One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

One of Our Conquerors
Dudley bore no resemblance to Mr. Barmby, who refused to
take the word no from her, and had taken it, and had gone
to do holy work, for which she revered him. Dudley took
the word, leaving her to imagine freedom, until once more
her mother or her father, inspired by him, came interceding,
her mother actually supplicating. So that the reality of
Dudley’s love rose to conception like a London dawn over
Nesta; and how, honourably, decently, positively, to sever
herself from it, grew to be an ill-visaged problem. She glanced
in soul at Dartrey Fenellan for help; she had her wild
thoughts. Having once called him Dartrey, the virginal barrier
to thoughts was broken; and but for love of her father,
for love and pity of her mother, she would have ventured the
step to make the man who had her whole being in charge
accept or reject her. Nothing else appeared in prospect. Her
father and mother were urgently one to favour Dudley; and
the sensitive gentleman presented himself to receive his
wound and to depart with it. But always he returned. At
last, as if under tuition, he refrained from provoking a wound;
he stood there to win her upon any terms; and he was a
handsome figure, acknowledged by the damsel to be increasing
in good looks as more and more his pretensions became
distasteful to her. The slight cast of sourness on his lower
features had almost vanished, his nature seemed to have enlarged.
He complimented her for her ‘generous benevolence,’
vaguely, yet with evident sincereness; he admitted, that the
modern world is ‘attempting difficulties with at least commendable
intentions’; and that the position of women demands
improvement, consideration for them also. He said
feelingly: ‘They have to bear extraordinary burdens!’ There
he stopped.
The sharp intelligence fronting him understood, that this
compassionate ejaculation was the point where she, too, must
cry halt. He had, however—still under tuition, perhaps—
withdrawn his voice from the pursuit of her; and so she in
gratitude silenced her critical mind beneath a smooth conceit
of her having led him two steps to a broader tolerance.
Susceptible as she was, she did not influence him without
being affected herself in other things than her vanity: his
prudishness affected her. Only when her heart flamed did
she disdain that real haven of refuge, with its visionary mount
of superiority, offered by Society to its effect, in the habit of
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