A ROUGH LOVER
For a second or two we stood staring at each other while Richard Dawson
mopped the blood from his hand.
"Don't you see that your damned dog has bitten me?" he shouted, as
though my silence infuriated him.
"I see," I said with my hand on Dido's collar to restrain her. "You
shouldn't have been rude to me, sir."
He stopped staunching his wound and burst into a great roar of laughter
which had no good humour in it.
"Lord, lord!" he said. "That's the best thing I've heard of this many a
day. Why a little country hussy like you ought to be honoured by
receiving a gentleman's kisses. There, my dear, get rid of your dog. I
don't want to kick her brains out as I could easily do, and as she
deserves to have done for having bitten me. Send her home with a stone
at her heels and come and sit by me on the stile. You shall see how
prettily a gentleman makes love."
I suppose I must have looked at him with the horror I felt for him, for
he laughed again.
"What," he said, "am I so ugly as all that? I can tell you, my dear,
that a good many of your sex, both small and great, regard me as a very
pretty fellow. In fact, I'm pestered with the women. I assure you I
really am, my dear. And so you won't give me a kiss of your own free
will? Why, I could take it if I liked; but I'm not sure that I want to
take it till you come and offer it to me of your own free will."
"That I shall never do," I said.
"I'm not so sure of that," he replied. "There aren't many ladies in this
county wouldn't give me a kiss if I wanted it, much less a little
dairymaid like you."
I thought at the time that it was his egregious vanity and conceit, but
in this I was wrong, as events afterwards proved. Indeed, it was a very
strange thing how women, both gentle and simple, were in many cases
attracted by the coarse good looks and insolent, swaggering way of
Richard Dawson--an inconceivable thing to me in the case of a lady,
although more easily understood in the case of a poor peasant girl like
Nora Brady.
His mood had apparently changed, and I was less afraid of him, although
my detestation of him had been deepened by his conduct to me.
He still sat on the stile so that I could not pass him; but all the
anger had gone out of his face, although the blood still trickled a
little from the back of his hand where Dido had planted her teeth.
"Will you let me pass, please?" said I.
"Presently, my dear." How I hated him for his easy insolence! "I want to
hear first what it is you dislike in me."
"Everything," I answered.
"Why," he said mockingly, "it is a thing of spirit, and it will be the
more pleasure to tame it. I am tired of birds that come fluttering into
my hands and cling to me when I no longer desire them. Upon my word, I
like you the better for it. Come, I'm sorry I frightened you. I can say
no more than that; it is the fault of your sex, which is so
complaisant."
He put his hand into his pocket and drew out a handful of coins.
"Here's a sovereign," he said, "to buy a ribbon. It can't make you
prettier, but may it make you kinder when next we meet!"
He flung the coin as though he expected me to catch it, but, of course,
I made no effort to do so and it fell on the ground and rolled away into
a heap of dead leaves. No matter what happened I could not have kept
myself from kicking at it contemptuously with my foot where it lay.
"Not enough, eh?" he asked, his eyebrows raised in amusement. "Would
five do?"
I stared at him and the colour flamed in my cheeks.
"Why, you are prettier than ever," he said. "If you look at me like that
much longer I shall be obliged to kiss you, although I would rather wait
till you came offering me a kiss. Pretty spitfire! Where have they been
hiding you? I had no idea, till I saw you the other day at the Creamery,
that there was anything so pretty hereabouts. I generally find out what
there is delectable in the way of femininity before I am forty-eight
hours in a place. You have no idea of what an adorable little modesty
you looked with your white arms plunged in the milk. You took the shine
out of the ladies, my dear."
I could only look at him with steady animosity, while my hand on her
collar kept poor Dido in check. I saw that he took me for a peasant girl
and I was not minded to enlighten him. I was going away; and perhaps
before I came back he would be gone again on his travels, for I had
always heard that he was wild and a rover and could not be persuaded to
settle down and live at Damerstown although his father and mother were
most anxious that he should. My heartfelt desire at the moment was that
I should never again see Richard Dawson's face, with its insolent and
coarse good looks, as long as I lived.
"Yes, you took the shine out of the fine ladies that were with me that
day," he went on, "fine a conceit as they have of themselves. They were
fine London ladies, my dear, the sort that play cards all night, and
motor all day, and have no time to be God-fearing and loving like the
women that went before them. You didn't look at them?"
The speech struck me as oddly incongruous in parts of it, yet we had
heard--about the one thing we had heard in his favour--that he was fond
of his old mother, a good-natured, homely, kindly body, people said, who
was rather unhappy among the Dawson riches, rather afraid of her
granite-faced, beetling-browed husband.
"No, I didn't look at them," I said.
"And why not, pray?"
"I took no interest in them. I did not like their way of speaking. They
seemed vulgar to me."
I hardly knew why I answered him. Perhaps he compelled me. When I had
answered he turned round and looked at me with an uproarious delight in
his face.
"If Lady Meg could only hear you! Lord! lord!" he said, with infinite
gusto. "The daughter of a hundred earls! And Miss Moxon, just as high
born and just as fast! How amazed they would be. They would box your
pretty ears, my dear; at least Lady Meg would."
"That they would not," I answered him. "And now, please let me pass."
"Without a kiss?" he said mockingly. "Very well, then, I shall let you
go. But I feel myself a poor-spirited fellow for it. Do you know that
your eyes are like wet violets? And when do we meet again, my dear?"
However, though he mocked he stood aside to let me pass, which at first
I hesitated to do, fearing that he might perhaps seize me in his arms as
I passed him.
To my great vexation he seemed to guess at this feeling of mine, for he
laughed again and said--
"Don't be afraid, pretty one. I promised to let you pass and I shall.
No one shall say that Dick Dawson's word isn't as good as his bond; and
his bond is worth a good deal. He ought to know something of bonds too,
seeing the way the money was made."
So he mocked at himself when he was not mocking at me. I did not
altogether trust him, but I made up my mind that if he was rude to me
again my poor dog should protect me as she had done before. But after
all there was no necessity, for with a sudden movement my enemy lifted
his hat, turned away and walked down the road, smiling at me, as he
went, over his shoulder.
Never was any one so glad of a place of refuge as I was when I went in
at the postern gate in the wall and was within our own woods. I tried to
shoot the rusty bolt into its place, but it had been unused for years
and I could not move it, so I let it be. And now it was twilight in the
dark woods but I felt at home, and letting Dido go, she bounded on
before me as though she were young again, and I followed more sedately,
with an occasional glance back to see I was not followed.