One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

One of Our Conquerors
bully lads. ‘That will do—you were rescued. And now go to
bed, Skepsey; and be up at seven to breakfast with me,’ Nesta
said, for his battle-damaged face would be more endurable
to behold after an interval, she hoped; and she might in the
morning dissociate its evil look from the deeds of Captain
Dartrey.
The thought of her hero taking active part in a streetfray,
was repulsive to her; it swamped his brilliancy. And this distressed
her, by withdrawing the support which the thought
of him had been to her since mid-day. She lay for sleepless
hours, while nursing a deeper pain, under oppression of repugnance
to battle-dealing, bloodshedding men. It was long
before she grew mindful of the absurdity of the moan recurring
whenever reflection wearied. Translated into speech, it
would have run:
‘In a street of the town! with a stick!’—The vulgar picture
pursued her to humiliation; it robbed her or dimmed her
possession of the one bright thing she had remaining to her.
So she deemed it during the heavy sighs of night; partly conscious,
that in some strange way it was as much as tossing
her to the man who never could have condescended to the
pugnacious using of a stick in a street. He, on the contrary,
was a cover to the shamefaced.
Her heart was weak that night. She hovered above it, but
not so detached as to scorn it for fawning to one—any one—
who would offer her and her mother a cover from scorn.
And now she exalted Dudley’s generosity, now clung to a
low idea of a haven in her father’s wealth; and she was unaware,
that the second mood was deduced from the first.
She did know herself cowardly: she had, too, a critic in her
clear head, to spurn at the creature who could think of purchasing
the world’s respect. Dudley’s generosity sprang up to
silence the voice. She could praise him, on a review of it, for
delicacy, moreover; and the delicacy laid her under a more
positive obligation. Her sense of it was not without a toneless
quaint faint savour of the romantic, that her humour
little humorously caught at, to paint her a picture of former
heroes of fiction, who win their trying lady by their perfection
of good conduct on a background of high birth; and
who are not seen to be wooden before the volume closes.
Her fatigue of sleeplessness plunged her into the period of
poke-bonnets and peaky hats to admire him; giving her the
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