The Deceased Wife's Sister, and My Beautiful Neighbour, v. 3

by William Clark Russell

I had proposed that we should spend our honeymoon abroad; but she would not listen to our leaving Elmore Court. She said it was now in the fulness of its beauty, and where should we find abroad so lovely and quiet an abode? "Did I not tell you, naughty boy, that I would not leave this house?" she had said. "It is the very perfection of a home, in my eyes. We know no one. We can have all the long days to ourselves. I can work in the garden without minding my dress. I should hate to have to keep myself tidy to receive callers—stupid people, who would come to envy and go away to tell stories. Look at my hair now—if I were anywhere else I should have to keep it dressed."

And she pointed at her reflection in the glass, which showed her yellow hair negligently looped behind with a piece of blue ribbon, with stray curls sunning over her white forehead, and streaming down her back.

She seemed, and she was, I am sure, perfectly happy. The gardeners took to her at once; and I would often see one or the other of them following her about to listen to her directions, touching his cap so often as he received her wishes; and yet, spite of his respectful manner, hinting by his behaviour that he thought her rather more of a child than a woman.

She had wanted to bring her own maid Lucy along with her, but the two servants and Mrs. Williams were enough for our wants. So Lucy returned to the village with the promise of filling the next vacancy in Elmore Court.

I purchased a phaeton and a smart little mare, and would drive Geraldine long excursions into the country. The memory of those days is very fresh. She seems to be at my side while I write, her large luminous eyes fixed on my face, her small white hand on my neck, interrupting me with the musical lilt of her voice to tell me of a bright-plumed bird that is drinking at the fountain.

You do not ask me what had become of the fine resolutions that had brought me to Cliffegate. You know, for you have doubtless experienced, that love is too absorbing a business to admit of any other occupation. The living freshness of my wife's society made my library a kind of mausoleum; and if I preferred basking in the luxury of her beauty to handling the dusty skeletons which lined the shelves, you will not be surprised. At the time of forming my resolutions I had never contemplated marrying; and now that I had married, my wife, for the time being at all events, fully satisfied the craving for occupation, for something to live for, which I had hoped ambition might have appeased. Yet I did not despair of waking one morning with a strong impulse to study. The fact of my life being no longer companionless would disarm the fears of ambition; and I felt that, should I fail in the attempt to distinguish myself hereafter, disappointment would be qualified, if indeed not obviated, by the knowledge that I had always by my side some one to love and who loved me, and whose happiness it would be a joyous occupation to minister to.

Her dislike of society had at first surprised me; but it made me love her the more. It argued, I thought, her ignorance of her fascination; for I could not doubt, had she known her powers of delighting, that she would never have buried them in so dead a retreat as Cliffegate. She was twenty-seven, a period of a woman's life when her love of pleasure and admiration is strong; though, it must be owned, that this love very often strengthens in proportion as time makes its gratification more difficult. Marrying her as I had, without a deep knowledge of her character, it would not have surprised me had she expressed a desire to change her solitude for a life of pleasure. The dull time she had passed would certainly have justified the wish. Her eagerness therefore to remain hidden from the world pleased me. It illustrated a nature pure and unsophisticated; a heart innocent and sincere. And it made me happy to believe I could always think of her as my own, without having the calmness of my devotion sullied by those breezes of jealousy which society sometimes brings with it, and which one's particular friends generally take care shall increase to gales.

We passed our time almost wholly together. She did not like that I should ever be from her side. She would call me from a book or a letter, to come and watch her watering some favourite plants, or any other work she might be at. And when such an excuse would be wanting, she would sit by me, take my hand, and so remain quiet, rubbing her cheek against my shoulder, and by her action and eloquent breathing suggesting the grace and purring of a kitten.

It was strange that I should have inspired such a love. This narrative has, I fear, given you but an imperfect conception of my character; yet you may infer enough from the crude sketch to make you wonder that any one so commonplace as I, should have given such life and movement to the deepest and most latent instincts of this beautiful creature's nature.

She had well said she was born to be loved. Her sensibilities were singularly acute; her nature warm and sudden; her sympathies too powerful; for they agitated her with more joy and grief than the occasion that bred the emotion justified. Her spirit, made tameless by solitude, desired the corrective of love; her fancies needed sobering; her longings wanted interpreting; her whole nature demanded the warmth of imparted passion to give life to slumbering powers, nourishment to sickly instincts, sap and vigour to the drooping qualities which had developed in loneliness and blossomed in sorrow.