Urith: A Tale of Dartmoor

by S. Baring-Gould

The house was in confusion. None of the workmen were gone to their duties; the serving-maids and men talked or whispered in corners, and went about on tip-toe as though there were a corpse in the house.

His man told the Squire that Fox was gone, and had left a message, which the fellow would not deliver, so grossly insolent was it; the substance was that he would not return to the house. The Squire nodded and asked for his horse.

After some delay it was brought to the door; the groom was not to be found, and one of the maids had gone to the stable for the beast, and had saddled and bridled it.

The old man mounted and rode away. Then he heard a call behind him, but did not turn his head; another call, but he disregarded it, and rode further, urging on his horse to a quicker rate.

Next moment the brute stumbled, and nearly went down on its nose; the Squire whipped angrily, and the horse went on faster, then began to lag, and suddenly tripped once more and fell. Old Cleverdon was thrown on the turf and was uninjured. He got up and went to the beast, and then saw why it had twice stumbled. The serving girl, in bridling it, had forgotten to remove the halter, the rope of which hung down to the ground, so that, as the animal trotted, the end got under the hoofs. That was what the call had signified. Some one of the serving-men had noticed the bridle over the halter as the old Squire rode away, and had shouted after him to that effect.

Mr. Cleverdon removed the bridle, then took off the halter, and replaced the bridle. What was to be done with the halter? He tried to thrust it into one of his pockets, but they were too small. He looked round; he was near a saw-pit a bow-shot from the road. He remembered that he had ordered a couple of sawyers to be there that day to cut up into planks an oak-tree; he hitched up his horse and went towards the saw-pit, calling, but no one replied. The men had not come; they had heard of what had taken place at Hall, and had absented themselves, not expecting under the circumstances to be paid for their labour.

The old man wrapped the halter round his waist, and knotted it, then drew his cloak about him to conceal it, remounted, and rode on. Had the sawyers been at the pit he would have sent back the halter by one of them to the stable. As none was there, he was forced to take it about with him.

Five hours later he returned the same way. His eyes were glassy, and cold sweat beaded his brow. His breath came as a rattle from his lungs. All was over. He could obtain assistance nowhere. The times were dangerous, because unsettled, and no one would risk money till the public confidence was restored. His attorney had passed him on to the agent for the Earl of Bedford, and the agent had shaken his head, and suggested that the miller at the Abbey Mill was considered a well-to-do man, and might be inclined to lend money.

The miller refused, and spoke of a Jew in Bannawell, who was said to lend money at high rates of interest. The Jew, however, would not think of the loan, till the Rebellion was at an end.

All was over. The Squire—the Squire!—he would be that no more—must leave the land and home of his fathers, his pride broken, his ambition frustrated, the object for which he had lived and schemed lost to him. There are in the world folk who are, in themselves, nothing, and who have nothing, and who nevertheless give themselves airs, and cannot be shaken out of their self-satisfaction. Mr. Cleverdon was not one of these, he had not their faculty of imagination. The basis of all his greatness was Hall; that was being plucked from under his feet; and he staggered to his fall. Once on the ground, he would be proper, lie there, an object of mockery to those who had hitherto envied him. Once there, he would never raise his head again. He who had stood so high, who had been so imperious in his pride of place, would be under the feet of all those over whom hitherto he had ridden roughshod.