One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

One of Our Conquerors
enlightening of them—to some extent—a prudential measure
for their defence; and premature instruction is a firewater
to their wild-in-woods understanding; and histrionic
innocence is no doubt the bloom on corruption; also the
facts of current human life, in the crude of the reports or the
cooked of the sermon in the newspapers, are a noxious diet
for our daughters; whom nevertheless we cannot hope to be
feeding always on milk: and there is a time when their adorable
pretty ignorance, if credibly it exists out of noodledom,
is harmful:—but how beautiful the shining simplicity of our
dear young English girls! He was one of the many men to
whose minds women come in pictures and are accepted much
as they paint themselves. Like his numerous fellows, too, he
required a conflict with them, and a worsting at it, to be
taught, that they are not the mere live stock we scheme to
dispose of for their good: unless Love should interpose, he
would have exclaimed. He broke from his fellows in his holy
horror of a father’s running counter to love. Nesta had only
to say, that she loved another, for Dudley Sowerby to be
withdrawn into the background of aspirants. But love was
unknown to the girl.
Outwardly, the plan of the Drive to Paris had the look of
Victor’s traditional hospitality. Nataly smiled at her incorrigibly
lagging intelligence of him, on hearing that he had invited
a company: ‘Lady Grace, for gaiety; Peridon and Catkin,
fiddles; Dudley Sowerby and myself, flutes; Barmby,
intonation; in all, nine of us; and by the dear old Normandy
route, for the sake of the voyage, as in old times; towers of
Dieppe in the morning-light; and the lovely road to the capital!
Just three days in Paris, and home by any of the other
routes. It’s the drive we want. Boredom in wet weather, we
defy; we have our Concert—an hour at night and we’re sure
of sleep.’ It had a sweet simple air, befitting him; as when in
bygone days they travelled with the joy of children. For travelling
shook Nataly out of her troubles and gave her something
of the child’s inheritance of the wisdom of life—the
living ever so little ahead of ourselves; about as far as the fox
in view of the hunt. That is the soul of us out for novelty,
devouring as it runs, an endless feast; and the body is eagerly
after it, recording the pleasures, a daily chase. Remembrance
of them is almost a renewal, anticipation a revival. She enraptured
Victor with glimpses of the domestic fun she had
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