Part 13

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."