Wastralls: A Novel

by C. A. Dawson Scott

The day following Sabina's death had been to Byron as a tract of hilly and dangerous country. He had traversed it, as he believed, without more than an occasional stumble and, at the day's end, had seen from the mountain-tops of sleep a vision of rich lands under the suns of fair to-morrows, a vision not altogether dispersed when he awoke. Springing out of bed he surveyed with eager hope the yellowing dawn. Mrs. Tom, being in no mind to trouble herself about him, he had been allowed to sleep on and, exhausted by the emotions, by the mental gymnastics of the previous day, he had done so until the eastern horizon was afire. From his upper window he looked up Trevorrick River, now December-full and purring over a wide bed of slates and quartz. The day was mild and still. A girl, in a blue coat and carrying a can, was crossing the stepping-stones and he recognized her as Jenifer Bate. The cloak hung in straight lines about her swelling figure and on her head was a gooky bonnet—a sort of winter sun-bonnet—which had belonged to her dead mother. She had brought Mrs. Bate down to Wastralls and was returning with milk for the people at Cottages. "She think weather'll be catchy," he said to himself with the joyous feeling that she was mistaken. The wind had dropped till not a breath stirred the beaded tamarisk but, far overhead, clouds were drifting lazily from the north. As long as they sailed the sky in that direction there would be no rain.

Below stairs the women were busy roasting chickens and otherwise preparing for the morrow. Sunday in the West is a time of rest from labour; of gathering in the chapels for friendly intercourse; but death, with a high hand, substitutes for local custom a universal law and not one of Mrs. Tom's helpers had failed her. In a corner of the kitchen a meal had been prepared for Byron and he slipped quietly into the chair set in readiness. For the first time since his wife's death he was conscious of flavour in the food. Breakfast was the good beginning of a good day and he ate and drank with relish. His mind had been like the sands at low water, a place of quags and pools and unsuspected rocks but now the tide of life had risen and he had forgotten what lay below. Yesterday was wholly gone and before him lay long hours—hours of realization, of happiness such as he had never before known. The women moved quietly about and in the midst of that orderly bustle Byron sat, speaking now and then in answer to some remark but always as if his mind were preoccupied. The meal ended, he made perfunctory offer of his services but was relieved to find the work had been so arranged that his room was more desired by the women than his help.

"That one's glad to be gone out of it," said Mrs. Con as his heavy figure passed the window on its way to the waste lands; and all could see that Byron was no longer slouching along in the mooning and indifferent manner to which they were accustomed.

"He'm like Parson's Fool, like everything that's good, but don't want to work for't," remarked Aunt Louisa, her big scissors going 'crusp, crusp' through some black material that was spread over the table.

Mrs. Tom repeated in an indifferent voice, the old tag:

"'s'E 'av got fever o' lurk

Two minds to eat and none to work.'"

She was looking ill and, when the women commented on her appearance, had spoken of a sleepless night. She was in fact oppressed by the horror of her late experience. As she went about the tasks of the moment she was as if in a cloud, a cloud on which the scene of the previous night was reflected, now from one point of view, now from another.

Unable to forget it she threw herself into the work with an energy which aroused the admiration of the other women and made Aunt Louisa wonder. "She don't work 'ome like that," mumbled the old woman over her mouthful of pins, "nor I don't believe 'tis cos she was so fond of S'bina. That one know more'n we think she do," and throughout the day which, for Mrs. Tom, was unbearably long, a haunted miserable day, Aunt Louisa kept a thoughtful eye upon her.

Byron, striding out of the yard, struck across the wide spread of shallow water and up the natural rock embankment which, on that side of Trevorrick valley, prevented the sea from overrunning the 'wastralls.' The turf, cropped closely by his bullocks, clipping into the bright yellow green of marsh, breaking into grey spire-grass towards the west, stretched before him up the coast. With his happy feet he meant to beat the boundaries of the farm, of the goodly acres which, after a time of waiting longer than that of Jacob, were his. A tamarisk hedge ran north and south between the commons—which a century ago had been arid sand—and Hember fields. Byron, walking by this, looked across the undulating ground to the sandy ramparts on the sea-edge. Piled by forgotten tides they resembled in their tiny crests and hollows, their unexpectedness, their general conformation, the huddle of a mountain range. By them the plain behind was protected from the worst rigours of the Atlantic and Byron saw them as a useful factor in his plan for the development of the commons. At present cattle pastured on the turf, rabbits flickered through the spire-grass and the wide space was quiet and at rest. It lay, peacefully, under the eye of day and that which moved on its green bosom moved as if time did not exist. But Byron meant to alter this, to change the face of the dunes. He would tear up the turf which fitted to the land as curling hair fits to a man's head and he would plant the seaward side with a sea-plant, with asparagus. Farther in, he would have strawberries. He knew they did well on the south coast, on the sandy strip beyond Southampton; and he planned a journey which should enable him to observe the methods of other men, which should teach him how to turn the sand beneath his feet into gold. As he walked by a clump of hawthorn and bramble he touched a rabbit gin and, with a sinister snap, the teeth came together. Byron pulled it out and reset it. He meant to rid the land of its rabbits and it pleased him to mark his intention; but gins and guns were ridiculously inadequate, his trapping would be of a more efficacious kind. It should exterminate.

Returning to the house for a midday meal he once more made perfunctory offer of his services.