One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

One of Our Conquerors
tary minister in those grisly haunts of the misery breeding
vice, must needs accomplish less than a Septimus the husband
of one of England’s chief heiresses:—only not the most
brilliant, owing to circumstances known to the Rev.
Groseman Buttermore: strangely, and opportunely, revealed:
for her exceeding benefit, it may be hoped. She is no longer
the ignorant girl, to reject the protecting hand of one whose
cloth is the best of cloaking. A glance at Dudley Sowerby’s
defection, assures our worldly wisdom too, that now is the
time to sue.
Several times while Mr. Barmby made thus his pudding of
the desires of the flesh and the spirit, Skepsey’s tales of Matilda
Pridden’s heroism caught his attention. He liked her deeds;
he disliked the position in which the young woman placed
herself to perform them; and he said so. Women are to be
women, he said.
Skepsey agreed: ‘If we could get men to do the work, sir!’
Mr. Barmby was launching forth: Plenty of men!—His
mouth was blocked by the reflection, that we count the men
on our fingers; often are we, as it were, an episcopal thumb
surveying scarce that number of followers! He diverged to
censure of the marchings and the street-singing: the impediment
to traffic, the annoyance to a finely musical ear. He
disapproved altogether of Matilda Pridden’s military display,
pronouncing her to be, ‘Doubtless a worthy young person.’
‘Her age is twenty-seven,’ said Skepsey, spying at the number
of his own.
‘You have known her long?’ Mr. Barmby asked.
‘Not long, sir. She has gone through trouble. She believes
very strongly in the will:—If I will this, if I will that, and it is
the right will, not wickedness, it is done—as good as done;
and force is quite superfluous. In her sermons, she exhorts
to prayer before action.’
‘Preaches?’
‘She moves a large assembly, sir.’
‘It would seem, that England is becoming Americanized!’
exclaimed the Conservative in Mr. Barmby. Almost he
groaned; and his gaze was fish-like in vacancy, on hearing
the little man speak of the present intrepid forwardness of
the sex to be publicly doing. It is for men the most indigestible
fact of our century: one that—by contrast throws an
overearthly holiness on our decorous dutiful mothers, who
294