One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

One of Our Conquerors
that twenty times the stake is not a dream of the past!’
‘The Riviera green field on the rock is always open to you,’
said Victor.
She put out her hand to be taken. ‘Not if you back me here.
It really is not gambling when yours is the counsel I follow.
And if I’m to be a widow, I shall have to lean on a friend,
gifted like you. I love adventure, danger;—well, if we two are
in it; just to see my captain in a storm. And if the worst happens,
we go down together. It ‘s the detestation of our deadly
humdrum of modern life; some inherited love of fighting.’
‘Say, brandy.’
‘Does not Mr. Durance accuse you of an addiction to the
brandy novel?’
‘Colney may call it what he pleases. If I read fiction, let it be
fiction; airier than hard fact. If I see a ballet, my troop of short
skirts must not go stepping like pavement policemen. I can’t
read dull analytical stuff or “stylists” when I want action—if
I’m to give my mind to a story. I can supply the reflections.
I’m English—if Colney ‘s right in saying we always come round
to the story with the streak of supernaturalism.
I don’t ask for bloodshed: that’s what his “brandy” means.’
‘But Mr. Durance is right, we require a shedding; I confess
I expect it where there’s love; it’s part of the balance, and
justifies one’s excitement. How otherwise do you get any real
crisis? I must read and live something unlike this flat life
around us.’
‘There’s the Adam life and the Macadam life, Fenellan says.
Pass it in books, but in life we can have quite enough excitement
coming out of our thoughts. No brandy there! And no
fine name for personal predilections or things done in domino!’
Victor said, with his very pleasant face, pressing her hand, to
keep the act of long holding it in countenance and bring it to
a well-punctuated conclusion: thinking involuntarily of the
other fair woman, whose hand was his, and who betrayed a
beaten visage despite—or with that poor kind of—trust in
her captain. But the thought was not guilty of drawing comparisons.
‘This is one that I could trust, as captain or mate,’ he
pressed the hand again before dropping it.
‘You judge entirely by the surface, if you take me for a
shifty person at the trial,’ said Lady Grace.
Skepsey entered the room with one of his packets, and she
was reminded of trains and husbands.
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