Wastralls: A Novel

by C. A. Dawson Scott

A man is not looked on as a 'foreigner' by his neighbours without knowing and resenting it. Only by an assumption of superiority can he equalize matters. For many years Byron had been contemptuous of the opinions held by the community. At last his contempt had found concrete expression. He had dared and he knew that no man of that community, no Rosevear, Brenton or Old would dare as much. Yes, he had shown a courage such as they, if they knew of it, must secretly envy and yet... He had not been altogether brave. Though he had taken life he had been abjectly afraid. Unable to recapture the ecstasy of that anguish he looked back in shame and doubt. Unseemly terror had given shape to a black nothing and that nothing had been stronger than he. Before he could be at peace with himself he must rise above this humiliation, prove it to have been momentary, a lapse.

Stiffening himself, he gazed at the door which had now swung wide, uncovering the black mouth of the passage. What a fool he had been to think that Sabina had come in search of him. And even if she had? Afraid of a dead woman? He set his teeth yet felt his heart leaping and the blood singing in his ears. Afraid? He would show—himself—that nothing, neither apparition nor invisible presence, could daunt him. Let Sabina have her will, she was only Sabina. He grasped eagerly at the new thought. Only Sabina! Not some unknown unimaginable terror, but the tame convenient Sabina with whom he had lived in domestic intimacy for so long. How could he have fancied that by dying she had become invested with horrific power? He cursed his folly; and the words that came to his tongue were big-sounding foreign words that he had already uttered once that night, words which had come to him out of the days when he had sailed with strange men in strange waters. The curses were echoed back to him out of the passage and, for a moment, the sound once more stirred his blood with the cold finger of fear. This time he only swore more loudly, and the old words, evoking the atmosphere of daredevilry with which he had been once familiar, gave him courage. Memories that lay at the back of his mind, memories of lands where human life is of less importance than that of a sheep, of dangers and adventures, recurred to him. His voice was no longer a hoarse threat. It filled the kitchen with a round full sound, dominating the seen and the unseen, stiffening him until he knew there was nothing he would not dare. He would even walk down the passage between the kitchen and the justice-room and open that green door at the end.

Those roistering nights in South American cities had been a reaction from the pent life on shipboard, had been spiced with hot dangers, mad loves and sudden death; but this last adventure was one on which no man would willingly embark. Byron, with his heart cold and middle age in his limbs, would go as a man goes on direful errand. He would go because he must prove his courage, his right to take Sabina's place, to own Wastralls, to play the lover. This was his hour and, if he avoided the issue, he must admit that those—he said 'those' but he meant one only—who had held him of no account were right. Byron's outer life had for many years been eventless; but his dreams had been a shifting drama full of colour, a play enacted for one spectator, himself. Now that dissatisfied one was insisting on reality instead of dreams and, in his state of dull-reaction from the terrors of the supernatural, he was willing. He saw, however, that what was to do, should be done at once. The courage of flesh and blood is a poor thing at best and, if he stayed upon his going, likely to run out at the finger-tips.

His hands, as he took a candle from the linhay shelf and lighted it, were cold. Drawing water, he braced himself by drinking great gulps of the icy fluid; and, thus invigorated, returned to the kitchen with his head up. Nor, indeed, until he reached the door did he hesitate and then it seemed to him that the room was a snug place and quite peculiarly safe. In leaving it he was courting danger, leaving himself without a wall to set his back against!

The candle flame leaping in a cross-current of air, revealed the door at the end of the passage, and Byron saw with relief that it was shut. This to his mind proved the hollowness of his late fears. A spirit should be able to pass through the wood of a shut door, to slip through crack or keyhole; but the contrary is maintained by those who claim to know. Doors, they say, may be burst open, handles may turn without visible agency; but, once the bolt is shot or the key turned, the haunt must remain on the other side. That closed green door proved to Byron that the disembodied Sabina had not left her room, that his terrors had been without foundation. With his lips twisted in a contemptuous grin he stepped into the passage.

His nailed boots struck the stones with a clash that echoed up the staircase. Wastralls was so resoundingly empty that the brave sound was heard whispering away in the attics, whispering as do the monuments of extinct families in the week-day quiet of a church. Step by step, for the air seemed to him of the consistency of mud, the man pushed his way. To left of him were doors, doors without significance, doors which opened upon innocent and commonplace parlours. He passed these without seeing them and came at last to the heavy door of the old justice-room.

This door had a strong lock and was of stout wood. Nevertheless, it was being shaken from within and, for a moment, Byron's courage failed. Remembering the draught in which his candle had flared, however, the cold air which had poured into the kitchen, he understood. A wind was tearing at the door, a draught from some window which had been blown open. He suspected the little Gothic casement in the eastern wall, the wood of which he knew to be worm-eaten and the fastening worn. It occurred to him, that, if for no other reason, he must have come in to close that window. As he pushed open the door, the waiting wind swooped on the candle flame and left him in darkness. A noise of banging and howling assailed his ears; but the countryman, his superstitious fears held at arm's length for the nonce, recognized it. He had been right. The Gothic window, which a sun-lover had set in the three-foot wall, was open and knocking against the plaster. Byron, forcing himself to walk with deliberate steps, crossed the room and shut it. At once the old stillness fell over the place, the silence that is more alarming than any sound. Byron, his back to the window, listened but the hush was unbroken. Nothing moved, nothing even breathed. He relighted the candle and a host of shadows darted away. The room, which had been a mere cavern of the winds, showed an accustomed face, the shining features of old furniture, the outline of a monumental bed. He looked about, anxious to establish a feeling of friendly relationship. These objects, giving service for house-room, had shared the place with him. They were older than he, so old they seemed to him part of Wastralls. The familiar shapes were pleasing to him. He raised the candle but, as he did so, became vaguely aware of change. The furniture wore a new look. The faint life that dwelt behind its wooden surfaces seemed, suddenly, to have grown less remote. He felt that the pieces were watchful and no longer friendly. He had lived with them in a long peace but, on that night, a pact had been broken. They knew and from being household goods had changed to household gods, the guardians of the home. No longer fitting obscurely into their appointed places, they had an air of purpose. They seemed on the verge of movement. Byron, startled by their covert hostility, yet drew his brows together. "Pack o' nonsense for me to think like that," he muttered, and thereby sealed their doom. When he brought Gray home he would send this old stuff to the dealer and buy new furniture, light woods, mirrors, bamboo. In spite of his stout heart, however, he stepped away rather hastily from the tall-boy. It appeared, in the uncertain light, to be leaning treacherously forward, to be about to fall and, with its weight of mahogany, to crush whatever was within reach.

The covert malignancy of these shining and familiar faces impressed Byron, but a man can conquer the inanimate, he can rend and smash and burn; at least he can if, aware of hostility, he were careful to strike first.

With an effort, he steadied himself. Before him, vast and shadowy, the great bed of 'Old Squire' stood out from the wall and Byron turned towards it with a tread that shook the ancient floor. Sabina had taken a housewifely pride in this bed. Every spring it had been stripped of curtains and valances, of ceiling and headcloths and of padded foot-cover. These when washed had been restretched, backaching job, to retain that stiff spotlessness for a twelvemonth. Sabina had never omitted an iota of this ritual. As the bed had been handed down to her, so it should be kept. The spring cleansing and restretching were part of the mysterious rhythm of life.

Beside the curtain stood that piece of mechanism which had enabled Sabina to move about the house and from which every night she swung herself into bed. On the other side was a small table on which lay a candlestick and the brown cocoa-jug.