Читать книгу Urith: A Tale of Dartmoor - S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould - Страница 14

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The night of storm was succeeded by a fresh and sparkling morning. The rain hung on every bush, twinkling in prismatic colours. There still rose smoke from the moor, but the wind had shifted, and it now carried the combined steam and smoke away to the east. The surface of Dartmoor was black, as though bruised all over its skin of fine turf. Hardly any gorse bushes were left, and the fire had for more than one year robbed the moor of the glory of golden blossom that crowned it in May, and of the mantle of crimson heath wherewith it was enfolded in July.

Luke Cleverdon, Curate of Mary Tavy, walked slowly up the hill from the bridge over the brawling River Tavy towards Willsworthy. He was a tall, spare young man, with large soft brown eyes, and a pale face. His life had not been particularly happy. His parents had died when he was young, and old Cleverdon, of Hall, had taken charge of the boy in a grumblingly, ungracious fashion, resenting the conduct of his brother in dying, and encumbering him with the care of a delicate child. Luke was older than young Anthony, and possibly for a while old Anthony may have thought that, in the event of his wife giving him no son, Hall and his accumulations would devolve on this frail, white-faced, and timid lad. The boy proved to be fond of books, and wholly unsuited for farm life. Consequently he was sent to school, and then to College, and had been ordained by the Bishop of Exeter to the Curacy of Tavy St. Peter, or Petery-Tavy, as it was usually called. His uncle had never shown him affection, his young cousin, Anthony, had been in everything and every way preferred before him, and had been suffered to put him aside and tyrannise over him at his will. Only in Bessie had he found a friend, though hardly an associate, for Bessie's interests were other than those of the studious, thoughtful boy. She was a true Martha, caring for all that pertained to the good conduct of the house, and Luke had the dreamy idealism of Mary. The boy had suffered from contraction of the chest, but had grown out of his extreme delicacy in the fresh air of the country, and living on the abundant and wholesome food provided in a farm. His great passion was for the past. He had so little to charm him in the present, and no pursuit unfolding before him in the future, that he had been thrown as a lad to live in the past, to make the episodes of history his hunting fields. Fortunately for him, Dartmoor was strewn with prehistoric antiquities; upright stones ranged in avenues, in some instances extending for miles, with mysterious circles of unhewn blocks, and with cairns and kistvaens, or stone coffins, constructed of rude slabs of granite. Among these he wandered, imagining strange things, peopling the solitude, and dreaming of the Druids who, he supposed, had solemnised their ritual in these rude temples.

Old Cleverdon was angered with the pursuits of his nephew. He utterly despised any pursuit which did not lead to money, and archæology was one which might, and often did, prove expensive, but was not remunerative from a pecuniary point of view. As soon as ever Luke was ordained and established in a curacy, the old man considered that his obligation towards him had ceased, and he left the poor young man to sustain himself on the miserable salary that was paid him by his non-resident Rector. But Luke's requirements were small, and his only grief at the smallness of his stipend was that it obliged him to forego the purchase of books.

He was on his way to Willsworthy, four miles from the parish church, at the extreme end of the parish, to pay a pastoral visit to Mistress Malvine, who was an invalid. Before reaching the house he came to a ruined chapel, that had not been used since the Reformation, and there he suddenly lighted upon Urith.

His pale face flushed slightly. She was seated on a mass of fallen wall, with her hands in her lap, occupied with her thoughts. To her surprise, on her return late on the preceding night, before the breaking of the storm, her mother had not followed her accustomed practice of covering her with reproaches; and this had somewhat disconcerted Urith. Mrs. Malvine was a woman of not much intelligence, very self-centred, and occupied with her ailments. She had a knack of finding fault with every one, of seeing the demerits of all with whom she had to do; and she was not slow in expressing what she thought. Nor had she the tact to say what she thought and felt, and have done with it, she went on nagging, aggravating, exaggerating, and raking up petty wrongs or errors of judgment into mountains of misdemeanour, so that when at one moment she reproved such as had acted wrongly, she invariably in the next reversed positions, for she rebuked with such extravagance, and enlarged on the fault with such exaggeration as to move the innate sense of proportion and equity in the soul of the condemned, and to rouse the consciousness of injustice in the accused.

Such a scene had taken place the previous day, when her mother, aided by the blundering Uncle Solomon, had driven Urith into one of her fits of passion, in which she had run away. When Mistress Malvine discovered what she had done—that she had actually pressed her child beyond endurance, and that the girl had run to the wilderness, where she could no more be traced, when the day and evening passed without her return, the sick woman became seriously alarmed, and faintly conscious that she had transgressed due bounds in the reprimand administered to Urith for rejecting the suit of Anthony Crymes. Consequently, when finally the girl did reappear, her mother controlled herself, and contented herself with inquiring where she had been.

Luke Cleverdon knew Urith better than did his cousins; in his rambles on the moor, as a boy, he had often come this way, and had frequently had Urith as his companion. The friendship begun in childhood continued between them now that he was curate in charge of souls, and she was growing into full bloom of girlhood.

He now halted, leaning both his hands on his stick, and spoke to her, and asked after her mother.

Urith rose to accompany him to the house. "She is worse; I fear I have caused her trouble and distress of mind. I ran away from home yesterday, and might have been lost on the moor, had not"—she hesitated, her cheek assumed a darker tinge, and she said—"had not I fortunately been guided aright to reach home."

"That is well," said Luke. "We are all liable thus to stray, and well for us when we find a sure guide, and follow him."

For a young man he was gaunt. He was dressed in scrupulously correct clerical costume, a cassock and knee-breeches, white bands, and a three-cornered hat.

Urith spoke about the fire on the moor, the bewilderment caused by the smoke, and then of the storm during the night. He stood listening to her and looking at her; it seemed to him that he had not before properly appreciated her beauty. He had wondered at her strange temper—now frank, then sullen and reserved; he did not know the reason why this was now for the first time revealed to him—it was because in the night a change had taken place in the girl, for the first time she had felt the breath of that spirit of love which like magic wakes up the sleeping charms of soul and face, gives them expression and significance. Not, however, now for the first time did the thought cross his mind that, of all women in the world, she was the only one he could and did love. He had long loved her, loved her deeply, but hopelessly, and had fought many a hard battle with himself to conquer a passion which his judgment told him must be subdued. He knew the girl—wild, sullen, undisciplined—the last to mould into the proper mate for a village pastor. Moreover, what was he but a poor curate, without interest with patrons, without means of his own, likely, as far as he could judge, to live and die, a curate. He knew not only that Urith was not calculated to make a pastor's wife, but he knew also that hers was not a character that could consort with his. He was studious, meek, yet firm in his principles; she was hardly tame, of ungovernable temper, and a creature of impulse. No, they could not be happy together even were circumstances to allow of his marrying. He had said all this to himself a thousand times, yet he could not conquer his passion. He held it in control, and Urith, least of all, had a notion of its existence. She exercised on him that magic that is exercised on one character by another the reverse at every point. The calm, self-ruled, in-wrapped nature of Luke looked out at the turbulence or the moroseness of the wild girl with admiration mingled with fear. It exercised over him an inexplicable but overpowering spell. He knew she was not for him, and yet that she should ever belong to another was a thought that he could not bear to entertain. He walked at her side to the house listening to her, but hardly knowing what she said. The glamour of her presence was on him, and he walked as in a cloud of light, that dazzled his eyes and confused his mind.

Willsworthy was a very small and quaint old manor house—so small that a modern farmer would despise it. It consisted of a hall and a couple of sitting-rooms and kitchen on the ground floor, with a projecting porch, with pavise over it. The windows looked into the little court that was entered through old granite gates, capped with balls, and was backed by a cluster of bold sycamores and beech, in which was a large rookery.

Mrs. Malvine was in the hall. She had been brought down. She was unable to walk, and she sat in her armchair by the hearth. The narrow mullioned lights did not afford much prospect, and what they did reveal was only the courtyard and stables that fronted the entrance to the house. To the back of the house was, indeed, a walled garden; but it was void of flowers and suffered from the neglect which allowed everything about Willsworthy to sink into disrepair and barrenness. It grew a few pot-herbs, half-choked by weeds. There was no gardener kept; but a labourer, when he could be spared off the farm, did something in a desultory fashion to the garden—always too late to be of use to it.

"Peace be to this house!" said Luke, and passed in at the door.

He found that, for all his good wish, nothing at the moment was farther removed from Willsworthy, than peace, Solomon Gibbs had slept long and heavily after his carouse, and had but just come down the stairs, and had just acted the inconsiderate part of telling his sister of the outrage committed by Anthony Cleverdon on her husband's grave. The poor widow was in an hysterical condition of effervescent wrath and lamentation.

The story was repeated, when Luke and Urith appeared, in a broken, incoherent fashion—the widow telling what she knew, with additions of her own, Solomon throwing in corrections.

Urith turned chill in all her veins. Her heart stood still, and she stood looking at her uncle with stony eyes. Anthony Cleverdon, who had behaved to her with such kindness—Anthony, who had held her in his arms, had carried her through the fire, who had looked into her face with such warmth in his eyes—he thus insult her father's name and her family! It was impossible, incredible.

Luke paced the little hall with his arms folded behind his back. He had heard nothing of this at Peter Tavy when he left it. He hoped there was some mistake—some exaggeration. What could have been Anthony's object? Mr. Solomon Gibbs's account was certainly sufficiently involved and obscure to allow of the suspicion that there was exaggeration, for Mr. Solomon's recollection of the events was clouded by the punch imbibed overnight. But the fact that the headpiece of the grave had been brought to the tavern by his cousin could not be got over. Luke's heart was filled with commiseration for the distress of the widow, and pain for Urith, and with bitterness against Anthony. He had nothing but platitudes to say—nothing that could pacify the excited woman, who went from one convulsion into another.

Suddenly the door was thrust open and in, without a knock, without permission, came Anthony himself—the first time he had crossed that threshold.

Urith's arms fell to her side, and her fists became clenched. How dare he appear before them, after having committed such an offence? Mistress Malvine held up her hands before her face to hide the sight of him from her eyes.

"I have come," said Anthony, "I have come because of that bit of tomfoolery last night."

Luke saw that his cousin was approaching the widow, and he stepped between them. "For shame of you, 'Tony!" he said, in quivering voice. "You ought never to show your face after what has been done—at all events here."

"Get aside," answered Anthony roughly, and thrust him out of the way.

"Madame Malvine," said he, planting himself before the hysterical widow, "listen to me. I am very sorry and ashamed for what I did. It was in utter ignorance. I was dared to go to the churchyard last night when the ghosts walk, and Fox said no one would believe me that I had been there unless I brought back some token. We had all been drinking. The night was pitch-dark. I got up the avenue under the trees, and pulled up the stake nearest to the church porch I could feel. Whose it was, as Heaven is my witness, I did not know. I was wrong in doing it; but I was dared to do something of the kind."

"You must have known that my brother-in-law lay on the right-hand side of the porch," said Solomon Gibbs.

"How should I know?" retorted Anthony. "I am not sexton, to tell where every one lies. And on such a pitch-black night too, I could find my way only by feeling."

"Your offence," said Luke, sternly, "is not against this family only, but against God. You have been guilty of sacrilege."

"I will ask you not to interfere," answered Anthony. "With God I will settle the matter in my own conscience. I am come here to beg forgiveness of Mistress Malvine and of Urith."

He turned sharply round to the latter, and spoke with a deep flush in his cheek, and with outstretched arm. "Urith! you will believe me! You will forgive me! With my best heart's blood I would wipe out the offence. I never, never dreamed of injuring and paining you. It was a misadventure, and my cursed folly in sitting drinking at the Hare and Hounds, and of allowing myself to be taunted to a mad act by Fox Crymes, who is my evil genius."

"It was Fox Crymes who urged you to do it?" asked Urith, her rigidity ceasing, and the colour returning to her cheeks and lips.

"He goaded me to the act, but he had nothing to do with my bringing your father's headpiece to the tavern—that was the devil's own witchcraft."

"Mother," said Urith, "do you hear; it was Fox Crymes's doing. On him the blame falls."

"You believe me, Urith—I know you must! You know I would not injure you, offend you, grieve you in any way. You must know that, Urith—you do in your heart know it; assure your mother of that. Here, give me your hand in pledge that you believe—that you forgive me."

She gave it him at once.

"Now see, Mistress Malvine, Urith is my testimony—Good God! what is the matter?"

Mrs. Malvine had fallen back in her chair, and was speechless.