One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

One of Our Conquerors
without being dupe of the plea or at all the thirsty swallower
of his sugary brandy. Mrs. Marsett expressed aloud her gladness
of escape in never having met a man like him; followed
by her regret that ‘Ned’ was so utterly unlike; except ‘perhaps’—and
she hummed; she was off on the fraternity in
wickedness.
Nesta’s ears were fatigued. ‘My mother writes of you,’ she
said, to vary the subject.
Mrs. Marsett looked. She sighed downright: ‘I have had
my dream of a friend!—It was that gentleman with you on
the pier! Your mother objects?’
‘She has inquired, nothing more.’
‘I am not twenty-three: not as old as I should be, for a guide
to you. I know I would never do you harm. That I know. I
would walk into that water first, and take Mrs. Worrell’s
plunge:—the last bath; a thorough cleanser for a woman! Only,
she was a good woman and didn’t want it, as we—as lots of us
do:—to wash off all recollection of having met a man! Your
mother would not like me to call you Nesta! I have never begged
you to call me Judith. Damnable name!’ Mrs. Marsett revelled
in the heat of the curse on it, as a relief to torture of the breast,
until a sense of the girl’s alarmed hearing sent the word reverberating
along her nerves and shocked her with such an exposure
of our Shaggy wild one on a lady’s lips. She murmured:
‘Forgive me,’ and had the passion to repeat the epithet in
shrieks, and scratch up male speech for a hatefuller; but the
twitch of Nesta’s brows made her say: ‘Do pardon me. I did
something in Scripture. Judith could again. Since that brute
Worrell crossed me riding with you, I loathe my name; I want
to do things. I have offended you.’
‘We have been taught differently. I do not use those words.
Nothing else.’
‘They frighten you.’
‘They make me shut; that is all.’
‘Supposing you were some day to discover … ta-tata, all
the things there are in the world.’ Mrs. Marsett let fly an
artificial chirrup. ‘You must have some ideas of me.’
‘I think you have had unhappy experiences.’
‘Nesta … just now and then! the first time we rode out
together, coming back from the downs, I remember, I spoke,
without thinking—I was enraged—of a case in the newspapers;
and you had seen it, and you were not afraid to talk of
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