One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

George Meredith
But you shall look above: Eyes up. Ire necesse est. Good, but
mount; you come to something. Have ideas.’
‘Good, but when do we reach your level?’
‘Sir, I do not say more than that we do not want instruction
from foreigners.’
‘Pupil to paedagogue indeed. You have the wreath in Music,
in Jurisprudence, Chemistry, Scholarship, Beer, Arms,
Manners.’
Dr. Schlesien puffed a tempest of tobacco and strode.
‘He is chiselling for wit in the Teutonic block,’ Colney
said, falling back to Fenellan.
Fenellan observed: ‘You might have credited him with the
finished sculpture.’
‘They’re ahead of us in sticking at the charge of wit.’
‘They’ve a widening of their swallow since Versailles.’
‘Manners?’
‘Well, that’s a tight cravat for the Teutonic thrapple! But
he’s off by himself to loosen it.’
Victor came on the couple testily. ‘What are you two concocting!
I say, do keep the peace, please. An excellent good
fellow; better up in politics than any man I know; understands
music; means well, you can see. You two hate a man
at all serious. And he doesn’t bore with his knowledge. A
scholar too.’
‘If he’ll bring us the atmosphere of the groves of Academe,
he may swing his ferule pickled in himself, and welcome,’
said Fenellan.
‘Yes!’ Victor nodded at a recognized antagonism in Fenellan;
‘but Colney’s always lifting the Germans high above us.’
‘It’s to exercise his muscles.’
Victor headed to the other apartments, thinking that the
Rev. Septimus and young Sowerby, Old England herself, were
spared by the diversion of these light skirmishing shots from
their accustomed victims to the ‘masculine people of our time.
His friends would want a drilling to be of aid to him in his
campaign to come. For it was one, and a great one. He remembered
his complete perception of the plan, all the elements
of it, the forward whirling of it, just before the fall on
London Bridge. The greatness of his enterprise laid such hold
of him that the smallest of obstacles had a villanous aspect;
and when, as anticipated, Colney and Fenellan were sultry
flies for whomsoever they could fret, he was blind to the
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