Urith: A Tale of Dartmoor

by S. Baring-Gould

He remained for some hours, lurking about and watching; for he argued that, if Julian entertained any thought that he had been in the dove-cote on private ends, like a woman she would take the earliest occasion of trying to discover his ends, and would go, as soon as she thought she was unobserved, to the place and explore its lockers.

But though he kept himself hidden, and narrowly watched her proceedings, he could find no cause for mistrust. She left the terrace and went off to the stables to see her horse; she ordered it out for a ride; then, as rain began to fall, she countermanded it; then she went to the parlour, where she wrote a letter to her father to give him an account of the marriage of his son, and to express her views thereon.

Finding her thus engaged, and with his mistrust laid at rest, Fox left Kilworthy and went to Tavistock, where he entered a tavern and called for wine. He had not resolved what to do about the mortgage money on Hall.

He believed that, with the five hundred pounds stowed away in the pigeon-holes at Kilworthy, and with what money old Cleverdon was able to raise, sufficient, or almost sufficient, could be paid to secure Hall. If more had to be found, it could perhaps be borrowed on the security of the small Crymes estate in Buckland; but Fox was most averse to having his own inheritance charged for this purpose. If Hall were let slip, then he was left with nothing save his five hundred pounds and the small Buckland property.

He sat in the tavern for long, drinking, and trying to reach a solution of his difficulty, consumed with burning wrath at the manner in which he had been imposed upon, and entangled in the embarrassments of a family into which he had pushed his way, believing that by so doing he was entering into a rich heritage.

When he reached Hall, at nightfall, he had drunk so much, and was in such an inflamed and exasperated frame of mind, as to promise trouble.

Bess saw the condition he was in the moment he entered the door, and she endeavoured to turn him aside from her father's room, towards which he was making his way, unsteadily.

The serving-men and maids were about, and a few guests. Comments, unfavourable to Fox, had passed with some freedom, and not inaudibly, relative to his absence on that afternoon. No one desired his presence, and yet the fact of his being away provoked displeasure. It was taken as an insult to those present. That some trouble had fallen on Squire Cleverdon, that his position in Hall was menaced, was generally known and commented on in the house, by guests and servants alike. That Fox had left in connection with this difficulty was admitted but nevertheless not excused.

French was there disposed to make himself merry, with a fund of good stories to scatter among the guests. When Fox appeared, all present, guests and servants, were in jovial mood, having eaten and drunken to their hearts' satisfaction; some were in the passage, some in the dining-room that opened out of it, with the door open. Mr. Cleverdon was with the guests, and when he beheld his son-in-law in the entrance, he started up and came towards him. Fox saw him at once, and hissed, caught at the side-posts of the door with his left, and pointed jeeringly at the Squire.

"I want to have a talk with you, my plump money-bag, my well-acred Squire father-in-law, and if there are others by, so much the better. It is well that all the world should see the bubble burst. Ha! ha! ha! This is the man who was a little farmer, and pushed himself to become a justice! The little shrivelled toad who would blow himself out to be like an ox. His sides are cracking, mark you!"