One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

One of Our Conquerors
The strip of white cloud flew on a whirl from the blue, to
confirm it.
But Victor and Lady Grace rejected any play of conceits
upon nature. Violent and horrid interventions of the counterfeit,
such mad similes appeared to them, when pure coin
was offered. They loathed the Rev. Septimus Barmby for proclaiming,
that he had seen ‘Chapters of Hebrew History in
the grouping of clouds.’
His gaze was any one of the Chapters upon Nesta. The
clerical gentleman’s voice was of a depth to claim for it the
profoundest which can be thought or uttered; and Nesta’s
tender youth had taken so strong an impression of sacredness
from what Fenellan called ‘his chafer tones,’ that her
looks were often given him in gratitude, for the mere sound.
Nataly also had her sense of safety in acquiescing to such a
voice coming from such a garb. Consequently, whenever
Fenellan and Colney were at him, drawing him this way and
that for utterances cathedral in sentiment and sonorousness,
these ladies shed protecting beams; insomuch that he was
inspired to the agreeable conceptions whereof frequently rash
projects are an issue.
Touching the neighbours of Lakelands, they were principally
enriched merchants, it appeared; a snippet or two of
the fringe of aristocracy lay here and there among them; and
one racy-of-the-soil old son of Thames, having the manners
proper to last century’s yeoman. Mr. Pempton knew something
of this quaint Squire of Hefferstone, Beaves Urmsing
by name; a ruddy man, right heartily Saxon; a still glowing
brand amid the ashes of the Heptarchy hearthstone; who
had a song, The Marigolds, which he would troll out for you
anywhere, on any occasion. To have so near to the metropolis
one from the centre of the venerable rotundity of the country,
was rare. Victor exclaimed ‘Come!’ in ravishment over
the picturesqueness of a neighbour carrying imagination away
to the founts of England; and his look at Nataly proposed.
Her countenance was inapprehensive. He perceived resistance,
and said: ‘I have met two or three of them in the train:
agreeable men: Gladding, the banker; a General Fanning;
that man Blathenoy, great billbroker. But the fact is, close on
London, we’re independent of neighbours; we mean to be.
Lakelands and London practically join.’
‘The mother city becoming the suburb,’ murmured Colney,
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