One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

George Meredith
‘In other respects, unimpeachable!’
‘Oh! quite!’
‘There was a fishfag of classic Billingsgate, who had broken
her husband’s nose with a sledgehammer fist, and swore
before the magistrate, that the man hadn’t a crease to complain
of in her character. We are condemned, Mr. Carling,
sometimes to suffer in the flesh for the assurance we receive
of the inviolability of those moral fortifications.’
‘Character, yes, valuable—I do wish you had named tonight
for doing me the honour of dining with me!’ said the
lawyer impulsively, in a rapture of the appetite for anecdotes.
‘I have a ripe Pichon Longueville, ’65.’
‘A fine wine. Seductive to hear of. I dine with my friend
Victor Radnor. And he knows wine.—There are good women
in the world, Mr. Carling, whose characters …’
‘Of course,’of course there are; and I could name you some.
We lawyers …!
‘You encounter all sorts.’
‘Between ourselves,’ Carling sank his tones to the indiscriminate,
where it mingled with the roar of London.
‘You do?’ Fenellan hazarded a guess at having heard enlightened
liberal opinions regarding the sex. ‘Right!’
‘Many!’
‘I back you, Mr. Carling.’
The lawyer pushed to yet more confidential communication,
up to the verge of the clearly audible: he spoke of examples,
experiences. Fenellan backed him further.
‘Acting on behalf of clients, you understand, Mr. Fenellan.’
‘Professional, but charitable; I am with you.’
‘Poor things! we—if we have to condemn—we owe them
something.’
‘A kind word for poor Polly Venus, with all the world against
her! She doesn’t hear it often.’
‘A real service,’ Carling’s voice deepened to the legal ‘without
prejudice,’—’I am bound to say it—a service to Society.’
‘Ah, poor wench! And the kind of reward she gets?’
‘We can hardly examine … mysterious dispensations …
here we are to make the best we can of it.’
‘For the creature Society’s indebted to? True. And am I to
think there’s a body of legal gentlemen to join with you, my
friend, in founding an Institution to distribute funds to
preach charity over the country, and win compassion for her,
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