Wastralls: A Novel

by C. A. Dawson Scott

Dark Head is a narrow peninsula of rock which stands knee-deep in water. A green mane of turf ripples to the black edge and Leadville, scourged across the waste, came at last to a softness of thick untrodden grass. This was the world's end and behind lay the amazing cruelty of life. The great spaces were clean and they were sweet. The man strode to the sloping edge but, because he was not yet ready to surrender his atom of consciousness, drew back. For a moment he stood, looking vacantly across the breathing sea, then turned and flung himself upon the bed the ages had prepared. The grass, wind-swept and deep, yielded a little, closing about his heavy figure like the displaced water of a pool.

On a rock below, an oyster-catcher chattered disapproval but the gulls and shyer cormorants came back to their resting-places. The man was harmless and after the storm they must make the most of the sunshine. They stood about, preening themselves in the red light and above the southern hills but near them, the sun made the half-circle of the sky.

In moments of overwhelming emotion Byron, when the strain grew too intense, had hitherto passed into another state of consciousness. The sound of hammering had as it were, opened a door, beyond which was a bewildering peace. Forgetfulness had fallen on him like a garment and when he came back it was, always, to begin afresh. Sabina's words however, though they roused him to a frenzy of feeling, had not had the usual effect. He had not been able to escape.

Drowned in an agony that was elemental he lay on the cliff-top, supine and motionless; Sabina's bitter revelation had been like the pouring of vitriol over his heart. Loving for the first time in his life, loving with the passion of a highly emotional temperament, the hopelessness of his love had been thrust suddenly upon him. A disappointment so elemental, so profound, put him beside himself. His instinct was, somehow, to escape the ultimate pangs. He had fled before the flood, fled from himself, scrambled and sobbed himself across the cliffs until he came to rest, deep in the deep grass of the headland.

His exhaustion was so great that for some time he lay supine as the wreckage on the sands below. As the moments passed, however, consciousness began to return and with it, through the darkness of his mind flitted unhappy thought, a greyness here and there, a vague suspicion. By degrees Sabina's face detached itself from the background. He saw it resentful and defiant and, tired as he was, his gorge rose. The woman was for ever in his road. She had withheld Wastralls from him, now she would come between him and Gray. He saw again the strong lined face, the unlovely trunk; saw them with a dislike which had for some time been growing in intensity. Since her accident Sabina had been to him a death's-head, a creature which, without the power to enjoy, yet clung to its possessions; which, though its grave was yawning, persisted in dragging a repulsive mortality about the earth. A person with any decency of feeling, would have lain her down under the turf and slept the good sleep; but Sabina was neither dead nor alive. That trolly! He cursed it for the hideous thing it was and for the unseemly activity of which it was the symbol. He would have liked to break it in pieces. He would have enjoyed the wrecking and scattering.

Circumstances had put Sabina in opposition to him and had given her the upper hand; but if it came to a struggle he did not fear the issue.

Sitting up on his bed of grass he stared out to sea and, on the horizon, the ships went along and along, far off blacknesses, dim trails of smoke. He did not see them, was indeed unconscious of his material surroundings, but his mind was beginning to work. Behind Sabina's denying face he sensed the opposition of Gray's mother. Hitherto he had regarded Mrs. Tom as a friendly circumstance; but he knew she was shrewd and, in a small way, ambitious. Jim Rosevear of Treketh would be a satisfactory match. He had the promise of a good farm and was a steady chap. And Gray? Would she take her mother's penny shrewdness for wisdom, marry a young man for his youth, do the commonplace thing?

For the first time since the blow had fallen, Byron allowed himself to think of Gray driving away from him with Jim Rosevear. Suffocating with rage, he fell forward again upon the grass.

Such passion as that of Leadville Byron is the creative force at its human strongest and the man who feels it, recognizes in it something of the divine. He cannot doubt that he will be able to inspire in its object an equal flame; and he seeks, with a persistence worthy of its sacred object, for his opportunity. Byron had the most precious thing in the world to offer Gray and nothing, not her mother, not the hampering circumstance of a wife, not even her girlish preference for another man, would be allowed to stand in his way.

Noon found him by the yard gate of Wastralls. He had drifted back across the waste because the way was familiar to his wandering feet; and he reached the farm as the kitchen clock began to strike. The familiar sound, hoarse and creaking as the voice of an old person, carried across the sunshiny yard and the man stood to count the strokes. Twelve o'clock! Where had the morning gone? He rubbed his eyes like one waking out of sleep and, as he did so, became aware that a horse had been tethered to the staple and that beyond the horse, was a gig. The varnish of this threw off a hundred cheerful reflections while the buckles and bosses of the harness were of a highly polished brass. The glitter and hard cheeriness of the whole were like the sharp gleams of frost on a sunshiny winter morning. Byron recognized the gig as belonging to Dr. Derek of Stowe. Whenever other business brought him into the parish, the doctor was apt to drop in for a chat with his late patient. He liked her, but he had also a professional reason for coming. Her recovery had surprised him, for such vitality is unusual; and he meant to keep an eye on the case.