One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

George Meredith
Dartrey in the course of the evening, begged to hear the
contralto; and Nataly, refusing, was astounded by the admission
in her blank mind of the truth of man’s list of charges
against her sex, starting from their capriciousness for she could
have sung in a crowded room, and she had now a desire for
company, for stolid company or giddy, an ocean of it. This
led to her thinking, that the world of serious money-getters,
and feasts, and the dance, the luxurious displays, and the
reverential Sunday service, will always ultimately prove itself
right in opposition to critics and rebels, and to any one vainly
trying to stand alone: and the thought annihilated her; for
she was past the age of the beginning again, and no footing
was left for an outsider not self-justified in being where she
stood. She heard Dartrey’s praise of Nesta’s voice for tearing
her mother’s bosom with notes of intolerable sweetness; and
it was haphazard irony, no doubt; we do not the less bleed
for the accident of a shot.
At last, after midnight Victor arrived.
Nesta most impudently expected to be allowed to remain.
‘Pray, go, dear,’ her mother said. Victor kissed his Fredi. ‘Some
time to-morrow,’ said he; and she forbore to beseech him.
He stared, though mildly, at sight of her taking Dartrey’s
hand for the good-night and deliberately putting her lips to it.
Was she a girl whose notion of rectifying one wrong thing
done, was to do another? Nataly could merely observe. A
voice pertaining to no one present, said in her ear:—Mothers
have publicly slapped their daughter’s faces for less than
that!—It was the voice of her incapacity to cope with the
girl. She watched Nesta’s passage from the room, somewhat
affected by the simple bearing for which she was reproaching
her.
‘And our poor darling has not seen a mountain this year!’
Victor exclaimed, to have mentionable grounds for pitying
his girl. ‘I promised Fredi she should never count a year without
Highlands or Alps. You remember, mama?—down in
the West Highlands. Fancy the dear bit of bundle, Dartrey!—
we had laid her in her bed; she was about seven or eight; and
there she lay wide awake. “What ‘s Fredi thinking of?”—
”I’m thinking of the tops of the mountains at night, dada.”—
She could climb them now; she has the legs.’
Nataly said: ‘You have some report to make. You dined
with those people?’
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