The paving of the Hall was of granite blocks, rudely fitted together, and was strewn with dry brown bracken. We marvel at the discomfort of ancient chairs, because the seats are so high from the ground. We forget that the footstool was an attendant inseparable from the chair, when ladies sat in these stone-floored halls. They were necessary adjuncts, holding their feet out of the draught, and off the stone.
Small and mean as the manor house would appear in one's eyes now, yet it was of sufficient consequence in early days to have its chapel, a privilege only accorded to the greater houses, and wealthiest gentry. The chapel was now in ruins. It had not been used since the Reformation.
Anthony became impatient of waiting. He would not leave, and he was vexed, because he was kept loitering at the window without some one to speak to.
He was tired of looking at the butterfly battering its wings to pieces, so he took up the gloves and unrolled them—a pretty pair of fine leather ladies' gloves, reaching to the elbow, and laced with silk ribbon and silver tags. Elegant gloves; more handsome, Anthony thought, than suited the usual style of Urith's dress. He had nothing else to do but turn them inside out, unfold, and refold them.
As he was thus engaged, he thought over an interview he had had that morning with his father. With all his faults, and they were many, the young man was open and direct, and he had told his father what he had done the night before.
To his surprise, directly old Cleverdon heard that he had pulled up Richard Malvine's head-post, and thrown it on the tavern table before the topers, he burst into an exultant laugh, and rubbed his hands together gleefully.
When, moreover, Anthony expressed his intention of going to Willsworthy to offer an apology, the old man had vehemently and boisterously dissuaded him from so doing.
"What are the Malvines?" he had said; "a raggle-taggle, beggarly crew. I won't have it said that a son of mine veiled his bonnet to them. That was a fair estate once, but first one portion and then another portion has been sold away, and now there is but enough to starve on left. Pshaw! let them endure and pocket the affront. If they try to resent it, and prosecute you in court of law, I will throw in my money-bag against their moleskin purse, and see which cause then has most weight in the scales of justice."
The intemperance of his father's conduct and words had on young Anthony precisely the opposite effect to that intended. It opened the young man's eyes to the gravity of his conduct. Without answering his father he went to Willsworthy, leaving the old man satisfied that he had overborne his son's resolution to make amend for his offence. Whether this would have happened had not Urith produced so strong an impression on his heart the previous day, and enlisted him on her side, may well be questioned; for the visit of apology involved an acknowledgment of wrong-doing which was not readily made by Anthony. He was thinking over, and wondering at, his father's conduct, when Urith entered the hall, and expressed surprise at seeing him.
"I tarried," said he, "to know how it fared with your mother."