One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

One of Our Conquerors
the Gallic tongue, jumped me to bravo the cleverness. And
Bobinikine turning to the complexion of the remainder of
cupboard dumplings discovered in an emigrant’s house-tolet!
And Semhians—I forget what and Mytharete’s forefinger
over the bridge of his nose, like a pensive vulture on the
skull of a desert camel! But, I complain, there’s nothing to
make the English love the author; and it’s wasted, he’s basted,
and the book ‘ll have no sale. I hate satire.’
‘Rough soap for a thin skin, Victor. Does it hurt our people
much?’
‘Not a bit; doesn’t touch them. But I want my friends to
succeed!’
Their coming upon Westminster Bridge changed the
theme. Victor wished the Houses of Parliament to catch the
beams of sunset. He deferred to the suggestion, that the
Hospital’s doing so seemed appropriate.
‘I’m always pleased to find a decent reason for what is,’ he
said. Then he queried: ‘But what is, if we look at it, and
while we look, Simeon? She may be going—or she’s gone
already, poor woman! I shall have that scene of yesterday
everlastingly before my eyes, like a drop-curtain. Only, you
know, Simeon, they don’t feel the end, as we in health imagine.
Colney would say, we have the spasms and they the peace.
I ‘ve a mind to send up to Regent’s Park with inquiries. It
would look respectful. God forgive me!—the poor woman
perverts me at every turn. Though I will say, a certain horror
of death I had—she whisked me out of it yesterday. I don’t
feel it any longer. What are you jerking at?’
‘Only to remark, that if the thing’s done for us, we haven’t
it so much on our sensations.’
‘More, if we’re sympathetic. But that compels us to be philosophic—or
who could live! Poor woman!’
‘Waft her gently, Victor!’
‘Tush! Now for the South side of the Bridges; and I tell
you, Simeon, what I can’t mention to-night: I mean to enliven
these poor dear people on their forsaken South of the
City. I ‘ve my scheme. Elected or not, I shall hardly be accused
of bribery when I put down my first instalment.’
Fenellan went to work with that remark in his brain for
the speech he was to deliver. He could not but reflect on the
genial man’s willingness and capacity to do deeds of benevolence,
constantly thwarted by the position into which he had
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