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.He spent a good deal of each year in this town, this very house.So it never crossed his mind to refuse Dirk anything.And Dirk, has, I think, loved me from the first day he saw me.' 'But.'So there is an end to it.I am Dirk's wife, and must remain so until the day he dies.For both our sakes, now.But you must remain with me, Matt, as long as possible.No one need ever know.But without you, having known you, having held you in my arms, my darling, I should go mad.You must stay, Matt.Forever.'Forever.And ever.And ever.And now it rained again, and it was November rain, not February, and she lay in his arms, her head pillowed on his shoulder, her soft golden strands lying across his chest and tickling his chin as she breathed.Without moving his head he could look down the long pale curve of her back to the mole which waited immediately above her left buttock, and beyond, to the endless delight of her legs.Perhaps she slept.She often did, in the middle of the afternoon.Her breath was even, and she was absolutely still, replenishing the exhausting passion which had consumed her but minutes before.One arm was round his neck, the other rested on his chest.And if he was hers, then she was his, equally, now.If he still had to lie abed and listen to Dirk's grunts, he could be sure that she was thinking of him, and would be more eager for his embrace the next day.She was, indeed, Georgiana's sister, but with a cloak of maturity and restraint Georgiana had never possessed, a cloak perhaps of deceit and, as she would have it, criminal purpose, which could be thrown off as she chose, and donned again as she chose, which could send her so entrancingly from naked, sweatstained, tempestuous lover to serene distant cousin, placed to look after him, in a matter of seconds.And Dirk suspected nothing.Perhaps there was the more serious crime, at least from his point of view.That he had lived here for more than a year, had celebrated his twenty-first birthday, had attained manhood and apparently become content to remain no more than a clerk at the warehouse, eating Dirk's food, drinking Dirk's wine, sheltering beneath Dirk's roof - and possessing Dirk's wife.There was crime.But was that, even, the extent of his crime? He shut his mind to all else.He dared not think, of anyone or anything save Sue.To allow his brain to wander, even twenty miles from this house, was to damn himself forever.Sometimes, in his darkest moments, he wondered if he was not indeed the victim of some desperate conspiracy.He knew Georgiana.He knew Robert.He was not sure he knew or understood Sue at all, but she was their sister, and no doubt as capable as them of pursuing an objective with the single-minded determination of the Hiltons.When they were alone together he could not gainsay her love.But when they were in the company of others she was cool and even disdainful of him.No doubt this was a necessary part of the continuous deception they practised, as she constantly reminded him.But could he swear that she loved him as she pretended? That she was not really only interested in bedding a young man, as opposed to her husband? That she did not, indeed, know that this was the true way to keep him on Statia, to make him forget Gislane?And could he deny that she had succeeded? Not in making him forget.But how easy to explain to himself.He had tried, to make his escape in February, and failed.It had been made clear to him, then, even had Suzanne not happened into his life, that his departure from Statia was going to take a great deal of patient endeavour, and perhaps even require the audacity of the stowaway, with no guarantee as to the attitude of the captain when he was discovered, or the thief, with no guarantee that he would be able to navigate his craft successfully to Nevis.No doubt he was in many ways a coward; he could not imagine this situation daunting Kit Hilton.Or Tom Warner and his vigorous, determined son.They had built this empire; he was no more than the heir.And then, having failed to escape in time to greet Gislane's arrival in Nevis, what was there left? She had now been the slave, the chattel, the plaything of James Hodge for nine months.Long enough indeed for her to have been delivered of a child by that foul brute.She would have no defences against him.And before that she would have been the plaything of the crew of the ship which had taken her from Bristol.Once that thought had filled him with rage; now he knew better.To love, to be loved, was to share, to be possessed.One could retain nothing, and he could not see that it would be possible to retain anything even supposing one was an unwilling partner.He could not envisage life without Sue; he was not prepared to envisage life without Sue, even should she truly be playing no more than Robert's game in her own way.So then, what could Gislane have left for him, or him for her?Unless she had rejected everything, had submitted no more than was necessary, to the lash, to the constant humiliation, to the business of being a slave.And of course Gislane would have accepted nothing more than this, and would put all her trust in him, and his promise of freedom from the dreadful fact that overshadowed her life.Then indeed was he criminal, was he damned.And even now he had not reached the end of it.For what of the Nicholsons? What misery had he brought on them by his blind passion? And theirs was the increased misery of not knowing, for being guilty of breaking West Indian law they could not even seek their foster child themselves.But could that alter the fact, that it was impossible for any woman to have undergone the fate of Gislane and remain unchanged? That the girl with whom he had fallen in love no longer existed? That to seek to marry her now, after Hodge and after Sue, would be to make a mockery of both their lives? Easy to think.There was the rational man of the world solving the problems of the world with lofty disinterest [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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.He spent a good deal of each year in this town, this very house.So it never crossed his mind to refuse Dirk anything.And Dirk, has, I think, loved me from the first day he saw me.' 'But.'So there is an end to it.I am Dirk's wife, and must remain so until the day he dies.For both our sakes, now.But you must remain with me, Matt, as long as possible.No one need ever know.But without you, having known you, having held you in my arms, my darling, I should go mad.You must stay, Matt.Forever.'Forever.And ever.And ever.And now it rained again, and it was November rain, not February, and she lay in his arms, her head pillowed on his shoulder, her soft golden strands lying across his chest and tickling his chin as she breathed.Without moving his head he could look down the long pale curve of her back to the mole which waited immediately above her left buttock, and beyond, to the endless delight of her legs.Perhaps she slept.She often did, in the middle of the afternoon.Her breath was even, and she was absolutely still, replenishing the exhausting passion which had consumed her but minutes before.One arm was round his neck, the other rested on his chest.And if he was hers, then she was his, equally, now.If he still had to lie abed and listen to Dirk's grunts, he could be sure that she was thinking of him, and would be more eager for his embrace the next day.She was, indeed, Georgiana's sister, but with a cloak of maturity and restraint Georgiana had never possessed, a cloak perhaps of deceit and, as she would have it, criminal purpose, which could be thrown off as she chose, and donned again as she chose, which could send her so entrancingly from naked, sweatstained, tempestuous lover to serene distant cousin, placed to look after him, in a matter of seconds.And Dirk suspected nothing.Perhaps there was the more serious crime, at least from his point of view.That he had lived here for more than a year, had celebrated his twenty-first birthday, had attained manhood and apparently become content to remain no more than a clerk at the warehouse, eating Dirk's food, drinking Dirk's wine, sheltering beneath Dirk's roof - and possessing Dirk's wife.There was crime.But was that, even, the extent of his crime? He shut his mind to all else.He dared not think, of anyone or anything save Sue.To allow his brain to wander, even twenty miles from this house, was to damn himself forever.Sometimes, in his darkest moments, he wondered if he was not indeed the victim of some desperate conspiracy.He knew Georgiana.He knew Robert.He was not sure he knew or understood Sue at all, but she was their sister, and no doubt as capable as them of pursuing an objective with the single-minded determination of the Hiltons.When they were alone together he could not gainsay her love.But when they were in the company of others she was cool and even disdainful of him.No doubt this was a necessary part of the continuous deception they practised, as she constantly reminded him.But could he swear that she loved him as she pretended? That she was not really only interested in bedding a young man, as opposed to her husband? That she did not, indeed, know that this was the true way to keep him on Statia, to make him forget Gislane?And could he deny that she had succeeded? Not in making him forget.But how easy to explain to himself.He had tried, to make his escape in February, and failed.It had been made clear to him, then, even had Suzanne not happened into his life, that his departure from Statia was going to take a great deal of patient endeavour, and perhaps even require the audacity of the stowaway, with no guarantee as to the attitude of the captain when he was discovered, or the thief, with no guarantee that he would be able to navigate his craft successfully to Nevis.No doubt he was in many ways a coward; he could not imagine this situation daunting Kit Hilton.Or Tom Warner and his vigorous, determined son.They had built this empire; he was no more than the heir.And then, having failed to escape in time to greet Gislane's arrival in Nevis, what was there left? She had now been the slave, the chattel, the plaything of James Hodge for nine months.Long enough indeed for her to have been delivered of a child by that foul brute.She would have no defences against him.And before that she would have been the plaything of the crew of the ship which had taken her from Bristol.Once that thought had filled him with rage; now he knew better.To love, to be loved, was to share, to be possessed.One could retain nothing, and he could not see that it would be possible to retain anything even supposing one was an unwilling partner.He could not envisage life without Sue; he was not prepared to envisage life without Sue, even should she truly be playing no more than Robert's game in her own way.So then, what could Gislane have left for him, or him for her?Unless she had rejected everything, had submitted no more than was necessary, to the lash, to the constant humiliation, to the business of being a slave.And of course Gislane would have accepted nothing more than this, and would put all her trust in him, and his promise of freedom from the dreadful fact that overshadowed her life.Then indeed was he criminal, was he damned.And even now he had not reached the end of it.For what of the Nicholsons? What misery had he brought on them by his blind passion? And theirs was the increased misery of not knowing, for being guilty of breaking West Indian law they could not even seek their foster child themselves.But could that alter the fact, that it was impossible for any woman to have undergone the fate of Gislane and remain unchanged? That the girl with whom he had fallen in love no longer existed? That to seek to marry her now, after Hodge and after Sue, would be to make a mockery of both their lives? Easy to think.There was the rational man of the world solving the problems of the world with lofty disinterest [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]