A Civil Contract

“I should have married Julia? I doubt it. I suppose I might have contrived to compound with the creditors, but I hardly think Oversley would have consented to such a poor match for Julia. He told me once that he didn’t think we were well-suited. In fact, we should have been very ill-suited. She would have discovered me to be a dead bore, poor girl, and I am much better off with my Jenny.”

She blushed fierily. “Oh, no — you don’t mean that! I do try to make you comfortable, but I’m not beautiful or accomplished, like she is!”

“No, but on the other hand you don’t enact me Cheltenham tragedies when I’ve barely swallowed my breakfast!” he said. He took her face between his hands, turning it up, and looking down at her for a moment before he kissed her. “I do love you, Jenny,” he said gently. “Very much indeed — and I couldn’t do without you. You are a part of my life. Julia was never that — only a boy’s impractical dream!”

A little pang smote her; she wanted to askhim: “Do you love me as much as you loved her? ” She was too inarticulate to be able to utter, the words; and, in a minute, knew that it would be foolish to do so. Searching his eyes, she saw warmth in them, and tenderness, but not the ardent flame that had once kindled them when he had looked at Julia. She hid her face in his shoulder, thinking that she too had had an impractical dream. But she had always known that she was too commonplace and matter-of-fact to inspire him with the passionate adoration he had felt for Julia. Probably Adam would always carry Julia in some corner of his heart She had been tiresome today, putting him out of love with her, but Jenny did not think that this revulsion would last. Julia stood for his youth, and the high hopes he had cherished, and although he might no longer yearn to possess her she would remain nostalgically dear to him while life endured.

Yet, after all, Jenny thought that she had been granted more than she had hoped for when she had married him. He did love her: differently, but perhaps more enduringly; and he had grown to depend on her. She thought that they would have many years of quiet content: never reaching the heights, but living together in comfort and deepening friendship. Well, you can’t have it both ways, she thought, and I couldn’t live in alt all the time, so I daresay I’m better off as things are.

She felt his hand lightly stroking her hair, and lifted her head. He was looking gravely at her, aware that she was troubled, yet not wholly understanding the cause. She gave him a hug, smiling reassuringly at him. She thought, and was comforted, that though she was not the wife of his dreams it was with her, not with Julia, that he shared life’s little, foolish jokes. Her eyes narrowed, twinkling, as she disclosed the latest of these to him.

“I wouldn’t tell you till we were alone, but your mama writes that it is exactly as she foretold!”

The hint of anxiety in his face disappeared. Amusement took its place; he exclaimed appreciatively: “Charlotte’s child favours Lambert!”

She nodded, chuckling. “Yes, and she says the poor little thing is positively gross, and quite undistinguished, besides having, already, a — a decided air of self-consequence!”

He gave a shout of laughter; and the pain in her heart was eased. After all, life was not made up of moments of exaltation, but of quite ordinary, everyday things. The vision of the shining, inaccessible peaks vanished; Jenny remembered two pieces of domestic news, and told Adam about them. They were not very romantic, but they were really much more important than grand passions or blighted loves: Giles Jonathan had cut his first tooth, and Adam’s best cow had given birth to a fine heifer-calf.