One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

George Meredith
ners, to which one or other of the residents about Lakelands
had been taken before he sat at Victor’s London table. He
was already winning his way, apparently without effort, to
be the popular man of that neighbourhood. A subterranean
tide or a slipping of earth itself seemed bearing her on. She
had his promise indeed, that he would not ask of her to enter
Lakelands until the day of his freedom had risen; but
though she could trust to his word, the heart of the word
went out of it when she heard herself thanked by Lady
Blachington (who could so well excuse her at such a time of
occupation for not returning her call, that she called in a
friendly way a second time, warmly to thank her) for throwing
open the Concert room at Lakelands in August, to an
Entertainment in assistance of the funds for the purpose of
erecting an East of London Clubhouse, where the children
of the poor by day could play, and their parents pass a disengaged
evening. Doubtless a worthy Charity. Nataly was alive
to the duties of wealth. Had it been simply a demand for a
donation, she would not have shown that momentary pucker
of the brows, which Lady Blachington read as a contrast with
the generous vivacity of the husband.
Nataly read a leaf of her fate in this announcement. Nay,
she beheld herself as the outer world wexedly beholds a creature
swung along to the doing of things against the better
mind. An outer world is thoughtless of situations which prepare
us to meet the objectionable with a will benumbed;—if
we do not, as does that outer world, belong to the party of the
readily heroical. She scourged her weakness: and the intimation
of the truth stood over her, more than ever manifest, that
the deficiency affecting her character lay in her want of language.
A tongue to speak and contend, would have helped her
to carve a clearer way. But then again, the tongue to speak
must be one which could reproach, and strike at errors; fence,
and continually summon resources to engage the electrical vitality
of a man like Victor. It was an exultation of their life
together, a mark of his holiness for them both, that they had
never breathed a reproach upon one another.
She dropped away from ideas of remonstrance; faintly seeing,
in her sigh of submission, that the deficiency affecting
her character would have been supplied by a greater force of
character, pressing either to speech or acts. The confession
of a fated inevitable in the mind, is weakness prostrate. She
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