i f6c06dd9cf3fe221 by Unknown (the false prince .TXT) 📕

"Stella," he had cried to her . actually cried to her! "Don't 1 You are torturing me." He had crushed her body under his, but she was far withdrawn. He had been furious that this should be happening again, and had renewed his efforts to solicit her affections.

Her voice had come as a whisper, which might easily have been a hiss, when she had said, "Why must you always want the same thing? Why are you so beastly? We have had all this out before. I'm just not going to put up with it, night after night."

"But, darling, it's nearly ... it's so long..." he had stammered, in his pain.

"Oh, don't be so coarse! You talk like ... well, like one of these dockers."

At that he had let her go, her long, white limbs in their crumpled chiffon whirling out of the bed and into the dressing-room. It was only when he had heard the key turn in the lock, and he knew that she meant to spend the night on the couch, that the torturing desire in his blood seemed to gather itself into one hard knot in his head, which beat with sudden hate of her. He was banging on the dressing-room door and hissing words he would never have believed possible. She made no answering sound. When he dropped into bed, shaking and limp, he had to bite into the pillow to stifle the tearing emotion that wracked him.

Stella could reduce him to that because he loved her, because he could not stop loving her. She had the power to change in a Hash his six feet of virility into a shamed, trembling heap. He knew the course he should have adopted long ago; but he could never see himself touching anyone but Stella. He had loved her from the age of tive, when she had walked between Frank and him and had been the cause of their first serious quarrel.

This morning they had met at breakfast; Stella, a little white, but smiling and talking of the snow and the Christmas doings, in front of the servants. Stella was very well bred; she would keep up appearances in hell, he thought. He knew he had looked ghastly, the blackness of his beard accentuated the pallor of his face. He had scarcely spoken and had eaten nothing, and, on the plea of outstanding calls, he had hurriedly excused himself after drinking three cups of coffee. Without looking at her he knew that her whole bearing was one of sad and gentle reproach.

What the servants had heard last night from their distant rooms didn't trouble him; he was used to servants knowing as much about his life and that of his family as they did themselves. He forgot to take into account that the servants of thirty and forty years' standing, who were like one's own friends, were a different proposition from chance maids of three months.

The knocker of the front-door banged twice. It brought back Kate from far-away regions. She opened her eyes wide.

"Who's that?" she asked.

Then, grabbing his hand, "You're hot having me sent to the workhouse?"

She looked around wildly.

"Where's Mrs. Clarke? Oh, don't send me!

Please don't send me. I can easily pay you when I'm up. "

"What on earth are you talking about? Don't be silly, Katel What put such an idea into your head? That is likely Doctor Davidson; Mrs.

Clarke can't help me, she's hurt her knee. There, now, lie down. " He pressed her gently back into the pillow.

The knocker banged again, quicker and louder this time. Rodney went to the stair-head. Surely that brute wasn't still sitting there and making no attempt to open the door! He heard the poker rattle against the bars of the fire. By God, he was! Of all the swine!

He ran down the stairs.

"Are you deaf, sir?" he shouted at Tim Hannigan's back, as he hurried through the kitchen and into the front-room, from where the front door led into the street. The knocker banged once more as he pulled open the door, letting in a whirl of snow.

"I thought you were all dead." The big muffled figure was kicking his feet against the wall. Thewl What a night! " He stepped into the room, and Rodney dosed the door without a word and led the way through into the comparative brightness of the kitchen.

"Oh, hello, Tim! You deaf?" The easy familiarity of Doctor Davidson surprised Rodney. He gave the big, bony man a quick glance; no annoyance showed on his face at being kept waiting; there was about it that lingering half smile that had so baffled Rodney on the few previous occasions when they had met. He had felt at first that Davidson was laughing at him; laughing gently, but nevertheless laughing. And he had thought, how dare he! He had soon lea mt all about Davidson, who was the son of a Jarrow grocer. The grocer had made money, and had spent it on his son. And the son, instead of taking himself and his career to a far distant place, as far away as possible from Jarrow, had returned, bought a practice in the worst quarter, near the ferry, and married a Jarrow girl. They lived in an ugly house overlooking the muddy Don, where it poured its chemical-discoloured water into the Jarrow slacks and so into the Tyne.

But all this had not wiped that quaint smile off Peter Davidson's face. And, through time, Rodney had found that the smile was not for him alone; Davidson seemed to handle life gently and with that half smile; he never seemed to hurry, nor to be impatient.