Urith: A Tale of Dartmoor

by S. Baring-Gould

His father was possessed with madness; the whole blame fell on his father. Why was the old grudge against Richard Malvine to envenom the life of the son and grandchildren of the Squire? By the course he took the Squire was not hurting the man whom he hated, who was in his grave and insensible to injury, but his own living direct descendants! Anthony was stabbing at his own family, in his insensate malice. He thought over his quarrel with the old man, and he regretted that he had not spoken plainer, given his father sharper thrusts than he had—that he had not dipped his words in pitch, and thrown them blazing into his father's face.

His cheeks were burning; he clenched his fists and ground his teeth, and then bowed his hot brow upon his clenched hands. No doubt his father would hear how absurdly Urith had danced at the Cakes, and would laugh over it. He held up his head and looked round him, thinking he heard the cackle of his father, so vividly did he portray the scene to his imagination. No one was in the room save the taverner; but Anthony caught his eye fixed on him, and he turned impatiently away.

Urith was not—there was no blinking the matter—a wife suitable to him. He compared her with his sister. Bessie was sweet, gentle, and with all her amiability dignified; Urith was rough, headstrong, and sullen. She was uncouth, unyielding—did not understand what were the tastes and requirements of a man brought up on a higher plane of refinement. He was weary of her lowering brow, of her silence, her dark eyes with a sombre, smouldering fire in them. He wondered how he could ever have admired her! He never would feel content with her. He had sacrificed for her the most splendid prospects that any man had, and she did not appreciate the sacrifice, and bow down before him and worship him for it.

He knocked over his glass and broke it. By heaven! He wished he had never married Urith.

Anthony stood up, and threw down some coin to pay for his brandy and for the broken glass. He had knocked over the glass in the gesture and start of disgust, when he had wished himself unmarried, and now—he must pay for the glass with money that came to him from Urith. He knew this, it made him writhe, but he quickly deadened the spasm by the consideration that for every groat he had of his wife, he had given up a guinea. She was in debt to him, and the ridiculous little sums placed at his disposal were but an inadequate acknowledgment of the vast indebtedness under which she lay.

He stood for a few minutes irresolute in the rain, uncertain in which direction to turn. Home?—To Willsworthy? To the reproaches of Urith, to the tedious jests and drawled-out songs of Mr. Gibbs? To the sight of Urith ostentatiously holding her hand in a sling to let him know that he had hurt her, when she intercepted the blow aimed at her uncle?

"Pshaw!" said Anthony. "She is not hurt, she cannot be hurt. She caught the stick in her palm. It stung her, no doubt, but will pass. But what an outcry and fuss will be made over it."

Yet his heart reproached him for these complaints. He knew that it was not the way with Urith to make an outcry and a fuss. If he had hurt her, she would disguise the fact. Anyhow, he resolved not to go back to Willsworthy.

Should he go on to Peter Tavy, and visit his cousin Luke?

No—he had no desire for the society of a parson. Luke had married him to Urith; Luke was in part to blame for his present condition of dissatisfaction. Luke might surely; if he had poked about in his books, have discovered some canonical reason why the marriage could not have taken place, at least as early as it did. Then—with delay—his love might have abated, his head would have become cooler, he would have been better able to balance loss and gain.