Urith: A Tale of Dartmoor

by S. Baring-Gould

"Do you intend to drag me off my horse?" asked Anthony, "that you pull at my belt so roughly?"

"And you, that you draw the rein so short and make the mare rear?"

Urith knew nothing of the world. It had ever seemed to her inconceivable that after the bond and seal of marriage the thought of either should stray; that any one should dare to dream of loving a man who was pledged in heart and mind and soul to another woman. Yet Julian as much as told her she still loved Anthony, would use all her fascinations to draw him to her and away from his wife. Was Anthony so weak that his conscience would suffer him to be thus attracted from the place of duty? No—a thousand times, no. He was not so feeble, so lacking in moral strength as this.

They had turned off the high road upon the moor. Here was no stoned road, no road that lay white in the darkness before them, but turf, by daylight recognisable as a road by hoof marks, and the fret of feet over the turf. By night it could be followed only by observing stones set up at intervals and capped with whitewash. Stones had been picked off the roadway and thrown on one side, so that the turf was smooth almost as a racecourse. The head of the horse was turned now somewhat easterly. The sky above the rugged moor range was silvery, and from behind a rocky crest rose the moon, doubled in size by the haze that hung over the moor, and seemed like a mighty flame of the purest white light.

"There, there!" said Urith. "Do you see, Anthony; the moon is up above that old Lyke Way, along which we made our first journey together."

She disengaged her hand from his belt, and put it round his waist.

He raised his head and looked away to the east, at the ridge of moor and rock, black against the glittering orb. He remembered then how he had mounted her on his horse—how he had stood by her and looked into her eyes! He recalled the strange magic that had then come over him—a longing for her, mingled with a presentiment of evil—a fear lest she were drawing him on to destruction. That fear was verified—she had lured him on to his ruin. He was a ruined man; he had lost all that he valued—the esteem of his fellows, the comforts and luxuries of life. Then began again the odious and monotonous enumeration of the sacrifices he had made.

Why did Urith remind him of that ride? Did she want to find occasion to reproach him? Was it not enough that he was scourging himself with the whips of his own thoughts for his precipitate folly in marrying her?

But Urith was not at that moment thinking of reproach. She breathed moor air, was beyond hedges and enclosures, in the open, vast, uncultivated heather-land, and there her brain had cooled, and her heart had recovered composure. The atmosphere was other than that of a ball-room, which had filled her with intoxication, and had bred phantoms that had affrighted her.