One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

George Meredith
The young gentleman introduced to the Radnor Concertparties
by Lady Grace Halley as the Hon. Dudley Sowerby,
had to bear the sins of his class. Though he was tall, straightfeatured,
correct in costume, appearance, deportment, second
son of a religious earl and no scandal to the parentage,
he was less noticed by Nesta than the elderly and the commoners.
Her father accused her of snubbing him. She reproduced
her famous copy of the sugared acid of Mr. Dudley
Sowerby’s closed mouth: a sort of sneer in meekness, as of
humility under legitimate compulsion; deploring Christianly
a pride of race that stamped it for this cowled exhibition: the
wonderful mimicry was a flash thrown out by a born mistress
of the art, and her mother was constrained to laugh,
and so was her father; but he wilfully denied the likeness. He
charged her with encouraging Colney Durance to drag forth
the sprig of nobility, in the nakedness of evicted shell-fish,
on themes of the peril to England, possibly ruin, through
the loss of that ruling initiative formerly possessed, in the
days of our glory, by the titular nobles of the land. Colney
spoke it effectively, and the Hon. Dudley’s expressive lineaments
showed print of the heaving word Alas, as when a
target is penetrated, centrally. And he was not a particularly
dull fellow ‘for his class and country,’ Colney admitted; adding:
‘I hit his thought and out he came.’ One has, reluctantly
with Victor Radnor, to grant, that when a man’s topmost
unspoken thought is hit, he must be sharp on his guard
to keep from coming out:—we have won a right to him.
‘Only, it’s too bad; it ‘s a breach of hospitality,’ Victor said,
both to Nesta and to Nataly, alluding to several instances of
Colney’s ironic handling of their guests, especially of this one,
whom Nesta would attack, and Nataly would not defend.
They were alive at a signal to protect the others. Miss
Priscilla Graves, an eater of meat, was ridiculous in her
ant’alcoholic exclusiveness and scorn: Mr. Pempton, a drinker
of wine, would laud extravagantly the more transparent purity
of vegetarianism. Dr. Peter Yatt jeered at globules: Dr.
John Cormyn mourned over human creatures treated as cattle
by big doses. The Rev. Septimus Barmby satisfactorily
smoked: Mr. Peridon traced mortal evil to that act. Dr.
Schlesien had his German views, Colney Durance his ironic,
Fenellan his fanciful and free-lance. And here was an optimist,
there a pessimist; and the rank Radical, the rigid Con-
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