One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

One of Our Conquerors
The latter was the least of evils; she had her charges to
bring against them for injustice: uncited, unstirred charges,
they were effective as a muffled force to sustain her: and the
young who are of healthy lively blood and clean conscience
have either emotion or imagination to fold them defensively
from an enemy world; whose power to drive them forth into
the wilderness they acknowledge. But in the wilderness their
souls are not beaten down by breath of mortals; they burn
straight flame there up to the parent Spirit.
She could not fancy herself flying thither;—where to be
shorn and naked and shivering is no hardship, for the solitude
clothes, and the sole true life in us resolves to that steady
flame;—she was restrained by Dudley’s generosity, which held
her fast to have the forgiveness for her uncommitted sin
dashed in her face. He surprised her; the unexpected quality
in him seemed suddenly to have snared her fast: and she did
not obtain release after seeing behind it;—seeing it, by the
light of what she demanded, personal, shallow, a lover’s generosity.
So her keen intellect saw it; and her young blood (for
the youthful are thus divided) thrilled in thinking it must be
love! The name of the sacred passion lifted it out of the petty
cabin of the individual into a quiring cathedral universal,
and subdued her. It subdued her with an unwelcome touch
of tenderness when she thought of it as involving tenderness
for her mother, some chivalrous respect for her mother. Could
he love the daughter without some little, which a more intimate
knowledge of her dear mother would enlarge? The girl’s
heart flew to her mother, clung to her, vindicated her dumbly.
It would not inquire, and it refused to hear, hungering the
while. She sent forth her flights of stories in elucidation of
the hidden; and they were like white bird after bird winging
to covert beneath a thundercloud; until her breast ached for
the voice of the thunder: harsh facts: sure as she was of her
never losing her filial hold of the beloved. She and her mother
grew together, they were one. Accepting the shadow, they
were the closer one beneath it. She had neither vision nor
active thought of her father, in whom her pride was.
At the hour of ten, the ladies retired for the enjoyment of
their sweet reward. Manton, their maid, came down to sit
with Nesta on the watch for Skepsey. Perrin, the footman,
returning, as late as twenty minutes to eleven, from his tobacco
promenade along the terrace, reported to Manton ‘a
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