One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

One of Our Conquerors
will tell you of that man. That man is Major Worrell. One of
the majors who manage to get to their grade. A retired warrior.
He married a handsome woman, above him in rank,
with money; a good woman. She was a good woman, or she
would have had her vengeance, and there was never a word
against her. She must have loved that—Ned calls him, fullblooded
ox. He spent her money and he deceived her.—You
innocent! Oh, you dear! I’d give the world to have your eyes.
I’ve heard tell of “crystal clear,” but eyes like yours have to
tell me how deep and clear. Such a world for them to be in!
I did pray, and used your name last night on my knees, that
you —I said Nesta—might never have to go through other
women’s miseries. Ah me! I have to tell you he deceived her.
You don’t quite understand.’
‘I do understand,’ said Nesta.
‘God help you!—I am excited to-day. That man is poison
to me. His wife forgave him three times. On three occasions,
that unhappy woman forgave him. He is great at his oaths,
and a big breaker of them. She walked out one November
afternoon and met him riding along with a notorious creature.
You know there are bad women. They passed her, laughing.
And look there, Nesta, see that groyne; that very one.’
Mrs. Marsett pointed her whip hard out. ‘The poor lady
went down from the height here; she walked into that rough
water look!—steadying herself along it, and she plunged; she
never came out alive. A week after her burial, Major Worrell—
I ‘ve told you enough.’
‘We ‘ll gallop now,’ said Nesta.
Mrs. Marsett’s talk, her presence hardly less, affected the
girl with those intimations of tumult shown upon smooth
waters when the great elements are conspiring. She felt that
there was a cause why she had to pity, did pity her. It might
be, that Captain Marsett wedded one who was of inferior
station,’ and his wife had to bear blows from cruel people.
The supposition seemed probable. The girl accepted it; for
beyond it, as the gathering of the gale masked by hills, lay a
brewing silence. What? She did not reflect. Her quick physical
sensibility curled to some breath of heated atmosphere
brought about her by this new acquaintance: not pleasant, if
she had thought of pleasure: intensely suggestive of our life
at the consuming tragic core, round which the furnace pants.
But she was unreflecting, feeling only a beyond and hidden.
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