Wastralls: A Novel

by C. A. Dawson Scott

Beyond the entrance hall the parlours, giving on the passage, showed also an inviting face. These rooms, owing to the thickness of their walls, the smallness and eastern aspect of the many-paned casements, were gloomy. They smelt, not of the sea but its pervading damp and of the mould which crept like leprosy over boot and book and furniture. In both, fires had been lighted but the smoke showed little liking for the damp chimneys and, in the grates, the sea-coal smouldered without flame. In the Big Parlour the best china, silver and glass had been set out and a meal laid; and the gleam of polished surface, the white glow of the freshly laundered damask, the colour of the plates and dishes made a pleasant impression. Mrs. Tom and Richbell, rising early, had helped to carry from the linhay the food piled on its shelves. Fowls were at one end of the table, beef and ham at the other and between stood mountains of splits, bowls of Cornish cream, junkets and cake and pastry. The mourners as they came in would help themselves and plates, with darkly bright knives and shining forks, were stacked in readiness. The Little Parlour had, as far as possible, been denuded of furniture; for the mourners after they had eaten, would form up there in couples, ready when the coffin should have been brought forth, to follow it.

Tom Rosevear had prophesied a large gathering and the event justified him. The many who could 'call cousin' with Sabina Byron came through the deep winding lanes to take part in her funeral and besides these persons—literally 'the mourners'—were a number who did not go up to the house but stood about on Trevorrick Sands, waiting. Though lacking the right conferred by kinship—and in the West you are not invited to a funeral, you go, if a relative, as a matter of course—they, too, would follow her and see her committed 'earth to earth'; and so numerous were they that it was said afterwards that the only person in Tregols parish who did not attend Mrs. Byron's funeral was an old 'bedlier' of the name of Hawken and she, poor soul, had been bedridden up 'in the teens of years.'

Byron had carried with him overstairs a mood of serenity and content; but when he awoke in the morning his mental weather had changed from Set Fair to an uncertain condition of the mercury which expressed itself in a heavy dull sensation at the pit of his stomach. Waves of excitement were flowing through him. This would be a great day. Before a crowd of witnesses—and already they were leaving their distant homes, crossing in the ferry from Rock, coming by train from Wadebridge, driving in from Treremborne and Trerumpford and Treginnegar—Sabina would be finally dispossessed of Wastralls. He who, for so long, had taken second place would come into his own. It was he who would receive them. They would eat his bread, follow him in the long procession, acknowledge him as a neighbour, as a kinsman and, above all, as the owner of the farm. To him, Sabina's funeral was a public ceremony. All men would see her laid to rest, or as he put it 'turned out'; all men would allow his right to enter into possession.

Wastralls! The thought of it was like wine running warmly through his body. Wastralls, his! His mind turned for a moment to the dreary waste of the past, he saw it stretching like the shifting sands of the coast-line to a grey horizon and, with a shudder, he came back. That was over. Thank God he had left those years behind; them and all that had to do with them. He acknowledged to himself, as he drew on his black clothes, that hitherto he had made no attempt to stand well with his neighbours. They had had hearts at ease while he had been gnawing his fingers in despite. It was his fault, nay not his but the fault of embittering circumstance, that he had no friends; but now that Wastralls was his, all this would be changed.

In spite of the warmth about his heart, in spite of his happy anticipations, when at last he found himself in the hall ready to receive the mourners, his courage began to ebb. The adventure was too crucial, meant too much to him. The sensation at the pit of his stomach which had been obliterated by those hot thrills of excitement, returned and in a more acute form. His feet grew cold and the occasion became an ordeal he could have wished were over.

The individuals, converging by train, by road, by ferry on Trevorrick were each an unknown quantity and he found that he was afraid of them and that, as the moments passed, he grew more and more afraid. As he stood by the hearth, listening for the sound of wheels which should announce the first arrival, his unstable nerves, working on his body, gave him a sensation of actual physical sickness. He turned to the chimney-piece and leaned his elbows on it, wondering how much longer he would be able to stand there.

Not far from him, her expressive face set in sober lines, Mrs. Tom Rosevear stood beside Mrs. Con. Their duty it was to receive the wives of the mourners and pass them on to Mrs. Bate who, as Stripper, would take them to pay the dead woman a last visit.

"I don't believe as you've been in to see poor S'bina," said Mrs. Tom to her companion. Byron's presence was disturbing to her and she spoke more by way of distracting her thoughts, than because she thought Betsy would care to pay the customary visit. "Why don't you go now before the rest come? There'll be plenty to do, directly."

Mrs. Con's stout body quivered a negative. "My dear life, I couldn't bear to see 'er. I should be picturin' of 'er everywhere if I did."

"Don't 'ee be so silly," encouraged the other. "I don't believe there's 'ardly any funeral in the parish but what I've seen them."