One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

George Meredith
a Bohemian instead of the titular glitter for the bewildering
of moralists; as paste will pass for diamonds where the mirror
is held up to Nature by bold supernumeraries.
He wished to introduce Nesta. His girl was on the raised
orchestral flooring. Nataly held her fast to a music-scroll.
Mr. Peridon, sad for the absence and cause of absence of
Louise de Seilles,—summoned in the morning abruptly to
Bourges, where her brother lay with his life endangered by
an accident at Artillery practise,—Mr. Peridon was generally
conductor. Victor was to lead the full force of amateurs in
the brisk overture to Zampa. He perceived a movement of
Nataly, Nesta, and Peridon. ‘They have come,’ he said; he
jumped on the orchestra boards and hastened to greet the
Luciani with Durandarte in the retiring-room.
His departure raised the whisper that he would wield the
baton. An opinion was unuttered. His name for the fluteduet
with the Hon. Dudley Sowerby had not provoked the
reserve opinion; it seemed, on the whole, a pretty thing in
him to condescend to do: the sentiment he awakened was
not flustered by it. But the act of leading, appeared as an
official thing to do. Our soufe of sentiment will be seen subsiding
under a breath, without a repressive word to send it
down. Sir Rodwell Blachington would have preferred
Radnor’s not leading or playing either. Colonel Corfe and
Mr. Caddis declined to consider such conduct English, in a
man of station … notwithstanding Royal Highnesses, who
are at least partly English: partly, we say, under our breath,
remembering our old ideal of an English gentleman, in opposition
to German tastes. It is true, that the whole country
is changeing, decomposing!
The colonel fished for Lady Carmine’s view. And Lady
Swanage too? Both of the distinguished ladies approved of
Mr. Radnor’s leading—for a leading off. Women are pleased
to see their favourite in the place of prominence—as long as
Fortune swims him unbuffeted, or one should say, unbattered,
up the mounting wave. Besides these ladies had none of the
colonel’s remainder of juvenile English sense of the manly,
his adolescent’s intolerance of the eccentric, suspicion and
contempt of any supposed affectation, which was not ostentatiously,
stalkingly practised to subdue the sex. And you
cannot wield a baton without looking affected. And at one
of the Colonel’s Clubs in town, only five years back, an En-
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