FATHER AND SON AGAIN.
Anthony sat in the house of his cousin Luke, his head in his hand.
Bessie had come there to see him. She had been told of his return, and
Luke had advised her to meet him at the parsonage.
"O Tony!--dear, dear Tony! I am so glad you are back. Now, please God,
all things will go better."
"I do not see any turn yet--any possible," said Anthony.
His tone was depressed, his heart was weighed down with disappointment
at his inability to rouse Urith.
"Do not say that, my brother," said Bessie, taking his hand between both
of hers, "God has been very good in bringing you safe and sound back to
Willsworthy."
"No exceeding comfort that!" Anthony responded, "when I find Urith in
such a state. She does not know me again."
"You must not be discouraged," urged Bess. "She has this darkness on
her now, but it will pass away as the clouds rise from off the moor. We
must wait and trust and pray."
"Remember, Anthony," added Luke, "that she received a great shock which
has, as it were, stunned her. She requires time to recover from it.
Perhaps her reason will return gradually, just as you say she herself
came groping along step by step to you. You must not be out of heart
because at the first meeting she was strange. Perhaps some second shock
is needed as startling as the first to restore her to the condition in
which she was. I have heard of a woman thrown into a trance by a flash
of lightning, unable to speak or stir, and a second thunderstorm, months
after, another flash, and she was cured, and the interval between was
gone from her recollection."
Anthony shook his head.
"You both say this because you desire to comfort me, but I have little
expectation, Bess," said he, pressing his sister's hand. "God forgive me
that I have never hitherto considered and valued your love to me, but
have imposed on you, and been rough and thoughtless. One must suffer
one's self to value love in others."
His sister threw her arms about his neck, and the tears of happiness
flowed down her cheeks. "Oh, Tony! this is too much! and father also! He
loves me now."
"And you, Bess, you have been hardly used. But how stands it now betwixt
you and Fox?"
Bessie looked down.
"My father forced you to take him; I know his way, and you had not the
strength to resist. Good heavens! I ought to have been at your side to
nerve you to opposition."
"No, Tony, my father employed no force; but he told me how matters stood
with regard to Hall, and I was willing to take Fox, thinking thereby to
save the estate."
"And Fox, what is he going to do?"
"I cannot tell. Nothing, I think. He says he has the money, but he will
not pay the mortgage; and yet I cannot believe he will allow Hall to
slip away. I think he is holding out to hurt my father, with whom he is
very angry because the state of matters was not told him before the
marriage."
"You suffered her to throw herself away?" asked Anthony, turning to
Luke.
"I did wrong," he said. "I ought to have spoken to your father, but he
had forbidden me the house, and--but no! I will make no excuse for
myself. I did wrong. Indeed--indeed, Anthony, among us all there is only
one who stands blameless and pure and beautiful in integrity--and that
is our dear Bessie. I did wrong, you acted wrongly, your father, Fox,
all--all are blameworthy, but she--nay! Bess, suffer me to speak; what I
say I feel, and so must all who know the circumstances. The Squire must
have eyes blinder than those of the mole not to see your unselfishness,
and a heart harder than a stone not to esteem your worth."
"I pray you," pleaded Bessie, with crimson brow, "I pray you, not
another word about me."
"Very well, we will speak no more thereof now," said Luke, "but I must
say something to Anthony. You, cousin, should now make an attempt to
obtain your father's forgiveness."
"What has he to forgive?" asked Anthony, impatiently. "Are not his own
hard-heartedness and his hatred of Richard Malvine, the cause of all
this misery?"
"His hard-heartedness and hatred have done much," said Luke, "but
neither of these is the cause of Urith's condition. That is your own
doing."
"Mine?" Though he asked the question, yet he answered it to himself, for
his head sank, and he did not look his cousin in the face.
"Yes--yours," replied Luke. "It was your unfaithfulness to Urith that
drove her----"
"I was not unfaithful," interrupted Anthony.
"You hovered on the edge of it--sufficiently near infidelity to make her
believe you had turned your heart away from her for another. There was
the appearance, if not the reality, of treason. On that Fox worked, and
wrought her into a condition of frenzy in which she was not responsible
for what she said and did. From that she has not recovered."
"Curse Fox!" swore Anthony, clenching his hands.
"No, rebuke and condemn yourself," said Luke. "Fox could have fired
nothing had not you supplied the fuel."
Anthony remained with his head bowed on the table. He put up his hands
to it, and did not speak for some time. At last he lowered his hands,
laid the palms on the table, and said, frankly, "Cousin! sister! I am to
blame. I confess my fault freely, and I would give the whole world to
undo the past."
"Then begin a new life, Tony," said Luke, "by going to your father and
being reconciled to him."
"I cannot. I cannot. How can I forget what he has done to Bess?"
"And how can your Heavenly Father forgive you your trespass if you
remain at enmity with your earthly father?" said Luke, sternly. "No,
Tony, begin aright. Do what is clearly your first duty, and then walk
forward, trusting in God."
A struggle ensued in Anthony's breast. Then Bess took his hand again
between her own, and said, "You have been brave, Tony, fighting on the
battle-field; now show your true courage in fighting against your own
pride. Come!" She held his hand still, and drew him after her. She had
risen.
"Very well!" said Anthony, standing up. "In God's name."
"He has heard that you are returned," added Bessie. "It will be a
pleasure to him to see you again."
On reaching Hall, Elizabeth found her father in his room. He was seated
at his table, engaged on his accounts, turning over the list of sums due
to him, reckoning his chances of recovering these debts, considering
what money he could scrape together by cutting down timber, and by the
sale of stock. He thought that he might raise five or six hundred pounds
at once, and perhaps more, but the time was most unpropitious for a
sale. It was the wrong season in which to throw oak, and to sell the
crops in the ground would at that time be ruinous at the prices they
would fetch.
When the door opened and Bessie entered with Anthony, the old man looked
up, and said nothing. His sleep had restored his strength, and with it
something of his natural hardness. His lips closed.
"Well, father!" said Anthony, "here am I, returned, without a shot
through me."
"So I see," said his father, dryly.
Anthony, disappointed with his reception, was inclined to withdraw, but
mastered his disappointment, and going up to the table, extended his
hand, and said,
"Come, father, forgive me, if I have vexed you."
Old Cleverdon made no counter-movement. The request had been made
somewhat coolly.
"Father! what did you promise me?" asked Bessie, her heart fluttering
between hope and discouragement. "Here is Anthony, whose life has been
in jeopardy, come back, asking your forgiveness, and that is what you
required."
Then the old man coldly placed his hand in that of his son; but he said
no word, nor did he respond to the pressure with which Anthony grasped
him. His hand lay cold and impassive in that of his son. Then Anthony's
cheeks flamed, and a sparkle of wrath burnt in his eye. Bessie looked up
to him entreatingly, and then turned pleadingly to her father, and
implored him to speak. Anthony did not await the word, but drew his hand
away.
"So," said the old man, "you are back. Take care of yourself; you are
not yet out of danger." And he took up again the papers he had been
examining.
"I am interrupting you," said Anthony; "anything is of more interest to
you than your own son."
He would have left the room, but Bessie held him back. Then she went up
to her father and drew the papers away from him. In her fear lest this
meeting should prove resultless she became bold. The old man frowned at
her audacity, but he said nothing.
"Father," said Anthony, "I came here as a duty to you, to tell you that
I ask nothing of you but your forgiveness for having been hot-headed in
marrying without and against your will."
"I have nothing else to give," answered Mr. Cleverdon. "I no longer call
this place mine. The place where I was born, and for which I have
toiled, which I have dreamed about, loved--I have nothing more, nothing
at all." He was filled with bitter pity for himself. "I, in my
destitution, must thank you that it has seemed worth while to you to
come and see me."
"Father!" gasped Bessie.
The old man proceeded: "I cannot forget that all this comes to pass
because you disregarded my wishes. Had you married Julian, had you even
proposed to marry her, this could not have happened. It is this," his
voice rang hard and metallic, and the light in his eye was the glisten
of a flint; "it is this that is the cause of all. It brings my grey head
into the dust. It deprives the Cleverdons of a place in the county, it
blots them out with a foul smear." The pen he had been holding had
fallen on a parchment, and, with his finger, the old man wiped the
blotch and streaked it over the surface.
"I could not marry Julian," said Anthony, with difficulty controlling
himself. "A man is not to be driven to the altar as is a poor girl." He
turned to his sister. "I am sorry for your sake that Hall goes--not for
mine; I do not care for it. It has been the curse that has rested on and
blasted your heart, father, turning it against your own children,
marring the happiness of my mother's life, taken all kindness and pity
out of yours. It is like a swamp that sends up pestilential vapours,
poisoning all who have aught to do with it."
The old man raised himself in his seat, and stared at him with wide-open
eyes. This was not what he had deemed possible, that a child of his, a
Cleverdon, should scoff at the land on which he was born, and which had
nourished him.
"What has been cast into thankless soil?" asked Anthony. "All good
feelings you ever had for my mother, all, everything, has been
sacrificed for it. But for Hall, she would have never taken you, but
have been happy with the man of her heart. But for Hall, I would have
been better reared, in self-restraint, in modesty, and kept to steady
work. But for Hall, Bess's most precious heart would not have been
thrown before that--that Fox! Very well, father. I am glad Hall goes.
When it is gone clean away, I will see you again, and then maybe you
will be more inclined for reconciliation."
The old man's blood was roused.
"It is easy to despise what can never be yours. The grapes are sour."
"The grapes were never other than sour," retorted Anthony, "and have set
on edge all teeth that have bitten into them. Sister--come!"
He went out of the door.