AND AGAIN.
Anthony went home to Hall. He was on foot--if he must go to Kilworthy
and return the gloves to Julian Crymes, he would ride. They hung in his
girdle. His hat was gay with marsh marigolds. A sudden, overwhelming
intoxication of happiness had come over Urith. She was loved, and loved
in return. Her heart had hitherto known no love, or only that which was
rendered as a duty to an exacting and trying mother. The world to her
had become wider, brighter, the sky higher. The condition in which her
mother was forgotten for a moment, for a moment only, as with fluttering
heart and trembling fingers, and pulses that leaped and then were still,
she picked the marigolds and put them in his cap. Then he was gone, and
she returned at once to her mother's room.
Anthony wore his hat ajaunt as he strode into the yard of Hall, and when
he saw his sister Bessie in the door, he called to her to come to him,
to save himself the trouble of taking a dozen steps to her out of his
way to the stable.
She obeyed the summons at once.
"Bess!" said he, "I have made a promise for thee. I have been to
Willsworthy, and have said that thou wilt go there to-day."
"Oh, Anthony!" said Elizabeth, in return. "How could you do as you have
done concerning the headpiece?"
"There, there! that is finished and done for. I sent it back the same
night. I called up the sexton to help me. But the matter is at an end,
and I will not have it stirred again. Do you hear, you must go to
Willsworthy to-day. I have passed my word."
"I cannot, Tony. I was on my way there when I met Luke, and he told me
what you had done. Then for shame I could not go on, but returned home."
"I went there and made my peace," said Anthony. "Do not blow a drop of
soap into a vast globe. It is all over and mended. I said I was sorry,
and that was the end of the matter."
"But Luke told me that Mistress Malvine has had a fit because of it."
"She has had the like before, and has recovered; she will be herself
again to-morrow--and, it matters not! sickly and aged folk must expect
these accidents. You shall go to Willsworthy to-day."
"I cannot indeed, brother, for my father has forbidden it."
"Forbidden you going there?"
"Yes, brother, when I came back, he asked where I had been, and when I
told him he was wrath, and bade me never go there again. He would not,
he said, have it appear that he was begging off from the consequences of
what you had done."
"I have begged off. That is to say--I explained it was all a mistake. I
meant no wrong, and so it is covered up and passed over."
"That may be, Tony, but against my father's command I cannot go."
"It is such folly," said Anthony, "I will go see him myself. You shall
go there. I told Urith that I would send you. My father shall not make
my word empty."
He went by her.
She caught his arm, and said, in a low tone, "Brother, why do you make
so much now of Urith Malvine? And you treating her as your true love?"
"True love!" repeated he, scornfully. "That is the way with all you
woman-kind. If one but sees a handsome girl, and speaks two words to
her, at once you arrive at the notion that we have chosen each other as
true lovers, passed rings and promises, and wished for a marriage
licence. Let me go by."
He walked into the house, and to his father's room, which he entered
without announcing himself.
The old man sat by the fire. His account-books were on the table, at his
side. The fire was of turf and wood.
"What is this, father?" began Anthony, in his imperious fashion, "That
you have forbidden Bess to go to see the Malvine family, and the Madame
is ill, had a falling fit this morning."
"It is not for us to make a scrape and a cringe to the like of them,"
answered the old man, raising himself in his chair by a hand on each
arm, as he had sunk together in the seat. "I take it the Cleverdons need
not stoop to that beggar brood."
"I did wrong," said Anthony, shortly. "And I have been to Willsworthy,
and said I was sorry. I offered to put up a monument of stone to Master
Richard Malvine at our own cost."
"You did!"
"Yes, father, I did, I would do it at my own expense."
"You have not a penny but what I allow you, and not one penny would I
hand out for such a purpose."
"Then it is as well that my offer was refused."
"I bade you forbear going to that house when you spake of it this
morning."
"You advised me not to go; but my conscience spoke louder than your
voice, father, and I went."
"How were you received?" asked old Cleverdon, with a malignant leer.
Anthony shrugged his shoulders: "The old Madam fell into a fit at the
sight of me. There was also Luke there."
"Oh, Luke!" said Anthony senior, with a sneer. "He may go there; but no
son or daughter of mine. We do not consort with beggars. That is enough.
You have been. Do not go again. If they bring the matter into a court of
law I am well content--more than content, for it will bring them to
utter beggary, and they will have, maybe, to sell, and I will buy them
out." He turned to the fire and laughed at the thought. Then, turning
his face round again over his pointed shoulder, he said, in an altered
tone, "I am glad you are in here; you do not often give me a chance of a
talk, and now I wish to speak with you of serious matters. You are
getting to be a man, Tony--quite a man--and must think of settling in
life. It is high time for us to have the arrangement with Julian
Crymes----"
"What arrangement?"
"Oh, you know. It has been an understood thing. You have not been
ignorant, though you may affect to know nothing about it. Fine property
hers! All the Kilworthy estate after her father's death. He has it for
his life. But there is money. A good deal, I doubt not, will go with
her hand at once. If we had that we could clear the mortgage off Hall."
Anthony frowned, and folded his arms.
"I am against delaying marriage till late," continued old Cleverdon; "so
I propose that you have a talk with Julian at once, and get her to say
when it is to be. Some time this year; but not in May--May marriages are
unlucky." The old man chuckled, and said, "I reckon your honeymoon you
will find a harvest moon."
"I have no fancy for Julian Crymes," said Anthony; "I never had."
"Pshaw! Of course you have a fancy for Kilworthy. It will fit on with
Hall bravely; and so the old Glanville property will come together all
in time to the Cleverdons."
"I am not going to take Julian for the sake of Kilworthy. That you may
be assured of," said Anthony.
"Oh, yes, you will; but I dare say you want to keep out of chains a
little longer. If so, I do not press you. Nevertheless, in the end it
comes to this--you must take Julian and her estate."
"I will have neither one nor the other," said Anthony. "I do not want to
marry--when I do I will please myself."
"You will consult my wishes and my plans," said the father. "But there,
I have said enough. Turn the thing over in your head; the girl likes
you, small blame to her--you are the bravest cockrell in the district,
and can crow loud enough to make all others keep silence."
"I will never take Julian," again said Anthony. "It is of no use,
father, urging this; she has been thrown at me, and has thrown herself
at me. I may have prattled and laughed with her, but I never cared much
for her. I shall never take but the maid that pleases me; I give you
assurance of this, father."
"Well, well, that will suffice. I was too early in speaking. Take your
time; in the end you will see through my spectacles. Now I am busy; you
may go."
Anthony left. He was irritated at his father for endeavoring to force
him to marry Julian Crymes, irritated with him for his depreciatory tone
when speaking of the Malvines, irritated with him for not allowing his
sister to go to Willsworthy.
At the present moment he felt very reluctant to go to Kilworthy and see
Julian, to return to her the pair of gloves. After she had been thrust
on him and he had declined to think of her, he felt out of humour for a
visit to her; he had lost command of himself, in his annoyance, and
might speak with scant courtesy.
"If I could light on Fox I would give him the gloves," said Anthony, as
he mounted the horse.
He rode out on a down near Hall, and there drew rein, uncertain whether
he would go direct to Kilworthy or not.
"No," said he, "I will ride first to Peter Tavy and see that the
head-post of Master Malvine be secure. I will give the sexton something
to have the foot scarfed, that it may not fall over or give way. After
that I can go to Kilworthy." So he turned his horse's head in the
direction of the inn, the Hare and Hounds at Cudliptown, where he would
fall into the road to Peter Tavy.
In his irritation at what his father had proposed, he forgot about the
bunch of flowers in his hat. He left them there disregarded, fretting in
his mind at his father's attempt to force him to a union that was
distasteful to him. He liked Julian well enough; she was a handsome
girl. He had admired her, he had played the lover--played without
serious intent, for his heart had not been touched--but now he
entertained an aversion from her, an aversion that was not old; it dated
but from the previous day, but it had ripened whilst his father spoke to
him of her.
Anthony was this day like a charged electric battery, and any one that
came near him received a shock. His father had seen that the mood of the
young man was not one in which he would bear to be contradicted; the old
man was aware that his son would discharge his feelings against him
quite as readily as against another, and he, therefore, had the
discretion not to press a point that irritated Anthony, and was like to
provoke an outburst.
And now, as Anthony rode over the down, past many old tumuli covering
the dead of prehistoric times, he had no eyes for the beauty of the
scene that opened before him, eyes for no antiquities that he passed,
ears for none of the fresh and pleasant voices of early spring that
filled the air; he was occupied with his own thoughts, grumbling and
muttering over the matters of dissatisfaction that had risen up and
crossed him. He had apologised for the outrage committed on Richard
Malvine's grave, but he could not excuse himself of having occasioned a
shock to Mistress Malvine. He was angry with his father for the
slighting manner in which he spoke of the Malvines, for having forbidden
Bessie going to them, for having endeavoured to force him into an
engagement with Julian. He would please himself, murmured Anthony to
himself; in such a matter as this he would brook no dictation. His
liking for Urith was too young to have assumed any shape and force, and
he had no thoughts of its leading any further. Such as it was, it had
been fed and stimulated by opposition--the interference on the moor, the
opposition of his father, the difficulties put in his way by his own
act--but then Anthony was just the man to be settled in a course by
encountering opposition therein.
He crossed the river, reached Cudliptown, and saw the surgeon's horse
hitched up outside the tavern. The doctor had been to Willsworthy, and
had halted at the Hare and Hounds for refreshment on his way home.
Anthony at once dismounted. He would go in there and ask tidings of the
health of the widow.
He fastened up his horse and entered the tavern, in his usual
swaggering, defiant manner, with his hat on, and a frown on his brow. He
found in the inn, not the surgeon only, but James Cudlip, and to his
surprise Anthony Crymes.
The relationship in which Anthony Cleverdon stood to Fox was intimate
but not cordial. They had known each other and had associated together
since they were children; they had been at school together; they hunted,
and rabbited, and hawked together. Anthony was not one who could endure
to be alone, and as he had no other companion of his age and quality
with whom to associate, he took up with Fox rather than be solitary. But
when together they were ever bickering. Fox's bitter tongue made Anthony
start, and with his slow wit he was incapable of other retort than
threat. Moreover, from every one else young Anthony received flattery;
only from Fox did he get gibes. He bore in his heart a simmering grudge
against him that never boiled up into open quarrel. Fox took a malicious
delight in tormenting his comrade, whom he both envied and disliked.
That Anthony Crymes had paid his addresses to Urith, and had been
refused, was unknown to Anthony Cleverdon, to whom Crymes confided no
secrets of his heart or ambition.
When Anthony caught sight of Fox at the table, he checked the question
relative to the condition of Madame Malvine that rose to his lips, and
came over to the settle.
"Why! what a May Duke have we here!" exclaimed Fox Crymes, pointing with
a laugh at Anthony's cap. "What is the meaning of this decoration?"
Instead of replying, Anthony called for ale.
"And wearing his mistress' gloves as well!" shouted Crymes.
"They are not my mistress' gloves," answered Anthony, hastily, and in a
tone of great irritation. "If you would know, Fox, whose they are, then
I tell you, they belong to your sister."
"How came you by them? And wherefore wear them?"
"I was on the lookout for you, Fox, to return them to you for her. I do
not want them. She lost them overnight."
"And where did you find them? On the moor?"
"They were given to me by the finder. Will that satisfy you? I will
answer no more questions."
Crymes saw that Anthony Cleverdon was in an irascible mood--such a mood
as gave him special opportunities of vexing Anthony and amusing himself.
"And now about your posie of golden cups?" he asked tauntingly.
"I said I would answer no more questions."
"It is not necessary. I know very well where you have been."
"I have been home--at Hall," said Anthony, going over to the table from
the settle, where he felt himself uneasy with all eyes fixed on him. He
pulled the gloves out of his belt and laid them before him, and drew
them their full length on the table, then smoothed them with his finger.
He wished he had not entered the inn; his face was clouded, and his
muscles twitched, Crymes enjoying his evident annoyance. He sat on the
further side of the table, with his mug of beer by him.
"I know very well where you have been," said he again, with his
twinkling, malicious eyes fixed on Anthony. "So was I the day before
yesterday; and also came off with a posie--but a better one than yours."
"It is a lie!" burst from the irritated young man, starting. "Urith
never----" Then he checked himself, as Fox broke into ironical laughter
at the success of his essay to extract from Anthony the secret of his
bunch of marigolds. Anthony saw that he had been trapped, and became
more chafed and hot than before.
"Do you know what she meant by giving you those flowers?" asked Crymes,
and paused with his eyes on the man he was baiting.
Anthony answered with a growl.
"You know what they are called by the people?" said Crymes. "Drunkards.
And, when you were presented with that posie, it was as much as to say
that none save one to whom such a term applied would have acted as you
had done last night by your offence against a dead man's grave, and by
adding insult to injury by your visiting the widow and child to-day."
The blood poured into Anthony's face and dazzled his eyes. A malevolent
twitch of the muscles of the mouth showed how Fox enjoyed tormenting
him.
"Go again a little later in the season, and Urith will find another, and
even more appropriate, adornment for your hat--a coxcomb!"
Yeoman Cudlip and Surgeon Doble laughed aloud, so did the serving wench
who had just brought in Anthony's ale.
The young fellow, stung beyond endurance, sprang to his feet with a
snort--he could not speak--and struck Fox across the face with the
gloves.
Crymes uttered a cry of pain and rage, and with his hand to his eye drew
the hunting-knife from his belt, and struggled out of his place to get
at Anthony. The surgeon and yeoman threw themselves in his way and
disarmed him, the girl screamed and fled to the kitchen.
"He has blinded me!" gasped Fox, as he sank back into a seat. "I cannot
see."
Anthony was alarmed. Water was brought, and the face of Crymes washed.
One of the silver tags of the glove had struck and injured the right
eyeball.