CHAPTER XIIISabina's mental attitude towards events and persons was often one of surprise and protest. It was now."What 'av I done that 'e should treat me like this?" she thought. Her right-doing was the outstanding thing in her life and could not be missed. It was like a bonfire on a hill. If the wages of sin were death, the reward of righteousness which she deserved, should be love and faith. Laying claim to this reward, her poor mind, groped in a long bewilderment. For love and faith had been withheld.Leaning for support on the stone shelf, gathering the dark and quiet and coolness of the linhay into her soul, her tears gradually dried up and as gradually her personal feeling, her bitterness and resentment, gave place. She had asserted a claim, had protested as a wife against the outrage of Leadville's words, had protested as a child against that flourishing of the wicked as a green bay-tree; but the habit of her mind was impersonal and very kind. Dispirited, sad, almost despairing, she yet could not do other than return to it."Poor chap's that worried, 'e dunno what 'e's sayin'," she told herself. Her lack of children was an oversight she had done her best to remedy. She made for Leadville the blind tender excuses of her maternal heart. "I knaw 'e don't mean it.' Ye'll be all right in a day or two's time. Always been a good-livin' feller and I'm sure 'e wouldn't 'urt a flea. I don't belong to mind..." a quivering nerve gave her the lie.... "But I do, I do mind," she said piteously, "'e's all I got. No, and tedn't that. 'Tis I do love'n."Drawing water she bathed her eyes. The burst of emotion had left her drained of strength but supper was yet to get. "I did mean to fry for 'is supper," she said, the word covering as many varieties of appetizing food as can be cooked in a frying-pan, "but I don't think I will, I feel so tired and weary, I think us'll have to manage with what we've got." She glanced along the shelf. "That bit of cold meat'll do. 'E do dearly love a bit of fat pork."Although her tears, easing the strain on her nerves, had left her less apprehensive, the kitchen still loomed disquieting. "'Tis because I made a fool of myself," she said, bracing herself for further effort.Leadville was in his old place by the window. He neither moved nor spoke, seemed indeed too much absorbed in thought to be aware of her. Sabina felt relieved. She told herself she had had enough of his tantrums for one day: let them have the meal in peace and get off to bed. Putting the meat on a clean dish she began to lay the cloth but, as she moved about, a dim suspicion flitted through her mind that she was being watched. She dismissed it hurriedly and went on with her work, but it returned. Though Leadville appeared lost in thought, no sooner did she turn her back than his heavy lids lifted and his eyes followed her with a furtive question. She felt them on her, felt in his glance a quality which made her uneasy. What did he want to know? Why couldn't he put his question into words? Why should his following and thoughtful glance remind her of the way a cat, crouching, watches a bird? She was sure he was watching, yet not quite sure. Turning sharply she fixed brave blue eyes on his face, but immediately he looked away. He was not watching her, he was occupied with his own dark and brooding fancies.The blank unconsciousness of his gaze was reassuring. She had been mistaken, fanciful. How foolish of her! Well, she was tired, she could not help it if she did fancy things. She had been through a lot that day and it had shaken her. Perhaps too the lamp had something to say to her fancies. It was not burning well and, while a good light cheered and encouraged, a jumping insufficient one bred more than shadows. Mrs. Byron went into the linhay for scalded cream, for syrup and the cocoa-jug, but as she passed her husband she felt that if he did not quite look at her, she was yet the centre of his thoughts. And he was looking. Her back was towards him, her unprotected back, and his glances were like arrows. The hair crisped on the woman's head. What did this furtive watching mean? This down-dropping look which, when unobserved, followed and considered? Leadville was sitting back in the corner, his head resting against the wall and, though his heavy features wore the expression habitual to them, his eyes were no longer filmed with inward brooding. Sabina, wandering over the moors had once stooped to look along a deserted mine-shaft and, in the darkness, had seen two round eyes, eyes of green fire, eyes which though distant had been full of a wild menace. They had stared out at her, threatening her advance and, so inimical were they, that she had left the mine-shaft unexplored. Leadville's eyes reminded her of the savage daunting thing from which she had retreated. "I wish 'e wouldn't watch me like that," she said, lingering over her errand, "it makes me feel any'ow; I wish—" her thoughts flew to Hember, Hember which, whenever she had been in a difficulty hitherto, had come to the rescue—"I wish I'd let Richbell come down."A candle stood on the furnace and, by its light, Mrs. Byron searched the upper shelf for a jug of which she stood in need. During her long convalescence she had suffered from sleeplessness but, as her health improved, so had her nights. She put the latter down, however, to the fact that she had formed the habit of drinking a cup of hot cocoa as soon as she was in bed. A warm drink at night, a nourishing, non-stimulating drink which needed care in preparation was, she had felt, more likely to bring a return to normal conditions than patient waiting on the mysterious processes of nature. The cocoa-jug, brown, high-waisted, girdled by a gold line, stood a little behind the other pitchers. In her haste that morning, Gray had pushed it back and, the shelf being high, her aunt had some difficulty in recovering it. The effort to reach it distracted her mind and, when she returned to the kitchen, she was thinking more of the healing effects of cocoa than of the tiresome ways of husbands.On one side of the range hung a small square mirror, such as can be bought of any gipsy pedlar for a shilling; and as she leaned forward to put on the kettle she caught sight of her face. Used to rubicund cheeks below bright eyes, she was surprised to see that, though her colour was fixed, it had lost its warm tone and that her lips were a bluish grey."I bin frightened," she told herself, "I knaw 'tis fulishness of me but I can't 'elp it. Pretty mawkin I be, fancyin' things like that." The eyes in the mirror were strong and encouraging, the grey lips smiled at her. Here was a tried comrade who knew what she had to endure and who sympathized—who sympathized as no one else could! Sabina was captain of her soul and could rely on it for strength and for support; yet with her reviving courage came a hint of the old discomfort. On returning from the linhay she had found Byron staring at his knees. Now that her back was turned to him she felt—and the feeling sent a quick shudder through her—she felt that he was at his trick of watching. She felt it, then suddenly she knew, for in the depths of the mirror was another face, a face which had fixed narrowing eyes on her; and these eyes travelled over her, considering her, asking a strange inhuman question.She swung the trolly round in an access of nervous fear but that inimical glance had slipped away and Leadville was once more staring blankly at his knees. Mrs. Byron remained for a moment waiting, but he neither stirred nor looked. He had been on the verge of making the discovery he sought and her sudden movement, scattering his thoughts, had angered him. If she would go on with her work, the thing that was eluding him, would creep back and this time he would grasp it. He sat like one in a trance, focusing his mind on a dimly seen spot, a spot of dreadful knowledge.Sabina manoeuvred the car so that she no longer had her back turned to the dark figure on the bench. To make the cocoa while in a sideways position was awkward, but the defenceless attitude had become impossible. She must know what was happening on the other side of the room. Profoundly disturbed, she yet measured the spoonfuls of cocoa with a steady hand. As Gray would not share the beneficial draught that night her aunt was mechanically careful to make only half the usual quantity. The lavish hand does not pile up a balance at the bank.As Mrs. Byron set the jug of cocoa on the stove, in order that it might be kept hot till she was ready for it, Leadville broke the silence. He did not speak, but once more he laughed, and this time his was the satisfied laugh of a man who after long endeavour has found that of which he is in search.His wife stared. "'Ow you made me jump," she said, a little breathlessly. A quality in the laugh, a certain sinister satisfaction, had made her flesh creep. What was it that had pleased him, that by his secret watching he had discovered? She tried to shake off the conviction of his strangeness. "Dunno what's come over me. I spose 'e can laugh at 'is own thoughts; but it's a funny thing, it makes me all goosey flesh."Conquering an inclination to go out of the room, to leave Leadville to his secret satisfactions, she rolled herself to the table. "I should think you was feeling so leary as a grey'ound by this time," she said and, by speaking of the commonplace, would have relieved the tension. The queerness of Leadville's behaviour might after all be due to hunger for, as far as she knew, he had not had any food since morning.The man cleared his throat. "There's no butter on the table," he said, looking past her at something on the other side of the room."Gray's taken every bit to market." His habit being to eat without comment what was set before him, Sabina felt a dim surprise that he should have asked for butter."She 'aven't. I see some on the shelf."To ask him to fetch it did not occur to her. Turning the handle of the little car she went back to the linhay. It was possible that Gray, thoughtful for others, had put some aside.As the trolly disappeared behind the door it was as it a hand swept from Byron's features the mask which hitherto had shrouded his resolve. Obscure, unrecognized, it had lain for many a day behind his everyday thoughts. The general upheaval had thrust it forward until it shone naked in a dreadful candour. So long had it been familiar that it came tame to the man's seeking hand. He knew at last what he must do. Sabina making the cocoa had shown it him.Getting up from the bench and treading carefully—he whose step was always light—he tiptoed over to the wall cupboard. It yawned before him, a darkness hollowed in the solid masonry and with unerring certainty, as if his hand had gone that way in dreams, it fell on that which it sought, a little ribbed blue phial, with an orange label. The last occasion on which he had used it, had been when he adjudged Shep to be old and useless. The bottle was only a quarter full, and he felt sorry that he had wasted any of the precious contents on the dog. Would the quarter be sufficient for his purpose? For a moment he hung uncertain, but the passions which were riding him to destruction forced him to take the risk. He heard Sabina crossing the floor of the linhay and the repugnance with which she inspired him rose like nausea in his throat. He went blind with hatred, the hatred so long repressed, that primitive hatred of the under-dog. As one pressed for time, he uncorked the bottle and held it to the jug of cocoa. The colourless fluid gurgled as it flowed over the blue rim and the sound, striking through the man's absorption, woke in him the beginnings of fear. Even now, she might be able to come between him and success, this necessary, intolerably-longed-for success. He stared with wild eyes at the linhay door. If she had heard, if she came in and in her high brave way faced him and accused him, he was done. To use violence to Sabina was not in him. He could only work against her in secret, get her at a disadvantage, strike from behind. If she found him out, he would not dare any more, he would be beaten and it would break him. His spirit acknowledged that there was a limit.He listened but Sabina was still moving from shelf to shelf on her fruitless errand. He grew conscious that the sweat was running into his eyes. Raising a hand, a hand foul with seal's blood, to wipe it from his forehead, he left a brown smear in its place.The drops fell hissing on the red-hot coals and, out of his other hand, Byron dropped that ominous blue phial into the fire. A splutter and crackle of flame, louder than any of the man's furtive movements, spat out at him. Terrified he turned to the box beside the hearth, a strong old box which had come in from the sea and was now used to hold driftwood. From it he snatched thick pieces and thin queer-shaped bits of old dead ships, of their gear and their furniture, and piled them on the tell-tale bottle. When Mrs. Byron returned from her unsuccessful search, he was holding his trembling hands before the blaze and the flames were leaping over the heap of sea-rimed fuel."Mercy!" cried she, at the sight of what seemed to her careful mind a waste of good wreck, "you'll catch the chimbly afire. Us don't want a big fire, 'tis near bedtime, now."She rolled forward as if to remove a log but Leadville stood his ground. "Leave'n go. If I didn't want it, I shouldn't ha' put it there. I'm cold."For a man who wore the same clothes, winter and summer, who had never cared to possess an overcoat, this was a curious assertion. Sabina, observing that his hands shook, began to think he must be on the verge of an illness. If so, it would account for the general strangeness of his conduct."Please yourself," she said and rolled the trolly over to the table. "I couldn't find the butter anywhere, but Isolda has promised to send some down in the morning. Wud yer like a bit o' dripping?" She placed a small china dish heaped with pork dripping near her husband's plate. "Come on, make 'aste," she said, "supper's ready."With his back to her and with those darkly stained hands still spread to the blaze, he muttered that he could not eat."You'll very soon be knocked up if you don't eat something," she said kindly. "Won't yer 'ave a bit o' this pork?""If I did I should bring me life up."Concerned for his health she continued to press him. "Will 'ee 'av a drop of beer if I fetch it?""I don't want anything.""Well, couldn't 'ee drink a cup of my cocoa?"For a moment the world heaved dizzily about the man. He stumbled forward a space. "Of your—of your cocoa—I didn't—" he stammered, his spirit turning craven; but Sabina's innocent uncomprehending face, turned sideways from the table, arrested him on the brink; and he swung off into a wild, incoherent mutter, which presently resolved itself into oaths, such as he had not used since his seafaring days. He could not stop, the words poured from him like steam out of a safety-valve. Even Sabina, to whose common-sense point of view swearing was mere harmless breath, was taken aback. To surliness she was accustomed, cursing of a mild order was the male way of expressing gratitude for the gift of speech, but this? Turning in the wicker cone she looked at him searchingly and this look, puzzled and seeking to understand, brought him to his senses. He stammered, choked over his words and flinging himself into Old Squire's red-cushioned chair bade her 'leave him be.'"Poor old sinner, 'e dunno what to do by 'isself," she thought excusingly. "Like a bear wi' a sore 'ead 'e is. Well, I better leave'n be."She drew the pork towards her and cut it. She was reconsidering her decision to wait till morning before telling her husband that Gray was definitely beyond his reach. If his queerness and irritability were due to hope deferred it would be merciful to put him out of his misery, to give him the final blow. She glanced at the figure in the arm-chair. Leadville was sitting forward, his elbows on his knees, his head with its strongly growing black hair sunk between his hands. He looked unapproachable and the saying about 'sleeping dogs' occurred to her.If she were to make an effort, were to tell him, she would certainly suffer for it. He would treat her to some sort of scene and she was tired. She could not remember when she had felt so tired. Her back ached and her head ached, she had even a whimsical feeling that her legs ached.She would not tell him now. The news trembling on the tip of her tongue should wait till, strengthened by her night's rest, she were able to take his anger and disappointment for granted.She found that she was hungry. What a blessing there was always to-morrow, with a fence of sleep shutting off one day and its troubles from the next. What she needed was a good supper and a long night's rest. Thank goodness, Richbell would be down before it was light. She, Sabina, could lie abed until the pains had gone out of her bones.In the quiet room the only sounds were the slight movements of the figure at the table, the tinkle of a fork against china, the crackle of dry wood in the grate. Once a tiny explosion, a breaking of heated glass, was audible; but, at the same moment, Leadville rose with a loud scrape of his chair."You'm eatin' like a 'adger," he said, in a tone of suppressed irritability and, taking down his gun, began to clean it. The energy of his movements was almost violent. By this oiling and rubbing he was easing the strain on his nerves. Mould and rust grow in that damp climate like the Giant-killer's bean and Leadville rubbed and polished till the barrel was gleaming darkly in the dull light of the wall lamp, till it caught a red glint from the flaming driftwood."What be yer gwine to do with your gun?" asked Sabina taking quiet note of this outburst of energy. "Any wild fowl down?"At Christmas stranger birds, sooty-plumaged, web-footed, delicate-fleshed, came in large numbers to the north coast and all men, hind and farmer alike, went out to 'get a duck for dinner.'The relief of hearty movement seemed to have oiled Leadville's tongue for, staring down at the last specks of rust, he said dreamily, "I used to think as one day I should shet myself with'n.""Whatever was 'ee gwine do that for?" She had the practical person's contempt for extravagant talk, moreover she had listened to this threat before, had even expressed her opinion that there 'was cleaner ways o' dying.' She began to stack plates and dishes on a tray."If you can't 'av what you wanted," said he, still speaking as if only half conscious of what he said, "what's the good of livin'?""If you can't 'av what you want," retorted Sabina, "you should make the best of a bad bargain.""No," he said simply, "I bain't made that way."She shook her head over his childishness. "You'm a very covechous man," she said. "If you wanted a farm so bad as that, why didn't you rent'n?"The light of the fire was reflected in his dark eyes, a spark in the blackness. He had put the gun back over the door and was sitting forward, his gaze on the burning wood. "I didn't want nothing but my own," he said with unalterable conviction. "I'd a right to Wastralls and 'twas just your oogliness denyin' me of it."Sabina smiled. How foolish he was, how unreasonable! Just a big child."Did you marry me," she inquired, thinking to clinch the matter and her voice was the voice of one who makes allowance for a boyish fancy—"did you marry me or the land?"For a moment he did not answer, then the truth which he had lived for twenty years, forced its way out. "I married 'ee for the land," he said quietly.But Sabina had her memories. Let him say what he would she could not doubt his young sincerity."And now," he added, "now I wish I 'adn't."Ah, that was it—'now.' She had been loved. She could recall the days of courtship, the first years of their union, sweet words, little tender deeds, the potpourri of rose-leaves that a woman hoards. He had courted her for more than the land and, though he denied it, he could not shake her faith. The past was hers and, because it was dead, it would be always hers."You wish that I was gone?" she said. He had loved her once, now he fancied that he loved Gray. It was only a fancy and would pass. The past was hers and the future would be, but the present? Sabina had always lived in the present and it was the present which had betrayed her."I wish we was never married, I wish you," he hesitated for a word, "I wish you would let me go."She had been clearing the table. Her hands worked in the familiar way. She collected cruet, knives, forks and put them in the appointed places, but without knowing that she had lifted a finger. "You wish I would let you go?" she said incredulously. "You don't mean what you say, Leadville. I'm sure you don't. You'm vexed now, you've 'ad things to try you to-day and you don't know what you'm sayin' of; you'll be better in the mornin'." She had not been able to let his words pass without a protest, the protest of a still hopeful heart. Surely he would deny them."I wish," he affirmed heavily, "you would let me go."The difficult tears rose to her eyes and her chin trembled. "My dear," she said and her stable law-abiding spirit was behind the words, "you knaw we'm married. It's a funny thing after all these years you want to be let go."But he persisted. "If I was to clear out of this...""Go—go away?" she stammered, as if his previous words had been a meaningless ejaculation. "Go right away? Whatever for?""I bin 'ere all these years and I 'aven't been 'appy. A man want a little 'appiness in's life.""Oh, Leadville, don't say such things. I've done my best to make you 'appy and comfortable.""You couldn't do it," he said and added with finality, "you wasn't the right one."The tears were running down her face, her poor quivering face which to his eyes looked so old, so unattractive. "I've done my best—my best.""If I was to clear out of this..." he said, returning to what occupied his mind. Why could she not believe him, realize that for her own sake, she must let him go? Even now it was not too late. He glanced at the brown jug on the stove—not too late yet."No," she cried, "no, don't 'ee go away.""One of us got to go, then."But she had found the answer, the word of power. "Not—not till death us do part," she responded."Aw," he said, "and that's it. Till death us do part," and he repeated the words as if they were the chorus of a song already sung, the refrain of a chant known long ago and until then forgotten. "Till death us do part."He had spoken throughout as if hardly conscious of his words, but now a spurt of irritation, irritation at her folly, shook him. "You and your ways!" he cried harshly. "'Tis you that's responsible. You drove me to do things I wouldn't do."Relieved by his return to this more ordinary mood Sabina's courage rose. "'Tis your own self that 'arnessed the 'arse," she said with greater confidence. "I've 'ad nothing to do with it. My 'ands is clean."The man's inconsequent attention was caught by her last words. Glancing stupidly at his hands he saw to his surprise, and swiftly growing consternation, that they were dark with blood. The minor events of the afternoon—the slaughter of the seal, its skinning, the 'running out' of the oil, had been forgotten. He could see no reason, no reason but the one, for this significant stain. "Mine 'edn't," he cried shaking them as if he would shake it off. "Can't think whatever this is!""Looks as tho' you got blood on them."His first shuddering dismay changed to fear. He glanced at her sidelong. "'Ow 'av I got blood on my 'ands, can yer tell me?""No, I can't." She also had forgotten the trifling incident of the seal. "But 'tis certainly blood."To a man in Leadville's confusion of mind, a confusion shot with flashes of clear thought, the age of miracles was not past. That the dark intention of his spirit should have been made supernaturally visible, did not seem impossible, not even improbable."Get out—blood?" he cried furiously. "'Tis only dirt. I'll go and wash them."Hurrying into the linhay he began to pump water over his hands, washing and re-washing them till they were red with cold, till not a speck of the betraying colour remained. The flow of the water, bright and unbroken, had a soothing effect on him. He watched it falling from the round mouth of the pump on to the grating, listened dreamily to it running out by the conduit under the flags; and with it his horror drained away, leaving him at peace. As the flow thinned to a trickle, like a child at innocent but mischievous play, he raised the green handle and brought another rush. The winter rains had filled the well and Mrs. Byron, though she wondered mildly what he might be doing, was too much occupied with her griefs to pay much attention.However stout a woman's common sense it crumbles before such simplicity as that of Leadville. Alleging a long unhappiness, he had begged for the freedom which should straighten out the tangle of his life. "If I was to clear out of this—" he had said.To accord it, was not in her. If their marriage was a mistake as he averred, and she could not grant that it was, the mistake once made must be accepted. They must, as she had said, 'make the best of a bad bargain.' Gray married and out of reach, Leadville would surely remember that when he had wandered into Trevorrick, like some flying creature into a garden, she had been the one, of all those rooted there who, opening her heart, had given him shelter. She could not take seriously that desire of his to spread his wings and lift himself once more into the blue. What was there for him, now that he was no longer young, but the security of the garden, the sheltering walls of that one heart?Sabina, hungry for an old age of peace and affection, turned in thought to a couple well known in Tregols, the Henwoods of Curyarnon. Married after a long courtship and the father of boys and girls, Mr. Henwood had yet had two sons by a woman of the village. Though the scandal was open the wife had chosen to ignore it and, in the end, he had gone back to her. Now, an example of senile devotion, they were tottering hand in hand down the gradual hill. Sabina envied them. Like Mrs. Henwood she felt that she could wait and, when the time came, forgive.The kitchen was always tidy, but some of the parcels that had been brought from Stowe still lay on the side-table and, rolling herself, in tired fashion, across the room she began to sort them. Cottons, needles, a roll of flannel, unbleached calico for the hams and a new account-book, they were speedily drafted into drawers and work-box; but behind the parcel of drapery lay an object, the purchase of which she had forgotten. For a moment she looked at it in sadness and uncertainty; then, with the faint dawnings of a smile. Gray had executed the commission with which she had been charged. She had bought the pipe, a good one with an amber mouthpiece, and it lay before Sabina on the blue and red table-cloth. Leadville smoked by fits and starts and, for some days, his foul and blackened pipe had lain untouched on the mantelshelf. With the thought of the man's material welfare she put the new pipe by the old. Let him go? Go where? He had no trade, no money and he was getting 'up in years.' Her kind heart saw him drifting on the tides of poverty, saw him submerged and she shook her head. For this reason and for every other, she must not let him have the freedom that he asked—it was too late.For a moment the oppression that was clouding her mind lifted on a sunset thought. She could imagine his surprise when he found the new pipe by the old, his pleasure and the word of thanks she would be accorded. By then he would know Gray was out of reach and though his vanity might suffer—not even now could the wife believe it was more than vanity—the pipe smoked and smoking sweetly, must remind him of the tried companion who for so many years had looked after his creature comforts, and given him with one exception, everything he asked.She must have patience.She was so tired that if she did not go to bed she felt she would sink away through cone and trolly, sink into nothingness. Lifting the jug of cocoa from the stove and carrying it with her, she went out of the kitchen and down the long passage to her room."Good night!" she called.CHAPTER XIVSabina's voice, not having been modified by the habit of rooms, had a resonant, carrying note. "Good night!" she had said and the sound, travelling out to the linhay, fell on Leadville's ears.Through the skylight in the high sloping roof, the moon was dimly sketching shelves and barrels, and the absorbed figure of the man. He stood, his eyes fixed on the swelling and diminishing flow of the water, his hand on the pump. The bell-like voice calling Good night, a good night to new days and the following years, broke the spell. The two short sounds did not, however, reach his mind as a word with a certain meaning. They were to him the beginning of a familiar sequence of sound. Tap, tap, tap, the hammer was at work again. A puzzled look came into his eyes and he drew his black brows together in the effort to understand who was knocking in—not nails, no, but large-headed brass tacks. He became aware, in some inward manner which yet was convincing, of a polished surface of light wood on which were two curving rows of round brass heads, two complete rows. The shaped board with the rows of cut clasps was oddly familiar. He had seen it before, but where? He struggled to retain the vision, to see more, but it broke into innumerable yellow points, specks of dancing light. He shook his rough head as if the lights were dazzling him and, turning away, began to dry his hands. From time to time he had had glimpses of wood and even of brass nails, but never so clear a vision. He wondered whether, now that the rows were complete to the last round head, the knocking would cease, this knocking which had haunted him for so long.In order to husband the lamp-oil Sabina, before going to bed, had lowered the wick, but Byron had a dislike of shadows and obscurity. Before he turned up the light, however, a furtive glance assured him the brown jug was gone from the stove.Its disappearance, though expected, gave him a shock. While he, in the linhay, had been oddly forgetful of the event he had prepared, the moment had come and passed, that moment so heavily charged with possibilities, the moment of the last chance. It was as if, having laid the train, another had touched off the fuse. The matter had been taken out of his hands and, though startled, he was conscious of relief. The thing was done.Old Squire's chair, which stood during the day to the right of the hearth, had been pushed against the wall. Sabina, tidying the room, had supposed that her husband would soon go to bed; he, however, was no more conscious of a desire for rest than if it had been morning. Replenishing the fire he sat down, but though the maker of the chair had shaped it cunningly, Byron neither leaned back in it nor relaxed his limbs.The catch of the door opening into the house was weak and, suddenly, the long passage that began at the kitchen and ended at the justice-room, was filled with whispering sounds. A breeze, wandering in, had lost itself in the darkness. It pulled at the handle until Leadville, sitting forward, his head sunk between his shoulders in the attitude of a bird of prey, his mind concentrated on the approaching and dreadful and longed-for end, looked up. For him the breeze was winged with fear. He fancied that the handle moved. Could Sabina be coming back for something she had forgotten? She had a fancy that she suffered from cold feet, that she must have a flagon of hot water in the bed. To Leadville this fancy had seemed part of her general unreasonableness."Yer laigs are gone," he had said irritably."As long as they're above ground-'they bain't gone.""Any'ow you can't 'av cold feet.""I tell yer, I can't sleep for 'em.""Well, what's the good of a 'ot jar at the bottom of the bed when you'm to the top?""I put the bottle," she had said obstinately, "where I feel my feet's to. That's where I feel cold."He remembered to have seen on the linhay shelf the old Hollands jar which was used as a hot-water bottle. Was she returning to fetch it? Was it her fingers that were moving the little brass door-knob? His fear grew until it mastered him. He had done with Sabina and she must not come back. He could not stand it. If she swung in on that loathly trolly and began to potter about, heating water, looking for the flagon, he felt that some containing wall would bulge and give and what was held up by it fall into the open."I should 'av to tell her," he said, staring at the handle. "Shouldn't be able to keep it in. 'Twould be out of me mouth before I knawed."On that coast a gale may be blowing great guns one moment and the next drop into silence. The land wind which had piled cove and bay with the welcome oreweed had died down during the day and, out of the north, had come a flock of small white clouds. They trailed on their unknown errand across the sky and behind them, like a sheep-dog, ran a fitful wind. It sang in the ears of the old house and Leadville, made aware of it, turned his eyes contemptuously from the spasmodically moving door-knob. "That's only the wind," he muttered.The rocky shelf on which Wastralls was built, lying behind Dark Head and lower than the ridges of the valley, lay also below the wind. A thickness on the turning earth it lay in an unnatural hush. On the beaches the tides roared and thundered. Above, but divided from the homestead by wide, clean, moonlighted space, the winds shrieked a warning; but the house, except for that one breath of disturbed and whispering sound, was very still. It kept a vigil. Byron, motionless in Old Squire's chair, knew that he too was waiting.A board, in which were bolt-holes, which had indeed been part of a ship wrecked long ago, creaked loudly, startling the watcher. With whirring note the old clock had told the hour, once, twice, but he had not marked it. He had been like one turned to stone. In him only one tract of consciousness had burned with life and this glow, fierce and steady, burned in the innermost place, in the darkness and silence that are beyond thought. Recalled to the surface, the man became conscious of numb limbs and an aching back. He stretched himself, a little and very cautiously. He was not anxious to draw attention to himself. With the same caution he put another log on the sinking fire. He had been waiting, for what he hardly knew; but the dream, the old secret dream to which his clumsy hands had given form and substance, was rising through the blackness and the silence, changing into a fact. As he leaned back in the Windsor chair, he was being shown a picture, a picture from which, if he could, he would have turned his eyes. He was looking into the big shadowy justice-room at the end of the passage, the room in which Sabina lay.He saw the grey walls, the little old windows curtained with white dimity and the four-poster which, for so long, had been the bed of bridal and of birth, the death-bed of a family. In it Old Squire had lain him down to sleep and then to die. In it his childless descendant was drawing her last breaths. Her last breaths! Byron saw them coming slowly, a mist on the cold air, more slowly and then no mist. Sabina was about to die. Die? He said the word softly to himself. His wife, the woman at whose side he had lived for so many years, was about to die. He shook his head over the word as something of which the meaning escaped him, which was portentous, which stirred him in a dim elemental way, but which he could not grasp. Sleep he could understand. Sabina asleep was something he had often seen. A healthy creature, once she had shut her eyes, she did not stir till morning. He was different, found it difficult to lose himself, slept lightly as a cat and dreamed. Day-dreams and night-dreams, he had lived in dreams; but Sabina...She was asleep now. She was sleeping dreamlessly and from this empty sleep she would not rouse. Daylight would broaden in the east, the farmyard stir with life, and feet would come and go in the house. Do what they might, however, she would not waken. He frowned, knitting his brows over the to-morrow which was about to dawn, the to-morrow in which Sabina had no part. That she who was so vigorously alive should thus have been wiped out, that she should have gone, not for a little time but for ever, was unthinkable and yet...A nerve vibrated with relief, with a slow thick satisfaction. Gone was she? In their long struggle then, he was the victor? He had come into the open, fought for the woman that he loved, the bit of land that was his 'by rights.' He had always had it in him to fight but not until driven to extremities had he shown his mettle. At long last he had proved that he and not Sabina was the one who counted, that fundamentally he was the stronger.And yet...The shallows of his mind were alive with darting thoughts. The long long contest had been declared in his favour, the adversary was not so much beaten as destroyed and yet, on the heels of his rejoicing, crept little yapping doubts.The vision of the justice-room, of that quiet figure in the quiet chamber, was for him repellently interesting. As long as he could imagine the fine mist of her breath, the rising and falling of her breast, he was only conscious of his approaching triumph. Time, however, brought a change, for now Sabina was more than quiet, she was still. Her blue eyes were frozen, she rested in a peace deeper than that of sleep and, whereas the sleeper is harmless...Though he did not yet understand, his satisfaction began to dwindle. He drew nearer to the hearth, to the warm living fire. The wind still shrieked a warning overhead but on the house, especially the part beyond the kitchen, a hush had fallen. Byron found the silence oppressive. If a mouse had come out of the wainscot and flitted bright-eyed about the floor, he would have welcomed it, but the place was empty even of minute and furtive life. The thick walls leaned together, brooding over stagnant space, over the dust of dead hopes, the smell and the suspicion of mould, of more than mould. They shut the man in with his dry husk of satisfaction, bade him observe it shrivelling before a new growth, a growth at which he dared not look, it seemed so closely to resemble fear.Yet—fear?In the unhappy past he had borne himself stoutly on the assumption that he was the stronger, that he had only to rise and assert himself. That very day he had put this contention to the proof and now Sabina, in her new stillness, was threatening—what was she threatening?If he were to smoke a pipe he would be more at ease! Pipes were associated in his mind with long dreams of Gray, when he had wandered over the springy turf of the headland, seen her hair in the brown weed of the pools, the curve of her brow in the gull's wing; when he had sat by the fire and his vision had been broken, like water, by the light passing of her feet. Smoking, he might be able to banish the stark figure in the great four-poster and the crowding thoughts connected with it, might be able to replace them with Gray. He rose to fetch the tobacco-jar. It stood among the bottles on the cupboard shelf and to get it he must turn his back upon the door into the passage, upon that door behind which lay a something against which, though he could put no name to it, he must be on his guard. For a moment he hung irresolute on one foot, then sank back in the chair. He could not go. Though such a brave fellow and so strong, he did not dare.During his intermittent labours he had slaughtered, as part of his work, every sort of farm creature. Sheep, pigs, bullocks, old and diseased animals, the wild-fowl that came over Trevorrick in the winter, the seals that haunted Morwen Cove. He had slaughtered as a duty. The creatures were, to him, food or refuse and he had killed them. He had also killed Sabina.He tried to think of her as so much dead flesh, an old animal, maimed, useless, and perverse; but though the distorted trunk of Sabina might be dead, the dominant spirit with which he had been for so many years in conflict, that he had not killed. The vision of Sabina's dead body and frozen eyes began to fade. Worse things were about than bodies and glazed sightless eyes.His wife had shown her affection for him by a cheery liking for his society, by an occasional shy caress. Although she used round terms she had been easy-tempered and if it had not been for Wastralls, that bone of contention, he would have had a good life with her. Sharp with the hinds, direct of speech, he had never seen her roused to wrath. She had told him once "It was not worth while being angry.""I don't believe as you could, not to say, lose yer temper.""Oh couldn't I, there's them that know; but it would be fulish to lose it for a trifle."From the respect with which the labourers treated her, Byron had realized that her cheeriness must cover depths. She had impressed the men with a sense of power that had been limited, comfortably, by the flesh.He found that he was trembling, that it needed all his strength to prevent his teeth from chattering. The fire had sunk to a heap of glowing ash and the December night was cold. With wary eye upon the door, he piled the grate high with logs, the last logs in the box.In the past he had often taken sly and secret advantage of Sabina's trust. With a word here, a gesture there, he had tried to undermine her authority, turn local feeling in his favour. He had not dared an open break for that would have meant, or he believed it would, the severance of their relations. At last, however, his furtive tentatives had been laid aside and the accumulated unhappiness of the years had found vent in one soul-satisfying dastard blow.In her blithe confidence Sabina had shut her eyes to the small disloyalties of the past. If she were aware of them she had, in her large-hearted way, forgiven. Now, in that grey and white room at the end of the passage, the parting of spirit from body must unroll before her the sordid past. She must learn that, after eating and drinking in domestic trust the food she had prepared, he had dropped poison in her cup.Once more he found that he was trembling. He glanced at the fire but blue and purple flames were licking round the logs; the dank air was shot with an increasing warmth and, in the centre of each little window-pane, was a star of gold light. He had shivered, not because he was cold, not because the wind out of the north was mourning as it fleeted with cloud and moonshine overhead; but because he realized that having slain the body he was afraid of the spirit he had released.Byron had not lived in the West without absorbing the beliefs of the countryside. He knew who in the hamlet had been 'piskie-led'n,' whose best horse had been inexplicably found dead, which bit of woodland was haunted. He had listened to the little feet that patter behind the wayfarer yet leave no prints on the soft sand and he had watched for the white rabbit that leaps and gambols on the bit of clear road by the graveyard, the rabbit that can be neither shot nor snared. With other of his neighbours, he did not care to pass sombre low-lying Treglyn after dark. The little ghost of an inconvenient child was said to rise out of the garden earth and Byron, at least, never caught sight of the house—a lurking house, set round with tamarisks—without remembering what of crime and horror had happened there, what still happened when the moon was at the full.Such a man was at the mercy of superstitious fear. The quietude in which at first he had waited had been due to weariness, to a reaction from the intense emotion which had preceded his act. This expectant calm, however, had gradually become shot with doubt. His mind had wakened to a new aspect of the matter. Attempting to wrest Wastralls from a hand of flesh and blood, he found in its place the clasp of spectral fingers.Byron, looking into the future saw a ghostly presence in the ancient house, saw it gliding on the old errands, pervading the rooms and passages. Would others see it too; would they, perhaps, perceive without seeing? He wondered whether Gray...?Would that dim ghost avenge itself on him by trying to come between him and Gray, by intruding on their tendertête-à-tête, by filling the maid's mind with foul suspicion?No tie is so close as that of blood and the women were of one family. Would Gray be sensitive to that flitting shadow? Behind the veils of the flesh, would spirit be able to communicate with spirit? Would the truth, whispered in every corner of the house, grow into a following fate? In time, when the maid had come to love him, she would glory in his having stopped at nothing to win her. But a first flicker is easily extinguished.The hour was late and, in his growing discomfort, his growing fear, Byron thought of his chill room at the top of the house. He went there for sleep and sleep meant the laying by of dread, it meant escape. He glanced at the door which hung, quivering now and again under the uncertain onslaught of the wind, between his lighted shelter and the dark. He was thinking of another door, the one that shut Sabina into the justice-room. If ne tried to make for his burrow, for that safe place he knew of, he must pass it. Could he? His mind answered the challenge with a quick defiance. Could he? Of course he could..He put his hands on the arms of the chair and sought to rise. He swayed his body forward, big head and broad deep-chested bulk; but under him his limbs failed. They hung leaden, lifeless. Not only had it become impossible for him to pass that farther door which stood sentinel by the foot of the stairs, but even to move. Escape through the gates of sleep? No, not by any gate.She, to whom the injury had been done, was become his judge. She knew, at last, that she had been married for her inheritance; endured as a man endures the mole on his face and finally, for the sake of another woman, pushed into the grave. Events, stripped of life's concealing leafage, would be bare to her informed considering eye. Sabina had been wronged from the first day of their meeting to the last. Always a swift clear creature, he thought of her as running through the midnight passage, intent on vengeance, merciless.The latch rattled suddenly, increasing the man's dread. He forgot the fitful wind, the faulty lock. His vivid imagination showed him, instead, a hand upon the door-knob, outlined for him in the night of the passage, a dim and bodiless greyness, told him the frail barrier of wood was all that stood between him and a just but awful vengeance. No wonder that mere flesh and blood shrank cowering, that to the guilty creature it was as if his parts were falling away from him, as if he were sinking into the thin unprotected shell of himself.A gust of wind tore across the wide peace of the sky; and a loose tile slipped to fall crashing on the roof of the porch. The sharp smash of glass let in the night, let in the wind and the heavy roar of the sea. Byron, drowning in superstitious terror strained his ears to catch, among the many sounds, that which should fulfil his dread anticipation; and as he waited, as he listened, the latch of the door slipped over the catch.Slowly the green door swayed to an impulse from the farther side. Cold air poured into the room from all the unwarmed chambers beyond the kitchen, from that great room at the end. The narrow strip of black began to widen ominously and, in Byron's guilty breast, it was as if his heart had ceased to beat. Between his lips, his dry tongue made a hoarse feeble sound, neither a cry nor a groan, but the utterance of a man in his extremity. The door swung creaking on its hinges and the flame in the ill-fed lamp leapt up and died. Above the other sounds, above that distant roar and the creaks and murmurs of an old draughty house, rose a heavy stumbling, the crash of a fall. The outer edge of fear, the limit of endurance had been passed and Byron had fallen in a swoon across the hearth.
CHAPTER XIII
Sabina's mental attitude towards events and persons was often one of surprise and protest. It was now.
"What 'av I done that 'e should treat me like this?" she thought. Her right-doing was the outstanding thing in her life and could not be missed. It was like a bonfire on a hill. If the wages of sin were death, the reward of righteousness which she deserved, should be love and faith. Laying claim to this reward, her poor mind, groped in a long bewilderment. For love and faith had been withheld.
Leaning for support on the stone shelf, gathering the dark and quiet and coolness of the linhay into her soul, her tears gradually dried up and as gradually her personal feeling, her bitterness and resentment, gave place. She had asserted a claim, had protested as a wife against the outrage of Leadville's words, had protested as a child against that flourishing of the wicked as a green bay-tree; but the habit of her mind was impersonal and very kind. Dispirited, sad, almost despairing, she yet could not do other than return to it.
"Poor chap's that worried, 'e dunno what 'e's sayin'," she told herself. Her lack of children was an oversight she had done her best to remedy. She made for Leadville the blind tender excuses of her maternal heart. "I knaw 'e don't mean it.' Ye'll be all right in a day or two's time. Always been a good-livin' feller and I'm sure 'e wouldn't 'urt a flea. I don't belong to mind..." a quivering nerve gave her the lie.... "But I do, I do mind," she said piteously, "'e's all I got. No, and tedn't that. 'Tis I do love'n."
Drawing water she bathed her eyes. The burst of emotion had left her drained of strength but supper was yet to get. "I did mean to fry for 'is supper," she said, the word covering as many varieties of appetizing food as can be cooked in a frying-pan, "but I don't think I will, I feel so tired and weary, I think us'll have to manage with what we've got." She glanced along the shelf. "That bit of cold meat'll do. 'E do dearly love a bit of fat pork."
Although her tears, easing the strain on her nerves, had left her less apprehensive, the kitchen still loomed disquieting. "'Tis because I made a fool of myself," she said, bracing herself for further effort.
Leadville was in his old place by the window. He neither moved nor spoke, seemed indeed too much absorbed in thought to be aware of her. Sabina felt relieved. She told herself she had had enough of his tantrums for one day: let them have the meal in peace and get off to bed. Putting the meat on a clean dish she began to lay the cloth but, as she moved about, a dim suspicion flitted through her mind that she was being watched. She dismissed it hurriedly and went on with her work, but it returned. Though Leadville appeared lost in thought, no sooner did she turn her back than his heavy lids lifted and his eyes followed her with a furtive question. She felt them on her, felt in his glance a quality which made her uneasy. What did he want to know? Why couldn't he put his question into words? Why should his following and thoughtful glance remind her of the way a cat, crouching, watches a bird? She was sure he was watching, yet not quite sure. Turning sharply she fixed brave blue eyes on his face, but immediately he looked away. He was not watching her, he was occupied with his own dark and brooding fancies.
The blank unconsciousness of his gaze was reassuring. She had been mistaken, fanciful. How foolish of her! Well, she was tired, she could not help it if she did fancy things. She had been through a lot that day and it had shaken her. Perhaps too the lamp had something to say to her fancies. It was not burning well and, while a good light cheered and encouraged, a jumping insufficient one bred more than shadows. Mrs. Byron went into the linhay for scalded cream, for syrup and the cocoa-jug, but as she passed her husband she felt that if he did not quite look at her, she was yet the centre of his thoughts. And he was looking. Her back was towards him, her unprotected back, and his glances were like arrows. The hair crisped on the woman's head. What did this furtive watching mean? This down-dropping look which, when unobserved, followed and considered? Leadville was sitting back in the corner, his head resting against the wall and, though his heavy features wore the expression habitual to them, his eyes were no longer filmed with inward brooding. Sabina, wandering over the moors had once stooped to look along a deserted mine-shaft and, in the darkness, had seen two round eyes, eyes of green fire, eyes which though distant had been full of a wild menace. They had stared out at her, threatening her advance and, so inimical were they, that she had left the mine-shaft unexplored. Leadville's eyes reminded her of the savage daunting thing from which she had retreated. "I wish 'e wouldn't watch me like that," she said, lingering over her errand, "it makes me feel any'ow; I wish—" her thoughts flew to Hember, Hember which, whenever she had been in a difficulty hitherto, had come to the rescue—"I wish I'd let Richbell come down."
A candle stood on the furnace and, by its light, Mrs. Byron searched the upper shelf for a jug of which she stood in need. During her long convalescence she had suffered from sleeplessness but, as her health improved, so had her nights. She put the latter down, however, to the fact that she had formed the habit of drinking a cup of hot cocoa as soon as she was in bed. A warm drink at night, a nourishing, non-stimulating drink which needed care in preparation was, she had felt, more likely to bring a return to normal conditions than patient waiting on the mysterious processes of nature. The cocoa-jug, brown, high-waisted, girdled by a gold line, stood a little behind the other pitchers. In her haste that morning, Gray had pushed it back and, the shelf being high, her aunt had some difficulty in recovering it. The effort to reach it distracted her mind and, when she returned to the kitchen, she was thinking more of the healing effects of cocoa than of the tiresome ways of husbands.
On one side of the range hung a small square mirror, such as can be bought of any gipsy pedlar for a shilling; and as she leaned forward to put on the kettle she caught sight of her face. Used to rubicund cheeks below bright eyes, she was surprised to see that, though her colour was fixed, it had lost its warm tone and that her lips were a bluish grey.
"I bin frightened," she told herself, "I knaw 'tis fulishness of me but I can't 'elp it. Pretty mawkin I be, fancyin' things like that." The eyes in the mirror were strong and encouraging, the grey lips smiled at her. Here was a tried comrade who knew what she had to endure and who sympathized—who sympathized as no one else could! Sabina was captain of her soul and could rely on it for strength and for support; yet with her reviving courage came a hint of the old discomfort. On returning from the linhay she had found Byron staring at his knees. Now that her back was turned to him she felt—and the feeling sent a quick shudder through her—she felt that he was at his trick of watching. She felt it, then suddenly she knew, for in the depths of the mirror was another face, a face which had fixed narrowing eyes on her; and these eyes travelled over her, considering her, asking a strange inhuman question.
She swung the trolly round in an access of nervous fear but that inimical glance had slipped away and Leadville was once more staring blankly at his knees. Mrs. Byron remained for a moment waiting, but he neither stirred nor looked. He had been on the verge of making the discovery he sought and her sudden movement, scattering his thoughts, had angered him. If she would go on with her work, the thing that was eluding him, would creep back and this time he would grasp it. He sat like one in a trance, focusing his mind on a dimly seen spot, a spot of dreadful knowledge.
Sabina manoeuvred the car so that she no longer had her back turned to the dark figure on the bench. To make the cocoa while in a sideways position was awkward, but the defenceless attitude had become impossible. She must know what was happening on the other side of the room. Profoundly disturbed, she yet measured the spoonfuls of cocoa with a steady hand. As Gray would not share the beneficial draught that night her aunt was mechanically careful to make only half the usual quantity. The lavish hand does not pile up a balance at the bank.
As Mrs. Byron set the jug of cocoa on the stove, in order that it might be kept hot till she was ready for it, Leadville broke the silence. He did not speak, but once more he laughed, and this time his was the satisfied laugh of a man who after long endeavour has found that of which he is in search.
His wife stared. "'Ow you made me jump," she said, a little breathlessly. A quality in the laugh, a certain sinister satisfaction, had made her flesh creep. What was it that had pleased him, that by his secret watching he had discovered? She tried to shake off the conviction of his strangeness. "Dunno what's come over me. I spose 'e can laugh at 'is own thoughts; but it's a funny thing, it makes me all goosey flesh."
Conquering an inclination to go out of the room, to leave Leadville to his secret satisfactions, she rolled herself to the table. "I should think you was feeling so leary as a grey'ound by this time," she said and, by speaking of the commonplace, would have relieved the tension. The queerness of Leadville's behaviour might after all be due to hunger for, as far as she knew, he had not had any food since morning.
The man cleared his throat. "There's no butter on the table," he said, looking past her at something on the other side of the room.
"Gray's taken every bit to market." His habit being to eat without comment what was set before him, Sabina felt a dim surprise that he should have asked for butter.
"She 'aven't. I see some on the shelf."
To ask him to fetch it did not occur to her. Turning the handle of the little car she went back to the linhay. It was possible that Gray, thoughtful for others, had put some aside.
As the trolly disappeared behind the door it was as it a hand swept from Byron's features the mask which hitherto had shrouded his resolve. Obscure, unrecognized, it had lain for many a day behind his everyday thoughts. The general upheaval had thrust it forward until it shone naked in a dreadful candour. So long had it been familiar that it came tame to the man's seeking hand. He knew at last what he must do. Sabina making the cocoa had shown it him.
Getting up from the bench and treading carefully—he whose step was always light—he tiptoed over to the wall cupboard. It yawned before him, a darkness hollowed in the solid masonry and with unerring certainty, as if his hand had gone that way in dreams, it fell on that which it sought, a little ribbed blue phial, with an orange label. The last occasion on which he had used it, had been when he adjudged Shep to be old and useless. The bottle was only a quarter full, and he felt sorry that he had wasted any of the precious contents on the dog. Would the quarter be sufficient for his purpose? For a moment he hung uncertain, but the passions which were riding him to destruction forced him to take the risk. He heard Sabina crossing the floor of the linhay and the repugnance with which she inspired him rose like nausea in his throat. He went blind with hatred, the hatred so long repressed, that primitive hatred of the under-dog. As one pressed for time, he uncorked the bottle and held it to the jug of cocoa. The colourless fluid gurgled as it flowed over the blue rim and the sound, striking through the man's absorption, woke in him the beginnings of fear. Even now, she might be able to come between him and success, this necessary, intolerably-longed-for success. He stared with wild eyes at the linhay door. If she had heard, if she came in and in her high brave way faced him and accused him, he was done. To use violence to Sabina was not in him. He could only work against her in secret, get her at a disadvantage, strike from behind. If she found him out, he would not dare any more, he would be beaten and it would break him. His spirit acknowledged that there was a limit.
He listened but Sabina was still moving from shelf to shelf on her fruitless errand. He grew conscious that the sweat was running into his eyes. Raising a hand, a hand foul with seal's blood, to wipe it from his forehead, he left a brown smear in its place.
The drops fell hissing on the red-hot coals and, out of his other hand, Byron dropped that ominous blue phial into the fire. A splutter and crackle of flame, louder than any of the man's furtive movements, spat out at him. Terrified he turned to the box beside the hearth, a strong old box which had come in from the sea and was now used to hold driftwood. From it he snatched thick pieces and thin queer-shaped bits of old dead ships, of their gear and their furniture, and piled them on the tell-tale bottle. When Mrs. Byron returned from her unsuccessful search, he was holding his trembling hands before the blaze and the flames were leaping over the heap of sea-rimed fuel.
"Mercy!" cried she, at the sight of what seemed to her careful mind a waste of good wreck, "you'll catch the chimbly afire. Us don't want a big fire, 'tis near bedtime, now."
She rolled forward as if to remove a log but Leadville stood his ground. "Leave'n go. If I didn't want it, I shouldn't ha' put it there. I'm cold."
For a man who wore the same clothes, winter and summer, who had never cared to possess an overcoat, this was a curious assertion. Sabina, observing that his hands shook, began to think he must be on the verge of an illness. If so, it would account for the general strangeness of his conduct.
"Please yourself," she said and rolled the trolly over to the table. "I couldn't find the butter anywhere, but Isolda has promised to send some down in the morning. Wud yer like a bit o' dripping?" She placed a small china dish heaped with pork dripping near her husband's plate. "Come on, make 'aste," she said, "supper's ready."
With his back to her and with those darkly stained hands still spread to the blaze, he muttered that he could not eat.
"You'll very soon be knocked up if you don't eat something," she said kindly. "Won't yer 'ave a bit o' this pork?"
"If I did I should bring me life up."
Concerned for his health she continued to press him. "Will 'ee 'av a drop of beer if I fetch it?"
"I don't want anything."
"Well, couldn't 'ee drink a cup of my cocoa?"
For a moment the world heaved dizzily about the man. He stumbled forward a space. "Of your—of your cocoa—I didn't—" he stammered, his spirit turning craven; but Sabina's innocent uncomprehending face, turned sideways from the table, arrested him on the brink; and he swung off into a wild, incoherent mutter, which presently resolved itself into oaths, such as he had not used since his seafaring days. He could not stop, the words poured from him like steam out of a safety-valve. Even Sabina, to whose common-sense point of view swearing was mere harmless breath, was taken aback. To surliness she was accustomed, cursing of a mild order was the male way of expressing gratitude for the gift of speech, but this? Turning in the wicker cone she looked at him searchingly and this look, puzzled and seeking to understand, brought him to his senses. He stammered, choked over his words and flinging himself into Old Squire's red-cushioned chair bade her 'leave him be.'
"Poor old sinner, 'e dunno what to do by 'isself," she thought excusingly. "Like a bear wi' a sore 'ead 'e is. Well, I better leave'n be."
She drew the pork towards her and cut it. She was reconsidering her decision to wait till morning before telling her husband that Gray was definitely beyond his reach. If his queerness and irritability were due to hope deferred it would be merciful to put him out of his misery, to give him the final blow. She glanced at the figure in the arm-chair. Leadville was sitting forward, his elbows on his knees, his head with its strongly growing black hair sunk between his hands. He looked unapproachable and the saying about 'sleeping dogs' occurred to her.
If she were to make an effort, were to tell him, she would certainly suffer for it. He would treat her to some sort of scene and she was tired. She could not remember when she had felt so tired. Her back ached and her head ached, she had even a whimsical feeling that her legs ached.
She would not tell him now. The news trembling on the tip of her tongue should wait till, strengthened by her night's rest, she were able to take his anger and disappointment for granted.
She found that she was hungry. What a blessing there was always to-morrow, with a fence of sleep shutting off one day and its troubles from the next. What she needed was a good supper and a long night's rest. Thank goodness, Richbell would be down before it was light. She, Sabina, could lie abed until the pains had gone out of her bones.
In the quiet room the only sounds were the slight movements of the figure at the table, the tinkle of a fork against china, the crackle of dry wood in the grate. Once a tiny explosion, a breaking of heated glass, was audible; but, at the same moment, Leadville rose with a loud scrape of his chair.
"You'm eatin' like a 'adger," he said, in a tone of suppressed irritability and, taking down his gun, began to clean it. The energy of his movements was almost violent. By this oiling and rubbing he was easing the strain on his nerves. Mould and rust grow in that damp climate like the Giant-killer's bean and Leadville rubbed and polished till the barrel was gleaming darkly in the dull light of the wall lamp, till it caught a red glint from the flaming driftwood.
"What be yer gwine to do with your gun?" asked Sabina taking quiet note of this outburst of energy. "Any wild fowl down?"
At Christmas stranger birds, sooty-plumaged, web-footed, delicate-fleshed, came in large numbers to the north coast and all men, hind and farmer alike, went out to 'get a duck for dinner.'
The relief of hearty movement seemed to have oiled Leadville's tongue for, staring down at the last specks of rust, he said dreamily, "I used to think as one day I should shet myself with'n."
"Whatever was 'ee gwine do that for?" She had the practical person's contempt for extravagant talk, moreover she had listened to this threat before, had even expressed her opinion that there 'was cleaner ways o' dying.' She began to stack plates and dishes on a tray.
"If you can't 'av what you wanted," said he, still speaking as if only half conscious of what he said, "what's the good of livin'?"
"If you can't 'av what you want," retorted Sabina, "you should make the best of a bad bargain."
"No," he said simply, "I bain't made that way."
She shook her head over his childishness. "You'm a very covechous man," she said. "If you wanted a farm so bad as that, why didn't you rent'n?"
The light of the fire was reflected in his dark eyes, a spark in the blackness. He had put the gun back over the door and was sitting forward, his gaze on the burning wood. "I didn't want nothing but my own," he said with unalterable conviction. "I'd a right to Wastralls and 'twas just your oogliness denyin' me of it."
Sabina smiled. How foolish he was, how unreasonable! Just a big child.
"Did you marry me," she inquired, thinking to clinch the matter and her voice was the voice of one who makes allowance for a boyish fancy—"did you marry me or the land?"
For a moment he did not answer, then the truth which he had lived for twenty years, forced its way out. "I married 'ee for the land," he said quietly.
But Sabina had her memories. Let him say what he would she could not doubt his young sincerity.
"And now," he added, "now I wish I 'adn't."
Ah, that was it—'now.' She had been loved. She could recall the days of courtship, the first years of their union, sweet words, little tender deeds, the potpourri of rose-leaves that a woman hoards. He had courted her for more than the land and, though he denied it, he could not shake her faith. The past was hers and, because it was dead, it would be always hers.
"You wish that I was gone?" she said. He had loved her once, now he fancied that he loved Gray. It was only a fancy and would pass. The past was hers and the future would be, but the present? Sabina had always lived in the present and it was the present which had betrayed her.
"I wish we was never married, I wish you," he hesitated for a word, "I wish you would let me go."
She had been clearing the table. Her hands worked in the familiar way. She collected cruet, knives, forks and put them in the appointed places, but without knowing that she had lifted a finger. "You wish I would let you go?" she said incredulously. "You don't mean what you say, Leadville. I'm sure you don't. You'm vexed now, you've 'ad things to try you to-day and you don't know what you'm sayin' of; you'll be better in the mornin'." She had not been able to let his words pass without a protest, the protest of a still hopeful heart. Surely he would deny them.
"I wish," he affirmed heavily, "you would let me go."
The difficult tears rose to her eyes and her chin trembled. "My dear," she said and her stable law-abiding spirit was behind the words, "you knaw we'm married. It's a funny thing after all these years you want to be let go."
But he persisted. "If I was to clear out of this..."
"Go—go away?" she stammered, as if his previous words had been a meaningless ejaculation. "Go right away? Whatever for?"
"I bin 'ere all these years and I 'aven't been 'appy. A man want a little 'appiness in's life."
"Oh, Leadville, don't say such things. I've done my best to make you 'appy and comfortable."
"You couldn't do it," he said and added with finality, "you wasn't the right one."
The tears were running down her face, her poor quivering face which to his eyes looked so old, so unattractive. "I've done my best—my best."
"If I was to clear out of this..." he said, returning to what occupied his mind. Why could she not believe him, realize that for her own sake, she must let him go? Even now it was not too late. He glanced at the brown jug on the stove—not too late yet.
"No," she cried, "no, don't 'ee go away."
"One of us got to go, then."
But she had found the answer, the word of power. "Not—not till death us do part," she responded.
"Aw," he said, "and that's it. Till death us do part," and he repeated the words as if they were the chorus of a song already sung, the refrain of a chant known long ago and until then forgotten. "Till death us do part."
He had spoken throughout as if hardly conscious of his words, but now a spurt of irritation, irritation at her folly, shook him. "You and your ways!" he cried harshly. "'Tis you that's responsible. You drove me to do things I wouldn't do."
Relieved by his return to this more ordinary mood Sabina's courage rose. "'Tis your own self that 'arnessed the 'arse," she said with greater confidence. "I've 'ad nothing to do with it. My 'ands is clean."
The man's inconsequent attention was caught by her last words. Glancing stupidly at his hands he saw to his surprise, and swiftly growing consternation, that they were dark with blood. The minor events of the afternoon—the slaughter of the seal, its skinning, the 'running out' of the oil, had been forgotten. He could see no reason, no reason but the one, for this significant stain. "Mine 'edn't," he cried shaking them as if he would shake it off. "Can't think whatever this is!"
"Looks as tho' you got blood on them."
His first shuddering dismay changed to fear. He glanced at her sidelong. "'Ow 'av I got blood on my 'ands, can yer tell me?"
"No, I can't." She also had forgotten the trifling incident of the seal. "But 'tis certainly blood."
To a man in Leadville's confusion of mind, a confusion shot with flashes of clear thought, the age of miracles was not past. That the dark intention of his spirit should have been made supernaturally visible, did not seem impossible, not even improbable.
"Get out—blood?" he cried furiously. "'Tis only dirt. I'll go and wash them."
Hurrying into the linhay he began to pump water over his hands, washing and re-washing them till they were red with cold, till not a speck of the betraying colour remained. The flow of the water, bright and unbroken, had a soothing effect on him. He watched it falling from the round mouth of the pump on to the grating, listened dreamily to it running out by the conduit under the flags; and with it his horror drained away, leaving him at peace. As the flow thinned to a trickle, like a child at innocent but mischievous play, he raised the green handle and brought another rush. The winter rains had filled the well and Mrs. Byron, though she wondered mildly what he might be doing, was too much occupied with her griefs to pay much attention.
However stout a woman's common sense it crumbles before such simplicity as that of Leadville. Alleging a long unhappiness, he had begged for the freedom which should straighten out the tangle of his life. "If I was to clear out of this—" he had said.
To accord it, was not in her. If their marriage was a mistake as he averred, and she could not grant that it was, the mistake once made must be accepted. They must, as she had said, 'make the best of a bad bargain.' Gray married and out of reach, Leadville would surely remember that when he had wandered into Trevorrick, like some flying creature into a garden, she had been the one, of all those rooted there who, opening her heart, had given him shelter. She could not take seriously that desire of his to spread his wings and lift himself once more into the blue. What was there for him, now that he was no longer young, but the security of the garden, the sheltering walls of that one heart?
Sabina, hungry for an old age of peace and affection, turned in thought to a couple well known in Tregols, the Henwoods of Curyarnon. Married after a long courtship and the father of boys and girls, Mr. Henwood had yet had two sons by a woman of the village. Though the scandal was open the wife had chosen to ignore it and, in the end, he had gone back to her. Now, an example of senile devotion, they were tottering hand in hand down the gradual hill. Sabina envied them. Like Mrs. Henwood she felt that she could wait and, when the time came, forgive.
The kitchen was always tidy, but some of the parcels that had been brought from Stowe still lay on the side-table and, rolling herself, in tired fashion, across the room she began to sort them. Cottons, needles, a roll of flannel, unbleached calico for the hams and a new account-book, they were speedily drafted into drawers and work-box; but behind the parcel of drapery lay an object, the purchase of which she had forgotten. For a moment she looked at it in sadness and uncertainty; then, with the faint dawnings of a smile. Gray had executed the commission with which she had been charged. She had bought the pipe, a good one with an amber mouthpiece, and it lay before Sabina on the blue and red table-cloth. Leadville smoked by fits and starts and, for some days, his foul and blackened pipe had lain untouched on the mantelshelf. With the thought of the man's material welfare she put the new pipe by the old. Let him go? Go where? He had no trade, no money and he was getting 'up in years.' Her kind heart saw him drifting on the tides of poverty, saw him submerged and she shook her head. For this reason and for every other, she must not let him have the freedom that he asked—it was too late.
For a moment the oppression that was clouding her mind lifted on a sunset thought. She could imagine his surprise when he found the new pipe by the old, his pleasure and the word of thanks she would be accorded. By then he would know Gray was out of reach and though his vanity might suffer—not even now could the wife believe it was more than vanity—the pipe smoked and smoking sweetly, must remind him of the tried companion who for so many years had looked after his creature comforts, and given him with one exception, everything he asked.
She must have patience.
She was so tired that if she did not go to bed she felt she would sink away through cone and trolly, sink into nothingness. Lifting the jug of cocoa from the stove and carrying it with her, she went out of the kitchen and down the long passage to her room.
"Good night!" she called.
CHAPTER XIV
Sabina's voice, not having been modified by the habit of rooms, had a resonant, carrying note. "Good night!" she had said and the sound, travelling out to the linhay, fell on Leadville's ears.
Through the skylight in the high sloping roof, the moon was dimly sketching shelves and barrels, and the absorbed figure of the man. He stood, his eyes fixed on the swelling and diminishing flow of the water, his hand on the pump. The bell-like voice calling Good night, a good night to new days and the following years, broke the spell. The two short sounds did not, however, reach his mind as a word with a certain meaning. They were to him the beginning of a familiar sequence of sound. Tap, tap, tap, the hammer was at work again. A puzzled look came into his eyes and he drew his black brows together in the effort to understand who was knocking in—not nails, no, but large-headed brass tacks. He became aware, in some inward manner which yet was convincing, of a polished surface of light wood on which were two curving rows of round brass heads, two complete rows. The shaped board with the rows of cut clasps was oddly familiar. He had seen it before, but where? He struggled to retain the vision, to see more, but it broke into innumerable yellow points, specks of dancing light. He shook his rough head as if the lights were dazzling him and, turning away, began to dry his hands. From time to time he had had glimpses of wood and even of brass nails, but never so clear a vision. He wondered whether, now that the rows were complete to the last round head, the knocking would cease, this knocking which had haunted him for so long.
In order to husband the lamp-oil Sabina, before going to bed, had lowered the wick, but Byron had a dislike of shadows and obscurity. Before he turned up the light, however, a furtive glance assured him the brown jug was gone from the stove.
Its disappearance, though expected, gave him a shock. While he, in the linhay, had been oddly forgetful of the event he had prepared, the moment had come and passed, that moment so heavily charged with possibilities, the moment of the last chance. It was as if, having laid the train, another had touched off the fuse. The matter had been taken out of his hands and, though startled, he was conscious of relief. The thing was done.
Old Squire's chair, which stood during the day to the right of the hearth, had been pushed against the wall. Sabina, tidying the room, had supposed that her husband would soon go to bed; he, however, was no more conscious of a desire for rest than if it had been morning. Replenishing the fire he sat down, but though the maker of the chair had shaped it cunningly, Byron neither leaned back in it nor relaxed his limbs.
The catch of the door opening into the house was weak and, suddenly, the long passage that began at the kitchen and ended at the justice-room, was filled with whispering sounds. A breeze, wandering in, had lost itself in the darkness. It pulled at the handle until Leadville, sitting forward, his head sunk between his shoulders in the attitude of a bird of prey, his mind concentrated on the approaching and dreadful and longed-for end, looked up. For him the breeze was winged with fear. He fancied that the handle moved. Could Sabina be coming back for something she had forgotten? She had a fancy that she suffered from cold feet, that she must have a flagon of hot water in the bed. To Leadville this fancy had seemed part of her general unreasonableness.
"Yer laigs are gone," he had said irritably.
"As long as they're above ground-'they bain't gone."
"Any'ow you can't 'av cold feet."
"I tell yer, I can't sleep for 'em."
"Well, what's the good of a 'ot jar at the bottom of the bed when you'm to the top?"
"I put the bottle," she had said obstinately, "where I feel my feet's to. That's where I feel cold."
He remembered to have seen on the linhay shelf the old Hollands jar which was used as a hot-water bottle. Was she returning to fetch it? Was it her fingers that were moving the little brass door-knob? His fear grew until it mastered him. He had done with Sabina and she must not come back. He could not stand it. If she swung in on that loathly trolly and began to potter about, heating water, looking for the flagon, he felt that some containing wall would bulge and give and what was held up by it fall into the open.
"I should 'av to tell her," he said, staring at the handle. "Shouldn't be able to keep it in. 'Twould be out of me mouth before I knawed."
On that coast a gale may be blowing great guns one moment and the next drop into silence. The land wind which had piled cove and bay with the welcome oreweed had died down during the day and, out of the north, had come a flock of small white clouds. They trailed on their unknown errand across the sky and behind them, like a sheep-dog, ran a fitful wind. It sang in the ears of the old house and Leadville, made aware of it, turned his eyes contemptuously from the spasmodically moving door-knob. "That's only the wind," he muttered.
The rocky shelf on which Wastralls was built, lying behind Dark Head and lower than the ridges of the valley, lay also below the wind. A thickness on the turning earth it lay in an unnatural hush. On the beaches the tides roared and thundered. Above, but divided from the homestead by wide, clean, moonlighted space, the winds shrieked a warning; but the house, except for that one breath of disturbed and whispering sound, was very still. It kept a vigil. Byron, motionless in Old Squire's chair, knew that he too was waiting.
A board, in which were bolt-holes, which had indeed been part of a ship wrecked long ago, creaked loudly, startling the watcher. With whirring note the old clock had told the hour, once, twice, but he had not marked it. He had been like one turned to stone. In him only one tract of consciousness had burned with life and this glow, fierce and steady, burned in the innermost place, in the darkness and silence that are beyond thought. Recalled to the surface, the man became conscious of numb limbs and an aching back. He stretched himself, a little and very cautiously. He was not anxious to draw attention to himself. With the same caution he put another log on the sinking fire. He had been waiting, for what he hardly knew; but the dream, the old secret dream to which his clumsy hands had given form and substance, was rising through the blackness and the silence, changing into a fact. As he leaned back in the Windsor chair, he was being shown a picture, a picture from which, if he could, he would have turned his eyes. He was looking into the big shadowy justice-room at the end of the passage, the room in which Sabina lay.
He saw the grey walls, the little old windows curtained with white dimity and the four-poster which, for so long, had been the bed of bridal and of birth, the death-bed of a family. In it Old Squire had lain him down to sleep and then to die. In it his childless descendant was drawing her last breaths. Her last breaths! Byron saw them coming slowly, a mist on the cold air, more slowly and then no mist. Sabina was about to die. Die? He said the word softly to himself. His wife, the woman at whose side he had lived for so many years, was about to die. He shook his head over the word as something of which the meaning escaped him, which was portentous, which stirred him in a dim elemental way, but which he could not grasp. Sleep he could understand. Sabina asleep was something he had often seen. A healthy creature, once she had shut her eyes, she did not stir till morning. He was different, found it difficult to lose himself, slept lightly as a cat and dreamed. Day-dreams and night-dreams, he had lived in dreams; but Sabina...
She was asleep now. She was sleeping dreamlessly and from this empty sleep she would not rouse. Daylight would broaden in the east, the farmyard stir with life, and feet would come and go in the house. Do what they might, however, she would not waken. He frowned, knitting his brows over the to-morrow which was about to dawn, the to-morrow in which Sabina had no part. That she who was so vigorously alive should thus have been wiped out, that she should have gone, not for a little time but for ever, was unthinkable and yet...
A nerve vibrated with relief, with a slow thick satisfaction. Gone was she? In their long struggle then, he was the victor? He had come into the open, fought for the woman that he loved, the bit of land that was his 'by rights.' He had always had it in him to fight but not until driven to extremities had he shown his mettle. At long last he had proved that he and not Sabina was the one who counted, that fundamentally he was the stronger.
And yet...
The shallows of his mind were alive with darting thoughts. The long long contest had been declared in his favour, the adversary was not so much beaten as destroyed and yet, on the heels of his rejoicing, crept little yapping doubts.
The vision of the justice-room, of that quiet figure in the quiet chamber, was for him repellently interesting. As long as he could imagine the fine mist of her breath, the rising and falling of her breast, he was only conscious of his approaching triumph. Time, however, brought a change, for now Sabina was more than quiet, she was still. Her blue eyes were frozen, she rested in a peace deeper than that of sleep and, whereas the sleeper is harmless...
Though he did not yet understand, his satisfaction began to dwindle. He drew nearer to the hearth, to the warm living fire. The wind still shrieked a warning overhead but on the house, especially the part beyond the kitchen, a hush had fallen. Byron found the silence oppressive. If a mouse had come out of the wainscot and flitted bright-eyed about the floor, he would have welcomed it, but the place was empty even of minute and furtive life. The thick walls leaned together, brooding over stagnant space, over the dust of dead hopes, the smell and the suspicion of mould, of more than mould. They shut the man in with his dry husk of satisfaction, bade him observe it shrivelling before a new growth, a growth at which he dared not look, it seemed so closely to resemble fear.
Yet—fear?
In the unhappy past he had borne himself stoutly on the assumption that he was the stronger, that he had only to rise and assert himself. That very day he had put this contention to the proof and now Sabina, in her new stillness, was threatening—what was she threatening?
If he were to smoke a pipe he would be more at ease! Pipes were associated in his mind with long dreams of Gray, when he had wandered over the springy turf of the headland, seen her hair in the brown weed of the pools, the curve of her brow in the gull's wing; when he had sat by the fire and his vision had been broken, like water, by the light passing of her feet. Smoking, he might be able to banish the stark figure in the great four-poster and the crowding thoughts connected with it, might be able to replace them with Gray. He rose to fetch the tobacco-jar. It stood among the bottles on the cupboard shelf and to get it he must turn his back upon the door into the passage, upon that door behind which lay a something against which, though he could put no name to it, he must be on his guard. For a moment he hung irresolute on one foot, then sank back in the chair. He could not go. Though such a brave fellow and so strong, he did not dare.
During his intermittent labours he had slaughtered, as part of his work, every sort of farm creature. Sheep, pigs, bullocks, old and diseased animals, the wild-fowl that came over Trevorrick in the winter, the seals that haunted Morwen Cove. He had slaughtered as a duty. The creatures were, to him, food or refuse and he had killed them. He had also killed Sabina.
He tried to think of her as so much dead flesh, an old animal, maimed, useless, and perverse; but though the distorted trunk of Sabina might be dead, the dominant spirit with which he had been for so many years in conflict, that he had not killed. The vision of Sabina's dead body and frozen eyes began to fade. Worse things were about than bodies and glazed sightless eyes.
His wife had shown her affection for him by a cheery liking for his society, by an occasional shy caress. Although she used round terms she had been easy-tempered and if it had not been for Wastralls, that bone of contention, he would have had a good life with her. Sharp with the hinds, direct of speech, he had never seen her roused to wrath. She had told him once "It was not worth while being angry."
"I don't believe as you could, not to say, lose yer temper."
"Oh couldn't I, there's them that know; but it would be fulish to lose it for a trifle."
From the respect with which the labourers treated her, Byron had realized that her cheeriness must cover depths. She had impressed the men with a sense of power that had been limited, comfortably, by the flesh.
He found that he was trembling, that it needed all his strength to prevent his teeth from chattering. The fire had sunk to a heap of glowing ash and the December night was cold. With wary eye upon the door, he piled the grate high with logs, the last logs in the box.
In the past he had often taken sly and secret advantage of Sabina's trust. With a word here, a gesture there, he had tried to undermine her authority, turn local feeling in his favour. He had not dared an open break for that would have meant, or he believed it would, the severance of their relations. At last, however, his furtive tentatives had been laid aside and the accumulated unhappiness of the years had found vent in one soul-satisfying dastard blow.
In her blithe confidence Sabina had shut her eyes to the small disloyalties of the past. If she were aware of them she had, in her large-hearted way, forgiven. Now, in that grey and white room at the end of the passage, the parting of spirit from body must unroll before her the sordid past. She must learn that, after eating and drinking in domestic trust the food she had prepared, he had dropped poison in her cup.
Once more he found that he was trembling. He glanced at the fire but blue and purple flames were licking round the logs; the dank air was shot with an increasing warmth and, in the centre of each little window-pane, was a star of gold light. He had shivered, not because he was cold, not because the wind out of the north was mourning as it fleeted with cloud and moonshine overhead; but because he realized that having slain the body he was afraid of the spirit he had released.
Byron had not lived in the West without absorbing the beliefs of the countryside. He knew who in the hamlet had been 'piskie-led'n,' whose best horse had been inexplicably found dead, which bit of woodland was haunted. He had listened to the little feet that patter behind the wayfarer yet leave no prints on the soft sand and he had watched for the white rabbit that leaps and gambols on the bit of clear road by the graveyard, the rabbit that can be neither shot nor snared. With other of his neighbours, he did not care to pass sombre low-lying Treglyn after dark. The little ghost of an inconvenient child was said to rise out of the garden earth and Byron, at least, never caught sight of the house—a lurking house, set round with tamarisks—without remembering what of crime and horror had happened there, what still happened when the moon was at the full.
Such a man was at the mercy of superstitious fear. The quietude in which at first he had waited had been due to weariness, to a reaction from the intense emotion which had preceded his act. This expectant calm, however, had gradually become shot with doubt. His mind had wakened to a new aspect of the matter. Attempting to wrest Wastralls from a hand of flesh and blood, he found in its place the clasp of spectral fingers.
Byron, looking into the future saw a ghostly presence in the ancient house, saw it gliding on the old errands, pervading the rooms and passages. Would others see it too; would they, perhaps, perceive without seeing? He wondered whether Gray...?
Would that dim ghost avenge itself on him by trying to come between him and Gray, by intruding on their tendertête-à-tête, by filling the maid's mind with foul suspicion?
No tie is so close as that of blood and the women were of one family. Would Gray be sensitive to that flitting shadow? Behind the veils of the flesh, would spirit be able to communicate with spirit? Would the truth, whispered in every corner of the house, grow into a following fate? In time, when the maid had come to love him, she would glory in his having stopped at nothing to win her. But a first flicker is easily extinguished.
The hour was late and, in his growing discomfort, his growing fear, Byron thought of his chill room at the top of the house. He went there for sleep and sleep meant the laying by of dread, it meant escape. He glanced at the door which hung, quivering now and again under the uncertain onslaught of the wind, between his lighted shelter and the dark. He was thinking of another door, the one that shut Sabina into the justice-room. If ne tried to make for his burrow, for that safe place he knew of, he must pass it. Could he? His mind answered the challenge with a quick defiance. Could he? Of course he could..
He put his hands on the arms of the chair and sought to rise. He swayed his body forward, big head and broad deep-chested bulk; but under him his limbs failed. They hung leaden, lifeless. Not only had it become impossible for him to pass that farther door which stood sentinel by the foot of the stairs, but even to move. Escape through the gates of sleep? No, not by any gate.
She, to whom the injury had been done, was become his judge. She knew, at last, that she had been married for her inheritance; endured as a man endures the mole on his face and finally, for the sake of another woman, pushed into the grave. Events, stripped of life's concealing leafage, would be bare to her informed considering eye. Sabina had been wronged from the first day of their meeting to the last. Always a swift clear creature, he thought of her as running through the midnight passage, intent on vengeance, merciless.
The latch rattled suddenly, increasing the man's dread. He forgot the fitful wind, the faulty lock. His vivid imagination showed him, instead, a hand upon the door-knob, outlined for him in the night of the passage, a dim and bodiless greyness, told him the frail barrier of wood was all that stood between him and a just but awful vengeance. No wonder that mere flesh and blood shrank cowering, that to the guilty creature it was as if his parts were falling away from him, as if he were sinking into the thin unprotected shell of himself.
A gust of wind tore across the wide peace of the sky; and a loose tile slipped to fall crashing on the roof of the porch. The sharp smash of glass let in the night, let in the wind and the heavy roar of the sea. Byron, drowning in superstitious terror strained his ears to catch, among the many sounds, that which should fulfil his dread anticipation; and as he waited, as he listened, the latch of the door slipped over the catch.
Slowly the green door swayed to an impulse from the farther side. Cold air poured into the room from all the unwarmed chambers beyond the kitchen, from that great room at the end. The narrow strip of black began to widen ominously and, in Byron's guilty breast, it was as if his heart had ceased to beat. Between his lips, his dry tongue made a hoarse feeble sound, neither a cry nor a groan, but the utterance of a man in his extremity. The door swung creaking on its hinges and the flame in the ill-fed lamp leapt up and died. Above the other sounds, above that distant roar and the creaks and murmurs of an old draughty house, rose a heavy stumbling, the crash of a fall. The outer edge of fear, the limit of endurance had been passed and Byron had fallen in a swoon across the hearth.