[The Amazing Marriage by George Meredith]@TWC D-Link bookThe Amazing Marriage CHAPTER XV 1/37
.
OPENING STAGE OF THE HONEYMOON. A famous maxim in the book of the Old Buccaneer, treating of PRECAUTION, as 'The brave man's clean conscience,' with sound counsel to the adventurous, has it:-- 'Then you sail away into the tornado, happy as a sealed bottle of ripe wine.' It should mean, that brave men entering the jaws of hurricanes are found to have cheerful hearts in them when they know they have done their best.
But, touching the picture of happiness, conceive the bounteous Bacchic spirit in the devoutness of a Sophocles, and you find comparison neighbour closely between the sealed wine-flask and the bride, who is being driven by her husband to the nest of the unknown on her marriage morn. Seated beside him, with bosom at heave and shut mouth, in a strange land, travelling cloud-like, rushing like the shower-cloud to the vale, this Carinthia, suddenly wedded, passionately grateful for humbleness exalted, virginly sensible of treasures of love to give, resembled the inanimate and most inspiring, was mindless and inexpressive, past memory, beyond the hopes, a thing of the thrilled blood and skylark air, since she laid her hand in this young man's.
His not speaking to her was accepted.
Her blood rather than recollection revived their exchanges during the dance at Baden, for assurance that their likings were one, their aims rapturously one; that he was she, she he, the two hearts making one soul. Could she give as much as he? It was hardly asked.
<<Back Index Next>> D-Link book Top TWC mobile books
|