The Tragic Comedians: A Study in a Well-known Story — CompleteMeredith, George
General
The Tragic Comedians: A Study in a Well-known Story — Complete
Meredith, George
English fiction -- 19th century; Lassalle, Ferdinand, 1825-1864 -- Fiction
Alvan had relinquished her he loved to brave the tempest in a frail
small boat, and he certainly could not have apprehended the furious
outbreak she was exposed to. She might so far have exonerated him had
she been able to reflect; but she whom he had forced to depend on him
in blind reliance, now opened her eyes on an opposite power exercising
material rigours. After having enjoyed extraordinary independence for
a young woman, she was treated as a refractory child, literally marched
through the streets in the custody of her father, who clutched her by
the hair-Alvan’s beloved golden locks!--and held her under terror of a
huge forester’s weapon, that he had seized at the first tidings of his
daughter’s flight to the Jew. He seemed to have a grim indifference to
exposure; contempt, with a sense of the humour of it: and this was a
satisfaction to him, founded on his practical observance of two or
three maxims quite equal to the fullest knowledge of women for rightly
managing them: preferable, inasmuch as they are simpler, and, by merely
cracking a whip, bring her back to the post, instead of wasting time
by hunting her as she likes to run. Police were round his house. The
General chattered and shouted of the desperate lawlessness and larcenies
of that Jew--the things that Jew would attempt. He dragged her
indoors, muttering of his policy in treating her at last to a wholesome
despotism.
This was the medicine for her--he knew her! Whether he did or not, he
knew the potency of his physic. He knew that osiers can be made to
bend. With a frightful noise of hammering, he himself nailed up the
window-shutters of the room she was locked in hard and fast, and he
left her there and roared across the household that any one holding
communication with the prisoner should be shot like a dog. This was a
manifestation of power in a form more convincing than the orator’s.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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