Quiet Dell: A Novel by Jayne Anne Phillips Page B

they will meet for the first time, though she knows his soul so deeply. She will look into his eyes and see his words within them.
    She knows certain passages of his letters by heart. From the beginning, he has addressed the gulf between them, the loneliness that led them to correspond, his desire to marry, his standards and means.
    My dear unknown friend: My wife can have anything within reason that money can buy, but above all I expect her to give that true love and devotion everyone of us craves.
    She is not unattractive, but she is past her youth. She fears she looks careworn, drab, for she cannot afford the smart clothes andfine shoes, the appointments with hairdressers and manicurists, that might show her to better advantage. She’s not grown stout, at least; in fact, since Lavinia’s death, she’s lost weight. Such have been her worries and concerns, concerns she dares not confide, lest he think her a burden or question her motives. He must not know the depth of her exhaustion, for his words are the source of her renewal and stir in her the warmth of trust, and even, after so long, the anticipation of gentle touch.
    Each day is vividly alive with keen interest and it is you, Dear, who has given me the inspiration. Before you, life was prosaic and commonplace. No longer!
    Cornelius plans a future based upon her and she will not disappoint. The photographs, seated portraits taken in professional studios, show a man of no great height, well fleshed, immaculately dressed. His round gold spectacles and bow tie imply discernment. He is not handsome, but his gaze is direct, his eyes kind; perhaps he is shy, and less eloquent in person than on paper. It does not matter. She requires only his fidelity and support, his consideration, for he seems a gentleman, and takes such time and care. An ardent and faithful correspondent, he writes two letters for every one of hers, yet never reproaches her.
    I am trying in this manner to find my only One. . . . I have no financial worries, but, dear, it does not satisfy the heart. I need a good, true, affectionate wife; one who will love me and make home a paradise.
    The children, he knows, require her time and attention. Their grandmother’s recent passing has surely grieved them, reminding them anew of their father’s early death, but children are resilient. She has tried to make them known to him; she tells him that they are deserving and good, and not just because she loves them; adults who know them admire them, and they are well liked by theneighborhood children. Cornelius, a widower, is childless, and a man longs for a son. She believes he feels a special sympathy for her boy, who is twelve, nearly a young man. She’s written Hart’s name on the backs of photographs enclosed in her letters, and Cornelius responded so warmly, supplying a pet name for a boy he has yet to meet.
    I am indeed very proud of Buster. He looks like a splendid young chap, and the two girls, too, they look like fine children. They will have the opportunities that they deserve and they will be able to develop into whatever their inclinations may call for.
    Whose children will inhabit the dilapidated playhouse when they have gone, and hide their treasures in the broken-down workshop? Perhaps both will be razed, and a garden grown on the open land. All will be open. She will take her husband’s arm as they cross streets in the South, in the gentle mountain clime Cornelius describes, and in Cedar Rapids, where he owns a city home and a farm, hundreds of acres of Iowa land, lying flat beneath the sun. She imagines the land, arable and plowed as far as the eye can see, with a great cloud passing over it.
    The cloud is an image of her evasion and lack of candor. This she knows. Someday she will tell Cornelius all, the secrets she holds close, the shame, how the shock of Heinrich’s death was preceded by the trial of his betrayal, the long wrangling arguments, discussions, pleading, for he believed he had