Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits - Donoghue [34]
"Couldn't you do that at home with me?"
"No, no," he laughs, "I'd be shockingly under your feet. You'll be busy writing letters to improve your spelling, and trying to read Balzac for your French, and keeping up your piano—though perhaps not for two hours at a time anymore, as in your boarding-school days."
"And I shall have your coat brushed," Effie murmurs, "and mend your gloves, and above all, I shall keep you from wearing white hats!"
"And in return, young Miss Gray, you must rein in your extravagant spending—"
Her mouth begins to turn down.
"—and promise never to wear that excessively pink bonnet."
She sighs like a martyr. "Pink is my favourite colour."
"In this instance you must bow to the superior discernment of a man who has made the beauties of Nature and Art his life's study."
"Very well," she yawns.
"And also," he says, pressing his advantage, "you mustn't let your uncle call you Phemy anymore. Effie I've named you, and Effie you'll stay. Phemy sounds like the kind of restless girl you used to be, who gadded around town to phrenologists and mesmerists and all manner of charlatans!"
Effie ignores this. "I expect I shall like keeping house, even just a rented one," she says thoughtfully, "and before long I shall have—I mean—," and she falters—"quite apart from any other domestic duties that may arise in the fullness of time."
She waits, watching his profile in the dim of the carriage, but he does not pick up the subject; he has begun to sniffle, again, and is fumbling for his handkerchief. "I dare say you will have to call, and be called upon, most days," he remarks glumly.
"It's not that I'll have to, John; I'll like to."
"Well, it comes to the same thing." He blows his nose violently. "But I trust you won't be flirting with any more young subalterns."
"John!"
He wags his long finger at her. "Admit it, Effie, until our engagement was made public, you were a perfect specimen of a man-trap!"
Speechless, she rolls her eyes.
"But no," he adds more soberly, "all I really fear is that you will encourage the hordes to pester me."
"Oh, I never would!"
"You don't seem to understand, my dear, that even now it's only by a firm rudeness that I am able to shield myself against the importunities of acquaintance-seekers, who long to know me, and talk nonsense about art. The social whirl is as much poison to my health as arsenic would be," he adds fiercely, rubbing at his nose with his damp handkerchief. "When people try to get at me through you—"
"I won't let them," she insists, squeezing his wrist. "Now tell me more about our days," she murmurs soothingly.
"Well," says John, lying back against the horsehair upholstery with a wheezy sigh, "I'll return at four o'clock, shall we say, and present myself in the parlour to take you down to dinner—"
"Papa says I always order a very good dinner."
"—indeed, and then we shall have delicious hours of quiet tête-à-tête."
"Oh yes," she says eagerly. "You'll show me pictures of beautiful statues, and we'll discuss your book, and your Mr. Turner and his wild paintings, and I shall learn to mend your broken pens. But John, will you not miss your bachelor state?"
"I should hope not," he says, smiling down at her. "You will be a great solace to me; someone to come home to, someone to refresh my spirits and save me from my old despondencies. You'll be my mistress, my friend, my queen, my treasure, my only darling, my own Effie!"
She shudders with pleasure. "But John," she says after a moment, tugging at his cuff, "how do I know you will always love me as you do now?"
He grins at her between nose-blows. "That depends entirely upon yourself. A good wife has a secret power to make her husband love her more and more every day." He wipes his streaming eyes and gathers her into his arms. "And I know this much: God has given you to me, and he gives no imperfect gifts."
The countryside is a rumpled black blanket, only occasionally lit up by the coachman's swinging lamps. The newlyweds, enclosed in the carriage, cannot see each other's faces anymore. At the Bridge of Tilt, Effie