Part 22

"The land, house and hereditaments of Wastralls," began the lawyer in his dry voice, each word clipped of sound and the whole giving the effect of a well-kept but withered hedge.

In his big chair at the head of the table Leadville stirred slightly, clenching his hands. At last!

"I will devise and bequeath the land house and hereditaments of Wastralls to my cousin, Gray Rosevear."

The up-turned attentive faces about the table, expressed for a moment only intense surprise. Leadville, leaning forward, made a husky hesitating sound--"What?"

In his precise voice, the lawyer re-read the bequest and about his words, as the information sank into people's minds, rose a little whisper of astonished comment.

"Gray?"

"Did 'ee ever 'ear the like?"

"Some's born lucky!"

"Well, Gray now."

A chair went over with a sudden crash and Leadville was on his feet. Before the slower-witted men had realized his purpose he had crossed the room, snatched the will out of Criddle's hand and, scattering the women, was at the fire. He meant to destroy it, to press it down among the logs, to hold it until it was burned to ashes. Flinging it on the wood, he glanced round for the poker but the Rosevears had begun to recover from the stupefaction into which his reckless action had thrown them. Tom had the lean strength of whipcord and Con that of a bull. As they closed with Byron, bearing him away from the fire, Mrs. Tom snatched up the paper and, pressing out the flame, ran back with it out of harm's way.

"I'm afeared 'tis a good bit burned," she said as she returned it to the lawyer but that individual looked at her calmly over the tops of his glasses.

"This is only a copy, Mrs. Rosevear. The will is in my safe at home."

His voice carried, and in spite of the general confusion, men smiled to themselves. Cunning chaps, these lawyers, up to snuff. Tom Rosevear, wiping a heated face, picked up Old Squire's chair and put it back at the head of the table. For the moment, with devils tearing at his heart, Byron stood in their midst, then, sullenly, he resumed his seat. Two heads could be knocked together but there were a dozen men in the room. Except for the relief to his feelings what would a fight advantage him? Moreover, as he had failed to burn the will, as in fact the will was not there to be burnt, he must take other measures. "She've left the land to me," he asserted violently.

At the time he drew up the will, Mr. Criddle had pointed out to his client that her husband might feel aggrieved at being passed over and she had given him her reasons for leaving Wastralls to a Rosevear. He had them in readiness.

"She made what she considered a proper provision for you, Mr. Byron, when she left you the money."

"Provision? Don't want none o' that. 'Tis the land I want."

"I understood from my client that you had never done any farming."

"Never 'ad the chance."

Mr. Criddle's sandy brows went up in expostulation. "Mrs. Byron told me you had been a sailor and that, after her marriage with you, she had suggested your renting land but that you had refused. I understood her to say she had even been willing to sink capital in buying some but you impressed her as not wishing to take the responsibility."

"She told you so?" began Byron and choked over the words. His tongue was not glib, he could not explain that he had been misrepresented and this inability, giving him a feeling of helplessness before this man of words, abated the violence of his mood. "A damned lie," he muttered, "a damned lie!"

From the group of women about the hearth, a voice cut into the discussion. "She thought," said Mrs. Tom, moved by her secret knowledge to a bitter word, "as she'd maybe live as long as 'er 'usband."

Mr. Criddle accepted this contribution with a little bend of the head. "She did. She said as much. She thought if she should predecease Mr. Byron he would, by that time, be too old to start farming on his own account."

Byron brushed this aside as irrelevant. He was becoming gradually conscious of meshes about his feet--meshes from which, however, he still thought he could escape. "But," he said and he believed it, "she can't leave the land to any one else, what's 'ers is mine."

"The law gives women the right to dispose of their property," returned the lawyer patiently. His mind was divided between Byron and the clock. A few minutes more and, if he were not to miss the train, he must start on the drive back.

"You don't mean," Byron was aghast but incredulous, "that the law gives 'er the right to leave the land away from me?"

"It does."

"The missus could do as she liked with the land?" began the unhappy man and there was such poignant anxiety in his tones that, even Mrs. Tom, angry and embittered, felt a qualm of pity. 'Poor old toad, too, he was taking it hard!'

"Yes!"

Sabina had had the power and she had used it, used it simply and without heart-searchings or artifice. The world was turning round with him, but he still had his hands on that which he had taken. In spite of will and lawyer he would hold to it. He felt that nothing could relax his grip, that the land was his from now on until time should make him more intimately a part of it, yet something was slipping from him--slipping----

He looked from face to face along the sides of the table, from Con, heavy and ruminative, to Beulah Sowden, whose glassy eyes stared unresponsive as ever and so to Tom Rosevear. The day was being driven out by the shadow hosts of evening but the faces were still distinct. The unhappy man searched them with the old, desperate, 'Who is on my side, who?'

"What good," said he in an urgent troubling voice, "what good would Wastralls be to Gray--a young maid?"

Being farmers all, their prejudices, their outlook, would put them against the will. They could not approve of land being left to a woman. Anything else but not land. Byron thought that with them to back him he might force the lawyer-fellow to see reason. After all, it was the men of the community who made the law and, if these would give it as their opinion that the will was unjust, was unnatural, it might be upset.

To a man, those to whom he made his appeal, were kind of heart. They were sorry for Byron. They would have been sorry for any one who stood to lose a fair farm, for any one whose hopes had been disappointed. They agreed, too, that it was a pity the land should have been left to a maid. Where they joined issue with Byron was in the universal feeling that the land belonged to Rosevears. Anything was better than that it should go out of the family. They would not help him to get the will upset. On the contrary.

The failure of his appeal sent a gust of fury through Byron. They would see him wronged and not lift a hand to prevent it? What matter? He would have it in spite of them. "The land's mine," he blazed and brought his fist down on the table, with a thump that jarred from every loose surface a protesting sound and threatened to split the thick wood. "'Tis mine and by 'itch or by crook I'll 'av it. A mistake's been made and--" he flung down the gage, "you do all knaw it 'as, but we'll 'av it put right."

The other men looked to Mr. Criddle for direction.

"I'm sorry," the lawyer said in his unimpassioned way, "that you should be disappointed, but the intention was clear and the will is properly executed. You will be only wasting time and money if you try to upset it."

Byron's mind was moving quickly. "The missus thought I should be old by the time she was taken," he argued. "I bain't old, I'm so young as any. There isn't a man 'ere can put it across me."

Into this atmosphere, already full of conflicting thought, of possibilities more ominous than any there suspected, Mrs. Tom threw a barbed and poisoned phrase. "S'bina 'ad no thought of dyin' and you knaw, Leadville, that she 'adn't."

He turned at the words. The corner by the hearth was growing dark but the firelight revealed a face here and another there. Mrs. Tom was on the outskirts of the group and in her accusing eyes and on her pale features was a writing Byron could and, for all his unwillingness, must read. Mrs. Tom was telling him that his secret was known to her and that in the provisions of the will she recognized the truth of her Tom's words. That for which Leadville had schemed and done evil, that was what, to the upholding of righteousness, he was to lose.

But the man was not yet broken to the acceptance of his fate. Mrs. Tom might suspect, she could not know. He turned to the lawyer with a movement that suggested the flicking off of a troublesome fly.

"I don't believe," he said, "that missus would leave it to Gray. She wouldn't do such a thing. How could she take Wastralls from me when I bin 'ere all me life? You've made the will out wrong."

As far as Mr. Criddle's experience went, a last will and testament never satisfied the survivors. It was unfortunate that Mrs. Byron's should have come into operation while her husband was still a comparatively young man; but, after all, he had the money and there were more farms than those in Trevorrick. To the poignant aspect of the matter he was blind.

"Mrs. Byron was quite clear on the point, in fact though she did not insist on it she told me she hoped that, when Miss Gray married, she would not change her name. Being Rosevear land, Mrs. Byron felt that Wastralls should belong to a Rosevear."

The younger people, grouped on and about the bench, whispered among themselves but Byron's voice overrode their murmurs. "I could call myself Rosevear," he offered eagerly, "the name's nothing."

"You 'aven't a name of your own, Mr. Byron," said Con in his slow heavy fashion, "and one name's so well as another to you."

"Iss," agreed the other impatiently, "a man's the same, whether 'e got one name as another."

"Those are the provisions of the will," continued Mr. Criddle, ignoring the suggestion. In his clipped voice he read to the end. Gray was left residuary legatee and Thomas Freathy Rosevear and Sydney Constantine Rosevear were to be the executors. "And lastly I revoke all former wills made by me, in witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand."

*CHAPTER XXIV*

The lawyer, pressed for time, hurried over his farewells and, going out, pulled the door to behind him. The faulty latch failing to hold, the door swung back to fall with a little jingling clash against the post and this irritating sound, metallic and irregular, alone broke the hush of expectation that, with Mr. Criddle's departure, had fallen on the room.

His withdrawal, freeing this large family from the observation of a stranger, took from the members of it any self-consciousness they may have felt; and enabled them to give their whole attention to what was passing, to centre it, in fact, on Byron, on this man who, like a widow, was not to inherit the property but to be pensioned off with an annuity! The women about the hearth, the young people on the window-bench, the men at the table, all were wondering what Byron would say and do, whether, indeed, he quite understood.

He sat before them, with his broad shoulders hunched and a hand over his eyes, withdrawn and, though one of a crowd, solitary. Behind him rose the polished back of the old chair. He had placed it at the head of the table. He had sat in it to emphasize the fact of his ownership and there were those present who thought he had, by so doing, brought ill-luck on himself. He had stretched covetous hands to what Old Squire had set apart for his descendants and in his own way, at his own time, Old Squire, dead yet very much alive, had taken action. In the disposition of the property the people recognized his hand. Sabina had been the instrument of an older more imperious will. Rosevear land was for Rosevears. Those who had had it before this nameless wight came up out of the sea should keep it. Their grip was fixed on it, their roots went down to its rock foundations, they were of it, sprung from it, the living manifestations of it, while he--he who would have taken it from them--he was 'a foreigner.' He had no right, no part among them. As he was come, so would he go. The sea had spewed him up and in due time the earth would swallow him and the memory of him would perish.

The door banged at will, the latch catching and slipping like a nerveless hand. In the old chimneys of the old house, the drear December wind whined and entreated; and first one person then another began to stir and whisper.

In their cramped quarters under the window, the young people were responding to the faint calls of everyday life. Conscious of tension, of a something in the atmosphere that threatened and insisted, they glanced anxiously at the door. Its foolish rattling indecision suggested to them that it was open, that they had only to get up, take a quick step or two and it would provide a way of escape. Something, perhaps an appeal to their emotions, more likely a dull discussion was pending; and they were impatient to breathe fresh air, indulge in a little chaff and sweethearting, get back to the normal. The troubles of their seniors, the dark incomprehensible tragedy of Byron, were beyond their understanding. They were glad when their mothers and aunts began to move, to speak in restrained tones, to whisper of Isolda's linen, of Con's red roan and of the fifty pounds that would fall to high-shouldered George Biddick, the good old hind who had been on the farm for so many years, all the working years of a life. As they talked they fastened cloaks and pulled down veils, beginning as it were to move and so setting an example the young folks would be glad to follow.

The miller had been sitting, solid and motionless, at Byron's right hand. As the women began their tentative movements, he rose, drew a deep breath of relief and drifted in Mrs. Tom's direction. She gave him a pleasant word. "The 'awse, that S'bina give you, Con, 'll 'av a good 'ome with you."

"She knawed I liked Prince," the other said heavily. His eyes had been resting on his three sons and he now uttered a plain thought.

"Pity Gray wadn't a boy, seems a pity for the farm to go to a maid, still S'bina bin fair enough." Tom was S'bina's next of kin, and in choosing his eldest child to inherit Wastralls she had acknowledged his claim. Con, thinking of his hearty lads, regretted, while accepting, her decision.

Mrs. Tom did not take offence. "Iss!" she sighed, voicing her one grievance against fate, "I only wished I 'ad a boy..."

The young folk were frankly a little envious of Gray's good fortune and Jim Rosevear who, having taken to heart Mrs. Tom's mild scolding was standing a little behind the St. Cadic men, stooped to the girl's ear with a congratulatory word. Her eyes, as she answered him, were full of tears.

"Dear auntie! I had no idea she was goin' to give me the farm. I feel I ought to have done more for her."

"My tender dear, you done all you could do."

Upon this simple talk, born of a general willingness to be accommodating, to live and let live, broke an arresting voice. The sense of disaster, irremediable and dire, was slowly closing down on Byron; but, until he had done his utmost to escape, he would not admit he was in straits.

"I been thinkin'," he said, looking from Tom Rosevear to his cousin, "I been thinkin' if Gray 'as Wastralls p'raps she would like for me to stay on an' teel it for 'er. I've wanted the farm all along. I think 'tis very cruel to 'av it took away now; but--" he did not attempt to disguise his anxiety--"you can make it right for me if you like."

Tom had joined Constantine and, into the bearing of the two, though only so lately made executors, was crept a faint consciousness of their position. They had been placed in authority and they were used to wielding it. They stood together, listening gravely to the man's appeal, giving it, as far as appearances went, their consideration. In reality they were wondering how to avoid a direct refusal. That Byron should have set his heart on Wastralls seemed to them mere perversity. As well cry for the moon.

"I dunno," said Tom evasively. He did not want to hurt the man's feelings but he and Con had been put in charge of the property and were responsible to Sabina for its administration. "I dunno 'bout that. We shall 'av to think it over. What do you say, Constantine?"

"I think," said his more direct coadjutor, "I think the best way is to do as S'bina wished."

But Byron was unable to take a wrapped-up 'No' for an answer. "I was 'er 'usband," he pleaded and if he had addressed his words to the nether stone in St. Cadic Mill, they would have had as much effect. "I was 'er 'usband and I think she meant for me to 'av it, only there been a mistake made in the will."

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 maaeze 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."