One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

George Meredith
‘If, dear, in truth the father’s look is in the child, he has the
greater reason to desire for her a taste of our atmosphere.’
‘Do not pursue it. Sleep.’
‘One prayer!’
‘Your mention of our atmosphere, dear, destroys my power
to frame one. Do you, for two. But I would cleanse my heart.’
‘There is none purer.’
‘Hush.’
Virginia spoke a more fervent word of praise of her sister,
and had not the hushing response to it. She heard the soft
regular breathing. Her own was in downy fellowship with it
a moment later.
At the hour of nine, in genial daylight, sitting over the
crumbs of his hotel breakfast, Victor received a little note
that bore the handwriting of Dorothea Duvidney.
‘Dear Victor, we are prepared to receive the child for a
month. In haste, before your train. Our love. D. and V.’
His face flashed out of cloud.
A more precious document had never been handed to him.
It chased back to midnight the doubt hovering over his belief
in himself;—phrased to say, that he was no longer the Victor
Radnor known to the world. And it extinguished a corpse-like
recollection of a baleful dream in the night. Here shone radiant
witness of his being the very man; save for the spot of his
recent confusion in distinguishing his identity or in feeling
that he stood whole and solid.—Because of two mature maiden
ladies? Yes, because of two maiden ladies, my good fellow. And
friend Colney, you know the ladies, and what the getting round
them for one’s purposes really means.
The sprite of Colney Durance had struck him smartly overnight.
Victor’s internal crow was over Colney now. And when
you have the optimist and pessimist acutely opposed in a
mixing group, they direct lively conversations at one another
across the gulf of distance, even of time. For a principle is
involved, besides the knowledge of the other’s triumph or
dismay. The couple are scales of a balance; and not before
last night had Victor ever consented to think of Colney ascending
while he dropped low to graze the pebbles.
He left his hotel for the station, singing the great aria of
the fourth Act of the Favorita: neglected since that mighty
German with his Rienzi, and Tannhauser, and Tristan and
Isolda, had mastered him, to the displacement of his
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