One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

George Meredith
‘Hum,’ Carling hesitated. ‘I can remember when the dirt
at the windows was appalling.’
‘Appealing to the same kind of stuff in the passing
youngster’s green-scum eye: it was. And there your Law did
good work.—You’re for Bordeaux. What is your word on
Burgundy?’
‘Our Falernian!’
‘Victor Radnor has the oldest in the kingdom. But he will
have the best of everything. A Romanee! A Musigny! Sip,
my friend, you embrace the Goddess of your choice above.
You are up beside her at a sniff of that wine.—And lo, venerable
Drury! we duck through the court, reminded a bit by
our feelings of our first love, who hadn’t the cleanest of faces
or nicest of manners, but she takes her station in memory
because we were boys then, and the golden halo of youth is
upon her.’
Carling, as a man of the world, acquiesced in souvenirs he
did not share. He said urgently: ‘Understand me; you speak
of Mr. Radnor; pray, believe I have the greatest respect for
Mr. Radnor’s abilities. He is one of our foremost men …
proud of him. Mr. Radnor has genius; I have watched him;
it is genius; he shows it in all he does; one of the memorable
men of our times. I can admire him, independent of—well,
misfortune of that kind … a mistaken early step. Misfortune,
it is to be named. Between ourselves—we are men of
the world—if one could see the way! She occasionally … as
I have told you. I have ventured suggestions. As I have mentioned,
I have received an impression …’
‘But still, Mr. Carling, if the lady doesn’t release him and
will keep his name, she might stop her cowardly persecutions.’
‘Can you trace them?’
‘Undisguised!’
‘Mrs. Burman Radnor is devout. I should not exactly say
revengeful. We have to discriminate. I gather, that her animus
is, in all honesty, directed at the—I quote—state of sin.
We are mixed, you know.’
The Winegod in the blood of Fenellan gave a leap. ‘But,
fifty thousand times more mixed, she might any moment
stop the state of sin, as she calls it, if it pleased her.’
‘She might try. Our Judges look suspiciously on long delayed
actions. And there are, too, women who regard the
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