One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

George Meredith
Possessing, for example, nine thousand pounds per annum
in Consols, and not expending the whole of it upon our
luxuries, we are, without further privation, near to kindling
the world’s enthusiasm for whiteness. Yet there, too, we find,
that character has its problems to solve; there are shades in
salt. We must be charitable, but we should be just; we give to
the poor of the land, but we are eminently the friends of our
servants; duty to mankind diverts us not from the love we
bear to our dog; and with a pathetic sorrow for silt, we discard
it from sight and hearing. We hate dirt. Having said so
much, having shown it, by sealing the mouth of Mr. Stuart
Rem and iceing the veins of Mr. Abram Posterley, in relation
to a dreadful public case and a melancholy private, we have
a pleased sense of entry into the world’s ideal.
At the same time, we protest our unworthiness.
Acknowledgeing that they were not purely spotless, these
ladies genuinely took the tiny fly-spot for a spur to purification;
and they viewed it as a patch to raise in relief their
goodness. They gazed on it, saw themselves in it, and veiled
it: warned of the cunning of an oft-defeated Tempter.
To do good and sleep well, was their sowing and their reaping.
Uneasy consciences could not have slept. The sleeping
served for proof of an accurate reckoning and an expungeing
of the day’s debits. They differed in opinion now and then,
as we see companion waves of the river, blown by a gust, roll
a shadow between them; and almost equally transient were
their differences with a world that they condemned when
they could not feel they (as an embodiment of their principles)
were leading it. The English world at times betrayed
a restiveness in the walled pathway of virtue; for, alas, it closely
neighbours the French; only a Channel, often dangerously
smooth, to divide: but it is not perverted for long; and the
English Funds are always constant and a tower. Would they
be suffered to be so, if libertinism were in the ascendant?
Colney Durance was acquainted with the Duvidney ladies.
Hearing of the journey to them and the purport of it,
he said, with the mask upon glee: ‘Then Victor has met his
match!’ Nataly had sent for him to dine with her in Victor’s
absence: she was far from grieved, as to the result, by his
assurance to her, that Victor had not a chance. Colney
thought so. ‘Just like him! to be off gaily to try and overcome
or come over the greatest power in England.’ They were
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