One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

George Meredith
His Minister (satirically, or in sympathetic Conservatism)
would have them not to move on, that they may preserve
among beholders the impression of their handsome frontage.
Night, however, will come; and they, adoreing the decent face,
are moved on, made to expose what the Rajah sees. Behind
his courteousness, he is an antagonistic observer of his conquerors;
he pushes his questions farther than the need for them;
his Minister the same; apparently to retain the discountenanced
people in their state of exposure. Up to the time of the explanation
of the puzzle on board the departing vessel (on the
road to Windsor, at the Premier’s reception, in the cell of the
Police, in the presence of the Magistrate-whose crack of a totally
inverse decision upon their case, when he becomes acquainted
with the titles and station of these imputedly peccant,
refreshes them), they hold debates over the mysterious
contrarieties of a people professing in one street what they
confound in the next, and practising by day a demureness
that yells with the cat of the tiles at night.
Granting all that, it being a transient novelist’s business to
please the light-winged hosts which live for the hour, and
give him his only chance of half of it, let him identify himself
with them, in keeping to the quadrille on the surface
and shirking the disagreeable.
Clouds of high colour above London City are as the light
of the Goddess to lift the angry heroic head over human.
They gloriously transfigure. A Murillo beggar is not more
precious than sight of London in any of the streets admitting
coloured cloud-scenes; the cunning of the sun’s hand so
speaks to us. And if haply down an alley some olive mechanic
of street-organs has quickened little children’s legs to
rhythmic footing, they strike on thoughts braver than pastoral.
Victor Radnor, lover of the country though he was, would
have been the first to say it. He would indeed have said it too
emphatically. Open London as a theme, to a citizen of London
ardent for the clear air out of it, you have roused an
orator; you have certainly fired a magazine, and must listen
to his reminiscences of one of its paragraphs or pages.
The figures of the hurtled fair ones in sky were wreathing
Nelson’s cocked hat when Victor, distinguishably bright-faced
amid a crowd of the irradiated, emerged from the tideway to
cross the square, having thoughts upon Art, which were due
rather to the suggestive proximity of the National Gallery
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