Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits - Donoghue [33]
"Will I like Switzerland, John?"
"How could you not?" He gives her a look of kindly exasperation. "All that remains to be seen is whether you can bear the heat and the fatigue of walking at high altitudes. I do wish I might show you France too, but those wretched revolutionaries have put paid to that plan."
"Is it true what people are saying," asks Effie, "that there could be dreadfulness here in Britain too?"
His eyebrows almost meet. "Who's been putting such nonsense into your head?"
She speaks with fearful relish. "A hundred thousand of the Chartists are marching in London today, the vicar told me, and it's said they've gathered five million signatures for their petition, and if they don't get their way there'll be blood shed!"
"In that case, it's just as well we're here in the tranquil Highlands," he says, grinning at his bride.
After the dark blot of Birnam Wood—where John coughs and blows his nose for some time, in preparation for quoting Macbeth— they pass the ruined cathedral of Dunkeld. When the carriage goes over a rock in the road the couple are flung up in the air, and both break into laughter.
"Sony, Miss, sir," comes a muffled call from the coachman, and Hobbs's upsidedown head hangs at the window for a moment, checking that his master and new mistress are unhurt.
When the footman's head has disappeared, Effie leans against John confidentially. "Why did you many me, I wonder?"
"Fishing for compliments, are we?"
"No," she cries, stung. "But you are a brilliant young man of some name in literary and artistic circles, and of all the girls there are in the world—"
"Why did my heart select Miss Euphemia Chalmers Gray, of Bowerswell, near Perth?"
"Your mother once told me," she remarks carefully, "that you have a tendency to surround people with imaginary charms."
"Well, let's consider the matter." He holds her chin between finger and thumb, at a judicious distance. "Are Miss Grays charms of a chimerical nature? Item: she has an exceedingly pretty face. Item: she is both lively and kind."
"That's two items in one," Effie points out, squirming.
"Item: she plays Mendelssohn moderately well."
She makes a moue.
"Now, on the dark side of the scales, to prove my objectivity—," John growls. "Item: the same Miss Gray does not always welcome criticism. Item: her health is uncertain, and her talents as a walker are so far untried. Item: she likes everybody—"
"Isn't that a virtue?"
"—everybody and anybody, which is most definitely a weakness."
"You're such a queer being!" Effie exclaims with a giggle.
"I?" He makes a face of shock.
"You shrink from society,"—she counts on her fingers—"you write and paint and work like a carthorse, you're prone to dreadful melancholies, and you're besotted with your old Alps."
"You'll never wean me from them. But I do admit I am an odd fellow," John says seriously, peering out the window at the encroaching twilight. "If I had been born into your sex, I doubt I could ever have loved a man like me."
"Don't say that," she says worriedly. "I never meant you weren't easy to love."
"Well," says John, rubbing his hands together, "Heaven never designed men and women to be the same. Marriage is said to be a miraculous yoking of opposites." He interweaves his cold fingers with hers, till they form a tight roof. "Whatever may be flawed, or lacking, in each of us, the other will supply."
They drive on, north by northeast into the ragged hills, and the darkness closes in around them. At Pitlochry, the coachman gets down to light the carriage lamps.
"Tell me, John," Effie murmurs sleepily, "how shall we pass our days?"
He pulls at his whiskers, considering the matter. "Much as we've spent them until now, I hope."
"Oh," she says faintly.
"Except of course that we shall be together, in our rented house for the time being. I shall go into London all day, to the British Museum, or if I'm etching or doing anything that requires good light, I shall go to my old study at my parents' house."