One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

One of Our Conquerors
as one of the principal persons of her time, that Society’s
indebted to for whatever it’s indebted for?’
‘Scarcely that,’ said Carling, contracting.
‘But you ‘re for great Reforms?’
‘Gradual.’
‘Then it’s for Reformatories, mayhap.’
‘They would hardly be a cure.’
‘You ‘re in search of a cure?’
‘It would be a blessed discovery.’
‘But what’s to become of Society?’
‘It’s a puzzle to the cleverest.’
‘All through History, my dear Mr. Carling, we see that.
‘Establishments must have their sacrifices. Beware of interfering:
eh?’
‘By degrees, we may hope … .’
‘Society prudently shuns the topic; and so ‘ll we. For we
might tell of one another, in a fit of distraction, that t’ other
one talked of it, and we should be banished for an offence
against propriety. You should read my friend Durance’s Essay
on Society. Lawyers are a buttress of Society. But, come:
I wager they don’t know what they support until they read
that Essay.’
Carling had a pleasant sense of escape, in not being personally
asked to read the Essay, and not hearing that a copy
of it should be forwarded to him.
He said: ‘Mr. Radnor is a very old friend?’
‘Our fathers were friends; they served in the same regiment
for years. I was in India when Victor Radnor took the fatal!’
‘Followed by a second, not less … ?’
‘In the interpretation of a rigid morality arming you legal
gentlemen to make it so!’
‘The Law must be vindicated.’
‘The law is a clumsy bludgeon.’
‘We think it the highest effort of human reason—the practical
instrument.’
‘You may compare it to a rustic’s finger on a fiddlestring, for
the murdered notes you get out of the practical instrument.
‘I am bound to defend it, clumsy bludgeon or not.’
‘You are one of the giants to wield it, and feel humanly,
when, by chance, down it comes on the foot an inch off the
line.—Here’s a peep of Old London; if the habit of old was
not to wash windows. I like these old streets!’
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