One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

George Meredith
started from a twitch at the corner, of her lips, the good gentleman
pursued: ‘Can we dare write our designs for the month
to come? Ah!—I will say—Nesta! give me the hope I beg to
have. See the seriousness. You are at liberty. That other has
withdrawn his pretensions. We will not blame him. He is in
expectation of exalted rank. Where there is any shadow … !’
Mr. Barmby paused on his outroll of the word; but immediately,
not intending to weigh down his gentle hearer with
the significance in it, resumed at a yet more sonorous depth:
‘He is under the obligation to his family; an old, a venerable
family. In the full blaze of public opinion! His conduct can
be palliated by us, too. There is a right and wrong in minor
things, independent of the higher rectitude. We pardon, we
can partly support, the worldly view.’
‘There is a shadow?’ said Nesta; and her voice was lurefully
encouraging.
He was on the footing where men are precipitated by
what is within them to blunder. ‘On you—no. On you
personally, not at all. No. It could not be deemed so. Not
by those knowing, esteeming—not by him who loves you,
and would, with his name, would, with his whole strength,
envelop, shield … certainly, certainly not.’
‘It is on my parents?’ she said.
‘But to me nothing, nothing, quite nought! To confound
the innocent with the guilty! … and excuses may exist. We
know but how little we know!’
‘It is on both my parents?’ she said; with a simplicity that
induced him to reply: ‘Before the world. But not, I repeat …’
The band-instruments behind the sheltering glass flourished
on their termination of a waltz.
She had not heeded their playing. Now she said:
‘The music is over; we must not be late at lunch’; and she
stood up and moved.
He sprang to his legs and obediently stepped out:
‘I shall have your answer to-day, this evening? Nesta!’
‘Mr. Barmby, it will be the same. You will be kind to me in
not asking me again.’
He spoke further. She was dumb.
Had he done ill or well for himself and for her when he
named the shadow on her parents? He dwelt more on her
than on himself: he would not have wounded her to win the
blest affirmative. Could she have been entirely ignorant?—
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