One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

George Meredith
ask, How came we by the goods? It is unreasonable; it strikes
at rights of property. But I have to go on thinking. When in
danger, she sings without excitement. When the blow struck
her, she stopped singing only an instant. She says, no one
fears, who has real faith. She will not let me call her brave.
She cannot admire Captain Dartrey. Her principles are opposed.
She said to him, “Sir, you did what seemed to you
right.” She thinks every blow struck sends us back to the
state of the beasts. Her principles …’
‘How was it Captain Dartrey happened to be present,
Skepsey?’
‘She is very firm. You cannot move her.—Captain Dartrey
was on his way to the station, to meet a gentleman from
London, Miss Nesta. He carried a stick—a remarkable stick—
he had shown to me in the morning, and he has given it me
now. He says, he has done his last with it. He seems to have
some of Matilda Pridden’s ideas about fighting, when it’s over.
He was glad to be rid of the stick, he said.’
‘But who attacked you? What were the people?’
‘Captain Dartrey says, England may hold up her head while
she breeds young women like Matilda Pridden: right or
wrong, he says: it is the substance.’
Hereupon Manton, sick of Miss Pridden, shook the little
man with a snappish word, to bring him to attention. She got
him together sufficiently for him to give a lame version of the
story; flat until he came to his heroine’s behaviour, when he
brightened a moment, and he sank back absorbed in her principles
and theories of life. It was understood by Nesta, that the
processionists, going at a smart pace, found their way blocked
and were assaulted in one of the sidestreets; and that Skepsey
rushed to the defence of Matilda Pridden; and that, while they
were engaged, Captain Dartrey was passing at the end of the
street, and recognized one he knew in the thick of it and getting
the worst of it, owing to numbers. ‘I will show you the
stick he did it with, Miss Nests’; said Skepsey, regardless of
narrative; and darted out of the room to bring in the Demerara
supple-jack; holding which, he became inspired to relate something
of Captain Dartrey’s deeds.
They gave no pleasure to his young lady, as he sadly perceived:—thus
it is with the fair sex ever, so fond of heroes!
She shut her eyes from the sight of the Demerara supplejack
descending right and left upon the skulls of a couple of
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