"THIS FOR JULIAN."
Urith was left alone looking at the broken token. It did not bring to
her the cynical consolation that her uncle intended it to convey. It was
not even poor comfort, it was no sort of comfort whatever to learn that
others had been unhappy in the same way as herself--that there had been
discord between her father and mother. The broken token was to her a
token of universal breakage--of broken trust, broken ambitions, broken
words, broken hearts--but that all the world was in wreck was no relief
to Urith, whose only world for which she cared was contained within the
bounds of Willsworthy.
She had dreamed with reverence of her father; but Uncle Sol had shown
her that this father had been false in heart to her mother. Her own
story was that of her mother. Each had married one whose heart had been
pre-engaged. After a little while, no doubt of sincere struggle, the
heart swung back to its eldest allegiance. As Urith sat in the hall
window, looking out into the court, her eyes rested on the vane over the
stables. Now that arrow pointed to the west! Sometimes it veered to
other quarters, but the prevailing winds came from the Atlantic, and
that vane, though for a few days it may have swerved to north or south,
though for a whole month, nay--a whole spring it may have pointed east,
as though nailed in that aspect, yet round it swung eventually, and for
the rest of the year hardly deviated from west. So was it with the heart
of Anthony; so had it been with the heart of her father. Each had had a
first love; then there had come a sway towards another point, and
eventually a swing round into the direction that had become habitual.
Fox's words at the dance in the house of the Cakes returned to
her:--"You cannot root out old love with a word." With Anthony it had
been old love. Since childhood he and Julian had known each other, and
had looked on each other in the light of lovers. It was a love that had
ramified in its roots throughout his heart and mind. It was with this
love as with the coltsfoot in the fields. When once the weed was there,
it was impossible to eradicate it; the spade that cut it, the pick that
tore it up, the sickle that reaped it down, only multiplied it; every
severed fibre became a fresh plant--every lopped head seeded on the
ground and dispersed its grain. For a while a crop of barley or oats
appeared, and the coltsfoot was lost in the upright growth; but the crop
was cut and carried, and the coltsfoot remained.
Was this a justification for Anthony? Urith did not stay to inquire. She
considered herself, her anguish of disappointment, her despair of the
future--not him. With all the freshness and vehemence of youth, she had
given herself wholly to Anthony. She had loved--cared for--no one
before; and when she loved and cared for him it was with a completeness
to which nothing lacked. Hers was a love infinite as the ocean, and now
she found that his had been but a love, in comparison with hers, like a
puddle that is dried up by the July sun.
She did not consider the matter with regard to Anthony's justification,
only as affecting herself--as darkening her entire future. The coltsfoot
must go on growing, and spread throughout the field. It could not be
extirpated, only concealed for a while. She could never look into
Anthony's face--never kiss him again, never endure a word of love from
him any more, because of that hateful, hideous, ever-spreading,
all-absorbing, only temporarily-coverable weed of first love for Julian.
An indescribable horror of the future filled her--an inexpressible agony
contracted her heart as with a cramp. She threw up her hands and
clutched in the air at nothing; she gasped for breath as one drowning,
but could inhale nothing contenting. Everything was gone from her with
Anthony, not only everything that made life happy, but endurable. Down
the stream belonging to the manor was a little mill, furnished with
small grinding-stones, and a wheel that ever turned in the stream that
shot over it. No miller lived at the mill. When rye, barley, or wheat
had to be ground, some person from the house went down, set the mill,
and poured in the grain. Night and day the wheel went round, and now in
her brain was set up some such a mill--there was a whirl within, and a
noise in her ears. The little manor-mill could be unset, so that, though
the wheel turned, the stones did not grind unless needed; but to this
inner mill in her head there was no relaxation. It would, grind, grind
as long as the stream of life ran--grind her heart, grind up her trust,
her hopes, her love, her faith in God, her belief in men--grind up all
that was gentle in her nature, till it ground all her nobler nature up
into an arid dust.
The day declined, and she was still looking at the broken token.
The mill was grinding, and was turning out horrible thoughts of
jealousy, it ground her love and poured forth hate, it ground up
confidence and sent out suspicion. She sprang to her feet. Where was
Anthony now? What was he doing all this while? He had been away a long
time; with whom had he been tarrying?
The mill was grinding, and now, as she threw in the jealous thoughts,
the hate, the suspicions, it had just turned out, it ground them over
again, and sent forth a wondrous series of fancies in a magic dust that
filled her eyes and ears; in her eyes it made her see Anthony in
Julian's society, in her ears it made her hear what they said to each
other. The dust fell into her blood, and made it boil and rage; it fell
on her brain, and there it caught fire and spluttered. She was as one
mad in her agony--so mad that she caught at the stanchions of the window
and strove to tear them out of the solid granite in which they were set,
not that she desired to burst through the window, but that she must tear
at and break something.
Why had Anthony marred her life, blistered her soul? She had started
from girlhood in simplicity, prepared to be happy in a quiet way,
rambling over the moors in a desultory fashion, attending to the farm
and garden and the poultry yard. She would have been content, if left
alone, never to have seen a man. Her years would have slipped away free
from any great sorrow, without any great cares. Willsworthy contented
her where wants were few. She loved and was proud of the place; but
Anthony, since he had been there had found fault with it, had
undervalued it, laughed at it; had shown her how bleak it was, how
ungenerous was the soil, how out of repair its buildings, how lacking in
all advantages.
Anthony had taught her to depreciate what she had highly esteemed. Why
need he have done that?
The wheel and the grindstones were turning, and out ran the bitter
answer--because Willsworthy was _hers_, that was why he scorned it, why
he saw in it only faults.
She paced the little hall, every now and then clasping her hands over
her burning temples, pressing them in with all her force, as though by
main strength to arrest the churn of those grindstones. Then she put
them to her ears to shut out the sound of the revolving wheel.
On the mantel-shelf was a brass pestle for crushing spices. She took it
down. Into it were stuffed the old gloves of Julian Crymes. It was a
characteristic trait of the conduct of the house; nothing was put where
it ought to be, or might be expected to be. After these gloves had lain
about, at one time in the window, at another on the settle, then upon
the table, Urith had finally thrust them out of the way into the pestle,
and there they had remained forgotten till now. In the train of her
thoughts Urith was led to the challenge of Julian, when she recalled
where the gloves were, and these she now took from the place to which
she had consigned them.
She unfolded them and shook the dust from them. Then she stood with one
foot on the hearthstone, her burning head resting against the granite
upper stone of the fireplace, looking at the gloves. Had Julian made
good her threat? Was she really, deliberately, with determinate malice,
winding Anthony off Urith's hand on to her own? And if so--to what would
this lead? How would she--Urith--be tortured between them? Every hair of
her head was a nerve, and each suffering pain.
She lifted her brow from the granite, then dashed it back again, and
felt no jar, so acute was the inner suffering she endured. It were
better that Anthony, or she--were dead. Such a condition of affairs as
that of which the mill in her head ground out a picture, was worse than
death. She could not endure it, she knew--she must go mad with the
torment. Oh, would! oh--would that Fox's fuse had been left to take its
effect in the ear of Anthony's horse, and dash him to pieces against the
rocks of the Walla!
She could no longer bear the confinement of the house. She gasped and
her bosom laboured. She put the gloves between her teeth, and her hands
again to her head, but her dark hair fell down about her shoulders. She
did not heed it. Her mind was otherwise occupied. In a dim way she was
aware of it, and her hands felt for her hair, how to bind it together
and fasten it again, but her mind was elsewhere, and her fingers only
dishevelled her hair the more.
The air of the room oppressed her; the walls contracted on her; the
ceiling came down like lead upon her brain. She plucked the gloves out
of her mouth and threw them on the table, then went forth.
The rain had ceased. Evening had set in, dark for June, because the
twilight could not struggle through the dense vapours overhead.
"Where is Anthony? I must see Anthony!" Her words were so hoarse, so
strange that they startled her. It is said that when one is possessed,
the evil spirit in the man speaks out of him in a strange voice,
utterly unlike that which is natural. It might be so now. The old demon
in Urith that had gone to sleep was awaking, refreshed with slumber, to
reassert his power.
Where was Anthony? What delayed his return? Had he on leaving
Willsworthy gone direct to Julian to pour out into her sympathetic ear
the story of his domestic troubles? Was he telling her of his wife's
shortcomings?--of her temper?--her untidiness?--her waywardness? Were
they jeering together in confidence at poor little moorland Willsworthy?
Were they talking over the great mistake Anthony had made in taking
Urith in the place of Julian? Were they laughing over that scene when
Anthony led out Urith for the dance at the Cakes? She saw their hands
meet, and their eyes--their eyes--as at the Cakes.
Then there issued from her breast a scream--a scream of unendurable
pain; it came from her involuntarily; it was forced from her by the
stress of agony within, but the voice was hoarse and inhuman. She was
aware of it, and grasped her hair and thrust it into her mouth to gnaw
at, and to stifle the cries of pain which might burst from her again.
She had descended the hill a little way when she thought she discerned a
figure approaching, mounting the rough lane. It might be Anthony--it
might be Solomon Gibbs. She was unprepared to meet either, so she
slipped aside into the little chapel. The portion of wall by the door
was fallen, making a gap, but further back grew a large sycamore, out of
the floor of the sacred building, near the angle formed by the south and
west walls. Behind this she retreated, and thence could see the person
who ascended the path, unobserved.
She was startled when Fox Crymes stepped through the gap where had been
the door. There was sufficient light for her to distinguish him, but he
could not observe her, as the shadows thrown by the dense foliage of the
sycamore from above, and the side shadows from the walls, made the
corner where Urith stood thoroughly obscure.
She supposed at first that Fox had stopped there for a moment to shake
out his wet cloak and readjust it; he did, in fact, rearrange the
position of the mantle, but it was not so as more effectually to protect
himself from rain as to leave his right arm free. Moreover, after that
he had fitted his cloak to suit his pleasure, he did not resume his
ascent of the lane to Willsworthy.
For a while Urith's thoughts were turned into a new channel. She
wondered, in the first place, why Fox should come to Willsworthy at that
hour; and next, why Fox, if Willsworthy should be his destination,
halted where he was, without attempting to proceed.
His conduct also perplexed her. He seated himself on a stone and
whistled low to himself through a broken tooth in front that he had--a
whistle that was more of a hiss of defiance than a merry pipe. Then he
took out his hunting-knife, and tried the point on his fingers. This did
not perfectly satisfy him, and he whetted it on a piece of freestone
moulding still in position, that formed a jamb of the old door, of which
the arch and the other jamb were fallen.
This occupied Fox for some time, but not continuously, for every now and
then he stood up, stole to the lane, and cautiously peered down it,
never exposing himself so as to be observed by any person ascending the
rough way.
The air was still, hardly any wind stirred, but what little there was
came in sudden puffs that shook the foliage of the sycamore burdened
with wet, and sent down a shower upon the floor. Urith could not feel
the wind, and when it came it was as though a shudder went through the
tree, and it tossed off the burden of water oppressing it, much as would
a long-haired spaniel on emerging from a bath.
Bats were abroad. One swept up and down the old chapel, noiseless, till
it came close to the ear, when the whirr of the wings was as that of the
sails of a mill.
An uneasy peewhit was awake and awing, flitting and uttering its
plaintive, desolate cry. It was not visible in the grey night-sky, and
was still for a minute; then screamed over the ruins; then wheeled away,
and called, as an echo from a distance, an answer to its own cry.
Fox stood forward again in the road, and strained his eyes down the
lane; then stole a little way along it to where he could, or thought he
could, see a longer stretch of it; then came back at a run, and stood
snorting in the ruins once more. Again, soft and still, came on a
comminuted rain--the very dust of rain--so fine and so light that it
took no direction, but floated on the air, and hardly fell.
Fox turned to the sycamore-tree. No shelter could be had beneath its
water-burdened leaves, that gathered the moisture and shot it down on
the ground. But he did not look at it as wanting its shelter. He stepped
toward it, then drew back; exclaimed, "Ah! Anthony. Here's one for
Urith," and struck his knife into the bole. The blade glanced through
the bark, sheering off a long strip, that rolled over and fell to the
ground attached to the tree at the bottom. "You took her and Willsworthy
from me," said Fox, drawing back. Then he aimed another blow at the
tree, cursing, "And here is for my eye!"
Urith started back; each blow seemed to be aimed at and to hit her, who
was behind the tree. She felt each stroke as a sharp spasm in her heart.
Fox dragged at his knife, worked it up, down, till he had loosened it;
then withdrew it. Then he laid his left hand, muffled in his cloak,
against the sycamore trunk, and raised his knife again. "That is not
enough," he whispered, and it was to Urith as though he breathed it into
her ear. He struck savagely into the side of the tree, as though into a
man, under the ribs, and said, "And this for Julian."
Before he could release his blade, Urith had stepped forth and had laid
her hand on him.
"Answer me," she said: "What do you mean by those words, 'And this for
Julian?'"