One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

George Meredith
counterstrokes were like a play of quarter-staff on the sconce,
to knock all comprehension out of Skepsey. Otherwise he
would not unwillingly have inquired to-morrow into the
Statistics of the controversy between the waters of the wells
and of the casks, prepared to walk over to the victorious,
however objectionable that proceeding. He hoped to question
his master some day except that his master would very
naturally have a tendency to sum-up in favour of wine—
good wine, in moderation; just as Miss Graves for the cup of
tea—not so thoughtfully stipulating that it should be good
and not too copious. Statistics are according to their conjurors;
they are not independent bodies, with native colours;
they needs must be painted by the different hands they pass
through, and they may be multiplied; a nought or so counts
for nothing with the teller. Skepsey saw that. Yet they can
overcome: even as fictitious battalions, they can overcome.
He shrank from the results of a ciphering match having him
for object, and was ashamed of feeling to Statistics as women
to giants; nevertheless he acknowledged that the badge was
upon him, if Miss Graves should beat her master in her array
of figures, to insist on his wearing it, as she would, she certainly
would. And against his internal conviction perhaps;
with the knowledge that the figures were an unfortified display,
and his oath of bondage an unmanly servility, the silliest
of ceremonies! He was shockingly feminine to Statistics.
Mr. Durance despised them: he called them, arguing against
Mr. Radnor, ‘those emotional things,’ not comprehensibly
to Skepsey. But Mr. Durance, a very clever gentleman, could
not be right in everything. He made strange remarks upon
his country. Dr. Yatt attributed them to the state of ‘his digestion.
And Mr. Fenellan had said of Mr. Durance that, as ‘a barrister
wanting briefs, the speech in him had been bottled too
long and was an overripe wine dripping sour drops through
the rotten cork.’ Mr. Fenellan said it laughing, he meant no
harm. Skepsey was sure he had the words. He heard no more
than other people hear; he remembered whole sentences, and
many: on one of his runs, this active little machine, quickened
by motion to fire, revived the audible of years back;
whatever suited his turn of mind at the moment rushed to
the rapid wheels within him. His master’s business and
friends, his country’s welfare and advancement, these, with
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