XI

The room was perfect. It was a large corner room with a good bath, fronting the sea and also facing south over the dark moors toward Tom Nevershead. But wide strips of black tape had been fastened securely around the shades, and the shades themselves were pulled down to the sash.

“The blackout,” Ethel said.

“I’d forgotten.”

“I’d like to get into something different.”

“No time, Ethel. I told the desk we’d be right down. It’s late.”

“You go hold the table, I’ll only be a minute.”

Left to herself, she stood staring into the mirror of the bureau, though this was no time to be dallying. But she dreaded going downstairs, dreaded what might happen later. She did not see herself in the glass and she was not thinking of herself. She was thinking of her husband.

It wasn’t fair to spoil his vacation. He had needed it for so long, the rest and change; and perhaps that’s all he did need—perhaps, even, everything might be different from now on, from right now, beginning tonight. And yet—how long could she sustain herself on expectation alone?

She loved him—oh, there was no question that she didn’t love him; but how long could she go on loving a man who wasn’t there? True, he had tried to pay a certain amount of attention to her on the boat, at first, tried to patch up a quarrel which he had sensed at once was in the air, but that had been mere politeness, habit, and pride. It made things easier for him if outwardly everything looked all right. That was all he really wanted: the semblance of order and harmony. Provided the outward appearances of husband-­and-­wifely unity were kept up, basic troubles could be ignored as if they didn’t exist, ignored forever and ever till they finally didn’t matter any more. He could do that; but she couldn’t.

While the boat waited at Oak Bluffs, he had given her her opportunity to speak; and she had failed. The moment having come, she found herself fumbling helplessly, and somehow the advantage had passed from her to him: as always, he became the one who did the attacking, not she. Why was it always like that? Her emotion and her love were truly too deep for words, while he—he could carry on glibly, devastatingly, through any impasse that came up between them, unanswerable and always victorious. Her misery had been so keen that she had found herself longing for the Haumans to return, the Haumans for whom she did not give a damn; when they did return, it had been more of a relief to her than they or he could possibly have known. A strange reversal had taken place, for which no one was responsible but herself. She was the one who was putting it off, thrusting it far into the background, taking refuge in the company of strangers. This, somehow, was the crowning humiliation; far from bringing the matter into the open and facing it, out of cowardice she was helping her husband to cover it up.

She turned her back on the dresser and looked at the room through tear-­filled eyes. She looked at the beds. She would take the one farthest from the door, he the nearest, as they always did—and that would be that. But the idea of undressing in his presence (her husband of ten years!) and getting into bed, with him in the other bed in the same room, saying good night and going to sleep—she couldn’t do it. Yet she knew she would. She knew that when he took her in his arms as he was certain to do tonight, all her resolution would melt away and the moment would pass forever. For another month, or six months, or for the rest of their lives, they would carry on the pretense as they had been carrying it for so long now, and the moment might never rise again. Perhaps in time it wouldn’t matter—somehow this seemed the most dreadful thought of all.

She bent down, unsnapped one of her bags, and took out a green wool dress. She had packed well; it showed scarcely a wrinkle. She stepped out of her skirt, slipped off her jacket and blouse, and pulled the dress over her head. She fixed her hair at the mirror and put on some lipstick.

Had he known what she was talking about or trying to say? Of course he had; he always did. Is that why he had risen so sharply, so instantaneously to the attack? But as she thought it over, she realized she hadn’t been talking about anything: she had said nothing, the blame was hers, not his, that nothing had been resolved. Nothing would be resolved; love tied her hands, love and pity for her husband, who, for all his facility in argument, was as much at sea as she was. If she really wanted to reach him, might it not be better to wait a while longer, do nothing whatever about it now, let him make love to her if he wanted to and so carry their marriage through another few weeks? It was a pointless question; she knew she would be unable to decide what to do in any case.

Love is of man’s life a thing apart; it is a woman’s whole existence. . . . Thus the poet. But it could be her degradation, too. Having so much to give him, getting so little in return, whatever happiness she had now consisted merely in being thankful for small favors. Were small favors worth it; did they really give her anything; was loving him—just loving in itself—enough? If it came to that, her love was big enough to sustain them both; but she had to know, had to feel even if he never said a word, that her love was at least wanted and needed.

She turned back to the glass, gave a last look at her hair, and fastened a plain gold chain around her neck. She wished it were longer, wished it hung lower in a longer oval, so that it didn’t make her face look so round. She looked at the effect in the mirror, and then, staring at her reflection, again lost herself in her thoughts.