but I didn’t think it right to marry you without letting you know it.
Yours very affectionately,
Esther Sands.
“Now you know it was rather damping to me, ’cause I’m fond of children; it makes you feel good to have the little ones crawling about you, and going to sleep in your arms. Them French women wouldn’t be half as bad if they nursed their own babies, to my mind. But still I didn’t feel like giving it up, ’cause of that, but I thought it was what many women wouldn’t have done in her case, and I thought all the more of her for it.
“Well, we were married by the curate, and his wife came to the wedding and kissed her. There are some good Christian women in the world, and that grey-eyed wife of the curate was one.
“We took this little house near the old people, and there we lived as happy as could be. She did her duty if ever woman did. I never had to speak twice about anything—the moment I expressed a wish for anything, she seemed to do her best to get it for me. My way was always best, at least for her, she said; but I don’t know how it was, I wasn’t quite satisfied. Seemed as if there was something more wanted to make me quite happy. She did all I wanted, and yet, somehow, it wasn’t quite what I wanted. I’m sure she loved me, but not, as she told me at first, with the same love she had felt for Sands.
“We used to talk about him, and it made me nigh mad at times to see her eyes sparkle and her face glow when I praised him. She was always more fond of me after I’d been talking of Sands.
“She couldn’t see a fault in him. I’ve heard a good deal in my time about first love and second love, and that sort of thing, but my opinion is this, that a woman can only love once with that kind of love that sees no faults—that kind of love that takes up all his opinions, his views—so that if you know his you know hers.
“Well, if they do get married in this state of mind, they don’t wake out of it for a long time—mostly they don’t, for that kind of love isn’t found much after twenty; it’s like a fever, they have it, and they’re safe then. Other things weigh with them—a man’s position, his means, and so on. They get more set then, criticise (don’t you call it?) a man, know his faults, admit them to others, but then they do their duty almost better in one case than the other; still a man feels somehow which kind of love he’s got, and he’s never quite satisfied without the first kind—at least I think so. I remember one night, about three months after we were married, I’d been talking of Sands a good deal to somebody who’d been to supper with us, and she was quite alive I could see—made me describe him, and listened as though she’d never heard it all before. We locked up the house and went to bed—that room, right over your head, was our bed-room—she fell asleep almost directly with one hand under my neck, and her face to me. I was awake, for, you see, I’d been talking and got excited a little. It was a moonlight night, and the light came in between the blind, and the side of the window right on her face.
“I was looking at her, as I said, half on my back, and half on my side—presently she put her other hand to my face, and stroked it as tender as if I’d been a baby, and murmured ‘John, dear John,’ and then drew my face to hers, and kissed me. She was dead asleep, too,—but, by G—d, sir, it was a thing I shall never forget! How I felt then! It was an awful thing to hear her say ‘John, dearest John,’ and my name Ben. She was dreaming of him, and he was dead, but I didn’t get over that for some time. Next morning, she told me she’d been dreaming of him, and that she had kissed him. I didn’t tell her I knew it before, though, for she was always as kind as could be to me when awake; still, you know, it goes to prove that she hadn’t the kind of love for me that I wanted, and I couldn’t make her feel any different if I spoke ever so much, so I never told her.
“After this, it happened once or twice; but I used to wake her up by touching her, or some way or another. I couldn’t bear it, you see. By G—d, I couldn’t, sir! You fancy your wife whispering, ‘John, dearest John,’ and your name Ben all the while.
“So we lived on for about ten years; she’s been dead fifteen years come next Michaelmas; 23rd September she died, in that room where I sleep now. I don’t know what she died of; but she kept getting paler and thinner, and more dreamy in the day-time, for years; then took to her bed, and was there nigh upon six months. Just before she died she made me tell her all about how Sands died, and what he said; and she took the two bits of the sixpence in her right hand, and shut it fast, and told me she’d like to be buried with ’em there.
“‘There’s one thing,’ she says, ‘I should like, too, Ben dear, if you don’t mind; you won’t be angry with me.’ ‘Angry with her,’ and she lay dying. I told her I’d do anything that she asked me.
“‘Can’t you put poor John’s name on the tombstone, Ben?’
“‘I don’t know how, Esther; it ain’t as if you’d been his wife.’
“I didn’t mean this unkind, and she knew it, for we always talked that way about it.
“‘But he meant to make me his wife, didn’t he, Ben?’
“‘He did, Esther, I’m sure.’
“‘Can’t you say that, then, on it?’
“‘I don’t see how. I’ll speak to the curate about it, so as to make it look proper.
“‘Thank you, Ben. You’ve been a good husband to me, Ben, better than I deserved; but I didn’t deceive you, did I, Ben? I told you at first I couldn’t feel for you like I did for poor John, didn’t I, Ben?’
“‘You did, Esther, and I know it, and I have felt it; but you’ve been a good wife to me, you’ve done your duty to me, and thank you for it.’ You see I never could say much, if I felt ever so.
“The curate’s wife came in just then, and Esther’s eyes looked bright; that little grey-eyed