Dawn

Генри Райдер Хаггард

Philip Caresfoot is all but promised to marry the local heiress, Maria Lee. They are both to inherit small fortunes in their own right. And thus their marriages to each other would make an ever wealthier household. However, when Hilda, a noblewoman with no wealth of her own, arrives in town to become Maria's companion, Philip begins to fall in love with her. They have an affair when Philip is sent away to Oxford and they marry in secret. When Philip returns to his home, his father inquires about his relationship with Maria Lee. Philip tells him that Maria Lee and himself are engaged. How will he keep all his lies together and still inherit the land and money from his father?

H.В Rider Haggard

Dawn

"Our natures languish incomplete;

Something obtuse in this our star

Shackles the spirit’s winged feet;

But a glory moves us from afar,

And we know that we are strong and fleet.”

В В В В Edmund Ollier.

"Once more I behold the face of her

Whose actions all had the character

Of an inexpressible charm, expressed;

Whose movements flowed from a centre of rest,

And whose rest was that of a swallow, rife

With the instinct of reposing life;

Whose mirth had a sadness all the while

It sparkled and laughed, and whose sadness lay

In the heaven of such a crystal smile

That you longed to travel the self-same way

To the brightness of sorrow. For round her breathed

A grace like that of the general air,

Which softens the sharp extremes of things,

And connects by its subtle, invisible stair

The lowest and the highest. She interwreathed

Her mortal obscureness with so much light

Of the world unrisen, that angel’s wings

Could hardly have given her greater right

To float in the winds of the Infinity.”

В В В В Edmund Ollier.

В© T8RUGRAM,В 2018

В© Original, 2018

Chapter I

"You lie; you always were a liar, and you always will be a liar. You told my father how I spent the money.”

"Well, and what if I did? I had to look after myself, I suppose. You forget that I am only here on sufferance, whilst you are the son of the house. It does not matter to you, but he would have turned me out of doors,” whined George.

"Oh! curse your fine words; it’s you who forget, you swab. Ay, it’s you who forget that you asked me to take the money to the gambling-tent, and made me promise that you should have half of what we won, but that I should play for both. What, are you beginning to remember now—is it coming back to you after a whole month? I am going to quicken your memory up presently, I can tell you; I have got a good deal to pay off, I’m thinking. I know what you are at; you want to play cuckoo, to turn �Cousin Philip’ out that �Cousin George’ may fill the nest. You know the old man’s soft points, and you keep working him up against me. You think that you would like the old place when he’s gone— ay, and I daresay that you will get it before you have done, but I mean to have my penn’orth out of you now, at any rate,” and, brushing the tears of anger that stood in his brown eyes away with the back of his hand, the speaker proceeded to square up to George in a most determined way.

Now Philip, with his broad shoulders and his firm-knit frame, would, even at eighteen, have been no mean antagonist for a full-grown man; much more then did he look formidable to the lankly, overgrown stripling crouching against the corner of the wall that prevented his further retreat.

"Philip, you’re not going to strike me, are you, when you know you are so much stronger?”

"Yes, I am, though; if I can’t match you with my tongue, at any rate I will use my fists. Look out.”

"Oh, Philip, don’t! I’ll tell your father.”

"Tell him! why, of course you will, I know that; but you shall have something to lie about this time,” and he advanced to the attack with a grim determination not pleasant for his cousin to behold.

Finding that there was no escape, George turned upon him with so shrill a curse that it even frightened