IT WAS Friday morning. Jane Coe had set the alarm clock for eight, so that she would be sure to get hold of the electrician before he went off for the day. The icebox had been on the blink since Tuesday, and every morning she had missed him. It was no good leaving messages with his wife, to give him at lunch-time, for he was a lazy loafer who hated to come all the way out the back roads to the Coes’ house and risk getting stuck in the sand with his new low-slung car. You had to coax him, in person, using all your womanly wiles; if he once promised, he would not go back on it. Jane understood his point of view. Why should he come and waste his time here when he could go bass-fishing instead? He did not need the money; he made his killing on the summer people. Warren begged to differ; he and Jane had had quite a discussion on the subject only the night before. According to Warren, Will Harlow had a duty, as the only electrician in the community, to come when he was called, like a doctor. When Will went off to Florida last winter for a vacation, leaving everybody stranded and children’s milk spoiling in the iceboxes, Warren had seen red. But Jane said that just living was more important than fussing with other people’s electricity if you didn’t have to; Will’s customers could have put the milk out the window and waited calmly till he came back. She did not think it was fair to consider the texture of life the most important thing, for yourself, if you didn’t apply the same standard to poor Will, who came when it suited him or when he needed the money. This debonair statement had made Warren explode. “You mean Will Harlow comes here just for the money?” he had cried, setting down his cup of Sanka with a bang on the table; they did not bother with saucers. “He comes here because we bribe him,” he added, breathing fire.
“Of course,” replied Jane, yawning. This was truer than Warren knew. Jane had made a study of Will Harlow’s psychology, and in the summertime, when everybody was competing for him, she would put something extra out of commission to make it worth his while to come fix the stove or the icebox. She had a defective mixer that could be counted on to blow the electricity in the whole house if necessary. This was one of the little things she hid from Warren, on account of his high principles, but last night she had told him, just to shake him up. She had been reading an article in a medical magazine, explaining that anger was good for you; it kept you from getting cancer. They had had an awful fight, and Jane, sure enough, had slept like a log. She had slept so well that when the alarm clock rang, she had turned it off and burrowed back into her pillow, forgetting why she had set it. At nine o’clock, she had waked up with a start to realize that it was the day of the Bérénice reading and that the Hubers and the Murphys were coming for dinner first, and after dinner, the others, Miss Lamb and Paul and the Sinnotts. They would all be awfully put out if there were no ice for their drinks. She plodded out to the telephone, in her furry scuffs and bathrobe, but it was too late: Will Harlow had already left, for his workman’s day.
It was a dark rainy morning. Warren reported, after a look at the weathervane, that they were in for a three-day blow. That was why she had overslept, of course; everybody overslept on overcast mornings. In the bathroom, Jane drew a long face and thrust her lower lip out, staring at herself sternly in the mirror to keep a furtive giggle down. There was a funny side to it, her owlish reflection agreed: John Sinnott would tell her she had missed the electrician from perversity. Every time he and Martha came, something went haywire. Either there was no ice or else there was no soda water, like the last time, or she had forgotten to get salt, for the dinner, or sugar, or there were mouse-droppings in the flour. These things did not matter, Warren assured her, but Jane had felt a little bit embarrassed, a few nights before, when they had had Miss Lamb to dinner, and they had found they were out of paper napkins and paper towels and kleenex, so that they had had to give her toilet paper, folded neatly by Warren, for a napkin. They used to have linen, Warren told Miss Lamb, with a tender glance, like a hug, at his rosy spouse, but Jane had given it all away, except for the sheets and pillow slips, which did not have to be ironed. When they first came up here, they had a whole trunk full of Jane’s grandmother’s beautiful embroidered linen from Germany, stored out in the garage. Jane had never used it, and they needed the storage space for Warren’s pictures. Martha had some of the napkins now; they looked lovely on her table, with the big Ws in heavy scroll embroidery—it was a lucky coincidence that both Martha’s maiden name and Jane’s grandmother’s had begun with W.
Jane did not grudge this gift. She was naturally open-handed, and it also satisfied her thrifty side to see that the things were being used. She thought Martha was crazy to bother with the washing and the ironing and keeping the table polished, and it gave Jane pleasure to think of the hours she herself was saving not doing these things. When she looked at her napery gleaming on Martha’s dark table, she felt the same way she felt when she saw their goat munching a tin can in the zoophile lady’s back yard: she was glad she had found it a good home. She had a genius, she admitted, for finding people who would take things she did not want. Last year, she had even discovered a man who was delighted to have their garbage to feed to his pigs—which saved her going to the dump. As it turned out, he insisted on having it sorted and he complained about broken glass and coffee grounds, so that idea had to be chalked up as a failure. But sooner or later, Jane was confident, she would solve the garbage-disposal problem, in a way that would make everybody hold up their hands in astonishment and wonder why they had not thought of it. She and Warren had tried everything: expensive chemical devices buried in the ground; a gas incinerator that functioned in the kitchen; burning the stuff in the fireplace or in Warren’s studio stove. But nothing as yet had worked out to suit her; unless you went to the dump, you always had the labor of sorting.
Labor-saving schemes of one kind or another played a large part in Jane’s thoughts. It was something she had inherited, probably, from her inventor-grandfather; Warren said that her bump of inventiveness was very much enlarged. Recently, she had been pondering putting in some sheep to act as lawn mowers around the house and fertilize the ground with their droppings, so that some time she could have a vegetable garden—according to the latest theories, it was better not to weed. And she had heard of a place where you sent the sheep’s wool, which came back woven into blankets. That was what had got her started: she and Warren needed some new blankets; the moths had got into their spare ones. Last fall, when John and Martha were staying with them, John had said, “What is this, Jane—a blanket for an octopus?” Warren had agreed that they needed blankets, but he wanted to just buy them in a store, like other people. The sheep, he pointed out, would have to have cover, in the wintertime, and be fed, the same as the goat. And if he and Jane wanted to go away some time, during the winter months, to see some exhibitions and picture galleries, they would be stuck here, because of the sheep. Sheep lived outdoors, Jane argued; all they needed was a little sheepfold that they could huddle in, during a storm; you could just put some oats or whatever they ate out for them. But Warren was too tenderhearted. In the summer, yes, he conceded; but he would not take responsibility in the winter. “If you can find somebody who will have them for the winter, dear,” remained his last word.
Jane was very foresighted when she had her mind set on something. She would not get the sheep until spring, when she could buy them cheap, as lambs, but she had already sounded out the goat-lady and the butcher at the First National. They had both turned her down, as she had feared. And yet she still felt that there must be somebody in the community who would be glad to take care of the sheep for her. There was a balance in human psychology, she had always reasoned, like the balance of Nature; and just as snakes were useful to kill rodents and weeds to put vitamins in the soil, so there had to be somebody who would find a use for those sheep during the winter months. She had been turning over the problem every night before going to sleep, visualizing the lambs, one black, one white, and the blankets she would have woven to her own design, in a modern zigzag pattern. She had read about mathematicians who put their unconscious to work on a difficult equation and woke up with the solution. And this morning, as a matter of fact, as she was dialing a number where his wife thought she might reach Will Harlow, inspiration smote her. The public high school, she exclaimed to herself, widening her eyes. In a modern school like that, they must have a course in zoology or natural science, for which a pair of sheep would be perfect. And the school year exactly coincided with the months Warren did not want the sheep.
“Wonderful, dear,” agreed Warren, somewhat absently, from the kitchen, where he was coddling some eggs for his breakfast. He had slipped out of bed ahead of her, as he sometimes did when he wanted to start painting early. “Did you get Will?” he added, gazing sadly at the toaster, which did not seem to be working. In the doorway, Jane shook her head, recalled to the day’s agenda. “They didn’t answer,” she said. “I’ll have to try and find him. He can’t be fishing in this storm. I’ll bet he’s down at Snow’s Bungalows; all his cronies are working there, putting up some new cabins. . . .” She added some water to last night’s coffee and turned the heat on high. “Say,” she said, thinking, “maybe I could get a piece of ice from the iceman and we could put it in the guest-room bathtub.” Warren’s face brightened obediently, and then a shadow fell on it. “There’s wood there, dear. Remember?” Jane frowned; the bathtub was full of driftwood that they had carried up from the beach. It had seemed to her an excellent storage bin for keeping the wood dry; last year, they had left their wood outside, under a tarpaulin, but it had always got damp. “We could put the ice in our tub,” she proposed. “You don’t need a bath.” Warren apologetically opened the dark icebox; there was a smell of mold and spoilage. “Don’t you think it would be better to try to get Will?” he queried. “That’s just penicillin,” said Jane briskly, but after a moment’s thought she acquiesced. It would be less work, she calculated, to find Will Harlow than to go to the iceman and have to lug the ice out of the station wagon, dump it in the bathtub, and then chop it, by hand.
She was eager to go talk to the high-school principal during the morning recess; it did not do to postpone things and let your enthusiasm peter out. But she overrode the impulse. The sheep could wait; Warren was anxious for tonight to be a success. He was full of gratitude to Miles, for buying the portrait, and he wanted everything to be nice for him. This meant that Jane would have to go and get the cleaning woman, put her to work, and drive her back home, when she was through. She would have to find Will Harlow and take the carving knife to the butcher to be sharpened; they were having a joint for dinner. She would have to stop at Martha’s and get some herbs for the salad; there was a torn slipcover on the sofa which she could fix in a jiffy, if she could remember to buy mending tape. They had been planning to spend the afternoon at the cove, gathering oysters—her mother had just sent them a patented oyster-opener—but the weather precluded that now. Nevertheless, it would be a busy day for her, and she would be bound to forget something important if she got distracted by the sheep. For one thing, she ought to wash her hair, and for another, she ought to get Paul to open up his antique store during his lunch hour so that she could buy some stem glasses for the wine. She still had a last set of goblets stored away up above the beams in the studio, but it would be more trouble to look for them and get them down and have Mrs. Silvia wash them than it would be to get new ones, which Paul could dust out in the shop for her. That was the difficulty about a party; everything landed on you at once. Most people here didn’t care what you served it in, so long as they got their booze, but tonight’s guest list was a little different, more bourgeois, she supposed you could call it, though to somebody like her family Miles Murphy would be pretty startling.
Warren, moreover, had been funny lately, ever since the Sinnotts had arrived. “Why can’t we have something like this?” he had said wistfully, holding up a thin glass at Martha’s dinner table. For years, he had been setting the table with cottage-cheese glasses for the wine and had never seemed to notice. He was different from Jane; other people’s possessions stirred something in him, evidently—memories of his mother’s house. Jane almost thought he was envious, which was silly because they could afford anything the Sinnotts had, if they wanted it. It was a question of practicality. Martha’s fragile glasses would be broken in a week in the dishwasher—as Jane knew from experience—and nobody nowadays wanted to take the trouble to wash glasses by hand and dry them.
Nevertheless, she was going to let Warren have his way. He would soon see for himself that it was not worth it to have a breathless, perspiring, frazzled wife flop down at the dinner table across from him. What he really prized was her intellectual companionship, and she could not spend the day perusing current books and magazines or just thinking, curled up on the sofa, if she was going to be a compulsive housewife, like her mother, always “over” the servants and arranging flowers and looking for dust. Germs were good for you; they built up immunities; Jane had not had a day’s sickness, except during her periods, since the vacuum cleaner broke.
“I wonder whether the Murphys will come,” said Warren, peering out the window. The weathervane on the studio was whirling about wildly; gusts of rain struck at the house; the gutters ran. “They’ll come,” said Jane. It was the kind of dismal day that made people want to be together. “All the way from Digby?” Warren said doubtfully. “They know I’m expecting them to dinner,” answered Jane, who never worried. “They would have called by this time, if they weren’t coming, so that I wouldn’t go ahead and do the marketing.”
In the station wagon, on the way to the village, Jane herself began to wonder. She could hardly see to drive, down the wet sand road. In the village, the main street was deserted. As she turned into the parking space, she saw the Sinnotts’ car, which still had its New York license plates, speeding north, out of the village, toward Digby. She could not make out who was in it, but it was burning a lot of oil, she noted; they ought to get it fixed. Where could either of them be going, she wondered, on a morning like this? Could they have had another fight? Her speculations ceased as she hurried across the street to the post office in her plastic raincoat and hood, which were no protection, really. Her long full orange cotton skirt was flapping wetly around her bare ankles, and her ballet slippers were soaked.
She opened her mailbox and found a telegram. “Western Union man just brought that around,” said the postmistress. “Your phone’s out of order; somebody on your line left the receiver off the hook.” The smallest village idiot stood watching her with a grin as she broke the seal with her forefinger. “Somebody die,” he repeated in his high, loud gabble. Jane shook her head. “Telegrams don’t mean death any more,” she said to him, kindly. She made it a policy to spread reason wherever she could. Nevertheless, her heart missed a beat; she was afraid it was from the Murphys, begging off for tonight. Her eyes ran over the message: Warren’s mother was dead, of a stroke, yesterday, in Savannah.
Her first thought was of the roast she had had the butcher cut specially the day before. Death was peculiar; it made things like that pop into your mind. Still, it was a problem whether she could return it; being an only child, Warren, of course, would have to go to the funeral. She would have to cancel the play-reading. A deep disappointment took hold of her, as she tried to tell herself, by way of comfort, that at least the day would be simplified. It would not matter now about the wine glasses or trying to get Will Harlow. But it was a cheerless comfort; without the plans to fill it, the day seemed bereft. And Warren would have to be away for three days at the very least; when he came back, he might want to go into mourning. They would never have the play-reading, she said to herself sadly, stuffing the telegram into her Mexican leather pouch. She would have to call the Murphys and tell Paul, in the liquor store, and call the Hubers and Martha, who could tell Miss Lamb. They would all be let down just because one old lady had happened to die the day before. It made her think of the time when her fifteenth birthday party had to be canceled because her brother had come down with polio. The Greeks had a better idea; when somebody died, they feasted, to show that life went on.
All at once, she realized that the idiot and the postmistress were both watching her, avidly, she thought. Wrapping her raincoat about her, she started down the street to the drugstore to telephone. They would have to know right away, so they could make other dinner plans. What a waste, she said to herself. But as she trudged through the rain, two thoughts struck her. What was the matter with her? Obviously, Warren could not take the plane; all flights would be canceled. According to her car radio, the storm was general throughout coastal New England. She could drive him to Trowbridge, to get the afternoon train, but he would not reach New York till nearly midnight, too late, probably, to catch the sleeper for Savannah. He might just as well stay here and wait to get a plane in the morning, when the weather would doubtless clear. He could go to Boston, of course, in the hope that flights would be resumed again this afternoon or this evening, but he might not get a seat; Friday was a bad travel day. And there was a second obstacle. What was he going to wear?
Jane had been considering this question ever since they had heard that his mother was failing. In the south, as she knew, people were stuffy about the ceremonial of mourning. A black band sewn on his corduroy sleeve would not be enough, probably, to satisfy Warren’s cousins and his aunt. He could stop off in Boston and get a ready-made dark suit and a pair of black shoes; but it seemed crazy to spend the money on something he would wear only the once. Moreover, there was the time factor. He would have to have the suit altered. Ready-made pants were always too long for him and too baggy in the seat. Even if he took the suit to some little tailor, it would take a couple of hours for the alteration to be done, what with the pressing and everything: he might miss the plane, if there was one, hanging around and waiting. Last week, however, Jane had had a brain wave. Seeing John Sinnott walk into a party in his dark-blue suit, she had realized that he and Warren had much the same build. John, of course, was taller, but his shoulders and waist were narrow, like Warren’s, and he had a small behind; she had checked on this point when they were in swimming, in the nude. The blue suit would be just right for Warren, if she turned up the trousers; there was a steam-iron put away somewhere in the studio that she could press them with. Black or a dark oxford would have been better, but there was no point in repining. It was a piece of luck that the only dark suit in all New Leeds—except the bank president’s—should have come here with the Sinnotts in September. If Warren’s mother had died last year, there would have been no suit for him at all. The blue was very dark, almost midnight, and it would look very nice with Warren’s blue eyes. And John had a lot of neckties; she had seen them hanging on his bureau, some of them in dark, conservative colors. Warren had only two: bright wools woven by the New Leeds Craftsmen. The shoes Warren would have to buy, in Trowbridge or Digby. John’s feet were too long, though narrow, and Paul’s black shoes, which he wore for state occasions, were short enough but too broad. Even if Warren were to wear several pairs of wool socks, he would not be comfortable, and foot comfort was important, psychologically—that was why they went barefoot so much.
Sitting in the drugstore phone booth, with her wet skirt and petticoat bundled about her, Jane took out a coin and hesitated. There was no use trying to get Warren yet, if their phone was out of order. It came to her that it must be she who had left the receiver off the hook, while she was calling Will Harlow and thinking about the sheep. And even if Warren had replaced it in the meantime, he would be in his studio now, out of earshot of the phone. With the planes not flying, there was no hurry about telling him. She decided to call Martha first and ask about the suit. But just then she remembered seeing the Sinnotts’ car heading out of town. What was she going to do if they were off somewhere for the day? She dropped in the coin, and Martha answered. She had been trying to get Jane, she said, to tell her they could not come to the play-reading because John had had to go to Boston this morning to finish some research. Jane heard her out, without interruption; she could have saved Martha her breath by telling her about Warren’s mother, but she was curious to know what explanation the Sinnotts had cooked up between them: any fool could see that John had gone to Boston to avoid having to meet Miles tonight. For herself, Jane wanted to find out diplomatically, before asking straight out, whether the blue suit was here or whether it had gone off too. “I thought I saw John,” she said. “Dashing out of the post office. What was he wearing?” “A raincoat,” said Martha. “And that good-looking blue suit?” persisted Jane. “Why yes, I think so,” said Martha. “Yes, he was,” she added, more positively. Jane caught her breath. “How long is he going to be gone?” “Just today,” said Martha. “He has to see somebody for dinner. He’ll be back late tonight.” “Oh,” said Jane.
A new idea was forming in her mind. It was clear now that Warren could not leave till tomorrow in any case; he would have to wait on the weather and the suit. There was no reason, therefore, why they should not have the play-reading. Warren himself had been looking forward to it for a week now. He and Jane had read the play, together, in Masefield’s English translation, and he wanted to discuss with Martha the peculiar philosophy behind it. He would be horribly disappointed if the project fell through. But of course, with his mother dead, he would think that they ought not to have it, not for any real reason, but just because of the forms. He had been expecting her death anyway; after all, she was seventy-nine, and when he had gone down to see her last year, he must have realized it was good-bye. And it was not as if his knowing, today, could do any good. If the telegram had said, “Mother dying,” that would have been different: he would have wanted to telephone and start off as fast as he could, even though she would be unconscious and incapable of recognizing him—that was how she had conditioned him. But since the old lady was gone, what could be the harm of letting him have the play-reading before he found out?
It was only an accident, actually, Jane suddenly perceived, that she had got the telegram this morning. There were some days when they did not go for the mail at all, and she often left the receiver off the hook for twenty-four hours without noticing it. Actually, if it had not been for the party tonight, the telegram could have stayed there in the box without their knowing it until tomorrow at least. So to all intents and purposes, it was as if she had not got it yet. And how much better it would be, from everybody’s point of view, if she had not happened to stop in at the post office just now. . . . If Warren was going to grieve, in spite of having worked through his mother-attachment with the psychoanalyst, he might as well begin tomorrow, Jane said to herself in her practical voice. There was nothing he could do anyway, and useless suffering was the worst kind; that was the good part about funerals—they gave the relations something to put their minds on. If she were in Warren’s place and it was her mother, she would want him to spare her until she could get off on a plane and start making the funeral arrangements. She would want him to have the play-reading for her.
Absently listening to Martha, Jane made her decision. The play must go on, she said to herself with a grin and a hollow feeling in her stomach. For one wild instant, she considered taking Martha into her confidence, but prudence intervened: if she was not going to tell Warren, it was better that nobody should know until tomorrow morning. And Martha might disapprove. She was telling Jane now all the virtuous reasons why she too could not come to the play-reading: she had some letters to write; she had bought some green tomatoes and was going to make a pickle; she had no car and it was too far for Dolly to come for her. “I’m sorry,” she wound up. “But after all you don’t need me. There are only seven parts. Dolly can do Bérénice; her French is much better than mine. And you can do the confidante.” “Don’t be a nut,” said Jane, feeling cross with Martha. “Of course, we need you. You’re the only professional. Warren will die if you don’t come.” It was true: Warren’s expectations rested on Martha’s presence; he was happy in the thought that she and Miles could be friends again, thanks to the portrait. But Martha kept sounding reluctant. She would rather not, she insisted. “Is it because of Miles?” Jane demanded, boldly. Partly, Martha admitted. But it was not only that, she pretended; she had all those things to do and she wanted to be home, for John, when he got back from Boston: he would have an awful drive in this weather. Jane made a face. “Why, you don’t want to stay there all alone, waiting for him,” she exclaimed in scoffing tones. “If he has dinner in Boston, he won’t be back till one in the morning.” “Yes,” acknowledged Martha. “You’ll be home by that time,” Jane pointed out. “Warren will come and get you and bring you back afterward. You might as well come to dinner; I’ve got a big roast.”
There was a tiny pause. “I couldn’t,” said Martha faintly. “Not to dinner.” “Because of the Murphys? Don’t be crazy,” said Jane. “You don’t have to be afraid of them. Miles is still in love with you. Everybody says so. That’s why he bought the portrait.” “That isn’t true,” Martha’s voice protested. “And if it were, it would be all the more reason. . . .” “Not to come?” said Jane. “I don’t see that at all. He’s settled down now. He’s not going to do anything unless you encourage him. Anyway,” she added, “they may not come. Because of the weather. And somebody’s got to eat that roast.” “No,” said Martha. This firmness was not like Martha, Jane said to herself. “Is it John?” she ventured. “Did he tell you not to come?” Martha remained silent. “He doesn’t have to know,” remarked Jane. “You’ll be home before he is.” “Oh, I couldn’t do that,” cried Martha in a horrified voice. “Well, then, tell him after he gets back. Tell him you felt lonely. Why shouldn’t you go out to dinner if he does in Boston?” “I don’t know,” said Martha. “I must say, it does sound rather silly when you think about it.” “Then you’ll come,” said Jane. She felt Martha hesitate. “No,” Martha said finally. “I’d better not. He might call me, from Boston, and it would worry him if I weren’t here.” “He calls you up,” exclaimed Jane, “when he’s just gone for the day?” “Sometimes,” said Martha, proudly. Jane considered this strange; to her mind, it argued a lack of security. “Oh, come anyway,” she said. “He probably won’t call. I’ll have Warren stop by for you at seven. Don’t forget to bring your book; we’ve only got two copies, unless Harriet Huber finds one. And bring some herbs from your garden.” “No,” pleaded Martha, but Jane rang off. She was certain Martha would come, to the play-reading, if not to dinner, and probably to both.
But as soon as she felt satisfied that she had won her point, a slight uneasiness beset her. She was not sure that Warren would approve of Martha’s coming to dinner; they had agreed that it would be better for the Sinnotts to arrive afterward, so as not to embarrass the Murphys. To Jane’s mind, John’s absence altered everything: Martha would just be an extra woman who could be slipped in next to Harold Huber, like somebody you were having for charity. But Warren might not see it that way; he might feel that Jane had betrayed him. And if he ever found out about the telegram . . . ! In the stuffy phone booth, Jane felt suddenly queasy; she rested her head against the telephone and tried to collect herself. Her eyes wandered sidewise out into the drugstore; the druggist had his back turned and the soda-fountain girl was reading a comic book. But Jane had the conviction that they had just been watching her and listening to her conversation. Against all reason, the notion fastened itself on her that the whole village knew that Warren’s mother was dead. She drove her station wagon very slowly out toward the cleaning woman’s house; two cars passed her, as she crawled along, and again she felt that eyes had turned to study her.
There was nothing unusual in that, she assured herself; she was a bit of a curiosity in the village and people always stared. They thought she was a character, just because she was sensible and easygoing. Her ideas made people laugh, and she did not mind; all her brothers had teased her, and in boarding school and college, she had been looked on as a card. People laughed at her because she was innocently logical. She was being logical, now, about Warren’s mother; she had thought it out, step by step, reasonably, as she did all her ideas. Nobody could possibly know about the telegram (that was all her imagination); the Western Union man was a typical closemouthed Yankee who would not tell anybody anything, not even the time of day, unless he had authorization. There were dozens of stories about him.
Jane’s heart began to race. She had overlooked one factor. Supposing the Western Union man telephoned to make sure the telegram had reached them? She had no way of knowing whether the phone was still off the hook. Faintness overtook her. She was not used to deception, she realized, except in small things; up to now, she had only told white lies and did not mind being caught in them. In fact, it was rather fun to let Warren catch her in an untruth; quite often she would give herself away, with giggles, like a kid playing hide-and-seek, just to let him pounce on her, the way he had last night.
But now, for the first time, she recognized, she had done something that Warren might take a grave view of. He might not think it was funny or delightfully in character for Jane to be suppressing this telegram. And once she started lying, she would have to keep it up. If she did not produce the telegram the minute she got home, she would have to claim she had never got it, no matter what, assuming she was questioned. Her original plan had been to “discover” the telegram in their mailbox early tomorrow morning, when she could come to the village on some pretext. Warren, she reckoned, would be too busy packing and trying on the suit to press any inquiries about why it had not been delivered earlier. And by the time he got back from Savannah, it would be too late to follow it up; nobody would remember. Only two people, Jane reasoned, had seen her get the telegram this morning, and one of them, after all, was an idiot, who did not know one day of the week from another. The real problem, she now decided, was the Western Union man, who was the old-fashioned, conscientious type. If the phone was still off the hook and he kept trying to get them, he might send a man out from the phone company or even drive out himself in his old Ford to deliver it in person. Or would he check with the postmistress, to find whether the Coes had got their mail? That would make three people who knew. And what if Warren’s relations, down there, got worried when they did not hear from him and put a tracer on the telegram?
Jane stopped the car by the roadside. She was shivering all over. This was what it felt like, apparently, to embark on a career of crime. It was not worth it; she could see that at once. Honesty was the best policy. Whoever said that was right. She marveled, sitting there, at the women who made a practice of deceiving their husbands. How did they do it? She thought of the New Leeds wives who had had clandestine love affairs: Ellen Gray, in the old days, and Martha, when she was married to Miles. She could understand their doing it once, but to keep it up, as a regular thing? Her teeth began to chatter, as her mind stole amazedly back over the course of romantic history: Queen Guinevere, Mary Stuart—living every hour in the fear of discovery. How had they done it? She had never approved, much, of adultery; the fun of marriage was sharing things with your mate. But she had never before considered how much courage adultery took, far more than the act repaid—days of suspense for a few seconds of pleasure. She had always thought of herself as a hardy soul, but now she saw that she had never really dared. Daring, she cogitated, was a matter of taking chances. It was like statistics or gambling; you had to compute probabilities. And there was always the unforeseen, the little thing you overlooked that would catch you up in the end—what they called contingency. She herself already felt like a different person, just for thinking of deceiving Warren, or rather she felt the same, but everything else had changed and become somehow slippery, like when Alice went through the looking-glass—into the fourth dimension, Warren said; that mathematician had explained it to him.
Devoted as she was to Warren, she had always found his mathematical theories a little bit boring, and she noticed that other people did too. But now she perceived that there was a human side to all that: people who were afraid began to count and reckon, just as she was doing, and they were faced, straight off, with infinity. And when you were afraid, something queer happened to time. Looking at her watch, she found that only ten minutes had passed since she left the drugstore, though it seemed like an hour at least. Her thoughts, evidently, were racing like her pulse; that was what it must mean to live a double life, like Paul.
And yet, she reflected, it was not anything wrong she was contemplating. To keep Warren in ignorance was the kindest and most sensible thing. It would be almost a sacrifice, on her part, to go through all this anxiety so that he could have a few hours’ peace. The only way it could hurt Warren not to know would be if the story got out that he had had a party the night after his mother’s death. But he could always say that he didn’t know, which would be true. Furthermore, it was not a party, exactly, but something educational. After all, it was a tragedy they were going to read, which would put Warren right in the mood.
A smile twitched at Jane’s lips; her eyes goggled. She felt tickled by her own power of reasoning. Other people would say she was outrageous, but it was only the truth she was thinking. Wasn’t tragedy supposed to be a cathartic? She put on an innocent expression and arranged her plastic hood attractively over her tawny hair. A brand-new idea had come to her. She was going to the Western Union office and send a telegram for Warren to his old aunt: “Impossible leave today because of storm. Taking plane Savannah tomorrow morning. Grief-stricken. Love to all.” But as she considered this message, she saw that it would not do. It would satisfy the Western Union man, but the dating would give her away. Warren’s aunt would be bound to let the cat out of the bag by asking Warren about the storm; old people like that were always interested in weather conditions. Jane pondered. Lying was not easy, when you had to cover your tracks. But it stimulated your brain, like doing a chess problem: you had to think ahead to all the possible moves on the other side of the board. The easy thing would be to go home and tell Warren now and get it over with, but she could not bear to give up, now that she was started. A solution would come to her; solutions always had. The point was to word a telegram so that it could sound as if it had been sent tomorrow, in case Warren ever saw it, and at the same time to fix it so that the Western Union man would not wonder. . . . Just as she was despairing, the light suddenly broke: she would send a night letter! “Warren taking plane. He will arrive Savannah, today, Saturday, P.M. and will phone you from airport. Both of us very sad to hear of mother’s passing. Condolences to all. Signed, Jane Coe.” She counted over the words to make sure it was long enough not to surprise the Western Union man that it was going as a night letter; luckily, her small economies were famous in the village. He would not think a thing of it, unless she started explaining. “Never apologize, never explain,” she said to herself sagely, starting up the engine.
Tomorrow morning, when she brought Warren the bad news, she would tell him that she had just sent that message for him, from the Western Union office, and he would say, “Wonderful, dear,” as he always did when she thought ahead for him. Then, even if his aunt should happen to show him the telegram, Warren would be too hot and bothered to notice the NL, for night letter, up among the symbols at the top. If he did, he would think it was a mistake.
In the little telegraph office, heated by a station-stove, Jane lost her usual aplomb. The Western Union man in his brown buttoned sweater unnerved her; he was so silent and poky. He did not make a sound as she wrote out the message for him, printing in big letters. She felt she ought to say something as his cracked brown finger moved laboriously over the yellow sheet she handed him, marking each word while she waited, sweat breaking out on her brow. Finally, he looked up over his glasses and scratched his head. “Sure you want to send it this way, Mrs. Coe?” he said, with a sharp look. Jane nearly passed out; she felt just as she used to when she was called into the head mistress’s office. “As a night letter, you mean?” she blurted out. “Yes . . . I think so. . . . It’s cheaper, and the person it’s going to will be out all day anyway. When they get it, you see, today will be tomorrow, or the other way around.” She could have killed herself when the telegrapher, nodding his old head slowly back and forth like a rocker, finally saw fit to reply. “That’s your business,” he observed. “Tweren’t that I was thinking of.” He got up from his stool and meandered over to the window. “Looks to me,” he said, “like a three-day blow. Doubt Mr. Coe will get a plane tomorrow morning.” Relief made Jane giddy; she nearly laughed aloud. “Why don’t you add, ‘Weather permitting’?” she suggested brightly, pointing to the telegram. “Put it after ‘plane.’ ‘Weather permitting, he will arrive Savannah . . .’?” The telegrapher considered. “That’s it,” he nodded. “Don’t cost you no more.”
Jane bolted out of the office. He was a rare one, all right, she said to herself, and he held her in the palm of his hand, if he only knew it, like that awful creature in Madame Bovary. She was still shaking when she drove up to the cleaning woman’s house and parked for a minute to steady her nerves before having to face another native. The way they watched you steadily, without saying a word, seemed to her suddenly sinister, like being surrounded in the jungle. She longed for a confidante, to whom she could explain herself, but Warren was the only person who would understand and sympathize. Some day, she decided, she would tell him what she had gone through this morning, and they would laugh about it together; it would become one of Jane’s exploits. “Do you remember the time your mother died?” she could hear herself begin, and her face, in the car mirror, at once assumed a sheepish bad-girl look, with the lower lip thrust out and the long chin dropped, while the big blue eyes rolled appealingly, ready to dance, if only a partner invited. She was two people, really, as Warren had delightedly discovered, first on their honeymoon, and then again and again, just as he thought he had her settled. There were big Jane and little Jane, stern Jane and guilty Jane, downcast Jane and blithe Jane—she knew this from scolding herself as she used to scold her doll. And it was bad Jane, she recognized, who had the upper hand this morning. She had just done something awful. But now that she admitted it boldly, gazing hangdog at herself in the mirror, she promptly felt much better. Fear left her; some day she would confess to Warren and that would take care of remorse. She honked the horn for the cleaning woman and waited, at the wheel, unflurried. There was plenty of time for everything, so long as she took it easy and reminded herself that nothing mattered, really. She could still get Will Harlow, and if she didn’t, so much the worse. Moreover, if she was lucky, she might catch the high-school principal at lunch, when she went to get the glasses.