Part 8

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.