One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

George Meredith
Meanwhile the sun of Victor Radnor’s popularity was already
up over the extended circle likely to be drenched by a
falsification of his daring augury, though the scud flew swift,
and the beeches raved, and the oaks roared and snarled, and
pine-trees fell their lengths. Fine tomorrow, to a certainty!
he had been heard to say. The doubt weighed for something;
the balance inclined with the gentleman who had become so
popular: for he had done the trick so suddenly, like a stroke
of the wizard; and was a real man, not one of your spangled
zodiacs selling for sixpence and hopping to a lucky hit,
laughed at nine times out of ten. The reasoning went—and
it somewhat affected the mansion as well as the cottage,—
that if he had become popular in this astonishing fashion,
after making one of the biggest fortunes of modern times,
he might, he must, have secret gifts. ‘You can’t foretell
weather!’ cried a pothouse sceptic. But the workmen at
Lakelands declared that he had foretold it. Sceptics among
the common folk were quaintly silenced by other tales of
him, being a whiff from the delirium attending any mention
of his name.
How had he become suddenly so popular as to rouse in
the mind of Mr. Caddis, the sitting Member for the division
of the county (said to have the seat in his pocket), a particular
inquisitiveness to know the bearing of his politics? Mr.
Radnor was rich, true: but these are days when wealthy men,
ambitious of notoriety, do not always prove faithful to their
class; some of them are cunning to bid for the suffrages of
the irresponsible, recklessly enfranchised, corruptible masses.
Mr. Caddis, if he had the seat in his pocket, had it from the
support of a class trusting him to support its interests: he
could count on the landowners, on the clergy, on the retired
or retiring or comfortably cushioned merchants resident
about Wrensham, on the many obsequious among electoral
shopmen; annually he threw open his grounds, and he subscribed,
patronized, did what was expected; and he was not
popular; he was unpopular. Why? But why was the sun of
this 23rd August, shining from its rise royally upon pacified,
enrolled and liveried armies of cloud, more agreeable to earth’s
populations than his pinched appearance of the poor mopped
red nose and melancholic rheumy eyelets on a January day!
Undoubtedly Victor Radnor risked his repute of prophet.
Yet his popularity would have survived the continuance of
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