One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

One of Our Conquerors
Up in the box, the powers of the orator were not so cordially
esteemed. To Matilda Pridden, his tales were barely
decently the flesh and the devil smothering a holy occasion
to penetrate and exhort. Dartrey sat rigid, as with the checked
impatience for a leap. Nesta looked at Louise when some
one was perceived on the stage bending to her father: It was
Mr. Peridon; he never once raised his face. Apparently he
was not intelligible or audible but the next moment Victor
sprang erect. Dartrey quitted the box. Nesta beheld her father
uttering hurried words to right and left. He passed from
sight, Mr. Peridon with him; and Dartrey did not return.
Nesta felt her father’s absence as light gone: his eyes rayed
light. Besides she had the anticipation of a speech from him,
that would win Matilda Pridden. She fancied Simeon
Fenellan to be rather under the spell of the hilarity he roused.
A gentleman behind him spoke in his ear; and Simeon, instead
of ceasing, resumed his flow. Matilda Pridden’s gaze on
him and the people was painful to behold: Nesta saw her
mind. She set herself to study a popular assembly. It could
be serious to the call of better leadership, she believed. Her
father had been telling her of late of a faith he had in the
English, that they (or so her intelligence translated his remarks)
had power to rise to spiritual ascendancy, and be once
more the Islanders heading the world of a new epoch abjuring
materialism—some such idea; very quickening to her, as
it would be to this earnest young woman worshipped by
Skepsey. Her father’s absence and the continued shouts of
laughter, the insatiable thirst for fun, darkened her in her
desire to have the soul of the good working sister refreshed.
They had talked together; not much: enough for each to see
at either’s breast the wells from the founts of life.
The box-door opened, Dartrey came in. He took her hand.
She stood-up to his look. He said to Matilda Pridden: ‘Come
with us; she will need you.’
‘Speak it,’ said Nesta.
He said to the other: ‘She has courage.’
‘I could trust to her,’ Matilda Pridden replied.
Nesta read his eyes. ‘Mother?’
His answer was in the pressure.
‘Ill?’
‘No longer.’
‘Oh! Dartrey.’ Matilda Pridden caught her fast.
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