray putting
down the printer laid her head on her arms. If Aunt
Sabina should not be able to prevent him!

But Aunt Sabina was a tower of strength.

CHAPTER VIII

In order that Gray might start for the market in good
time, Mrs. Byron had swung herself out of bed that
morning as soon as she had swallowed her simple
breakfast of tea and buttered split. But though she had
brush, comb, garments, in fact all toilet necessaries
at hand, and could therefore dress expeditiously, she
found when she reached the kitchen that day was breaking.
A red sun, having topped the south-easterly slopes
of Brown Willy and Rowtor, was smiling in at the
many-paned window and winning an answering brightness from
surfaces of steel, of yellow glaze and of glass.
Mrs. Byron’s eye as she pushed the trolly into the room
took in the homely details. To the right of the range
yawned a cloam oven and, before long, Jim Rosevear
would be bringing faggots of tamarisk wood with
which to fill it. Before the fire in a deep pan the dough
was ‘plumping’ under a linen cloth, and nothing makes
a house so homely as dough on a low chair ‘plumping’
in kitchen warmth and stillness. As she gathered the
breakfast crocks together, preparatory to cleansing them,
she smiled to herself well-pleased. Her plans were
working smoothly and although the past year had been one
of change and discomfort, she could believe that the
disturbance, like yeast in flour, would bring good results.
Mrs. Byron’s movements were still quick and deft. She
set the remains of the fry aside, poured hot water into
the wooden tub for washing up and stood the knives,
blade down, in a pot. The trolly, being of cane and
shivered wood, ran lightly over the blue flags; but as
she turned from putting the refilled kettle on the fire
she heard voices in the linhay, the deep bass murmur
that was her husband’s and a clearer sound, the voice
of some one young and troubled, of some one angered,
but also afraid.

The smile died off Mrs. Byron’s lips and for some
minutes she stared unseeingly at the steaming water in
the round wooden bowl. So he was at his tricks, the old
villain! She had taken the matter lightly as a vagary,
a passing fancy: but as the sound of his voice fell upon
her ears she experienced a doubt, the first real doubt
that she had known. In these tones there was a passion
wholly new to her. It shook the wife’s heart with fear,
the fear of ultimate irremediable loss; with such fear,
that for the moment she went sick and faint and leaned
perilously forward in the cone of her trolly.

In the linhay, the voices dropped into silence and,
when they began again, they were pitched in a more
commonplace key. Sabina, sitting by the table, stunned
by a late realization of what had happened, heard a
well-known step, a pause and the utterance in quick,
fierce tones, of some threatening phrase. Upon that,
Leadville came quickly into the kitchen.

“S’bina,” he said and she noticed with a fresh pang
that his face wore a warm and eager look, a look of happy
anticipation, “I want the money for they veares.”

The year’s pigs had been made into hams and bacon
and Mrs. Byron, discussing the matter with old George,
had decided not to buy young animals—veares or
slips—until the New Year. She could not understand why
Leadville should want to restock the empty sties. What
was it to do with him?

“Pigs,” she said non-committally, “‘ull be cheaper
after Christmas.”

“They won’t go down again.”

“I know they will. You can get good-sized slips after
Christmas for less money than you’ll give for veares now.”

He thrust his hands into empty pockets and tried to
think of another way in which he could procure money.
How could he take Gray into Stowe if he had none?
He wanted to give her pretty things, to spend on her,
to impress her: but he could not ask the one woman
for money to throw away on the other. “Ah,” said he,
“but I can go to-day and get them and after Christmas
I shan’t be able to.”

Only then did Mrs. Byron remember the errand upon
which Gray was bound, the errand which was taking
her into Stowe. She smiled and a tinge of malice crept
into her thoughts.

“It bain’t often as you’re so keen to do things for us,”
she said, “and I didn’t know as you’d time to spare.”

“Iss, I can spend the day in buyin’ they veares for
‘ee and welcome.”

“There’s things as I want more’n veares. Wi’ the
wind off the land there’ll be a pretty lot of oreweed in
the bay. You might give a hand to that.”

“I been down and there ‘edn’t a bit in.”

She knew that he had not been farther than the yard
that morning. “I don’t say ‘no’ to a fair offer,” she
said, her upper lip lifting a little over the still white
and regular teeth. “They turmits want bringin’ in from
the Willows Field, else the rabbits will eat’n all.”

“I ‘eard Biddick say as ‘e was goin’ after’m to-day.” He
had a habit of shifting his weight from one foot to
the other, as he stood, and it gave him an appearance of
restlessness, as if at any moment he might start off on
some errand. “I don’t want to bother with oreweed
or turmits. I’m going into Stowe and I thought you
might like for me to get the pigs. Come, leave me ‘av
some money.”

“I don’t want they veares.” She rested her strong
hands on the sides of the cone and looked at him with
understanding. He must be made to realize that this
was folly and that it must come to an end. “An’ you
don’t want to buy them. All you want is to go with Gray.”

Leadville, as always when his subterfuges were detected,
fell back on the truth.

“Well?” he said. “An’ s’posin’ if I did?”

Sabina was startled. Had matters gone so far that
he no longer had the decency to deny his feelings?
“Isolda’s goin’ wi’ Gray,” she said, with a shrug of
her plump shoulders.

“Isolda?” he said and his disappointment, bubbling
up from the depths, showed as anger. Among them they
took good care of Gray; but if they thought their scheming
and underhauling would prevent his reaching her, he
would very soon show them they were mistaken. “Fine
thing you,” he cried wrathfully, “to be jealous over a
feller.”

Mrs. Byron had grown stouter since her long illness.
She filled the wicker cone to overflowing, a big rosy
woman with abundance of white hair above a face the
strength of which time had made plain. Her husband’s
thrust was shrewd, so shrewd that she gave way before
it. “You’m wishin’ me daid, I s’pose?” she said
bitterly and waited to hear him deny the accusation.

Leadville shifted from one foot to the other but did
not speak. People say terrible things when they are
angry, but silence can be more terrible than speech.

“I shen’t die any quicker,” cried poor Mrs. Byron,
“for you wishin’ of it.”

For months the man had concealed his feelings behind
down-dropped lids and avoidance; but now the repugnance
with which she filled him rose to his eyes, eyes no
longer moody and dull, but suddenly, revealingly, alive.
Hitherto the secrecy which was natural to him had seemed
the only possible plan; now, driven by jealousy, by
anger, by a mounting hatred, he suddenly discarded it.
Raising his lids he stared at Sabina for some seconds
and his soul showed her its loathing and threatened her
and condemned her; and—like a rabbit held by lanthorn
light—she stared back.

The truth was riding nakedly through the street of
life. It spoke with a clear note of warning and
Sabina—for a moment—both saw and heard.

CHAPTER IX

“You’m lookin’ whisht this mornin’, missis, what’s the
matter with ‘ee?”

Jim Rosevear had brought two faggots of tamarisk
wood for the cloam oven. His shy glance, taking in
every corner of the now brightening kitchen, had assured
him that Gray was not present; and, putting that main
preoccupation momentarily aside, he had leisure to note
that Mrs. Byron’s face was haggard, that she looked older,
more worn, than he had thought. It followed that she must
be ill and for illness he had always a solicitous word.

After that revealing look Leadville had walked quietly
past his wife out of the house. His dark thoughts, his
secret hopes had risen to the surface. He had held them
in for months but, in the end, they had escaped from him
in a glance.

His footsteps died away on the hard mud of the yard,
the warm silence fell again over the kitchen and, in the
midst of it, a modern Lot’s wife, Mrs. Byron sat strangely
still. The steam died off the surface of the water, the
sun crept a little farther into the room and the untidy
pile of breakfast crocks gave back a glint here and a
dazzle there. Mrs. Byron was undeniably shaken. Her
poor hands were trembling and now and again a quiver
passed over the rubicund cheeks. It was as if the woman
would have wept, as if only a summer rain could have
dissolved the ice at her heart, but as if the source of
tears had for too long been dry.

At the sound of the yard-man’s voice she raised eyes
which, though tearless, were dim. Jim seemed a long
way off but kind and human. She was old enough to
be his mother and, like a mother who has secret sorrows,
she answered him.

“I’m down in the dumps to-day, terr’bly. ‘Aven’t
got any ‘eart for nothing.”

“Can I do anything for ‘ee, missis?”

Being the eldest of a ‘long tail,’ he was used to doing
odd jobs for a woman; and, at Treketh, his mother,
dependent now on the unsatisfactory help of younger
boys, sent him daily a regretful thought. Jim had been
so handy, so good-natured.

Rousing herself, Mrs. Byron looked about. “You
might light up the fire in the cloam oven for me, Jim,
there’s a good sawl.”

Breaking a faggot apart he filled the oven with bushes
and set a light to them. The smoke curled up the black
chimney and little flames ran along the brittle wood.
When the earthenware sides were sparkling hot the oven
would be ready for the tins of bread, the cakes and
pasties which were to feed the household during the
ensuing week.

“Anything else I can do for ‘ee while oven’s hettin’?”

Mrs. Byron’s eyes were the brave frozen blue of the
seafarer and wistfulness was not possible to them,
nevertheless Jim was conscious of that quality in their gaze.
The son of a cross-grained father, words were not needed
to tell him that the Byrons had had a difference. He
moved deftly about, emptying the cool water and replacing
it with hot, setting out the array of loaf tins and
filling a scuttle. He was glad to be of use. It made him
think of happy evenings with his mother, made him wonder
which of the elder boys, Sidney or Charley, was carrying
coal and water for her and what hand they made of it.

“Anything else, missis?”

She had watched him unseeingly, but with a growing
sense of comfort. “I’m in better ‘eart now you’ve
helped me so.” She would have this young man at hand
to help her in all her future difficulties and the thought
was reassuring. “‘Tis near time for ‘ee to be goin’ into
Stowe. Gray’s all but ready.”

As if she had been called, the girl opened the door of
the linhay. At sight of Jim, a sight by no means
unexpected, her pale-tinted face bloomed like an opening rose.

“Good mornin’, Jim. You’re late.” If only he had
come one little half-hour sooner!

He was looking spruce in clean shirt and new tie, a
fresh smooth-skinned youngster. “Well, my dear,” he
said awkwardly, “I ‘ad a lot to do this mornin’ before
I could come away.”

“Jim ‘ad to put ‘is best bib and tucker on,” said
Mrs. Byron. Her interest in these opening lives helped her
to push her anxieties into the background. Never one to
nurse a grief, she smiled at the boy and girl, glad to
be looking at a morning face.

“I’d thought,” said Gray, and in her voice was a regret
he could not fathom, “you’d be earlier, so as to take
the chickens and eggs.”

“Well, to tell ‘ee the truth,” the young man threw
himself on her mercy, “I went down in the orchard to
see if I could find a few vi’lets for yer. I want yer to
look vitty to-day.” He stepped back into the porch,
returning with a little posy. In the West, flowers bloom
the year round, and these were scented violets.

“Oh, Jim,” said the girl, taking them—and could
say no more. The violets were a charming thought;
but if he had only known what hung on his keeping to
the arrangement he had made with her the previous
day, to come to the linhay after breakfast!

“Your uncle wants to go in with yer,” said Mrs. Byron,
making an effort to speak of the matter with her customary
cheerfulness, “but I bain’t goin’ to let’n go.” She was
rewarded by a grateful glance from Gray, a glance which
laid for all time the incipient doubts of a natural jealousy.
“Now Jim, by the time you’ve tackled up Lady, Gray’ll
be ready. My dear,” she turned to the girl, standing
dreamily by the table, the violets in her hand, “‘av
you finished the butter?”

In the warm air of the kitchen the flowers were giving
forth their scent. “Yes, and packed it,” said Gray,
raising the posy to her face. It had been dearly bought.

“Couldn’t find your dress anywhere this mornin’.
What ‘av ‘ee done with it?”

“Aunt Louisa carried it to ma’s, and ma said I’d better
come up there and dress.”

Mrs. Byron looked disappointed. “P’raps ’tis best,”
she said, common sense triumphing as was usual with
her, over the longing for a little personal gratification,
“still I should like to ‘av seen the costume.”

“Well, I’ll wear it down to-morrow for you to see.”

“Iss, my dear, do.”

The girl looked affectionately at the older woman,
conscious for a moment of her disabilities and her still
young heart. “I wish you could come, auntie.”

“You don’t wish it more’n I do.” She shook her
head, but in her eyes the old smile was relit. She had
resigned herself and with her, when a decision was
reached, the natural thing was to turn from it to the
next item on the programme of life. “Now, my dear,
you must make haste and clear off,” she said, beginning
to roll up the sleeves of her blue cotton gown. The day
promised to be busy and it was high time the young
people were on their way. She did not even wait until
Gray was out of the room before reaching down for the
‘springing’ dough. The oven was nearly ready, but
she was all behindhand. That would never do.

The atmosphere which Mrs. Byron diffused was so
practical, so reassuring that it had soothed her young
cousin’s natural distress. As the girl walked quickly
away to the room they shared, though she could not
altogether forget the scene with Leadville, she remembered
that she was about to escape from his importunities;
and, though an occasional shudder still shook her, she
encouraged herself to think of other, happier things
and in particular of the errand upon which she and Jim
were bound. Gray was bidding good-bye to Wastralls,
at least for a time; and the green box she had brought
with her had been packed ready for him to fetch away.
For immediate necessities however she was taking with
her a brown leathern bag, which had been given her
by her aunt and which bore the initials G.R., initials
Gray was never to change.

In an otherwise empty drawer lay a little pile of
garments of superfine quality and workmanship; and
for these, after cleansing herself from the stains of
butter-making and household work, the girl exchanged her
everyday clothes. Jim had made her a moleskin cap
and necklet and in the latter, she pinned the little bunch
of violets.

“It don’t seem hardly possible!” she said dreamily,
on her return to the kitchen, where Mrs. Byron was
kneading the dough.

Memory carried the older woman back to a like day
in her own life. “Well, my dear,” she said, from the
other side of Time’s river, “you’ll know all about’n by
to-morrow.” She contemplated the blushing girl for a
moment then turned to practical matters. “Did you
think about bringin’ out the list for groceries?”

“Never thought nothing about it.” She ran off,
returning with a blue-lined page, torn from a penny
account book.

“Whatever you do, don’t ‘ee forget yer uncle’s pipe.”

No man shall instruct deaf ears or open the eyes of
the blind. Already Sabina’s optimism was reasserting
itself. She had exaggerated the import of her husband’s
look. Leadville, poor chap, had been disappointed and
had shown it. No need for her to make ‘the worst of
a bad bargain.’

Christmas is a time of good-will and Christmas was
coming. She had noticed he was in need of a new pipe
and who knew whether such an offering might not prove
a milestone on the difficult road to reconciliation?

“No, I won’t forget,” said Gray, who saw the
commission as yet another instance of nobility exercised
towards the entirely undeserving. She kissed her aunt
warmly. “You are a darlin’,” she said. “I feel awful
to leave you to do all this work,” she glanced from the
dough to the bread-tins, “I can’t bear going.”

“Well, my dear,” Sabina felt the pleasantness of
this young and partisan affection, “’tis only for a little
while. Richbell will do so well as she can.”

“Richbell’ll never think to make your cocoa of a night
or to get your hot-bottle and make you comfortable.”

“Please God, I’ll ‘av you back again soon. Now you
go on and be ‘appy and don’t you think about me. I
shall be all right. There—” she glanced through the
diamond panes of the window, “the mare’s being tackled
up, make haste.”

A slight frost had hardened the mud of the yard and
above St. Cadic Mill the December sun had risen into a
sky of little far-off clouds. Between the shafts of the
wagon stood Lady, the young mare, glad to exchange
the warm dark stable for the adventure of the public
road. Jim Rosevear, in well-brushed clothes and with
a tie that matched the blue of his eyes, was fastening
the last buckle as Gray came out, with a basket of eggs
and butter in one hand and her bag in the other. A
larger basket, containing poultry, was already in place
and, beside it, lay a piece of broken mechanism which
was to be left at the smithy. As the girlish figure stepped
out of the dark house Leadville, who, with frowning
brow, had been watching the preparations, came forward.
Gray had a momentary qualm; but saw with relief that
he had not made any change in his dress. In old clothes
and without a collar even Leadville, though he set many
conventions at defiance, would not think of going to
Stowe.

“Hullo!” said he, “what be yer gwine do wi’ that bag?”

“I’m going to stay home to-night.”

“‘Ome? This is yer ‘ome ‘ere.”

“Well, I’m going to stay to mammy’s for a change,”
she spoke lightly, willing to placate him and hasten her
escape.

“I think you ought to ‘av ask me if you can stay ‘ome
or no.” He had stepped between her and the wagon;
and his eyes had the smouldering light which she had
learnt to dread.

With her heart fluttering, she controlled her voice to
a pleasant, “Well, what is there to hinder me?”

Her docility appeased him. After all she was only
going to the butter market.

“Well, can I? Can I stay to mammy’s?” asked the
singing voice with its rising inflexion on the last word.

“I s’pose you can,” he said reluctantly. “You can
go if you’m a good maid and bring me back something.”

“I’ll bring you back something that’ll surprise you,”
promised Gray, her eyes soft and smiling, but an edge
of malice under her tongue.

He towered over her, ardent and dominating. “There’s
only one thing I want and that you know.”

She knew and was both angered and afraid. In vain
she tried to think of Leadville as wicked, for her he
was worse than that, he was terrifying. She did not
know what he might do, whether there was any limit.

Jim having finished harnessing the mare, came up
on the other side of the wagon. Gray, glancing aside
from her tormentor, saw his courageous eyes and took
heart of grace. She had a protector and this was the
last time, the very last, that she would be at Leadville’s
mercy.

“Come now, Uncle Leadville,” she said and her young
voice, carrying across the wagon, dissipated an incipient
jealousy, “I want to be gone.”

He drew back as if he had received a blow and, in a
moment, the girl was climbing nimbly to her place on a
bag of chaff which Jim had placed ready. As she turned,
a little anxious as to the effect of her words, but glad
on any terms to have got away, she was met by a black
scowl of wrath. “Mind I never ‘ear yer call me that
again.”

With a graceful swing, Jim sprang on to the rail of
the wagon and the mare, fresh from her oats, began to
move. Gray, secure at last, looked down on Byron with
an air of innocent inquiry and the lad beside her smiled.
For some time he had had a suspicion that the other
was more attentive to her than became a married man;
and this suspicion had stimulated a wooing which might
otherwise have seemed too tame.

As the wagon wheels turned, Leadville perforce gave
way, but unwillingly, for in his heart was suspicion, a
fear of all men, a shaking terror lest one should have
been before him. The memory of her supple yielding
form yet thrilled him with its promise. For a moment
she had abandoned herself and though she had drawn
away at once the yielding had betrayed her. Gray was
no longer a chrysalis of cool dim life and unfolded wings.
Emotion was quick in her, she was ready for full
experiences, the blue sun-warmed air and the flight. Instinct,
teaching Leadville she was no unawakened maid, was
brought up short by the word she had flung at him.
Uncle? What did it mean? Had some younger man
dared to approach her? Had she listened, listened
because he was the first and young love is sweet? Was
there some light fancy that must be extinguished before
she could be wholly his? Surely not. Surely she had
meant to mark the gulf between herself and Sabina’s
husband, to point out to him that he was married. The
theory explained her momentary yielding, her quick
withdrawal, her words. He smiled to himself. If Gray
imagined that, because long ago he had gone through
a form of words with another woman, they were to bind
him now that for the first time in his life he loved with
passion, she should learn that she was mistaken. As
soon as she returned to Wastralls, he would show her in
what estimation he held the worn unwelcome bond.

From the low window of the kitchen Mrs. Byron had
watched the scene. Jim’s handsome head had been bent
over the mare’s shiny coat as he thrust the tongues of
the buckles through the brass. He moved easily and
well, for life had not yet taken advantage of his strength
and she saw him as a proper lad. When Gray came out,
Mrs. Byron felt a motherly pride in the little rounded
figure, the soft fair face between the furs of cap and
necklet. “An’ she’ve pinned they vi’lets on, trust her
for that.”

Leadville’s appearance cast a shadow on the scene.
In the bright winter sunshine he loomed up, a threatening
unhappy figure, the incarnation of a desire which might
not be gratified. The light fell on his uncovered head
with its thick black hair, on his muscular figure, growing
heavy with years but still a wonder for its strength,
on his eager face. Sabina, in a reaction from the blow
she had received, felt that the time was come for her
to assert herself. Anxious not to drive him farther away
she had played a gentle self-obliterating part and she
felt that in doing so she had made a mistake. She would
grasp her nettle more firmly, let him know that Gray
was bespoken. Conscious, as she went, of envy, she
began to push herself towards the porch. What a thing
it was to have an old body, a body that had ‘gone
abroad’ and a young heart! Jim and Leadville hung
about Gray with the same hope. Sabina, for all her
vitality and strength, had no longer anything to give.
She was old and done, while Gray, to them and every
man, was incarnate promise.

The wagon was turning out of the gate as Mrs. Byron
reached her husband’s side and the off-wheel rose over
a stone. The body of the cart swayed and lurched and
Gray, with a little cry, caught at Jim Rosevear’s arm.

Byron swore fiercely. “If anything ‘appen to her I’ll
wring his neck.”

“You needn’ fear. He’ll take care of she.”

The man turned and stared at the distorted figure in
the cone of basket-work. He had not heard her come
up but his mind was too deeply occupied with other
matters for him to be startled. “Why?”

“Because they’m courtin’.”

She had thought it would be difficult to tell him but
the words sprang out of her resentment at the way in
which she, struggling with difficulties, she who should
have met with consideration from her husband, had been
treated.

“Courtin’?” repeated Leadville and his swarthy skin
turned a dull grey. The wagon was rattling up the road
at a good pace, the cheery sound of hoofs and wheels
and voices growing fainter as it turned towards Hember.
The man stared after it and about him was the falling
of dream castles, of built-up theories, false hopes. He
had heard the truth and could not turn his back on it,
could not refuse it credence. He knew, now, that Gray’s
response that morning had been to Jim Rosevear and
not to himself. The pieces of the puzzle fitted. He
was momentarily stunned by the revelation. Only when
he realized that they were driving away together did he
come to himself. The vision of their propinquity was
intolerable and he started to run towards the gate.

“I won’t let’n go with ‘er.”

Sabina raised her voice. “‘Bain’t a bit of good for
‘ee to interfere. They’m to ‘Ember by this time.”

From the gate he could see the wagon had been stopped
and that Tom Rosevear was lifting down his daughter.
The family had gathered in the road and the younger
girls were talking to Jim, doubtless giving him Christmas
commissions. A little air of festivity pervaded the group,
an air which as Leadville did not understand it, he found
ominous. He wanted to rush up the road and seize and
carry Gray off from among them, carry her away from
Trevorrick, out of the complications of life there and,
above everything, carry her away from Jim. For a
desperate situation, desperate remedies. He did not
mean to sit down under misfortune, to accept tamely the
blows of destiny. All things come—not to those who
wait, but to those who fight; and he who cannot fight
for his mate is no man.

“They’ve been courtin’ for months,” said Sabina.
“Anybody but you would have seen it, but you’re never
‘ome. You can’t expect to know things when you’m
out mumpin’ around the cliffs like an old dog.”

Gray had gone into the house, the big bold house
on the hillside, with her mother; and Leadville turned
back from the yard gate.

“I’ll send ‘un off neck and crop,” he cried, ragingly.
“He shall go to-night. He shall never stay ‘ere on the
place another night.” His words came stammeringly,
like liquid out of a bottle that is too sharply tilted.
“I’ll send’n goin’ neck an’ crop out of this, then we shall
see.”

“Iss, my dear,” returned Sabina bitterly, “then we
shall see. They’m courtin’ and before long they’ll be
married—then we shall see; and when they’m married
they’ll live ‘ere along with we, then we shall see.”

But the unhappy man, unable to endure her words,
had rushed blindly away.

CHAPTER X

Beyond Wastralls rose a line of black cliffs culminating
in the high ground of Dark Head and, towards them,
Leadville turned. No roads crossed these solitudes.
Sheep cropped the fine herbage, sea-gulls built on the
inaccessible ledges, tumuli and earthworks showed that
man too had once sheltered here. Far inland an
occasional grey homestead, in its nest of farm-buildings,
could be discerned, while in clear weather the daymark
was visible on Stepper Point. Otherwise the eye was given
only the wide spaces of sky and sea and earth.

On the storm which had strewn the coast with wreckage
had followed a land wind; and this had brought in the
weed with which the coast-dwellers manure their sandy
fields. The sea, in big unquiet rollers, fell heavily against
the walls and islands of rock. It was dark with the
slippery oreweed and, when the tide went out, the coves
and bays would be ankle-deep in shining olive-brown
masses. In that treeless wind-swept land however,
the people look to the sea-harvest for more than weed. To
the beaches drift beams that can be split into gate shivers;
hatches, which put together, make a reasonable pig’s
house; chests and spars and miscellaneous wreckage.
From cottage and hamlet the folks converge upon the
coast and, at any other time, Byron would have stopped
above the nearest sandy cove to shout down an offer for
some of the piles of wood. Now he strode by, unconscious
of the tiny carts being filled with planks and boxes, of the
little figures intent on their grim work of salvage. The
man was fleeing from the intolerable revelation that had
been thrust upon him. He was closing his ears, his mind,
his heart, seeking to delay the inevitable moment when he
must give heed; yet with him, in the depths of his being,
was carrying that from which he fled.

So obsessed was he with the desire to get away, to put
space between him and that terrible prophetic voice, that
he did not realize his solitudes had been invaded. He
pressed on, crossing cliff-faces and climbing steeps.
The crags, the wide prospect, the sea-unrest were familiar
to him, this waif and foreigner who had come up out of the
deep and could claim no place as home, no human being
as of his blood. He was as safe among the crags as if he
had been born to wings. The people, labouring far below,
saw the grey figure on the heights and craned their necks
to watch his perilous progress; and the salving of a good
ship’s bones went on more slowly because Leadville
Byron, on a ledge six inches wide and cut away underneath,
a ledge of black and crumbling slate, was risking a
possession dear to no one but himself.

The man was coming to Dark Head as a hurt child
rushes blindly to its mother. Hither had he fled after
every difference with Sabina and here had he found a
vastness, a changelessness, an impersonal peace upon
which he could rest his little and tortured soul. His
trouble was greater now. He was in the grip of powers
which, if he could not escape from them, might break him.
By climbing peaks on which cormorants had nested in a
confidence hitherto secure, by ploughing through deep
sands and up the slippery shale, by crazy leaps and a wild
expenditure of force, he tried to exhaust himself. By so
doing he might avoid, not only knowledge, but the
sinister possibilities of his nature.

Dark Head is a narrow peninsula of rock which stands
knee-deep in water. A green mane of turf ripples to the
black edge and Leadville, scourged across the waste, came
at last to a softness of thick untrodden grass. This was
the world’s end and behind lay the amazing cruelty of
life. The great spaces were clean and they were sweet.
The man strode to the sloping edge but, because he was
not yet ready to surrender his atom of consciousness,
drew back. For a moment he stood, looking vacantly
across the breathing sea, then turned and flung himself
upon the bed the ages had prepared. The grass, wind-swept
and deep, yielded a little, closing about his heavy
figure like the displaced water of a pool.

On a rock below, an oyster-catcher chattered disapproval
but the gulls and shyer cormorants came back to
their resting-places. The man was harmless and after
the storm they must make the most of the sunshine.
They stood about, preening themselves in the red light
and above the southern hills but near them, the sun made
the half-circle of the sky.

In moments of overwhelming emotion Byron, when the
strain grew too intense, had hitherto passed into another
state of consciousness. The sound of hammering had as
it were, opened a door, beyond which was a bewildering
peace. Forgetfulness had fallen on him like a garment
and when he came back it was, always, to begin afresh.
Sabina’s words however, though they roused him to a
frenzy of feeling, had not had the usual effect. He had
not been able to escape.

Drowned in an agony that was elemental he lay on the
cliff-top, supine and motionless; Sabina’s bitter revelation
had been like the pouring of vitriol over his heart.
Loving for the first time in his life, loving with the passion
of a highly emotional temperament, the hopelessness of
his love had been thrust suddenly upon him. A
disappointment so elemental, so profound, put him beside
himself. His instinct was, somehow, to escape the
ultimate pangs. He had fled before the flood, fled from
himself, scrambled and sobbed himself across the cliffs
until he came to rest, deep in the deep grass of the headland.

His exhaustion was so great that for some time he lay
supine as the wreckage on the sands below. As the
moments passed, however, consciousness began to return
and with it, through the darkness of his mind flitted
unhappy thought, a greyness here and there, a vague
suspicion. By degrees Sabina’s face detached itself
from the background. He saw it resentful and defiant
and, tired as he was, his gorge rose. The woman was
for ever in his road. She had withheld Wastralls from him,
now she would come between him and Gray. He saw
again the strong lined face, the unlovely trunk; saw them
with a dislike which had for some time been growing in
intensity. Since her accident Sabina had been to him a
death’s-head, a creature which, without the power to enjoy,
yet clung to its possessions; which, though its grave was
yawning, persisted in dragging a repulsive mortality
about the earth. A person with any decency of feeling,
would have lain her down under the turf and slept the
good sleep; but Sabina was neither dead nor alive.
That trolly! He cursed it for the hideous thing it was
and for the unseemly activity of which it was the symbol.
He would have liked to break it in pieces. He would have
enjoyed the wrecking and scattering.

Circumstances had put Sabina in opposition to him
and had given her the upper hand; but if it came to a
struggle he did not fear the issue.

Sitting up on his bed of grass he stared out to sea and,
on the horizon, the ships went along and along, far off
blacknesses, dim trails of smoke. He did not see them,
was indeed unconscious of his material surroundings, but
his mind was beginning to work. Behind Sabina’s
denying face he sensed the opposition of Gray’s mother.
Hitherto he had regarded Mrs. Tom as a friendly
circumstance; but he knew she was shrewd and, in a small way,
ambitious. Jim Rosevear of Treketh would be a
satisfactory match. He had the promise of a good farm and
was a steady chap. And Gray? Would she take her
mother’s penny shrewdness for wisdom, marry a young
man for his youth, do the commonplace thing?

For the first time since the blow had fallen, Byron
allowed himself to think of Gray driving away from him
with Jim Rosevear. Suffocating with rage, he fell
forward again upon the grass.

Such passion as that of Leadville Byron is the creative
force at its human strongest and the man who feels it,
recognizes in it something of the divine. He cannot
doubt that he will be able to inspire in its object an equal
flame; and he seeks, with a persistence worthy of its
sacred object, for his opportunity. Byron had the most
precious thing in the world to offer Gray and nothing, not
her mother, not the hampering circumstance of a wife,
not even her girlish preference for another man, would be
allowed to stand in his way.

Noon found him by the yard gate of Wastralls. He had
drifted back across the waste because the way was familiar
to his wandering feet; and he reached the farm as the
kitchen clock began to strike. The familiar sound,
hoarse and creaking as the voice of an old person, carried
across the sunshiny yard and the man stood to count
the strokes. Twelve o’clock! Where had the morning
gone? He rubbed his eyes like one waking out of sleep
and, as he did so, became aware that a horse had been
tethered to the staple and that beyond the horse, was a
gig. The varnish of this threw off a hundred cheerful
reflections while the buckles and bosses of the harness
were of a highly polished brass. The glitter and hard
cheeriness of the whole were like the sharp gleams of
frost on a sunshiny winter morning. Byron recognized
the gig as belonging to Dr. Derek of Stowe. Whenever
other business brought him into the parish, the doctor
was apt to drop in for a chat with his late patient. He
liked her, but he had also a professional reason for coming.
Her recovery had surprised him, for such vitality is
unusual; and he meant to keep an eye on the case.

The farmer hesitated for a moment. He was not in a
mood for talk. Nevertheless the force which had already
set his feet upon a hidden road drove him forward and
he took his accustomed way across the now slushy yard,
straight to the porch. Clean blue flagstones ran by the
hedge-gripe, turning at right angles along the side of the
house; but, as Byron had once contemptuously said,
“They were all right for cats and women, he wasn’t
afraid of a little mud.”

As he opened the door the appetizing smell of new bread
rushed out. Sabina had been baking and, on the side-table,
stood a row of crusty loaves flanked by lightly
piled splits while behind was enough white cake and
saffron cake to carry the household over Christmas.

Byron stood for a moment, his bloodshot eyes scanning
the place. The kitchen being a dark room, a new-comer
required time to forget the sun. As his pupils widened,
however, he perceived ensconced in Old Squire’s big chair,
a little man, rosy-gilled and grey-haired. This man was
eating, with an air of pleasant enjoyment, a thunder-and-lightning
split and, beside him on a stool, stood a cup of
tea. Though Dr. Derek had been out all night he looked
as if fresh from his bath; and no one could have supposed
that this snack of new bread was in place of the breakfast
he had missed. Opposite him, her unwieldy bulk seeming
about to overflow the wicker cone of the trolley, sat
Mrs. Byron, a quiet somewhat distrait figure. The contrivance
had been made when she was a comparatively normal
shape. Since then she had grown stouter, ‘gone abroad’;
and a new and roomier cone was becoming imperative.
She looked tired after her morning’s bread-making and
her face had lost its jovial look. Over it a breath had
passed, dulling the gaiety, wiping away even content, and
the breath was one to which all of us, unhappily, can fit
a name.

Dr. Derek looked up at the farmer’s entrance. “Just
come from Curvithick,” said he, “and thought I’d look
in on my way home.”

Curvithick Farm, the mistress of which had been
cheerfully expecting her thirteenth child, lay on the other
side of the main road at the head of the valley. The land
marched with that of Constantine Rosevear. “Maggie
Martin ‘av got a baker’s dozen now then,” said
Mrs. Byron but she spoke without her usual interest in her
neighbour’s concerns.

“She’s done better than that,” and Dr. Derek helped
himself to another split. “She’s got twins!”

“Twins? My dear sawl and body, whatever they
gwine do now with so many childer?”

“Twelve last night and fourteen this morning!” Dr. Derek
looked pleased. He held that a declining birth-rate
meant the opportunity of his country’s enemies and
was himself the father of five sons and four daughters.
He was wont to declare blandly that he lived in the West
because the women there had, on the whole, a sense of
their duty to the empire.

“Boy and cheeld?” pursued Mrs. Byron.

“Yes, one of each kind, a pigeon pair.” He beamed at
her through round glasses, the rims of which had a yellow
gleam, and passed his cup for more tea. “Your splitters
are excellent, Mrs. Byron—but you,” he shook his head,
“what have you been doing with yourself?”

Sabina glanced at her husband who, after greeting the
doctor, had seated himself heavily on the window-bench.
The family physician has slipped gradually into the place
of the family confessor and, if Byron had not been
present, she might have taken Dr. Derek to a small extent
into her confidence. As it was, she acknowledged her
state without offering to explain it. “I don’t feel very
special. I be all any’ow to-day.”

Not having seen her for some time Dr. Derek did not
suspect that her wan looks and cheerless air were what a
day had brought forth. Remembering the keen hearty
cross-country woman of former days and contrasting her
with this dulled stay-at-home, he found support for his
theory that the amazing rally after her accident had been
the last flicker of a strong vitality. She had gone
downhill since he saw her last.

“You’ve been doing more than you should,” and
a glance at the array of loaves emphasized his words.
“That heart of yours won’t stand much, Mrs. Byron. A
little extra strain, you know, and you’ll find yourself in
Queer Street.”

Leadville who had been staring down at the gun which
still lay across the table, turned his heavy eyes on the
doctor. “‘Tis no good tellin’ ‘er to stop, for she will
carry on as long as she mind to. I tell ‘er I’ll do the
out-o’-door work for ‘er, but ‘er won’t listen, so ’tis so
well I leave it drop.”

The little bright doctor glanced from wife to husband
and back again. With neat compact theories about
everything, he held that Sabina’s childlessness was the
key to the situation. “Here’s a man ready and willing
to take the work off your shoulders! Why not make use
of him? He’d save you all sorts of worries.”

“I reckon he would,” and Sabina covered bitterness
with a smile. “He’d never say nothing about ’em. He’d
keep ’em all to ‘isself.”

“Considering,” retorted the doctor crisply, “that you
have by no means regained your strength, surely that
would be a good thing?”

Sabina shook her head. He did not understand and she
could not explain. “I’d rather ride my own ‘obby-‘arse,”
she said vaguely.

“Don’t overtax your strength then or you’ll be sorry
for it.” After all, whether she should wear herself out
quickly or rot by the chimney corner, was her affair.

Leadville withdrew his fascinated gaze from the gun.
“Didn’t I ‘ear you say, last time you was ‘ere, she ought
to ‘ave a operation?”

“I did, it wouldn’t be a serious one, a matter of a week
or so in hospital. What do you think, Mrs. Byron?
To have it done would make you much more comfortable.
Stronger too, I fancy.”

But Sabina’s recollection of the days after her accident,
those days of pain and discomfort when she had hung
conscious and half consenting on the edge of the void, was
still clear. She wondered why Leadville should be
showing this sudden interest on her concerns. Did he wish
to get her out of the way again, so that he might be up to
his tricks? Or did he think he still had a chance with
Gray? She could smile to herself over his infatuation.
It would not be long now before he realized its hopelessness.

“I don’t like that old knife business,” she said. “I’ll
live as long as I can and then I must die.”

“This is hardly worth calling an operation.”

“Thank you, doctor, I’ll stay where I’m to.”

“A wilful woman!” he said, rising. “Well, then, I must
send you a tonic and Byron’ll see that you take it.”

“He’s likely to,” she said.

“Now come, Mrs. Byron, can’t have you saying things
like that. The person who is really interested in your
getting better is your husband. You don’t know what
he was like when you were in hospital.”

“I think,” said she, with a little twitch of the lips, “as
I can make a guess. But thank ‘ee all the same, doctor.”

Picking up his gun, Byron followed the doctor out of
the house. The farmer might prefer to strike a path for
himself but Dr. Derek had a feline dislike of dirt and wet.
His patent-leather boots, small and pointed, twinkled
in the sunshine as he stepped along the blue flagstones,
and through his bright round glasses, his steel-blue eye
shot an inquiring gleam at the man, padding heavily at
his side.

Against that neat personality, Leadville’s big frame
showed rough and heavy. He was the hulking unshaven
countryman, powerful as a bear and with a bear’s light
but ungainly walk. He did not attempt to accommodate
his stride to the other’s city gait but lounged along
somewhere in his neighbourhood.

“The missis ‘aven’t been ‘erself lately,” Byron
volunteered as they came up to the gate, “an’ I wish you
could make her do as you say. P’raps, next time you
come, you’ll try and persuade ‘er?”

With his plans not yet matured, one way out of his
difficulties was as good as another. If Sabina could be
persuaded to return to the hospital for a time, he would
only have to deal with Mrs. Tom.

The doctor climbed into the gig. “‘Tis no good,
Byron. When she says ‘No’ there’s no moving her.”

The farmer’s vague gaze was fixed on the glittering
harness but his heart sank. “I should like to have
everything done that can be done,” he growled in his
deep voice.

“I know, my good fellow,” comforted the other.
“Well, don’t let her do more than you can help and
keep her diet as light as possible. Not too much pork,
you know, and no heavy suppers.”

“She won’t be said by me,” returned Byron.

“Well, well, one does the best one can and there’s no
more to be said. Wonderful case! Never thought
she’d turn that first corner; yet, there she is, doing a day’s
work. It’s a pity she’s growing so stout. When I think
of what she was!” With his small well-kept hands, the
polished nails of which scattered tiny reflections of the
light, he made a gesture of pity and regret. “The
strength of a man, and now——”

Byron stepped back from the gig. “And now,” he
said grimly as the cob began to move, “now, she’s a
proper wreck.”

CHAPTER XI

An hour later Byron came into the kitchen carrying a
small dead seal. Climbing down by a little treacherous
path, he had seen it lying at the mouth of a cave and for
some minutes had stood to watch it. By means of an
inner membrane it was clearing first one nostril of
sea-water and then the other; and he had shot it while it was
still unaware of him.

“What’s become o’ the furnace?” he asked. “I
told George to leav’n by the hedge-gripe.”

Sabina, though a farmer, preserved some feminine
traits and in particular a love of tidiness. She was as
clean as a cat and to see her yard churned up by the
hoofs of the cattle, and the farm implements at the mercy
of the weather, troubled her. The rusty furnace, an
outdoor stove used for farm purposes and, in particular,
to try out seal-oil, had been an eyesore and she had had it
removed.

“‘Tis out in the bullocks’ house.”

Leadville ‘damned ‘er up in the ‘eaps for interferin’
with ‘is things’; but he spoke, not harshly so much as
absent-mindedly.

“I’ll ‘av the place as I’ve a mind to,” returned Sabina
placidly. Her husband had often raged against the
equable good nature which suffered without malice, as a
mother surfers the unreasonableness of her child. Now he
only muttered vaguely as he set the gun in its thongs
over the door.

“Where’s Dick to?”

“Drayin’ oreweed.” Sabina, who had manoeuvred the
trolly close to the fender, had been nodding in the
agreeable warmth. An indoor life had made her susceptible
to cold and this afternoon she felt tired and ill. The
emotions rather than the work of the day had exhausted
her, and she had thought to snatch a few minutes’ rest
before Mrs. Tom, whom she was expecting to call on the
way back from Stowe, should arrive.

“You’ll catch afire one of these days if you keep on
gruddlin’ so,” said Byron, with a fathering wish. Sabina
could not follow his thought, in fact she mistook it for
solicitude. It was long since he had shown any interest
in her welfare. Could the doctor’s visit, revealing that
she was in a poor way, have brought her husband to a
better mind? Like the rest of us she could not believe
that it takes all sorts to make a world and, in the eyes of
others, saw consequently only the reflection of herself.
She looked hopefully at Leadville and at once he
turned away, hanging his big head and balancing from
one foot to the other. His mind was stirring, as
the sand crawls under an army of ants. He felt the
movement, was perhaps vaguely conscious of the direction
in which he was going, but could not see the end;
not yet.

A cart laden with glistening weed, wet and olive-brown,
had come up from the beach. As Leadville lounged out
of the porch he saw that Dick Bennett was the driver.
The weed had been left by the receding tide, left
ankle-deep in every sandy bay, strewn over the black rocks; a
generous provision, enough for every potato-patch in the
parish. Nor did the glossy slippery weed constitute the
whole of the sea-harvest. Manure for the fields, wood for
the kitchen fires and, what that wood had held—oranges
and shelled walnuts, crates and bags and boxes—had
floated in during the night. The sea had been good to the
lonely dwellers on her coasts; and she had offered, in her
own gruesome fashion, a Christmas gift.

“The furnace, maister? I knaw where ’tis to. Leave
me empt up this and I’ll get it for yer.”

When the stove, red with rust, had been reinstated in
the shelter of the hedge, Byron took up the limp body and
began to prepare it.

“That’s every bit of coal we got, till Jim bring ‘ome
some from Stowe,” said Bennett as he poured a shovelful
of round knobs, which had been salvaged from the sea,
on to the furze bushes, and set them alight.

“There’s plenty of wood there,” grunted the other,
“so we must burn that.”

“I should think ’twas time Jim ‘ud be back.” The
hind was a little mournful man with a grievance. He had
seen Jim drive off that morning, in his Sunday suit, with a
pretty girl for company; and he had felt that he himself,
older in service, should have been sent. “But these
young chaps, when they go an errand, they take good care
they don’t come ‘ome very quick. Course,” he added
grudgingly, “‘e can spend the day in Stowe without any
trouble.”

“Oh, shut yer mouth,” cried the other savagely. The
man’s grumbling chatter had obliged him to remember
that Jim Rosevear was with Gray. Till then, he had
succeeded in keeping the thought of their proximity at the
back of his mind. It had been difficult, but he had done
it. Dick had made it no longer possible and the day in
Stowe unrolled itself before his jealous eyes—the drive in,
a drive of five good Cornish miles, the drive behind Lady
who, though a good mare, was slow: the stall in the
market where Rosevear would set up the trestles, help
the girl arrange to the best advantage the eggs, the poultry,
the pounds and half pounds of butter: the meeting after
market on the Quay where, the wagon being loaded with
coal and flour, they would leave Lady by the warehouse
while they hurried from shop to shop, she buying and he
carrying the parcels: finally the long drive home in the
windy dusk. Leadville tortured himself with the thought
of that drive, of Gray’s softness and nearness, of the little
face between the fur of cap and necklet, the little smiling
face….

He had been skinning the seal. Much as less powerful
men skin a rabbit, he had been tearing the coat, grey and
damp, from the smooth pale body. A stone wall, five foot
broad at the base and crowned with tamarisk bushes, is
what in Cornwall is called a hedge. It is at least a shelter
from the wind, and Dick Bennett had been careful to set
the furnace in a lew corner. The furze bushes burnt
with a crackle and above them the sea-coal smouldered
slowly in large red lumps. The air in the yard was fresh
but still, and through it, a warm reek, rose the smell of
blood. It rose to Byron’s nostrils, affecting him as it
affects the children of the wild, rousing in him that
primitive, long-forgotten, but deathless passion which
claims survival as its right and, battling before the hosts
that wait to be called across the threshold, stakes its life.
Between his hands hung the limp body and he wrenched
at the skin in a growing fury of impatience. His blunt
dark-skinned fingers were foul and, as the sealskin slipped
he noticed that a trickle of thickening blood had run down
his palm on to the wrist. He stared at this from between
narrowed eyelids for a second, then, stooping his big
head, licked it away. The taste of it, salt on his tongue,
further affected an equilibrium already unstable; and
the beast which slumbers behind the arras of our civilization,
which stirs with a faint growl at every shaking of
that decent cover, that savage incalculable beast of the
long past, awoke. The blood-lust rose in him. He forgot
the presence of the bullock-man, the time, the place,
everything but a sudden overmastering need. Something,
he could not remember what, had defied him and it was of
paramount necessity that this something should be done
away with, destroyed, ground into the earth. To rend
and crush had become obligatory, the vindication of
his claim to live. The poor body of the seal was gone
and in its place was an enemy who had been given into
his hands. He caught up the carcass, seeing not it, but
all he hated, all he was burning to destroy and the
dismemberment degenerated from honest butchery into an orgy.
Dick Bennett stood aghast. In the master’s eye was a
wildness which made the hind thankful he was even more
inconspicuous than small. For once his querulousness
was hushed. “The old devil pulled and dragged and
‘acked as though ‘e was mad,” was his description afterwards
of the scene. “‘E fetched ‘is spite out on the poor
creature. It made me fairly sick to see ‘im.”

Bit by bit the crushed fragments of bloody flesh were
cast into the cauldron; but as long as bone or sinew held
together, Byron tore at the body with unabated passion.
The last lump was flung in with the same fury of effort
as the first; but as soon as his hands were empty, the mood
passed. The sweat was on his forehead, his knees were
knocking together and he was trembling, but he seemed
unconscious of his condition. For some minutes he
stood by the furnace staring vacantly into the bubbling
depths but by degrees his breath came more evenly, and
the suavity of successful effort began to wash over his
tortured mind.

Daunted by his master’s incomprehensible ferocity,
the hind waited in the background; and, behind him again,
the chickens picked and scratched and on the lichened
roof the pigeons balanced in the sun. Byron was watching
the formation of a large iridescent bubble. His eye
dwelt languidly on the red and green transparence, on the
smaller bubbles hurrying to its side; but as the film burst
and disappeared he pushed the stirring-stick into the
labourer’s hand with a deep, “Mind you don’t leave’n
burn,” and swung away. He was come fully to himself,
a weary and a hungry self and he remembered that the
dinner hour was long past.

The outer door of the linhay opened on to a paved
drying-yard and, as he passed through, he stooped his
head under a sagging cord with the practical man’s
comment that a new prop was needed. Trifles,
common-place and wholesome, were distracting his mind. He
felt cold, noticed that what little wind there was had gone
round to the north, noticed too that above Dark Head
the sky was flaming with a sunset of good augury. The
short December day being so near its close, the linhay was
dark; but the hungry man knew where to lay his hand on a
rabbit pasty. He had shot the rabbits and brought them
in—to Gray; and now Gray was—where? Behind him
lay the old house with its many chambers and not one
of them harboured her. For the first time he realized
that without Gray, Wastralls was but an empty shell.

In a row on the shelf stood the loaves and, beside them,
on a big white dish lay the pasties. Sabina had added
onion and bacon to make them appetizing, parsley to
give flavour, freshly dug potatoes to hold the gravy; and
all was folded in a responsible crust. Her pasties were
renowned; but Byron, satisfying his hunger, did not
notice the quality of the food. He was still obsessed by
his vision of the empty house. The barren years, when
he had paced the friendly fields as a captive paces his
cage, unable either to take action or to escape, had done
their work. He had supported life on a meagre hope;
but he was older now, less patient, had a shorter time left
him in which to enjoy. The young Samson can afford to
ask riddles and play tricks, it is the ageing man who,
grown desperate, brings destruction upon the people.
Standing by the shelf, eating hungrily but absent-mindedly,
Byron presently became conscious of voices
in the kitchen. For a moment his heart beat in swift
anticipation. Was Gray back? He stopped eating to
listen, but the voice which had suggested that of the young
girl was older and had lost some of its West-country
music. He recognized it disappointedly as that of the
girl’s mother.

Filling himself a mug from the pitcher of milk that stood
on the flags, Byron drank. If Mrs. Tom were in the
kitchen the little party must have returned from Stowe,
and the thought was, in a way, reassuring. Gray would
be at Hember now and Rosevear would have come on to
Wastralls with the mare and cart. At least they were no
longer together.

Byron’s thoughts dwelt fleetingly on Rosevear. Should
he go back, find the fellow and send him packing? He
hated the sight of that womanishly smooth face. Some
day he would send his fist crashing into it, put the weight
of his shoulder into the blow. If he could fell a bullock
it would be child’s play to spoil Rosevear’s beauty,
to make him so as the chap’s own mother wouldn’t
recognize him. When Gray saw what he made of her
fine sweetheart, there would be no more hesitation—Leadville
could not believe it to be more than hesitation.
She would turn to the man who had proved in primal
fashion his right to her.

In the kitchen the women’s voices rose and fell, lifting
at the end in the Cornish way. Phrases and half words
reached the man’s ears and brought him to a distrustful
consideration of them. These women, with their
‘under-hauling,’ their scheming, the way they ‘held for each
other’—what were they discussing? Him and his
affairs? He fell to again on the pasty, biting into its
hard crust with unnecessary force, biting indeed into
more than crust and meat.

Mrs. Tom, having brought in the Christmas groceries
and stacked the tins and parcels on the side-table, had
settled down for a chat. The bond between the women,
which like themselves was stout and workaday, had been
embroidered by the years with a pattern of memories;
and what can be pleasanter at the end of a winter day
than to sit by a bright fire with a friend who has been
tried by time? Sabina talked of her husband, of the
farm, of the future.

“Ah!” said Mrs. Rosevear cheerfully, “and now the
time ‘as come for ‘ee to make a fresh start. When
Leadville knaw about Gray, ‘e will ‘av to rest ‘is ‘eart
content.”

Sabina stirred her tea in a meditative fashion. With a
simple faith in good and evil, reward and punishment,
it was puzzling to her that she who was a ‘member and
had gone to prayer meeting and chapel all right and been
a good livin’ woman,’ should have had so much trouble.
“I think it’s a awful thing for ‘e to be running after
Gray, when ‘e got a wife of’s own?” she said. “Too bad,
I do call it.”

“Well, there ’tis, my dear, I ‘spose ‘e can’t ‘elp it.
Men are like that, bain’t they, poor old dragons? Best
thing to do is to keep temptation out of’s way.”

“Do ‘ee think so? Now I’d rather show’m as ‘e
can’t ‘av what ‘e wants.”

The more clear-sighted woman did not dispute the
matter. Even if Sabina wanted Gray and Jim to live
at Wastralls, the decision would not rest with her. Gray
would not care so long as she was with Jim, but he,
though good-natured and easygoing, knew his own mind.
Not long since, he had been over to Gentle Jane where
his aunt, receiving him warmly, had been urgent that he
should live with her. He had not given a definite answer,
but Mrs. Tom knew he was considering the matter.

“Better for Leadville if ‘e ‘ad something to take up ‘is
time,” she said. “E’s always mumpin’ around the cliffs
like a wandering Jew.”

The wife’s happy-go-lucky faith in Leadville’s harmlessness
did not commend itself to Mrs. Tom. She remembered
the zest with which he had torn up the honeysuckle,
the indifference he had shown as to whether Sabina lived
or died, his moroseness since her return. They might
yet have trouble with him.

“Well, ’tis ‘is choice, ‘e could work if ‘e like; there’s
plenty to do, but ‘e’s not that way inclined.”

“‘E ‘as got fever of lurk,

Two minds to eat and none to work,”

quoted Mrs. Tom as she helped herself to a slice of
yeast-cake. “If a man got nothin’ else to think about, ‘e sure
to get into mischief. Can’t you find something for’m
to do? Why don’t yer let’n go to town for ‘ee in an’
out, and work a team sometimes?”

“‘Av yer forgotten the trick ‘e served me when I was
in the ‘ospital? ‘Twouldn’t do at all. ‘E’s one o’ they
sort, if you give’n a inch ‘e’ll take a nail.”

“Well, you’m Job’s comforter, but all I can say is you’re
both gettin’ upstairs and, after a bit, you’ll settle down all
right again. Of course Gray’ll stay ‘ome now, until we
see what’s to be done. The young folks must please
their own minds, then they can’t blame nobody.”

Sabina agreed, though with some reluctance. “Whatever
be I to do without ‘er?”

“You needn’t trouble yerself about that. Richbell
shall come down in the mornin’ and light yer fire and get
the breakfast. Iss, and while I think of’t, Tom say you
must sure to come up to Hember to spend Christmas.
He’ll fetch yer ‘isself. The Constantines are comin’, and
we shall be all together; and by then, please God, I ‘ope
Leadville’ll be settled down.”

“I should like that very much.” Her face brightened
at the thought of the welcoming faces and the cheer.
“I’m sure ’tis good of ‘ee to think about it and I’ll bring
up something with me. ‘Tis years since we’ve spent
Christmas together.”

“My dear, ’tis more’n ten years ago. Now, ‘av you
told Leadville about Gray?”

“I said to’n ‘They’re courtin’ an’ll be married very
soon an’ I expect they’ll come ‘ere to live.'”

“What did he say about it, then?”

“‘E give a nasty grunt-like, ‘e did; still ‘e’ll get over
that. To-morrow I’ll tell’n of ‘t; but I don’t feel I could
bear any more to-day.”

“Well, to-morrow’ll do.”

As she spoke, Byron opened the linhay door. The
dancing flames illumined the low-browed room sufficiently,
for him to see the two women seated one on each side of
the hearth; and with a short mutter of greeting he walked
over to the window-bench. “Who brought they groceries
back?”

“I did,” said Mrs. Tom.

“Is Gray come back then?”

“Gray? She idn’t comin’ back. Me and S’bina ‘ve
made arrangements for Richbell to come in ‘er place.”

He had suspected the women were plotting against him.
He had been conscious of their intangible opposition and
a spasm of hatred took him by the throat. He shook in
the grip of it. “Why?”

Mrs. Tom was resolved that there should be no
ill-blood between Hember and Wastralls and her reply was
non-committal. “She do dearly love ‘er Aunt S’bina
but she want to be ‘ome.”

“She’ll soon be back ‘ere,” asserted Byron.

“She’s very grateful for all your kindness but she’d
rather live ‘ome with me for a bit.”

“I don’t like changes and I won’t ‘av them.”

“Dear me,” said Mrs. Tom placidly, “won’t is a big
word!” She turned to the figure in the wicker cone as if,
having disposed of one matter, she were ready for another.
“Shall I put they groceries in the cupboard for ‘ee,
S’bina?”

Leadville had risen from his seat. They had taken Gray
from him and they meant to keep her away. Would she
be a consenting party to their scheme? He feared she
might, yet if she only knew! Mrs. Tom, tranquil,
occupied with household thoughts, seemed to the angry
man to possess a tremendous, terrifying power. She could
make Gray inaccessible and she would.

“We want ‘er ‘ere,” and his harsh voice shook so that
Mrs. Tom, aware of him out of the corner of an eye, could
not but pity him.

“I knaw ’tis very good of ‘ee to make so much fuss of
her,” she returned, pushing back her chair, “but just now
she’d rather be ‘ome.”

Through the turmoil of his fears and hopes Leadville
heard his wife’s easy, “You can put they things away if
you like, Isolda; but leave out the tin of boot-polish for
I know we want one.”

They could talk of groceries and boot-polish! He was
astounded at their lack of understanding. A man might
be suffering the pains of hell and they would still be
occupied with trifles. With an effort which set the blood
drumming in his ears he forced himself to sit down.
Behind him in the thickness of the wall was the bench
and above it the many-paned window, with a geranium
on the inner ledge. The kitchen table stood against
this bench and, as Leadville sank back he gripped the
stout edge, putting into the clutch the passion or his
disappointment, his revolt. The women moved about,
pouring sugar and currants into jars, filling the bin with
flour, folding up bags and paper. The murmur of their
casual talk filled the air—their talk of the markets and
the shops, of prices and of people! Murmur of women’s
voices is the breeze in the tree-tops; murmur of men’s,
the sea on the beaches, the sea at night! Leadville
heard as one a great way off hears a familiar sound. He
heard and gradually the gale of his impatience ceased to
blow. He was no longer occupied with the soft movements
of the women, no longer exasperated by their
intangible opposition. He had turned from the latter as
from a thing of little moment, and in the depths of his
spirit had found enlightenment.

Take Gray from him, would they?

He understood at last that Mrs. Rosevear and Jim were
not his chief enemies. The person who stood between
him and the realization of his dreams was Sabina. She
had withheld Wastralls; now, by merely living, she
blocked his path to Gray.

CHAPTER XII

“I’ve asked Gray to get Raby Gregor to come down
and alter trolly a bit. I’ve thrived a bit since I lost
me laigs.”

“Good sign that.”

“Shows I’m in better ‘ealth, still I don’t like bein’ so
fat. I’ve ‘ad to ‘av Aunt Louisa alter all my clothes
and if Raby Gregor takes a long time to make trolly
bigger, I shan’t be able to get about for goodness knows
‘ow long.”

“Well, I should think Mrs. Bate ‘ud come in for a day
or two to ‘elp yer. I shouldn’t ‘av trolly done till after
Christmas, if you do you won’t be able to come up to our
place.”

Leadville, sitting engrossed in secret thought, had had
a withering effect upon the women’s talk. It lost
spontaneity, it grew spasmodic and, as soon as the last tin was
on the shelf, Mrs. Tom said she must go home.

“I’ll go out as far as the gate with yer,” Sabina had
answered eagerly. After the hot kitchen it would be
pleasant to have a breath of air from the sea, pleasant
also to finish their chat. The flags being level it was an
easy run but the gate marked the end of the journey.
From it the ground fell away to the sandy commons
covered with grey spire-grass, which had given the place
its name. The Wastralls had been bare blown sand, but
the stiff spire held the ridges from shifting and on its
heels had come bright lady’s-fingers and silver-weed,
coarse herbage and, in depressions, the thick yellow moss.
Sabina found it rested her, after the dark confinement,
the depressing influence of the house, to look across the
commons. The sand was piled in fantastic bulwarks
but between these wind-formed bastions and ditches
glimmered a white unrest of tides.

The short winter’s day was drawing to a close. The
sun had sunk below Dark Head and the black shadow of
the cliff had fallen on Wastralls. Grey in the dip of the
grey land, it lay like a rock; but unlike a rock it was
hollow and the many chambers were full of echoes from
the past. Above the eastern hills a vague brightness
gave promise of the moon and the women, pausing by the
egg-crowned gateposts, looked up the road to where
Hember windows were aglow. Their thoughts had run
before them and they fancied they could hear faint
sounds of voices and laughter.

“They will keep it up to-night,” said Mrs. Tom and with
a kiss bundled off down the lane. She was returning,
full of pleasant anticipations to a merry circle—a circle
which on her appearance would make her affectionately
welcome. With the five girls it was always ‘Mother!’
with Tom too.

She had not taken many steps before the contrast
between what she was leaving and that to which she was
hastening, brought her to a standstill. Her heart misgave her.

“S’bina!” she called to the lonely figure, motionless
by the gate. “S’bina!”

“Well, what is it?”

“Would you like for Richbell to come down to-night?”

In the kitchen Leadville could hear the high-pitched
question and reply.

“Spoil ‘er evenin’? My dear life, I wouldn’t think of
it. Don’t you worry. I shall get on all right.”

“I don’t like to feel that you are all alone.” She knew
Sabina would not have welcomed a reference to her
helplessness.

“Now don’t ‘ee think about me, go and enjoy yourself.”

Mrs. Tom hesitated for a moment. At the few
merrymakings of the countryside Sabina, jovial and buxom,
had been a welcome guest; but, since her accident, the
difficulty of getting about had kept her at home.
Mrs. Tom decided she must be persuaded to go out more, that a
pony must be got for her and the trolly adapted. That
Leadville would be violently opposed to such a proceeding,
that he would object to his wife’s making a ‘laughing-stock
of herself,’ did not weigh with Mrs. Tom.

More than once that evening when the young people,
singing the old hymns to the old tunes were gathered
about the harmonium, the good woman’s thoughts
returned to the friend of her youth. What a fine woman
Sabina had been, putting them all in the shade yet
unaware of it and what happy times they had had. She
remembered childhood’s days and how often she had
waited at the cross-roads for Sabina, so that they might
walk the length of the way together. The fish-seller’s
daughter would bring a pasty for her school dinner and
there being nine at home, it was generally more pastry
than meat; but Sabina had supplemented it with red
apples and cold sausages and other delectable foods.
Sabina had also supplemented the other’s wardrobe,
perhaps even her prospects.

Mrs. Tom, thinking of the lonely figure at the gate, was
glad her own days were passed at Hember, in rooms that
led out of each other and were crowded with children.
Wastralls, silent and old, depressed her. Not all the
fires Sabina lighted could warm its bones and do away
with the faint but pervading smell of mould. Life that
had been thinned to ghostliness, drifted through the
passages; and the rooms lay in a brooding hush. She
thought of the place with a dim prevision, too dim for her
to grasp, a prevision of calamity.

“Somebody digging my grave!” she said and drew
nearer to the fire.

The wind which blew in gusts, dropping now and again
into a deceitful lull, sent a cold breath up the valley and
Sabina, lingering by the gate, drew the shawl closer
about her shoulders. The shadow that rested on
Wastralls, a shadow to which she was as a rule wholesomely
indifferent, had grown a little, grown till it included her.
Though her perceptive faculty was slight, she was in no
hurry to leave the clean sanity, the freshness of the
night.

Above the black oblong of the mill the rim of the moon
was showing golden, that wonderful West-country moon,
which hangs, a clear lamp of light, far above cloud and
mist. The beams falling across the yard, across the ricks,
had not yet reached Wastralls. The house stood withdrawn
below the hills and, for the first time, Sabina felt
her home to be remote from the warm friendliness of the
world. She saw it that night approximately as it
appeared to others, a place cut off by its situation. The
valley being far from the main highway, strangers were
unaware of it. The road through, led to nothing but the
teeth of the devouring sea and, as the hamlet of Cottages
was the most cheerful spot in Trevorrick, so Wastralls
was the most lonely and the most lost. Hember windows
were always aglow. The sun found them by day and the
moon by night. They glowed from within, from the
fires of driftwood and sea-coal, from lamps swinging
under the dark rafters, from the fires of life. Sabina,
reluctantly returning to the house, could not but contrast
the light and music of Hember, its continual coming and
going, with the dark desolation, the stagnant peace of
Wastralls. Never had it been otherwise. Her earliest
recollections were of long hours when, her father being
at the Dolphin, the servant would take advantage and be
‘walking out.’ The child, given the run of the empty
rooms and left to her own devices, had peopled the place
with imaginary figures. Even at this distance of time
she could recall their ‘names and attributes—Tinkle
Minkle who was black and made of sugar, Creekuk and
Clokuk the eiderdown men, and Tinkle Farg who, still
more absurd, had been ‘shy with a buffalo!’ Naturally
social she had liked to imagine a face at every window,
children playing under the ‘grubby elms’ of the
avenue and among the animals in the yard. She
had looked forward to the time when she should be
grown up and married. “One child is a misfortune,”
she had told her father at the ripe age of ten, “I’m
going to ‘ave lots when I marry. I’m going to full the
rooms.”

The sound of a harmonium came to her through the
stillness, but so faint was it she could hardly distinguish
the tune. At Hember they were singing the familiar
hymns in which all could join. The sound drew the
listening woman. How often when weary of imaginary
companions had she run up the lane and joined her cousins
at their play! Hember had been a bright spot in her
life. All that she knew of sewing and housewifery, her
aunt had taught her; and Tom had wanted to marry
her, yes—Tom and Constantine. Poor old Constantine,
he had tried his best. But Tom, the rascal, Tom had been
looking two ways at once. She sighed, the gusty sigh
of a stout middle-aged woman who wishes the hot cake of
youthful joys, with its plums and its citron and its spice,
was once more whole in her hand.

A puff of wind, increasing the volume of sound, enabled
Sabina to recognize the hymn. She could almost see
the happy group, Isolda knitting in her chair by the
range, Tom opposite to her and, about the harmonium,
the bright heads and smiling faces of the girls. Ah, if
only one of them had been born to herself! She, who
had been going to ‘full the rooms,’ had had neither the
full quiver nor the faithful mate; she had had, as she
realized at last, nothing in all her life but hope; and from
her, time had stolen, even that which she had.

In the kitchen, absorbed in brooding thought, Byron, a
thicker shadow in the growing gloom, was awaiting her
return. Her mind, from wandering far afield, circled
to the present, to the slight repugnance she felt at
entering the house. She was not a ‘nervy’ woman, indeed,
in a countryside peculiarly susceptible to the so-called
supernatural, had been known to declare, “Out at all
times, night and day, and never see nothing worse than
myself.” Her unwillingness to go back, an unwillingness
which, in truth, was but another of the warnings which
had been tolling like death-bells all the day, seemed to
her foolish.

“‘Tis owin’ that we’ve been bad friends for so long,”
she said. “I’m feelin’ awkward as tho’ ‘e’d been a stranger.
The sooner I take an’ go in the better.”

The door of the glass porch stood wide in a yawn of
blackness, a blackness so thick that Mrs. Byron felt as if
she were pushing her way in against a resistance intangible
and, on the whole, yielding but which could yet be felt.
Afraid of what might be lurking in the depths of that
gloom she forced herself to move noisily and, making a
greater effort, to break the silence.

“‘Tis darker ‘ere than ’tis in the yard,” she said,
thinking of the moon, and the pale flood it was pouring over
meadow and common, over the nestling farms, over every
place but the dark corner in which her home lay hid;
contrasting the black and silver of the night with this
brooding hush.

She put her hand on the shelf to find the matches.
Once the lamp was lighted, once its cheery beams had
driven out the dark, she would be more at ease. In a
hurry to finish her work, Gray however, had forgotten
to fill the brass receptacle with oil and Mrs. Byron was
faced with a domestic problem. To manoeuvre the
trolly sufficiently close to the wall would be difficult.
Nevertheless it did not occur to her to ask Leadville’s
help and he, sitting motionless by the window, did not
offer it.

“Strange ‘ow I feel I must keep on craikin’,” she
thought, as, at last successful, she trundled off to the
linhay. “‘Tis just like Leadville ‘ad now comed in and
I must talk to’n. I dunno when I felt so whisht.”

“We ‘aven’t got very much paraffin left,” she said aloud
as she returned with the lamp. “Jim didn’t bring any.
I dare say we got enough for to-night though, we don’t
burn much.”

“Where’s Jim to?” asked Leadville suddenly.

“Couldn’t get a bit of coal,” said Mrs. Byron, hanging
the lamp in its bracket and trying to conceal the fact
that his unexpected utterance had jarred her unruly
nerves. “‘Awken ‘adn’t a bit, but the boat is expected
in to-night so Jim’ll ‘av to go in to-morrow and fetch it.”

“Where’s ‘e to?” persisted Leadville.

Sabina held that if no fuel were thrown upon a fire, that
fire must die. “‘Ow d’yer think I knaw?”

“Is ‘e to ‘Ember?”

“Well, where else should ‘e be, seein’…”

The man’s deep chest lifted and fell. “Seein’,” he
interrupted fiercely, “as Tom wish for’m to be there,
seein’ as ‘is wife wish it…”

“‘Is—’is wife?” stammered Sabina.

“Don’t Isolda wish it? You know she do; but my
li’l bird don’t wish it. I don’t believe she do.”

The blood, which had drained out of the woman’s face,
returned with a rush. She opened her lips but found
herself voiceless and gasping. “Don’t say like that,
Leadville,” she whispered at last. “Don’t ‘ee, don’t ‘ee
say it—not to me.”

The man threw back his head and, as if unable in any
other way to express his feelings, broke into a laugh.
“You!” he said. “You!”

Sabina turned the trolly handle, pushing it blindly
out of the room. She was running away as a man runs
from licking, climbing flames. She could not yield,
could not knuckle under, but she could retreat until
strong enough to resume the struggle. The tears were
running down her face as she turned into the linhay,
but they were tears forced from her by pain. Like the
child in the story she could have said, “It is my eyes that’s
cryin’, not me.”

For behind the wall of her tired and suffering body was
her indomitable spirit.

CHAPTER XIII

Sabina’s mental attitude towards events and persons was
often one of surprise and protest. It was now.

“What ‘av I done that ‘e should treat me like this?”
she thought. Her right-doing was the outstanding thing
in her life and could not be missed. It was like a bonfire
on a hill. If the wages of sin were death, the reward of
righteousness which she deserved, should be love and
faith. Laying claim to this reward, her poor mind,
groped in a long bewilderment. For love and faith had
been withheld.

Leaning for support on the stone shelf, gathering the
dark and quiet and coolness of the linhay into her soul,
her tears gradually dried up and as gradually her personal
feeling, her bitterness and resentment, gave place. She
had asserted a claim, had protested as a wife against the
outrage of Leadville’s words, had protested as a child
against that flourishing of the wicked as a green bay-tree;
but the habit of her mind was impersonal and very
kind. Dispirited, sad, almost despairing, she yet could
not do other than return to it.

“Poor chap’s that worried, ‘e dunno what ‘e’s sayin’,”
she told herself. Her lack of children was an oversight
she had done her best to remedy. She made for Leadville
the blind tender excuses of her maternal heart. “I
knaw ‘e don’t mean it.’ Ye’ll be all right in a day or two’s
time. Always been a good-livin’ feller and I’m sure ‘e
wouldn’t ‘urt a flea. I don’t belong to mind…” a
quivering nerve gave her the lie…. “But I do, I do
mind,” she said piteously, “‘e’s all I got. No, and
tedn’t that. ‘Tis I do love’n.”

Drawing water she bathed her eyes. The burst of
emotion had left her drained of strength but supper was
yet to get. “I did mean to fry for ‘is supper,” she said,
the word covering as many varieties of appetizing food
as can be cooked in a frying-pan, “but I don’t think I
will, I feel so tired and weary, I think us’ll have to manage
with what we’ve got.” She glanced along the shelf.
“That bit of cold meat’ll do. ‘E do dearly love a bit of
fat pork.”

Although her tears, easing the strain on her nerves,
had left her less apprehensive, the kitchen still loomed
disquieting. “‘Tis because I made a fool of myself,”
she said, bracing herself for further effort.

Leadville was in his old place by the window. He
neither moved nor spoke, seemed indeed too much
absorbed in thought to be aware of her. Sabina felt
relieved. She told herself she had had enough of his
tantrums for one day: let them have the meal in peace
and get off to bed. Putting the meat on a clean dish she
began to lay the cloth but, as she moved about, a dim
suspicion flitted through her mind that she was being
watched. She dismissed it hurriedly and went on with
her work, but it returned. Though Leadville appeared
lost in thought, no sooner did she turn her back than his
heavy lids lifted and his eyes followed her with a furtive
question. She felt them on her, felt in his glance a
quality which made her uneasy. What did he want to
know? Why couldn’t he put his question into words?
Why should his following and thoughtful glance remind
her of the way a cat, crouching, watches a bird? She was
sure he was watching, yet not quite sure. Turning sharply
she fixed brave blue eyes on his face, but immediately he
looked away. He was not watching her, he was occupied
with his own dark and brooding fancies.

The blank unconsciousness of his gaze was reassuring.
She had been mistaken, fanciful. How foolish of her!
Well, she was tired, she could not help it if she did fancy
things. She had been through a lot that day and it had
shaken her. Perhaps too the lamp had something to say
to her fancies. It was not burning well and, while a good
light cheered and encouraged, a jumping insufficient one
bred more than shadows. Mrs. Byron went into the
linhay for scalded cream, for syrup and the cocoa-jug, but as
she passed her husband she felt that if he did not quite
look at her, she was yet the centre of his thoughts. And
he was looking. Her back was towards him, her unprotected
back, and his glances were like arrows. The hair
crisped on the woman’s head. What did this furtive
watching mean? This down-dropping look which, when
unobserved, followed and considered? Leadville was
sitting back in the corner, his head resting against the wall
and, though his heavy features wore the expression
habitual to them, his eyes were no longer filmed with
inward brooding. Sabina, wandering over the moors
had once stooped to look along a deserted mine-shaft and,
in the darkness, had seen two round eyes, eyes of green
fire, eyes which though distant had been full of a wild
menace. They had stared out at her, threatening her
advance and, so inimical were they, that she had left the
mine-shaft unexplored. Leadville’s eyes reminded her
of the savage daunting thing from which she had
retreated. “I wish ‘e wouldn’t watch me like that,” she
said, lingering over her errand, “it makes me feel any’ow;
I wish—” her thoughts flew to Hember, Hember which,
whenever she had been in a difficulty hitherto, had come
to the rescue—”I wish I’d let Richbell come down.”

A candle stood on the furnace and, by its light, Mrs. Byron
searched the upper shelf for a jug of which she stood
in need. During her long convalescence she had suffered
from sleeplessness but, as her health improved, so had her
nights. She put the latter down, however, to the fact
that she had formed the habit of drinking a cup of hot
cocoa as soon as she was in bed. A warm drink at night,
a nourishing, non-stimulating drink which needed care
in preparation was, she had felt, more likely to bring a
return to normal conditions than patient waiting on the
mysterious processes of nature. The cocoa-jug, brown,
high-waisted, girdled by a gold line, stood a little behind
the other pitchers. In her haste that morning, Gray
had pushed it back and, the shelf being high, her aunt had
some difficulty in recovering it. The effort to reach it
distracted her mind and, when she returned to the kitchen,
she was thinking more of the healing effects of cocoa than
of the tiresome ways of husbands.

On one side of the range hung a small square mirror,
such as can be bought of any gipsy pedlar for a shilling;
and as she leaned forward to put on the kettle she caught
sight of her face. Used to rubicund cheeks below bright
eyes, she was surprised to see that, though her colour was
fixed, it had lost its warm tone and that her lips were a
bluish grey.

“I bin frightened,” she told herself, “I knaw ’tis
fulishness of me but I can’t ‘elp it. Pretty mawkin I
be, fancyin’ things like that.” The eyes in the mirror
were strong and encouraging, the grey lips smiled at her.
Here was a tried comrade who knew what she had to
endure and who sympathized—who sympathized as no
one else could! Sabina was captain of her soul and could
rely on it for strength and for support; yet with her
reviving courage came a hint of the old discomfort. On
returning from the linhay she had found Byron staring at
his knees. Now that her back was turned to him she
felt—and the feeling sent a quick shudder through her—she
felt that he was at his trick of watching. She felt it, then
suddenly she knew, for in the depths of the mirror was
another face, a face which had fixed narrowing eyes on
her; and these eyes travelled over her, considering her,
asking a strange inhuman question.

She swung the trolly round in an access of nervous
fear but that inimical glance had slipped away and
Leadville was once more staring blankly at his knees.
Mrs. Byron remained for a moment waiting, but he neither
stirred nor looked. He had been on the verge of
making the discovery he sought and her sudden movement,
scattering his thoughts, had angered him. If she would
go on with her work, the thing that was eluding him, would
creep back and this time he would grasp it. He sat like
one in a trance, focusing his mind on a dimly seen spot,
a spot of dreadful knowledge.

Sabina manoeuvred the car so that she no longer had
her back turned to the dark figure on the bench. To
make the cocoa while in a sideways position was awkward,
but the defenceless attitude had become impossible.
She must know what was happening on the other side of
the room. Profoundly disturbed, she yet measured the
spoonfuls of cocoa with a steady hand. As Gray would
not share the beneficial draught that night her aunt was
mechanically careful to make only half the usual quantity.
The lavish hand does not pile up a balance at the bank.

As Mrs. Byron set the jug of cocoa on the stove, in
order that it might be kept hot till she was ready for it,
Leadville broke the silence. He did not speak, but once
more he laughed, and this time his was the satisfied
laugh of a man who after long endeavour has found that of
which he is in search.

His wife stared. “‘Ow you made me jump,” she said, a
little breathlessly. A quality in the laugh, a certain
sinister satisfaction, had made her flesh creep. What
was it that had pleased him, that by his secret watching
he had discovered? She tried to shake off the conviction
of his strangeness. “Dunno what’s come over me. I
spose ‘e can laugh at ‘is own thoughts; but it’s a funny
thing, it makes me all goosey flesh.”

Conquering an inclination to go out of the room, to
leave Leadville to his secret satisfactions, she rolled herself
to the table. “I should think you was feeling so leary as
a grey’ound by this time,” she said and, by speaking of
the commonplace, would have relieved the tension.
The queerness of Leadville’s behaviour might after all be
due to hunger for, as far as she knew, he had not had any
food since morning.

The man cleared his throat. “There’s no butter on the
table,” he said, looking past her at something on the
other side of the room.

“Gray’s taken every bit to market.” His habit being
to eat without comment what was set before him, Sabina
felt a dim surprise that he should have asked for butter.

“She ‘aven’t. I see some on the shelf.”

To ask him to fetch it did not occur to her. Turning
the handle of the little car she went back to the linhay.
It was possible that Gray, thoughtful for others, had put
some aside.

As the trolly disappeared behind the door it was as it
a hand swept from Byron’s features the mask which
hitherto had shrouded his resolve. Obscure, unrecognized,
it had lain for many a day behind his everyday
thoughts. The general upheaval had thrust it forward
until it shone naked in a dreadful candour. So long
had it been familiar that it came tame to the man’s
seeking hand. He knew at last what he must do. Sabina
making the cocoa had shown it him.

Getting up from the bench and treading carefully—he
whose step was always light—he tiptoed over to the wall
cupboard. It yawned before him, a darkness hollowed in
the solid masonry and with unerring certainty, as if his
hand had gone that way in dreams, it fell on that which
it sought, a little ribbed blue phial, with an orange label.
The last occasion on which he had used it, had been when
he adjudged Shep to be old and useless. The bottle was
only a quarter full, and he felt sorry that he had wasted
any of the precious contents on the dog. Would the
quarter be sufficient for his purpose? For a moment he
hung uncertain, but the passions which were riding him to
destruction forced him to take the risk. He heard Sabina
crossing the floor of the linhay and the repugnance with
which she inspired him rose like nausea in his throat. He
went blind with hatred, the hatred so long repressed,
that primitive hatred of the under-dog. As one pressed
for time, he uncorked the bottle and held it to the jug of
cocoa. The colourless fluid gurgled as it flowed over the
blue rim and the sound, striking through the man’s
absorption, woke in him the beginnings of fear. Even
now, she might be able to come between him and success,
this necessary, intolerably-longed-for success. He stared
with wild eyes at the linhay door. If she had heard, if she
came in and in her high brave way faced him and accused
him, he was done. To use violence to Sabina was not in
him. He could only work against her in secret, get her at a
disadvantage, strike from behind. If she found him out, he
would not dare any more, he would be beaten and it would
break him. His spirit acknowledged that there was a limit.

He listened but Sabina was still moving from shelf to
shelf on her fruitless errand. He grew conscious that the
sweat was running into his eyes. Raising a hand, a hand
foul with seal’s blood, to wipe it from his forehead, he
left a brown smear in its place.

The drops fell hissing on the red-hot coals and, out of
his other hand, Byron dropped that ominous blue phial
into the fire. A splutter and crackle of flame, louder
than any of the man’s furtive movements, spat out at
him. Terrified he turned to the box beside the hearth, a
strong old box which had come in from the sea and was
now used to hold driftwood. From it he snatched thick
pieces and thin queer-shaped bits of old dead ships, of
their gear and their furniture, and piled them on the
tell-tale bottle. When Mrs. Byron returned from her
unsuccessful search, he was holding his trembling hands
before the blaze and the flames were leaping over the
heap of sea-rimed fuel.

“Mercy!” cried she, at the sight of what seemed to her
careful mind a waste of good wreck, “you’ll catch the
chimbly afire. Us don’t want a big fire, ’tis near
bedtime, now.”

She rolled forward as if to remove a log but Leadville
stood his ground. “Leave’n go. If I didn’t want it, I
shouldn’t ha’ put it there. I’m cold.”

For a man who wore the same clothes, winter and
summer, who had never cared to possess an overcoat,
this was a curious assertion. Sabina, observing that his
hands shook, began to think he must be on the verge of an
illness. If so, it would account for the general strangeness
of his conduct.

“Please yourself,” she said and rolled the trolly over
to the table. “I couldn’t find the butter anywhere, but
Isolda has promised to send some down in the morning.
Wud yer like a bit o’ dripping?” She placed a small
china dish heaped with pork dripping near her husband’s
plate. “Come on, make ‘aste,” she said, “supper’s ready.”

With his back to her and with those darkly stained
hands still spread to the blaze, he muttered that he could
not eat.

“You’ll very soon be knocked up if you don’t eat something,”
she said kindly. “Won’t yer ‘ave a bit o’ this pork?”

“If I did I should bring me life up.”

Concerned for his health she continued to press him.
“Will ‘ee ‘av a drop of beer if I fetch it?”

“I don’t want anything.”

“Well, couldn’t ‘ee drink a cup of my cocoa?”

For a moment the world heaved dizzily about the
man. He stumbled forward a space. “Of your—of your
cocoa—I didn’t—” he stammered, his spirit turning
craven; but Sabina’s innocent uncomprehending face,
turned sideways from the table, arrested him on the brink;
and he swung off into a wild, incoherent mutter, which
presently resolved itself into oaths, such as he had not used
since his seafaring days. He could not stop, the words
poured from him like steam out of a safety-valve. Even
Sabina, to whose common-sense point of view swearing
was mere harmless breath, was taken aback. To surliness
she was accustomed, cursing of a mild order was the male
way of expressing gratitude for the gift of speech, but this?
Turning in the wicker cone she looked at him searchingly
and this look, puzzled and seeking to understand, brought
him to his senses. He stammered, choked over his words
and flinging himself into Old Squire’s red-cushioned chair
bade her ‘leave him be.’

“Poor old sinner, ‘e dunno what to do by ‘isself,” she
thought excusingly. “Like a bear wi’ a sore ‘ead ‘e is.
Well, I better leave’n be.”

She drew the pork towards her and cut it. She was
reconsidering her decision to wait till morning before
telling her husband that Gray was definitely beyond his
reach. If his queerness and irritability were due to hope
deferred it would be merciful to put him out of his misery,
to give him the final blow. She glanced at the figure in
the arm-chair. Leadville was sitting forward, his elbows
on his knees, his head with its strongly growing black hair
sunk between his hands. He looked unapproachable
and the saying about ‘sleeping dogs’ occurred to her.

If she were to make an effort, were to tell him, she would
certainly suffer for it. He would treat her to some sort of
scene and she was tired. She could not remember when
she had felt so tired. Her back ached and her head ached,
she had even a whimsical feeling that her legs ached.

She would not tell him now. The news trembling on
the tip of her tongue should wait till, strengthened by her
night’s rest, she were able to take his anger and
disappointment for granted.

She found that she was hungry. What a blessing
there was always to-morrow, with a fence of sleep shutting
off one day and its troubles from the next. What she
needed was a good supper and a long night’s rest. Thank
goodness, Richbell would be down before it was light.
She, Sabina, could lie abed until the pains had gone out
of her bones.

In the quiet room the only sounds were the slight
movements of the figure at the table, the tinkle of a fork
against china, the crackle of dry wood in the grate. Once
a tiny explosion, a breaking of heated glass, was audible;
but, at the same moment, Leadville rose with a loud
scrape of his chair.

“You’m eatin’ like a ‘adger,” he said, in a tone of
suppressed irritability and, taking down his gun, began to
clean it. The energy of his movements was almost
violent. By this oiling and rubbing he was easing the
strain on his nerves. Mould and rust grow in that damp
climate like the Giant-killer’s bean and Leadville rubbed
and polished till the barrel was gleaming darkly in the
dull light of the wall lamp, till it caught a red glint from
the flaming driftwood.

“What be yer gwine to do with your gun?” asked
Sabina taking quiet note of this outburst of energy.
“Any wild fowl down?”

At Christmas stranger birds, sooty-plumaged, web-footed,
delicate-fleshed, came in large numbers to the
north coast and all men, hind and farmer alike, went out
to ‘get a duck for dinner.’

The relief of hearty movement seemed to have oiled
Leadville’s tongue for, staring down at the last specks of
rust, he said dreamily, “I used to think as one day I
should shet myself with’n.”

“Whatever was ‘ee gwine do that for?” She had the
practical person’s contempt for extravagant talk,
moreover she had listened to this threat before, had even
expressed her opinion that there ‘was cleaner ways o’
dying.’ She began to stack plates and dishes on a tray.

“If you can’t ‘av what you wanted,” said he, still
speaking as if only half conscious of what he said, “what’s
the good of livin’?”

“If you can’t ‘av what you want,” retorted Sabina,
“you should make the best of a bad bargain.”

“No,” he said simply, “I bain’t made that way.”

She shook her head over his childishness. “You’m a
very covechous man,” she said. “If you wanted a farm
so bad as that, why didn’t you rent’n?”

The light of the fire was reflected in his dark eyes, a
spark in the blackness. He had put the gun back over the
door and was sitting forward, his gaze on the burning
wood. “I didn’t want nothing but my own,” he said
with unalterable conviction. “I’d a right to Wastralls
and ’twas just your oogliness denyin’ me of it.”

Sabina smiled. How foolish he was, how unreasonable!
Just a big child.

“Did you marry me,” she inquired, thinking to clinch
the matter and her voice was the voice of one who makes
allowance for a boyish fancy—”did you marry me or the
land?”

For a moment he did not answer, then the truth which
he had lived for twenty years, forced its way out. “I
married ‘ee for the land,” he said quietly.

But Sabina had her memories. Let him say what he
would she could not doubt his young sincerity.

“And now,” he added, “now I wish I ‘adn’t.”

Ah, that was it—’now.’ She had been loved. She
could recall the days of courtship, the first years of their
union, sweet words, little tender deeds, the potpourri of
rose-leaves that a woman hoards. He had courted her
for more than the land and, though he denied it, he could
not shake her faith. The past was hers and, because it
was dead, it would be always hers.

“You wish that I was gone?” she said. He had
loved her once, now he fancied that he loved Gray. It
was only a fancy and would pass. The past was hers and
the future would be, but the present? Sabina had always
lived in the present and it was the present which had
betrayed her.

“I wish we was never married, I wish you,” he
hesitated for a word, “I wish you would let me go.”

She had been clearing the table. Her hands worked in
the familiar way. She collected cruet, knives, forks and
put them in the appointed places, but without knowing
that she had lifted a finger. “You wish I would let you
go?” she said incredulously. “You don’t mean what
you say, Leadville. I’m sure you don’t. You’m vexed
now, you’ve ‘ad things to try you to-day and you don’t
know what you’m sayin’ of; you’ll be better in the
mornin’.” She had not been able to let his words pass
without a protest, the protest of a still hopeful heart.
Surely he would deny them.

“I wish,” he affirmed heavily, “you would let me go.”

The difficult tears rose to her eyes and her chin trembled.
“My dear,” she said and her stable law-abiding spirit was
behind the words, “you knaw we’m married. It’s a
funny thing after all these years you want to be let go.”

But he persisted. “If I was to clear out of this…”

“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 tête-à-tête, 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.”

Mrs. Tom spoke sharply. “Why? ‘Av Gray been
talkin’ to yer?”

“No, Gray’s close as anything, but what is it?”

“Oh, my dear, ’tis nothing but ‘er fancy. There, go
along, I bain’t going to tell ‘ee.”

“I don’t need for Gray to tell me Wastralls is a whisht
old house for young maidens.”

“My dear,” said Mrs. Tom reasonably, “you’ll be able
to run ‘ome any time to see us and yer auntie is goin’ to
give yer twenty pound; good money, ‘edn’t it?”

“Iss, well, I know that’s all right,” returned Richbell
soberly. Sabina’s open-handedness had put many a
pleasure in her way, nevertheless instinct warned her
against the place and she was Mrs. Tom’s own child.

“Well, why don’t you like goin’ there?”

“I don’t feel I like,” she hesitated, lowering her voice,
“I don’t feel I like Uncle Leadville.”

“There’s no ‘arm in ‘im,” encouraged the mother,
“although ‘e do look downy. Any’ow ‘e’s nothing to do
with you. You’ll be with yer auntie.”

“Iss.” The girl could not put into words her feeling
that Leadville being fundamentally different from the
easy-going folk among whom she had hitherto lived was vaguely
alarming. “Well, he never look yer straight in the face.”

“My dear, that’s the way of’n. ‘E ‘edn’t goin’ to
take no notice of you.”

“Mammy!” She put her young arms round her
mother’s neck, so proving herself the taller by a couple of
inches, “I wish you would go down with me to-morrow
morning—I don’t feel I like goin’ by myself.”

Who could resist Richbell, when Richbell changed
from gay defiance to entreaty? Not Mrs. Tom! “Well,
I’ll go down with you. I shall be able to see your auntie
the same time. I’ll light up the fire before I go and the
kettle’ll be boiling by the time I get back. Come, my
dear,” she turned and walked up the trim path of sea-gravel
edged with quartz, “let’s be goin’ in, else we shan’t
get up early in the mornin’.”

December dawns are late and though, as Mrs. Tom had
feared, the tired family slept until after cockcrow, morning
had not broken when she and Richbell hurried down
between the tamarisks, silver-grey with frost, and in
at the yard gate of Wastralls. George Biddick, crossing
from the shed to the stables nodded a greeting, but
otherwise the yard was deserted.

Mrs. Tom called after him. “Pretty rough wind last night.”

“Iss,” he said with a gesture towards the roof. “I see
it’s blawed off one of the tiles and broke a pane of glass.”

“You won’t be able to get it mended now till after
Christmas,” said Mrs. Tom sympathetically. She pressed
her face against the window, peering in. “No one up yet?”

“Well, they didn’t go to bed till late last night,”
Richbell reminded her.

“Dessay they’ve overslept theirself!” Mrs. Tom took
the door key from under a stone where Sabina had hidden
it in readiness. During the night, with one of the rapid
changes to which that coast is liable, the wind had dropped.
Frost had stilled the thousand voices of the earth and, in
the house, doors hung without creak or movement and
the chimneys were hushed. As she crossed the threshold
Mrs. Tom shivered.

“‘Tis a whisht old place,” she said, “and cold.”

Her voice came back to her, echoed from the passage.
“Cold!”

“There always seems some one in the passage,” she
said whimsically, “some one who wants to talk and can
only say what we do say.”

Richbell tried the echo. “Mammy!” she said and
“Mammy” was whispered back to her.

Mrs. Tom hung her cloak behind the door and turned
upon the world a business face. “Here’s the matches,”
she said, taking them from the mantelshelf, “and you’ll
find a candle in the linhay there. Now light up the fire
quick and make a cup of tea and I’ll run in and see if yer
auntie’s awake.”

Exaggerating the companionable sound of her steps, she
went down the passage. So dark was it that she guided
herself with a hand to the wall, finding thus the stairs,
the turning that led into the other part of the house and,
eventually, the door of the justice-room. At this she
knocked.

Receiving no answer she hesitated for a moment
and then knocked again. “She’s sleepin’ well this
mornin’,” she told herself. “I believe she was fair
beat yesterday with all that bread-makin’ and
Leadville so teasy; funny, though, ‘at I can’t make
‘er ‘ear.”

She rattled cheerfully at the handle and, under her
preoccupation with Sabina, was the feeling that Hember
chambers were full of light and sound and that presently
she would return to them. Never had she felt so strongly
the brooding oppression of the old house.

“S’bina! S’bina!” she called and pushed open the
door. “Pretty time o’ day this to be in sleepin’,” and her
voice, dauntingly loud, filled the room. For a moment she
stood to listen. Another voice should have answered her,
should have come to her, reassuringly, out of the gloom.

“How be gettin’ on, S’bina?” she faltered. From
down the passage came sounds of human nearness:
Richbell was moving about in the kitchen and the fact
that the girl depended on her for direction stiffened the
other’s courage. Pulling herself together she crossed the
threshold. Once in the room, however, and she was
momentarily at a loss. As day still lingered below the
eastern hills, to pull the dimity curtains apart would not
further matters. Her hand went to the pocket of her
white apron and, in a loud, would-be-cheerful tone, she
went on talking the while she struck a match. “You
always seem to be able to sleep towards the mornin’,
don’t ‘ee? Iss, and we’ve overslept ourself this mornin’;
well, we couldn’t expect any other after yesterday. ‘Twas
a lot to think about if not much to do. I’ve brought
Richbell down this morning. She didn’t care to come by
‘erself so I told ‘er I’d come with ‘er; and, while she was
makin’ your cup of tea, I thought I’d come and ‘av a
little chat and tell yer ‘ow we got on last night.”

She had been in the justice-room many a time, had sat
gossiping with Sabina while she rested, had listened to her
complaints of the ache in those legs which were no longer
there; but, in spite of the familiarity of the place, as she
reached for the candle, her chatter ceased for very fear.
If only the wick would catch, but it was tallow, thick and
slow to ignite. Before the flame was more than a blue
glimmer she was holding it up and peering below it at the
bed, gazing with a premonition of what she would find.
As she said afterwards, “I thought what I should see.”

Nevertheless, though instinct had warned her, she was
unprepared. “Oh, my dear sawl she’s gone!” she cried
and, with confirmation, her fear passed.

“S’bina! S’bina!” she cried, the tears starting.
“Speak to me! It can’t be true!” Laying her hand
upon the brow she felt the unmistakable chill of death.
“‘Owever on earth did it ‘appen?”

The sounds of Mrs. Tom’s grief reached Richbell as she
put a match to the heap of tamarisk twigs with which she
had filled the grate. She sat back on her heels in amazed
suspense. What ailed her mother? To hear her give
way openly to emotion was unknown to her sixteen years.
Trembling she ran out down the passage.

“Whatever is the matter with you, mammy?”

Mrs. Tom was clinging to the green post at the foot
of the stairs. Leaning her face on its square top she was
weeping for her friend. Next to husband and children
Sabina had been dearest. The bond had seemed unbreakable,
a thing to trust in, until for her, too, the evening
should darken into night.

“Oh, my dear, your poor auntie’s gone.”

The girl’s eyes, which had been merely questioning,
filled with terror. To discover that in the midst of life
we are in death, shakes the confidence of youth. With a
little cry she crept into her mother’s arms and her tears,
the easy tears of girlhood, ran over her round checks and
mingled with those of the older woman.

The needs of the occasion were grim and, after the first
burst of grief, Mrs. Tom pulled herself together and, wiping
her eyes on her apron, sent a call up the wide stair, a call,
which echoing through the empty chambers and down the
passages found Byron in his heavy sleep, a call which
brought him back to consciousness.

“Leadville! Leadville!”

Who was crying in that lamentable voice? He sat up,
rubbing the sleep out of inflamed eyes. Who was calling
to him so dolefully out of the darkness of the lower rooms?
Not Sabina?

“What is it? I’m comin’,” he answered in his rough
bass but he did not move. The shadow of grief, rising
from below had fallen on him and he was reluctant. Out
of the torpor of exhaustion he had brought a bemused
mind; and, though disaster threatened, he was not yet
aware of the form which it must take. Sitting on the
edge of the bed and staring at his knees, it dawned on him
that he was still in his workaday clothes. This surprised
him and further stamped the morning as unusual.

“Leadville! Leadville!” cried the voice and he
found its unhappiness irritating. “Are ‘ee dead up there,
too?”

“Dead? No. Can’t ‘ee wait a minute, man must dress.”

He had slept on the outside of the bed and, though the
yielding feathers marked where he had lain, the clothes
were undisturbed. He knew, though without as yet
understanding why, that he must be careful. Everything
must be as usual. Hastily pulling the clothes from the
bed he threw the room into disorder.

He had taken off his boots and his feet in their grey
woollen wear fell noiselessly on the drugget. Upon the
group at the foot of the stairs he came unexpectedly and,
so coming, waited for a moment in fear and trembling.
Mrs. Tom, lifting her voice to send yet another summons
echoing aloft, presently caught sight of him. In the
justice-room a dim light showed. She did not speak but
pointed over her shoulder.

“Well,” he quavered, aware of the dim light, “whatever’s
all this fuss about?”

“I dunno’ ow to tell yer,” returned Mrs. Tom. “‘Tis
awful thing. Poor S’bina’s gone.”

“Gone?” His voice rang out full of incredulity and,
pushing past, he walked quickly into the bedroom.
“What d’yer mean?”

The man’s concern, if not his surprise, was genuine.
Sabina’s death assured, he could think of her as a tried
and loyal comrade, dwell on her many virtues, mourn
her as, whatever her shortcomings, she had deserved.
Memories, kind and gay and casual, crowded into his
mind. Though he might be glad that she was gone, he
would miss her. Mrs. Tom, jealous for her friend and,
with the accumulated knowledge of years to breed
suspicion, weighed his words and considered his manner.
Bitterly would she resent any failure on his part to render
unto Sabina the conventional marks of grief. But
Leadville did more. He showed real feeling, a sorrow that
was unmistakably sincere.

She followed him into the dead woman’s presence and
together they went up to the bed. As the man, stooping
towards Sabina, gathered the meaning of her immobility,
of her sculptured calm, his voice rang out in a cry of
grief and longing, a cry which lightened Mrs. Tom’s
heart of its suspicion.

“S’bina! Oh, my dear, speak to me. Whatever
shall I do, whatever shall I do without yer?” He
turned with an appeal to the other’s womanly knowledge.
“Be yer sure she’s gone? Titch ‘er ‘ands and see whether
they’m cold or not.”

Mrs. Tom laid her hand on fingers already growing
rigid. “Iss, my dear, she’s gone right enough, I’m afraid.”

He covered his face, breaking suddenly into gulping and
ugly grief. The last doubt that had harboured in
Mrs. Tom’s mind blew out to sea. After all, Leadville ‘wasn’t
a bad feller, ‘e ‘ad ‘is feelin’s!’

“Terrible job to be took away like this,” he gasped
after a few minutes, “and she all by ‘erself too.”

“Aw, poor sawl, iss,” agreed Mrs. Tom, “but she’s
lookin’ ‘appy and peaceful. I believe she must ‘ave died
in ‘er sleep and didn’t know nothin’ about it.”

Leadville looked at her anxiously and his heart was in
the question: “You don’t think she suffered any pain,
do you?”

“Why, look at ‘er. You can see she didn’t. If she ‘ad
suffered ‘er face ‘ud ‘av been quite drawn. But there she
is, lookin’ so peaceful as a lamb.” Her tears flowed again.
“We shall all miss her. She was a good sawl.”

“I dunno whatever I shall do without ‘er.”

“My dear life, ’tis nothing but right you should feel it so.”

“Well, nobody knew what a good wife she’s been to me.
I ‘adn’t ‘ad a penny to bless myself when she married me,
but since then I ‘aven’t wanted for nothing. Never an
angry word between us.”

“Poor sawl, too.”

“‘Twas ‘ard on the missis losin’ ‘er laigs but after
that she never complained. She made the best of everything.”

From the world beyond the justice-room, the world of
living people and the everyday, came sounds of movement.
Richbell, left in the passage, had returned to the
kitchen and, once there, had mechanically resumed her
work. Come life, come death, breakfast must be prepared.

“Come out now,” said Mrs. Tom, the odour of ‘fry’
being wafted to her nostrils, “and ‘av a bit of breakfast,
Leadville. I’m sure you’ll be wantin’ it.”

The man shook his head. “I don’t feel I want any.
I’d rather go out on the cliff by myself. Tidn’t like she’s
dead to me and I must get used to it.” He followed
Mrs. Tom out of the room but his eyes were so dim he stumbled
as he went.

“Well, she’s dead right enough. ‘Ow it ‘appened I
dunno. She seemed quite all right yesterday. She might
‘av been a bit tired but what was that? I’m afraid,”
she looked at him thoughtfully, “I’m afraid, as she died
suddint, we shall ‘av to ‘av an inquest.”

Byron was on his way to the porch but at the word
‘inquest’ he stopped and, though Mrs. Tom dismissed
the thought indignantly, her heart had said to her, “‘E
don’t want no inquest.”

“What do we want an inquest for, after doctor been
tendin’ ‘er so long?”

“Did doctor say that she might die off quick like this?”

“‘E was ‘ere yesterday and seen ‘er.” Leadville was
trying to remember. “I can’t call to mind ‘zactly what
‘e said but ‘e didn’t give me a word of encouragement.”

“‘E knaw better than we do,” said Mrs. Tom, musingly.
“Did S’bina seem poorly after I went ‘ome last night?”

Leadville constrained himself to answer as if the
elucidation of the mystery were of as much moment to him as
to her. “I don’t think I took much notice of ‘er but she
wadn’t very special. After you went she got the supper
and, as soon as she’d eat it, went off to bed.”

Mrs. Tom nodded with, however, an irrepressible doubt.
“Wonder what made ‘er go so early?”

“I dunno I’m sure.” He spoke without considering
whether what he asserted was in accordance with the
facts. Mrs. Tom’s questions were irritating him, they
were like the buzz of flies on a hot day. “I didn’t stay
up very late. In fact we was both to bed by ten.”

Mrs. Tom was careful not to look at him. She and
Richbell, standing at their gate in the small hours, had seen
a light in Wastralls. If the Byrons were abed who then
was up? Perhaps Sabina, feeling unwell, had gone in
search of a remedy. That was possible, of course,
indeed quite likely. Not until later did Mrs. Tom remember
that the light had been stationary. If Sabina had been
seeking medicine or a hot-water bottle she would have been
carrying a candle.

“Well, there’s a lot of things to be done,” she said,
non-committally. “Can you tend to ’em?”

He shook his heavy shoulders, as if he would have shaken
off something unwelcome. He would like to have told her
he had not slept much the previous night but that was out
of the question. “Oh well, you must leave me go out
and think it over first,” he said, making for the door, “I’ll
tell yer when I come back.”

Death in a household, particularly sudden death, brings
a rush of work. Mrs. Tom, realizing that the brunt of
this must fall on her, as the wife of Sabina’s nearest
relative, was thankful to see that Richbell had made the tea
and fried some bacon. She drew her chair to the table
and sat down, sat down with the quick lamentable
thought that here Sabina would never sit again. The
thought flashed up into poignancy and passed. She must
not think of it now, for there was work to be done.

“Now, my dear,” she said, when they had eaten and the
little breathing-space, between the knowledge of calamity
and the girding up of loins, was at an end, “Now, my
dear, you must go ‘ome. ‘Tis no place for you ‘ere.”

“Iss, mammy.” The lively self-assertive girl was
become pliant to her mother’s hand.

Mrs. Tom made her dispositions. “‘Tis a pity that
Gray went to Gentle Jane, but Leonora must run over
and bring ‘er back—better be all together now. After
you’ve gived the children their breakfast, Rhoda better
run up to Cottages and ask Mrs. Bate to come down and
set your auntie forth; and tell Aunt Louisa Blewett to
come down and bring ‘er machine with ‘er to do the
mournin’s. Let Loveday go to St. Cadic and tell your
Aunt Bessie to come down to ‘elp us; and now I’ll go
and get the room straight.”

“Is there anything else you’d like for me to do?” Richbell
spoke in tones so subdued they hardly rose above
a whisper.

“You can take my black things out of the box and ask
your father to bring ’em down and if there’s anything
else I want, when ‘e comes back ‘e’ll tell yer.”

“Aren’t you coming home?” Hember without
mother would be unspeakably dreary.

The girl’s tone, resigned yet unhappy, touched
Mrs. Tom’s heart. For a moment practical matters were put
aside. “Now you mustn’t go worryin’ yerself,” she said,
her glance warm and motherly. “Yer auntie’s ‘ad a
‘ard struggle, so it’s a ‘appy release she’s gone. She’s
taken out of a world of trouble.”

“Well, mammy, I can’t help grievin’,” protested the
girl, her tears rising. “It seems so sudden.”

“‘Twas one good thing she died off in her sleep and
didn’t know nothing about it. It’s our loss but her
gain.”

“But mammy, I think ’tis awful to be dead. Makes me
creep.”

“Dead? You mustn’t think she’s dead. I feel she’s
livin’. She’s up there tellin’ them everything about we
down ‘ere. She’s ‘appy and busy. No more tears. She’ve
‘ad ‘er share.”

The girl was only anxious to be comforted. “Well,
if that’s what’s she’s doing, we didn’t ought to grieve,
we ought to be glad she’s gone.” Her little face lost its
pinched expression and she moved more briskly. Nevertheless
when, the breakfast dishes being cleared away,
she was free to go, she went as if glad to leave this house
to which she had come so unwillingly and which had at
once proved itself the ‘whisht’ place of her imagination.

As she went up the road she looked back once or twice
and each time she quickened her steps. The promise of
dawn was brightening the east and in the bay some big
sooty-plumaged birds could be dimly discerned, their
web-feet set firmly on the very edge of the tide. A light
was twinkling in the many panes of Wastralls kitchen,
tiny glimmers that, affecting only the one spot, made the
sombre outlines more darkly impressive. A part of the
haunted night, what had happened there so lately gave it
to the young girl’s imagination an extra touch of gloom.
With a quick shudder she set her face towards the lights of
home.

CHAPTER XVII

Leadville left the house with a hasty but heavy step.
He had slept but little and his fall the previous evening
had jarred and bruised him. Carrying his head even
more forward than was his wont, he went along the shaly
path which led, a little circuitously, up Dark Head. At
another time he would have made the ascent without
realizing he was not on level ground but, that morning,
he stubbed his feet against the grey rock and stumbled
over the cushions of sea-thrift. He was so tired, so stiff,
that he, who had the sure-footedness of the mountain
sheep, slipped on the smoother surfaces and came near
to falling. When, at a turn in the path, a lew corner
presented itself, an angle of rock about a few hardy
plants, he uttered a grunt of satisfaction. Why should
he go farther? Here was a refuge from the questioning
of the women, a spot where he could rest. The cliff
wall rose between him and the north and, when the
southerly sun rose, its first beams would fall on that high
but sheltered rock. He flung himself down and, as he
lay on the tussocks of colourless grass, seemed in his
weather-worn clothes as much a bit of natural waste as
the oreweed drying on the rocks below.

The day was mild, one of those we owe to what we
are told is not the Gulf Stream but something which
has a similar effect. In the growing light the sea shone
dimly, a pale expanse of quiet water. On the man’s
harassed mind the peace of the scene had, as ever, a
soothing effect. His glance roved over the treeless
country, the rare farmsteads with each a group of grey
outbuildings, the Cornish moors and the far range of
rounded hills. What he saw was dear to him as it was
familiar. Those well-known slopes, swelling softly till
they reached Rowtor and Brown Willy, sinking to the
abrupt black rocks that edged the sea! Byron seemed
to himself a part of that on which he looked. Wastralls
had made ham. He was, as he had said in his youth,
a clod of Wastralls earth, dust which at the appointed
time would fertilize the land to a fresh harvest. To be
of it and, at the last, to go back to it, was what he had
asked of life. He had been obsessed by one large and
simple idea and, in his extreme weariness, he returned
to it, looking across the land he loved, lifting his eyes
to the good sun. He was outwearied and he longed for
warmth and comfort. The shelter of his corner promised
forgetfulness. The land lay green about him, the sea
sang its thunderous lullaby and sleep was in the soft
touch of the air, the thin warmth of the December sun.
Pillowing his shaggy head upon his arm, the man drifted
from the manifold irritations, the aches and pains of life,
into that state which doth so mysteriously resemble death.

For at least two hours, Leadville, warmed through by
sunbeams and the sea-scented air, lay deeply asleep.
When he stirred the red was in his cheek and his eyes
were clear. He looked about him and remembered. He
had killed Sabina and now must bear himself so that
none should know or even suspect. It would, he thought,
be easy enough. She had been a good wife to him and,
as she was actually dead, he might show, without tempting
Providence, a natural grief. His walk as he went down
the hill was brisk and purposeful. To the dead their
hour, a sob and a black coat; when they were underground
it would be the turn of the living. From the
future opening before him, Leadville turned his eyes.
Sabina should have her due!

Before Rhoda, full of the importance of her message,
reached Cottages, its inhabitants were agog. A little
bird had carried the news of Mrs. Byron’s death and
those whom it least concerned were discussing it.
Mrs. Bate, who lived in the end cottage of the hamlet, a tiny
two-roomed place, had for many years been Stripper,
or, as some call the woman who prepares the dead for
their last journey, ‘Nurse’ to the community. As
soon as a death occurred, she was sent for and her duty
it was not only to strip the clothes from the corpse and
array it in fine linen, but to receive the many visitors
and conduct them, in turn, to the death-chamber. On
the day of the funeral her position was one of some
importance. She was the undertaker’s right hand.
Indeed, the responsibility for the smooth working of the
arrangements rested on her rather than on him.

When the news reached Mrs. Bate, therefore, that
Mrs. Byron of Wastralls had died during the night, she
knew that she would be wanted. Though the possessor
of a handsome jolly face she was given to timid fears
and, after raking out her fire, she went across to
Mrs. Blewett, the seamstress, better known as ‘Aunt Louisa,’
to have one of these resolved.

“Mrs. Rosevear sure to be there,” she said anxiously,
“and she could set Mrs. Byron forth if her liked; but
she wouldn’t do anybody out of a job, would she?”

‘Aunt Louisa,’ slim and, in spite of the wear and tear
of life still graceful, was fitting the cover to her machine.
“She bin poor ‘erself,” she said encouragingly. The
two old bodies had lived in the same parish for seventy
years, and as next-door neighbours, for thirty. She knew
that Fanny Bate, in spite of her large well-covered frame
and square face, found it difficult to stand alone.

“I wouldn’t miss doing this,” said Mrs. Bate, her old
blue eyes still anxious, “for all the golden sovereigns in
Trevorrick. When Judgment Day come, there won’t be
many from ‘ere but what will look up and thank me for
settin’ ’em forth.”

“If you set ’em forth,” said Aunt Louisa, remembering
the many shrouds her fingers had fashioned, “I’ve made
the things for ‘m.”

“Iss, but I’ve nursed and tended them as well as
set them forth,” she would not admit the other’s claim
to a share in the work of preparing the neighbourhood
for burial. “And I think of their souls, too, poor things.
‘Tis better to look after their souls than their bodies.
‘Tis an awful thing to die not being prepared to meet
God. I sing hymns till they’m happy and not afraid to
die. I ‘ope ’tis all right with poor Mrs. Byron’s soul,”
she paused, a little troubled by Sabina’s eminent
unpreparedness, “but she was always a good-livin’ woman
and God is merciful to the last.”

Aunt Louisa turned her quiet grey eyes on the other
woman and in them was a suggestion from, which
Mrs. Bate shrank in pretended ignorance. “Must ‘av died
pretty and suddent!” said the seamstress.

“Well, I think she has been ailing for some time,
she ‘aven’t been vitty since her accident!” Louisa was
so ‘forth-y,’ but it didn’t pay to say all you thought.
She, herself, daring enough before the event, knew that
‘a still tongue make a wise ‘ead.’

“Mrs. Bate!” cried a voice from the road, where old
Hawken, rather staggery about the feet, was making
shift to carry an armful of fodder to his donkey. “Rhoda’s
comin’ up the lane. I believe she want you.”

“Thank you, Mr. ‘Awken,” said the old woman
modestly, “but there’s more’n me’ll be wanted at
Wastralls.”

“You’re the Stripper, bain’t you? and you’ll be wanted
first. Iss, first and last.”

The child, a sensible as well as pretty little girl of ten,
came quickly from the direction of the sea. She was
shocked to think that kind Auntie S’bina was dead.
She was also impressed with the importance of her errand.
Seeing Mrs. Bate at Aunt Louisa’s door, she ran to her
across the little green. “Mammy says, please will you
come down to Wastralls at once and will Aunt Louisa
come too and bring her machine.”

“I’ll be prettily glad to do anything for Mrs. Byron
and your mammy,” responded the latter, a little anxiously,
“but I can’t carr’ the machine, my dear.”

Old Hawken who had lingered, curious to hear what
passed, seized the opportunity. “If you will wait a
minute,” he volunteered, “I’ll put the ole dunkey in
and drave ‘ee down.”

“Well, ’tis braäve and kind of ‘ee, Mr. ‘Awken.”

“Time like this, everybody must do all they can to
‘elp,” and, as Mrs. Bate saw her neighbour drive off in
the donkey-cart, she regretted that laying out the dead did
not necessitate the transport of large and heavy parcels;
but it was like Louisa, so it was, she got the best of
everything and always had since she was born wrong side of
the blanket and everybody allowed it was the right!

Meanwhile Mrs. Tom, her heart heavier than it had
been for many a year, had set Sabina’s room in order
and removed the evidences of humble use. She took
up the cocoa-jug, looked into it, then carried it away
and put it on the upper shelf in the linhay. With the
certainty of knowledge, she went to the bottom drawer
of the tall-boy for the clothes in which Mrs. Bate was to
‘set her forth’—’no need to stream up anything, S’bina
‘ad ‘er clothes ready, stockings, night-cap and all!’ As
Mrs. Tom hung them over the back of a chair, a belated
tear ran down her cheek and she glanced from their
smooth white folds to the still figure on the bed. A
lifetime of friendship! She caught her breath in a sob
but, because she had so much to do, tried to check her
grief. Yet when, a little later, Tom brought the black
dress for which she had asked, he found her sitting on
the floor, her head against the chair and her tears falling
unheeded on the hem of her friend’s shroud.

“Why, mother, dear!” he cried with a quick rush of
tenderness. “I shouldn’t take on like that. You know
we’ve all got to die sometime.”

She put out her arms to him like a forlorn and sorrowful
child. “I can’t ‘elp feeling of it. You know we was
schoolgirls together.”

“Well, well, my dear, she’s gone. I’m pretty and
sorry but still she’s better off. We ‘av got each other
still and we need to be thankful for’t.”

Mrs. Tom clung to him. “I knaw. I’ve got a lot
to be thankful for. I’ve got you and the childern, but
to-day I can’t ‘elp thinkin’ about ‘er. What ‘appy times
we’ve ‘ad together.”

“I knaw, my dear.” He held her close, closer than
was his wont in prosperous times and, with her head on
that middle-aged shoulder, Mrs. Tom wept till the rush
of grief was spent.

When the women whom she had summoned made their
appearance, however, though red-eyed, she had herself
in hand. She and Mrs. Con Rosevear being the nearest
relatives, the family, only too well aware of the latter’s
slatternly ways, would look to Mrs. Tom for direction.
And she was ready for them. Experience had instructed
her in the routine to be followed and, before long,
Mrs. Bate with a bowl of hot water, with flannel, soap and
scissors, had shut herself into the justice-room: Mrs. Con
with the bustling help of a sister-in-law, Mrs. William
Brenton of Cumean, was turning out the big parlour;
and Aunt Louisa, like an embodied shadow, was slipping
from room to room in search of mourning apparel. Mrs. Byron
had stores of black material, in the piece and made
up, and to the old woman was deputed the congenial
work of looking for it. Her sewing machine had been
given pride of place on the side-table in the kitchen and,
already, the other was growing dark with the first results
of her search, with crape, black ribbon, cottons,
buttons, etc., a heterogeneous assortment. When
Leadville returned from Dark Head, the work of preparation
was so far forward, that the women, calling a halt, had
gathered for a mid-morning cup of tea.

When life has passed the adventurous stage—if it ever
does—it turns to the doings of others for its spice; and,
in that homely room, about which were scattered so
many black garments that the place looked as if draped
for some funereal occasion, the five women discussed the
dead.

“‘Tis very good of ‘ee, Aunt Louisa, to come at once
to ‘elp wi’ the blacks, when I knaw you be always slagged
wi’ work,” said Mrs. Tom, with the usual sweet civility
of the Cornishwoman.

“Well, my dear,” returned Mrs. Blewett, “at a time
like this anybody ‘ud do anything. I’d go on me ‘ands
and knees for Mrs. Byron. I’ve knawed ‘er ever since
she was a child and ‘ave always done ‘er sewin’ for ‘er.
Why, some time back, I made the clothes to set ‘er forth
with! But I thought she was worth a hundred dead
ones. Never thought, as I should live to make up ‘er
mournin’s.”

“She’s lookin’ so natural now,” said Mrs. Bate, who
had brought from the death-chamber the night-cap which
had been put in readiness. The lacy frills of it were
limp with the sea-damp and Mrs. Tom had offered to
iron and goffer it. She was glad to do for her friend
this last of many kindnesses.

“Aw, poor soul, she’s at rest now. Gone out of a
world of trouble. She’s best off where she’s to,” said
Aunt Louisa, in tones of conventional grief.

“I wonder,” began Mrs. William Brenton, who being
in Trevorrick on a week-end visit to her sister-in-law,
had accompanied her and was delighted to find herself
in the midst of such interesting occurrences. Living at
Polscore, and that only since her marriage, for she was
a woman from up-country, she was not deeply versed
in local gossip. She endeavoured to remedy this by
asking questions but, as she was not noted for discretion,
her gleanings were apt to be scanty. “I wonder if
she’ve left any will?”

Neither Mrs. Tom nor Mrs. Constantine looked up.
The latter felt that after Leadville’s death the farm
should come to one of her tall sons, to Freathy, Ern or
Tremain; while Mrs. Tom was sure that her girls, being
Mrs. Byron’s favourites, had the prior claim.

“You ought to know if anybody do,” said Aunt
Louisa, snipping the thread of a finished hem and turning
her grey eyes on Mrs. Tom. The neat precise old woman
gave a general impression, in colourless face, smooth
scanty braids and capable hands, of greyness. She was
like water overhung by trees, a limpid stillness in which
shadows moved.

“Well,” said Mrs. Tom carefully, “I don’t know.
S’bina was very close wi’ money matters. She never
let on to any one what she intend doin’.”

Aunt Louisa’s clear eyes moved thoughtfully from face
to face. With the exception of Mrs. Tom she was far
and away the cleverest woman in Trevorrick and she
applied her wits—as do all of us, from scholar to
ale-house gossip—to gathering stores of useless information.
“Never ‘eard tell of any will,” she said, beginning to
tack the seams of a skirt for little Rhoda, “and I never
knawed of any lawyer comin’ ‘ere to do anything about
a will.”

“What you don’t knaw, my dear,” said. Mrs. Bate,
tactless but admiring, “is good for sore eyes;” and in
this statement she voiced so conclusively the opinions of
all present that the hopes of both Mrs. Con and Mrs. Tom
sank. If there were no will Leadville would inherit
and there was no reason he should leave it to a Rosevear.
In all probability he would marry again and rear a family.
Mrs. Tom thought fleetingly of his infatuation for Gray
and what might have been.

“Goodness!” said Mrs. Brenton cheerfully. “There’ll
be pretty ole capers if everything’s left to Mr. Byron.
‘E’ll be turnin’ the place upside down. ‘E’ll be tellin’
us all ‘ow to farm. Continuous croppin’ ‘e call it, but
my maister say ‘better leave things as they be and not
make work when there’s no need for it.’ ‘E don’t believe
in these new-fangled ways.”

“I think,” said Mrs. Con uneasily, “‘e’ll teel all those
new things ‘e’s craikin’ about and I wonder what Old
Squire would say if ‘is ‘ead was above the earth.”

“Some do say ‘is ‘ead’s up now.” Mrs. Tom’s smile
was faint, a twitch of the lips, a recognition of
Mrs. Con’s tremulous outlook. “I think if Leadville was to
start ‘is sugar-beet and terbacker teelin’ ‘e ‘ud ‘av a
‘ot time wi’ Old Squire!”

“Mrs. Byron,” began Aunt Louisa and stopped to
re-thread her needle. She spoke as if her mouth were
full of pins. Use had made her able to speak through
a bristling chevaux de frise while age made her forget
whether the pins were there or not. “Mrs. Byron is
the livin’ image of Old Squire as I remember’n.” She
glanced at his elbow-chair, wide and built with a cunning
hand. Pushed against the wall, its red cushions were
hidden under billows of black material, but this drapery
only made its outlines the more regal. None of those
who looked but thought of the man for whom it had
been made as still dimly occupying it. More than one
had a glimpse of silver hair above a masterful face and
caught the faint sound of an imperious voice. “I seed’n
when ‘e was in ‘is coffin,” continued Louisa, recalling
further a mountainous bulk. “I warn’t higher than the
table when ‘e died but I can remember mother takin’ me in.”

“‘E was a great big man, wasn’t ‘e?” asked Mrs. Brenton.

“A lickin’ great feller!” Aunt Louisa basted as she
talked and the other women, most of them younger by
a generation, listened with interest. With the exception
of Mrs. Brenton they knew why the old woman’s mother
had been anxious to imprint the features of Freathy
Rosevear on her child’s plastic memory. “When he
was dead,” continued Aunt Louisa, who in her neatness,
her precision, was as unlike her sire as any child might
be, “they couldn’t get his coffin overstairs. They had
to take it up in pieces and put’n together in’s bedroom.
And then they couldn’t get’n out. They ‘ad to take
out the big winder in the end of the ‘ouse and slide’n
down over the boords. I can remember as if ’twere
yesterday. ‘E was so ‘eavy they had the bier out from Stowe
to carr’n; for ’twas more’n the bearers could manage.”