One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

One of Our Conquerors
would have barked the breathing intruder an hundredfold
back to earth, was one compulsory centurion yawn. Tears,
issue of the frightful internal wedding of the dulcet and the
sour (a ravishing rather of the latter by the former), rolled
off his muzzles.
Now, if you are not for insisting that a magnificent simile
shall be composed of exactly the like notes in another octave,
you will catch the fine flavour of analogy and be wafted
in a beat of wings across the scene of the application of the
Rev. Septimus Barmby to Mr. Victor Radnor, that he might
enter the house in the guise of suitor for the hand of Nesta
Victoria. It is the excelling merit of similes and metaphors to
spring us to vault over gaps and thickets and dreary places.
But, as with the visits of Immortals, we must be ready to
receive them. Beware, moreover, of examining them too scrupulously:
they have a trick of wearing to vapour if closely
scanned. Let it be gratefully for their aid.
So far the comparison is absolute, that Mr. Barmby passed:
he was at liberty to pursue his quest.
Victor could not explain how he had been brought to grant
it. He was at pains to conceal the bewilderment Mr. Barmby
had cast on him, and make Nataly see the smallness of the
grant:—both of them were unwilling to lose Barmby; there
was not the slightest fear about Fredi, he said; and why should
not poor Barmby have his chance with the others in the race!
—and his Nataly knew that he hated to speak unkindly: he
could cry the negative like a crack of thunder in the City.
But such matters as these! and a man pleading merely for the
right to see the girl!—and pleading in a tone … ‘I assure
you, my love, he touched chords.’
‘Did he allude to advantages in the alliance with him?’
Nataly asked smoothly.
‘His passion—nothing else. Candid enough. And he had
a tone—he has a tone, you know. It ‘s not what he said.
Some allusion to belief in a favourable opinion of him …
encouragement … on the part of the mama. She would have
him travelling with us! I foresaw it.’
‘You were astonished when it came.’
‘We always are.’
Victor taunted her softly with having encouraged Mr.
Barmby.
She had thought in her heart—not seriously; on a sigh of
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