Between Two Loves. Amelia E. Barr

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      CHAPTER III.

      THE MASTER OF ASKE.

      "A child of our grandmother Eve, a female; or, for thy more sweet understanding, a woman."

       Love's Labour's Lost.

      "A woman moved is like a fountain troubled,

      Muddy, ill-seeming, thick, bereft of beauty."

       The Taming of the Shrew.

      ⁠"Down on your knees,

      And thank Heaven, fasting, for a good man's love."

       As You Like It.

      The moral atmosphere, like the physical one, becomes impregnated with certain aromas; absent people rule over us, get hold of us by the forces of antipathy or attraction. As Burley left the mill he was conscious of being under a dominion of this kind. His daughter had taken possession of him. She compelled him to leave his business and his bargains, she called him to her by an attraction which he did not understand, but yet felt compelled to obey.

      It was a lovely afternoon, and he had a ride of six miles, a distance not worth naming in connection with the animal he was behind, one ​of those sturdy Suffolk punches that can be driven one hundred and ten miles in eleven hours; the very best horse in the world before a whip; the only one that will pull twice at a dead weight. Jonathan was very fond of horses, and was very kind to them. It was only his strong religious instincts which had prevented him from being a jockey. "When I was young," he often said, "I was all for horses! My word, I could sit anything, and jump anything right and left! There was Squire Oxley's Rampagious; no one could mount him, and he sent for me. Rampagious stared at me, and I stared at him, then I leaped upon his back and rode him to Oxleyholme, twenty-eight miles!"

      Outside his mill Jonathan was never more thoroughly happy than when he was driving a fine horse, and this afternoon, anxious and worried as he was, he felt a certain amount of relief as soon as the reins were in his hand, and he knew himself bowling away into pleasant country lanes. Swift motion seemed, at first, to be just what he most needed, but after a hard run of two miles he felt more inclined to take the distance easily. He was in a lovely road, shaded by branching limes and great elms, in ​which the wind swayed shadowy masses of thick leaves. The stone walls which bounded it were green with immemorial moss and fern, and fragrant with gadding honeysuckles, and beyond he could see the quiet crofts and pastures where the slow moving cattle were grazing while towards the horizon the undulating country had all the mystery of brooding clouds.

      This was a different atmosphere from the noisy mill, and he felt its influence; for as a mother rocks and soothes her child at her breast, so Nature took the troubled man to her still, sweet heart, and he was comforted and knew not how. The last two miles were through the shady beech woods and fine parks of the Aske Manor, and the effect upon Burley's temper was a beneficial one. The man who inherited such a grand old mansion and such rich lands through twelve generations of gentlemen was not one to be rated like a cotton-spinner. He told himself that Aske might have rights peculiarly his own, and that any woman would owe something to the love which had selected her from all the world to share such an honorable position.

      Aske had also been peculiarly generous about ​Eleanor's fortune. He would have married her without a penny, if Burley had not insisted on making over positively the fifty thousand pounds he intended as his daughter's portion. Riding slowly through Aske's lands, Burley got a view of his son-in-law's side of the quarrel; and he was more just to him than he had been in Burley House and in Burley Mills. He even began to suspect that Eleanor might have been trying. He remembered certain times in his own experience when she had been beyond everything so, and he made up his mind to give no encouragement to her unreasonable demands, for he was quite sure now they were in the main unreasonable.

      But when a man reckons up a woman in her absence, his decisions are very apt to amount to nothing when brought face to face with her. Just as soon as Burley met his daughter she trained her influence over him. She was sitting in her own parlor, a dainty room full of all sorts of pretty luxuries, and sweet with stands of exquisite flowers. Never had she seemed so radiantly beautiful in his eyes. Her flowing robe of soft scarlet merino gave a wonderful brilliancy to the snow and rose of her ​complexion and the pale gold of her loosened hair. She flung down the novel she was reading at his entrance, and with a cry of joy went to meet him.

      "Father! father!"

      The dear, simple words flung the inmost door of his heart open to her. He took her in his arms and kissed her. "My lass, my lass, I am glad to see thee." She drew the low chair in which she had been sitting beside him, and took his large, brown hand between her white, jewelled ones, and stroked and fondled it Aske was out riding, and Burley determined to take the opportunity and talk wisely to his child. He would advise her to do what was kind and right, but at the same time he knew that, right or wrong, he would defend her to the last shilling of his money and the last hour of his life.

      But who can reason with a high-tempered woman into whom the spirit of wilful contradiction has entered? The quarrel between Eleanor and her husband had come to a struggle for supremacy, and Eleanor was determined not to submit. And alas, the tenacity with which a woman will hold a post of this kind is amazing; there is no driving her from it, no compromise, ​no terms of capitulation of which she can conceive.

      In the midst of a very unsatisfactory conversation Aske entered. He was a small, slight man of fair complexion, with an honest, kindly face, and a pleasant shrewdness in the eyes. Jonathan could have carried him almost as easily as a child, but inches and weight were no indication of the real man. The real Anthony Aske was self-poised, quickly observant, and cool-headed, without being cold. He had a refined mouth, a wilful chin, and those wide-open gray eyes, with the bluish tint of steel in them, that always indicate a resolute and straightforward character. He looked at Eleanor as he entered the room, and his glance roused and irritated her, but she met it fearlessly, with her handsome head a little on one side and perceptibly lifted, and a smile which was at once attractive and provoking.

      Aske had a great respect for his father-in-law, and no intention whatever of making him a partner in his domestic troubles. To tell the truth, he was not seriously uneasy about them. He had anticipated some difficulty in transforming the spoiled daughter into an obedient, ​gentle wife, but any doubts as to his ultimate success had never assailed him. "The Taming of the Shrew" is a drama every young husband believes himself capable of playing, and Eleanor's anger and scorn, her disobediences, and her sins of ommission and commission against his authority, were not things which greatly dismayed or hurt him. He loved her none the less as yet for them, and he confidently looked forward to a time when she would acknowledge the matrimonial bit, and answer the lightest touch of his guiding rein. In the interval he felt the dispute to be entirely their own, and he desired neither assistance nor sympathy from outsiders regarding it.

      He met Burley with the frankest welcome, and soon took him away to the gardens and stables. Jonathan was greatly impressed with all he saw. Aske's was evidently the eye of the diligent and kind master. In the gardens, the hot-houses, the park, the most beautiful profusion and the most beautiful order reigned. The great court, surrounded by the stables and barns and granaries, was a place for men to linger delightedly in. Aske was fond of horses, and he knew a great deal about them, but that ​day Jonathan Burley amazed him. He looked at the cotton-spinner with admiration, and the cotton-spinner keenly enjoyed his little triumph.

      For two hours the men were really happy together, and they had found one topic at least on which both could talk with unflagging interest. Eleanor watched them coming along the terrace talking with animation, her father's hand upon her husband's shoulder, and Anthony's gay, short laugh chorusing some merry СКАЧАТЬ