Urith: A Tale of Dartmoor

by S. Baring-Gould

The marriage had taken place; the banns were no further opposed. Old Cleverdon, indeed, sought a lawyer's advice; but found he could do nothing to prevent it. Anthony was of age, and his own master. The only control over him he could exercise was through the strings of the purse. The threads of filial love and obedience must have been slender, they had snapped so lightly. But the Squire had never regarded them much, he had considered the others tough to resist any strain—strong to hold—in the wildest mood.

He was not only incensed because Anthony defied him, but because the defiance had been open and successful. He had proclaimed his disapproval of the match by forbidding the banns before the entire parish; consequently, his defeat was public.

Urith had been carried, as by a whirlwind, out of one position into another, without having had time to consider how great the change must necessarily be. She had, in her girlhood, hardly thought of marriage. Following her own will, independent, she had not pictured to herself that condition as invested with any charm which must bring upon her some sort of vassalage—a state in which her will must be subordinate to that of another.

The surroundings were the same: she had spent all her days since infancy in that quaint old thatched manor-house; looked out on the world through those windows; seen what of the world came there flow in through the same doors; had sat at the same table, on the same chairs; heard the tick-tick of the same clock; listened to the same voices—of Uncle Sol and the old family maid. The externals were the same; but her whole inner life had assumed a new purpose and direction.

She could think, at first, of nothing save her happiness. That rough home was suddenly invested with beauty and fragrance, as though in a night jessamine and rose had sprung up around it, covered its walls, and were breathing their fragrance through the windows.

The course of her life had not been altered, broken by a leap and fall, but had expanded, because fuller, and at the same time deeper.

Now and then there came a qualm over her conscience at the thought of her mother. She had defied her last wishes, and her marriage had followed on the burial with indecent haste, but in the dazzle of sunshine in which she walked the motes that danced before her served but to intensify the brilliance of the light.

Summer was advancing. The raw winds of early spring were over, and the east wind when it came down off the moor was no longer edged as a razor, but sheathed in velvet. The world was blooming along with her heart, not with a lone flower here and there, but with exuberance of life and beauty.

Her mother had kept but a single domestic servant, a woman who had been with her for many years, and this woman remained on. A charwoman came for the day, not regularly, but as frequently as she could.

The circumstances of the Malvines had been so bad that they could not afford a large household. Mistress Malvine had helped as much as she was able, and Urith, now that she was left mistress, and had introduced another inmate into the house, was called on to consider whether she would help in the domestic work, or keep another servant. She wisely resolved to lend a hand herself, and defer the enlargement of the household till the farm paid better than it did at present. That it would be doubled in value under prudent management, neither she nor Anthony doubted.