One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

George Meredith
Turning to the steps of a chemist’s shop to get a prescription
made up for his Nataly’s doctoring of her domestics, he
was arrested by a rap on his elbow; and no one was near; and
there could not be a doubt of the blow—a sharp hard stroke,
sparing the funny-bone, but ringing. His head, at the punctilio
bump, throbbed responsively—owing to which or indifference
to the prescription, as of no instant requirement,
he pursued his course, resembling mentally the wanderer
along a misty beach, who hears cannon across the waters.
He certainly had felt it. He remembered the shock: he could
not remember much of pain. How about intimations? His
asking caused a smile.
Very soon the riddle answered itself. He had come into
view of the diminutive marble cavalier of the infantile cerebellum;
recollecting a couplet from the pen of the disrespectful
Satirist Peter, he thought of a fall: his head and his
elbow responded simultaneously to the thought.
All was explained save his consequent rightabout from the
chemist’s shop: and that belongs to the minor involutions of
circumstances and the will. It passed like a giver’s wrinkle.
He read the placards of the Opera; reminding himself of the
day when it was the single Opera-house; and now we have
two-or three. We have also a distracting couple of Clowns
and Pantaloons in our Pantomimes: though Colney says that
the multiplication of the pantaloon is a distinct advance to
representative truth—and bother Colney! Two Columbines
also. We forbear to speak of men, but where is the boy who
can set his young heart upon two Columbines at once! Victor
felt the boy within him cold to both: and in his youth he
had doated on the solitary twirling spangled lovely Fairy.
The tale of a delicate lady dancer leaping as the kernel out of
a nut from the arms of Harlequin to the legalized embrace of
a wealthy brewer, and thenceforth living, by repute, with
unagitated legs, as holy a matron, despite her starry past, as
any to be shown in a country breeding the like abundantly,
had always delighted him. It seemed a reconcilement of opposing
stations, a defeat of Puritanism. Ay, and poor
women!—women in the worser plight under the Puritan’s
eye. They may be erring and good: yes, finding the man to
lift them the one step up! Read the history of the error. But
presently we shall teach the Puritan to act by the standards
of his religion. All is coming right—must come right. Colney
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