"Stop this unmanly contest against a
defenceless woman."
"I cannot do that," replied Orde quietly.
Kendrick's face assumed a livid pallor, and his eyes seemed to turn
black with excitement. Trembling in every limb, but without
hesitation, he advanced on Orde, drew a short riding-whip from
beneath his coat, and slashed the young man across the face. Orde
made an involuntary movement to arise, but sank back, and looked
steadily at the boy. Once again Kendrick hit; raised his arm for
the third time; hesitated. His lips writhed, and then, with a sob,
he cast the little whip from him and burst from the room.
Orde sat without moving, while two red lines slowly defined
themselves across his face. The theatrical quality of the scene and
the turgid rhetorical bathos of the boy's speeches attested his
youth and the unformed violence of his emotions. Did they also
indicate a rehearsal, or had the boy merely been goaded to vague
action by implicit belief in a woman's vagaries? Orde did not know,
but the incident brought home to him, as nothing else could, the
turmoil of that household.
"Poor youngster!" he concluded his reverie, and went to wash his
face in hot water.
He had left Carroll that afternoon in a comparatively philosophical
and hopeful frame of mind.
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