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Updated: June 19, 2025
No woman ever lived, perhaps, with more conscientious ideas of her duty as a woman than Mrs Winterfield of Prospect Place, Perivale. And this, as I say it, is intended to convey no scoff against that excellent lady.
'I always think that Perivale church looks better from Creevy bridge than any other point. Perivale church stood high in the centre of the town, on an eminence, and was graced with a spire which was declared by the Perivalians to be preferable to that of Salisbury in proportion, though it was acknowledged to be somewhat inferior to it in height.
She could not say to him, 'If you are too poor to be married or even if you mean to put forward that pretence say so at once. He still called her Clara, and still asked her to walk with him, and still talked, when they were alone together, in a distant cold way, of the events of their future combined life. Would they live at Perivale? Would it be necessary to refurnish the house?
She had been strong in her youth, and had herself sat through evening lectures with a fortitude which other people cannot attain. And she was strong too in her age, with the strength of a martyr, submitting herself with patience to wearinesses which are insupportable to those who have none of the martyr spirit. The sermons of Perivale were neither bright, nor eloquent, nor encouraging.
If I had known that all this was to be said to me about money, and that our poverty was to be talked over between you and Captain Aylmer, I would not have come to Perivale. I would rather that you should be angry with me and think that I had forgotten you. 'You would not say that, Clara, if you remembered that this will probably be your last visit to me. 'No, no; it will not be the last.
She had become uneasy when he asked her whether she would like to live in his house at Perivale. But afterwards, when he suggested that she was to have some companion with her there, she felt herself compelled to put an end to the conversation. And yet she knew that this was always the way, both with him and with herself.
We shall probably spend some months every year at Perivale, and I hope that we may look forward to the pleasure of seeing you sometimes as a guest beneath our roof. On reading this Clara shuddered, and made some inward protestation which seemed to imply that she had no wish whatever to revisit the dull streets of the little town with which she had been so well acquainted.
There were two lines of a postscript, which could not but flatter him: 'Papa is so anxious for Christmas, that you may be here again and so, indeed, am I also. Of course it will be understood that this was written before Clara's visit to Perivale, and before Mrs Winterfield's death.
'If you allow him to talk you over you will be a wretched woman all your life. 'It will be better that he should come, said Clara again. And then she wrote to Captain Aylmer at Perivale, telling him that she would be at the house at the hour he had named, on the day he had named.
He was a Conservative, and of course he told his hearers that a good time was coming; that he and his family were really about to buckle themselves to the work, and that Perivale would hear things that would surprise it.
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