Читать книгу Between Two Loves - Amelia E. Barr - Страница 5

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CHAPTER II.

THE BEGINNING OF STRIFE.

"Alas! how light a cause may move

Dissension between hearts that love."

"O woman, in our hours of ease,

Uncertain, coy, and hard to please,

And variable as the shade

By the light quivering aspen made!"

"Like as a father pitieth his children."

"Jonathan, does ta understand what I want thee to do to-night?"

"Thou made it plain enough for an infant-school. Thou wants me to come to the class-meeting, and I tell thee I can't do it."

"Thou hes been as unrestful as a shuttle in t' sheath lately. Whativer is the matter, then?"

"I may tell thee that I hev heard Aske isn't as kind to my daughter as he ought to be, and I'm bound to find out whether he's doing right by her or not."

"Stay at home and t' news will find thee. I niver knew any good come o' melling between a man and his wife. Women take a deal o' ​training, Jonathan. You can't make a good wife by putting a gold ring on her finger, any more than you can make a good joiner by buying him a box of tools."

"I'd speak about something I understood, if I was thee, Ben Holden. Women are a bit beyond thee."

Jonathan was standing by his harnessed gig as he talked, and as soon as he had given his friend this bit of advice, he drove out of the big gates and took the straight road to his home. There were few rich men in the county who had a more beautiful home. Burley House was no spick-and-span new dwelling, gorgeous with paint and gilding and gay upholstery. It was a fine pile of solid stone, that had been a favorite residence of the Somers family for centuries. It stood in the midst of a wooded park, and before it was a fair, old-fashioned garden, smelling of all the scents of Paradise. When Jonathan bought the place, people expected that he would be proud to continue the old name, and to call himself Burley of Somers Court. But he had rather resented the expectation. "It is not Somers Court now," he said, "it belongs to me, and it is Burley House for the future. The ​Somers have been wasters, and drinkers, and dicers, and I won't call my home after their name. Why should I?"

He drove rapidly until he entered the park; then he walked the horse under the great elms, and let his thoughts wander back to the village, back to the beautiful woman who had become so dear to his heart. The brooding darkness on his brow cleared as he remembered the light and peace of Sarah's face, and when he lifted his eyes to his many-windowed, stately home, he thought of her as its mistress, and felt that his life without the hope would be a very sombre one indeed.

As he entered the door his daughter came slowly forward to meet him. She was an exceedingly lovely woman, tall, radiantly fair, exquisitely formed, and with a swaying, easy grace in all her movements that was very attractive. She had on a long, flowing dress of violet satin, and many ornaments of gleaming gold. As she walked slowly down the dim hall, the amber light of its stained windows filing all over her, she made a picture so fair that Jonathan paused to look at her. His heart was swelling with affection and pride as he took her ​hands and stooped forward to kiss her lifted face.

But he saw trouble in it, even with his first glance, and as soon as they were in the closed parlor she began to complain of her husband's indifference and tyranny. "You are father and mother both," she sobbed, with her arms around his neck; and what father under such circumstances would not have been inclined to espouse his child's quarrel? Yet he knew something of Eleanor's temper, and he knew the world well enough to counsel submission and to discourage any positive act of rebellion.

"I am thy father, Eleanor," he said tenderly—"I am thy father, and I'll take thy part as far as iver I can, my dear, but listen to me, the world will go with thy husband, right or wrong, it will go with him, if thou takes one step it thinks thou ought not to take. It is a varry hard world on wives, sometimes. Doesn't ta think that thou may hev been a bit wrong, too?"

"Father, I am not going to be ordered about as if I was a slave, bought with his money—"

"Nay, nay, my lass. He got fifty thousand ​pounds with thee. If it comes to money, we can put down more brass than he can—ay, than he can. But thou art his wife, Eleanor, and thou must try and get thy happiness out of him. And thou won't get happiness out of Anthony Aske by fighting him. If iver thou means to be a woman, thy first and hardest battles must be with thyself."

"I thought he loved me better than everything. He said so often, and now love seems to be quite forgotten."

"He loves thee, I am sure of that; but men hev many a thing to think of. Don't thee set too much store on love, or expect more happiness from it than iver it gives either to men or women."

"He has such a wilful, do-as-I-tell-you temper, father, and you know I hev not been used to call any man lord or master."

"Sarah called Abraham lord."

"Sarah had a great many faults, and that was one of the worst of them. I am not going to imitate Sarah. Besides, Sarah would not think of doing such a thing if she lived in England in the nineteenth century."

​"Well, well, Eleanor, it's a wife's place to submit a bit. A high temper in a woman doesn't do varry much harm if she's an old maid; but if she hes a husband it's a different thing. Go home and do thy duty, and—"

"I always do my duty, father."

"Then do more than thy duty. It's a poor wife that stops at duty, and measures her life by that rule. Give love and patience and something higher still, self-forgetfulness. Anthony Aske isn't a bad sort, but he'll pay thee in thy own coin; most men do that. Nay, nay, my dear lass, don't thee cry, now!"

For Eleanor had hid her face in the satin cushion of the sofa on which she sat, and was weeping bitterly, and Jonathan's heart was hot and angry within him, as he moodily paced up and down the splendid room. He longed to comfort his child, to comfort her whether she deserved comfort or not, and he felt as if there would be a solid gratification in some unequivocal abuse of Anthony Aske. For it was hardly likely that Eleanor was altogether in the wrong, and she was so young, so beautiful and inexperienced, that the father thought, naturally, ​allowances of many kinds ought to be readily made for her.

Upon the whole it was a very sorrowful conference, and Jonathan's heart ached when he folded the rich carriage robes about his unhappy, angry daughter, and watched her drive away through the evening shadows to her own home. He sat thinking and smoking until very late, full of uncertainty and annoyance. He felt as if Squire Aske had deceived him, and that was a wrong hard to forgive. As a lover he had been so attentive and affectionate. No service had then appeared too great. He had been at Eleanor's side constantly, and ever on the alert to gratify her slightest wish. All who knew the young couple had regarded the marriage as particularly suitable, full of the promise of happiness.

But Aske was an English squire of the old order, and he held in the main their ideas about women. They were to be faithful and obedient wives, careful, busy mistresses, and loving mothers of children. Eleanor's efforts to establish an autocracy of her own at Aske Hall, to rule it as she had done her father's house, to fill it with company of her own selecting, and order ​its life according to her social tastes and ideas, were resisted by Anthony from the beginning.

At first his opposition was pleasantly expressed. "She might queen it over him, but he would be her deputy over the household; and as for filling the hall with company, he was jealous of her society, and would not share it with a crowd of foolish men and women." In such flattering words he veiled his authority, for he was deeply in love with his beautiful bride, although he would not surrender to her the smallest of his privileges as her husband and as master of Aske Manor and Hall. Indeed, even in the first days of their married life many things had shared his heart with her; his estate, his horses and dogs, and hunting affairs, country matters and politics.

And Eleanor, undisciplined and inexperienced, could not accept this divided homage. Her father had always given in to her desires and humored all her wishes. Her teachers had found it profitable never to contradict her. Her servants had obeyed her implicitly. Her beauty, youth, and wealth had made her for a time a kind of social queen. Was she to sink into the mistress of Aske Hall, and the wife of Squire ​Anthony? Surely she ought to rule, at least, the little world around it, just as she had ruled the little world of which Burley House was the centre.

But the main circumstance of the two small worlds were widely different Jonathan Burley was an autocrat in his mill, and that power satisfied his ambition. He was very willing to resign all domestic power to the women who had charge of his home. On the contrary, Aske had no such outlet. His fine hall, his staff of servants, his farmers and tenants, were his business in life. He would not resign any of his authority over them. Eleanor soon found that if her orders agreed with the squires they were attended to; if not; her husband set them absolutely aside. She tried anger, sulking, tears; but if her way was not her husband's way, she never succeeded in getting it. Squire Anthony was not a man who would give in to an unreasonable woman, and whenever Eleanor's desires did not agree with his desires, he considered her unreasonable. In half a year a definite point had been reached. The squire announced his intentions; if his wife approved them he was ​glad, if not, he followed them out, quite regardless of any opposition she might offer.

Here was a domestic element full of unhappiness, possibly full of tragedy. Jonathan sat through the long night hours, wakeful, anxious, and sorrowful. He was glad when morning came, and brought with it the open mill, and the mails, and the buyers and sellers. Yet in the fever and turmoil of business he was conscious of an aching, fretful pain, that would assert itself above all considerations about yarns and pieces. His daughter's face haunted his memory. He was angry at Aske, and yet he did not wish to quarrel with him. He had a conviction that it would be like the letting out of water; nobody could tell how far it would go, or in what way it would end.

Early in the afternoon, when business had slacked a little, Burley was standing at the dusty window in his counting-room, looking into the mill-yard. The yard was full of big lorries, which giants in fustian and corduroy were busily loading. Usually, under such circumstances, he would have been mentally checking off the goods and commenting upon them, but at that hour, though his eyes followed every bale or ​box, he was not thinking of their contents. But as Ben Holden entered the room, he turned slowly, and said, "Sagar is a brute to his beasts, Ben, I'll not hev good cattle sworn at and struck for nothing in my yard; thou tell him I said so."

"Ay, I will. He's a big bully. If t' poor brutes could talk back to him, he'd treat 'em better. He's got a mite of a woman for a wife, but, my word, he daren't oppen his lips to her."

"Howiver does she manage him? I'd like to know."

"Why, thou sees, she's got some brains, and Sagar, he's only so many pounds avoirdupois of flesh and blood. It's mind ruling matter, that's all. Thou doesn't look like thysen to-day. Is there anything wrong with thee?"

"There is summat varry wrong, I can tell thee that."

"Is it owt I can help thee in?"

"Thou hes helped me through many a trouble, Ben, but this one is a bit above thy help. It is about my daughter. She and Aske hev got to plain up-and-down quarreling, and she came with her sorrow to me last night. My poor lass! She has no mother, thou sees, ​and, as she said, I hev to be father and mother both."

"What was it about then?"

"Well, thou sees, he told her he was going to meet the Towton hounds, and he said to her, 'Put on your habit and hev a gallop; it will do you good.' Now, Eleanor wanted to go, but, woman-like, she would not admit it; she looked to be coaxed a bit, happen, but he answered, 'Varry well, she could do as she liked, he would go for his cousin Jane.' Then t' poor lass cried a bit, and he whistled, and when she got varry bad and hysterical with it all, he sent a footman for t' doctor, and so left her by hersen, and went off to t' meet, as if nothing was."

"I think he did just right, Jonathan."

"Then thou knows nowt about it. A man that hes so little human nature in him as to bide a bachelor for more than forty years, like thou hes, isn't able to say a sensible word about womenfolk and their feelings; not he! There's plenty of husbands, Ben, who always say the right thing, and always do the right thing, and, for all that, they are worse to live with than Bluebeards. I can tell thee that."

"St. Paul says—"

​"Don't thee quote St. Paul to me about women, and, for that matter, Paul had sense enough when writing about them to say he spoke 'by permission, and not of commandment.' If Jesus Christ hed to suffer with us before he could feel with us, it's a varry unlikely thing that St. Paul could advise about women on instinct. Nineteen hundred years hes made a deal o' difference in women and wives, Ben."

"It's like it hes."

"I hev a mind to go and see Aske. I'm all in t' dark, like, and I'm feared to speak or move for fear I make bad worse."

"I'll tell thee what to do. Take wit with thy anger, and go thy ways to Aske Hall. Use thine own eyes and ears, and then thou wilt put t' saddle on t' right horse, I don't doubt. Aske's wool is a varry fine length, and we could do with all he hes of it. Tetterly got ahead of us last year, so go and speak to Aske for his next shearing, and when thou art on the ground thou can judge for thysen."

"Ay, that will be a good plan, I'll do it." Then, as he hurriedly turned over his letters, "It's a great pity, I think, that I didn't marry ​again before this time o' day. If I hed a wife now, Eleanor could tell her all her troubles, and she'd give her advice a man niver thinks about."

"But, then, t' wife thou is after, Jonathan, is varry little older than thy daughter; but she's a good lass. It's Sarah Benson, isn't it?"

"Ay, it's Sarah. Dost thou think she'll hev me, Ben?"

"I niver asked her. Ask her thysen. I'm nobbut a bachelor ta knows, and therefore varry ignorant about such inscrutable creatures as women. But nobody could be the worse o' Sarah Benson, and they happen might be the better. Only I'll tell thee one thing: Aske and his wife will be mad as iver was if thou does a thing like that. Thou art a mill-owner now, and a land-owner, too, and Sarah, poor lass, is nobbut a hand."

"I was a hand mysen once, Ben, and ta knows I loved her mother before Sarah was born."

"Varry good; but Squire Aske and Mistress Aske were niver hands; and they know nowt at all about Sarah Benson or her mother. And thou may make up thy mind to one thing, that is, that Sarah Benson isn't t' right kind of ​peace-maker in any quarrel o' Squire Anthony Aske's."

Jonathan took up his letters again with a vexed face. We are not always pleased with the people who give us sensible advice; and Ben knew well that he had said words bitter as gall to the taste, however they might be by-and-by. Very soon afterwards, however, he saw Burley standing in the mill-yard, while the hostler was getting his gig ready.

"He'll be for Aske Hall," thought Ben, and he went down to the gate and stood there. Six feet two, in a long, blue-checked pinafore and a cloth cap, might not strike people as a figure likely to command respect, but everything is in the circumstances and the surroundings, and Ben, among thousands similarly clad, was a very fine type of a man used to authority. Even Burley was conscious of his moral power, and although he was privately in a very bad temper, he said, "Ben, I'm going to Aske Hall; do whet thou thinks best about Shillingsworth's offer."

"Ay, I'll do that for sure. Good-afternoon to thee."