One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

‘You will hear to-morrow afternoon,’ Nataly said, seeing
one paved way to the meaning—a too likely meaning… ‘He
hasn’t been … nothing about Fredi, surely!’
‘I have had no information.’
‘Impossible! Barmby has good sense; Bottesini can’t intend
to come scraping on that string. But we won’t lose him; he’s
one of us. Barmby counts for more at a Charity Concert
than all the catalogue, and particularly in the country. But
he’s an excellent fellow—eh?’
‘That he is,’ Nataly agreed.
Victor despatched a cheerful curt consent to see Mr.
Barmby privately on the late afternoon of the day to follow.
Nesta, returning home from the park at that hour of the
interview, ignorant of Mr. Barmby’s purpose though she was,
had her fires extinguished by the rolling roar of curfew along
the hall-passage, out of the library.
George Meredith
CHAPTER XVIII
SUITORS FOR THE HAND OF NESTA
VICTORIA
WHEN, upon the well-known quest, the delightful singer
Orpheus took that downward way, coming in sight of old
Cerberus centiceps, he astutely feigned inattention to the
hostile appearances of the multiple beast, and with a wave of
his plectrum over the responsive lyre, he at the stroke raised
voice. This much you know. It may be communicated to
you, that there was then beheld the most singular spectacle
ever exhibited on the dizzy line of division between the living
and the dead. For those unaccustomed musical tones in
the last thin whiff of our sustaining air were so smartingly
persuasive as to pierce to the vitals of the faithful Old Dog
before his offended sentiments had leisure to rouse their heads
against a beggar of a mortal. The terrible sugariness which
poured into him worked like venom to cause an encounter
and a wrestling: his battery of jaws expressed it. They gaped.
At the same time, his eyeballs gave up. All the Dog, that
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