One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

One of Our Conquerors
vision of their beds, her right hand given to one, her left to
the other. They had the semblance of a haven out of storms.
She reflected, after shutting the door of their room, that
the residing with them had been a means of casting her—it
was an effort to remember how—upon the world where the
tree of knowledge grows. She had eaten; and she might be
the worse for it; but she was raised to a height that would
not let her look with envy upon peace and comfort. Luxurious
quiet people were as ripening glass-house fruits. Her bitter
gathering of the knowledge of life had sharpened her intellect;
and the intellect, even in the young, is, and not less
usefully, hard metal rather than fallow soil. But for the fountain
of human warmth at her breast, she might have been
snared by the conceit of intellect, to despise the simple and
conventional, or shed the pity which is charity’s contempt.
She had only to think of the kindness of the dear good ladies;
her heart jumped to them at once. And when she fancied
hearing those innocent souls of women embracing her
and reproaching her for the knowledge of life she now bore,
her words down deep in her bosom were: It has helped me
to bear the shock of other knowledge! How would she have
borne it before she knew of the infinitely evil? Saving for the
tender compassion weeping over her mother, she had not
much acute personal grief.
For this world condemning her birth, was the world tolerant
of that infinitely evil! Her intellect fortified her to be
combative by day, after the night of imagination; which splendid
power is not so serviceable as the logical mind in painful
seasons: for night revealed the world snorting Dragon’s breath
at a girl guilty of knowing its vilest. More than she liked to
recall, it had driven her scorched, half withered, to the shelter
of Dudley. The daylight, spreading thin at the windows,
restored her from that weakness. ‘We will quit England,’ she
said, thinking of her mother and herself, and then of her
father’s surely following them. She sighed thankfully, half
way through the breakfast with Skepsey, at sight of the hour
by the clock; she was hurriedly sentient of the puzzle of her
feelings, when she guessed at a chance that Dudley would be
delayed. She supposed herself as possibly feeling not so well
able to keep every thought of her head brooding on her
mother in Dudley’s company.
Skepsey’s face was just sufferable by light of day, if one
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