Oddsfish!, Robert Hugh Benson [best books to read for women .txt] 📗

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"Anne," she said again; and I caught a note of fear in her voice.

"Cousin," said I softly, "I fear Anne is lost, and so are the rest. You see you would not speak to me; and it was none of my business--"

"Who is that?" said she sharply. But she knew well enough.

I resolved to spare her nothing; for I was beginning to understand her a little better.

"It is Cousin Roger," I said. "You see you said you knew the road, and so--"

Then she lashed her horse suddenly; and I heard him plunge. But he could not go fast, from the heaviness of the ground; and he was very weary too, as were we all. Besides, she forgot that she carried the lantern, I think; and I was able to follow her easily enough; as the light moved up and down. Then the light halted once more; and I saw a great whiteness beyond it which I could not at first understand.

I came up quietly; and spoke again.

"Dolly, my dear; we had best have a little truce--an armed truce, if you will--but a truce. You can be angry with me again afterwards."

"You coward!" she said, with a sob in her voice, "to lead me away like this--"

"My dear, it was you who did the leading. Do me bare justice. I have followed very humbly."

She made no answer.

"Cousin; be reasonable," I said. "Let us find the way out of this; and when we are clear you can say what you will--or say nothing once more."

She took me at my word, and preserved her deadly silence.

I slipped off my horse; she was within an arm's length, and, not trusting her, I passed my arm with scarcely a noticeable movement through her bridle. It was well that I did so; for an instant after she tore at the bridle, not knowing I had hold of it, and lashed her horse again, thinking to escape whilst I was on the ground. I was very near knocked down by the horse's shoulder, but I slipped up my hand and caught him close to the bit--holding my own with my other hand.

"You termagant!" I said, as soon as I had them both quiet; for I was very angry indeed to be treated so after all my gentleness. "No more trust for me. It would serve you right if I left you here."

"Leave me," she wailed, "leave me, you coward!"

I set my teeth.

"I shall not," I said. "I shall punish you by remaining. I know you hate my company. Well, you will submit to it, then, because I choose so. Now then, let us see--"

Then she burst out suddenly into a passion of weeping. I set my teeth harder than ever. There was only one way, after all, to get the better of Dolly; and I had pitched on it.

"Yes: it is very well to cry," I said. "You nearly had me killed just now. Well: you will have to listen to me presently, whether you like it or not. Give me the lantern."

She made no movement. She had fought down the tears a little; but I could hear her breath still sobbing. I reached up and took the lantern from her right hand.

"Now; where in God's name are we?" said I.

We had ridden into some kind of blind alley, I presently saw; and that was why Dolly's horse had halted. Even that I had not owed to her goodwill. For we had ridden, I saw presently, lifting the lantern up and down, into a great chalk pit; and must have turned off along the track that led to it, from one of those sunken ways that drovers use to bring their flocks up to the high road. That we were to the right of the high road I was certain, of my own observation. _Ergo_; if we could get back into the sunken way and turn to the right, we might find ourselves on familiar ground again. However, I said nothing of this to Dolly. I was resolved that she should suffer a little more first. I took the bridles of the two horses more securely, slipping my hand with the lantern through the bridle of my own, turned their heads round and walked between them, looking very closely on this side and that, and turning my lantern every way. After twenty yards I saw that I was right. The bank on my left proved to be no bank, but the cliff-edge of the chalk pit only, by which the sunken way passed very near. I led the horses round to the right; and there were we, in the very situation I had surmised. Still holding Dolly's bridle, I mounted my own horse; and when I had done so, to secure myself and her the better, I pulled the reins suddenly over her horse's head, and brought them into my left hand.

"That is safer," I observed. "Now we can pretend to be friends again; and hold that conversation of which I spoke after we left London."

There was no answer, as we set out along the way. It was a little clearer by now; and I could see the bank on my right. I glanced at her; and in the light of the lantern I could see that she was sitting very upright and motionless like a shadow. I lowered the lantern to the right side, so that she was altogether in the dark and the bank illuminated. I felt a little compassion for her indeed; but I dared not shew it.

"Now, Cousin," I said, "I preached to His Majesty yesterday; and he told me I should be a Bishop at least. Now it is you that must hear a sermon."

Again she said nothing.

I had rehearsed pretty well by now all that I meant to say to her; and it was good for me that I had, else I might have fallen weak again when I saw her so unhappy. As it was I kept back some of the biting sentences I had prepared. My address was somewhat as follows. We jogged forward very gingerly as I spoke.

"Cousin," I began, "you have treated me very ill. The first of your offences to me was that, though I had earned, I think, the right to call myself your friend, neither you nor your father gave me any hint whatever of your going to Court. I know very well why you did not; and I shall have a little discourse to make to your father upon the matter, at the proper time. But for all that I had a right to be told. If you were to go, I might at least have got you better protection in the beginning than that of the--the--well--of Her Grace of Portsmouth.

"Now all that was the cause of the very small offence that I committed against you myself--that of forcing my way into your lodgings. For that I offer my apologies--not for the fact, but for the manner of it. And even that apology is not very deep: I shall presently tell you why.

"The next of your offences to me was that open defiance which you shewed, and some of the words you addressed to me, both then and afterwards. You have told me I was a coward, several times, under various phrases, and twice, I think, _sans phrase_. Cousin; I am a great many things I should not be; but I do not think I am a coward; at least I have never been a coward in your presence. Again, you have told me that I was very good at bullying. For that I thank God, and gladly plead guilty. If a maid is bent on her own destruction, if nothing else will serve she must be bullied out of it. Again, I thank God that I was there to do it."

I looked at her out of the tail of my eye. Her head seemed to me to be a little hung down; but she said nothing at all.

"The third offence of yours is the intolerable discourtesy you have shewn to me all to-day--and before servants, too. I put myself to great pains to get you out of that stinking hole called Whitehall; I risked His Majesty's displeasure for the same purpose: I have been at your disposal ever since noon; and you have treated me like a dog. You will continue to treat me so, no doubt, until we get to Hare Street; and you will do your best no doubt to provoke a quarrel between your father and myself. Well; I have no great objection to that; but I have not deserved that you should behave so. I have done nothing, ever since I have known you, but try to serve you--" (my voice rose a little; for I was truly moved, and far more than my words shewed)--"You first treated me like a friend; then, when you would not have me as a lover, I went away, and I stayed away. Then, when you would not have me as a lover, and I would not have you as my friend, I became, I think I may fairly say, your defender; and all that you do in return--"

Then, without any mistake at all, I caught the sound of a sob; and all my pompous eloquence dropped from me like a cloak. My anger was long since gone, though I had feigned it had not. To be alone with her there, enclosed in the darkness as in a little room--her horse and mine nodding their heads together, and myself holding her bridle--all this, and the silence round us, and my own heart, very near bursting, broke me down.

"Oh! Dolly," I cried. "Why are you so bitter with me? You know that I have never thought ill of you for an instant. You know I have done nothing but try to serve you--I have bullied you? Yes: I have; and I would do the same a thousand times again in the same cause. You are wilful and obstinate; but I thank God I am more wilful and obstinate than you. I am sick of this fencing and diplomacy and irony. You know what I am--I am not at all the fine gentleman that leaned his head on the chimney-breast--that was make-believe and foolishness. I am a bully and a brute--you have told me so--"

"Oh!" wailed Dolly suddenly--no longer pretending; and I caught the note in her voice for which I had been waiting. I dropped the lantern; the horses plunged violently at the flare and the crash; but I cared nothing for that. I dragged furiously on the bridle; and as the horses swung together, I caught her round the shoulders, and kissed her fiercely on the cheek. She clung to me, weeping.


CHAPTER V

Well; I had beaten her at last; and in the only way in which she would yield. Weakness was of no use with her, nor gentleness, nor even that lofty patronage which, poor fool! I had shewn her in the parlour at Hare Street. She must be man's mate--which is certainly a rather savage relation at bottom--not merely his pretty and grateful wife. This I learned from her, as we rode onwards and up into the high road--(where, I may say in passing, there was no sign of our party)--though she did not know she was telling it me.

"Oh! Roger," she said. "And I thought you were a--a pussy-cat."

"That is the second time I have been told so in two