One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

One of Our Conquerors
talked of it: “my courtiers, Mr. Victor!” There, heaven forgive
me, I wouldn’t mock at her to another.’
‘It looks as if she were only inexorably human,’ said Mr.
Fenellan, crushing a delicious gulp of the wine, that foamed
along the channel to flavour. ‘We read of the tester of a bandit-bed;
and it flattened unwary recumbents to pancakes.
An escape from the like of that seems pleadable, should be:
none but the drowsy would fail to jump out and run, or the
insane.’
Mr. Radnor was taken with the illustration of his case. ‘For
the sake of my sanity, it was! to preserve my … . but any
word makes nonsense of it. Could—I must ask you—could
any sane man—you were abroad in those days, horrible days!
and never met her: I say, could you consent to be tied—I
admit the vow, ceremony, so forth-tied to—I was barely
twenty-one: I put it to you, Fenellan, was it in reason an
engagement—which is, I take it, a mutual plight of faith, in
good faith; that is, with capacity on both sides to keep the
engagement: between the man you know I was in youth and
a more than middle-aged woman crazy up to the edge of the
cliff—as Colney says half the world is, and she positively is
when her spite is roused. No, Fenellan, I have nothing on
my conscience with regard to the woman. She had wealth: I
left her not one penny the worse for—but she was not one
to reckon it, I own. She could be generous, was, with her
money. If she had struck this blow—I know she thought of
it: or if she would strike it now, I could not only forgive her,
I could beg forgiveness.’
A sight of that extremity fetched prickles to his forehead.
‘You’ve borne your part bravely, my friend.’
‘I!’ Mr. Radnor shrugged at mention of his personal burdens.
‘Praise my Nataly if you like! Made for one another, if
ever two in this world! You know us both, and do you doubt
it? The sin would have been for us two to meet and—but
enough when I say, that I am she, she me, till death and
beyond it: that’s my firm faith. Nataly teaches me the religion
of life, and you may learn what that is when you fall in
love with a woman. Eighteen-nineteen-twenty years!’
Tears fell from him, two drops. He blinked, bugled in his
throat, eyed his watch, and smiled: ‘The finishing glass! We
should have had to put Colney to bed. Few men stand their
wine. You and I are not lamed by it; we can drink and do
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