As Leadville on his black stallion turned the corner below Church Town, he met the Wastralls wagon coming back from Stowe with a load of coal and oil. The sight of the teamster, leading his horse as it zigzagged across the sharp ascent, brought the other a sudden tingling realization of power. Yesterday Rosevear had been a hind on his wife's farm and Byron, though ostensibly, blusteringly master, had not been able to dismiss him. Now, opportunity, spruce and debonair, was walking towards him up the wide curve of the road.
Reining in his horse—a gift from Sabina, who liked him to be well mounted—he waited till Jim, this 'proper jump-the-country' was abreast of him.
"The missus is gone!" He was not thinking of Sabina but of the alteration in their relative position.
Jim's face had been as cheerful as his thoughts. Though in workaday clothes he wore them with a holiday air and had adorned his cap with the iridescent wing-feather of a drake. He was in pairing mood and had seen in Stowe 'a lickin' great wardrobe' that he would like for Gray 'if she'd a mind to't.' His nest-building thoughts were scattered by Byron's untimely news and his face lengthened. "Gone?" he repeated. "'E don't say so? Poor sawl! I'm awful sorry. Was it a fit or what was it?"
Byron, impatient to assert himself, ignored the question. Sitting his horse with a touch of swagger he said truculently: "I'll leave yer know I'm maister now."
Jim believed that he had a reason to dislike the speaker and none whatever to avoid a quarrel. Better bad blood between them than that Byron, under the cloak of kinship, should be able to come worrying Gray.
"Iss," he said, accepting the challenge, "missus is 'ardly cold, but still I s'pose you think you'm maister now."
In Byron's fierce eyes was the longing to begin the inevitable fight. The youth, blithe and with his handsome face upturned, was incarnate provocation. One hearty blow and Byron saw the contour of that admirable nose for ever changed.
"When you finish up to-night you can come in," he growled, "and I'll pay you your wages. I don't want you 'ere, on the place, any longer."
Jim did not seem impressed. "I can clear now if you like." It would serve the 'ole hunks' right if he were left with the horse and wagon on his hands.
"An' if yer don't want to 'av yer bones broken," continued the other, pausing on a darkling thought that the sea did not always give up its dead, "you'll clear out of this part altogether."
In Jim's eyes was a little dancing light. "Shen't clear out for the likes of you."
"Well, now, you take this for a warning. If you don't you'll wish you 'ad."
"We'll see about that," and being of those whose spirits rise at the prospect of a fight he smiled. "We'll see who is the best man of the two, me or you."
A grimmer smile was on Byron's face. Knowing his strength he could look forward, past the irritating unpropitious moment, to the happy hour when they should come to grips. "Oo d'yer think's afraid of you, yer banty cock?" he cried, contemptuously, and prepared to ride on.
"If you was as big as a church and tower I ain't afraid," cried the youth after him. As the affair seemed to be hanging fire, he tried a rousing word. "An' if I'm in yer way I shall stay where I'm to."
Byron flashed him a look full of sinister possibilities, the look of one who had taken into consideration that cliffs are sheer and nights dark. "I'll see about that, then."
The prospect of a fight was dwindling into nothingness. "There's people," said Jim, on a last hope, "'ud rather see me than you."
"Any more of your cheek, young sprat, and I'll wring your neck."
But he had realized the countryside would cry shame if he were seen brawling in public while his wife lay dead at home. They would not be blinded to the reason and such knowledge might breed suspicion. He must wait. Grinding his heel into the stallion's side he started at a gallop, leaving Jim disappointed but smiling, for with him, too, it was a case of 'Gay go the Gordons.'
A little annoyance was enough to upset Byron for hours. In a fume of exasperation and bitter feeling he now urged his horse to a speed which drew on him the attention of other wayfarers.
"If 'e ride that rate 'e must be goin' after a doctor. I should think man's missis was goin' to straw—first child, too," said a man from Little Petherick to whom Leadville was a stranger.
"Thiccy feller's Mr. Byron to Wastralls," corrected his companion, "and I know there's no chick nor child there, nor any comin'. 'E do always ride as if Old Nick was after 'un. 'E'll break 'is neck one of these odd days."
The short interview with Rosevear had been unsatisfactory in more ways than one, for the youth's last words had planted a thorn. Not only had he smiled at Byron's threats but his smile, had been of a quality which made the other's blood run cold. Behind it lay assurance, a knowledge he might not divulge but which, like a hidden weapon, was for use at need. The other's jealousy, temporarily in abeyance, stirred and he sought a reason, other than the simple love of fighting inherent in the male, for Jim's smile. Not many cared to try conclusions with the strongest man in the parish. Byron had browbeaten the few who crossed his path, but Jim was game. What had happened to give him confidence? How were matters between him and Gray? That drive into Stowe! The farmer ground his teeth at the thought of it. Was she promised and did Rosevear feel sure of her? A fool for his pains! Such promises were of cobweb stuff. She might promise—his little umuntz—for she did not know, but the end would be the same.
The black stallion was damp with sweat when Byron pulled up at Dr. Derek's freshly painted gate—which in its brightness, its specklessness, was the outward and visible sign of the doctor's tastes! A pathway, gravelled with small white stones and edged with scarlet tiles, led directly to a cream-coloured house, the wide windows of which were brilliantly clean but uncurtained. On the door a highly polished knocker twinkled above a discreetly closed brass letter-flap. Dr. Derek was just returned from his morning round and, though the midday meal was on the table, his constant curiosity with regard to Mrs. Byron, would not allow him to keep her husband waiting. The farmer was, therefore, shown at once into the consulting-room.
The little doctor, round and rosy, was seated before a table of light polished wood. Byron, as he went up the room, gathered an impression of bright glass and metal surfaces, in a well-lighted sunshiny place. So bright was everything, the glass cupboards full of silver implements, the polished woods, the glazed bookcases, that the man, used to low tones within doors, blinked. The high lights of innumerable small objects, the sharply defined pattern of carpet and upholstered chair, confused him and for a moment he stood tongue-tied. At last the difficult words came.
"I've bad news for 'ee, sir."
If that well-regulated organ, which Dr. Derek called his heart, ever varied in its beat this was one of the occasions. He had been convinced that with such injuries as had been inflicted by her accident Mrs. Byron could not recover and, by doing so, she had proved him mistaken. Was it possible that after all...
"Sorry to hear it, Byron. The missus isn't worse, I hope?"
The man breathed heavily. "I'm sorry to tell 'ee, sir, she's gone."
Dr. Derek sat back in his cane elbow-chair. It was a sign, with him, of elation but his face was decorously long. "Dear, dear, you don't say so? How did it happen?"
Byron twisted his hat in his hands. In the meticulously clean room he showed clumsy, weather-browned and out of place. "She wasn't like herself all day, yesterday," he volunteered after a pause, during which Dr. Derek, waiting and knowing he must wait, had occupied himself with a retrospect. No woman could survive such injuries. If it had been one leg or if the head had not been hurt! Her partial recovery had been the effort of a healthy organism, a fine effort but foredoomed. The event had justified his prognosis. "She went to bed early," continued Byron, dragging out his words as if they were creatures with a will opposed to his, "she thought if she did she might be better by the mornin'."
"Did she take her food?"
"She was eatin' like a 'adger last night. I couldn't 'elp noticing it. I thought 'twas a poor sign."
"What did she have for supper?"
Byron recalled, not the articles of food but, the look of the table. "Well, I believe as she 'ad a piece of cold pork."
"Ah!" said the doctor and, behind his gold-rimmed glasses, his eyes gleamed with the satisfaction of the investigator who has run a fact to earth. "And I said she was to be careful about her food. If you remember I recommended a light diet?"
Byron, without understanding it, had noted the satisfaction. "Iss, doctor, but 'er mind was runnin' on pork." He did not know what a light diet was nor that fat pork, when indulged in freely and late at night, was unwholesome.
"A hearty meal," mused the doctor, "and a heart suffering from overstrain. Well—what happened?"
"Since 'er accident, she've been sleepin' downstairs and I never 'eard nothin' of 'er till Mrs. Rosevear come over early this mornin' and found 'er dead in bed." He shook his head. "It frightened all the lot of us."
The doctor, turning to a brass dish, picked up an agate penholder. "Very sad, Byron, very sad; but I'm afraid only what was to be expected."
It was the countryman's turn to experience surprise. The doctor had taken Sabina's death as a matter of course. Very satisfactory, but on what grounds? "You don't say so, sir," he began cautiously. "I'd no idea!"
"If people in a weak state of health will eat pork late at night, in other words give their stomach more work than it is capable of doing," explained Dr. Derek and, behind his twinkling spectacles, his cold and keen eyes emitted a friendly gleam, "the heart is apt to stop work. It's not a bad death, Byron. She didn't suffer."
"I'm pretty and thankful to hear that, sir. We was rather afraid, poor sawl, there by 'erself, might 'av 'ad a 'ard death."
"You can put that fear out of your mind. In all probability she passed in her sleep, just—" he snapped his fingers—"snuffed out. Now, let's see, do you want me to come over?"
So far, matters had gone better than Byron had dared to hope; but now his heart sank. If Dr. Derek were to see Sabina he might realize—Byron accredited him with miraculous powers—on what a fairy superstructure his diagnosis was built. "Well, sir," he said, "just as you like. If you think you ought to come, do so. I shouldn't like for people to talk after she were buried up and say we didn't do what we ought to 'ave done; but she's dead and stiff."
"You don't make a point of it, then?"
"I want you to zactly please yerself, sir."
"Humph!" The doctor considered. "I saw her yesterday and I'm pretty busy. Yes, yes, it isn't necessary." His gold nib in its cool agate holder began to run in smooth flowing style over a sheet of partly printed paper. "Show that to the undertaker," he said, passing the certificate to Byron.
"Thank you, doctor, and for all the trouble you've took of 'er." He placed the paper carefully in his pocketbook and prepared to go. "Seems rather hard that after all you couldn't pull 'er through!"
In Dr. Derek's bosom the professional man was often at war with the scientific. "The fact is, Byron," he said honestly, "I didn't expect to save her. I've never thought she would live so long." His experienced glance dwelt fleetingly on the other's face. "You look pretty seedy, yourself. If you don't take care we shall have you on the sick list."
"Well, sir, 'twas awful sudden, 'twas. I don't feel to believe she's really gone. I'm like I'm in a dream." But, in his hidden mind, he was wondering why the man who saw so much could not pierce to the little more.
"Must have been a terrible shock to you. When is the funeral to be?"
"Monday, I believe, sir."
"Walking, I suppose?"
The man looked surprised. "What else would we 'av, sir?"
"No, of course, I was forgetting. Well, I'll try to come to it. I had the greatest possible respect for your wife as a farmer. She should have been a man."
"'Tis great respect you're payin' her, sir."
The doctor smiled enigmatically. "That's as may be," he said and, indeed, for him to say a woman resembled a man was the reverse of complimentary. In his experience the sterile female frequently approximated to the male in type and habits; and he thought such approximation a sign of degeneracy. He had been interested from a scientific point of view in Mrs. Byron. She had led a man's life and she was childless. Was the latter a consequence, or had the childlessness determined her way of life? He could find arguments in support of both theories.
Byron had brought to the interview a mind filled with misgiving. Dr. Derek had a reputation for ability and the other had hardly ventured to hope his tale would pass muster. He had told the truth because he dared not do other and behold it had stood him in good stead, that and the fact that Dr. Derek, for the sake of his professional reputation, had not been altogether sorry to hear of Mrs. Byron's death. As he rode at a walking pace down the hilly street the farmer could congratulate himself on the outcome.
The streets of Stowe, like spokes of a wheel, converge on the quay; and back from it, but near at hand, lie the huddle of warehouses, shops and inns, which supply the needs of sailormen. The quayside itself is, at low tide, a sheer drop of many feet; but the children play on its unprotected verge and the drunken man rolls gaily home from the waterside pubs and there is no tale of casualties. In one of the less frequented streets, opposite the Farmer's Arms, stood the undertaker's shop with, in the window, by way of advertisement, a baby's coffin and a hollow mortuary urn. Henwood, the undertaker, a little chattery man, fond of society and overfond of his glass, was generally to be found on his neighbour's premises; and, when Byron rode up, was fetched therefrom by the wife whose tongue was supposed to drive him thither. As Dr. Derek would have said, however, it was a moot point whether Mrs. Henwood's temper was the cause of his going, or his going the cause of her temper.
He came in, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and, the subject of beer being to him the most congenial in the world, opened the proceedings by asking Byron if he would have a glass. The latter, preoccupied and anxious, had not known he was thirsty.
"I don't mind if I do 'av one," he said, with that increase of cordiality which an offer of hospitality induces.
"Wait a moment, then." Little Henwood, who was a man of girth rather than height, rolled himself down the shop. When he reached the door at the end, he opened the upper half and called to some one within. "Sandra! would you mind running in for a jug of beer?"
A clatter of tin pans reached Byron's ears, then a voice the reverse of amiable. "Do you think I'm going to run my foot in and out for you—yer walkin' beer-barr'l? Fetch it yerself."
"'Tidn't fer me, my dear," twittered the little man.
"Mr. Byron don't want beer when he's come for yer to make a coffin. 'Tis for yerself I reckon and quench yer thirst in this world you can but Lorrd knows yer throat will be dry enough in the next."
"Well, 'av it your own way then, my dear, but Mr. Byron's thirsty as a gull. He's comed all the way from Trevorrick. Perhaps," he added disarmingly, "you'll 'and me out a jug—a jug of water, my dear."
"And 'ave you empt that water away and go after beer? Do you think, Mr. Henwood; you've married a fool?"
"I wish I 'ad, I wish I 'ad," muttered Henwood and shaking a head on which a rim of grey curls surrounded an unreverend tonsure he came slowly back. "Don't you take no notice of 'er," he said, lifting the mortuary urn out of the window.
"I don't," said the other simply. "I've 'ad enough of that."
"Where there's a will there's a way," said the little undertaker making for the door, "and thiccy urn 'olds just about a pint. I'll be back in a jiffy."
Left to himself, Byron glanced down the shop. He felt curiously at home in it; and this was strange because he could not remember ever to have been there before. At the end was a shed lighted from above and furnished with a carpenter's bench, trestles and some newly planed boards. A sack of shavings stood in a corner and the air carried a scent of wood. Byron sniffed it appreciatively. It wakened in him a dim memory, a memory so elusive that, try as he might, he could not capture it. The place was familiar, the boards, the smell of wood, but something was lacking, some sound. As he stood, puzzling over the circumstance, Henwood returned with the brimming urn.
Setting it carefully on a small black stool or cricket, he turned to the window and, lifting the lid of the baby's coffin, took from within two rather smeary glasses. "The Lorrd 'elps them as 'elps 'emselves," he said cheerfully. "Missus 'ud never think of looking in thiccy coffin and many a drink I've 'ad from'n."
The other drank in silent appreciation of the undertaker's mother-wit. He found it pleasant after the annoyances, the secret fears and elations of the morning, to be in contact with this simple soul, whose one idea was beer and yet more beer.
"Not much doing," said Henwood, conversationally, as he returned the glasses to their hiding-place, "but what's my loss is other people's gain and, after all, though I do my duty by the dead the livin' 'as always been more to my taste. What can I do for you, Mr. Byron?"
"I want for 'ee to come over to measure my wife for 'er coffin."
"My dear life, you don't mean to say she's dead?"
"Iss, the poor sawl, she died off in her sleep last night and we want for you to come and do the business."
The little man considered, his head on one side. "You want 'er buried decent, I s'pose?"
So that Sabina was hurried into the grave, Byron was indifferent as to the furnishings of her journey but he knew better than to let this appear. "Of course I do—although I don't believe in wastin' so much money to be put'n under the turf, when it could be used for something better. The missus used to think same as I do, she was never one for grandeur."
"Well, you got to study other people's tongues, you know."
"If it wasn't for that," said the countryman with his grim smile, "you'd cut a poor shine, I reckon. Well, what sort of wood be yer goin' to put in?"
"I've a good piece of oak here, seasoned wood, what about that? I cut a coffin for Colonel Pendarves out of it, but there's enough for another."
Bargaining was second nature to these men and Henwood, in suggesting what he knew would not be acceptable, was only observing the rules of the game.
Byron made the expected answer. "Oak 'edn't for the likes o' we, it's for the gentry folk. What other 'av you got?"
"There's ellum. It's good hard wood and lastin'."
"Don't matter 'ow long it last when 'tis once in under the earth."
Henwood led the way into the shed and pointed to some timber.
"Why don't you 'av a polished pitch pine wi' brass fittin's? Thiccy stuff was only landed last week." He touched the wood with spatulate hands, the hands of the craftsman. Next to his beer he loved 'a bit o' seasoned wood.' "You wouldn't wish for a handsomer coffin than that 'uld make."
"Pitch pine is more like it," agreed the buyer. "What would it cost?"
"I dunno as I could tell 'ee to a pound or two. There's a lot o' things to consider. There's the linin's and the fittin's; and then there's the gloves for the bearers and their 'arf crowns. Was you thinkin' to 'av one set of bearers or two?"
"'Tis a braäve way to Church Town and the missus was a big woman, I think we better 'av the two."
"Sixteen half-crowns is a good bit. That'll make two pound. You see that tally up."
"Well, 'av it done decent, but she wouldn't like no show nor fuss. I know she wouldn't."
"We'll 'ave it plain as possible then." He made a note on the wood itself and then stood thoughtful. "When would you like to 'av it?"
"Mrs. Rosevear said I'd better leave it to you."
Henwood tapped his teeth with the broad wood pencil. "Weather's braäve and cold," he said meditatively, "but if she died off sudden——"
"She done 'er day's work as usual and ate a good supper but doctor said 'twas 'er 'eart. Accident must 'av strained it. 'E didn't think she'd live so long as she 'av."
"She must 'er died on a full stomach, so I should bury her up as soon as we can. To-day's Saturday, but I can be ready by Monday."
"We must 'av it that way."
"Very well, then, tell Mrs. Rosevear we shall leave the 'ouse at 'arf-past one."
As Byron went out, the little man's glance travelled beyond him on an errand in no way connected with the business in hand. Life was 'terrible short' and he must make the most of his time, get down as many 'cups o' beer' as he could before his journeymen were set to make that coffin which must be put together without his help.
The Farmer's Arms beckoned and he went.