Lord Ormont and His Aminta — CompleteMeredith, George
General
Lord Ormont and His Aminta — Complete
Meredith, George
English fiction -- 19th century
He nodded again. She came to a knowledge of Aminta's favourite colours
through the dwelling of his look on orange and black, deepest rose,
light yellow, light blue. Her grand-daughters won the satisfied look
if they wore a combination touching his memory. The rocky are not
imaginative, and have to be struck from without for a kindling of them.
Submissive though she was to court and soothe her brother Rowsley, a
spur of jealousy burned in the composition of her sentiments, to set
her going. He liked visiting Mrs. Lawrence Finchley at her effaced good
man's country seat, Brockholm in Berkshire, and would stay there a month
at a time. Lady Charlotte learnt why. The enthusiast for Aminta, without
upholding her to her late lord, whom she liked well, talked of her
openly with him, confessed to a fondness for her. How much Mrs. Lawrence
ventured to say, Lady Charlotte could not know. But rivalry pushed her
to the extreme of making Aminta partially a topic; and so ready was
he to follow her lead in the veriest trifles recalling the handsome
runaway; that she had to excite his racy diatribes against the burgess
English and the pulp they have made of a glorious nation, in order not
to think him inclining upon dotage.
Philippa's occasional scoff in fun concerning 'grandmama's tutor,'
hurt Lady Charlotte for more reasons than one, notwithstanding the
justification of her fore-thoughtfulness. The girl, however, was
privileged; she was Bobby Benlew's dearest friend, and my lord loved
the boy; with whom nothing could be done at school, nor could a tutor
at Olmer control him. In fine, Bobby saddened the family and gained the
earl's anxious affection by giving daily proofs of his being an Ormont
in a weak frame; patently an Ormont, recurrently an invalid. His moral
qualities hurled him on his physical deficiencies. The local doctor and
Dr. Rewkes banished him twice to the seashore, where he began to bloom
the first week and sickened the next, for want of playfellows, jolly
fights and friendships. Ultimately they prescribed mountain air, Swiss
air, easy travelling to Switzerland, and several weeks of excursions at
the foot of the Alps. Bobby might possibly get an aged tutor, or find an
English clergyman taking pupils, on the way.
Thus it happened, that seven years after his bereavement, Lord Ormont
and Philippa and Bobby were on the famous Bernese Terrace, grandest of
terrestrial theatres where soul of man has fronting him earth's utmost
majesty. Sublime: but five minutes of it fetched sounds as of a plug in
an empty phial from Bobby's bosom, and his heels became electrical.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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