Wastralls: A Novel

by C. A. Dawson Scott

Mrs. Tom pulled down her veil and, for a moment, leaned her weight on Constantine. To see Sabina carried feet foremost over the threshold of her home was too much for her powers of self-control and, behind the veil, her tears were flowing. Con, understanding but inarticulate, pressed her arm. They two were the real mourners; of all that concourse they alone would miss Sabina out of their daily lives. As the coffin was earned past, a shiver ran through the man's large body. With Sabina gone he, too, was in sight of the end. A week ago the thought would have troubled him but to it he was now indifferent. So does life, taking one by one the things we value, make us ready for its own putting off.

The bearers—and the sexton, once bullockman at Wastralls, was of their number—set the coffin down on the black crickets. Behind them the queue of mourners was receiving belated additions. Leadville had taken his place beside Mrs. Tom, her husband was behind him with Betsy, Constantine with Gray.

The day was calm with a tang of cold, a day when the gulls gathered in the new-ploughed fields and, the sea being still, the murmur of other waters could be heard. As the coffin was carried down the avenue under the low wind-bent branches, the sexton started a hymn. Many present being choir members, it was taken up at once and a volume of tuneful sound went before the procession up the lane.

Sleep on beloved, sleep and take thy rest,

Lay down thy head upon thy Saviour's breast;

I love thee well, but Jesus loves thee best—

Good night, good night, good night.

Mrs. Tom had walked in many a similar procession. Only that summer she had followed a brother to the grave and now, in obedience to Henwood's signal, she moved forward after the bearers. She was at the moment too much occupied with herself to realize that the long line was actually on its way. Once in the open air, however, and the chill freshness of the morning had its usual effect and, by the time the head of the black serpent was pushing past St. Cadic, she was sufficiently recovered to spare glance and thought—neither at all kindly—for the man keeping step with her.

For Byron the morning had been chequered. Some of the mourners, in particular those from a distance, had met him with an assumption of friendliness. Though a stranger he was now the owner of Wastralls and, in that capacity, they would meet him in the market-place and on public business. One or two of the wives expressed the hope that he would look in when passing. He was not only a substantial farmer but a widower and, on the whole, a man who filled the eye. Even Mrs. Tom, embittered and grudging, could not deny that at the head of the procession he looked well. By no means the tallest man present, his heavy dignified carriage made him appear bigger than he actually was. He walked, too, with a certain arrogance. The men who followed him were mentally lesser men and he was conscious of it. He was leading the way, was for the first time in his proper place. The errand on which he was bound did not occupy his attention. The coffin, when it passed him in the hall, had roused in him a queer inexplicable emotion, a fleeting sense of association, but not because of what it contained. Of Sabina he scarcely thought. She belonged to the past, that past on which he had definitely and thankfully turned his back. His face was towards the future, his mind was crowded with the brick and scaffolding of the edifice he hoped to rear; and he found in his breast such a consciousness of power that he was fain to give it expression by joining in the hymn.

"I love thee well, but Jesus loves thee best," he rumbled in his deep voice and Mrs. Tom, hearing him, stared. To her it was as if he were uttering blasphemies.

"The shirkin' old villain," she thought indignantly, "walkin' there as 'e belong to walk. I dunno 'ow 'e dare. Actually singin' in the hymn too, the two-faced dragon. 'Tis enough to bring a judgment on 'im, so it is."

Winding out of the valley between hedges which, though it was December, were still green, the procession came at last to Hilltop. Here the road made a wide bend. The grey tower of the church was in sight and the sexton, in order to toll the bell, took a short cut across the fields. Mrs. Byron, though a chapel-goer would be buried by the parson of the parish, laid beside Old Squire in the shadow of the church. To the people this ritual, which for them had lost its potency, was still part of the established order. The rector was appointed by powers outside their knowledge and had his place. They neither welcomed nor objected to him. He served his purpose.

Seen from above, the churchyard must have looked like a shallow vessel filling with ink. So numerous were the mourners that, after crowding the little old edifice to overflowing, they poured down the paths and over the grassy mounds. About the Rosevear graves the couples and groups had solidified into a mass. Their faces, like pink disks in a dark setting, were shadowed by their veils and their black headgear. They had turned towards the pit which had been digged; and the minds of all were occupied with thoughts, not of the resurrection but of the dampness and coldness of the body's last resting-place. Down in the earth, pressed down by a weight of mould and stones, shut away for ever from the fires and talk! During the night rain had fallen and the water had not yet soaked away through the stiff clay of the grave. It lay, covering the bottom, an inexpressibly dreary adjunct to the grey sides and crumbling verge. The mourners' hearts vibrated with pity for the woman who had looked her last on friendly faces, who was on her way to lie, rain-water below, saturated clods above, in the chill unfriendly bosom of the earth. When the coffin was brought out and 'Peace, Perfect Peace' was raised, they joined in with a sense of relief. It could not be that the Mrs. Byron, whom they all knew, was to lie there in the wet and the dark. With an optimism as indestructible, as logical, as hers had been, they promised themselves and her, not death but life.