English fiction -- 19th century; Marriage -- Fiction
Suspicions were not of the brood Carinthia's bosom harboured. Suspicion
of Chillon's wife Carinthia could not feel. An uncaptained vessel in the
winds on high seas was imagined without a picturing of it. The
apparition of Ives, if it was he, would not fit with any conjecture.
She sent a warning to Madge, and at the same time named the girl's
wedding day for her; pained in doing it. She had given the dear girl
her word that she would be present at this of all marriages. But a day
or two days or more would have to be spent away from Chillon; and her
hunger for every hour beside her brother confessed to the war going on
within her, as to which was her holier duty, the one on the line of her
inclinations, or that one pointing to luxury-choice between a battle-
horse and a cushioned-chair; between companionship with her glorious
brother facing death, and submission to a weak young nobleman claiming
his husband's rights over her. She had submitted, had forgotten his icy
strangeness, had thought him love; and hers was a breast for love, it was
owned by the sobbing rise of her breast at the thought. And she might
submit again--in honour? scorning the husband? Chillon scorned him. Yet
Chillon left the decision to her, specified his excuses. And Henrietta
and Owain, Lady Arpington, Gower Woodseer, all the world--Carinthia
shuddered at the world's blank eye on what it directs for the
acquiescence of the woman. That shred of herself she would become,
she felt herself becoming it when the view of her career beside her
brother waned. The dead Rebecca living in her heart was the only
soul among her friends whose voice was her own against the world's.
But there came a turn where she and Rebecca separated. Rebecca's
insurgent wishes taking shape of prophecy, robbed her of her friend
Owain, to present her an impossible object, that her mind could not
compass or figure. She bade Rebecca rest and let her keep the fancy of
Owain as her good ghost of a sun in the mist of a frosty morning; sweeter
to her than an image of love, though it were the very love, the love of
maidens' dreams, bursting the bud of romance, issuing its flower.
Delusive love drove away with a credulous maiden, under an English
heaven, on a coach and four, from a windy hill-top, to a crash below,
and a stunned recovery in the street of small shops, mud, rain, gloom,
language like musket-fire and the wailing wounded.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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