CHAPTER XXXIX. TWO PARTS OF A TOKEN.
Anthony had, as his father surmised, gone to see his Aunt Magdalen. His heart was soft within him—softened at the sense of his own unworthiness, and with the return flow of his old love to Urith. And as he did not desire at once to go back to Willsworthy, and at the same time remembered that some time had elapsed since he had seen his aunt, he went to her house. There he found his grandmother, Mistress Penwarne. Some of the bitterness of the old woman seemed to be rubbed away. Perhaps daily association with the gentleness of Luke Cleverdon had done this.
She was in tears when Anthony entered. Magdalen had been talking with her over the plan mapped out for Bessie, to the complete, final exclusion of Anthony from return to his father's house.
"Now—now does the righteous God pay back to old Anthony Cleverdon all the wrong he did my daughter," she said. "See—drop for drop of gall. Where there fell one on my child's heart, his own son spirts a drop on to his father's heart. There is retribution in this world."
"Oh, Mistress Penwarne," remonstrates Magdalen. "How can you take delight in this?"
"I delight only in seeing justice done," answered the old woman. "You hold with your brother—naturally—to some extent; but you never loved my daughter. You never showed her kindness——"
"Indeed, now," interrupted Magdalen, "there you do me a wrong. It was Margaret who would not suffer me to enter the house and be of any consequence more in Hall, who withstood me when I would draw near to my brother."
"She had no power to withstand any one. That you know full well. She weighed naught with her husband. But let that be. If you sinned against her, God is bringing the whip down on your shoulders as well, for I know that what is now falling out is to you great pain and affliction."
"That it is indeed," sighed Magdalen.
"Anthony is used by the hand of Providence as its rod with the father; Heaven rewards on the proud Squire of Hall every heartache, every humiliation to which he subjected my child. You know not how I have prayed that I might be suffered to see the day when the rod should fall and beat and bruise the back of the offender."
"You do not reckon," said Magdalen, "that the chief suffering falls, not on my brother, but on your daughter's son. Is not Anthony the very image of his mother? Has he not her eyes and hair—all the upper part of his countenance? Does not her blood run in his veins? You have desired revenge on my brother, and you have got it through the breaking to pieces of your own grandson."
Mistress Penwarne was silent. It was as Magdalen said.
"Yes, and whom does Bessie resemble most? She has none of the handsomeness of your Margaret. It is true that she is her child, but she has inherited the plain homeliness of the Cleverdons. Look at yonder picture over the mantel-shelf. That was drawn of me when about her age. Does she not so resemble me at that time that you would say she had taken nothing of the Penwarnes, that she was altogether and only Cleverdon? Yet to her will come Hall. She will be mistress there, and to her child it will descend, to the utter exclusion of Anthony. Nay, I cannot think that the judgment of God, to which thou appealest ever, is falling all to thy side in its weighted scale."
The old woman was about to answer when Anthony entered. He was pale, and his pallor reminded her of her daughter as the wan picture recalled Bessie. Mrs. Penwarne rose from her chair and stepped up to him, took him by both his hands, and looked him steadily in the face. As she did so great tears formed in her eyes and rolled down her wrinkled cheeks.
"Ah!" said she, seeing in him her dead daughter, and her voice quivered, "how hardly did the Master of Hall treat her, but Magdalen—aye, and Bessie—know that better than thou. He was rough and cruel, and now thou hast felt what his roughness and cruelty be—now thou canst understand how he behaved to thy poor mother; but thou art a man and able to go where thou wilt, fight thine own way through the world, carve for thyself thine own future. It was not so with my poor Margaret. She was linked to him—she could not escape, and he used his strength and authority and wealth to beat and to torment and break her. And Margaret had a spirit. Have you seen how a little dog is mended of lamb worrying? It is attached to an old ram—linked to it past escape, and at every moment the ram lets drive at the little creature with his horns, gets him under his feet and tramples him, kneels on him and kneads him with his knees, ripping at him all the while with his horns. Then, finally, the little dog is detached and taken away, covered with wounds and bruises, before the ram kills it. It was so with my Margaret, but she was no lamb-killer—only had a high spirit—and she was tied to that man, your father. He rent her away from Richard Malvine, whom she loved, just because it was his pleasure, and he broke her heart. Look here."
The old grandmother drew from her bosom a token, a silver crown-piece of Charles I., on which the King was figured mounted on horseback; but the coin was broken, and to her neck hung but one half.
"Look at this," said Mrs. Penwarne. "Here is the half-token that Richard Malvine gave to my daughter, and the other half he kept himself. That was the pledge that they belonged to each other. Yet Anthony Cleverdon of Hall would not have it so. He took her away, and on her marriage day she gave me the broken half-token. She had no right to retain that; but with her broken heart she could not part so readily. As if it were not enough that he had torn her away from the man she loved, your father left not a day to pass without ill-treating her in some way. He was jealous, because he thought her heart still hung to Richard Malvine; though, as God in heaven knows, she never failed in her duty to him, and strove faithfully to cast out from her heart every thought of the man she had loved, and to whom the Squire of Hall had made her unfaithful. As he could not win her love, he sought to crush her by ill-treatment. Now, O my Lord! how it must rejoice my poor Margaret, and Richard also, in Paradise, to think that their children should come together and be one—be one as they themselves never could be."
She ceased and sobbed. Then with shaking hands, she put the ribbon to which the broken token depended round Anthony's neck.
"Take this," she said. "I never thought to part with it; but it of right belongs now to thee. Take it as a pledge of thy mother's love, that her broken heart goes with thee to Willsworthy, and finds its rest there; and with it take my blessing."
Anthony bowed his head, and looked at the silver coin, rubbed very much, and placed it on his breast, inside his coat.
"Thank thee, grandmother," he said. "I will cherish it as a remembrance of my mother."
"And tell me," said she, "is it so, that thou art forever driven away from Hall, that thy father will take thy name, even, and give it to another, and that thou and thy children are forever to be shut off and cast away from all lot and inheritance in the place where thy forefathers have been?"
"It is even so," answered Anthony. "But hark!"
A horn was being blown in the street, and there was a tramp of running feet, and voices many in excitement.
"What can be the matter?" exclaimed Magdalen, going to the window. "Mercy on us! What must have taken place?"
Anthony ran out of the house. The street had filled; there were people of all sorts coming out of their houses, asking news, pressing inward toward the man with the horn. Anthony elbowed his way through the throng.
"What is this about?" he inquired of a man he knew.
"The Duke of Monmouth has landed at Lyme in Dorsetshire. Hey! wave your hat for Protestantism! Who'll draw the sword against Popery and Jesuitism?"
More news was not to be got. The substance of the tidings that had just come in was contained in the few words—the Duke has landed at Lyme; with how many men was not known. What reception he had met with was as yet unknown. No one could say whether the country gentry had rallied to him—whether the militia which had been called out in expectation of his arrival had deserted to his standard.
Anthony remained some time in the street and market-place discussing the news. His spirits rose, his heart beat high; he longed to fly to Lyme, and offer himself to the Duke. His excitement over, the tidings dispelled his concern about his own future and gloomy thoughts about his troubled home. In that home there was at the time much unrest. After he had departed from Willsworthy, Uncle Sol Gibbs had burst into laughter.
"Ah, Urith!" said he, "I hope, maid, thy hand is not hurt. It was not a fair hit. The lad was nettled; he thought himself first in everything, and all at once discovered that an old fool like me, with one hand behind my back, could beat him at every point. Your young cockerells think that because they crow loud they are masters in the cockpit. It disconcerts them to find themselves worsted by such as they have despised. There, I shall bear him no grudge. I forgive him, and he will be ashamed of himself ere ten minutes are past in which his blood has cooled. None of us are masters of ourselves when the juices are in ferment."
He took his niece's hand and looked at the palm; it was darkened across it, by the stroke of the stick.
"So! he has bruised thee, Urith! That would have cracked my old skull had it fallen athwart it, by heaven! Never mind, I kiss thee, wench, for having saved me, and I forgive him for thy sake. Look here, Urith, don't thou go taking it into thy noddle that all married folks agree like turtle-doves. Did'st ever hear me sing the song about Trinity Sunday?
When bites the frost and winds are a blowing,
I do not heed and I do not care.
When 'Tony's by me—why let it be snowing,
'Tis summer time with me all the year.
The icicles they may hang on the fountain,
And frozen over the farmyard pool,
The east wind whistle upon the mountain,
No wintry gusts our love will cool.
That is courtship, Urith—summer in the midst of winter. Now listen to matrimony—what that is:—
I shall be wed a' Trinity Sunday,
And then—adieu to my holiday!
Come frost, come snow on Trinity Monday,
Why then beginneth my winter day.
If drudge and smudge on Trinity Monday,
If wind and weather—I do not care!
If winter follows Trinity Sunday,
It can't be summer-time all the year.
That's the proper way to regard it. After marriage storms always come; after matrimony nipping frosts and wintry gales. It can't be summer-time all the year. Now just see," continued Uncle Sol, climbing upon the table and seating himself thereon, and then fumbling in his pocket. "Dos't fancy it was ever summer-time with thy father and mother after they were wed? Not a bit, wench—not a bit. They had their quarrels. I don't say that they were exactly of the same sort as be yours, but they were every whit as bad—aye! and worse, and all about this." He opened his hand and showed a broken silver crown piece of Charles I., perforated, and with a ribbon holding it. "I'll tell thee all about it. Afore thy father was like to be married to my sister, he was mighty taken in love with someone else. Well, Urith, I won't conceal it from thee—it was with Margaret Penwarne, that afterward married old Squire Cleverdon, and became the mother of thy Anthony. Everyone said they would make a pair, but he was poor and she had naught, and none can build their nest out of love; so it was put off. But I suppose they had passed their word to each other, and in token of good faith had broken a silver crown and parted it between them. This half," said Uncle Sol, "belonged to thy father. Well, I reckon he ought, when he married thy mother, to have put away from his thoughts the very memory of Margaret Cleverdon. I could not see into his heart—I cannot say what was there. Maybe he had ceased to think of her after she was wed to Anthony Cleverdon, and he had taken thy mother; maybe he had not. All men have their little failings—some one way, some another. Mine is—well, you know it, niece, so let it pass. I hurt none but myself. But thy father never parted with the broken half-token, but would keep it. Many words passed between them over it, and the more angry thy mother was, the more obstinate became thy father. One day they were terrible bad—a regular storm it was, Urith. Then I took down my single-stick, and I went up to Richard, and said I to him, 'Dick, thou art in the wrong. Give me up the half-token, or, by the Lord, I'll lay thy head open for thee!' He knew me, and that I was a man of my word. He considered a moment, and then he put it into my hand—on one condition, that I should never give it to my sister. I swore to that, and we shook hands, and so peace was made for the time. There"——said the old man, descending from the table. "I will give thee the half-token, maid, for my oath does not hold me now. Thine it shall be; and when thou wearest it, or holdest it, think on this—that there is no married life without storms and vexations, and that the only way in which peace is to be gotten is for the one in the wrong to give up to the other."
He put the half-token into Urith's hand.
She received it without a word, and held it in her bruised palm. Her face was lowering, and she mused, looking at the coin.
Yes, he who is in the wrong must abandon his wrongful way—give up what offended the other. What had she to yield? Nothing. She had done her utmost to retain Anthony's love. She had not been false to him by a moment's thought. She had striven against her own nature to fit herself to be his companion. She loved him—she loved him with her whole soul; and yet she hated him—hated him because he had slighted and neglected her at the Cakes, because he was suffering himself to be lured from her by Julian, because he was dissatisfied with his house, resented against her his quarrel with his father. She could hardly discriminate between her love and her hate. One merged into the other, or grew out of the other.
"Come!" said the old man, looking about for his hat. "By the Lord! the boy has gone off with my wet cap. Well, I shall wear his, I cannot tarry here. I will go seek out my friend Cudlip at the Hare and Hounds. I shall not be late, but I want to hear news. There is a wind that the Duke of Monmouth has set sail from the Lowlands. The militia have been called out and the trainbands gathered. Come, Urith, do not look so grave. Brighten up with some of the humours of the maid who sang of winter on Trinity Monday. It cannot be summer-time all the year—why, neither can it be winter."
Then he swung out of the house trolling:—
So let not this pair be despised,
That man is but part of himself;
A man without woman's a beggar,
If he have the whole world full of wealth,
A man without woman's a beggar,
Tho' he of the world were possessed,
But a beggar that has a good woman,
With more than the world is he blessed.