"How mean you?"
"Why, thus—I am Anthony. I was thus christened. And if I take Bess, I will throw aside my surname of Crymes, which brings me little—and take that of my father-in-law. So he will have an Anthony Cleverdon to carry on the name, and I—" his face assumed a malevolent expression—"I shall have spoiled for ever his own son's chances. It shall be down in black-and-white, and bound as fast as I can bind him. See if I cannot manage for myself."
He stood up, took his hat, and set it jauntily on his head, then at the door turned, and with a mocking laugh, said:
"There, sister Jule! Is not that a slap in the face for Anthony that will make his cheek tingle?"
He left the room.
Mr. Crymes laid his brow in his hand, and his elbow on the table.
"'Fore heaven!" he sighed, "I curse the day that gave me such a son."
A drizzling rainy day. A day on which nothing could be seen but a wavering veil of minute dust of water. A drizzle that was wetting, and which penetrated everywhere. The air was warm, laden with moisture, oppressive, and depressing. From a window could be seen nothing beyond a hedge. Trees seemed to be bunches of cotton wool; the drizzle crawled or was drawn along by a damp wind over the grass along the hedge, beading every blade and twig with the minutest drops of moisture. The shrubs, the plants stooped, unable to support the burden deposited on them, and shot the impalpable water-dust down on the soil in articulate drops.
Although the drizzle was excluded by roof and walls from the house, the moisture-charged atmosphere could not be shut out, and it made the interior only less wretched than outside the house. The banisters, the jambs of the door, the iron locks were bedewed, and the hand that touched them left a smear and came off clogged with water. The slates of the floor turned black, and stood with drops, as though the rain had splashed over them. Wherever there was a stone in the wall of a slatey or impervious nature, it declared itself by condensing moisture, sweating through plaster and whitewash, and sending tears trickling down the walls. The fireirons became suddenly tarnished and rusty. The salt in the cellar and salt-box was sodden, and dripped brine upon the floor, as did the hams and sides of bacon hung up in the kitchen. The table-linen and that for the beds adhered to the fingers when touched.
Anthony stood at the window in the hall looking out, then he went to the fire; then took down a gun from over the mantel-shelf, and looked at the lock and barrel; stood it in the corner of the fire, and resolved by and by to clean it.Then he went to the window again, and wrote his initials on the window-pane, or tried to do so, and failed, for the condensation of moisture was not inside but without, on the glass.
He had nothing to occupy him; no work could be done on the farm, and employment or amusement lacked in the house.
Where was Urith? She might come and talk to and entertain him.
What is the good of a wife, unless she sets herself to make home agreeable to her husband, when he is unable to go out-of-doors?
Where was Solomon Gibbs? He might have talked, fiddled, and sung, though, indeed, Anthony had no relish just then for music, and he knew pretty well all the topics on which Uncle Sol had aught to say. His anecdotes had often been retailed, and Anthony loathed them. He knew when Sol was preparing to tell one, he knew which he was about to produce, he was acquainted with every word he would use in telling his tale.
Anthony had grown irritable of late with Sol, and had brushed him rudely when he began to repeat some hacknied anecdote. On such a day as this, however, even Uncle Sol were better than no one.
At length, Anthony, impatient and out of humour, went upstairs and called Urith. She answered him faintly from a distance.
"Where are you hidden? What are you about?" he called.
"In the lumber-room," she replied.
He followed the direction of her voice, and came to a sort of garret full of every kind of discarded article of domestic use, old crocks that had lost a leg, broken-backed chairs, a dismantled clock, corroded rushlights, bottles that were cracked, a chest of drawers which had lost half the brass handles by which the drawers could be pulled out.
In the obscurity, dishevelled, covered with dust, and warm with her exertions, stood Urith. She put her hand to her face, and pushed her strayed hair from her eyes.
"I want thy help, Tony," she said. "I have been searching, and at length, I have found it. But I cannot carry it forth myself."
"Found what?"
"O—how can you ask? Do you not see what it is?"
It was an old, dusty, cobweb-covered, wooden cradle. "What do you want, Urith, with this wretched bit of rummage?"
"What do I want it for? O—Tony, of course you know. It is true I shall not need it immediately—not for some months, but I shall like to have it forth, and clean it well, and polish its sides, and fit it up with little mattress and pillows, and whatsoever it need, before the time comes when it is required to be put in use."
"I will not have this wretched old cradle," said Anthony. "It is not meet for my son—the heir to Hall and Willsworthy."
"You are reckoning too soon—" laughed Urith. "Perhaps you may have a daughter, not a son."
"A daughter! I do not want a maid; no—I shall never forgive you, if it be not a boy. Urith, My—everything depends on that. When there is a new Anthony Cleverdon, my father can hold out in his obstinacy no longer. He must give way. An Anthony Cleverdon of Willsworthy, andnotof Hall! It would go against all his pride, against his most cherished ambition. It cannot, it shall not be. Urith, a boy it must be, and what is more, he shall not lie in that dusty, cobweb-clad pig-trough. It would not become him."
"But, Tony," laughed Urith, "it was mine, I was rocked in that. It was not so bad that I could not sleep therein."
"Oh, you!" he spoke disparagingly in tone. "You were only heiress of Willsworthy, but my young Anthony will be something much different from that."
"I want my child to lie in the same crib in which I was rocked. It will be a pleasure to me."
"I will not have it. This is too mean."
"What does it signify?"
"If it does not signify, then let me go and buy a new cradle."
"No," said Urith. "No—there I lay when a poor little feeble creature; and there, in the same, it shall lie when it comes."
"I will go into Peter Tavy to the carpenter, and order a new cradle."
"I will not use it if you do. We have not the money to waste on luxuries. A child will sleep as well in this as in a painted cradle."
All at once, Anthony flushed to the roots of his hair. A thought had struck him, that if he bought a new cradle he must do so with his wife's money. He had nothing of his own. He was her pensioner. There stood at his side an old rusty bar of iron; in his anger and disgust he grasped this, raised it, and brought it down on the cradle, breaking down its side.
"Anthony!" exclaimed Urith. "Anthony! you would not have done that had any love, any respect remained in your heart for me. You would have loved the little crib in which I was laid, if you loved me."
He did not answer her. Ashamed at his own conduct, embittered at her opposition to his wishes, discontented with his lot, he left the garret and descended the stairs.
On reaching the hall, he found Solomon Gibbs there; he had been out in the rain, and had come in very wet. His face was red and moist, proclaiming that he had been drinking, but he was not intoxicated, only hilarious. He had cast his hat on the table, a broad-brimmed felt hat that had absorbed the rain like a sponge, and was now giving it forth in a stream that made a puddle on the table and ran over the side, dripped on to a bench, and having formed a slop there fell again to the floor, there producing another pool. The water ran off Uncle Sol's dress and oozed from his boots that were rent, and had admitted water within, which now spirited forth from the gaps at every step. Solomon had taken down a single-stick, with basket handle, from the wall, and was making passes, wards, and blows in the air at an imaginary opponent, and, as he delivered his strokes, he trilled forth snatches of song:—
I'm a hearty good fellow, as most men opine.
I'm a hearty good fellow, as most men opine.
I'm a hearty good fellow, as most men opine.
I'm a hearty good fellow, as most men opine.
Then he whacked from right to left—
So fill up your bumpers, and pass round the wine,Singing, Tol-de-rol-lol-de-rol.
So fill up your bumpers, and pass round the wine,Singing, Tol-de-rol-lol-de-rol.
So fill up your bumpers, and pass round the wine,Singing, Tol-de-rol-lol-de-rol.
So fill up your bumpers, and pass round the wine,
Singing, Tol-de-rol-lol-de-rol.
He fell to the ward.
"Come on, Tony lad! 'Tis cursed moist weather, and no fun out of doors. I've been to the Hare and Hounds, but no one there, and not even I can drink when there be no comrades with whom to change a word. Come, Tony, take a stick and let us play together, perhaps it will dry me, for I am damp, uncommon damp."
"Take your hat off the table," said Anthony, in ill-humour. He was accustomed to order and cleanliness in his father's house, and the ramshackle ways of Willsworthy displeased him; Uncle Sol was a prince of offenders in disordering and befouling everything. "Take your hat off. We shall have the board spread shortly, and how can we eat off it when it is slopped over by the drainage of your dirty beaver?"
"Nay, Tony, boy; let it lie. See—here I be. I will stand on the defence, and you take t'other stick; and, if you beat me off, you shall remove my hat; but, if I remain master, you shall pull off my boots. Can't do it myself, by heaven, they be so sodden with water."
"I will make you both remove your hat and kick off your own boots," said Anthony, angrily. "Dost think because I have married the niece that I am abased to be the uncle's serving-man? 'Fore heaven, I'll teach thee the contrary."
He went to the wall, took down a stick, and attacked Solomon Gibbs with violence.
Uncle Sol, for all the liquor he had drunk, was sober enough to be able to parry his blows, though handicapped by his drenched garments, which weighed on his shoulders and impeded rapid movement.
Anthony was not an accomplished single-stick player; he had not a quick eye, and he had never possessed that application to sports which would render him a master in any. Satisfied if he did fairly well, and was matched with inferiors who either could not or would not defeat him, he had now small chance against the old man, who had been a skilful player in his youth—who, indeed, had stuck to his sports when he ought to have held to his studies.
The old man held the stick between his hands over his head jauntily—carelessly, it seemed—but with perfect assurance; whereas Anthony struck about at random and rarely touched his antagonist. Anthony was in a badtemper—he faced the window; whereas Uncle Sol stood with his back to the light, and to the table, defending his soaked hat. Anthony was the assailant; whereas Sol remained on the defensive, with an amused expression in his glossy face, and giving vent at intervals to snatches of melody—showing his unconcern, and heightening his opponent's irritability, and causing him every moment to lose more control over his hand and stick.
Once Anthony struck Uncle Sol on the side, and the thud would have showed how dead with wet the old man's coat was, even had not water squirted over the stick at the blow.
"Well done, Tony! One for thee!" Then Mr. Gibbs brought his stick down with a sweep, and cut Anthony on the left shoulder.
The sting and numbness roused Anthony's ire, and he made a furious attack on his antagonist, which was received with perfect equanimity and the hardly-broken strain of—
I sing of champions bold,That wrestled—not for gold.
I sing of champions bold,That wrestled—not for gold.
I sing of champions bold,That wrestled—not for gold.
I sing of champions bold,
That wrestled—not for gold.
With ease, and without discontinuing his song, Sol caught a blow levelled at his skull, dealt with such force that Tony's hand was jarred by it.
And all the cryWas Will Trefry,That he would win the day.So Will Trefry, huzzah!The ladies clap their hands and cry—Trefry! Trefry, huzzah!
And all the cryWas Will Trefry,That he would win the day.So Will Trefry, huzzah!The ladies clap their hands and cry—Trefry! Trefry, huzzah!
And all the cryWas Will Trefry,That he would win the day.So Will Trefry, huzzah!The ladies clap their hands and cry—Trefry! Trefry, huzzah!
And all the cry
Was Will Trefry,
That he would win the day.
So Will Trefry, huzzah!
The ladies clap their hands and cry—
Trefry! Trefry, huzzah!
Down came Sol's stick on his antagonist's right shoulder.
"There, there! You are no match for me," laughed the old man. "Will you give over—and pull off my boots?"
"Never!" shouted Anthony, and struck at him again, again ineffectually.
"Look out, Tony! save your head!"
The old man, by a dexterous back-handed blow, struck up Anthony's staff, and with a light stroke he touched his ear. He had no intention to hurt him, he might have cut open his head had he willed; but he never lost hisgood-humor, never took full advantage of the opportunities given him by the maladroitness of his antagonist.
It was exasperating to the young man to be thus played with, trifled with by a man whom he despised, but who he felt was, at all events at single-stick, his master.
"Hah!" shouted Anthony, triumphantly. His stick had caught in Sol's wig, and had whisked it off his skull, but instantly the old man with a sweep of his staff smote his stick from the hand of Anthony, leaving him totally disarmed.
"There, boy, there! Acknowledge thyself vanquished."
Then the old fellow threw himself down on the bench, with his back to the table.
"Come, lad, pull off my boots."
"I will not," said Anthony, savagely, "you had unfair odds. You stood with your back to the window."
"I was guarding my hat. Leave it where it lies, dribble, dribble—drip, and take my place on the floor, and try another bout, if thou wilt. Come on, I am ready for thee."
Mr. Solomon Gibbs stood up, resumed his single-stick, and stepped into the midst of the hall. Anthony, with face on fire with annoyance and anger, stooped for his own weapon, and then took the place with the table behind him, where previously Mr. Gibbs had stood.
"Ready!" called Sol. "Come along! so be I."
Another bout, staves whirling in the air, feet dancing forward, backward, to this side, then to that.
Reports as of pistols, when the sticks met.
Anthony was no match for the old gentleman even now that he had the advantage of the light. Sol was without his wig, he had not resumed it, and his shaven pate exhibited many a scar, the mark of former encounters in which he had got the worst, but in which also he had acquired his skill.
"My foot slipped!" said Anthony, as, having dealt an ineffectual blow from which Uncle Sol drew back, Anthony went forward to his knee, exposing himself completely to the mercy of his antagonist. "It is that cursed wet you have brought in—not fair."
"Choose a dry spot," said Sol.
"You have puddled the whole floor," answered the young man.
"Then it is equal for both of us. I have given thee many advantages, boy."
"I want none. I will have none."
His eye was on the old man's bald head; the sting of the blows he had received had exasperated him past consideration of what was due to an aged man, the uncle of his wife. The blows had numbed in him every sense save anger. He longed to be able to cut open that smooth round skull, and so revenge his humiliations and relieve his ill-humour. But he could not reach that glossy pate, not smite which way he would, so dexterous was the ward of Uncle Sol, so ready was his eye, and quick his arm in responding to his eye.
Not an advantage of any kind could he get over his adversary; he rained his blows fast, in the fury of his disappointment, hoping to beat down his guard by mere weight of blows; and Uncle Sol saw that he was blinded with wrath and had lost all sense of play, having passed into angry earnest. Then he twirled the stick from Anthony's hand once more, so that it flew to the ceiling, struck that, and fell by the hearth.
Mr. Gibbs laughed. "Mine again, Tony, boy!" He cast himself into the settle by the fire, stretched forth his legs, and said, "Come, pull off my boots."
Anthony stood lowering at him, panting and hot.
"He strip't him to the waist,He boldly Trefry faced,I'll let him knowThat I can throwAs well as he to-day!So little Jan, huzzah!And some said so—but others, No,Trefry, Trefry, huzzah!"
"He strip't him to the waist,He boldly Trefry faced,I'll let him knowThat I can throwAs well as he to-day!So little Jan, huzzah!And some said so—but others, No,Trefry, Trefry, huzzah!"
"He strip't him to the waist,He boldly Trefry faced,I'll let him knowThat I can throwAs well as he to-day!So little Jan, huzzah!And some said so—but others, No,Trefry, Trefry, huzzah!"
"He strip't him to the waist,
He boldly Trefry faced,
I'll let him know
That I can throw
As well as he to-day!
So little Jan, huzzah!
And some said so—but others, No,
Trefry, Trefry, huzzah!"
Sol sang lustily, with his hands in his pockets and his legs extended.
"Come, lad, down on your knees, and off with my boots."
Anthony did stoop, he went on one knee, not on both, and not to pull off the old man's boots, but to pick up his single-stick, whirl it round his head, and level a blow at the head of the undefended Uncle Sol; the blow would havefallen, had not Urith, who had entered the room at the moment, sprung forward, and caught it in her hand.
"Coward!" she exclaimed, "coward!—my uncle! an old man! I hate you. Would God I had never seen you!"
He had hurt her hand, he saw it, for she caught it to her bosom, then put it to her mouth, but her eyes glared at him over her hand like white lightning.
"A scurvy trick, lad—did not think thee capable of it," said Uncle Sol. "Has he hurt thee, child?"
He stood up.
Anthony flung the single-stick from him with an oath, put his hand to his brow, stood for a minute confronting Urith, looking into her fiery eyes, without exculpation, without a word. Then he turned, took up Uncle Sol's hat, without observing that it was not his own, flung it on his head, and went forth.
Never is man so inflamed with anger, so overflowing with gall against others, as when he is conscious that he has laid himself open to animadversions. Anthony was bitter at heart against his wife and against her uncle, because he was aware, without being ready to acknowledge it, that he had acted ill towards both.
Why should not Urith have yielded at once to his wishes about the cradle? How obtuse to all delicate and elevated feeling she was to think that such a dusty, dingy, worm-eaten crib would suffice for his son, the representative of the house of Cleverdon—the child who was to be the means of reconciliation between himself and his father—the heir of Hall, who would open to him again the internal mansion, and enable him to return there and escape from Willsworthy, a place becoming daily more distasteful, and likely to become wholly insupportable! That he had seen the cradle under disadvantage, in its abandoned, forgotten condition, and that it could be made to look wellwhen a little feminine skill and taste had been expended on it, did not occur to him.
Moreover, his wife had no right to resist his wishes. He knew the world better than she—he knew what befitted one of the station his child would assume better than she. What might do for an heir to Willsworthy would be indecent for the heir to Hall—what might have suited a girl was not adapted to a boy. A wife should not question, but submit; the wish of her husband ought to be paramount to her, and she should understand that her husband in requiring a thing acted on his right as master, and that her place was to bow to his requisition. The old sore against his father that had partially skinned over broke out again, festered and hot. He was angry against his father, as he was against Urith. He was angry also with Mr. Gibbs for having proved a better man than himself at single-stick. Of old, Anthony had shown himself a tolerable wrestler, runner, single-stick player, thrower of quoits, player at bowls, among the young men of his acquaintance, and he had supposed himself a match for any one. Now he was easily disarmed and defeated by a half-tipsy old loafer, who had done no good to himself or any one in his life.
He had gone down in public estimation since his marriage—he who had been cock of the walk. And now he was not even esteemed in his own house; resisted by his wife, who set at naught his wishes, played with and beaten by that sot—her uncle.
There was no one who really admired and looked up to him any longer, except Julian Crymes.
He had wandered forth in the wet, without a purpose, solely with the desire to be away from the house where he had met with annoyance, where he had played—but this he would not admit, though he felt it—so poor a figure. He took his way to Peter Tavy, and went into the little inn of the Hare and Hounds at Cudliptown, the first hamlet he reached.
No one was there. Uncle Sol had sat there, and tippled and smoked; but had finally wearied of the solitariness, and had gone away. Now Anthony sat down where he had been, and was glad to find no one there, for in his present humour he was disinclined for company. Thelandlord came to him and took his order foraqua vitæ, brought it, and seated himself on a stool near him. But Anthony would not speak, or only answered his questions shortly, so as to let the man understand that his society was not desired. He took the hint, rose, and left the young man to his own thoughts.
Anthony put his head in his hand, and looked sullenly at the table. Many thoughts troubled him. Here he had sat on that eventful night after his first meeting and association with Urith on the moor. Here he had sat, with his heart on fire from her eyes, smouldering with love—just as an optic-glass kindles tinder. Here he had drunk, and, to show his courage, had gone forth to the churchyard and had broken down her father's head-post. He had brought it to this house, thrown it on this table—there! he doubted not, was the dint made by it when it struck the board.
How long was it since that night? Only a little over a twelve-month. Did Urith's eyes burn his heart now? There was a fire in them occasionally, but it did not make his heart flame with love, but with anger. Formerly he was the well-to-do Anthony Cleverdon, of Hall, with money in his pockets, able to take his pleasure, whatever it cost him. Now he had to reckon whether he could afford a glass before he treated himself to one, was warned against purchasing a new cradle as a needless expense, a bit of unpardonable extravagance.
He tossed off his glass, and signed for it to be refilled.
Then he thought of his father, of his rebellion against him, and he asked whether any good had come to him by that revolt. He, himself, was like to be a father shortly. Would his son ever set him at defiance, as he had defied his father? He wondered what his father was thinking of him; whether he knew how straitened his circumstances were, how clouded his happiness was, how he regretted the unretraceable step he had taken, how he was weary of Willsworthy, and how he hungered to hear of and to see Hall once more. There was little real conscious love of his father in his heart. He did not regret the breach for his father's sake, think of the desolation of the old man, with his broken hopes, his disappointed ambitions; he saw things only as they affected himself; he was himself thepivot about which all his meditations turned, and he condoled with, lamented over, himself as the worst-used of men, the man most buffeted by misfortune.
Anthony kicked the legs of the table impatiently. The host looked at him and smirked. He had his own opinion as to how matters stood with Anthony. He knew well enough that the young man was unlike Mr. Gibbs, was no toper; he had rarely stepped within his doors since his marriage. As the host observed him, he chuckled to himself and said, "That fellow will come often here now. He has a worm at the heart, and that worm only ceases to gnaw when givenaqua vitæor punch."
What if the old Squire were to remain obdurate to the end? What if he did not yield to the glad news that he was grandfather to a new Anthony Cleverdon? Anthony's heart turned sick at the thought. His son to be condemned to a toilful life at Willsworthy! But what if Urith should at some future time be given a daughter, then her estate would pass away from the young Anthony, and the representative of the Cleverdons would be adrift in the land without an acre, with hardly a coin—and Hall would be held by an alien.
He stamped with rage.
His father was possessed with madness; the whole blame fell on his father. Why was the old grudge against Richard Malvine to envenom the life of the son and grandchildren of the Squire? By the course he took the Squire was not hurting the man whom he hated, who was in his grave and insensible to injury, but his own living direct descendants! Anthony was stabbing at his own family, in his insensate malice. He thought over his quarrel with the old man, and he regretted that he had not spoken plainer, given his father sharper thrusts than he had—that he had not dipped his words in pitch, and thrown them blazing into his father's face.
His cheeks were burning; he clenched his fists and ground his teeth, and then bowed his hot brow upon his clenched hands. No doubt his father would hear how absurdly Urith had danced at the Cakes, and would laugh over it. He held up his head and looked round him, thinking he heard the cackle of his father, so vividly did he portray the scene to his imagination. No one was inthe room save the taverner; but Anthony caught his eye fixed on him, and he turned impatiently away.
Urith was not—there was no blinking the matter—a wife suitable to him. He compared her with his sister. Bessie was sweet, gentle, and with all her amiability dignified; Urith was rough, headstrong, and sullen. She was uncouth, unyielding—did not understand what were the tastes and requirements of a man brought up on a higher plane of refinement. He was weary of her lowering brow, of her silence, her dark eyes with a sombre, smouldering fire in them. He wondered how he could ever have admired her! He never would feel content with her. He had sacrificed for her the most splendid prospects that any man had, and she did not appreciate the sacrifice, and bow down before him and worship him for it.
He knocked over his glass and broke it. By heaven! He wished he had never married Urith.
Anthony stood up, and threw down some coin to pay for his brandy and for the broken glass. He had knocked over the glass in the gesture and start of disgust, when he had wished himself unmarried, and now—he must pay for the glass with money that came to him from Urith. He knew this, it made him writhe, but he quickly deadened the spasm by the consideration that for every groat he had of his wife, he had given up a guinea. She was in debt to him, and the ridiculous little sums placed at his disposal were but an inadequate acknowledgment of the vast indebtedness under which she lay.
He stood for a few minutes irresolute in the rain, uncertain in which direction to turn. Home?—To Willsworthy? To the reproaches of Urith, to the tedious jests and drawled-out songs of Mr. Gibbs? To the sight of Urith ostentatiously holding her hand in a sling to let him know that he had hurt her, when she intercepted the blow aimed at her uncle?
"Pshaw!" said Anthony. "She is not hurt, she cannot be hurt. She caught the stick in her palm. It stung her, no doubt, but will pass. But what an outcry and fuss will be made over it."
Yet his heart reproached him for these complaints. He knew that it was not the way with Urith to make an outcry and a fuss. If he had hurt her, she would disguisethe fact. Anyhow, he resolved not to go back to Willsworthy.
Should he go on to Peter Tavy, and visit his cousin Luke?
No—he had no desire for the society of a parson. Luke had married him to Urith; Luke was in part to blame for his present condition of dissatisfaction. Luke might surely; if he had poked about in his books, have discovered some canonical reason why the marriage could not have taken place, at least as early as it did. Then—with delay—his love might have abated, his head would have become cooler, he would have been better able to balance loss and gain.
"Loss and gain!" scoffed Anthony; "all loss and no gain!"
Luke would surmise that all was not right, he was keen-sighted—he had already had the impertinence to give an oblique admonition to Anthony to be tender and forbearing to his wife. If he went to him now, Luke would nail him, and hammer remonstrances into him.
By heaven! no—he wanted no sermons preached to him on week-days.
He walked to the door of Farmer Cudlip. The Cudlips had been on that estate much as the Cleverdons had been at Hall, for centuries, but the Cudlips had owned their own land, as yeomen, whereas the Cleverdons had been tenant-farmers. Now the Cleverdons had taken a vast stride up the ladder, whereas the Cudlips, who had given their name to the hamlet, had remained stationary. The Cudlips, though only yeomen, were greatly respected. Some of the gentle families were of mushroom growth compared with them. It was surmised that the Cudlips had originally been Cutcliffs, and that this yeoman family had issued from the ancient stock of Cutcliffe of Damage, in North Devon, which had gone forth like a scriptural patriarch and made itself a settlement on the verge of the moor, and called the land after its own name; but there was no evidence to prove this. It was at one time a conjecture of a Hector of Peter Tavy, who mentioned it to the Cudlip then at Cudliptown, who shrugged his shoulders and said, "It might be for ought he knew." In the next generation the descent was talked about as all but certain, in the third it was a well-established family tradition.
Anthony stood in the doorway of the old ancestral farm. He had knocked, but received no answer; no one had come to the door in response. He knew or guessed the reason, for overhead he heard Mistress Cudlip putting the youngest child to bed; he had heard the little voice of the child raised in song, chanting its evening hymn:—
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John,Bless the bed that I lay on.Four angels to my bed,Two to bottom, two to head;Two to hear me when I pray,Two to bear my soul away.
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John,Bless the bed that I lay on.Four angels to my bed,Two to bottom, two to head;Two to hear me when I pray,Two to bear my soul away.
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John,Bless the bed that I lay on.Four angels to my bed,Two to bottom, two to head;Two to hear me when I pray,Two to bear my soul away.
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John,
Bless the bed that I lay on.
Four angels to my bed,
Two to bottom, two to head;
Two to hear me when I pray,
Two to bear my soul away.
Probably Farmer Cudlip was not within. Had he been, the knock of Anthony would have been responded to by a loud and hearty call to come in.
Anthony did not repeat the knock. It was of no use his entering that house if the master were out; he did not want to pass words with women folk. But he halted where he was in order to make up his mind whither he should go. He craved for—not exactly flattery, but something of that adulation which had been lavished on him by all alike—old and young, men and maids—when he was Anthony Cleverdon of Hall, and which had been denied him since he had become Anthony Cleverdon of Willsworthy.
Under the humiliation he had received in his own house, under the sense of disgrace which he had brought on himself, first by his anger over the cradle, and the breaking it down with a blow of an iron bar; then, by his hand raised over an old man, defenceless; he felt a real need for adulation. He could not hold up his head, recover his moral elasticity till he had encountered some one who did not flaunt and beat him down. Fox—should he go and see Fox at Kilworthy? Fox was his friend; Fox had a sharp tongue and could say cutting things that would make him laugh, would shake the moths out of his fretted brain. Yes, he would go to Kilworthy and see Fox.
As he formed this resolution he was conscious that he was false to himself. He did not want to see Fox. Fox would not look up to him with eyes full of loving devotion. Fox's colour would not flush to the cheek when he entered.Fox's pulses would not bound when his step was heard on the gravel. Fox would not in words encourage him to think well of himself, to esteem himself again as the old cock of the walk in plumage, instead of a wretched draggled fowl. No—he did not want to see Fox, but Fox's sister. He would go to Kilworthy to see, to hear Julian Crymes, but he repeated to himself—"I must have a talk with Fox."
Then he heard the little child's voice upstairs repeating the Prayer of Prayers after its mother.
"Forgive us our trespasses," said Mistress Cudlip.
"Tespusses," said the child.
"As we forgive them that trespass against us."
"As we 'give them——" a pause. The mother assisted the little one, and it completed the sentence.
"And lead us not into temptation."
"And lead us not——"
Anthony drew his cloak closer about him, shook the water from Solomon's hat, that he wore, and set it again on his head.
"Into temptation," said the mother.
"Lead us not into temptation," repeated the child. Anthony bent his head, and went out into the rain, went heedless of the warning that hammered at his heart, went wilfully—into temptation.
"Get yourself ready," ordered Squire Cleverdon, looking at Bessie across the table. "Your aunt is unwell, and I have sent word that we would come and see her. A wet day, and nothing better to be done, so we can find out what is the matter with her."
"Certainly, father," answered Elizabeth, with alacrity. "I hope nothing serious is the matter with her?"
"Oh, serious, no."
The manner of the Squire was never gracious to his daughter; always imperious, but this day there was apeculiarity in it that struck her. There was, she felt instinctively, something in the background.
"What is it, father? I pray you tell me. She is not in any danger?"
"Oh, danger? No." A twitching of his cheeks marked inner uneasiness.
Bessie looked anxiously at him. "I am sure, father, you are hiding something from me."
"Go at once and get ready! Do not stop chattering here like a parrot," he roared forth, and Bessie fled.
Elizabeth had no anxiety over the weather. That was not the day of umbrellas, but then, neither was it the day of fine bonnets. The skirts were worn short, and did not trail in and collect the mud. A woman pinned up her gown, or looped it at the girdle, exposing a bright coloured petticoat, and below that her ankles, and there were many inches between the mud and the petticoat. A thick serge mantle covered gown and petticoat; it was provided with a hood that was drawn over the head, and bright eyes looked out of the hood and laughed at the rain and cold.
We sometimes wonder now how the world got on before the introduction of the umbrella. Very well. It was dryer, warmer, better protected in former days. It is only since the invention and the expansion of the parapluie, that those marvels of millinery, the nineteenth-century bonnet, piled up of feathers and flowers, and bead and lace, became possible. The umbrella has been a bell-shade under which it has grown.
Mr. Cleverdon was not communicative on the ride to Tavistock. Now and then he growled forth a curse on the weather, but said nothing against Magdalen. This surprised his daughter, who was accustomed to hear him grumble at his sister if she occasioned him any inconvenience; but she charitably set it down to real concern for Magdalen, and this increased her fear that more was the matter with her aunt than her father chose to admit.
Aunt Magdalen really was indisposed; but the indisposition was partly, if not chiefly, due to her distress of mind about her niece. She knew that her brother had resolved to act upon her own to marry Bess to young Crymes, and that he expected his sister to help him to overcome any opposition that might be encountered from Bessie. PoorElizabeth had as little suspicion, as she accompanied her father to Tavistock, that he was about to sacrifice her, as had Isaac when he ascended Moriah at the side of Abraham.
When Mr. Cleverdon and Bessie arrived at the house of Miss Magdalen, near the Abbey Bridge, they observed a man's hat and cloak hung up in the hall.
"Oh!" exclaimed Elizabeth, "the doctor is here! I am sure my aunt is really very ill."
At the same moment the side door opened, and the old lady appeared, and caught her niece in her arms.
"He is here," said Magdalen—"arrived only a minute before you."
"Who is here?" asked Bessie. "What do you mean?"
"Come aside with me into my snuggery," said her aunt. "I have a word with you before I speak with your father, and in the parlour he will find Anthony."
"Anthony! My brother!" with a joyful flash from Bessie; and she flung her arms round her aunt. "Oh, you dear—you good Aunt Magdalen! You have——"
"Have done with this folly," said the Squire, angrily. "Are you still such a fool as to think that when I say a thing I shall change about? No—your brother is not in there, but your bridegroom."
Miss Cleverdon put up her hand entreatingly to stop her brother, and hastily brought her niece into the adjoining room and shut the door.
"What is the meaning of this?" asked Bessie, with some composure. She had now a suspicion that the visit concerned herself, and not her aunt.
"My dear," said Magdalen, "do seat yourself—no, not in that chair; it is hard, and there is something wrong with the back—the bar comes exactly where it ought not, and hurts the spine—at least, I find it so. I never sit in it myself, never. Take that seat by the fireplace. I am so sorry there is nothing burning on the hearth, but, on my word, I did not expect to have you in here. I thought I might have spoken a word with you in the parlour before he came, or—but, bless my heart, Bess! I am so distracted I hardly know what I thought."
Bessie shook down her skirt over her dark-blue petticoat, and seated herself where her aunt desired, then laid her hands in her lap, and looked steadily at Miss Cleverdon.
"You are not ill, then?" she said.
"Oh, my dear, ill! I have not slept a wink, nor had a stomach for aught. I should think I was indeed ill, but all about you. You must remember that the commandment with promise is that which refers to the submission of a child to the parent; but, Lord! Bess, I would not have you forced against your wishes. Your father's mind is made up, and he has met with a sore disappointment in the case of Anthony. I do think it will be a comfort to him, and heal over that trouble somewhat, if he finds you more pliant than was Anthony. But, Lord! Bess, nothing, I trust, hinders you—no previous attachment. Lord! I did at one time think that your heart was gone a-hankering after Luke."
Bessie, who had become very pale, flushed, and said, "I entreat thee, aunt, not to have any fancies concerning me. I never gave thee grounds for any such opinion."
"I know that, I know that, child. But, Lord! an old woman like me must have her thoughts about those she loves and wishes well for."
"Aunt," said Bessie, "I think I can understand that my father desires to have me married, and has asked you to see me thereon. I have had some notions thereupon myself, but I would gladly hear from you whom he has fixed on, though, indeed, I think I can guess."
"It is Fox," answered Miss Cleverdon, and looked down on the floor, and arranged her stool, which was slipping from under her feet. "There, there, I have told thee; thy father put it on me. And I can only say to thee that which thou knowest well thyself. He belongs to an ancient family, once well estated, but now sadly come down; nevertheless, there is something of the old patrimony remaining. He is thy father's friend's son; and as it has come about that the families that were to be united by my nephew have not been thus joined, it is not wonderful that your father would see them clipped together by thee."
"I cannot indeed take Fox," said Bessie, gravely.
"Well—well—the final choosing must be with thee, wench. All that thy father can do is to say he desires it, and all I can do is to support him. God forbid that we should constrain thee unwilling, and yet a blessing does rain down from above the clouds on the heads of suchchildren as be obedient. Now look to Anthony, and see if he be happy, having gone against his father's wishes."
"Is he unhappy?" asked Bessie.
"I do not think him the same at all. He is restless, and his mood has lost all brightness. I have not seen much of him, but what I have seen has made me uneasy concerning him, and what Fox tells me still farther disconcerts me."
"I may not go to Willsworthy. I may not see my brother nor Urith—except by very chance I meet them," said Bessie, heaving a sigh, and her eyes filling. "My father seems no nearer forgiving than he was at first."
"I do not think that aught will move him to forgiveness save, perchance, the finding of ready obedience in thee."
"I cannot—indeed I cannot, in this," said Bess.
"Lord! I would not counsel thee against thy happiness," pursued Magdalen. "But see how ill it has worked with Anthony. He followed his own will, and went against the commandment of his father, and it eats as a canker into his heart, I can see that; now if then——"
Then the door was thrown open, and the Squire appeared in it, with Fox behind his back in the passage.
"Sister," said old Cleverdon, "time enough has been spent over preparing Bess for what must be. As you have not brought her unto us, to the parlour, we've come in here to you. Come in, Tony! Come in! Look at her—there she sits; kiss her, lad! She is thine!"
But Fox did not offer to do what he was required; Bessie started and drew back, fearing lest he should, but was at once reassured by his deprecatory look and uplifted hand.
"May I enter?" asked Fox.
"Come in, boy, come in!" said the old man, answering for his sister, as though the house were his own; and his own it might be considered, for it was paid for and furnished out of Hall; the maintenance of Miss Cleverdon fell on him and his estate.
"Come!" said the Squire, roughly, "shut the door behind you boy. Go over beside her. Take her hand. Hold out yours, Bess. Doy' hear? It is all settled between us."
Fox entered the room, fastened the door, and remained fumbling at the lock, with his face to it, affecting great diffidence. Mr. Cleverdon took him by the arm and thrust him away, and pointed imperiously to where Bess sat, near the fireplace, on which burnt no spark; her hands lay in her lap folded, and her eyes on the hearth. The window was behind her. The little room was panelled with dark oak that was polished. There were no pictures, no ornaments on the wall—only one oval pastel over the mantelshelf of Magdalen when she was a girl. The colour had faded from this, the pink gone wholly—it was a poor bleached picture of a plain maiden; and now beneath it sat one as blanched, for all the colour had gone out of Bessie's face, and she had assumed the same stiff attitude that her aunt had maintained when drawn by the artist.
Fox, with apparent reluctance, went over to the fireplace; Elizabeth looked at her father with great drops formed on her brow, as though the damp of the atmosphere had condensed on that surface of white alabaster.
"Give him your hand. Are you deaf?"
Elizabeth remained with her hands folded as before, her eyes wide open, fixed reproachfully on her father. She had given her young life to him, borne his roughness, experienced from him no love, no consideration—in every way sacrificed herself to make his home happy, and now he cast her happiness from him, gave her up to a man for whom she had no regard, without considering her feelings in the smallest degree. Then Magdalen looked at the crayon drawing of herself and down at Bessie, and some reminiscence at once painful and yet sweet in its bitterness came back to her—a remembrance, may be, of some sacrifice she had been called to make when about Bessie's age, and the tears came into her eyes.
"Brother," she said, "you are too hasty. The poor child is overcome with surprise. You handle her too roughly. Tell her that her well-being is dear to you, tell her that this plan of yours has been considered by you as the best for her, but do not attempt to drive her, as you might a sheep into the fold to be shorn, with a crack of whip and bark."
"You keep silence, Magdalen," said the Squire. "You have had time to say what you had, and have, it seems,wofully mismanaged the task set thee. I ought to know how to deal with my children."
"Nay, brother, I cannot be sure of that, after what has fallen out with Anthony."
Magdalen regretted having made this sharp reply when it was too late to recall it.
"You understand me, Bess," said the old man; "I have let you see by the way in which I have treated that rebellious son of mine, that my wishes are not to be slighted, my commands not to be disobeyed. You do as I tell you. Give your hand to Tony Crymes, or else——"
Bessie's calm, steadfast eyes were on him. He did not finish his sentence.
"Or else, what, father?" she asked.
He did not answer her; he put out one hand to the table, leaned on it, and thrust the other behind him under the coat-tails. His brows were knit, and his eyes glittered into stony hardness and cruel resolve.
"I cannot obey you, father," said Bessie.
"You will not!" shouted the old man.
"Father, I neither will, nor can obey, you. I have known Fox, I mean Anthony Crymes, ever since I have been a child, but I have never cared for him." She turned to Fox apologetically; even then, in that moment of trial and pain to herself, she could not endure to say a word that might seem to slight and give a pang to another. "I beg your pardon, Fox, I mean that I have never cared for you more than, in any other way than, as a friend, and as Julian's brother."
"Pshaw! What of that?" asked the old man, somewhat lowering his voice, and attempting to keep his temper under control. "Love comes after marriage where it did not precede it. See what love comes to when it is out of place before it, in your brother's case."
"I cannot promise Anthony Crymes my love, for I know it never will come. I am glad he is the friend of my brother, and as such I regard him, but I esteem him only for what merits he has in him. I never can love him—never—never!"
"Disobedient hussy!" exclaimed the old man, losing the slight control he had exerted momentarily over himself. "Am I to be set at defiance by you as well as by Anthony?By heaven, I did not think there was such folly in the family. It did not come from me—not from my side. I will be obeyed. I will not have it said in the town that I cannot have my own way with my children."
He looked so angry, so threatening, that Fox interfered. He slipped between Bessie and her father, and said:
"Master Cleverdon, I will have no constraint used. If you attempt to coerce Bessie, then I withdraw at once. I have known and loved her for many years, and would now have hardly dared to offer myself, but that you cast out the suggestion to me. I saw that Bessie did not love me, and I held back, hoping the time might come when she would, perhaps, be guided less by the feelings of the heart and more by the cool reason of the brain. If she refuses me, it shall be a refusal to me, to an offer made in my own way, with delicacy and consideration for her feelings, not with threat and bluster. Excuse plain speaking, Squire, but such are my views on this matter, and this is a matter that concerns Bessie and me first, and you, Master Cleverdon, afterwards."
"Yes," said Magdalen, "your violence, brother, will effect nothing. You will only drive your remaining child from under your roof, as you drove Anthony."
"Be silent, you magpie!" shouted old Cleverdon, but he looked alarmed.
"Now," said Fox, "you have frightened and offended Bessie, and effected no good. Let her walk home, although it is raining, and I will accompany her part of the way, if not the whole, and speak to her in my own manner, and hear her decision from her own lips."
Bessie stood up.
"I am content," she said; "but do not for a moment think that my determination is to be changed. Have with you, Fox. Father, you will follow when your business in the town is over, and will catch me up. You said, I think, that you were going up to Kilworthy to see Mr. Crymes."
Bessie and Fox walked side by side, but without speaking, as long as they were in the street of Tavistock, with houses on both sides. Here there were, perhaps, more mud, more numerous puddles, than outside the town. Moreover, the water that fell on the roofs dripped or shot in streams down on the heads of such as ventured to walk near the walls, and the only escape from these cataracts and douches was in the well-worn midst of the street where the dirt was deepest because the roadway was there most trampled. The douching from the descending shoots of water, the circumventing of the pools, caused the walk of the two to be no more than approximately side by side. No walk could be direct, but must consist of a series of festoons and loops; but on passing the last house, Fox came boldly up to the side of Elizabeth Cleverdon, and said:
"Bessie, I am at a disadvantage; who can be the lover in such weather, and how can I lay myself at thy feet when the road is ankle-deep in mire? I should sink into the slough of despond and the mud close over my head and back or ever I had an answer from thee."
"There can and will be no romance in the matter," answered Elizabeth. "It is to me a sad and serious business, for if there be truth in what you say—that you have cared for me, then I am sorry to disappoint you; but, on my honour as a maid, Fox, I never suspected it."
"That may well be, for thou art so modest," replied Fox Crymes. "Yet I do assure thee the attachment has been of a long time, and has thrown its roots through my heart. Even now—or now least of all, would I have held my tongue had not thy father encouraged me to speak."
"Why least of all now?"
"Because now, Bessie, that thy brother Anthony is out of favour thou art an heiress with great prospects; and neither would I seem to make my suit to thee because of these prospects, nor to step into the place and profits that should have belonged to Anthony."
Bessie looked round at him gratefully.
"I am glad you think of Anthony," she said.
"Of course I think of him. He is my friend. None have mourned more than I at his estrangement from his father. It has affected him in many ways. Not only is he cut off from Hall and his father, but disappointment has soured him, and I do not believe he is happy with his wife."
"What!—Anthony not happy with his wife!" Bessie sighed and hung her head. She remembered the dance at the Cakes, Anthony's neglect of Urith, and the attention he paid to Julian. No doubt this had occasioned a quarrel when he reached his home. Poor Anthony! Poor Anthony!
"And now," said Bessie, gently—"now that we are quite alone together, let me assure you that, though I am thankful to you for the honour you have done me by asking for me, that yet I must beg you to desist from pressing a suit that must be unsuccessful. I can—after what you have said, and after the good feeling you have shown—I will, respect you. I can do no more."
"You have given your heart to another?" half-asked Fox, with a leer that she did not notice.
"No—no one has my heart, for no one has thought it worth his while to ask for it, except you; and, alas! to you I cannot give it."
"But, if it is still free, may I not put in a claim for it?"
"No—it can never be yours."
"I will not take such a refusal. At bob-apple any boy may jump for the fruit, till it is carried away. Your heart is hung up to be jumped for, and I will not be thrust aside, and refused permission to try my luck along with the rest."
"No one else will think of coming forward."
"There you are mistaken, Bess. Consider what you are now—at all events what you are esteemed to be. You will inherit Hall and all your father's savings. Your father has made no secret of his determination to disinherit Anthony. He has told several persons that he has made his will anew, and constituted you his heiress, your husband to take the name of Cleverdon. This is known and talked about everywhere. Do you suppose that with such a prospect there will not be a score of aspirants ready to cast off their names and become at once the husband of the most charming girlanywhere in South Devon, and a rich Squire Cleverdon of Hall?"
Bessie was infinitely hurt and shocked. She to rob her brother of his birthright! God forbid!
"Fox," she said, "this can never be. If I should at any time become owner of Hall, I would give it up immediately to dear Anthony."
"But," said Fox, with a mocking laugh on his face, "is it not likely that your father knows what you would do, and will take precautions against it, by settling the estate through your husband on your eldest son? You could not, were the estate so settled, do as you propose."
Bessie was silent, looking down into the mud, and forgetting to pick her way among the puddles. The rain had formed drops along the eave of her hood, and there were drops within on the fringes of her eyes.
"You will be persecuted by suitors," Fox continued, "and I ask you is there any you know about here whom you would prefer to me?"
She did not answer him, she was thinking, with her hood drawn by one hand very close about her face, that no one approaching, nor Fox, should see her distress.
"Do not speak of others," said Bessie, at length; "sufficient to let things be till they come. I am, and you need not pretend it is not so—I am but a plain homely girl, and that will dampen the ardour of most young men who sigh for pretty faces."
"You do yourself injustice, Bessie. For my part I look to the qualities of the heart and understanding, and you have a generous and noble heart, and a clear and sound understanding. Beauty withers, such qualities ripen. I never was one to be taken with the glitter of tinsel. I look to and love sterling metal. It was your good qualities which attracted my admiration, and, 'fore Heaven, Bess, I think you uncommon comely."
"I pray you," urged Bessie, "desist from your suit. I have told thee it is fruitless."
"But I will not desist without a reason. Give me a reason, and I am silent. Without one, I will press on. I have a better right than any of the unknown who will come about thee like horseflies after awhile."
"I do not love thee. Is not that a reason?"
"None at all. I do not see why thou mayest not come to like me."
Bessie walked on some way in silence.
Presently she said, in a plaintive, low voice: "I will give thee, then, a reason; and, after that, turn on thy heel and leave me in peace. I have—" Her voice failed her, and she stepped on some paces before she could recover it. "I tell thee this, Fox, only because thou hast been frank with me, and hast shown me a generous heart. My reason is this—and, Fox, there must, I reckon, be some confidence between two situated as we are—it is this, that long, long ago I did dearly love another, and I love him still."
"Now, Bessie!" exclaimed Fox, standing still in the road, and she halted also, "you assured me that you had given your heart to none."
"I have given it to none, for none asked it of me."
"I do not understand. You speak riddles."
"Not at all. Cannot a poor, ugly girl love a man—noble, wise and good—and never let him know it, and never expect that it will be returned? I have heard a tale of a Catholic saint, that he wore a chain of barbed iron about his body, under his clothing, where it ate into his flesh and cankered his blood; but none suspected it. He went about his daily tasks, and laughed with the merry-makers; yet all the while the barbs were working deeper into him, and he suffered. There may be many poor, ill-favoured—ay, and well-favoured—wenches like that saint. They have their thorny braids about their hearts, and hide them under gay bodices, that none suspect aught. But—God forgive me," said Bessie, humbly, with soft, faltering voice—"God pardon me that I spoke of this as a chain of iron barbs, festering the blood. It is not so. There is no iron there at all, and no fester whatsoever—only very long-drawn pains, and now and then, a little pure, honest blood runs from the wound. There, Fox, I have shown this only to thee. No one else knows thereof, and I have shown it thee only as a reason why I cannot love thee."
Fox Crymes made a grimace.
Bessie stepped along her way. Fox followed.
Presently she turned, hearing his steps, with a gesture of surprise, and said, "What, not gone yet?"
"No, Bessie, I admire thee the more, and I do not evennow give over the pursuit. I would yet learn, hast thou any thought that he whom thou lovest will be thine."
"No! no! never; I do not desire it."
"Not desire it?"
"Nay, for he has loved another; he has never given me a thought. I must not say that. Kind and good he has ever been—a friend; but he can and will be nothing more."
"There you mistake, Bessie. When he learns that you are the heiress to Hall his eyes will be wonderfully opened to your charms, and he will come and profess he ever loved thee." He spoke bitterly, laying bare his own base motives in so doing. But Bessie was too guileless to suspect him. She reared herself up; his words conveyed such a slight on the honor of Luke that she could not endure it.
"Never! never!" she said, and her eyes flashed through her tears. "Oh, Fox! if you knew who he was you would never have said that."
"But if he should come and solicit thy hand?"
"He cannot. He has told me that he loved another."
She resumed her walk.
Fox continued to attend her, in silence. He was puzzled what line to adopt. What she had told him had surprised and discomfited him. That Bessie—the ordinary, plain-faced, methodical Bessie—should have had her romance was to him a surprise.
How little do we know of what passes under our very feet. Who dreamed of magnetic currents till the magnetometer registered their movements? Waves roll through the solid crust of earth without making it tremble at all; magnetic storms rage around us without causing a disturbance in the heavens, and but for the unclosing of our eyes through the scientific instrument we should know nothing about them—have laughed at the thought of their existence.
"I must needs walk on with thee," said Fox; "for I cannot leave thee till thy father come and overtake thee. And if I walk at thy side, well—we must talk, at all events I must, for my tongue has not the knack of lying still behind my teeth."
Fox was at heart angry at his ill-success; he had hoped to have made a great impression on Bessie by the declaration of his love. She was but an ordinarily-favoured girl, ashe knew well enough had never been sought by young men, always thrust aside, accustomed to see others preferred to herself—at a dance to be left against the wall without a partner, after church to be allowed to accompany her father home, without any lad seeking to attach himself to her and disengage her from the old man. To a girl so generally disregarded his addresses ought to have come as a surprise, and have been accepted with eagerness. He was in a rage with her for the emphatic and resolute manner in which she refused him.
"Let us talk of Anthony," said he.
"With all my heart," she replied, with a sigh of relief.
"Do you see any way in which your brother can be received again into favour?" he inquired.
She shook her head. "Nothing that I can say has any effect on my father. He will not permit me to go near Willsworthy."
"Then I can say what is the only way in which peace and good will may be brought back into the family. It lies in your hands to build a bridge between your father and Tony. I am certain that in his heart the old Squire is discontented that things should remain as they are, but he has spoken the word, and he is too proud to withdraw it. If it could have come to pass that you took my hand, then I do not believe that your father would resist our united persuasion. See how much weight we could have brought to bear on him, how we could have watched our opportunities, how—if it should happen at any time that Tony should have a child, we might have brought it to the old man, set it on his knees, and then together have taken the right moment to plead for Anthony."
Bessie drew a long breath.
"I would do a great deal, almost anything, to bring about what you speak of, but this means is beyond my power. It cannot be. I know now how good and faithful a friend you are to my dear, dear brother Anthony. I must again speak very plainly. I do desire, Fox, in all ways to spare you a wound, but you will take no refusal. You said, 'Let us talk of Anthony,' and you work it round to the same point. I shall never marry; I cannot marry you; I shall take no one else. I pray you desist from your pursuit. You heard what Aunt Magdalen said, that my father, if hepersisted, would drive me to run away, as did Anthony. It will be so. If my father will not accept my refusal, then I must go. I shall go to Anthony and his wife, or to my aunt. I could not swear what is false to you or to any one else. Before the minister of God I would not promise love, and love to my husband only, knowing that I could not love, for my love was elsewhere. No," added Bessie, shaking her head, "I must be true, always true, to myself, and before God."
As she spoke, both heard the clatter of horse's hoofs. They halted, parted, one on each side of the road, and looked back. A man was galloping along with his head down against the rain, he did not look up, but remained bowed as he approached.
"Father!" called Bessie, for she recognised both the horse and the rider. He did not draw rein, apparently he did not hear her. Certainly he saw neither her nor Fox. Wrapped in his own thoughts, forgetful of his daughter, of his promise to take her up, he galloped past, and sent the mud flying from his horse's hoofs, bespattering her as he passed.