Richard Dowling - The Duke's Sweetheart - A Romance

"What! come again to-day! In the name of wonder, what brought you here now?'

"You know, May, the pressure of race is ever from east to west,"

"The pressure of race! What on earth are you talking about? Don't! that hurts my hand."

"I was slapping your hand to prevent you from fainting at the unexpected sight of your slave and master. I meant the pressure of the human race-or more accurately, the attraction of the inhuman race-meaning yourself, sweetheart."

"Do you know, Charlie, you always begin a conversation as if you wanted me to think you clever; and if there is one thing I hate it is cleverness in a man."

"Do you know, Miss Durrant, you never by any means allow me to begin a conversation. Before I am fully in the room you always fly at me with some question or other."

"But you are so slow, Charlie. You take up half an hour getting ready to say 'Howd'y'do'; and if there is one thing more odious in a man than cleverness it is slowness."

"But you must admit. Miss Durrant, that if, when we meet, I am slow of speech, I am not slow in other matters proper to our meeting."

"Go away, sir! How dare you? I will not let you do that again. Sometimes I think you a bear, and sometimes I think you an elephant, but I think I hate you always."

"If you say any more I'll get a divorce on the grounds of cruelty and desertion. May, let us drop this sort of thing. Run and bring me a glass of beer. I've been trotting about the whole morning, and am dying for a glass of beer."

"You deserve to be starved, and you deserve to be thirsty, and you deserve to be-"

"I admit it all. I deserve it all, and every other thing that's awful, except to be married to you. Marion Durrant, spinster, what would you do if I cut my throat?"

"Charlie!"

"Or if I put my head under the wheel of an omnibus laden with exceedingly fat people?"

"Charlie! Charlie!"

"Or if I threw myself over Westminster Bridge with a couple of forty-pound shot tied round my heels?"

"I'll run for the beer, Charlie."

"Ah, I thought I'd get you to move at last. You see you can't bear to leave me even for a minute."

"Conceited fellow!" and she tripped out of the room.

She went herself with a jug into the little cellar under the front-door step, and drew the beer in a most elaborate and painstaking manner. She looked into three jugs before she was satisfied with one, although they were all as immaculate as human hands could make them. She looked at the glass as if it were a jewel she was thinking of buying, and the slightest flaw in it would render it valueless. She placed the jug and the tumbler and a plate of biscuits on an exceedingly slippery Japanese wooden tray, and declined to let the maid carry it up. She was proud of that polished jug, that polished glass, that polished tray. The jug and the glass and the tray were more to her that the condition of the beer. As a matter of fact, she never thought of the beer at all. It would be a pity if the beer was not in good condition; but it would be a disgrace if the jug, glass, and tray were not in perfect order.

When she came back to the room she was meek and penitential. We are always softened towards those to whom we have done ever so slight a service. When he had taken a draught of the ale and broken a biscuit, she said plaintively:

"Charlie!"

"Well, my fire-eating she-dragon, what bloodthirsty thing have you to say to your down-trodden slave now?"

"Only that you were right when you said-"

"When I spoke about cutting my throat?"

"No, no, no! When you said I did not like to go away from you even for a moment. Charlie, I hate going away from you, and I hate myself when you are away; for then I remember all the foolish things I have said to you, and-and I am always afraid-"

"Of my taking four pounds, apothecaries' weight, of solid opium?"

"No. Of your being angry with me some day, or of your not forgiving me."

She was pretty and very penitent, and he had had a long walk and a glass of beer, and he felt perfectly at rest and happy; so he put out his arms and took her into them for a moment, and when he let her go they both felt that, say what you like about love, it is the finest thing in all the world, and that there is nothing else which makes people so utterly unselfish.

"I had a letter from Graham this morning," said Charlie, after a pause.

"Where is he now?"

"In Devonshire still, sketching at some place called Anerly. He wrote me to send him some painting materials. He is going to begin a picture there, so I suppose we shall not see anything of him for some time. He has asked me to run down to him for a few days?"

"And will you go?"

"Not I. I am too busy just now."

"But you could do your work down there, and I am sure you want a run away and a little fresh air."

"Yes; I could write, no doubt. But then you see, May, I should not be able to come and read my MS. to you, and I should not get on very well. While I am at work at Long Acre I am in a hurry to be done, in order that I may get back to you, and I am too anxious to please you to do slovenly work; so the result is that I work longer and yet have more leisure, which is a paradox, and a paradox is particularly unsuited to the understanding of women."

"You are always saying nice and disagreeable things in the one breath; and I don't know whether to like you or to hate you."

"To cases of this kind an infrangible rule applies. It is, when I say nice things, hate me; when I say disagreeable things, love me. This is another paradox. Paradoxes, although they are not intelligible to women, are all the more dear to them on that very account. You never yet knew a woman who thoroughly understood a man care for him. I never did."

"But, Charlie, I think I understand you very well."

"Rank presumption. The rankest presumption I ever heard in all my life. Know me, May! Why, you don't even know who my father and mother were."

"You told me they were dead."

"Yes, they are dead. But you know nothing of them. You do not know if they were felons, or shopkeepers, or gentlefolk."

"I am sure, Charlie, they were gentlefolk."

"Ah, you do not know. And now, May," said he, taking her hand very tenderly and softly patting the back of it with the palm of his own, "I must tell you a secret I ought perhaps to have told you long ago, as it might influence you in your decision of accepting or not accepting me."

"Nothing you could have told me would have made the slightest difference in my decision, Charlie," she said, in a very faint voice.

He ceased patting her hand, and pressed it softly between his two palms. He spoke in a low voice:

"Well, May, the fact of it is I do not know who my father and mother were. It could do no good, dear, if this fact were made public, and I count on you for keeping it secret."

"You may," she whispered back, returning the pressure of his hands, and laying her disengaged hand upon the upper one of his. The action was slight and made without thought, yet he felt its import. He knew by that gesture she meant to convey to him that not only was the hand his own, but that all the faculties of her nature owed allegiance to him alone.

"Thank you, darling; I know how good you are. Every day I see you I am more and more convinced of your goodness. But you see. May, that is my only great trouble, and day by day I am afraid I may find out something very, unpleasant, something disgraceful about my father and mother."

"But nothing you can find out will be disgraceful to you, Charlie."

"No, logically and morally not. But then you know the sins of the parent are visited on the children, not merely by Heaven, but by the world. You know very well that if a man's father had been a hangman, or a murderer, or a forger, his son would be looked on with suspicion and dislike by the majority of the world. A man in my position is of course more alive to the discomfort of any such discovery than a man who knows about his parents. He is continually fancying all manner of horrible surprises, until the mind becomes morbidly sensitive on the subject. I confess I am morbidly sensitive on the subject; and of one thing I am certain, that if I made any discovery of the kind I have been speaking of, I could not stand England-London. I'd emigrate. I'd go to the United States or Australia; some place where the English language is spoken, and where I might have a chance of making a living by my pen. I am telling you all this for a purpose, May. It is all only a preface to a question. And the question: In case anything of the kind arose, and I was about to leave for the United States or a colony, would you marry me and come with me?"