Gray youth: The story of a very modern courtship and a very modern marriageOnions, Oliver
General
Gray youth: The story of a very modern courtship and a very modern marriage
Onions, Oliver
Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Marriage -- Fiction; Women -- Social and moral questions -- Fiction
Therefore it was that Amory looked on Corin and Bonniebell as the
precious repositories of her own relinquished joys, and heirs to a
happier life than she herself had known. She dreamed over them and
their future. Laura Wyron was quite right: by the time they had grown
up the fogs of cowardice and prejudice and self-seeking would have
disappeared for ever. Perhaps even by that time, as in Heaven, there
would be no more marrying nor giving in marriage. Things would have
adjusted themselves out of the rarer and sweeter and more liberal
atmosphere. Corin, grown to be twenty, would one day meet with some
mite who was still in her cradle or not yet born, and the two would
look at one another with amazement and delight, and the Ideal Love
would be born in their eyes, and Corin would recite a few of those
brave and pure and unashamed things out of "Leaves of Grass" to her,
and--well, and there they would be.... And Bonniebell, too, would
do the same, on a Spring morning very likely, simply clad, cool and
without immodest blushes--yes, she too would see somebody, and she
would say, gladly and simply, "I am here" (for there would be no
reason, then, why she should wait for the youth to speak first),
and--well, and there they would be too. And it would be Exogamy, or
whatever the word was that Walter used. Either would go forth from
the family on the appointed day--or perhaps only Corin would go, and
Bonniebell remain behind--but anyway, one, if not both of them would
go forth, and rove the morning-flushed hills, alone and free and
singing and on the look-out for somebody, and they would look just like
pictures of young Greeks, and nobody would laugh, as they did at the
poor lady who walked in Greek robes down the Strand....
And Amory herself? Alas! She would be left with the tribe. She would
be old then--say fifty-something on the eleventh of October. And Edgar
would be old too. They would have to recognize that _their_ youth had
been spent in the night-time of ignorance and suspicion. _They_ would
only be able to think of those spirited young things quoting "Leaves of
Grass" to one another and wondering what had happened to them....
No wonder Amory was sometimes pensive....
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