A Country Gentleman and His FamilyOliphant, Mrs. (Margaret)
General
A Country Gentleman and His Family
Oliphant, Mrs. (Margaret)
Marriage -- Fiction
Warrender had never known anything about London. His habits were entirely
distinct from those of the young men, both high and low, who find their
paradise in its haunts and crowds. When he left Cavendish on their
arrival, not without a suggestion on Dick's part of an after meeting
which the other did not accept, for no reason but because in his present
condition it was more pleasant to him to be alone, Warrender, who did
not know where to go or what to do in order to carry out the commission
which he had so vaguely taken upon him, walked vaguely along, carrying
about him the same mist of dreams which made other scenes dim. Where was
he to find a tutor in the streets of London? He turned to the Park by
habit, as that was the direction in which, half mechanically, he was in
the habit of finding himself when he went to town. But he was still less
likely to find a tutor for Lady Markland's boy in the lessened ranks of
the loungers in Rotten Row than he was in the streets. He walked among
them with his head in the clouds, thinking of what she had said when
last he saw her; inquiring into every word she had uttered; finding,
with a sudden flash of delight, a new meaning which might perchance lurk
in a phrase of hers, and which could be construed into the intoxicating
belief that she had thought of him in his absence. This was far more
interesting than any of the vague processional effects that glided half
seen before his eyes, the streams of people with no apparent meaning in
them, who were going and coming, flowing this way and the other, on their
commonplace business. The phantasmagoria of moving forms and faces went
past and past, as he thought, altogether insignificant, meaning nothing.
She had said, "I wondered if you remarked"--something that had happened
when they were apart from each other; a sunset it was, now he remembered,
of remarkable splendour, which she had spoken of next day. "I wondered
if you remarked," not I wonder, which would have meant that at that
moment she was in the act of wondering, but I wonder_ed_, in the past,
as if, when the glorious crimsons and purples struck her imagination,
and gave her that high delight which nature can give to the lofty mind
(the adjectives too were his, poor boy), she had thought of him, perhaps,
as the one of all her friends who was most likely to feel as she was
feeling. Poor Warrender was conscious, with bitter shame and indignation
against himself, that at that moment he was buried in his father's gloomy
library, deep in the shadow of those trees which he had no longer leisure
to think of cutting, and was not so much as aware that there was a
sunset at all; and this he had been obliged to confess, with passionate
regret (since she had seen it, and given it thus an interest beyond
sunsettings): but afterwards recalled, with the tempestuous sudden joy
and misery that seized upon him all at once now.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account