If I of marriage spake one word,I wot it was not true.Man loveth none so easy won,So over fond as you.All in your garden grows a herb,I think they call it rue;There willows weep o'er waters deep—That is the place for you.
If I of marriage spake one word,I wot it was not true.Man loveth none so easy won,So over fond as you.All in your garden grows a herb,I think they call it rue;There willows weep o'er waters deep—That is the place for you.
If I of marriage spake one word,I wot it was not true.Man loveth none so easy won,So over fond as you.All in your garden grows a herb,I think they call it rue;There willows weep o'er waters deep—That is the place for you.
If I of marriage spake one word,
I wot it was not true.
Man loveth none so easy won,
So over fond as you.
All in your garden grows a herb,
I think they call it rue;
There willows weep o'er waters deep—
That is the place for you.
The tears of mortification rushed into Julian's eyes. Her bosom heaved, and sharply she wheeled her horse about, rode back to those that followed, and said to Bessie, in a voice quivering with emotion, "Go on to the two Anthonys. I want a word with Urith."
Without demur Elizabeth left her place and passed Julian, who drew up across the road to force Urith to rein in. Urith looked at her with some surprise. She did not know Julian except by sight; she had never spoken to her in her life. And now this latter stayed her course as though she were a highwayman demanding her purse.
Julian at first was unable to speak, choked by her passion. She panted for breath and laboured for words, and both failed her. With nervous hands she plucked at her gloves, and dragged rather than drew them off.
"Will you allow me to go forward?" asked Urith coldly.
Then all at once Julian broke forth into a stream of words, disconnected, fiery with the fury that raged within.
"You would snatch him away! You! And you do not know, or you do not care, that he and I are destined for each other—have been ever since our cradles. Who are you to come between us? What are you, Urith Malvine, but a half-savage moor-girl? I have heard of you. Folks have tongues, and tell tales. Why did you come forth on the moor, but because you were aware that he was here? You came to play the forlorn damsel—to attract the pityand ensure the attention of this knight-errant. Are you crafty? I am not. I am straightforward, and do not deign to wear a false face, and put the domino on my heart. I have heard of you; but I never supposed you were crafty." She half-started up her stirrups: "Would we might fight out our quarrel here, on this spot."
She had reared her arm with her whip, the horse started, and she sank back on her seat; she had exhausted her words for the moment. Her blood tumbled, roared, flowed in her arteries like the river on the moor behind them.
"You are mistaken," said Urith with composure. "You flare forth unprovoked; or is it that you are angry with me because I have refused to have anything to say to your brother?"
"To Fox!" Julian laughed contemptuously. "I respect you for that. I never supposed that you or any sane girl would care for him. But the wherefore of his rejection I did not know till this day. I little suspected that Fox was cast aside because you were questing him who is mine—is mine, do you hear? Do you understand that he is not, and never shall be, yours? He is mine, and neither you nor any other shall pluck him from me. I would we might fight this out together with these weapons!" She reverted to the thought that had occupied her when the horse started and interrupted the thread of her ideas. "You, I see, have Anthony's crop that I gave him on his birthday; and I have but this lady's switch. I do not consider the difference. Just as we are—as we sit on our horses, here, on the turf and heather, with our whips—would to God we might fight it out!"
Again she paused for breath, and panted, and put both her hands to her bounding heart—the hand that held the whip and that in which was the bridle and her gloves.
Then she began to cut with her whip, and the horse she rode to curvet.
"Even with this little lash I would fight you, and slash you up and down across your treacherous face; and if you struck me I should not feel the blows—but there, it would not be seemly. Alack the day in which we are fallen—when we are covered with a net of such delicacy that we may not lift hand or foot to right ourselves!"
She drew a long breath and laid both her hands on the whip and bridle over the mane of the horse, and, leaning forward, said—
"But who—what could interfere if we went a race down the hillside among the bogs and rocks, so that one or other would be flung at a stumble of our steeds, and dash out the brains from our heads on the boulders? Would that please you? Would that approve itself to you? I should draw rein and laugh were that to chance to you." Then in an explosion of jealousy and rage, she dashed her gloves in the face of Urith. "I dare you! Yes, I dare you to wrest him from me!"
Urith sat on the horse unmoved. She was surprised, she was not angry. This was the foaming over of boiling passion, but not a frenzied paroxysm such as came upon herself. The charges brought against her were monstrous, untrue—so monstrous and so untrue that they bore no sting that could pain her.
She replied in her rich deep tones, and with composure. "You mistake. I will not take up your challenge. What is Anthony to me? What am I to him? You are beautiful, clever, and rich—and I," she laughed, "I am but an ungroomed, undisciplined moor colt, who never gave a thought to her looks, whether fair or foul. I am without wit, without scholarship, living with my mother on our poor manor, so poor in means as to be hardly accounted gentle, yet, by birth, too gentle to be esteemed boors. No, I will not contest with you. We are furnished unequally for a contest, you have the long whip and I but the switch."
At that moment the wind, blowing strongly, carried a tuft of ignited gorse overhead, and as it bore the tuft, fanned into fragrance, and the glare momentarily kindled the faces of the two girls planted in opposition.
Each saw the other clearer than in daylight, for the light fell on their faces and the background was sable, unillumined. As Urith looked, she saw how handsome was her opponent, with fluttering locks, her colour heightened by wrath, her full lips trembling, her eyes flashing. She thought that if she were to match herself against such an one she would come away with ignominious defeat; and Julian, by the same light, and at the same moment, formedher opinion of the rival facing her, recognised her strength, her charm, and felt that she was a girl who would jeopardise her hold over Anthony, and imperil her happiness.
Both were strong women, one threatening, the other reluctant to fight. Would they come into real conflict? Would the reluctance of the one be overborne? Would the threat of the first lead to action? And, if they fought, which would win?
"No," said Urith, "I do not covet the prize. So much for one thing. For the other, as I said, the odds are unequal."
"Then," said Julian, "return me my gloves."
"I suppose they have fallen. Would you have me dismount to search the grass for them? Get off your horse yourself, or call Fox to your aid. I will not stoop to look for them for you."
"You have my gloves. They are not on the ground. Return them to me, or I—"
Then Urith impatiently whipped her horse and thrust Julian aside. "This is arrant folly," she said; "I want to be at home. I will be stayed by you no longer."
The ill-assorted, discordant party pushed on as fast as possible along a road that, as it neared inhabited country, became rough and uncertain, and under a sky of diminished light, for the heather on this portion of the moor had been burnt early in the day, and hardly any of the embers remained aglow.
No combination was possible that would content all, for every one except the good-humoured Bessie had some private grudge against another, and Bessie herself was depressed by the general dissatisfaction.
Anthony Cleverdon was vexed that he had not been left to convey Urith to her home undisturbed, though he admitted to himself that for her sake the present accidental arrangement was the best. Julian Crymes, stillincandescent in her anger and jealousy, was unwilling to speak to Anthony, and unwilling to allow him to leave her side to address a word to, and show attention to, Urith. When she did speak to him, it was in a taunting tone, and his answers were curt, almost to rudeness.
The temper of Fox Crymes, never smooth, was now fretted to considerable asperity; for he was smarting under the sense of rejection. He had asked for the hand of Urith, and had been refused, and he saw, or suspected that he saw, a reason for his rejection—an attachment for Anthony Cleverdon. Fox was vain and conceited, and envious of his namesake, who had superior physical powers, a finer person, and a better fortune than himself. He was not sorry that his half-sister was disappointed, for whatever might distress her, gave pleasure to him. However, the occasion of her distress on this occasion was something that wounded him as well as her.
Fox loved Urith, as far as he was capable of loving, but the jealousy he now felt was no measure of his love; like the famous Serpent's Egg, it was bred of a score of parents. It was the produce of mortified vanity, of envy of Anthony Cleverdon's superior gifts of nature and fortune, of disappointed avarice, quite as much as of rejected love.
Fox Crymes' suit for Urith was not instigated wholly by his admiration for her charms; it sprang quite as much out of his desire to obtain the small patrimony which would fall to her on her mother's decease.
Willsworthy was an ancient manor, never of great importance, and without fertility, yet not despicable in the eyes of a poor gentleman. It lay on the extreme limits of cultivated land, or rather it may be said to have occupied the debateable ground between the waste and culture. It occupied a hill that ran as a spur out of the moorland, between torrents, and seemed to be what, no doubt, it was, a portion of wilderness snatched from savagery, and hedged in. It possessed no good soil, it lay too high for wheat to ripen on it, it was destitute of these pasture meadows by the waterside, where the grass grows knee-deep, and is gold-sprinkled in spring with buttercups; it was dominated by rugged tors, and stood near the entrance of the gorge of the Tavy, where it roared and leaped, and shot as it came down into the lowlands, and with it camedown the cold blasts that also roared and whirled, and beat about the lone Manor of Willsworthy.
Mrs. Malvine talked disparagingly of her farm, her brother Solomon Gibbs averred it was an estate on which to starve, and not to live. Urith accepted their verdict as final, she knew the need for money that ever prevailed in her house; and yet Fox Crymes cast greedy eyes upon the estate. He saw that it possessed capabilities that were disregarded by the widow and her brother. The manor owned considerable rights. It had the freedom of the moor, to send out upon it an unlimited number of sheep and cattle and colts; at a time when English wool was fetching a high price, and was exported to the Mediterranean, to Cadiz, to Leghorn, to Palermo, to Marseilles; this was important—it afforded exceptional opportunities of making money. There needed but the initial outlay on the stock, their keep was free. Not only so, but sheep in lowlands were, in wet seasons, afflicted with disease which slew them in great numbers, which sometimes exterminated entire flocks. But sheep on the moor were never known thus to suffer; they enjoyed perfect immunity from the many maladies which attend keeping them on cultivated land.
The climate in the West of England is so mild that it was possible to let the sheep run on the moor through the major portion of the year, only for a few months in the depth of the winter, possibly only when snow lay on the moor, was it needful to provide them with food; and the meadows of Willsworthy, though they did not produce rank grass, yet produced hay that was extraordinary sweet and nutritious, and in sufficient abundance to support a large number of sheep and cattle for the short time during which they were debarred from foraging for themselves. Anthony Crymes saw plainly enough, that if he had the management of the estate of Willsworthy he would make it a mine of gold; and that the reason why it did not now flourish was the lack of capital in the acres, and mismanagement. Anthony Crymes knew that some money would come to him from his father, not indeed much, but just sufficient for his purpose, should he acquire this property—and he was very ambitious of obtaining it.
At present, Mrs. Malvine entrusted the conduct of the farm to her brother Solomon who belied his name; hewas a man without any knowledge of farming, and with no interest save in his violin, and who took delight only in good company. The farm was allowed to take its course, which was naturally a retrograde one—a relapse from former culture into pristine wilderness.
At the period of this tale, some two hundred years ago, every squire farmed, if not his entire estate, at all events a portion of it. Men of ancient pedigree, proud of their ancestral properties and mansions, of their arms and their alliances, did not disdain to ride to market and cheapen cattle.
The Civil War ruined most of the squires who had taken up arms for the King, litigation ruined others; then came in the great merchants and bought the old owners out, and established themselves in their room. They understood nothing of farming, and esteemed it despicable and unworthy of their new-fangled gentility to pursue it.
With the gall of envy bitter in his heart did Fox see the other Anthony walk alongside of Urith, and assume towards her an intimacy to which he himself had never attained. The girl had ever avoided him, had treated him with coldness tinged with ill-disguised disdain. She had not made that effort to veil her dislike which will gloss over a repulse. Fox saw another man better favoured than himself, reach at a bound a position he had laboriously tried to mount, and had failed.
Hall, or as the country-folk called it "Yall," was the house of the Cleverdons. It had belonged to the Glanville estates—had been bought by old Judge Glanville, in the reign of Elizabeth, who had founded the family. The Glanvilles had flourished for awhile, and had spread over the country-side, taking up estate after estate, and had collapsed as suddenly as they had risen. The Cleverdons had been farmers, renting Hall, and when that estate was sold old Cleverdon by some means got together sufficient money to purchase it, and since the purchase had laid out considerable sums to transform what had been a modest farmhouse into a pretentious squire's mansion.
Old Anthony was in that transitional state in which, passing from one rank of life to another, he was comfortable in neither. He was sensitive and ambitious—sensitive to slights, and ambitious to push himself and his son into abetter social position than that which had been occupied by his ancestors; and, indeed, by himself in early life. The Crymes family had been connected with the Glanvilles by marriage, and now old Anthony schemed on the acquisition of another portion of the Glanville property, through the marriage of his son and heir with Julian Crymes. The old man's success had fostered his ambition. He indulged in a dream of the Cleverdons, by skilful management, assuming eventually the position once maintained by the Glanvilles.
The Civil Wars had produced vast displacement in the social strata. The old gentry were failing, and those who had taken part with neither side, but had waited on their own interests in selfish or indifferent neutrality, were rewarded by emerging, where others were falling into ruin, into ripe prosperity. After that Anthony Cleverdon, the elder, had acquired the freehold of Hall, he had become a widower, and showed no disposition to take to himself another wife. His marriage had not been a happy experience, and none had felt the disagreement in it more than Elizabeth, his eldest daughter, who, after her mother's death, had been called to manage the household. If the opinion of Magdalen Cleverdon were to be taken—the unmarried sister of Anthony, senior—who lived in a small house in Tavistock, the blame of the unhappiness of her brother's married life lay with his wife; but then the judgment of Magdalen was warped and partial. When Anthony brought home his young wife, she—Magdalen—had endeavoured to remain at the head of the house, to interfere where she could not direct, Mrs. Cleverdon had taken a very decided line, and refused all intermeddlement, and Magdalen, after a sharp struggle for supremacy, had left the house routed. Disappointment had embittered her estimate of her sister-in-law.
But there were other and more substantial grounds for her charging her sister-in-law with having rendered the marriage an unhappy one. Mrs. Anthony had been a portionless girl, the daughter of a poor parson; Margaret Penwarne might have been regarded as a suitable match socially, but pecuniarily, she was most unsuitable, especially to an ambitious and money-grasping man.
What her brother could see to admire in MargaretPenwarne, Miss Cleverdon protested she never could see—she entirely forgot that Margaret had been endowed with surpassing beauty.
Others beside Magdalen Cleverdon had marvelled at the choice of Anthony, knowing the character of the man. What could induce a man, whose main features were ambition and greed, to select as his partner one who had not a penny, nor was connected with any of the gentle families of the neighbourhood? Magdalen had not reckoned on the girl's beauty; the others who wondered had not counted on Anthony's ambition, which would exert itself in other directions than they considered. His ambition was deeply tinctured with, if it did not originate in, personal vanity. Vanity is but ambition in a fool's cap, and that of Cleverdon was well hung with bells. Because he considered himself the richest man in the neighbourhood of his class, he esteemed himself also irresistible as a wooer. He had been treated with considerable severity by his father in his early years, for the old man had been a strait Puritan, though not such an one as to risk any money for his cause, or compromise his safety for it in any way. He allowed his son no freedom, consulted his wishes in no particular, and allowed him no pocket-money. When the old man died, Anthony was left with a good deal of hoarded money, and freedom to act as he listed. His fancy was taken by Margaret Penwarne, and his vanity and ambition stimulated by the knowledge that she was already the object of the attentions of Richard Malvine, the son of a neighbouring parson, without profession and without inheritance. Richard Malvine was a handsome man, and Margaret Penwarne certainly was attached to him, but the marriage could not be thought of till Richard had a competence on which to support himself and a wife. Anthony Cleverdon entered the list against the handsomest young man in the district, but he had money and a good farm to set against good looks. He and Richard had been together at the Grammar School, and had been rivals there, Richard ever taking the lead, and on one occasion had thrashed Anthony severely. It was with eagerness that Cleverdon seized the opportunity of gratifying his malice by snatching from Malvine the girl of his heart, and it flattered his vanity to have it said of him that he had won the most beautiful girl of the districtover the head of the handsomest man. Margaret struggled for some time between her affection and her ambition; the urgency of her father and mother prevailed, she cast off Malvine and accepted Cleverdon.
Anthony Cleverdon's pride was satisfied. He had gained a triumph, and was wrapped up in the sense of victory for a while, then the gloss of novelty wore off, and he began to regret his precipitancy in taking to him a wife who brought nothing into the family save good looks. The thriftiness of the father now came out in the son. He did not grudge and withhold money where he could make display, but he cut down expenses where no show was made, to the lowest stage of meanness. Margaret's father died. She thought to take her mother to live with her at Hall, but to this her husband would not consent, nor could she wring a silver coin from him wherewith to assist her mother, reduced to great poverty. This occasioned the first outbreak of domestic hostilities. Margaret was a woman of temper, and would not submit tamely to the domination of her husband. His sister Magdalen took sides against her, and fanned the embers of strife when they gave token of expiring. If Margaret had been of a meek and yielding temperament, the marriage might not have been so full of broils; her husband would have crushed her, and then ignored her. But her spirit rose against him, and stirred the discord that was only temporarily allayed. She could not shut her eyes to his infirmities, she would not condescend to flatter him. In her heart she contrasted him with the man she had loved and had betrayed; her heart never warmed to her husband; on the contrary, indifference changed into hatred. She made no scruple about showing him the state of her mind, she pitilessly unmasked his meannesses, and held them up to mockery; she scoffed at his efforts to thrust himself into a position for which he was not born; he found no more penetrating, remorseless critic of all he did, than his own wife.
Anthony Cleverdon believed, and was justified in believing, that his old rival, Richard Malvine, stood between him and domestic peace, as a shadow that blighted and engalled his relations to his wife; that, though he had triumphed formally over his rival, that rival had gained the lasting and substantial success. Anthony Cleverdon might prizehimself as high as he pleased, but he could no longer blind himself to the fact, that his money bags which had won his wife for him, were unavailing to buy her affections, and secure to him the fruits of his triumph.
This consciousness stimulated his hatred of Malvine to fresh acridity, and in his meanness, he found a base satisfaction in humiliating his wife by every means in his power, and on every available opportunity.
The birth of Bessie did not serve to unite the pair, for Anthony Cleverdon had set his heart on having a son, and when, after the lapse of a considerable interval of time, the desired son arrived, it was too late to serve as a link of reconciliation. Mrs. Cleverdon died shortly after his birth, her only regret being that she had to leave her daughter, whom she loved with double passion, partly because her desolate heart naturally clung to some object, and had none other to which to attach itself, partly also because little Bessie was totally disregarded by her father.
Richard Malvine consoled himself for his disappointment by marrying Marianne Gibbs, of Willsworthy; he took her for the sake of Willsworthy, as Margaret Penwarne had taken Anthony Cleverdon for the sake of Hall. He was a feckless man, who had lived at home in the parsonage with his father, had hunted, had shot, and had never earned a penny for himself. He died, thrown from his horse, in hunting, a few years after his marriage, leaving an only child, Urith.
The death of the mother produced no alteration in the conduct of Anthony Cleverdon towards her daughter. What love he had in his heart was bestowed on his son—the heir to his name and estate.
In nature all forces are correlated. Indeed it is said that force is a pure and unique factor, and that light, heat, sound, etc., are but various manifestations or aspects of the one primal force. It would be hard to say whether old Anthony's love for his boy might not be considered as another phase of his ambition. He had never himself been a firm-built, handsome man; undersized and of mean appearance, he had felt the slight that this physical defect had entailed on him. But the young Tony was robust of constitution, burly of frame, and had inherited his mother's beauty. At Hall, from the hour of his birth, young Anthony hadbecome a sovereign, and every one was placed beneath his footstool. Every inmate of the house laboured to spoil him, either because he was himself provocative of love, or out of a desire to curry favour with the father. He tyrannised over his sister, he was despotic with his father, he was wayward and exacting with the servants. Nothing that he did was wrong in his father's eyes; he grew up into manhood demanding of the outer world, as a right, that which was accorded to him in his home as a favour.
Every member of the little party felt sensible of relief when they came out on the high road and left the moor behind. For some time all had been silent; the efforts to start and maintain conversation had signally failed, and a funeral party would have been livelier.
As soon as the hoofs of the horses rang on the roadway, the fetters that had bound the tongues were thrown aside, and words a few were interchanged.
After ten minutes or a quarter of an hour a little tavern by the wayside was reached, named the Hare and Hounds; and then Anthony Cleverdon laid his hand on the bit of the horse Urith rode.
"My cob must bait here," he said—"at least, have a mouthful; so must you. I will go in and see what can be provided, and bid the landlady lay the table."
"I thank you," said Urith; "but I desire to go home at once. The distance is in no way considerable. I know where I am. But surely I hear my uncle's voice."
That individual appeared at the open door. He was a stout man, with a very red face and a watery eye. His wig was awry. He stood with a pipe in one hand and a tankard in the other.
"Aha!" shouted Solomon Gibbs. "I said the truth! I knew that it was in vain for me to go in quest of you on the moors, niece. Told your mother so; but she wouldn't believe me. Come on—come, and let's be jolly—driveaway dull melancholy! I knew that you must come on to the road somewhere; and, if on to the road, then to the inn. For what is the inn, my boys, but the very focus and acme to which all gather, and from which all radiate? Come in—come in."
"I wish to push on," said Urith.
"How can you without my cob?" asked Anthony roughly. "I have said—she baits here. You, also—you must be perishing for food. We all are; have been mum all the way home—no fun, no talking. So, come in."
"That is right—urge her, young man, to follow the advice of age and experience," shouted Mr. Gibbs.
Then he began to sing:
Come my lads, let us be jolly,Drive away dull melancholy,For to grieve it is a follyWhen we're met together.So, my friends, let us agree,Always keep good company,Why should we not merry, merry beWhen we're met together?
Come my lads, let us be jolly,Drive away dull melancholy,For to grieve it is a follyWhen we're met together.So, my friends, let us agree,Always keep good company,Why should we not merry, merry beWhen we're met together?
Come my lads, let us be jolly,Drive away dull melancholy,For to grieve it is a follyWhen we're met together.
Come my lads, let us be jolly,
Drive away dull melancholy,
For to grieve it is a folly
When we're met together.
So, my friends, let us agree,Always keep good company,Why should we not merry, merry beWhen we're met together?
So, my friends, let us agree,
Always keep good company,
Why should we not merry, merry be
When we're met together?
He brandished his tobacco-pipe over his head, in so doing striking his wig with the stem, and at once breaking the latter, and thrusting the wig over his ear, and then dived into the alehouse again. He was half tipsy.
"You are right," said Elizabeth to Urith. "You must go on. Your mother is anxious, probably in a state of serious alarm."
"My uncle's horse is in the stable, I doubt not," answered Urith, "and as he will not be disposed to leave till he be unfit to accompany me, I will borrow the horse, and send it back by a servant."
"I will accompany you," said Elizabeth, "and the serving man that brings back the horse can accompany me. The distance is inconsiderable, yet you must not at night travel it alone. Fox and Julian have, I see, turned their horses' heads homewards without bidding us a farewell. I cannot stay outside whilst Anthony is within, and I do not care to enter when men are drinking."
"Your brother will hardly leave you alone outside."
"My brother will probably forget all about me when he gets with Mr. Gibbs and others who can sing a good song and tell a merry tale."
She said this without any reproach in her tone. She was so accustomed to be neglected, forgotten, to find herself thrust aside by her brother, that she no longer felt unhappy about it; she accepted it as her due.
Urith sent a stable-boy for Mr. Gibbs' horse, and having mounted it, gratefully accepted Bessie Cleverdon's company for the ride of three miles to Willsworthy.
Urith knew Bessie very little. Old Mr. Cleverdon did not care that his children should associate with the Malvines. His bitterness against the father, Richard, overflowed all his belongings—wife and child and estate; but he published no reasons for his dislike to association with the owners of Willsworthy, who, moreover, on account of their poverty, kept to themselves. The Cleverdons mixed with those who were in prosperous circumstances, and kept themselves, or were kept, aloof from those on whom Fortune turned her back. Mrs. Malvine had for some time been a woman in failing health, and, having no neighbours, Urith had grown up accustomed to be solitary, and not to know the value of the friendship, or at least the companionship, of girls of her own age and rank. She was too proud to associate, like her Uncle Solomon, with those of a lower grade, and she had not the opportunity of forming acquaintanceship of those fitted to be her comrades.
As Urith rode beside Bessie, her heart stirred with a sensation of pleasure strange to her. There was a kindness, a sympathy in the manner of Elizabeth Cleverdon that found a way at once to Urith's heart, and she warmed to her and shook off reserve. And Elizabeth on her side was touched by the simplicity, the loneliness of the girl's mind, and when they reached the entrance gates to Willsworthy she held out her hand to Urith, and said:
"This must be the beginning of our friendship. I do not know how it is that we have not met before, or rather, have not met to make acquaintance. Promise me that you will not let this be the beginning and the ending of a friendship."
"That lies with you," said Urith, with timidity. It wasto her too surprising a glimpse into happiness for her to trust its reality.
"If it lies with me," said Elizabeth, "then you may be assured it will be warm and fast; expect to see me again soon. I will come over and visit you. But here—let us not part thus. Give me a kiss and take mine."
The girls drew their horses alongside each other and kissed. The tears came into Urith's eyes at this offered and given pledge of kindness. It was to her a wholly new experience, and was to her of inexpressible value.
Then Urith called a serving man, alighted, and delivered her horse up to him that he might attend Bessie Cleverdon on her way back to the Hare and Hounds, and leave it there for her uncle when it pleased Mr. Solomon Gibbs to return home.
Bessie found that her brother was angry and offended when he came out of the alehouse and discovered that Urith had departed without a word; he had felt himself obliged to wait for his sister, because it would not be seemly to allow her to ride home in the dark alone; but he vented his ill-humour on her when she appeared. Bessie bore his reproaches with patience. She was accustomed to be found fault with by her father, and less frequently, nevertheless sometimes, and always unreasonably, by her brother.
"I've promised the ostler a shilling to attend you to Hall," said Anthony. "There is Fox returned, and there is Solomon Gibbs here, and—I don't feel inclined to go home."
"Father will be ill-pleased at your remaining away so long," remonstrated Bessie.
"Father has seen so little of me to-day that another hour's absence won't signify. The weather is going to change—we shall have a thunderstorm. Get home as fast as you can. Here, Samuel, attend my sister."
Then Anthony returned to the alehouse.
At Willsworthy, Urith had stood for a moment in the porch in hesitation. She knew that she deserved to be reproached for her conduct, and she expected it. Her mother was not a person to spare words. She was repentant, and yet was certain that directly her mother addressed her with rebuke her spirit would rise up in revolt.
To her surprise, when she did enter her mother's room, Mrs. Malvine said no more than this, "Oh, Urith! what a many hours you have been absent. But, my child, what is that? You have gloves hanging to your dress."
Urith stooped and looked. It was as her mother had said—the gloves of Julian Crymes had not fallen to the ground, they had been caught by the tags in the gown of Urith, and hung there. She disengaged them, and held them in her hand. She had unwittingly taken up the gage.
Magdalen Cleverdon had come out for that day from Tavistock to visit her brother at Hall. She did not appear there very often, but made a point of duty to visit Hall once a quarter. Old Anthony had not interfered when his wife resisted the interference of her sister-in-law, and discouraged her visits to the house, and after his wife's death he had not invited her to be more frequent in her expeditions thither; nor had he shown her the slightest inclination to defer to her opinions, and attend to her advice.
Magdalen's visits can hardly have conduced to her own pleasure, so ungracious was her reception when she appeared, except only from Bessie, who was too tender-hearted to be unkind, unconciliatory to any one. Anthony, senior, regarded and spoke of his sister as an old and stupid harridan, and the younger Anthony took his tone from his father, and did not accord to his aunt the respect that was due to relationship and age.
Although one of her periodical visits to Hall usually brought on Magdalen a rebuff, yet she did not desist from them, partly because it satisfied her curiosity to see how matters fared in the old house, and partly, if not chiefly, because she gave herself in Tavistock considerable airs as the sister of the Squire of Hall, and she liked to appear to her neighbours as if on the best of terms with her kindred there.
Magdalen had never been pretty. Hers was one ofthose nondescript faces which Nature turns out when inventive faculty is exhausted, and she produces a being, much as a worn-out novelist writes a tale, because she is expected to be productive, though she has nothing but hackneyed features to produce. Or her face may be said to have resembled a modern hymn-tune that is made up of strains out of a score of older melodies muddled together, and void of individual character. Magdalen had, however, not a suspicion that her personal appearance was unattractive. If she had not been sought in marriage, that was due wholly to the inadequate manner in which she had been provided for by her father's will; he had, she held, sacrificed her to his ambition to make a rich man of Anthony.
She was a short, shapeless woman, with a muddy complexion and sandy hair, now turning grey, and therefore looking as if it were full of dust. Her eyes were faded, so were the lashes. She had bad teeth, and when she spoke she showed them a great deal more than was necessary. Any one conversing with her for the first time found nothing in her to notice except these teeth, and carried away from the interview no other recollection of her than one of—teeth.
She made a point of being well-dressed when she made her periodical visits to Hall, to show her consequence, and to let her brother see that she held herself in condition equal to his pretensions.
When she learned that her nephew and niece were not at Hall, but had gone to the moor for the day to watch the fires, and to endeavour to recover some colts that had been turned out on it by old Cleverdon, she expressed her satisfaction to her brother.
"It is as well, Tony," she said, "for I want to have a talk with you; I am thinking——"
"What? Talk first and think after? That is the usual way," said Cleverdon, rudely.
Magdalen tossed her chin. She did not think it prudent to notice and resent her brother's discourtesy. She was not likely to gain much by flattering or humouring him; but to quarrel with him was against her wishes.
"Really, Tony, I have your interests so much at heart——"
"I never asked you to cupboard them there; but, if they be there, turn the key on them, and let them abide where they are."
"You are clever and witty—that every one knows—and you like to snap your lock under my eyes and make me wince as the sparks fly out; but I know very well there is no powder in the barrel, and I do not mind. You really must attend to me, brother. There has been so much small-pox about, and it has been so fatal, that upon my word, as a woman, you should lend me your ear."
"What has the small-pox to do with my interests?"
"Much. Have you made your will, or a settlement of the property?"
"What now!" exclaimed Anthony Cleverdon roughly. "You came to scare me with thoughts of small-pox, and want me to draw my will, and provide for you?"
"About that latter point I say nothing, though I do feel that I was ill-treated by my father. You had the kernal and I had the rind of the nut."
"I dispute that altogether. You are an incumbrance on the estate that I feel heavily."
"I am likely to encumber it somewhat longer," said Magdalen, not showing resentment at his brutality. "I do not fear the small-pox. I have had it, and it has marked me; though not so as to disfigure. The Lord forbid!"
Observing that her brother was about to make a remark, and being confident that it would be something offensive, she hastily went on: "But what, Tony—what if it were to attack your Anthony? What if it were to take him off? You have but a single son. To whom would Hall go then?"
Old Squire Cleverdon started to his feet, and strode, muttering, about the room.
"Ah! It is a thought to consider. The Knightons have lost their heir, and he was a fine and lusty youth. Our Anthony is so thoughtless; he runs where he lists, and does not consider that he may be near infection. Please the Lord nothing may happen; but suppose that he were carried off, who would have Hall? Bessie?"
"Bessie! Are you mad?" Old Cleverdon put his hands in his breeches-pocket and turned and scowled at his sister.
"No. I reckon Bessie would be put off with scant treatment, like myself. Then, Luke?"
"Luke!" Cleverdon burst out laughing. "Never a parson here in Hall, if I can help it. A shaveling like he——"
"Then, who would have it?"
"Not you, if you are aiming thereat," said Cleverdon.
"I was not aiming at that. Such a prospect never rose before me. I do not want Hall. I could not manage the estate."
"I shall take care you have not the chance."
"I have no doubt you will. But consider what are the accidents of life. If you were to lose Anthony——"
"But I shall not. Anthony is flourishing, and not a thought of small-pox, or the falling sickness, or the plague about him. He is sound as a bell; so have done with your croak, you raven. I will call up the servants and have in dinner. You can eat, I suppose?"
"Yes, I can eat, and digest your unkindness; but I cannot forget my anxiety. I am considering the welfare of the family. I am looking beyond myself and yourself. You have raised the Cleverdons from being tenant-farmers into being gentlefolks. You have been to the Heralds to grant you a coat of arms and a crest, and, now every one calls you the Squire, who used to call your father a farmer. You have altered Hall into a very handsome mansion, that no gentleman of good degree need be ashamed to live in. I consider all that, brother, and then I think that you are no fool, that you have wonderful wits to have achieved so much, and I am only anxious lest after having achieved so much for the family and the name of Cleverdon, all should go down again, as it did with the Glanvilles—just because there was no heir male."
"Have done with your croak—here comes dinner."
During the meal old Anthony was very silent. He pulled long and often at the tankard, and neglected the courtesies due to his sister as a guest. She observed that he was uneasy, and was wrapped in thought. What she had said had stuck, and made him uncomfortable. She was too shrewd to revert to the topic during dinner, and when it was over he went out, and left her alone. She knew her brother's ways, his moods, and the turns of his mind, andwas convinced that he would come back to her presently and broach anew the subject.
She leaned back in the arm-chair, and indulged herself in a nap. The doze lasted about three-quarters of an hour. Whilst she slept her brother was walking about the farm, in great restlessness of mind and body. He was quick-witted enough to see that Magdalen was right. He could not count on matters not falling out as she had said, and then all his labour to build up the Cleverdons would come down like a pack of cards. His son was the main prop of the great superstructure raised by his pride and ambition. If his son, by the dispensation of Providence, were to fail him, he had none to sustain the succession save his daughter Bessie and his cousin Luke, a delicate, narrow-chested lad, who had been an encumbrance thrown on him, had been reared by him, and sent to school by him, and then thrust into sacred Orders as the simplest way of providing for him, and getting him out of the way. Hall to pass to Bessie or to Luke! The idea was most distasteful to him.
He returned to the oak parlour, where he had left his sister, and shook her until she roused from her nap.
"Sit up—gather your senses! You do not come here to sleep like a frog," said old Anthony with his wonted rudeness.
"I beg pardon, brother. I was left alone and had nought to occupy my mind, and dozed for a minute."
"I say to you, Mawdline!"—Squire Cleverdon paced the room with his hands knotted behind his back, writhing with the inward agitation of his nerves—"I tell you Mawdline, that you did not come here to scare me about small-pox without some design lurking behind. Let me hear it. You have emptied the pepper-box, now for the salt-box."
"I do not know anything of a design behind," answered Magdalen, rallying her scattered senses, and then plunging into the main communication with less caution than if she had been fully awake; "but I think, brother, you should get them both married as quickly as you may."
"Both!—what Anthony and Bess?"
"To be sure. Anthony might take Julian at any time; and for Bessie——"
Cleverdon laughed. "I never heard that Bessie had agallant as yet, and she never had good looks to lure one. If Tony takes a wife that is sufficient."
"No, brother, it is hardly sufficient. He might, if he married, chance to have no children. Besides, it is well to have alliances on all sides. If only I had married——"
"Fernando Crymes," muttered her brother. "You tried hard for him before he took his first wife."
Magdalen tossed and shook her head. "You indeed misunderstand me. You try to provoke me, brother; but I will not be provoked. I am too desirous to advance the family to be browbeat by you and forced to hold silence. Elizabeth is getting forward in years, and she might be the means of alliance to a good family that would help to give ours firmer hold in the position it has won. There is Anthony Crymes, for instance."
"What!—Fox for Bessie? This is sheer folly."
"Yes, Fox. What against him?"
"Nay, naught other against him, save that he does not lay his fancy to Bessie."
"I am not certain of that. Why else has he rid this day to the moor? He has not gone for love of his sister, that all the world knows. Now see this, brother Tony. If you was to marry Anthony to Julian, and Bessie to Fox, then you would be close allied to one of the best families of the country-side, and he who would lift a word against you would rouse all the Crymes that remain. They were not unwilling to draw to us, or else why did Squire Crymes bid you to be his son's godfather? Fox will not be rich, but he will have something from his father, and that will be enough with what you let Bessie have to make them do well. Then, if there come a family of children on either side, it is well, for there will be a large kindred in the district, and if there be none on one side, but only on the other then what property there is, this way or that, does not fall out of the family."
"If Bessie is to be married, we might look elsewhere for one richer."
"Where will you look? Who among the neighbours is old enough or young enough? Some are over her age. You would not give her to Master Solomon Gibbs. Some be too young and hot-blooded to care for her, not very well favoured, and without much wealth."
Old Anthony stood still before the window and looked out.
"Then," said Magdalen, "there's another side of the matter to be considered. What if Bessie should set her heart on some one of whom you would not approve?"
Old Anthony laughed mockingly. "Not much chance of that I reckon."
"Do you reckon?" asked his sister, with some heat. "Yes, you men make up your minds that we spinsters have no hearts, go through no trials, because you do not see them. As our love is not proclaimed on the house-tops you assume that it does not exist in the secret chambers of the heart. If you are forced to admit that there is such a thing in us, you suppose it may be killed with ridicule, as you put salt on weeds. As for your own headlong, turbulent passions, they brook no control, they are irresistible, but we poor women must smother our fires as if always illicit, like a chimney in a blaze that must be choked out with damp straw stuffed in. You men never consider us. You permit a pretty girl to love, and you consider her feelings somewhat—just somewhat; but it never occurs to your wise heads, but shallow thoughts, that the plain faces and the ordinary-favoured girls may have hearts as tender and susceptible as those who are regarded as beauties. Now, as to Bessie——"
"Well, what as to Bessie?" asked Anthony roughly. He knew that his sister was lightly lifting the corner of a veil that covered her past, and he knew how that by a little generosity on his part, he might have made it possible for her to marry.
"As to Bessie?" resumed Magdalen. "I can only speak what I suspect. I have thought for some time she was fond of her cousin."
"What—of Luke?"
"Of Luke, certainly."
Old Anthony turned angrily on her, and said, "A pack of folly! He is her cousin."
"I said so. Does that prevent her liking him? Have you aught against that?"
"Everything. I will not hear of her marrying a pigeon-breasted, starveling curate. I will speak to her."
"If you meddle you will mar. Take a woman's advice, and say not a word."
"Then be silent, on this matter."
"If you marry Tony," said his sister, "what are you going to do with Elizabeth? Fernando Crymes has Kilworthy for his life, so that the young people will, I doubt not, live here; and Julian will no more let Bessie remain than would your Margaret suffer me."
"She shall abide here as I choose it."
"No, indeed. You may will it; but women's wishes, when they go contrary, can make a bad storm in the house, and spoil it as a port of peace. You take my counsel and mate the twain together—the one to Julian and the other to Fox."
"Pshaw!" said the old man turning away from the window. "Because I was godfather to Fox, it does not follow that he wants to be my son."
Then the old man came over to the table that stood near his sister, seated himself, and began to trifle with a snuff-box upon it.
"I shall not part with Bess," he said, "till Tony is matched."
"Then let him be matched with speed," said Magdalen sharply. "How know you but that, if you delay, Julian Crymes may turn her fancy elsewhere. She is a wayward hussy."
"Pshaw! Where is there such a lad as my Tony? He is the chiefest of all the youths about. Not one can compare with him. Are you mad to think of such a thing?"
"There is no reckoning on a maid's eyes; they do not see like ours. Moreover, there is no saying what freak might take your Tony, and he might set his mind on some one else."
"No fear of that," answered the squire roughly. "He knows my will, and that is law to him."
"Indeed! Since when? I thought that the cockerel's whimsies and vagaries set the law to the house; and that you, and Bess, and every one of the family danced to such tune as he whistled."
"I reckon he knows his own interests," said the old man grimly. He was angered by his sister's opposition.
"None can trust to that in young men," answered his sister, "as you ought best to know, brother."
Old Anthony winced, and became purple at this allusionto his own marriage. He started up, struck the snuff-box across the table, then seated himself again, and said grimly: "I asked you, sister, if you could eat and digest a good, wholesome dinner, and I gave it you; but, by Heaven, you have come here and fed me with unwholesome and unsavoury diet that I cannot digest, and that gives me a worry and heartburn. I wish you had never come."
In the tavern with the sign of the Hare and Hounds, a fire of peat was burning on the hearth. A huge oak settle occupied the side of the fireplace opposite to the window; and beneath and before the window was a long table, the end of which admitted of being drawn out so as to make it serve as a shuffle-board for the use of such as liked to play at that game so popular in the reign of Elizabeth, illicit in the time of the Commonwealth, and at the epoch of my story almost obsolete, except in stray corners remote from fashion.
The settle was of a construction then usual, now rarely met with, and therefore deserving a description as a domestic curiosity. The seat was on hinges, and could be raised, disclosing beneath it a cavity like a clothes chest; the settle back opened in compartments and revealed sides of bacon and hams that had been smoked, and there awaited cutting up. Above the heads of those who sat in the settle was a sort of projecting roof to cut off all down draught; but this also served as a cupboard for vinegar, salt, spices, and other groceries. The chest, that was also seat, to a mother with an infant, was of extraordinary service; when she was engaged at the fire, baking or cooking, she raised the lid or seat and buttoned it back, then she planted the babe in the box, where it lay warm and secure, close to her, without the chance of coming to harm. If the child were in the age of toddledum, then it ran up and down in the box with the little hands on the edge, saw its mother, crowed to her, watched her proceedings, and ran no riskof falling into the fire, or of pulling over and breaking the crockery. Altogether the settle was a great institution, and the march of culture, instead of improving it, has abolished it. More is the pity.
The fireplace was of granite uncarved, but rudely chamfered, very wide and very deep, so deep as to allow of a seat recessed in the wall at the side, in which a chilly old man might sit and toast his knees, protected from the down draught and falling soot by the arched roof of the recess. It used to be said of one of these great fireplaces, in which wood and peat were burned, that a necessary accompaniment was an old man and a pair of tongs, for the logs when burnt through in the midst fell apart, and required some one at hand to pick the ends up, and reverse them on the hearth, and to collect and repile the turfs when they fell down. At the fire-breast burnt, what was called a "spane," that is, a slip of deal steeped in resin, which lighted the housewife at her operations at the fire. But the "spane" emitted more smoke than light. Opposite to the ingle-nook was the "cloam" oven, that is, the earthenware oven let into the wall for baking.
In more ancient times ovens were constructed with enormous labour out of granite blocks, which were scooped out in the middle, but the disadvantage attendant on granite was that it became in time resolved into sand by heat, and crumbled away like sugar.[1]These were rapidly got rid of when the earthenware oven was introduced, and hardly a specimen remains. Not so, however, with the stone frying-pan, which is only just, and not altogether, superseded. Housewives contend that the iron pan is not so good at frying as the scooped-out pan of stone, and that rashers of bacon done in the latter are incomparably superior to those burnt in iron. Thus, it will be seen that in the West we are only recently, in some particulars emerging from the Stone-Age, but it is with a leap over that of Bronze into the era of Iron.[2]
The walls of the "mug-house" of the Hare and Hounds were well white-washed and ornamented with a quantity of broadside ballads, the illustrations very generally bearing no intelligible relation to the letterpress.
A single rush-candle burning on the table, served to light the room. The servant-wench was expected to act as snuffer, and she regularly at intervals of ten minutes left the work on which she was engaged, cooking, washing, drawing ale, and like the comet that sweeps up to and about the sun, and then dashes back into obscurity, so did she rush up to the candle, snuff the wick between the forefinger and thumb, and plunge back to the work on which she was engaged, at the fire, in the back-kitchen, or in the cellar.
At the fire and about the table were seated Anthony Cleverdon, Fox Crymes, the host of the Hare and Hounds. Mr. Solomon Gibbs, also a quaint old grey-haired man in sorry garb, and a couple of miners from the moor.
At the time of the tale, and, indeed for a century after, it was customary for men of all classes to meet at the alehouse, parson and Squire, surgeon, farmer, and peasant, comrades all in merry-making—and at that period there was no social-democracy, no class-hatreds—how could there be, when all classes met, and gossiped, and smoked, and boozed together? No good thing comes without bringing a shadow after it. Perhaps it is well that parson and Squire do not now go to the tavern to take pipe and glass with yeoman and ploughboy, but—the misfortune is that there has come class-alienation, along with this social amelioration of the better sort.
Mr. Solomon Gibbs was at the table. He had occupied the corner of the settle all the afternoon, searching for his niece in the bottom of his tankard, but after a while, as evening settled in, he declared he felt the heat too greatly by the fire, and then withdrew to the table. In fact, when occupying the settle, his can of ale had stood on a three-legged stool between his feet, and whenever he lusted after a drink he was obliged to stoop to take it up. As the ale got into his head, he found that this stooping produced afulness of the veins that made him giddy, and he had fallen forward once on his hands, and upset the stool and his ale. Then he deemed it advisable to retire to the table, but as men never give direct and true reasons for their proceedings, he explained to those who were present that——
"There was thunder in the air, and when there was, he was liable to fits of giddiness; moreover, the heat of the fire was insufferable."
His wig was very much awry; underneath it was a strong stubbly growth, for Mr. Gibbs had not had his head shaved for a fortnight. His mulberry coat was much stained with ale, and the elbows were glossy.
The old man in the threadbare coat occupied a chair near the table, and he stood up, turned his eyes to the ceiling, extended his arms rigidly before him, planted his legs apart, and began to sing a song at that time exceedingly popular, "The Catholic Cause;" his voice ranging through an extensive scale, from bass to falsetto.