One of Our Conquerors | Page 8

his feverish sensibility of the moment, that
the matter was personal; and the intimation of a touch on domestic
affairs caused sinkings in his vacuity, much as though his heart were
having a fall.
He mentioned the slip on the bridge, to explain his: need to visit a
haberdasher's shop, and pointed at the waistcoat.
Mr. Fenellan was compassionate over the 'Poor virgin of the smoky
city!'
'They have their ready-made at these shops--last year's: perhaps, never
mind, do for the day,' said Mr. Radnor, impatient for eating, now that
he had spoken of it. 'A basin of turtle; I can't wait. A brush of the coat;
mud must be dry by this time. Clear turtle, I think, with a bottle of the
Old Veuve. Not bad news to tell? You like that Old Veuve?'
'Too well to tell bad news of her,' said Mr. Fenellan in a manner to
reassure his friend, as he intended. 'You wouldn't credit it for the Spring
of the year, without the spotless waistcoat?'
'Something of that, I suppose.' And so saying, Mr. Radnor entered the
shop of his quest, to be complimented by the shopkeeper, while the
attendants climbed the ladder to upper stages for white-waistcoat boxes,
on his being; the first bird of the season; which it pleased him to hear;

for the smallest of our gratifications in life could give a happy tone to
this brightly-constituted gentleman.

CHAPTER III
OLD VEUVE
They were known at the house of the turtle and the attractive Old
Veuve: a champagne of a sobered sweetness, of a great year, a great
age, counting up to the extremer maturity attained by wines of stilly
depths; and their worthy comrade, despite the wanton sparkles, for the
promoting of the state of reverential wonderment in rapture, which an
ancient wine will lead to, well you wot. The silly girly sugary crudity
his given way to womanly suavity, matronly composure, with yet the
sparkles; they ascend; but hue and flavour tell of a soul that has come
to a lodgement there. It conducts the youthful man to temples of dusky
thought: philosophers partaking of it are drawn by the arms of
garlanded nymphs about their necks into the fathomless of inquiries. It
presents us with a sphere, for the pursuit of the thing we covet most. It
bubbles over mellowness; it has, in the marriage with Time, extracted a
spice of individuality from the saccharine: by miracle, one would say,
were it not for our knowledge of the right noble issue of Time when he
and good things unite. There should be somewhere legends of him and
the wine- flask. There must be meanings to that effect in the Mythology,
awaiting unravelment. For the subject opens to deeper than cellars, and
is a tree with vast ramifications of the roots and the spreading growth,
whereon half if not all the mythic Gods, Inferior and Superior, Infernal
and Celestial, might be shown sitting in concord, performing in concert,
harmoniously receiving sacrificial offerings of the black or the white;
and the black not extinguishing the fairer fellow. Tell us of a certainty
that Time has embraced the wine-flask, then may it be asserted
(assuming the great year for the wine, i.e. combinations above) that a
speck of the white within us who drink will conquer, to rise in main
ascension over volumes of the black. It may, at a greater venture, but
confidently, be said in plain speech, that the Bacchus of auspicious
birth induces ever to the worship of the loftier Deities.

Think as you will; forbear to come hauling up examples of malarious
men, in whom these pourings of the golden rays of life breed fogs; and
be moved, since you are scarcely under an obligation to hunt the
meaning, in tolerance of some dithyrambic inebriety of narration
(quiverings of the reverent pen) when we find ourselves entering the
circle of a most magnetic polarity. Take it for not worse than
accompanying choric flourishes, in accord with Mr. Victor Radnor and
Mr. Simeon Fenellan at their sipping of the venerable wine.
Seated in a cosy corner, near the grey City window edged with a sooty
maze, they praised the wine, in the neuter and in the feminine; that for
the glass, this for the widow-branded bottle: not as poets hymning; it
was done in the City manner, briefly, part pensively, like men
travelling to the utmost bourne of flying flavour (a dell in infinite
nether), and still masters of themselves and at home.
Such a wine, in its capturing permeation of us, insists on being for a
time a theme.
'I wonder!' said Mr. Radnor, completely restored, eyeing his
half-emptied second glass and his boon-fellow.
'Low!' Mr. Fenellan shook his head.
'Half a dozen dozen left?'
'Nearer the half of