Love Me Little, Love Me Long Part 84

"Excuse my interrupting you, but it is a rule with me never to reason about right and wrong; I notice that whoever does that ends by choosing wrong. I don't go to my head to find out my duty, I go to my heart; and what little manhood there is in me all cries out against me compounding with the woman I love, and taking a ship instead of her."

"How unkind you are! It is not as if I was under no obligations to you. Is not my life worth a ship? an angel like me?"

"I can't see it so. It was a greater pleasure to me to save your life, as you call it, than it could be to you. I can't let that into the account. A woman is a woman, but a man is a man; and I will be under no obligation to you but one."

"What arrogance!"

"Don't you be angry; I'll love you and bless you all the same. But I am a man, and a man I'll die, whether I die captain of a ship or of a foretop. Poor Eve!"

"See how power tries people, and brings out their true character.

Since you commanded the _Rajah_ you are all changed. You used to be submissive; now you must have your own way entirely. You will fling my poor ship in my face unless I give you--but this is really using force--yes, Mr. Dodd, this is using force. Somebody has told you that my s.e.x yield when downright compulsion is used. It is true; and the more ungenerous to apply it;" and she melted into a few placid tears.

David did not know this sign of yielding in a woman, and he groaned at the sight and hung his head.

"Advise me what I had better do."

To this singular proposal, David, listening to the ill advice of the fiend Generosity, groaned out, "Why should you be tormented and made cry?"

"Why indeed?"

"Nothing can change me; I advise you to cut it short."

"Oh, do you? very well. Why did you say 'poor Eve'?"

"Ah, poor thing! she cried for joy when she read your letter, but when I go back she will cry for grief;" and his voice faltered.

"I will cut this short, Mr. Dodd; give me that paper."

"Which?"

"The wicked one, where you refuse my _Rajah_."

David hesitated.

"You are no gentleman, sir, if you refuse a lady. Give it me this instant," cried Lucy, so haughtily and imperiously that David did not know her, and gave her the letter with a half-cowed air.

She took it, and with both her supple white hands tore it with insulting precision exactly in half. "There, sir and there, sir"

(exactly in four); "and there" (in eight, with malicious exactness); "and there"; and, though it seemed impossible to effect another separation, yet the taper fingers and a resolute will reduced it to tiny bits. She then made a gesture to throw them in the fire, but thought better of it and held them.

David looked on, almost amused at this zealous demolition of a thing he could so easily replace. He said, part sadly, part doggedly, part apologetically, "I can write another."

"But you will not. Oh, Mr. Dodd, don't you see?!"

He looked up at her eagerly. To his surprise, her haughty eagle look had gone, and she seemed a pitying G.o.ddess, all tenderness and benignity; only her mantling, burning cheek showed her to be woman.

She faltered, in answer to his wild, eager look. "Was I ever so rude before? What right have I to tear your letter unless I--"

The characteristic full stop, and, above all, the heaving bosom, the melting eye, and the red cheek, were enough even for poor simple David. Heaven seemed to open on him. His burning kisses fell on the sweet hands that had torn his death-warrant. No resistance. She blushed higher, but smiled. His powerful arm curled round her. She looked a little scared, but not much. He kissed her sweet cheek: the blush spread to her very forehead at that, but no resistance. As the winged and rapid bird, if her feathers be but touched with a speck of bird-lime, loses all power of flight, so it seemed as if that one kiss, the first a stranger had ever pressed on Lucy's virgin cheek, paralyzed her eel-like and evasive powers; under it her whole supple frame seemed to yield as David drew her closer and closer to him, till she hid her forehead and wet eyelashes on his shoulder, and murmured:

"How could I let _you_ be unhappy?!"

Neither spoke for a while. Each felt the other's heart beat; and David drank that ecstasy of silent, delirious bliss which comes to great hearts once in a life.

Had he not earned it?

CHAPTER XXIX.

By some mighty instinct Mrs. Wilson knew when to come in. She came to the door just one minute after Lucy had capitulated, and, turning the handle, but without opening the door, bawled some fresh directions to Jenny: this was to enable Lucy to smooth her ruffled feathers, if necessary, and look Agnes. But Lucy's actual contact with that honest heart seemed to have made a change in her; instead of doing Agnes, she confronted (after a fashion of her own) the situation she had so long evaded.

"Oh, nurse!" she cried, and wreathed her arms round her.

"Don't cry, my lamb! I can guess."

"Cry? Oh no; I would not pay him so poor a compliment. It was to say, 'Dear nurse, you must love Mr. Dodd as well as me now.'"

The dame received this indirect intelligence with hearty delight.

"That won't cost me much trouble," said she. "He is the one I'd have picked out of all England for my nursling. When a young man is kind to an old woman, it is a good sign; but la! his face is enough for me: who ever saw guile in such a face as that. Aren't ye hungry by this time? Dinner will be ready in about a minute."

"Nurse, can I speak to you a word?"

"Yes, sure."

It was to inquire whether she would invite Miss Dodd.

"She loves her brother very dearly, and it is cruel to separate them.

Mr. Dodd will be nearly always here now, will he not?"

"You may take your davy of that."

In a very few minutes a note was written, and Mrs. Wilson's eldest son, a handsome young farmer, started in the covered cart with his mother's orders "to bring the young lady w.i.l.l.y-nilly."

The holy allies both openly scouted Kenealy's advice, and both slyly stepped down into the town and acted on it. Mr. Fountain then returned to Font Abbey. Their two advertis.e.m.e.nts appeared side by side, and exasperated them.

After dinner Mrs. Wilson sent Lucy and David out to take a walk. At the gate they met with a little interruption; a carriage drove up; the coachman touched his hat, and Mrs. Bazalgette put her head out of the window.

"I came to take you back, love."

David quaked.

"Thank you, aunt; but it is not worth while now."

"Ah!" said Mrs. Bazalgette, casting a venomous look on David; "I am too late, am I? Poor girl!"

Lucy soothed her aunt with the information that she was much happier now than she had been for a long time past. For this was a fencing-match.