  Produced by Al Haines. Wastralls A Novel By Author of London London: William Heinemann, 1918 DEDICATED TO PROLOGUE CHAPTER I Trevorrick River was but a little stream to have fretted so deep a cleft between the hills as that which sloped from the main road of Tregols parish to the sea. From the source to the engulfing sands was barely a mile, and the twinkling waters, if full and fierce in winter, showed a summer fear of their own broad stepping-stones. Nevertheless the sharp declivities, the juttings of rock, even the shelves and crags and walls of Dark Head, had been formed by the gnawing of this tiny but persistent flow. The valley ran east and west. The sun, rising beyond St. Cadic Mill, poured its noon warmth over Hember and sank behind the sheltered plateau on which stood the old home of the Rosevears. The dying beams, however, could not reach the deep-set windows of Wastralls, for the crest of Dark Head reared itself between the farmstead and the harsh threat of the Atlantic. The house lay in a fold of land, hidden equally from those who moved upon the face of the waters, and those who might be said, though their habitations were at a distance, to neighbour it. As a refuge in troublous times, the position had its value, and there were indications that this shelf of rock had been, many centuries ago, the nest of some wild brood. Upon their heels had followed as descendants or conquerors—the script is too nearly obliterated to be read—men who in their own strong person represented the law. The gate-posts of Wastralls were crowned with the egg-shaped stones which indicated that it was a manor-house, and that its owner had the right to dispense justice. Within the house, and occupying a space from wall to wall, was the ancient Justice Room; but its stately uses had long been abated, its irrevocable decisions had lost their force, in the autumn of its days it had become a lumber-room and more lately a bedchamber. A century ago, from the mill at the head of the valley to the Wreckers' Hut on the foreshore, Trevorrick had been the property of one man. Of peasant stock, how Freathy Rosevear came by land and money was matter of surmise. 'He had gone out one morning a poor man, and had come home rich.' Little need, however, to invent tales of hidden treasure, witchcraft, divination, when the caves in Morwen Cove made so safe a store-house: when the Wreckers' Hut stood behind the teeth of the Mad Rip: when the lanes that converged upon the towns—the towns in which queer commodities could always be sold—were so deep and secret. Whatever the sources of his income, as fortunes went, in that remote district, Freathy Rosevear was accounted wealthy. He was also a man to take the eye. Big, florid, fair, he might have stepped out of a Holbein canvas, and tales of his unusual strength were told and retold of a winter's evening in the cottages. Did his wife complain the store of wreck was running low? Forthwith he had gone out, caught the first of the homing donkeys, and carried it, load and all, into her presence, with "A fardel for my Lady"—so the story. The man was as Saul to a kingless folk, a head and shoulders above the multitude. Like the last of the Tudor monarchs he brought the people among whom he lived material well-being, and, like other outstanding personalities, stamped his impress on the current coin. Before he died he was "Old Squire" and, as such, he lived in the long memory of the countryside. Not that to them his death was the final exit from the stage of his influence and activities. Though they followed him to his burying, though they saw the sods falling earth to earth, they could not believe that abundant, penetrating, imperial vitality could be resolved into its elements. Recognizing that neither heaven nor hell was the fitting place for it, they showed their faith in the life after death by a hardy belief that Old Squire, though rendered invisible, was still among them. When this man's grip upon Trevorrick relaxed, the land fell to his three legitimate sons: for his other children, and he had done his part in peopling the neighbourhood, he had provided during his life. The legitimate sons, Freathy, Constantine, and Tom, were good farmers all, but cast in an ordinary mould. They lived, they replenished the earth and, in the fullness of time, went back to it, dust to dust. A younger Constantine now owned the mill, a younger Tom tilled the fat slopes of Hember, and Wastralls, the cradle of the race, was become the property of Freathy's only child, his daughter Sabina. Every rood of land in the valley was still Rosevear property, and the cousins, shut in by their hill boundaries, formed a community conscious at once of its kinship and its isolation. Of the three farms, Wastralls was the largest and most important. Across the valley were wide commons—the wastralls—once bare, blown sand, but now converted by spire grass into turf for the fattening of red-brown bullocks. On the heavy land between the house and the little stream were orchards and cornfields, while behind the cliffs, tethered in pairs to prevent them being blown over the edge, a flock of sheep nibbled the short grass. The manor itself was a low two-storied oblong of country stone and, with its courts and outhouses, seemed as much an excrescence of the rocky ground as more solid outcroppings. A grey irregularity by day, it sank, when twilight fell, into its surroundings. At dawn St. Cadic Mill was a black tower against the saffron; at dusk Hember windows flamed with reflections of the west; but both at dawn and dusk Wastralls was more a presumption than a fact. The house was older than Hember, older than the mill, and its obscurity suggested that the forgotten builder had hoped the Storm-god might take Wastralls in his stride, that Death might fail, among so many grey swells and hummocks, to distinguish it. The place had been built to house two families. A dividing wall cut the fine chambers on the western front from the low-pitched rooms that looked across the yard. A green door, stout and with a heavy lock, was set in the dividing wall to allow of communication between the old-time lord of the manor and the bailiff who tilled his fields; but the families, living back to back, having different modes of egress and ingress, the one taking the field path, the other the road, preserved each its privacy. When Old Squire brought a wife to Wastralls, she, preferring the homeliness of the farmstead, had made it their dwelling-place. From thenceforward the life of the house centred in the roomy, whitewashed kitchen; and the fine chambers, swept and shuttered, were only used on ceremonial occasions. Old Squire had no use for state or trappings and when his son Freathy reigned in his stead, the lesser man asked no greater luxury than had satisfied his sire. This second Freathy married a woman so indistinct that it was a wonder he had seen her sufficiently well to fall in love. She ruled Wastralls with a boneless hand, and used her knees for praying rather than scrubbing. Of this vague, colourless creature was born the vital bright-haired Sabina. Her father welcomed her as a beginning, "first a maid and then a child," but his wife's effort left her exhausted. The tonic air of the valley made it difficult for her to die, but she failed a little, month by month, until, unnoticed, she was able to slip into her grave. Freathy's thought was "must marry again, try to get a boy; 'twon't do to let a maid be heir of the land." But he was comfortable as a widower, more comfortable than he had been during Dusha's pious, slatternly existence and, Time, the inexorable, drew the daisy quilt about his neck, while he yet procrastinated. For lack of a son Freathy had taken his daughter with him about the farm. His thoughts being of the cattle-market, of soils and crops, it was of such matters that he spoke; and Sabina picked up the lore of the seasons as naturally as another child learns to sew and cook. Her father was a man who drank, not continuously, but at intervals which, like a perspective of posts, showed diminishing interspaces. The child accepted his habits as she accepted rain and shine and, when he was under the influence of liquor, did her young best to grapple with his duties. By the time he died—from the effects of a night spent inadvertently in the open—she had gathered a little store of experience, had indeed been farming Wastralls for over a year. Freathy, intending to remarry and leave hearty sons, had not troubled to make a will and the girl of one-and-twenty succeeded to an unencumbered freehold of five hundred acres, the manor-house and what remained of Old Squire's savings. Offers of help came from both Hember and St. Cadic. Each was willing to work Wastralls with his own land, each hoped Sabina might listen to a cousinly tale of love. She, however, having inherited the robust confidence of her grandfather, was determined to undertake on her own account the adventure of farming. Nor were Tom and Constantine Rosevear altogether surprised. They had not played with her as children without recognizing her quality; and if they wondered 'what hand she'd make of it,' it was as those whose hearts prophesy unto them. The brothers who had inherited Hember and St. Cadic had died young, but each had left a son. Tom, the owner of Hember, thought that as its fields marched with those of Wastralls, he ought to marry his cousin; while Constantine sought her because the glint of her bright hair had dazzled him. A fine maid was Sabina, blue eyes flush with rounded cheeks, not the passionate eyes of Old Squire, but the blue of ice-depths when the sun is shining in a clear sky; and when it was a question of marriage she found the straight sticks who offered themselves for weapon and support were of a too familiar wood. She would go a little farther into the forest.
[*] Padstow Hobby-horse song. The green waves of the Atlantic roll strange flotsam into the sandy bays of that bitter coast; and the sea, hungry though it be, can give up more than the dead. One summer on the bosom of a forgotten sunset, a boat had drifted into Morwen Cove, to strand, when the tide turned, amid the weed and rubbish of the foreshore. In it, swollen with cold, unconscious, nearly dead, lay a waif, the survivor of some obscure wreck. Leadville Byron, a hind who with his childless wife lived over the disused fish-cellars at Wastralls, chanced upon the boat. Its contents stirred the father in him and, as he carried home the bit of human waste, his anxiety was lest it might be reclaimed; indeed he never quite lost his fear that what the sea had given the land, that unknown of towns and country beyond the hills, might take. If inquiries were made, however, they did not reach Trevorrick and the child, a lusty, black-browed youngster, grew to manhood, without further change in his surroundings. His native tongue had been unintelligible to the villagers and he could not give himself a name. His foster-parents, therefore, felt themselves justified in calling him Leadville. If his name were ever discovered he could return to it, meanwhile he was buttressed against the curiosity of strangers. As was only natural the Byrons bred him to work on the land; and at eighteen, Wastralls—the delectable hillside, the edge of cliff, the tumuli of the ancient folk—were all he knew; indeed, it required a cataclysm to prove to him that he was not a clod of Wastralls earth. In outward seeming the lad was not unlike the people among whom he lived. A little more swarthy, with a more sombre expression in his dark eyes, a broader chest than was often seen, he might have passed for a Cornishman. The difference was one of temperament and it was a difference so great, that never to the end of his life was he to be other to them than a 'foreigner.' One autumn, after a rainy, reedy summer, a summer of losses, Mr. Rosevear was forced to believe he could work the farm with fewer labourers; and young Byron, being the last to join the little band of hinds, must be the first to go. The lad took his dismissal hardly. By dewing the land with his sweat he had made it his and, against his will, a deep and narrow will, he could not be disinherited. He considered himself as much part of Wastralls as a bush of tamarisk in the hedge. As, however, he must go, he listened to his foster-father's suggestion and returned temporarily to the great waters which had spewed him up. He went, but in every ship's wake, in the reek of foreign cities, in the wind that blew from home, he saw visions of those few fields which to him were the world. He had the inward eye of the dreamer and, as the year turned, saw spring drawing her green skirts over the hillside and hanging the orchard with her gossamers. He saw the dandelions starring the thick grass by the river, the lush dark grass in which he had rolled himself moved by the ecstasy of life; and to him the salt sea was barren and unprofitable, a desert upon which he must go to and fro until the days of his pilgrimage were accomplished. The death of old Byron brought the wanderer back to Hindoo Cottage—as the fish-cellars were called—only to find that the wife had followed her man; and that he—Leadville the younger—was again without even the semblance of a human tie. He had not loved the old couple, love did not at any time come easily to him and all the emotion of which he was capable had long been concentrated upon Wastralls; but he was anxious to secure his foster-father's berth as teamster. To the outpourings of the neighbours he listened unheeding and presently took his way to the farmhouse, there to learn that Rosevear had been laid in a neater ditch than that of his inadvertent choice and that Sabina—big, ripe, fair, a woman who might have stepped out of the Elizabethan age—reigned in his stead. The opportunity was self-evident and Byron, back in his place and once more happy, soon realized that his heart's desire was within reach. It was not Sabina that he wanted but Wastralls; and that, again, not for ambition's sake, but because his late experience had taught him the value of security. Asking no more of life than permission to spend his youth, his strength, his passion on the land, he found consent in Sabina's awakening interest. She had disdained the easy-kindled fires of Tom, of Constantine, and of the Tregols lads, but the sombre glow in Byron's eyes was disturbing. It moved her as something unknown and full of a strange promise, that promise which is in the rising sap and germinating seed. The neighbours expressed a kindly apprehension, for though marriage between persons of different race may be eugenically sound, it seldom brings happiness to the individual; but Sabina was beyond reason, for in the stranger she had found her mate. Within a month the banns were called and a little later the oddly assorted couple pushed off into matrimony. Whereas, however, Byron believed himself to be marrying Wastralls—the good farm and the waste lands by the sea—making it for ever flesh of his flesh, his in indissoluble union, Sabina did not intend to endow her lover with her worldly goods. She held the land by right of inheritance and by a worthier right, that of the farmer who deals understandingly with her fields. Although she cultivated the farm in the way that had brought prosperity to the family, her stock was pedigree and realized good prices, her seed was the best procurable and she was always ready to try new manures and dressings. She was not a woman of ideas, neither was she reactionary but a fold of Old Squire's mantle hung from her shoulders and, as the neighbours said, "to give the maid her due, her's a first-rate farmer." She loved her farm, but as a sportsman loves a good dog. She exacted from it the utmost it could give and was its considerate master, but she could have no conception of Leadville's attitude. If it had been explained to her that he loved the land as a man loves a woman, she would have doubted her informant, and if convinced have thought her husband a fool for his pains. As it was, when he attempted to assert his new rights, as he did immediately after their marriage, she stared in surprise. "'Oo told you to give the orders to the 'inds when I've got a tongue of me own?" "I thought I was savin' of 'ee a lot of trouble." "I don't want yer to do my work for me. I can do it meself." "I should think you got enough to do indoors without goin' outdoors workin'. I don't see what a woman want to be out in all weathers for." Sabina laughed good-humouredly. "My dear feller, I always bin outdoor. Rain or fine don't make any difference to me." "Well, my dear, you'll lose all they good looks o' yours. I don't like to see women all burned up. You'll be an old woman before you'm a young one." "I don't care what I be, and I don't believe a word you say is true. Ony'ow I shall chance it." "Well, 'tis the man's place to teel the land." "A fine mess you'd make of it, too. Look at the Mill fields! If Con turned the ditches out they wouldn't be so wet; even Tom don't keep 'is fields so clean as mine." "I don't care 'bout that, 'bain't a woman's work." "Aw, git away. 'Tidn't all women that want to farm; but those that do, let'm 'av it. 'Tis just whether they can farm or can't." "Well, I think it's my business as I'm yer 'usband. You ought to let me 'av it." "What's the good to let you 'av it, you dunno nothing about farmin'. You bin to sea most all yer life. 'Tis years an' years since you ploughed a bit o' ground." A dark colour came into the bridegroom's cheek. "'Ow can you say that when I was brought up on the land. I knaw all about farm work. 'Aving married you, to 'av the farm's my due." Sabina sat very straight in her chair. "Now once for all," said she, "let's settle this matter. Wastralls is mine, and I dare you to so much as lay a finger on it. If you want to farm so much as all that, Higher Polnevas is to let, and its fields are joinin' ours. Why don't you go over and take that? I'll let you 'av the money for that, but you won't 'av Wastralls." Byron had not expected opposition. Sabina, being a woman, would naturally be glad to have the outdoor work taken off her hands. His surprise at her attitude was so intense that he stared at her in a helpless silence, until she clinched the matter by exclaiming in her hearty, fresh-air voice, "'Tis no good for 'ee to think anything about it." This phrase opened the flood-gates. Usually somewhat silent, he had moods when the words tumbled over each other in a multitude beyond counting. Perceiving he had miscalculated he set to work to retrieve his error and, during the course of the evening, learnt many things but not how to make Sabina change her mind. The poor man, desperately afraid, did all he knew. He entreated and she smiled, he blustered and she laughed, he cajoled and she warmed to him but, though she warmed, she did not weaken. Her first word was her last: "'Tis no good for 'ee to think anything about it." Byron was helpless. He could not win her to his will, neither could he break her. She was capable, as she let him see, of separating from him. If he appealed to the hinds, they would side with her. Her cousins at Hember and St. Cadic, the neighbours in the adjacent valleys, would take her part. Turning the matter over, however, he perceived that time, by giving Sabina fresh interests, fresh cares, might prove his friend. Nurslings tie the mother to the house and when the babies came his wife would have her hands full. She must let go what she could not hold; and he would be ready to pick up, bit by bit, what she let fall. In this hope he settled to his new life. It was unthinkable that he should attempt to farm Higher Polnevas, when his mind was filled with Wastralls. Of a brooding nature, through which at times flames of emotion broke, he was content to spend his days thinking out and dwelling on the changes he would make when his opportunity came. Sabina's farming, cautious and well-considered, chafed him. He wanted the land to bring forth a hundredfold where she now gave a mere return. He was her lover asking of her all that she could give, eager only to have the exploiting of her possibilities. To make her fruitful was to be his work. He saw the seed swell in her bosom, the silent marvel of growth, the harvest that should reward his husbandry; and, because out of the heart the mouth speaketh, when he talked it was of intensive farming, of the money that lay in sugar-beet, strawberries, asparagus, of market-gardening and the use of glass. Thereby he damaged his cause; for Sabina, listening, came to the conclusion that she had married an unpractical dreamer. If he believed in his theories why did he not rent land and prove them? That he only talked, satisfied her that she had been right in her refusal to let him farm Wastralls and her grip on the land tightened. The kindly fields deserved better of her than that she should put them at the mercy of a dreamer. Whether or no the man's life that she led did her disservice, it is certain that no children came to modify the situation. In the loft, the carved wooden cradle lay with only the wind to set it a-rock; below, the rooms were as empty of new life as is a whispering conch. The bustle of the farm was like the swish of water about a rock islet, that little spot of sterility and stagnation at the heart of multitudinous life. Sabina, who had natural instincts, who had mothered a bibulous father and many a bit of life from the fields and hedges, was disappointed; but her feeling was mild compared with that of her husband. His children were to have delivered Wastralls into his hand, assuaged at last the long ache of his passion; but the years turned on their axes, going as they had come. At first Byron bore himself with a good courage. After the unprofitable days of his seafaring it was enough to watch the tamarisk stems warming into red life, to spend the daylight wandering over the well-known ground, to return at night to the grey house on its shelf of rock. If, after a while, these delights palled, it was because they led nowhither. Meanwhile, under Sabina's judicious management, the farm prospered. Neither cared to spend, the one because she had no wants, the other because what he desired could not be bought. With every year the bank stocking grew heavier, also the man's heart; and every year found his thoughts fixed more bitterly upon his disappointment. Sabina saw but without understanding. Her man was moody, foolish too with his perpetual harping on his rights, but she was not thereby alienated, for, wise or unreasonable, he was her man. Though she envied Tom his houseful of daughters and Constantine his big sons, her own lack left her the more leisure to care for her husband's comfort. The standard of living at Wastralls was higher than that of the surrounding farms. Byron ate according to his fancy and lay soft; was given indeed those things to which he was indifferent, and denied that after which he hungered. "I'm kep' like a prize bullock," he said morosely, "when what I want is to be workin' and doin' for meself." "Well, my dear, 'oo told you not to work? There's plenty to do, there's that four-acre field, why don't yer go and plough up that, 'stead of in 'ere mumpin' about?" "As though I was yer 'ind?" "What, still wantin' to be maister?" "Iss, an' shall be till I die." "Now look 'ere. If you want money to buy Polnevas you can 'av it, but Wastralls you will never 'av." "Well, if I can't 'av Wastralls I won't 'av nothing; but you mark my words"—he bent towards her and brought one hand with a thump into the palm of the other—"if I can't 'av it by 'itch, I will by crook." "Not so long as I live then, any'ow." Byron was slightly underhung, a formation which gives the face a look of strength and purpose. "We shall see, some day, which of us is the strongest of the two." The woman, happy in her work and with her main affection satisfied, could answer with reasonable good-humour: "Well, my dear feller, 'tis my land and I must do my duty by it. 'Tis I'm responsible, not you, to the folks up yonder," and a movement of her bright head indicated the burial-ground at Church Town. "I'm sorry you're disappointed, but I can't 'elp it." "Oh, hang it—sorry?" "Well, I be sorry. I'd like for 'ee to 'av everything to make yer 'appy; but Wastralls I can't give." She smiled at him in her friendly fashion, a sweet inviting smile. "I do my best to make it up to yer in other ways and that you know." "Iss, I want bread and you do give me a stone." He turned away, leaving her, as ever, uncomprehending. It was impossible for her to think of him as other than a child, who for his own sake must be denied and prevented, who was hers to care for and, in ways that could not harm him, to indulge. The truth to her, as to so many of us, would have been unbelievable. The break-up of the situation was due to an accident. Sabina had driven a young horse to the fair at St. Columb Major and this animal, excited by the unwonted traffic, the smells and the noise, became unmanageable. Plunging down the hill, he came into collision with a heavy van. The prancing feet slipped and he fell, shooting his driver over the shafts. Though clear of horse and cart, she was flung with considerable violence against the front wheel of the van. This startled the van horses and the heavy lumbersome creatures, with a prodigious clatter, started up the street. Sabina, rendered unconscious by the blow she had received, had fallen between the wheels and the van, lurching forward, passed over her. It was thought at first that she was killed but the crushed woman who, later that afternoon, was admitted to the little hospital at Stowe, was still breathing. As the case seemed hopeless, the husband was sent for, and Byron, in a ferment of excitement, came pounding in on the heels of the messenger. His horse was in a lather when he checked him at the hospital gate. "Poor Sabina, poor old girl, it was a terrible thing for her to die as she lived; away from home like that. No doubt 'er 'ead was full of the farmin', never once thought of dyin', but the Lorrd would be merciful." "If she's goin' to die, don't 'ee keep it from me," he said to Dr. Derek, who was in charge of the case. "I'd rather knaw the worst." "And," as he explained to the neighbours, on his return home, after being allowed to glance at the unconscious face on the pillow, "the poor doctor 'ee couldn't give me no encouragement." CHAPTER II The sight of Sabina, her florid face grey against the white bandages, her pale lips open to facilitate the drawing of difficult breath, had convinced her husband that she could not possibly recover. That evening he called the hinds together, told them what had happened, and for the first time gave them their orders. As he went back into the house, old George Biddick, who had been many years on the farm, and was of a noticing disposition, drew the attention of a new-come labourer to the receding figure. "Speaks as though 'e'd been maister all the time, don't 'e? An' carries 'isself pretty straight, too, considerin' as 'e'm bowed wi' grief." "I don't s'pose 'e realize things yet," said Jim, a Rosevear from across the hills. "Must 'av been tarr'ble shock for'n." The other man glanced sideways out of small brown eyes, and gave a non-committal grunt. He was queerly shaped, with a high-shouldered short body and long legs and, being related to most of the cottagers, was known generally as "Uncle George!" "Dunno so much about that. Missus is so strong as a dunkey," he said, as he returned to his work of bedding down the horses, "an' she may chate the crows yet." But Jim Rosevear was not listening, his thoughts had run before him up the road, to where, at the stone stile, a maid would be waiting. The rest of the world might be concerned with death; but he was young and his concern was with life, more life. When, on the following day, Byron rode over to the hospital, he was told that his wife still breathed; but that an operation had become necessary, an operation which it was scarcely possible she could survive. He found it difficult to understand why it must be. "Why punish 'er so? Wouldn't it be better to let 'er die quiet than to 'ack 'er about?" The wheel of the van had gone over both legs, crushing together bone and flesh and the surgeon proposed to amputate. The limbs were injured beyond hope of saving; and it was explained that their removal might give the patient a chance. "Do you think then, sir," said the anxious husband, "that she'll be better if she 'av the operation?" "She may. The condition is critical and unless the operation is performed she might at any moment take a turn for the worse." He was afraid blood-poisoning might set in. "I shouldn't 'av thought she'd be strong enough to bear it." Dr. Derek's opinion was that Sabina would probably die on the operating-table and this, without putting it into so many words, he managed to convey. As soon as Byron understood, although the idea of the amputation was curiously repugnant to him, he gave leave for it to be attempted. Sabina had to die, poor soul, and it was hard on her that the doctors should think it necessary to try their experiments on her, should not be able to leave her in possession of her limbs. Still ... theirs the responsibility. Byron was allowed to remain in the hospital till the result of the operation was known. He sat in an austerely furnished waiting-room and, through his mind, coursed dim memories of Sabina, handsome and active, Sabina vaulting the gates and climbing like a boy, Sabina with her free gait and her hearty open-air voice. From the other side of the picture, the Sabina whose mangled limbs were at that moment being cut from her body, he sedulously turned his gaze. That she should be thus mutilated was abhorrent to him. Dr. Derek, his spick-and-span brightness a little dimmed and his eyes tired, came in at last. "She's still alive, Byron." "I didn't think she would be, sir." The doctor hummed and hawed. The operation had been long and delicate and he was weary; but he could not let the man take away with him an illusory hope. "We have to reckon," he said gravely, "with the shock to the system." "You don't think," returned Byron in his deep rumbling bass, "as there's much chance for 'er then, sir?" "The condition is very serious." "I shall be lost without 'er, even as 'tis—" he stared before him out of the window and the melancholy of his rough, unkempt appearance impressed the other man. "Are you alone at Wastralls?" he asked, contrasting in a mind as neat as his body, his trim, small house on the main street of Stowe, with the grey homestead and irregular outbuildings of the lonely farm. "I've a woman that do the housework but she go 'ome by night." "Sounds a bit dreary." Dr. Derek was essentially a town bird. The noise of footsteps on the pavement, of voices in the street, was music to him. "Well, it's what we'm accustomed to," said Byron carefully, "an' after all we'm pretty and busy. O' course I got the farm to see to as Missus is 'ere.' "Yes, yes, of course." "I was wonderin', sir, if you could send out and let me knaw 'ow she's gettin' on. Course, I should be delighted to set by 'er if she knawed me; but, seein' as poor sawl's gone past that, and I've so much to do, I'm better off 'ome—till I'm wanted." "I've no doubt it could be arranged. I'll speak to Matron about it." "Thank you, sir; an', of course, anything she want she can 'av, only send in and let me knaw. Money's no object when it's 'er life." "You can trust me, Byron. Everything possible will be done for her," said the other gravely, "only, I'm afraid..." The first bulletin that reached Wastralls told Byron to prepare for the worst. His wife was still alive but sinking. That day he went about the farm in a ferment of emotion. Poor Sabina, poor soul, but if she had to die, better now when he was in his prime. She had had a good time and now it was his turn. He trod the fields as blessed souls may walk in Paradise. The dear land, the land he loved deep as Dozmare, was his and he had got it fairly; he had not pushed his wife out of it. Accident had befriended him—oh, happy accident! When he came in from his work, he took down a well-thumbed list and wrote an order for glass, for frames, for certain much-advertised manures and for young plants. The season was advanced and, if he hoped for a speedy result, he must not lose time. The next bulletin, dropping on his happy absorption, gave but little hope that Sabina would see another dawn. She was alive and no more. Byron, who was at breakfast, found his hunger easily satisfied. The letter had been meat and drink. Thoughts, indeed, of a day spent striding over the Cornish moors, of a night in the sacred, haunted solitudes of Rowtor passed through his mind; but, while he was considering them, his glance fell upon the honeysuckle of the porch. Long the pride of Sabina's heart, its untidy growth had been to him an eyesore. Here then was the outlet for his passionate elation, an outlet, too, symbolic of his mood. With his own hands he pulled it up, digging out the roots so that nothing remained from which a fresh shoot might spring. Jealousy, an old jealousy, the jealousy of the brooding years was in the action. Wastralls, which had been Sabina's, was to affront him with no memories of a past humiliation. The new Wastralls was always to have been his. At the end of the week he was surprised to learn that Sabina still hovered between life and death. Riding into Stowe, he sought out Dr. Derek and was reassured to find he took a pessimistic view of the case. Though acknowledging that Mrs. Byron showed great vitality the surgeon did not think she would outlive the week. He condoled with the farmer and Byron, satisfied that all was well, went back to his work. A wagon, drawn by three great brown horses, had brought from Wadebridge the various articles which the farmer, lavish for the first time in his life, had ordered. Having Sabina's savings upon which eventually to draw he had commanded glass, manures, plants, in abundance. The little band of labourers, accustomed to Mrs. Byron's caution, looked on with the stolid disapproval of men averse to change. The delicate processes of market-gardening were new to them and they did not think the new scheme should have been inaugurated while she lay on her death-bed. The farmer found them irritatingly slow, but did not realize that this seeming stupidity was the cautious expression of their unwillingness. If the mistress died this man would be their employer, therefore their wisest course was to be outwardly docile but a little hard to teach. They talked among themselves, however, and, what is more, spread the tale of Byron's doings over the countryside. Wind of it had already been wafted up the valley. At Hember and St. Cadic the cousins, after trying the one for Sabina's land, the other for her love, had long since settled to a second choice. Tom Rosevear, indeed, had gone back to an earlier fancy, a girl with whom both he and Sabina had been at school. Isolda Raby was the daughter of a fishseller and her marriage with the prosperous farmer had been for her a rise in life. Since the time they had sat on the same school bench, she had been Sabina's most intimate crony—the only interruption to their friendship being caused by the frailty, the land-hunger of man! But Tom, after some plain speaking on Sabina's part, had returned to his Isolda and the friendship had not only been revived, but placed on a wider, more satisfactory basis. When Sabina met with her accident Mrs. Tom's heart was wrung. An imaginative, tender-hearted woman, she felt an anxious desire to be a stay and a comfort, to do something, however small, to mitigate her friends sufferings. There was at first little that she could do beyond keeping an eye on poor Sabina's household and seeing that Leadville did not lack food or service. After the first anxious days, however, she was allowed into the hospital and from that time, her eldest daughter being able to 'tend house' in her stead, she spent as many hours at her friend's bedside as the rules of the place permitted. At first Sabina was for long periods unconscious. She took nourishment, she drowsed, she suffered many and various discomforts; but it seemed to her that whenever she came to the surface her glance fell on the comforting vision of Isolda, the same pretty matronly Isolda, who with kind talk and kinder offices had for so long pervaded her daily life. Sabina was so badly injured, in such incessant pain, so low in herself, that she took little interest in her surroundings. To hear the familiar click of the knitting-needles, to open her weary eyes on that understanding smile, was, however, some sort of pleasure. When Mrs. Tom heard that Byron was busy with carpenters and masons, putting up glass-houses and introducing a new system of tillage, she was not so much surprised as indignant. She had not gone in and out of Wastralls every day for so many years without becoming aware of the husband's disappointment and impatience. She understood that he, like her own Tom, had loved the land not the woman. He, however, had not been able to adapt himself and his life was a daily weariness. Though she allowed that the result was a judgment on him, she found it in her kind heart to wish that he could have had his way. The mad impatience which made him inaugurate far-reaching changes in anticipation of his wife's death, met, however, with scant sympathy from Mrs. Tom. A woman of moderate councils, whose very civility sprang from a sincere kindliness, the fact that Byron went so far as to tear up Sabina's honeysuckle while she yet breathed, put him beyond the pale. When the talk reached Mrs. Tom's ears, Sabina was still undecided whether to attempt the weary climb back to health or slip quietly away. The loss of her limbs inclined her to the latter course. She could not bear to contemplate life as a cripple. The thought of the fields over which she had ridden, of the market-place in which she had bought and sold, of the whole familiar countryside, was unbearable. Better lie quiet up at Church Town than go limping where she had once leaped and run. Mrs. Tom, coming into the ward at a moment when Sabina, with "I don't want any o' that old traÄde," was refusing good nourishment, decided that the truth might be as good for her as a tonic. "How be 'ee to-day, S'bina, how be gettin' on?" The injured woman looked at her with weary bloodshot eyes. "I dunno. I don't feel very special." Isolda seated herself on a cane chair facing the patient and took out her knitting. As she made not only her husband's stockings but those of her five daughters, she had always one on hand. "What do 'ee feel like?" "My dear life, I suffer like a Turk. I'd soon be dead as livin'." Mrs. Tom's face expressed her sympathy. "'Av 'ee got much pain?" "Yes, I ache something awful—in my legs." The other stared in surprise. "In yer legs? But you 'aven't got any." "Well, seem like I 'av them." Mrs. Rosevear laughed. "If that doesn't beat everything!" The sufferer moved restlessly on her pillow. "I'd rather be out on Gool-land,[*] than like I be now." [*] Gulland, a barren islet off the north coast of Cornwall. Looking at the hollows of the face once so apple-round, Isolda's heart misgave her. "I feel," continued Mrs. Byron in a dragging voice, "that I can't stand much more of this." "Nonsense, you'll cheat the crows yet." "Don't care whether I do or no. What is there for a woman like me? I've neither chick nor chield." "Well, there's Leadville to think about." Sabina sighed. "He'd cut a poor shine without me; but there—I dunno..." her voice trailed away into silence. Mrs. Tom's heart began to beat more quickly. "Well," she ventured, "he's workin' pretty and 'ard now." "He's got to keep the thing going," assented the wife. "He's doin' more'n that." Sabina's voice was still languid, but she showed a little interest. "What's ah doin' then?" "A cart come over from Wadebridge o' Thursday piled up wi' boxes and bags. Now just let me turn this heel." "Boxes and bags?" murmured the wife. "Good gracious! What's ah going to do with that?" After a few seconds given to her work, Mrs. Tom looked up. "He's teelin' the li'l medder wi' sugar-beet." The other's mind, dulled by suffering and loss of blood, took time to grasp the significance of this statement. "Sugar-beet?" she said, slowly, "but I'm goin' to 'ave the li'l medder teeled wi' dredge-corn." "You bain't there to give the orders." Sabina's lips took a firmer line. "I won't 'av it teeled wi' that new-fangled traÄde. You tell'n so." "Better tell'n yourself; I reckon—" She glanced shrewdly at her friend, for Sabina's unexpected illness had put new thoughts into Mrs. Tom's head. She was not greedy, but the most self-effacing creature will scheme a little for its young. "I reckon he'd do far different if you wasn't 'ere." "You think so?" Sabina shut her eyes the better to realize the situation. The news had been stimulating, and when she spoke again her voice was stronger. "I don't think as I'm goin' round land this time, Isolda." "I do hope an' pray as you aren't, my dear soul." "What else is ah doin'?" "Tom went down to see'n last night, thought as 'ee might be lonely in that big 'ouse all by 'imself; and Leadville was tellin' 'im he didn't believe in the way missis was farmin'. He'd like to try and see what the land'd grow best. He said—terbacca." "Terbacca? I should think he was maÄze. Never heard tell of such a thing. Whatever next is he gwine grow?" "He think the land would grow vegetables as 'tis the right sort o' soil and that 'tis wasted in corn." Sabina gave a feeble snort. "What do 'ee know about soils—a sailor!" She shook her head. "As long as I live he'll never have nothing to do with Wastralls." Mrs. Rosevear's needles clicked in agreement. "As long as you do live, S'bina." "Iss, why not me livin'? I 'ent older than he is, and there's no reason I should turn up my trotters first; at least I don't see why I should." "We'll all live till we die, sure enough; but it's been touch and go lately with you." "I'll live in spite of'n," said Mrs. Byron. "I hope you will, my dear, but sposin' you don't?" Mrs. Byron returned her friend's glance with a startled look. "Ah, iss, sposin'." She saw at last what her death would have meant both to her husband and her kinsfolk. "Well, I make no promises, but I do see now where I'm to. Iss, I can see through a very small hole, and I'm not too old to learn." Sabina had been effectually roused. Possessions that are menaced increase in value and as long as Leadville was making changes at Wastralls she would not want to die. "There's things as you can't alter," she said, thinking Sabina should be prepared for what could not now be helped. "What can't I alter?" "He've pulled up the honeysuckle by the porch." A fugitive colour dyed the wan cheeks. "Have 'ee now, the old villain? Whatever for? The honeysuckle as my poor old mother planted." Sabina's thoughts were finally diverted from her own trials and, lame or not, she was now only too anxious to stop this meddling with what was hers. "He's always after something new." Leadville could not have known that she treasured the climber. She was sure he would not knowingly have hurt her feelings. Whenever he did anything that to her was incomprehensible, Sabina put it down, not to design, but want of thought. She was of those who cannot see into the heart of a matter. "I like the old things best," she continued, and her eyes, those impersonal eyes, which were the blue of a December sky, shone with new purpose. "We'll have no more of they doin's. Where's that traÄde Nurse wanted for me to take? I feel I could drink some now." Byron, busy putting his plans into execution, nearly forgot on what their success hung. He had thrown himself into the work with the eagerness of a man in all ways extreme. He was living his dream and he was happy. After one or two non-committal post cards from Dr. Derek, however, came the news that, though her husband would be wise not to build on it, Mrs. Byron was holding her own. By this time some of the glass-houses were up, and the land below the house, which should have been in dredge-corn, was planted with sugar-beet. For the first time Byron felt a qualm of anxiety. He had not imagined it possible Sabina could survive the amputation of her legs. In giving leave for the operation to be performed, he had believed that he was hastening—with the doctor's kind assistance—the inevitable end. With a sinking heart he now began to wonder whether he had underestimated her vitality. What if, after all, she should recover? She was a sound, harmonious being, whom exposure and a simple strenuous life had only toughened. If any one could survive so terrible an accident, it would be she. That day he did his work in perturbation of spirit. He had no illusions as to what Sabina would think of the changes he was making. She would be stubbornly opposed to every one of them and Sabina's stubbornness was the force with which for so long he had had to reckon. A gleam of hope came with the thought that even if she recovered she would no longer be able to manage the farm. A poor cripple could not get about the fields, especially such up-and-down fields as those of Wastralls. She would be obliged to appoint a deputy and who so suitable as the man she had married? He cursed the impatience which had led him astray. If he had waited, the matter would have arranged itself in accordance with his wishes. Now, if Sabina recovered, it was only too likely that she would make it difficult for him to carry out his schemes. He tried to imagine what form her opposition would take, but though he had lived beside her for so long, the writing on the wall was in characters he could not interpret. To add to his anxieties the man was finding himself short of money. One of his counts against Sabina was that when they married she had refused to have her banking account put in their joint names. "Tedn' a woman's business to sign cheques," he had told her in a futile attempt to bring her to his way of thinking. She smiled as at a good joke. "I don't think you ever signed a cheque in your life." "I didn' marry yer for yer money," he assured her hastily. "Don't bother yerself about it, then. I done business for my old dad all the time you was to sea; and I'd be a pretty malkin if I didn' knaw more about signin' cheques than you do." "I'm told I ought to be able to draw cheques on your account." "Shouldn't listen to all you 'ear. If you want money, go and work for't. I'll lend 'ee any to start with." "There never ought to be two purses between man and wife. They should share alike." "When you got something," she assured him, "we will." In spite of her words she had not been niggardly. As much as Byron asked for he received and, believing that all was rightly his, he had taken as much as he wanted. He had seen, however, no reason to save; and now found himself unable to pay for what he had ordered. Sabina was too ill to be approached, and when he took the tale of his difficulties to Hember he found Tom Rosevear civil, as usual, but evasive. He did not say much, but it was evident the 'improvements' did not meet with his approval; that he could not understand Byron's initiating them while his wife lay at death's door. The trifling loan which the farmer succeeded in raising did not do more than pay the wages of the extra workmen, the carpenters and masons he was employing; and, as time passed, and his agent at Wadebridge began to press for the money owing, Byron found himself awkwardly placed. Money he must have, but when he tried to raise it on his expectations he discovered that the security was not considered good. The obvious course was to tell Liddicoat to send the bills in to Sabina; but this, as he well knew, would entail on him unpleasant consequences. Meanwhile the injured woman was slowly gaining ground. Isolda's tale had roused in her, not only the will to live, but the will to overcome, as far as might be, the disabilities of her condition. In the days when she was accounted handsome she had been without self-consciousness; and she did not develop it now that she knew herself to be "a poor remnant." What were looks when the heart was beating warmly and the mind was clear? Her mutilation being the result of accident, it did not occur to her that any one—any one to whom she looked for love and tenderness—might find her repulsive. After the operation was performed Byron had inquired after her welfare, but had not come to see her. Although so happily occupied he felt at times a little uneasy. Sabina's attraction for him had been her flawless health and the amputation aroused in him, not pity, but a faint stirring of repugnance. He sent her a message that he "must be on the spot to see to things," and, undemonstrative herself and not yet instructed as to the nature of the "things," she had accepted his excuse. A day came, however, when he felt that he must overcome his unwillingness to see for himself the difference in her which the operation had made. Liddicoat was pressing for payment, and he had other liabilities. He rode into Stowe, therefore, rode at his usual breakneck pace and, having stabled his horse, called at the hospital. Although his visit was unexpected, Sabina had had the long leisure of a slow convalescence in which to arrange her thoughts and make plans for the future. Leadville had tried to take advantage of her being ill. He had thought that when she recovered she would accept the changes he had introduced. He had acted like a child without thought of the consequences. The foolish fellow! Sabina was not angered. She had always been an indulgent wife, and she could overlook this attempt to steal a march on her, as she had overlooked his many efforts to get the management of the farm into his hands. Looking neither to the right nor to the left, Byron dragged his reluctant feet up the ward. Sabina, who disliked sewing, and did not care to read, had been lying back on her pillows, her hands folded on the white sheet. As she caught sight of the well-known figure; a little flush of surprised pleasure spread over her pale cheeks. She was very glad to see him. In her eyes his breadth and heaviness, the strong growth of his black hair, the jut of his square chin, were so many attractions. She had always admired his strength; and the evidences of it in deep chest and hairy skin were to her taste. She could have wished, however, that he would look up, would answer her ready smile, instead of staring before him like a bull who is not quite certain whether the people he is encountering are friend or foe. She had no suspicion that every step her husband took was more unwilling than the last. The moment came when he must look at her. His furtive glance swept in one unhappy second the bed and its occupant, then he bent forward and gave her a clumsy kiss. The truth was not as bad as he had feared. By some deft arrangement of the clothes the bed gave a false impression. As far as appearances went the woman in it might have been in possession of her limbs. Byron, escaping the shock he had expected, experienced, however, one of a different kind. The face he touched was indeed that of his wife, but it was changed. Sabina's red-gold hair, which had been rippling and abundant, the very symbol of her gay vitality, had lost its colour. When he last saw her a bandage had concealed it, now, white as that bandage, it framed a face lined and haggard. "Why—my dear life—" he stammered, staring, "'ow your 'air 'av altered." She put a hand to her head. "Yer didn't know? Well, can't be 'elped." "Yer 'air was awful pretty." The change troubled him vaguely; he was not pleased to find that his wife, who had kept her looks beyond the average, should have aged. "I reckon I'm as God made me, but I was never one to trouble about my looks." She sought for words to express her thought. "Red 'air or white, I'm the same." "Iss," he said and continued to look at her thoughtfully. She might be the same woman, but her effect upon others, and in particular on himself, would be different. "'Ow be 'ee?" "I've 'ad a prettily and draggin' time, but now I'm doin' grand." He uttered a rough sound of no meaning, but she took it to be congratulatory. "I shall be up afore long." "Up?" he murmured, glancing sideways at the bed. "I shall get Raby Gregor to make me a little trolly so that I can get about." He pushed his chair farther away. In spite of appearances she was not a woman, but the distorted remnant of one. A shiver ran down his spine. "You bain't thinkin' of—of tryin' to get about?" "Me not gettin' about? Iss. You've never seen me settin' down wi' me 'ands folded." "But you'll find things'll be different now," he stammered. He thought of the trolly as some sort of wheel-chair. He had no conception of his wife's inventiveness or of her indifference to comment. "You've been a strong woman, but you can't look to be that again." The resolute look he knew so well came into Sabina's eyes, and for a moment he doubted whether after all she would not conquer her disabilities. "I bain't strong now," she said, "but a month or two'll make all the difference. I'll soon be up and about again." The momentary doubt passed. "I wouldn't make too sure of that, then," he told her. The fact that Wastralls had not so much flat land as would make a football field was reassuring. No wheel-chair, whatever the power of its directing will, could climb up and down those fields. "I'm hopin'," said Sabina obstinately, "to teel Wastralls as I 'av before." "We must see 'ow you do frame." "Bain't a matter of gettin' about," she continued, guessing his thoughts. "I know Wastralls like the palm of my hand, every 'itch and stitch of it, and the 'inds'll carry out my orders. I can trust old George Biddick to see as the others do their work. I've planned it all." "And me?" asked Leadville grimly. "My dear feller, you don't like farmin', you wouldn't make no 'and at it, you an' your old rigmaroles." "I c'd teel Wastralls so as it brought in double what you get now." She shook her head. "You bain't goin' to try." It was as well for her peace of mind that eyes cannot speak. That this mutilated trunk of a woman should still be in a position to withstand him! His great chest heaved with bitter emotion, but he did not answer. "Come," said Sabina peaceably. "Tell me how things is going." He stared out of the window until he had mastered himself sufficiently to speak. "I came to ask mun for what you aw Liddicoat." "Aw Liddicoat?" A smiling light came into her eyes. "How much do I aw'n?" "Couldn't tell 'ee for a pound or two; but if you was to draw out a cheque for me I could full'n soon as I get 'ome." "You send me in the bill and I'll pay'n after I've checked'n." Byron's face darkened. He would not be able to hide from her much longer the changes he had attempted. What did it matter? She could only be angry. He thought he would be glad if she were. "There's the men's money—three weeks 'awin'." "I give'n Isolda yesterday. I expect she's paid'n by now." "You ought to 'ave give it to me and I could 'av paid'n." "So I should 'av," she answered peaceably, "if you'd been in to see me. But I give it to Isolda instead." He was not to be placated. "Looks mighty queer you don't trust me with the money. I've to keep the place goin' and if I don't pay the 'inds who's to know I'm maister?" "There's no need, for you bain't maister. You may blate morning till night, you won't 'av Wastralls, no never for, come to that, I don't trust 'ee." "S'bina!" She held up her hand. "You do take too much on your own 'ead." He knew then that the tale of his imprudent labours had run before him and that she was expressing her disapproval. She was not angry with him; a mother is not angry when she sequestrates a forbidden toy. "I always thought," he stammered, making no further mystery of the matter, "that we should grow sugar-beet." "An' you was welcome to try it—at Polnevas. Now come, it bain't too late to put the li'l medder in dredge-corn. You'd better see to't at once, or I'll 'av Tom do't." He cried out at that last humiliation and it was still the same cry, the cry his wife thought so unreasonable. "You'd put Tom Rosevear over me? You'd take away what belong to me?" "'Long to you? I should like to know 'ow it come yours." "You give it me, you give it me when we married." "Never." In his disappointment and rage he stumbled over his words. "You'll see, you'll see! Iss, you'll see whether I won't 'av it or no." "'Tis mazedness of 'ee to think so," she answered. "Come, be sensible. I'll pay for these old fads of yours and you can pile'n away where you mind to. I'll pay this once, but 'twas a fulish game for 'ee to play and maybe you'll see that before you'm done." |
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