One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

One of Our Conquerors
CHAPTER XXII
CONCERNS THE INTRUSION OF
JARNIMAN
ARMANDINE did her wonders. There is not in the wide range
of the Muses a more responsive instrument than man to his
marvellous cook; and if his notes were but as flowing as his
pedals are zealous, we should be carried on the tale of the
enthusiasm she awakened, away from the rutted highroad,
where History now thinks of tightening her girdle for an
accelerated pace.
The wonders were done: one hundred and seventy guests
plenteously fed at tables across the great Concert Hall, down
a length of the conservatory-glass, on soups, fish, meats, and
the kitchen-garden, under play of creative sauces, all in the
persuasive steam of savouriness; every dish, one may say,
advancing, curtseying, swimming to be your partner, instead
of passively submitting to the eye of appetite, consenting to
the teeth, as that rather melancholy procession of the cold,
resembling established spinsters thrice-corseted in decorum,
will appear to do. Whether Armandine had the thought or
that she simply acted in conformity with a Frenchwoman’s
direct good sense, we do require to smell a sort of animation
in the meats we consume. We are still perhaps traceably related
to the Adamite old-youngster just on his legs, who betrayed
at every turn his Darwinian beginnings, and relished
a palpitating unwillingness in the thing refreshing him; only
we young-oldsters cherish the milder taste for willingness,
with a throb of the vanquished in it. And a seeming of that
we get from the warm roast. The banquet to be fervently
remembered, should smoke, should send out a breath to meet
us. Victor’s crowded saloon-carriage was one voice of eulogy,
to raise Armandine high as the finale rockets bursting over
Wrensham Station at the start Londonward. How had she
managed? We foolishly question the arts of magicians.
Mr. Pempton was an apparent dissentient, as the man must
be who is half a century ahead of his fellows in humaneness,
and saddened by the display of slaughtered herds and their
devourers. He had picked out his vegetable and farinaceous
morsels, wherever he could get them uncontaminated;
enough for sustenance; and the utmost he could show was,
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