Lord Ormont and His Aminta — CompleteMeredith, George
General
Lord Ormont and His Aminta — Complete
Meredith, George
English fiction -- 19th century
Lively doings were on the leap to animate Weyburn at Olmer during Easter
week. The Rev. Mr. Hampton-Evey, rector of Barborough, on hearing that
Lady Charlotte Eglett was engaged in knocking at the doors of litigation
with certain acts that constituted distinct breaches of the law and the
peace, and were a violation of the rights of her neighbour, Mr. Gilbert
Addicote, might hope that the troublesome parishioner whom he did not
often number among his congregation would grant him a term of repose.
Therein he was deceived. Alterations and enlargements of the church,
much required, had necessitated the bricking up of a door regarded by
the lady as the private entrance to the Olmer pew. She sent him notice
of her intention to batter at the new brickwork; so there was the
prospect of a pew-fight before him. But now she came to sit under him
every Sunday; and he could have wished her absent; for she diverted his
thoughts from piety to the selections of texts applicable in the case
of a woman who sat with arms knotted, and the frown of an intemperate
schoolgirl forbidden speech; while her pew's firelight startlingly
at intervals danced her sinister person into view, as from below. The
lady's inaccessible and unconquerable obtuseness to exhortation informed
the picture with an evil spirit that cried for wrestlings.
Regularly every week-day she headed the war now rageing between Olmer
and Addicotes, on the borders of the estates. It was open war, and
herself to head the cavalry. Weyburn, driving up a lane in the gig she
had sent to meet the coach, beheld a thicket of countrymen and boys
along a ridge; and it swayed and broke, and through it burst the figure
of a mounted warrior woman at the gallop, followed by what bore an
appearance of horse and gun, minus carriage, drivers at the flanks
cracking whips on foot. Off went the train, across a small gorse common,
through a gate.
'That's another down,' said his whip. 'Sound good wood it is, not made
to fall. Her ladyship's at it hard to-day. She 'll teach Mr. Addicote a
thing or two about things females can do. That is, when they stand for
their rights.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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