Aurora Leigh – Love and Revolution - 2cyberwhelm.org

LADY WALDEMAR
Miss Leigh, I have a world to speak about your cousin's place in Shropshire where I've
been to see his work, our work. You heard I went? You'll like to hear that your last book
lies in the schoolroom, judged innocuous for the girls who still care for books. We all
must read, you see, before we live, til slowly the ineffable light comes up and, as it
deepens, drowns the written word. So said your cousin while we stood and felt a sunset
from his favorite beech tree seat. I think he looks well now, has quite got over that
unfortunate creature. Ah I know it moved you, tender heart. You took a liking to the
wretched girl. Perhaps you thought the marriage suitable? A poet hankers for romance
and so on.. As for Romney, it's sure he never loved her. Never. By the way, you have not
heard from her? Quite out of sight? Lost in every sense?
I breathe large at home.
YOUNG AURORA
AURORA
We are buried alive in this close world and want more room.
YOUNG AURORA
How she talked to pain me, a woman's spite. You wear steel mail. A woman plucks a
delicate needle out as if it were a rose and pricks you carefully beneath your nails, your
eyelids, in your nostrils. A beast would roar so tortured but a human creature must not,
shall not, no, not for shame. What vexes, after all, is just that such as she with such as I
knows how to vex. Sweet heaven, she takes me up as if she had fingered and dogeared
me and spelled me by the fireside half a life.
AURORA
And why should I be pained that Romney should marry Lady Waldemar?
YOUNG AURORA
She held her newly blossomed gladness in my face. Clearly Romney wants a wife. So,
good.
AURORA
The man's need of woman is greater than the woman's of man.
And easier served.
YOUNG AURORA
67