Wastralls: A Novel

by C. A. Dawson Scott

"Iss, Leadville," said the wife tranquilly, "I'm glad for 'ee to stay in wi' me. Let the young ones go, they don't want we old 'uns followin' of them up. We've 'ad our day."

The man turned on her quickly. "Me old?" he cried with manifest irritation. "I'll tell yer about old. I bain't old."

"You'm in yer prime; but that seem old to a young maid."

"Do I seem old to you, Gray?" demanded he, and his eyes were both pleading and threatening, eyes so hungry that the girl had some ado to give him an unmoved reply. Not that she felt any sympathy with him in what she looked on as a tiresome aberration, but that under the quiet surface she was a little stirred and a little afraid. "You'm older than dad," she said at last.

"I'm ten times the man your father is!" He stretched his arms and expanded his deep chest. He was desperately anxious to prove to her his unabated virility, while she, timid, and on the threshold of awakening sensation, would have avoided the thought of it. His strength, present with her, and always desirous, was a subtle menace to the young happiness which her bosom shrined. "There isn't a feller for miles round can wrestle me or box me. You know I can carry four hundredweight on my shoulders where other chaps take two. I hain't old."

The girl, moved by her longing to escape, had risen and drawn nearer to her aunt. Here was, at least, protection, protection from all but that dim admission of her own heart that Leadville Byron was indeed all he claimed to be and more. For he was not only strong he was persistent, he was forcible. "Don't make no difference to me," she said, in a voice she tried to render careless, "whether you're old or not." And she spoke the truth. It was not his age that mattered.

When she came to Wastralls she had been prepared to find Leadville devoted to his wife's interests and deeply thankful she had been spared to him. By degrees it dawned on her simplicity that his thoughts were otherwise busy, that Sabina was a matter of indifference to him, or worse, that he was living a dream life of which she, Gray, was the centre. An unhappy little centre! She had had her share of attention from the young men of the scattered community, a little sighing, a soft pursuit, a hot word and the end. But Leadville was a stranger and his pursuit was not soft but fierce. He did not sigh but she could not be in the room with him without feeling that his brawny chest, his strong arms were aching with the longing to lay hold of her. She could not touch him accidentally without feeling the thrill of his desire. She was enveloped by his thoughts; and she struggled, resenting this emotion which threatened to overwhelm her and the bright prospects of her youth. For Gray was in need, not of a conflagration, but of a little fire upon the hearth.

With the man, matters were gradually coming to a head. He had not loved the old couple who had adopted him, he had been only mildly attracted by his wife, but he had in him a fund of passion which, through the fallow years, had been growing in concentration and of which the fuse had at length been lighted. His love for Gray was as overwhelming to himself as it might prove to its object. He had not known what a furnace was smouldering at the heart of him and, when the flame broke forth, to resist was impossible. He did not attempt it. On the contrary he gave himself up to these new sensations that ran through him, wave after wave, like a burning but not scarifying fire. His new passion pushed Wastralls for the time being into the background. He could not contain more than one absorbing emotion. He had been the persistent, passionate lover of the land, so but with more fever, did he love Gray. Wonderful as to him were these new feelings, he found them almost too poignant. When she entered a room in which he sat his throat went dry, he could hardly speak and the brief contacts of skirt or hand proved unendurably sweet. He turned from these moments of a troubling ecstasy to the languorous long intervals when she was absent and he, recalling her face, could dwell on it and imagine the fulfilling, tender, fiery, wonderful, of his every hope.

During the first months that Gray was living at Wastralls, Byron spent much of his time on Dark Head; but in the end he woke to a desire for more than dreams could give, a desire which grew in intensity after the manner of Jack the Giant-killer's bean. He began to haunt the young girl's steps and her honest attempts to discourage him passed with him for a sort of tantalizing encouragement. He could not believe that the object of a feeling so intense could be unresponsive, that these troubling sensations were not mutual; and when Gray avoided him, escaped from him, even, when protected by Sabina, flouted him with a little angry ruffling, he smiled with the conviction that his hour was at hand.

Steady untiring pursuit is apt to demoralize the victim and while Sabina thought the summer heats had washed the colour out of Gray's cheek, Mrs. Tom, uneasy as a hen when hawks are hovering, went to the root of the matter.