One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

George Meredith
profess the principles—into the bog we go, we have got round
to it!—the principles of those horrible marching and chanting
people!
Then, must our England, to be redoubtable to the enemy,
be a detestable country for habitation?
Here was a knot.
Skepsey’s head dropped lower, he went as a ram. The sayings
of Mr. Durance about his dear England: that ‘her remainder
of life is in the activity of her diseases’—that ‘she
has so fed upon Pap of Compromise as to be unable any
longer to conceive a muscular resolution’: that ‘she is animated
only as the carcase to the blow-fly’; and so forth:—
charged on him during his wrestle with his problem. And
the gentlemen had said, had permitted himself to say, that
our England’s recent history was a provincial apothecary’s
exhibition of the battle of bane and antidote. Mr. Durance
could hardly mean it. But how could one answer him when
he spoke of the torpor of the people, and of the succeeding
Governments as a change of lacqueys—or the purse-string’s
lacqueys? He said, that Old England has taken to the armchair
for good, and thinks it her whole business to pronounce
opinions and listen to herself; and that, in the face of an
armed Europe, this great nation is living on sufferance. Oh!
Skepsey had uttered the repudiating exclamation.
‘Feel quite up to it?’ he was asked by his neighbour.
The mover of armed hosts for the defence of the country
sat in a third-class carriage of the train, approaching the first
of the stations on the way to town. He was instantly up to
the level of an external world, and fell into give and take
with a burly broad communicative man; located in London,
but born in the North, in view of Durham cathedral, as he
thanked his Lord; who was of the order of pork-butcher;
which succulent calling had carried him down to near upon
the borders of Surrey and Sussex, some miles beyond the
new big house of a Mister whose name he had forgotten,
though he had heard it mentioned by an acquaintance interested
in the gentleman’s doings. But his object was to have a
look at a rare breed of swine, worth the journey; that didn’t
run to fat so much as to flavour, had longer legs, sharp snouts
to plump their hams; over from Spain, it seemed; and the
gentleman owning them was for selling them, finding them
wild past correction. But the acquaintance mentioned, who
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