One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

One of Our Conquerors
marriage-tie as indissoluble. She has had to combat that
scruple.’
‘Believer in the renewing of the engagement overhead!—
well. But put a by-word to Mother Nature about the state of
sin. Where, do you imagine, she would lay it? You’ll say, that
Nature and Law never agreed. They ought.’
‘The latter deferring to the former?’
‘Moulding itself on her swelling proportions. My dear dear
sir, the state of sin was the continuing to live in defiance of,
in contempt of, in violation of, in the total degradation of,
Nature.’
‘He was under no enforcement to take the oath at the altar.’
‘He was a small boy tempted by a varnished widow, with
pounds of barley sugar in her pockets;—and she already serving
as a test-vessel or mortar for awful combinations in
druggery! Gilt widows are equal to decrees of Fate to us young
ones. Upon my word, the cleric who unites, and the Law
that sanctions, they’re the criminals. Victor Radnor is the
noblest of fellows, the very best friend a man can have. I will
tell you: he saved me, after I left the army, from living on the
produce of my pen—which means, if there is to be any produce,
the prostrating of yourself to the level of the round
middle of the public: saved me from that! Yes, Mr. Carling, I
have trotted our thoroughfares a poor Polly of the pen; and
it is owing to Victor Radnor that I can order my thoughts as
an individual man again before I blacken paper. Owing to
him, I have a tenderness for mercenaries; having been one of
them and knowing how little we can help it. He is an Olympian—who
thinks of them below. The lady also is an admirable
woman at all points. The pair are a mated couple, such
as you won’t find in ten households over Christendom. Are
you aware of the story?’
Carling replied: ‘A story under shadow of the Law, has generally
two very distinct versions.’
‘Hear mine.—And, by Jove! a runaway cab. No, all right.
But a crazy cab it is, and fit to do mischief in narrow Drury.
Except that it’s sheer riff-raff here to knock over.’
‘Hulloa?—come!’ quoth the wary lawyer.
‘There’s the heart I wanted to rouse to hear me! One may
be sure that the man for old Burgundy has it big and sound,
in spite of his legal practices; a dear good spherical fellow!
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