One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

George Meredith
edly) a similar alert immobility of her lips, indicating foreign
notions of this kind or that, in England: an all but imperceptible
shortening or loss of corners at the mouth, upon
mention of marriages of his clergy: particularly once, at his
reading of a lengthy report in a newspaper of a Wedding
Ceremony involving his favourite Bishop for bridegroom: a
report to make one glow like Hymen rollicking the Torch
after draining the bumper to the flying slipper. He remembered
the look, and how it seemed to intensify on the slumbering
features, at a statement, that his Bishop was a widower,
entering into nuptials in his fifty-fourth year. Why not?
But we ask it of Heaven and Man, why not? Mademoiselle
was pleasant: she was young or youngish; her own clergy
were celibates, and—no, he could not argue the matter with
a young or youngish person of her sex. Could it be a reasonable
woman—a woman!—who, disapproved the holy nuptials
of the pastors of the flocks? But we are forbidden to
imagine the conducting of an argument thereon with a lady.
Luther … but we are not in Luther’s time:—Nature …
no, nor can there possibly be allusions to Nature. Mr. Barmby
wondered at Protestant parents taking a Papistical governess
for their young flower of English womanhood. However, she
venerated St. Louis; he cordially also; there they met; and he
admitted, that she had, for a Frenchwoman, a handsome
face, and besides an agreeably artificial ingenuousness in the
looks which could be so politely dubious as to appear only
dubiously adverse.
The spell upon Nesta was not blown away on English
ground; and when her father and mother were comparing
their impressions, she could not but keep guard over the
deeper among her own. At the Chateau de Gisors, leftward
off Vernon on Seine, it had been one of romance and wonderment,
with inquisitive historic soundings of her knowledge
and mademoiselle’s, a reverence for the prisoner’s patient
holy work, and picturings of his watchful waiting daily,
Nail in hand, for the heaven-sent sunlight on the circular
dungeon-wall through the slits of the meurtrieres. But the
Mausoleum at Dreux spake religiously; it enfolded Mr.
Barmby, his voice re-edified it. The fact that he had discoursed
there, though not a word of the discourse was remembered,
allied him to the spirit of a day rather increasing in sacredness
as it receded and left her less the possessor of it, more
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