Lord Ormont and His Aminta — CompleteMeredith, George
General
Lord Ormont and His Aminta — Complete
Meredith, George
English fiction -- 19th century
Aminta dwelt on “the one sole one.” Lord Ormont's treatment had
detached her from any belief in love on his part; and the schoolboy, now
ambitions to become a schoolmaster, was behind the screen unlikely to
be lifted again by a woman valuing her pride of youth, though he
had--behold our deceptions!--the sympathetic face entirely absent from
that of Mr. Adolphus Morsfield, whom the world would count quite as
handsome--nay, it boasted him. He enjoyed the reputation of a killer
of ladies. Women have odd tastes, Aminta thought, and examined the
gentleman's handwriting. It pleased her better. She studied it till the
conventional phrases took a fiery hue, and came at her with an invasive
rush.
The letter was cast back into the box, locked up; there an end to it, or
no interdiction of sleep.
Sleep was a triumph. Aminta's healthy frame rode her over petty
agitations of a blood uninflamed, as lightly as she swam the troubled
sea-waters her body gloried to cleave. She woke in the morning peaceful
and mildly reflective, like one who walks across green meadows. Only by
degrees, by glimpses, was she drawn to remember the trotting, cantering,
galloping, leaping of an active heart during night. We cannot, men
or woman, control the heart in sleep at night. There had been wild
leapings. Night will lead an unsatisfied heart of a woman, by way of
sleep, to scale black mountains, jump jagged chasms. Sleep is a horse
that laughs at precipices and abysses. We bid women, moreover, be
all heart. They are to cultivate their hearts, pay much heed to their
hearts. The vast realm of feeling is open to these appointed keepers of
the sanctuary household, who may be withering virgins, may be childless
matrons, may be unhusbanded wives. Wandering in the vast realm which
they are exhorted to call their own, for the additional attractiveness
it gives them, an unsatisfied heart of woman will somewhat audaciously
cross the borderland a single step into the public road of the vast
realm of thinking. Once there, and but a single step on the road, she is
a rebel against man's law for her sex. Nor is it urgent on her that she
should think defiantly in order to feel herself the rebel. She may think
submissively; with a heart (the enlarged, the scientifically plumped,
the pasture of epicurean man), with her coveted heart in revolt, and
from the mere act of thinking at all.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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