One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

One of Our Conquerors
A man came along the pavement, working slow legs hurriedly.
Simeon ran down to him.
‘Humour, as much as you can,’ Colney said to Mr. Barmby.
‘Let him imagine.’
‘Miss Radnor?’
‘Not to speak of her.’
‘The daughter he so loves?’
Mr. Barmby’s tender inquisitiveness was unanswered. Were
they inducing him to mollify a madman? But was it possible
to associate the idea of madness with Mr. Radnor?
Simeon ran back. ‘Jarniman,’ he remarked. ‘It’s over!’
‘Now!’ Colney’s shoulders expressed the comment. ‘Well,
now, Mr. Barmby, you can do the part desired. Come in. It’s
morning!’ He stared at the sky.
All except Dudley passed in.
Mr. Barmby wanted more advice, his dilemma being acute.
It was moderated, though not more than moderated, when
he was informed of the death of Mrs. Burman Radnor; an
event that occurred, according to Jarniman’s report, fortyfive
minutes after Skepsey had a second time called for information
of it at the house in Regent’s Park—five hours
and a half, as Colney made his calculation, after the death of
Nataly. He was urged by some spur of senseless irony to verify
the calculation and correct it in the minutes.
Dudley crossed the road. No sign of the awful interior was
on any of the windows of the house either to deepen awe or
relieve. They were blank as eyeballs of the mindless. He shivered.
Death is our common cloak; but Calamity individualizes,
to set the unwounded speculating whether indeed a
stricken man, who has become the cause of woeful trouble,
may not be pointing a moral. Pacing on the Park side of the
house, he saw Skepsey drive up and leap out with a gentleman,
Mr. Radnor’s lawyer. Could it be, that there was no
Will written? Could a Will be executed now? The moral was
more forcibly suggested. Dudley beheld this Mr. Victor
Radnor successful up all the main steps, persuasive, popular,
brightest of the elect of Fortune, felled to the ground within
an hour, he and all his house! And if at once to pass beneath
the ground, the blow would have seemed merciful for him.
Or if, instead of chattering a mixture of the rational and the
monstrous, he had been heard to rave like the utterly distraught.
Recollection of some of the things he shouted, was
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