Country life -- England -- Fiction; England -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
It was with a kind of solemnity of sweetness that Harry dwelt upon
Viola’s trust in him and his manhood. By a thousand little signs it had
been made plain that she knew more of the world than he, but she put all
that knowledge aside and looked up to him and submitted to him as if
infinite wisdom and experience were his. And in truth he had grown
greatly in mental stature since her love had come into his life to
change it so completely. They must have remarked upon it at home if he
had not taken such advantage of the freedom that was granted him and
been so little at home at this time. His mother actually had told him
that he was altered, after he had expressed himself with more than usual
self-confidence when they had talked about the war over the
dinner-table. She was always on the look-out for signs of something
that might take him from her, and she feared the war and what might come
of it with an unreasoning fear, considering the information at her
command. Harry was thinking a great deal about the war now, which does
not mean that there were any times at which he was not thinking about
Viola. With the coming of love his sense of the deeper values of life
had become strengthened. If he had felt himself borne along on a strong
current that would carry him to whatever of action or duty or mere state
of being that was laid down for him, then whatever happened to him was
part of the whole, and nothing in his life would be dissociated from
anything else. It was this sense of unity that lifted his fresh boy’s
adoration of a girl as young and as pure as himself into something
bigger and more rooted than that, beautiful as it is. His love gave the
divine note of joy to all his purpose, sweetened and solemnized it at
the same time. It was not like a great happiness in which he could
forget himself, and which he must also forget for a time if something
more serious had to be faced.
This morning, for the first time, influenced perhaps by the breath from
outside which had come through Wilbraham’s advent upon the scene, which,
however, they put aside from them, they talked about the time when Viola
should have gone away.
Their extreme youth moved them to sadness, which was not wholly painful
because the time was not near yet, and present bliss was only heightened
by the thought of parting. They were so far unlike most young lovers
that no mention was made of writing, or even of meeting again. It was
as if the contact between them was so close and so sure that however far
apart they might be in space, and for whatever time, they would still be
together.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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