To Love and to Cherish Read Online Free PDF Page B

ladies are mad for the Archangel, and regularly bombard him with cakes and scones, mufflers and gloves, slippers, pressed flowers, bookmarkers, antimacassars—anything they can think of to bring home to him the pitiful meagerness of his lonely domestic circumstances. Two sisters, Chloe and Cora Swan, daughters of the blacksmith, are the fiercest competitors, but the mayor’s daughter, Miss Honoria Vanstone, is no slouch, and not a few interested observers have put their money on her (figuratively speaking, one assumes). My informants were Mrs. and Miss Weedie, elderly mother and middle-aged daughter, genteel ladies of Wyckerley, who paid an old-fashioned call on me this afternoon. All the above gossip was couched in the most respectful and discreet terms, of course, but one reads between the lines and draws one’s own conclusions. I was welcomed to the neighborhood by these two ladies with much kindness and not a little awe (the latter most amusing and disconcerting), not to mention a large jar of pickled eggs—“with biscuits and tea, a great boon to the digestion.” Once their timidity began to wear off, we had quite a jolly chat. At the end of the allotted twenty minutes, they invited Geoffrey and me to tea after church next Sunday. I was vague.
Must
I go to church? How seriously am I to take my new role of lady of the manor? Geoffrey offers no guidance; it’s all a joke to him. I suppose it’s a joke to me as well—and yet, the Weedies’ kindness to me was real, and for a few minutes I did not feel as if I were in disguise . . .
    A little money has come from the lawyer, four hundred pounds or so, I think. Geoffrey took it and went away this morning, to Exeter to buy a horse. So now I am alone. I can never decide which is worse—being alone, or being alone with my husband.
    13 April
    This is not a tragedy, this is only the beginning of a night. But on evenings like this I understand perfectly what drives people to drink. Everything is heightened, sharper, exaggerated, as the time crawls by. At six o’clock, the night to come seems endless, and unhealthy thoughts fester in the mind. Who will speak to me? Will I write a letter? Would William Holyoake sit down and talk with me for ten minutes, for an hour? But I don’t ask him to; as dreadful as this solitude is tonight, I can’t bear the thought of speaking to another living soul. But—then again—I must hear a human voice, or see a face, or watch someone walk across the courtyard. I must get out of my own mind.
    No. I can’t speak to anyone, I’m utterly unfit for conversation. They would think me odder than I am, even mad. Well, perhaps I am. Maybe this is how it starts. If I must go on and on like this forever, I would rather be mad. My life is becoming a desolation. I’m in an absolute hunger for warmth, sympathy, some small kindness.
    I’m afraid of losing my hold on the here and now, of sliding farther and farther away from the commerce of my daily life and ending in some dark room, screaming. Absurd! Oh, but I long for a drug that would make me sleep now, deeply and dreamlessly, until dawn. Morning birds, rude sunshine, everything full and unexperienced—then I would have my courage back. But now I fear this dusk, these dark thoughts, dying, death, my end. Oh, God, what shall I do?
    Nothing. Open a book, call for tea. Endure.
    Footsteps on the stairs: a timely interruption. I hope it’s—
    I T WAS S USAN . “M’lady,” she said, patting her chest, panting a little from the climb, “‘scuse me fer interruptin’, but I thought you did ought t’ know that Reverend Morrell’s come to see ’is lordship.”
    “Reverend Morrell? He’s here, now?” A glance at the mantel clock told her it was almost nine o’clock.
    “Well, ’e might still be here. See, ma’am, Violet answered the door an’ put ’im in the blue parlor, but then Mrs. Fruit come an’ told ’im ’is lordship’s away an’ you was indisposed—which is what you said