One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

George Meredith
He fancied an aching at the back of his head when he speculated.
But his Idea had been surpassingly luminous, alive, a
creation; and this came before him with the yellow skin of a
Theory, bred, born of books. Though Nataly’s mention of
the aristocracy of self-denying discipline struck a Lucifer in
his darkness.
Nesta likewise helped: but more in what she did than in
what she said: she spoke intelligently enough to make him
feel a certain increase of alarm, amounting to a cursory secret
acknowledgement of it, both at her dealings with Dudley
and with himself. She so quietly displaced the lady visiting
him at the City offices. His girl’s disregard of hostile weather,
and her company, her talk, delighted him: still he remonstrated,
at her coming daily. She came: nor was there an instigation
on the part of her mother, clearly none: her mother
asked him once whether he thought she met the dreadful
Brighton woman. His Fredi drove constantly to walk back
beside him Westward, as he loved to do whenever it was
practicable; and exceeding the flattery of his possession of
the gallant daughter, her conversation charmed him to forget
a disappointment caused by the defeat and entire exclusion
of the lady visiting him so complimentarily for his advice
on stocks, shares, mines, et caetera. The lady resisted;
she was vanquished, as the shades are displaced by simple
apparition of daylight.
His Fredi was like the daylight to him; she was the very
daylight to his mind, whatsoever their theme of converse for
by stimulating that ready but vagrant mind to quit the leash
of the powerful senses and be a ethereally excursive, she gave
him a new enjoyment; which led to reflections—a sounding
of Nature, almost a question to her, on the verge of a doubt.
Are we, in fact, harmonious with the Great Mother when we
yield to the pressure of our natures for indulgence? Is she,
when translated into us, solely the imperious appetite? Here
was Fredi, his little Fredi—stately girl that she had grown,
and grave, too, for all her fun and her sail on wings—lifting
him to pleasures not followed by clamorous, and perfectly
satisfactory, yet discomposingly violent, appeals to Nature.
They could be vindicated. Or could they, when they would
not bear a statement of the case? He could not imagine himself
stating it namelessly to his closest friend—not to Simeon
Fenellan. As for speaking to Dartrey, the notion took him
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