Urith: A Tale of Dartmoor

by S. Baring-Gould

Anthony stood with downcast eyes. The temptation was a strong one—strong, to a young man who had been humoured and allowed to have his own way uncontrolled, allowed to follow his pleasure or whim without hindrance. He could not return home without having to face his wife, angered and resentful, without having to acknowledge himself to have been in the wrong. Anthony Crymes was playing him a treacherous and cruel trick, and here was a chance offered him of at once recovering his old position, wiping out his past mistake, and discomfiting Fox when on the eve of success. Was he sure that he could ever be on the same terms as before with Urith? Had she not been gradually estranged from him, till she had declared to him that she hated him, that she wished she had never seen him? Would it not be a relief to be rid of him, to be spared any more domestic broils?

Old Anthony Cleverdon was at the window, and as he stood there he marked the initials drawn on the fogged glass, and turned and looked at his son. Young Anthony noticed the look, and observed what had attracted his father's attention. He moved hastily to the window, and his father drew away, went to the fireplace, and rested his elbow against the mantel-shelf and fixed his eyes intently on his son. So also did Julian. Both saw that the moment was a crucial one. The young man was forced to make up his mind on a point which would determine his whole after-life. It was more than that, it was a crucial moment in his moral life. He must now take a step upward or downward, in the path of right or that of wrong. This neither Julian nor his father considered, intent only on their selfish ends. But this appeared clearly to Anthony. His inner consciousness spoke out and told him plainly where went the path of duty and where lay the deflexion from it. But the path of duty was a painful one full of humiliations, promising no happiness, only a repetition of contests with a sulky wife, and jars with the foolish Solomon Gibbs, of struggle against poverty, of labour like a common hired workman, of loss for ever of his old position, and deprivation of all the amusements that had filled his former life.

He and Urith did not suit each other. His temperament was sanguine, his spirit mirthful; he was sociable, and full of the sparkle of youth; whereas she was moody, almost morose, had no humour and laughter in her soul, brooded over imagined wrongs as well as those that were real, and could as little accommodate herself to his mood as could he to hers. Surely it were best, under these circumstances, that they should part.

Now Anthony was standing at the window where he had stood before when he drew those initials on the panes, in the place occupied recently by his father. So full was he of his thoughts, of the rolling of conflicting waves of feeling, that he forgot where he was, forgot the presence of his father and of Julian—the very sense of the lapse of time was gone from him. Though he looked through the window, he saw nothing.

Then, all at once, uncalled for, there broke and oozed forth in his heart the old vein of love which had been filled with so hot and full a flood when he was Urith's suitor; he saw her with the old eyes once more, and looked in mental vision once more into the sombre eyes, as he had on the moor, when he lifted her into his saddle, and there came over him that sensation of mingled love and fear. It seemed to him that now only did he understand the cause of that fear; it was fear lest he himself should prove a wreck through lack of love and devotion to her. He thought now of how, after their wedding, on his coming to Willsworthy he had taken her in his arms, how her dark head had lain on his bosom, and he had stooped and kissed her brow, and she had looked up into his face with eyes expressive of perfect confidence, of intensest love. He thought now how he had forced her against her will, against her conscience, to marry him prematurely, after her mother's death, and against the dying command of that mother. He thought how that he had lived on her estate, had been, as it were, her pensioner. He thought also of the efforts she had made, efforts he had perceived, to accommodate herself to him, to meet his humour, to overcome her own gloom, to struggle against the bad habits of slovenliness into which the household had fallen, and to correct her own want of order, because she saw it pained her husband. She had done a great deal for him, and what had he done for her? Grumbled, been peevish, disappointed her. He recalled that evening at the Cakes, where he had slighted her. He thought of how he had trifled with his old regard for Julian, allowed her to lure him away from his wife, and had let her see that he was no more at one with Urith, and that he wished he could have undone the marriage and re-tied the old threads that had bound him to Julian. She—this Julian, had been playing with him—she, for her own ends, had been making mischief between him and his wife—and what had he done?

His eyes were opened, and he saw the initials on the glass, and the love-knot between them.

With the blood surging to his brow and cheeks, and a fire in his eye, he raised his hand, and angrily brushed his palm over the three panes, effacing utterly the characters there inscribed, then he remained with uplifted hand and forefinger extended, still, as in dream, unconscious that he was being watched.

A new thought had occurred to him—that he was about to become a father.

A father! and he away at Hall, while the deserted Urith sat at Willsworthy—wan, with tears on her cheek, drip, drip, over the cradle he had treated so insultingly—her cradle, which he had deemed unworthy of his child, and which, for all that, with his child in it, he was inclined to abandon!

Then the blood went out of Anthony's face, went back to his heart, as he grew pale and still with the thought of the infamy of the conduct that had been his, had he yielded to the temptation.