One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

One of Our Conquerors
with shivers:—Young Dudley would have seemed a more
possible confidant:—and he represented the Puritan world.—
And young Dudley was getting over Fredi’s infatuation for
the woman she had rescued: he was beginning to fancy he
saw a right enthusiasm in it;—in the abstract; if only the fair
maid would drop an unseemly acquaintance. He had called
at the office to say so. Victor stammered the plea for him.
‘Never, dear father,’ came the smooth answer: a shocking
answer in contrast with the tones. Her English was as lucid
as her eyes when she continued up to the shock she dealt:
‘Do not encourage a good man to waste his thoughts upon
me. I have chosen my mate, and I may never marry him. I
do not know whether he would marry me. He has my soul.
I have no shame in saying I love him. It is to love goodness,
greatness of heart. He is a respecter of women—of all women;
not only the fortunate. He is the friend of the weaker everywhere.
He has been proved in fire. He does not sentimentalize
over poor women, as we know who scorns people for
doing:—and that is better than hardness, meaning kindly.
He is not one of the unwise advocates. He measures the forces
against them. He reads their breasts. He likes me. He is with
me in my plans. He has not said, has not shown, he loves
me. It is too high a thought for me until I hear it.’
‘Has your soul!’ was all that Victor could reply, while the
whole conception of Lakelands quaked under the crumbling
structure.
Remonstrance, argument, a word for Dudley, swelled to
his lips and sank in dumbness. Her seeming intuition—if it
was not a perception—of the point where submission to the
moods of his nature had weakened his character, and required
her defence of him, struck Victor with a serious fear of his
girl: and it was the more illuminatingly damnatory for being
recognized as the sentiment which no father should feel. He
tried to think she ought not to be so wise of the things of the
world. An effort to imagine a reproof, showed him her spirit
through her eyes: in her deeds too: she had already done
work on the road:—Colney Durance, Dartrey Fenellan, anything
but sentimentalists either of them, strongly backing
her, upholding her. Victor could no longer so naturally name
her Fredi.
He spoke it hastily, under plea of some humorous tenderness,
when he ventured. When Dudley, calling on him in
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