Wastralls: A Novel by C. A. Dawson Scott (100 books to read .TXT) 📕

Mrs. Tom who had been standing behind the two men took a step forward. "I know S'bina trusted you in everything——"

He caught at the words, turning eagerly, triumphantly on the executors. "There—I knaw she did."

"In everything else," pursued Mrs. Tom steadily, "besides Wastralls."

"Besides Wastralls?" he stammered.

"But that," and there was a note in her voice, a note of mingled grief and satisfaction which only Tom understood, "that, she said, you would never 'av."

Byron threw up his-hands in a wild gesture. "My good God! She must 'av been maäze or she wouldn't 'av done it. Surely you bain't goin' to let 'er fulish fancies take it away from me?"

Working adjacent farms, Sabina's cousins could not be blind to the fact that she and her husband had been at odds as to the management of Wastralls. They were, too, as averse to the changes he would have introduced as she could be. She had appointed them her executors. They would see her wishes were carried out. The disappointment to Byron, the crumbling of his hope, of something more intimate than hope, did not weigh with men intent on a plain duty.

Realizing that his appeal had as much effect on them as wind beating on a boulder, the other shifted his ground. As reasonable beings they must see he could be of use to them. "I'm here and I knaw every hitch and stitch of the place. Who'll take it on and work it for Gray? For certain she can't. She don't know a mangold from a turmit. She can't manage it by 'erself and 'er father can't do it. 'E got 'is own work to do."

The shadows had been encroaching and already it was growing difficult to distinguish one pale disk among the many faces from another. As Byron paused there was a movement among the young people and Jim Rosevear, bearing himself modestly, stepped up to the table.

"I reckon," he said, and the claim was put forward quietly and in a matter-of-fact voice, "I reckon I got the right now to work the land!"

Turning from the executors, Byron stared, speechlessly and in bewilderment, at the young man. To him, Jim was a hind whom he had lately dismissed and that he could be in any way concerned with Wastralls was impossible. Byron felt much as if a strange dog had found its way in at the door. "You?" he said. "What right 'av you to be 'ere? Didn't I tell yer, other day, to never put foot inside this 'ouse again?"

"Now then, now then!" interposed Constantine, big and authoritative as a London policeman. Those present felt he had the right to impose his will on them, that the ownership of Wastralls had passed from the one man to the other, that never more would Byron be in the position to drive out even a dog. "We'll 'av none of this, no quarrellin' 'ere."

Byron felt it, too, and his spirit revolted in a last frenzy of protest. He cursed Jim with a bitter concentrated curse but there was acceptance of his lot, of the calamity which had overtaken him, in the final, sullen, "Let'n clear out of this."

To Jim, as to the others, Byron was merely an angry, disappointed man. "The shoe's on the other foot," he cried, his spirits rising, the ready but provocative smile on his lips. "Come to that, 'tis for you to go, not me."

Byron swept out an annihilating arm. This gadfly, he would brush him off, silence him. "Cuss yer, get out of me sight."

But Jim, wheeling lightly, appealed to the executors. "I've a right to be 'ere?"

To Byron's confused surprise, Tom nodded briefly and Constantine, with a grunt of assent, admitted the claim. "What right 'av yer got then?" He realized that Jim must be settled with, before they could get back to the matter in hand—the farming of Wastralls. Byron still nursed a flicker of hope that he might be left as manager or bailiff, that this fate which was hovering would not be allowed to swoop.

Before Jim's light tongue could reel off the ready answer, Constantine interposed. "Let Gray speak," said he, probing among the shadows for his niece. "'Tis 'er land."

"Iss, come now, Gray," said her father encouragingly. "'Tis for you to say."

Never had Gray disputed her father's seldom-imposed will and now, though so reluctant that it seemed to her, her feet were leaden, she came to the table. Her heart was beating fast. The publicity, even this modified publicity of the family, was, to one of her retiring nature, very unwelcome; nevertheless she carried herself with a modest dignity. She had even a little air of confidence, as if in her bosom was a store of courage on which she could draw at will; and this confidence in one so timid, so unassuming, appeared as a grace. That day as, with colour in her cheeks and a steady light in her midnight eyes, Gray faced her redoubtable relative, she was at her finest and most desirable.

"Uncle Leadville," she began simply and the man shrank with a gesture of repudiation from the wounding title; but all her life he had been 'Uncle' to her and he would be so to the end. "Uncle Leadville, I'm sorry if what Aunt S'bina done is against your wish, but the land was hers and she could do what she liked with it. You know it has always belonged to her family and been worked, in the way that we are used to down here. I'm very sorry to go against you in anything but—" she paused and her serious steady gaze shifted from the dark face, watching her as a condemned man watches the sinking sun the night before he is shot, to Jim's blithe countenance; and, as it shifted, her eyes softened, filling with an expression no one in the room, not even Byron himself, could mistake, "but I think it's only right my husband should work the farm for me."

"My husband," Gray had said and when her voice ceased the words were still echoing through the room. They had fallen on Byron's ears, on his passionate craving heart as fall words of doom against which there is no appeal.

"Your 'usband?" he ejaculated but not because he had any doubt. We walk in twilight until light falls through a window and in that moment of revelation it did not need Gray's further words to enlighten him.

"We was married last Friday into Stowe."

To the Hember and St. Cadic Rosevears this was no news; but Mrs. Byron's death on the night of the wedding, the subsequent rush of work, the funeral, had prevented it from being bruited abroad. The more distant relatives looked at each other and at the young couple, surprised yet, on the whole, pleased. So Gray, sly puss, had picked her man and married him on the quiet. And who was he? Rosevear of Treketh's son. Not much money there but Mrs. Andrew of Gentle Jane was his auntie and very fond of him. Likely looking chap too! The maid had had her wits about her when she chose him; though, as things had turned out, she was more of a catch than he. And Sabina had probably known! She would be glad the maid was wedding a Rosevear, even though it was one of a different family. Well! well! They sent a sigh after vanished youth and prepared themselves to utter the kind commonplaces of congratulation. The connexion would be a satisfactory one. The young people would live in the old home and the Rosevear tradition be maintained. The hearts of the elders, accepting them as members of the family, blessed them to increase, a long line of stout descendants. The erratic genius, the Lucifer of a later day, was to be driven out that the old order might be continued, world without end. Amen.

Instinctively, though the words of congratulation were on their lips the people waited for Byron to take the initiative. They did not know what Gray's simple statement meant to him, had no suspicion that a dream-castle had been tumbled about his ears, the dream in which he had shrined hope and desire. Destroy these figments and you destroy the purpose of a life and, as a consequence, the will to live. Byron's dream had not been only of Gray, though she had been at the heart of it—the reddest hottest coal of the fire. He had dreamed too of his strength, that strength through which all else should be added unto him; and he was being gradually forced to see it as an illusion. Some one had been strong, but not he. Some one had given and withheld, had ordained what he should have, what he should go without, but it was not he. He thrust at the young people a question which seemed to them irrelevant.

"Did 'er knaw? Did S'bina knaw?"

That was the crucial point, the point by which his self-respect must stand or fall. Had Sabina done this thing or was it merely an unforeseen event?

"'Twas Aunt Sabina's wish for us to be married then, she made the arrangements." Gray was glad to make this known. She would not have people think that she had married without the countenance of her family and, in particular, of the aunt who had been so good to her. So much had happened since the morning of her wedding-day, she was so different a person from the shy and frightened girl who had driven out of Wastralls yard, that she had almost forgotten the menace of Byron's love. Uncle Leadville had been the ogre of her story but her marriage had changed the ogre back into a man and she could speak frankly to him of Aunt Sabina's part in what had been done. She was far from guessing that her simple words would take from him a last delusion; yet, as she spoke, she saw his face change and she wondered.

The people, too, were uneasily conscious that he had not taken the announcement of his niece's marriage as they would have expected. What was wrong? No whisper had ever linked her name with his, moreover, Sabina was but three days dead. They wondered over his grey strained face, his eyes which saw what was withheld from them and, into their wonder, crept a tinge of apprehension.

While they hesitated Byron flung into the silence—as a bomb is flung into a crowd—his bitter thought.

"I took 'er life and she've served me out for it."

A thrill ran through the listeners. With their Celtic perception they had been aware of half-seen forces and thoughts, of shadows moving remotely, of a background from which unforeseen events might issue. Not for a moment did they believe Byron's wild statement, they only realized he was, in some way unknown to them and beyond their guessing, a guilty man; and upon them began to press the feeling that a spirit was abroad, a spirit which, like clouds swept up from the rim of the sea, might be winged with unknown and ruinous possibility.

"She knawed," he said; and in his voice was awe and an emotion more poignant, more personal. Piercing the many veils he had found the ultimate, that ultimate which mercy hides. He understood at last that he had been living in a world of illusions and that Sabina, kindly, tolerant, had left him there. She had not taken them seriously, had not perhaps realized they were heady stuff which might give off the vapour of death. From start to cruel finish she had preserved her careless superiority, and now when he thought her bested had turned in her grave and laughed. By a word, scribbled in haste at an odd moment, she had made a mock of his pretensions, put him in his place. Secret humiliation is the black and bitter bread of which all shall eat but to be set at naught before his fellows breaks a man. "Like a twig in 'er 'ands I was," and he snapped his big fingers, like one snapping a stick in two. From the beginning Sabina had been the better man and his revolt had been as hopeless as that of a child.

"A life for a life," he muttered, using a phrase with which he was familiar, twisting a little its plain meaning. Sabina was taking from him, not his life but the fullness thereof, she was