One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

George Meredith
of Mrs. Marsett. A military captain, in the succession to be
Sir Edward Marsett, bestowed on her the shadow of his name.
It could be certified, that Miss Radnor visited the woman
at her house. What are we to think of Miss Radnor, save that
daughters of depraved parents! … A torture undeserved is
the Centaur’s shirt for driving us to lay about in all directions.
He who had swallowed so much —a thunderbolt: a
still undigested discharge from the perplexing heavens jumped
frantic under the pressure upon him of more, and worse. A
girl getting herself talked of at a Club! And she of all young
ladies should have been the last to draw round her that buzz
of tongues. On such a subject!—The parents pursuing their
career of cynical ostentation in London, threw an evil eye of
heredity on their offspring in the egg; making anything credible,
pointing at tendencies.
An alliance with her was impossible. So said disgust. Anger
came like a stronger beast, and extinguished the safety
there was in the thing it consumed, by growing so excessive
as to require tempering with drops of compassion; which
prepared the way for a formal act of cold forgiveness; and
the moment that was conceived, he had a passion to commit
the horrible magnanimity, and did it on a grand scale, and
dissolved his Heart in the grandeur, and slaved himself again.
Far from expungeing the doubt of her, forgiveness gave it a
stamp and an edge. His renewed enslavement set him perusing
his tyrant keenly, as nauseated captives do; and he saw,
that forgiveness was beside the case. For this Nesta Victoria
Radnor would not crave it or accept it. He had mentally
played the woman to her superior vivaciousness too long for
him to see her taking a culprit’s attitude. What she did, she
intended to do. The mother would not have encouraged her.
The father idolized her; and the father was a frank hedonist,
whose blood … speculation on horseback gallops to barren
extremes. Eyes like hers—if there had not been the miserable
dupes of girls! Conduct is the sole guide to female character.
That likewise may be the hypocrite’s mask.
Popular artists, intent to gratify the national taste for effects
called realistic, have figured in scenes of battle the raying
fragments of a man from impact of a cannon-ball on his
person. Truly thus it may be when flesh contends. But an
image of the stricken and scattered mind of the man should,
though deficient in the attraction, have a greater significance,
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