Wastralls: A Novel by C. A. Dawson Scott (100 books to read .TXT) ๐
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- Author: C. A. Dawson Scott
Read book online ยซWastralls: A Novel by C. A. Dawson Scott (100 books to read .TXT) ๐ยป. Author - C. A. Dawson Scott
"'Tis a long time," said Mrs. Tom sadly, "since you 'ad anything ter eat in this 'ouse."
He sighed. "It's been a very sad 'ouse since 'er accident."
"I'm sure 'twould be 'er wish for yer to 'av something."
"I knaw. She was very kind." Many a piece of well-paid work had come to him through Sabina but he was thinking of the woman herself. He was not an introspective man. He could not have explained even to himself, why the death of a person whom he rarely saw, should make so great a difference. "She was very kind," he repeated heavily, "but I don't want anything."
His three tall sons were at the table helping themselves; his wife, almost tidy for once in her new blackโtrust Betsy to have nothing put away for an occasion like the presentโwas talking to her brother, Mr. John Brenton of St. Eval. They looked pleased with themselves and fate; but the big miller, for all his comfortable girth and good broadcloth, was as one who had lost his grip.
Mrs. Tom, obliged by her hospitable duties to leave him for a little, carved and served and talked with the thought of him foremost in her mind. She was listening for a certain expected sound and, though her hearing was a little dulled, she did not miss it. The bearers, waiting in the kitchen, had been fed on simpler fare than that provided for the mourners. They were ready now and the irregular tramp of feet along the passage told her that they were coming to take up their burden. She went back to Con, for she could no longer trust herself to speak. The back of her throat ached with the tears she was trying to restrain. Sabina had been born in Wastralls, she had lived there all her days and now she was to be carried out. Con, too, felt the full poignancy of the moment. His eye met Mrs. Tom's a little wildly and he pulled at his neckcloth to loosen it. Sabina's place would know her no more. She was going and never would she come back to them. His heart was a wordless protest. He rose unsteadily and the two, the man who loved her, the woman who had been her friend, went into the hall.
At a Cornish funeral it is customary for the relatives to follow the coffinโwhich is carried on poles by eight bearersโin a certain order. Precedence is regulated by the degree of kinship and, to a certain extent, by age. With the exception of old folks who, unable to walk so far, follow in their gigs and carts, the mourners traverse the distance from house to graveyard on foot. The arrangement of these couples, with due regard to their individual claims, is a work requiring knowledge of the family ramifications and in this Tom Rosevear shone.
When his wife, followed by Con, came out she found the work of assigning their positions to the mourners was nearly finished. Couples lined one side of the hall and yet others were waiting in the Little Parlour. An air of sombre readiness pervaded the gathering. Henwood, carrying the black crickets on which the coffin was to stand, hurried out of the door. He planted them on a level space, the space which had been used for that purpose since death first recognized that Wastralls had become a human habitation. At a sign from her husband, Mrs. Tom went to the head of the procession. As Sabina's nearest relative it was her place to walk with Byron.
The door of the justice-room opened and the hinds, in dark suits and black ties, came out. The poles, which they held against their breasts, were slanted to allow for the narrowness of the opening and their faces wore a look of purpose. They were anxious to get the varnished and glittering coffin out of the room, round corners and through the hall, without hitch or stumble and the task seemed to them bristling with difficulties. They were thinking, not of what this long brightly decorated box contained but of the trust reposed in them.
Mrs. Tom pulled down her veil and, for a moment, leaned her weight on Constantine. To see Sabina carried feet foremost over the threshold of her home was too much for her powers of self-control and, behind the veil, her tears were flowing. Con, understanding but inarticulate, pressed her arm. They two were the real mourners; of all that concourse they alone would miss Sabina out of their daily lives. As the coffin was earned past, a shiver ran through the man's large body. With Sabina gone he, too, was in sight of the end. A week ago the thought would have troubled him but to it he was now indifferent. So does life, taking one by one the things we value, make us ready for its own putting off.
The bearersโand the sexton, once bullockman at Wastralls, was of their numberโset the coffin down on the black crickets. Behind them the queue of mourners was receiving belated additions. Leadville had taken his place beside Mrs. Tom, her husband was behind him with Betsy, Constantine with Gray.
The day was calm with a tang of cold, a day when the gulls gathered in the new-ploughed fields and, the sea being still, the murmur of other waters could be heard. As the coffin was carried down the avenue under the low wind-bent branches, the sexton started a hymn. Many present being choir members, it was taken up at once and a volume of tuneful sound went before the procession up the lane.
Mrs. Tom had walked in many a similar procession. Only that summer she had followed a brother to the grave and now, in obedience to Henwood's signal, she moved forward after the bearers. She was at the moment too much occupied with herself to realize that the long line was actually on its way. Once in the open air, however, and the chill freshness of the morning had its usual effect and, by the time the head of the black serpent was pushing past St. Cadic, she was sufficiently recovered to spare glance and thoughtโneither at all kindlyโfor the man keeping step with her.
For Byron the morning had been chequered. Some of the mourners, in particular those from a distance, had met him with an assumption of friendliness. Though a stranger he was now the owner of Wastralls and, in that capacity, they would meet him in the market-place and on public business. One or two of the wives expressed the hope that he would look in when passing. He was not only a substantial farmer but a widower and, on the whole, a man who filled the eye. Even Mrs. Tom, embittered and grudging, could not deny that at the head of the procession he looked well. By no means the tallest man present, his heavy dignified carriage made him appear bigger than he actually was. He walked, too, with a certain arrogance. The men who followed him were mentally lesser men and he was conscious of it. He was leading the way, was for the first time in his proper place. The errand on which he was bound did not occupy his attention. The coffin, when it passed him in the hall, had roused in him a queer inexplicable emotion, a fleeting sense of association, but not because of what it contained. Of Sabina he scarcely thought. She belonged to the past, that past on which he had definitely and thankfully turned his back. His face was towards the future, his mind was crowded with the brick and scaffolding of the edifice he hoped to rear; and he found in his breast such a consciousness of power that he was fain to give it expression by joining in the hymn.
"I love thee well, but Jesus loves thee best," he rumbled in his deep voice and Mrs. Tom, hearing him, stared. To her it was as if he were uttering blasphemies.
"The shirkin' old villain," she thought indignantly, "walkin' there as 'e belong to walk. I dunno 'ow 'e dare. Actually singin' in the hymn too, the two-faced dragon. 'Tis enough to bring a judgment on 'im, so it is."
Winding out of the valley between hedges which, though it was December, were still green, the procession came at last to Hilltop. Here the road made a wide bend. The grey tower of the church was in sight and the sexton, in order to toll the bell, took a short cut across the fields. Mrs. Byron, though a chapel-goer would be buried by the parson of the parish, laid beside Old Squire in the shadow of the church. To the people this ritual, which for them had lost its potency, was still part of the established order. The rector was appointed by powers outside their knowledge and had his place. They neither welcomed nor objected to him. He served his purpose.
Seen from above, the churchyard must have looked like a shallow vessel filling with ink. So numerous were the mourners that, after crowding the little old edifice to overflowing, they poured down the paths and over the grassy mounds. About the Rosevear graves the couples and groups had solidified into a mass. Their faces, like pink disks in a dark setting, were shadowed by their veils and their black headgear. They had turned towards the pit which had been digged; and the minds of all were occupied with thoughts, not of the resurrection but of the dampness and coldness of the body's last resting-place. Down in the earth, pressed down by a weight of mould and stones, shut away for ever from the fires and talk! During the night rain had fallen and the water had not yet soaked away through the stiff clay of the grave. It lay, covering the bottom, an inexpressibly dreary adjunct to the grey sides and crumbling verge. The mourners' hearts vibrated with pity for the woman who had looked her last on friendly faces, who was on her way to lie, rain-water below, saturated clods above, in the chill unfriendly bosom of the earth. When the coffin was brought out and 'Peace, Perfect Peace' was raised, they joined in with a sense of relief. It could not be that the Mrs. Byron, whom they all knew, was to lie there in the wet and the dark. With an optimism as indestructible, as logical, as hers had been, they promised themselves and her, not death but life.
As the signal was given to lower the coffin into the grave, out of the clouded sky fell a quavering dazzle of sunlight, omen to these heavy anxious hearts of better times in store. It fell on the brass handles, the name-plate, and the two curving rows of cut clasps, scintillating from the bright surfaces in a myriad tiny glints. Byron, standing between Tom and Constantine Rosevear at the head of the grave, noticed it, as did the others; and to him it was not only sunshine falling unexpectedly on a coffin but something personal to himself.
He had gone mechanically through the service, had glanced with disfavour at the wreaths and harps and other floral sacrifices, had even in his heart made ribald comment on 'Peace, Perfect Peace, with loved ones far away.' The mood of exultation in which he had left Wastralls had changed to one of slowly mounting irritation. This burying was after all a tedious business. The creak and strain of the ropes which indicated that the coffin was being let down drew from him a sigh of relief. In another minute he would be able to turn his back on this place of sepulture.
The flash of sunlight, however, had caught his eye and had done more than that. Its transient gleam had linked the fleeting sense of familiarity he had felt, when the coffin had been carried past him out of Wastralls, with other moments strung bead-like on the past. This was the shape, those the infinitesimal glimmers, which he had seen in visions. Again and again
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