One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

CHAPTER XI
WHEREIN WE BEHOLD THE COUPLE
JUSTIFIED OF LOVE HAVING SIGHT OF
THEIR SCOURGE
George Meredith
FENELLAN, in a musing exclamation, that was quite spontaneous,
had put a picture on the departing Skepsey, as observed
from an end of the Lakelands upper terrace-walk.
‘Queer little water-wagtail it is!’ And Lady Grace Halley
and Miss Graves and Mrs. Cormyn, snugly silken dry ones,
were so taken with the pretty likeness after hearing Victor
call the tripping dripping creature the happiest man in England,
that they nursed it in their minds for a Bewick tailpiece
to the chapter of a pleasant rural day. It imbedded the
day in an idea that it had been rural.
We are indebted almost for construction to those who will
define us briefly: we are but scattered leaves to the general
comprehension of us until such a work of binding and labelling
is done. And should the definition be not so correct as
brevity pretends to make it at one stroke, we are at least rendered
portable; thus we pass into the conceptions of our fellows,
into the records, down to posterity. Anecdotes of
England’s happiest man were related, outlines of his personal
history requested. His nomination in chief among the traditionally
very merry Islanders was hardly borne out by the
tale of his enchainment with a drunken yokefellow—unless
upon the Durance version of the felicity of his countrymen;
still, the water-wagtail carried it, Skepsey trotted into memories.
Heroes conducted up Fame’s temple-steps by ceremonious
historians, who are studious, when the platform is
reached, of the art of setting them beneath the flambeau of a
final image, before thrusting them inside to be rivetted on
their pedestals, have an excellent chance of doing the same,
let but the provident narrators direct that image to paint the
thing a moth-like humanity desires, in the thing it shrinks
from. Miss Priscilla Graves now fastened her meditations
upon Skepsey; and it was important to him.
Tobacco withdrew the haunting shadow of the Rev.
Septimus Barmby from Nesta. She strolled beside Louise de
Seilles, to breathe sweet-sweet in the dear friend’s ear and tell
her she loved her. The presence of the German had, without
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