Wastralls: A Novel

by C. A. Dawson Scott

CHAPTER XX

A death in the family brings to some members of it unwelcome holiday. Tom Rosevear, though not particularly fond of his cousin, would not have thought it 'decent' to do more work than was necessary on the day 'poor S'bina 'ad gone 'ome'; and when he had shot 'a wild duck or two,' counted the seventy-three red-brown bullocks of his herd and arranged for the death of a nineteen-score pig, he found time hang heavy on his hands. Without his wife, Tom was like a whip-handle without a lash. Once or twice during the afternoon he put his head in at the door, but finding only Gray, went off again. He was as dissatisfied as a dog with a sore toe and, though when evening darkened he sat down with the children and took his tea, he ate without relish. The room which Gray, ashamed of previous slackness, had set in order, was homelike and snug; but in his thoughts Tom found vague fault with it. The old sofa was shabby and the oilcloth worn, the place too was small, too small for so large a family. When the meal was over he fetched the last number of the Cornishman from the parlour table and set himself, unhappily, to read the paragraphs that bore on matters agricultural: and it seemed to him—the lack of one being the lack of all—that even the Cornishman was dull.

The hum of good-natured clack, of bubbling irrepressible life, that note which is peculiarly the note of a growing family and which was characteristic of Hember, had sunk to the merest suggestion of a sound. The younger girls, having stayed away from school, showed by an inclination to bicker that they missed their regular routine of work. Gray, absorbed in her own affairs, was silent; while Richbell, who had been trimming a hat and found her mother's fingers were needed to give the smartening touch, sat staring at the unsatisfactory result of her industry. As the evening wore on, one by one, the children slipped cheerlessly away to bed. Gray, who had lighted a fire in the parlour, went to sit there with her sweetheart and, upon the usually pleasant kitchen, settled an unsatisfactory hush.

"'Tis time mammy was home," said Richbell as the rain of a sudden shower beat on the window and went singing on across the shelterless land.

Tom, who had been nodding over the newspaper, looked at his feet. "If I 'adn't took off me boots, I'd go down and fetch 'er." He was a man of medium height who spoke slowly, fetching up his words like water from a well, fetching them, too, with considerable creaking of the machinery. In appearance he was spare and hard, with a Viking moustache and close dark hair which fitted to his skull like a cap. His wisdom being only of the heart he was likely to remain in that state of life to which it had pleased God to call him. His wife could rely on him for counsels of moderation, she could rely also on an affection which, like home-brewed, was good from the froth to the dregs.

"I can hear steps," cried Richbell, her discontented face brightening and, as she spoke, Mrs. Tom, the raindrops shining on the wool of her bonnet, her cheeks flushed by the quick walk uphill, came in. "Oh, mammy," said the girl in tones that were themselves a welcome, "we thought you was lost."

Tom laid aside the Cornishman. "Just thinking you was pisky-laid'n," he said, with the smile on which she had rested her heart content for many a year. So glad was she of it after the discomfort, the hinted mystery of the evening that, as she passed his chair, she pressed her cheek for a moment against his. He responded by catching and pulling her down upon his knee.

"Take and sit down 'ere a minute," he said, in his most cheerful tone. Mrs. Tom was a busy creature, strong to work and to manage and it was not often that her spirit flagged, that she showed the need of a stay. "Now tell us all what you bin doing."

From the room beyond, Gray and Jim, their love-dreams shattered by the sound of an arrival, came to round out the circle. They had been sitting in the firelight, discussing the projected journey to Plymouth and the disagreeable ways of Uncle Leadville. It did not surprise them to find Mrs. Tom throned on her Jim's knee, for they believed in the permanency of 'sweet-hearting.' What were twenty years?

In the home atmosphere—the atmosphere created by her return—Mrs. Tom was able to dismiss the dim but ugly suspicions Leadville's manner had engendered and take a simple, more prosaic view of his state. The man was, as he had said, 'carried off' and the strangeness of his looks and words were due in all probability to the shock he had received. He had not loved Sabina but, to lose her thus suddenly, had unnerved him. Let him have a good night's rest and he would be his usual brusque and sombre self. She turned from the thought of him to give her attentive hearers a recital of the day's events. They would like to know who had called and what had been said, would like to take part at second hand in the stir caused by Sabina's death. Tom had a further interest. His mind had grasp. Unable to originate, he could adapt and improve, and he was anxious to hear what arrangements were being made for the funeral.