One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

George Meredith
Bed spake to bed:
‘The words of Mr. Stuart Rem last Sunday!’ ‘He said: “Be
just.” Could one but see direction!’
‘In obscurity, feeling is a guide.’
‘The heart.’
‘It may sometimes be followed.’
‘When it concerns the family.’
‘He would have the living, who are seeking peace, be just.’
‘Not to assume the seat of justice.’
Again they lay as tombstone effigies, that have committed
the passage of affairs to another procession of the Ages.
There was a gentle sniff, in hopeless confirmation of the
experience of its predecessors. A sister to it ensued.
‘Could Victor have spoken so, without assurance in his
conscience, that his entreaty was righteously addressed to
us? that we …’
‘And no others!’
‘I think of his language. He loves the child.’
‘In heart as in mind, he is eminently gifted; acknowledgeing
error.’
‘He was very young.’
The huge funereal minutes conducted their sonorous
hearse, the hour.
It struck in the bed-room: Three.
No more than three of the clock, it was the voice telling of
half the precious restorative night-hours wasted.
Now, as we close our eyelids when we would go to sleep, so
must we, in expectation of the peace of mind granting us the
sweet oblivion, preliminarily do something which invokes,
that we may obtain it.
‘Dear,’ Dorothea said.
‘I know indeed,’ said Virginia.
‘We may have been!’
‘Not designingly.’
‘Indeed not. But harsh it may be named, if the one innocent
is to be the sufferer.’
‘The child can in no sense be adjudged guilty.’
‘It is Victor’s child.’
‘He adores the child.’
Wheels were in mute motion within them; and presently
the remark was tossed-up:
‘In his coming to us, it is possible to see paternal solicitude’
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