Complete Short Works of George MeredithMeredith, George
General
Complete Short Works of George Meredith
Meredith, George
English fiction -- 19th century
‘Child!’ said the little lady to Margarita when they kissed at parting,
‘your courage amazes me. Do you think? Do you know? Poor, sweet bird,
delivered over hand and foot!’
‘I love him! I love him, aunty! that’s all I know,’ said Margarita:
‘love, love, love him!’
‘Heaven help you!’ ejaculated Aunt Lisbeth.
‘Pray with me,’ said Margarita.
The two knelt at the foot of the bride-bed, and prayed very different
prayers, but to the same end. That done, Aunt Lisbeth helped undress the
White Rose, and trembled, and told a sad nuptial anecdote of the Castle,
and put her little shrivelled hand on Margarita’s heart, and shrieked.
‘Child! it gallops!’ she cried.
‘‘Tis happiness,’ said Margarita, standing in her hair.
‘May it last only!’ exclaimed Aunt Lisbeth.
‘It will, aunty! I am humble: I am true’; and the fair girl gathered the
frill of her nightgown.
‘Look not in the glass,’ said Lisbeth; ‘not to-night! Look, if you can,
to-morrow.’
She smoothed the White Rose in her bed, tucked her up, and kissed her,
leaving her as a bud that waits for sunshine.
CONCLUSION
The shadow of Monk Gregory was seen no more in Cologne. He entered the
Calendar, and ranks next St. Anthony. For three successive centuries the
towns of Rhineland boasted his visits in the flesh, and the conqueror of
Darkness caused dire Rhenish feuds.
The Tailed Infernal repeated his famous Back-blow on Farina. The youth
awoke one morning and beheld warehouses the exact pattern of his own,
displaying flasks shaped even as his own, and a Farina to right and
left of him. In a week, they were doubled. A month quadrupled them. They
increased.
‘Fame and Fortune,’ mused Farina, ‘come from man and the world: Love
is from heaven. We may be worthy, and lose the first. We lose not love
unless unworthy. Would ye know the true Farina? Look for him who walks
under the seal of bliss; whose darling is for ever his young sweet
bride, leading him from snares, priming his soul with celestial
freshness. There is no hypocrisy can ape that aspect. Least of all, the
creatures of the Damned! By this I may be known.’
Seven years after, when the Goshawk came into Cologne to see old
friends, and drink some of Gottlieb’s oldest Rudesheimer, he was waylaid
by false Farinas; and only discovered the true one at last, by chance,
in the music-gardens near the Rhine, where Farina sat, having on one
hand Margarita, and at his feet three boys and one girl, over whom both
bent lovingly, like the parent vine fondling its grape bunches in summer
light.
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