So when the
sensibility burnt itself out, as it generally does; and when children,
and the weak health which comes with them, and the cares of a
household, and money difficulties were absorbing her little powers,
Elsley Vavasour began to fancy that his wife was a very commonplace
person, who was fast losing even her good looks and her good temper.
So, on the whole, they were not happy. Elsley was an affectionate man,
and honourable to a fantastic nicety; but he was vain, capricious,
over-sensitive, craving for admiration and distinction; and it was not
enough for him that his wife loved him, and bore him children, kept
his accounts, mended and moiled all day long for him and his; he
wanted her to act the public for him exactly when he was hungry for
praise; and that not the actual, but an altogether ideal, public; to
worship him as a deity, "live for him and him alone," "realise" his
poetic dreams of marriage bliss, and talk sentiment with him, or
listen to him talking sentiment to her, when she would much sooner be
safe in bed burying all the petty cares of the day, and the pain in
her back too, poor thing! in sound sleep; and so it befell that they
often quarrelled and wrangled, and that they were quarrelling and
wrangling this very night.
Who cares to know how it began? Who cares to hear how it went on,--the
stupid, aimless skirmish of bitter words, between two people who had
forgotten themselves? I believe it began with Elsley's being vexed
at her springing up two or three times, fancying that she heard the
children cry, while he wanted to be quiet, and sentimentalise over the
roaring of the wind outside.
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