"I will not take it, Luke; what I have and spend shall be mine own. So Urith and I will ask you to make us one, and give me a right to a penny or two."
Luke was confounded; this was acting with precipitation, indeed. He quite understood that Squire Cleverdon would not receive Urith as a daughter-in-law with open arms, and that he would oppose such an alliance by all means in his power. Like Anthony, he supposed that the old man's violence of language and threats of disinheritance meant nothing. He would cut off his right hand rather than give up his ambitions set upon his son. But in the end he would yield to the inevitable, if inevitable this were. But this haste of Anthony in precipitating the marriage, in disregard to all decency, must incense the old father, and, if anything could do so, drive him to act upon his word.
Luke became, if possible, graver; the lines in his face deepened. He withdrew his hands from behind his back.
"Anthony," said he, "this will not do. You are acting with your usual hot-headedness. You have angered your father, and must seek reconciliation and the abatement of his wrath, before you take such a step as this."
"I said so," threw in Urith.
"My father never will yield so long as he thinks that I may be brought to change my mind. When he finds that I have taken the irrevocable step, then he will buckle under."
"And is it for the son to bid the father do this?" asked Luke, with some warmth. "No, I will be no party to this," he added, firmly, and set his thin lips together.
"I love her, and she loves me; we cannot live apart. God has made us for each other," said Anthony; "my father can't alter that; it is God's will."
Luke did not meet Anthony's glowing eyes, his were resting on the ground. He thought of his own love, and his own desolate heart. For a moment the bitterness therein overflowed; he looked up sharply, to speak sharply, and then his eyes fell on the two young things—Anthony big, sturdy, wondrously handsome, and full of joyous life, and at his side Urith, in her almost masculine and sullen beauty. Yes, they were as though made for each other—the bright, light temper to be conjoined to the dark and sombre one, each qualifying, correcting the exuberance in the other, each in some sort supplementing the deficiencies in the other. The harsh words that were on his lips remained unspoken. On the settle Uncle Sol was murmuring his tune to himself, every now and then breaking forth into a louder gush of song, and then at once suppressing it again.
Perhaps it was God's will that these two should belong to each other; perhaps the old hostility, and wrath, and envy that had embittered the lives of their several parents were to be atoned for by the mutual love of the children. Luke was too true a Christian to believe that the words of hate that had shot like fire-coals from a volcano out of the mouth of Madam Malvine, when dying, could avail aught now. In the better light into which she had passed, as he trusted, in the world of clearer vision and extinguished animosity, of all-enwrapping charity, she must, with inner anguish, repent, and desire to have unsaid those terrible words. The dying utterances of the woman did not weigh with Luke, or, if they had any weight, it was to turn the scale against them. No better comfort to the soul of the dead could be given than the certainty that those words had been reversed and cast aside. Luke passed his hands over his brow, and then said, "I will see your father again, Anthony."