Young Earnest: The Romance of a Bad Start in LifeCannan, Gilbert
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Young Earnest: The Romance of a Bad Start in Life
Cannan, Gilbert
English fiction -- 20th century
He weakened to her will, and not again during their honeymoon did he
let slip in expression or gesture the tiniest hint of the storm let
loose in him. Small periods of solitude he could procure at night when
she had retired for her astonishingly lengthy toilette. Then in
suppression of his fire and rebellion, in the effort to keep a tight
control on it even within himself, he became aware of a strength, a
firmness that, out of all that he had lost of youth and ease and
pleasant happiness and the charm of living, emerged as gain. Yet it
was not in his nature to count it up nor to hoard. He could find much
to rejoice over, the splendor of the night, the keen winds, the huge
waves splashing under the wind, and all he would take to his wife for
her to turn into charm. And she would weave her spells round him. Her
tone, her eyes, her warmth, that was so like tenderness as almost to
deceive him into acquiescence, all said to him: "Forget! Forget!" But
every fiber of his will was stretched in the effort to remember and
gain knowledge--to remember how this thing had come about, that he
should have so much and so little love for this woman, by what
blindness he had come to it, and what in all his slow growth to
manhood should have brought him to such sweet mockery of it. These
were not his words. He was groping beyond words, beyond actions; his
captured force was searching through his life to find forces to
sustain it, to urge it on, to release that slow-moving stream that had
brought him thus far to be chained and confined. He who had realized
so little was struggling to realize himself, to find within himself
the power that should break this woman in her complacent dwelling in
the pleasure of their love and set him free and her. For he had begun
dimly to perceive that she too was to be thought of, and in his effort
he was gentle with her. This was hard, for against his gentleness she
chafed. She wanted turbulence, upheaval, suspected not the stirring in
his depths and was forever agitating the surface of his being. Once or
twice she did call forth the anger, and then she reveled in her
delicious fright and was so quiet as to alarm him and drive him back
into his gentleness. Out of this she stirred him. It was to her only
an odious sluggishness.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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