IV

The train down from Boston was hot, noisy, and dirty. Ethel Grandin rode in the daycoach, not because there was no Pullman (she hadn’t inquired about that) but because it would have seemed extravagant to pay extra fare for a trip of only three hours; she disliked anything that suggested ostentation or luxury. Her luggage was piled in the rack above her head; one bag remained in the aisle, to the annoyance of passers-­by, but that was something she could do nothing about. Each time the conductor came through he frowned darkly and seemed about to reprove this thoughtless passenger for cluttering up the aisle with her baggage; but after one look at the self-­contained lady sitting coolly in her seat virtually surrounded by servicemen, he changed his mind and went on. In her lap were the sandwiches she would eat for lunch, and a detective story called Holy Murder which she tried at intervals to read. The thickset private who all but leaned against her shoulder and the two sailors sprawled in the seat facing her—one of whom rested his feet on the dingy plush upholstery between her and the soldier—eyed her parcel of sand­wiches now and then, her book, or, more frequently, her legs.

That the book did not hold her interest was more her husband’s fault than the storyteller’s; taking over her thought more and more, he stood between her and attention. She put the book aside and watched the passing landscape, but the soldier thought she was looking at him and returned the look; so she directed her gaze along the car instead, a little above the heads of the two sprawling sailors. One of them, a dark unshaven fellow, was about to fall asleep with his cheek against the windowpane and his mouth open; the other was a blond child in no more than his middle teens. It was he whose neatly polished shoes continually brushed her skirt—purposely or not, she couldn’t make out; and when he caught her eye he gave her a sly, insolent, yet boyish smile.

Alan and Ted would have engaged both sailors in conversation at once, and the soldier as well; her husband would have done the same; but she could not bring herself to look squarely at these young men, much less converse with them. Like many women, Ethel Grandin loved the war, loved the fact that her country was in it, loved servicemen and the uniform; her eyes filled up with tears and her breast nearly burst at the sound and sight of martial music and a parade; but if a soldier or sailor accosted her on the street—or sparred for an opening to familiarity, as this boy seemed to be doing—all thought of the uniform vanished instantly and she could only regard him as what he was in actuality: a fresh kid.

Some women would have laughed, thinking it funny, or cute; others might have been flattered. But she was not flattered and she did not think it cute. On the contrary, there was something distinctly unpleasant in the idea that he might think she would be interested in him. She stared with a fixed stare at the far end of the car, determined to think of other things and thus wipe him from her mind.

She was glad she had remembered to send postcards to Alan and Ted during her few minutes in Boston; she must get some more in Woods Hole, and again in Nantucket before leaving for Sconset. She had not wanted the children with her and had only considered the idea at all because her husband had suggested it. She knew well why she preferred to meet him alone today; indeed, in her present confused state, it was the only thing she could be sure of. This was not because in the romantic sense she wanted her husband all to herself; it was because this holiday—possibly even this night—was to decide an issue in their marriage which (in her mind, at least) had reached a crisis. Had the boys been present to take the attention of either their father or their mother, this issue would not be resolved.—But what the “issue” was, or how one could resolve it, she did not know. If she did know, she would be able to meet her husband with a confidence and purpose she was far from feeling.

His hint that she bring the boys with her had not helped any. She was glad he was devoted to their sons; it was something she had always been proud of. So many men were indifferent to their children, particularly when they were little, but he had loved them from the first, had tended and taken care of them, and had shown an interest in them equal to the interest he brought to his work. In so far as the children were concerned, she could ask nothing more. But lately—increasingly so during the past year or two—Ethel Grandin had begun to feel she was being left out; he loved the children more than he loved her, had more need of them in his life, paid more attention to them than to herself. Time after time recently she had felt a curious sudden pang as she saw him respond so completely to one of their sons, saw his look of affection, his entire gratification and satisfaction with them. The pang was not jealousy; it was the feeling of being unwanted. She would have given much to know that he was as pleased with her as he was with them, and as loved. She had been, in the past.

From the first he had been the only man who had ever understood her; but did he understand her now, or know her feelings at all? She remembered so clearly the first evening he had taken her home from a party, and why. It had been an embarrassing evening, with several silly people spoiling what might have been good talk. She had no social gift in the sense of being able to make conversation about nothing with men and women she didn’t care for or know well. Present had been a woman with a flair for dramatics who at one point in the evening began to entertain them all with palm reading. She took Ethel’s reluctant palm in her own, gazed at it with wide-­eyed amaze, and gasped: “Look at that Mount of Venus! Did you ever see such a Mount of Venus in your life? I ask you!” Acutely embarrassed, Ethel Cameron found herself murmuring: “I’ve been told I have a murderer’s or a suicide’s hand.” The woman gazed at her darkly, held her speech for a dramatic moment, and then replied: “Well, it’s not a murderer’s hand.”—Of them all, John Grandin had been the only one who understood that Ethel had improvised what she had said (just as the palm reader had improvised her remark about the Mount of Venus) in an effort to take part, help out, give the woman something to go on. It had been silly of her to have suggested such a thing, but she had felt called upon to say something. Neither she nor John Grandin was foolish enough to attach any importance to the woman’s reckless interpretation, but they were both incensed by its stupidity. In a few moments they had left the party together; and an hour later (incredible to think of it now, since he had been, till then, such a stranger) they were making love.

That night he had become the single soul in the world whose destiny (oh far more than the children’s) was irrevocably linked with hers.