IT WAS Martha’s theory that people, whatever they said, did in the end what they wanted. The only exception she knew of was her relation with Miles. With Miles she had done steadily what she hated, starting from the moment she married him, violently against her will. “You wanted to, all right,” he used to growl at her, but she knew that it was not true. She had no explanation for this strange fact about herself. She was timid but not supine; nobody, except Miles, had ever browbeat her successfully. It was her youth, her friends had told her; when she met him, she had been an untried girl, who had not found herself, as the phrase was. If that was the case (and even John seemed to think so), she should have outgrown her fear of Miles during the intervening years; she felt much stronger, certainly. Yet, to her horror, the other day at the Coes’, when she was face to face with Miles, the years between vanished and she had begun to tremble again, as she had not trembled since the night she had left him. This awful weakness in herself she dared not confess to John, chiefly for fear of troubling him with something that was inexplicable. She did not like Miles, but she did not dislike him either, apart from his effect on her. Now that she was free of him, she saw his good points and his drawbacks in her customary clear perspective. Here in the New Leeds region, he had a certain stature, compared to the other men; he had a canny mind and read a great deal, seriously. He might yet produce something worth while in the new field he had roamed into—the history of ideas; he was forceful and energetic, with a gift for amassing information that was like his prodigies at the table. . . . His trouble, Martha had decided, was that his talent was crushed by his ambition; he had wanted to be another Goethe and had ended up as a rolling stone. And he had no facility of expression. She herself, she now perceived, had qualities Miles envied: a sharp ear and a lively natural style. There was therefore no reason why she should tremble before him, when she knew him, moreover, to be selfish, brutal, and dishonest in his domestic life.
Her weakness in his presence must, she supposed, be explained by that mysterious entity known as power. But this did not take her much further, because she did not understand power, either the desire for it or the yielding to it. She could not imagine, except when she was near Miles, obedience that was not based either on rational consent or on rational fear. But she had obeyed Miles, when she was married to him, without knowing why.
This irrational element, this bewilderment before her own actions, had been present from the very beginning; she had ceased to know herself from the moment she met Miles. She was just out of college then, where she had been voted “most literary” as well as “best actress.” Her teachers said “Martha can do anything.” She herself was not sure yet whether she really wanted to try to be an actress, which was what her class book predicted, or to write poetry, her earliest interest, or to plug ahead and do graduate work, which was what her favorite teacher advised. Her father was sending her an allowance so that she could take her time. She was engaged to a young man who had two more years, still, of architectural school; she had just had a rather squalid abortion, which another young man had paid for; she was acting small parts in a shoestring summer theater—when Miles, a friend of the producer, drifted in one terrible evening, after a bad performance, and started bulldozing her into marriage before she really knew him. It was what she needed, he assured her, appraising her with his jellied green eyes when she woke up, for the second time, in bed with him, after a lot of drinks. And because she had found herself in bed with him, against her natural inclinations (for he seemed immensely old to her, being well over forty while she was not yet twenty-one), she had concluded that he must be right. He knew what was best for her, doubtless—she needed a steadying force, a man, as he said, with a mind. She went back to the theater dormitory and sat on her bed, stoically, like a lump. She did not understand what had happened. She had only, she bemoaned, wanted to talk to him—a well-known playwright and editor, successful, positive, interested in her ideas and life-history. And yet he must be right; even her teachers would think so. She would never, surely, have yielded to his embraces, shrinking, as she did, from his swollen belly and big, crooked nose, if some deep urge in herself, which he seemed to understand, had not decreed it. The fatalistic side of her character accepted Miles as a punishment for the sin of having slept with him when she did not love him, when she loved, she still felt, someone else. Nevertheless, she had naively sought a compromise. She had begged Miles merely to live with him, as his mistress. But Miles had held out for marriage, instanter; he needed a mother for his son. She was still hesitating when the knot was tied and Miles was sitting beside her on the train, his chin sunk on his chest, morosely silent, a stranger, as they journeyed to pick up the boy, who was living with Miles’s sister. He would not let her telegraph her presumptive fiancé, in Cambridge, until the ceremony was over.
That was Miles. He would not let her give notice to the theater people, either, but made her pack her bags while she was still rehearsing next week’s part. The rest of her marriage, which had lasted four years, was in a way simply a catalogue of the natural things Miles would not let her do. He would not let her fly to Juneau to her father’s funeral, though her mother was ill and wired her the money. He would not let her see her brother off to the war or have him in the house when he came back wounded. He made her change her hair and turn over her small capital to him, after her mother died; he would never give her an allowance for the household or herself. He held the checkbook and hired and fired the servants, when they had them. He would not let her go to New York, once they had moved to New Leeds, unless he accompanied her. She could not get the child vaccinated or inoculated against diphtheria because Miles objected. He refused to have her practice birth-control and when she did it, privily, he made terrible scenes at night. He would not let her see her friends or accept an invitation without consulting him first. And, finally, he would not let her leave him.
There it was again. She was afraid to leave him, though he had no means of preventing her from doing it at any moment, had she dared. But, improbable as it seemed now, she had felt she could not leave him without his permission. When she finally ran away, it was partly because of John, whom she had secretly fallen in love with, but mainly because Miles, by pushing her out of the house, had seemed at last to give her license. That was why she flew out to the garage, in her nightgown, before he could revoke it. And even at that moment, as she turned on the ignition, she had the uneasy sense that she was taking advantage of Miles: he had not really meant for her to go.
This unaccountable fear she had often discussed with John. It was exactly, she said, like a phobia, like the fear of dogs or snakes or high places; reason had nothing to do with it. To tell herself that Miles could not hurt her had no more effect than pointing out that a snake was harmless or a dog did not bite. She knew he could not hurt her, seriously, and she used to force herself to oppose him, on small points, like an acrophobe who makes himself look over a parapet. But it did not work. The more she nerved herself to differ with him, the more fear she felt. It was only a sort of social shame or conscience on Barrett’s behalf that drove her to take stands. She resisted him because she thought she ought to, in a flurry of hysterical defiance. And the mere act of controverting him made her lose her head. She would find herself arguing excitedly when she knew she was in the wrong, or the issue would get away from her and turn into something else. Their penultimate quarrel, for example, had exploded in the middle of the night, after a party, when she was carrying out two overflowing pails of garbage and he refused, with a sardonic bow, to hold open the screen door for her. There she was, manifestly, the injured party, but instead of leaving it at that and taxing him with it the next day, when he was weakened with a hangover, she immediately distributed the guilt by setting down one pail of garbage and slapping him across his grinning face. She never knew how to make him feel sorry for what he had done.
The first night of their marriage, when he had suddenly struck her, for no reason, as she was climbing into bed, she had looked up at him in mute amazement, too startled even to cry. So far as she knew herself, Martha was one of those people who were naturally reasonable, like an open-minded child who listens unsuspiciously to what is told him and expects no evil. And Miles, from the outset, with a sort of blind purpose, like a mole, had set himself to undermine her sense of credibility: she could not believe what was happening. If she were a real woman, Miles used to tell her, she would learn how to handle him. But something obstinate in her nature refused to be indoctrinated; her passion for the normal rebelled. She would not exploit his “good” moods, and fear and nervous excitement caused her to fumble their quarrels. The sound of his tread, coming up the stairs, at night, when he had been drinking, made her heart race with terror, even when she had the door locked against him. In fact—here again was an oddity—she was more frightened on the nights when she had had the courage to turn her doorkey, softly, while he was still downstairs, than when she had left the door unlocked. It was her own guilty temerity, in the face of him, that held her palpitating, waiting for the knob to turn, the heavy knock to sound, rattling the whole house, and the step, finally, to lurch away into the guest bedroom.
It still made her shiver to think of those nights. She had not been able to get to sleep, even after he was gone and she could hear his snores, like regular paroxysms, coming from down the corridor. Fear would be succeeded by remorse, another form of cowardice; she always flinched from offending anyone, as if from a blow at herself. She could not bear the picture of humiliation, even in an enemy, even in Miles. The thought of the maid and Barrett listening in their beds, while Miles pounded uncertainly at the door, a suppliant, made her relent, as often as not, and tiptoe across the room to let him in. It was better, on the whole, to be kicked out of bed and to retreat herself to the guest bedroom than to listen to his exiled snores and be sorry.
A psychiatrist, of course, would say that she had wanted Miles to beat her. Miles himself used to contend this, in his seignorial style; he convinced himself that he was doing her a service by letting her have a black eye. It was on the strength of such “insights,” she supposed, that he had begun to take paying patients after she had left him. But even discounting Miles’s opinion, Martha herself had often wondered whether there could be a grain of truth in the charge. Yet if there was anything she knew about herself, it was that she hated violence. She had never received it from John and never, as she assured him wryly, missed it. He objected because she screamed, sometimes, when he came upon her unexpectedly, and her hand sometimes flew up to her face, as if to ward off a blow, when he raised his arm casually, in the midst of a discussion. But she was hoping to get over these reflexes, the last trace of Miles’s influence, as she had got over her bad dreams and the other fears, of automobiles, of falling, that he had left in his wake. With John, she was a different person, and she was proud of it. She had even been looking forward, secretly, to meeting Miles again, to confront him with her new character.
The strange thing was that nobody seemed to have noticed her trembling the other day at the Coes’, though the pounding of her heart, when Miles came to take her cloak, had been so loud that she thought the whole room must hear it, like a rumbling in somebody’s stomach. She had not seen the Coes since, but John and Dolly Lamb had assured her that she was fine when she asked them, “How did I seem?” in an apprehensive voice. And John, when she reiterated the question, adding, “Tell me the truth,” appeared a little surprised. “You were fine,” he said again, absently: his only criticism was that she had been too natural and friendly. This alarmed Martha. Either, she reasoned, he was withholding his real view, from tact, or else, she possessed, unknown to herself, the power to deceive him. And the last thing she wanted was to have such a power.
She had always been able to deceive Miles because he did not know her. He had mistaken both her faults and her virtues. He did not reckon with idealism as a serious factor in life and judged, as he used to say weightily, by actions. He had supposed that she must love him because she had let him seduce her on the very first meeting and because she did not leave him though she continually threatened to do so. This refusal to listen was a form of stupidity that Martha especially abhorred, and she considered Miles well punished for it. If he had ever taken seriously her passionate desire to leave him, she might not (she now believed) have been driven to show him in practice how little indeed he knew. To pay attention, for Martha, was the prime human virtue; without it, there could be no dignity and no reciprocity. The alertness of this faculty was what she prized in John. She wished nothing to be hidden from him, not even the bad parts of her nature. She respected his privacy, because he was a man, but for herself, if she could not be transparent, she did not want to love.
It seemed to her, therefore, ominous that the minute Miles re-entered her life, a slight deception began, almost automatically. She was able to conceal again, like that other person, whom she was supposed to have outgrown. She was both glad and sorry that John had not observed the turmoil she had been thrown into. It cut her off from him; he no longer knew her, which was perhaps for the best, since she did not know herself. Looking at Miles, she felt the old central question turned on her like an artillery piece. In the twelve years since she had met him, he had not changed at all. She could explain, in a way, how she had come to marry him, under the circumstances, and how, under the circumstances, she had stayed with him so long. But why she had let this man make love to her in the first place remained totally mystifying. Just at this point, when she looked at him and then looked backward, there was a terrifying blank.
“Yes, why did you?” said Dolly Lamb, gently, with a quizzical look at Martha, who had driven over to see her the day after the vicomte’s visit. She was used to Martha’s irruptions into her orderly life and had come up here, only the Saturday before last, to paint the marshes, because John and Martha had written to tell her that they had found a house she must live in, like Thoreau’s, on a pond. It was a shack, really, that had been used in the fall by duck-hunters—two tiny rooms and a kitchen, with only a fireplace to heat them and a kitchen range. At night, in her bunk-bed, Dolly protested, she was cold, but John and Martha had laughed and told her to sleep in woolen socks and sweaters. Dolly feared that she would offend them if she went to Digby and bought an electric blanket; they were very set in their notions of what was fitting for her.
Dolly was a year younger than Martha and still unmarried, which had resigned her to being prescribed for by everybody, as if she had an ailment. She was a distant cousin of John’s and had been at college with Martha, in the class below. She was tall and long-legged and curiously flattened out, like a cloth doll that had been dressed and redressed by many imperious mistresses. She had a neat round little face that came to a point unexpectedly in a firm, slightly jutting chin, short crisp blond hair, of a silvery cast, a silvery quiet laugh, and bright silver-blue eyes that shone with a high gleam, as if they had just been polished. Her pink cheeks and ears had a faintly angry, scrubbed look. In her unusual style, she was remarkably pretty—like a china shepherdess, said some people; like a gray nun, said others; like a mermaid, like a scalloped Spode plate, like a heron, like a shingled, weathered cottage, like a Swiss clock with bells and a maiden inside. It was Dolly’s fate to evoke fanciful comparisons, to be, as Martha said, a posse rather than an esse to everyone who knew her. She was too inscrutable, said Martha; that was why she had not got married—men did not think she was real. John said it was her shyness and the fact that she had been brought up by two eccentric aunts, who had died and left her their money. An orphan, he said, was just a figment who was sentimentalized by the whole world, like the heroine of a storybook; Dolly had never had any real privacy to develop herself in. Ever since Martha had known her, she had been under trustees.
She was now giving Martha tea and English muffins, which she was toasting with a fork over the fire. Her face was bright with the heat and puckered with a frown of concentration; this thoughtful, anxious, winsome look was typical of all the serious, clever girls she and Martha had been friends with at college. They bent their soft brows in continual perplexity, as if a teacher had just asked them a probing question. Dolly was gentler and more reserved than Martha; she was ironic where Martha was satiric and modest where Martha was vain. But just these differences, as in two sisters, pointed up the likeness between them—a likeness that reassured them, even though they affected to deprecate it. Martha today had come to talk to Dolly about Miles, and she felt a little guilty about it because it was the first time, in seven years, that she had reposed her confidence in anybody but John. “I’ll just stop and leave Dolly some tarragon,” she had called out to him, as she drove off. “Have a good time,” he advised, and Martha could not make out whether this meant that he saw through her excuse.
“Well, I was tight, of course,” she said now, watching her friend butter a muffin. Dolly gave a faint, embarrassed smile. “Oh, Martha!” she said. Martha laughed; she had always liked to shock Dolly. “I’ve slept with lots of men when I was tight,” she continued. “You’d die if I told you how many.” Dolly’s eyes widened in a question. “Not now, of course,” said Martha, quickly. “Years ago. Before I knew John.” Dolly nodded; she handed Martha the muffin and sought to change the subject slightly. “Miss Prentice,” she said, naming their favorite teacher, “always said you married Mr. Murphy for security. She had seen his picture once in the paper.” The two girls smiled. “Poor Miss Prentice,” murmured Martha. Dolly frowned. “But you never cared about security,” she pondered. Martha nodded gloomily. “I know,” she said. There was a silence. “He seemed so old, Dolly,” Martha exclaimed suddenly, setting down her cup and passing her hand across her brow, as if to calm herself. “He hasn’t changed a bit. I’d forgotten what he looked like. It gave me a turn to see him and remember myself yielding to his charms.” “I thought you were tight,” objected Dolly. “I was conscious,” cried Martha. “I wasn’t that tight. I remember everything about it, except one tiny little bit—the bit where he says I kissed him. I can’t remember that at all. The next thing I knew he was taking me into a motel, on the old Post Road. I was afraid we were going to get fleas. I remember thinking about that all the time. Do you suppose I really did kiss him, Dolly?” “I don’t know,” said Dolly. “If I did,” said Martha, “it wasn’t meant to be that kind of kiss. If it was, I don’t know myself at all, Dolly. All I can remember of my feelings is a sort of vague surprise, as if there were a big misunderstanding going on that ought to be cleared up, before it was too late, but I was too tight and tired to explain it to him. Up to the last minute, in the cabin, with all my clothes off, I was still trying to tell him that he was acting on a mistaken premise. I think I went through with it, as a sort of concession, to get him to listen to what I was trying to say.” She gave a little laugh. “Did you mind, Martha?” said Dolly, sympathetically. “Not specially,” said Martha. “It just seemed to me beside the point for him to be making love to me. I wasn’t either drawn or repelled—till the next morning, when I was horrorstruck. And then it happened again.” “In the morning, you mean?” said Dolly. Martha shook her head. “No. The next week. I thought it was all over and I could forget about it—treat it as an aberration. But then he turned up again, at the theater, and the same thing happened again, in practically every detail. . . .” Dolly scratched her head. “You must have been attracted to him,” she concluded. “But I wasn’t,” said Martha. “I had a man I was attracted to, more than one, in fact.” She shrugged and took another muffin.
“It was an awful mistake to come back here,” she continued. “Don’t tell John I said so; he doesn’t like to hear it. He knows it too but he won’t say so. I can’t tell him what I feel any more. He wants us to be brave and indifferent.” “But why not?” said Dolly. “Why should you let Miles affect you?” “I don’t know,” acknowledged Martha, sighing. “But he does. I can’t help it. He casts a long shadow. I don’t want to live in it. I feel depreciated by him, like a worm, like a white grub in the ground.” She jumped up and began to gesture with the muffin, conscious of acting a part; yet what she said was quite true. Again, as with John, she found that she could not be herself and describe the feelings Miles aroused in her. “I don’t understand,” said Dolly. Martha nodded; communication seemed hopeless. “Look, Dolly,” she said. “Between Miles and me, there’s a permanent war of principle. He claims to know what I am, to interpret me according to his authorized version; I’m sure he pretends to know why John and I came back here and why we married and what we ‘get out of each other,’ as he’d put it in his nasty grasping vocabulary. And I claim to know about him; thanks to my experience, I have the ‘lowdown’ on Miles. Two claims like this can’t exist side by side, in balance. One has to crush the other. And I’m the one to be crushed, inevitably.” She waved the muffin. “Why do you think that?” murmured Dolly, knitting her brows. “Because I doubt,” said Martha, rather grandly. “It occurs to me that I may be wrong. Miles has never had that experience.” Dolly inclined her head. “I see what you mean,” she said, thoughtfully. “Meeting him the other day. . . .”
Martha’s face brightened. “You thought he was awful?” she demanded, sitting down with a thump. “Yes,” said Dolly, in decided tones. “In what way?” pressed Martha. “So heavy,” said Dolly. “Like a stone-crusher. He made me nervous too. He reminded me of everybody’s father.” “Good!” exclaimed Martha. “You want people to dislike him?” asked Dolly. “Of course,” said Martha. “I rejoice in it. What did you think of her?” Dolly screwed up her forehead. “Rather nice, I thought, really. Very sweet face. Attractive in her way.” Martha bit her lip. “More so than I am?” But before Dolly could answer, Martha withdrew the question. “No,” she said. “Don’t tell me. I don’t want to hear, either way. Why should I care if she’s attractive?” “You’re jealous,” said Dolly, with a troubled countenance. “I must be,” admitted Martha. “But not in the way you would think. I stayed awake all last night, examining my conscience. I can’t bear to have such feelings. They’re unworthy. And I have no right to them. It isn’t as if I wanted him for myself. Perish the thought. I would die, I think, if he started after me again. That’s what I keep telling myself.” She closed her eyes and sat leaning back on the canvas-covered couch, looking all at once very pale and exhausted. “I always told him,” she said, slowly, “that he ought to let me leave him, for his own sake. I thought I meant it. I thought I had enough generosity to want him to be happy, apart from me.” She took a deep breath and set her lips. There was a silence while Martha brooded and Dolly watched her affectionately. “Don’t tell me if you don’t feel like it,” she murmured. It frightened her a little to see Martha like this, a waxen effigy of resolute misery; she had always considered her a gay, resilient person. Martha made a grimace. “I’ll try,” she said. “In a minute.” She closed her eyes again and reflected.
She was the worst wife he could have married, she used to tell Miles. It would be best for both of them, if he would let her go. “You’re the one I want,” Miles always retorted, comfortably. “No,” she would answer, resting her head on his arm, in the big bed (this would be one of their “good” mornings, when Miles was on the wagon); another woman, in her place, she said, would submit to his moods and make him happy. But though she allowed for this contingency in theory, she really did not think it likely. A saint, she meant, would put up with him. Hence it had greatly dismayed her, the other day at the Coes’, to see that this hypothetical other woman actually existed, smiling and tender, obeying him gratefully, murmuring, “Yes, dearest,” when he gave the sign to go. The notion that Miles could be “dearest” to anyone struck Martha as preposterous. It was still more fantastic to hear from the vicomte that it was Helen who had sent for the portrait. Such abnegation seemed to Martha unnatural and almost wicked. She could not, as she said to John, get over it. Yet it had a certain ring of familiarity. That, she declared with a sigh, was exactly the crazy kind of thing Miles tried to exact from a woman who wanted to live with him in peace. There was method in his madness; he made his wives choose between him and common sense, between him and ordinary decency.
He made his wives his accomplices; that was why they could not escape him. They had to stand by and watch him abuse the servants, hold back their wages, eat their food, accuse them of robbing him. He insisted that his wives lie for him, to his creditors, to the insurance company, to the tax people. He had no sense of limit or of other people’s rights. Nothing was safe from his meandering appetites: the maid’s time off, her dinner, her birthday box of candy, the cooking sherry, the vanilla. He slept in every bed and commandeered every bathroom. He even, Martha remembered, used to eat Barrett’s lollipops.
There was method in it, Martha had reiterated, to John, only last night: mere lack of consideration could not have carried him so far. His outrageousness had a purpose; by a campaign of calculated “frightfulness” he broke his wives’ spirits. She herself could never live down, in her own mind, not what he had done to her, but what she had consented in—their treatment of her brother, the beatings he used to give Barrett. It was his child, she used to tell herself; she could not interfere every time; it would only goad Miles on, etc., etc. These arguments were sound; she was justified; she had done her utmost. There was only one thing—a thing she had never quite brought herself to confess to John. Hearing Barrett cry, she had sometimes experienced pleasure. For an instant, before she could stop herself by pressing her fingers to her ears, she gloated that Miles was revealing himself in his true colors to his son. And, to be honest, she often felt something of the same kind when he ate the servants’ food.
If she had not felt this, she might have managed him better. She had seen this suddenly last night, in bed, clear as a vision or an unexpected refraction of her face from a street mirror. Miles had been right. It had satisfied her, in some part of her soul, whenever he behaved badly to herself or anyone else. It had proved, so to speak, a point. “You see?” she had felt like exclaiming, to Barrett, to the servants, to her doubting self. “That’s the way he is!” Martha was too fair-minded to incite him to any of his crimes, and indeed she had done her best to protect other people from him and to cover up his traces, so that the world would not know. But if despite all her efforts he demonstrated what he was, some part of her was well content and nodded to itself, as though a prediction had been verified. He would not let her love him, she used to tell herself, in gloomy triumph; he would not let anybody love him, including his own child. Now it dashed her to recognize that somebody else had succeeded in doing what she had always defined as the impossible. “She loves him,” she had said aloud to herself, wonderingly, sitting up in bed and feeling a strange pang of jealousy.
Her own love, beside this, seemed a paltry, commonplace thing—why should she not love John? It took no special virtue; he was a lovable person. She had turned on the light softly and looked down at him, a coil of limbs in the bed; he slept like a child, his lashes quivering gently on his cheek, his curly hair disarrayed picturesquely. He was beautiful and good, and yet as she looked down on him, curiously, she had a hollow sense, as though those very qualities had deprived her of an opportunity, the opportunity of loving against the grain.
“I’m envious of their marriage, isn’t that ridiculous?” she said to Dolly, now, with a light, forced laugh and a grimace. “I can’t bear the idea that anybody might think that it was happier than mine.” Dolly poked the dying fire. The pine wood was green; Martha and John had told her that she ought to have locust. She felt a little shocked, as usual, by Martha and wondered whether Martha was different from herself or simply more honest—a question Martha had often provoked among her college circle. “You mean,” said Dolly thoughtfully, trying to understand, “that if he’s happy, it casts a reflection on you?” Martha nodded. “But why should it, Martha?” pleaded Dolly. “You weren’t the right person for him.” Martha laughed. “Dear Dolly,” she said, “you sound so sensible. But I’m not. I’m an absolutist. I want to be a paragon uniting all the virtues. You remember that speech of Iago’s about Cassio? ‘He hath a daily beauty in his life that makes me ugly.’ Well, I feel that in reverse. I’d like to say to Miles: ‘I have a daily beauty in my life that makes yours ugly.’ In fact, I’d like to say it to every single person here in New Leeds, except you. All these tawdry people. That’s why we came back here—to show them how tawdry they are in comparison to us.” “Why, Martha, that’s horrible,” said Dolly, with her hand to her cheek. “I told you,” said Martha. “No wonder I feel like a worm. I hate this in myself and I can’t cast it out. And once I’ve discovered it I find it everywhere—all over me, even in my best actions. I suddenly feel that that’s why John and I got married: to show the rest of the world how to do it right, a sort of star turn, calculated to excite envy.” “I don’t believe it,” said Dolly, resolutely, shaking her head. “I know you both better than that. John was always a bit of a show-off, in his reserved way, and so were you, Martha. But you both admire lots of people—your friends. I’ve heard you. You’re both tremendous enthusiasts.” Martha reflected. “Yes,” she said. “You’re right. In a way. I always prided myself”—she laughed—“on the notion that I knew when to be humble. It must be this place that’s brought out the latent worst in me. Because of Miles. I feel I’m living in a showcase. Everybody is looking up to Digby and making comparisons. Or is it my imagination? It seems to me that it’s inevitable, that the human mind, given two similars, weighs them against each other. The principle of balance.” Dolly inclined her head. “I see,” she murmured. “But can’t you stop thinking about it?”
Martha lifted a shoulder. “You might as well tell me to stop thinking about myself. I can’t. If I think about him or her, I think about myself. If I think about myself, they pop into my mind. It’s degrading. Do you think about yourself a lot, Dolly?” “Constantly,” smiled Dolly. “In terms of reprimand.” “I know,” said Martha. “I wonder if these other people do. I can’t make out. If they did, you’d presume they’d make some effort to improve their messy lives. So probably they don’t. I like your shells,” she added, examining an arrangement of graduated seashells that Dolly had picked up on the beach. “You did it for pleasure, I imagine. If it were I, I would do it to make somebody admire my ingenuity.” She sighed and got up. “And the irony is, Dolly, that nobody here cares. They don’t know the difference. All my silly efforts are wasted on them. You should have seen the vicomte yesterday: the soul of phlegm. And I was hurt. Imagine. I wanted him to like our furniture.” “Why shouldn’t he?” said Dolly indignantly. Martha laughed. “I love you, Dolly,” she murmured. “You’re so loyal.” She hesitated. “Thank you for coming up here,” she said quickly. “I know you did it for us. Forgive us for bullying you.” “All my friends bully me,” said Dolly cheerfully. “Anyway, Martha, I admire you. You don’t have to force me to, either of you. But you do make me feel inferior. You always have. When you’re here, I burn the muffins.” She pointed with the fork to the charred remains on the hearth. Martha’s fair skin colored. “I didn’t will that to happen,” she said. “Honestly. I’d much rather you didn’t burn them. I love perfection in my friends. I don’t grudge you the seashells or having a better character than I have. It makes me happy.” She pondered. “Isn’t there such a thing, any more, as a healthy rivalry, a noble emulation, like the Olympic Games or a contest of bards? Does it all have to be poisoned, nowadays? This horrible bohemian life you see up here, with lily cups and beards and plastics—it’s real leveling, worse than suburbia, where there’s a frank competition with your neighbors, to have the newest car or bake the best cakes. I can understand that. I’m like that myself. But here nobody competes, unless there’s a secret contest as to who can have the most squalid house and give the worst parties. It gives me the strangest feeling, as if I were the only one left in the world with the desire to excel, as if I were competing, all alone, on an empty stage, without judges or rivals, just myself—a solipsistic nightmare. ‘That way lies madness,’ as old Dr. Hendricks used to say, remember, in freshman philosophy. In Juneau, Dolly, there used to be a madwoman who rode up and down the streets on a bicycle, wearing a sort of circus costume, tights and a red jacket, and white paint and rouge. I feel just like her when I walk down the main street here, in a dress and stockings; everybody stares—I’m anti-social. The other day, in the First National, one of the local beldames actually plucked at my arm and asked me why I wore stockings. ‘Nobody does up here,’ she informed me.”
“You always were a rebel,” said Dolly. “You’d be the same if you lived in Scarsdale.” “No,” said Martha. “If I lived in Scarsdale, I wouldn’t care what the neighbors thought. And I wouldn’t want to reform them.” “You want to reform these people?” asked Dolly, with a quizzical smile. Martha nodded. “Of course. I’m trying to set an example. It’s not only vanity; there’s also a corrective impulse. ‘Let your light so shine before all men.’ That’s the very height of my folly. John and I are making ourselves ludicrous with our high-toned ways. I know it but I won’t desist. It becomes a form of fanaticism. They can kill me, I say to myself, grandly, but they can’t make me be like them.”
Dolly remained seated on her stool by the fireplace, watching Martha arrange her gray cloak. “You won’t believe it,” said Martha, “but I don’t want to have a selfish life. I hate this obsession with myself, these odious comparisons. I want to live for somebody else, for ‘humanity.’ ” She gave a droll smile. “You have John,” pointed out Dolly. Martha frowned. “That’s just the trouble,” she said. “He won’t let me live for him. He wants to live for me. It leaves us at a peculiar deadlock. I keep telling myself that if we could only have a baby, everything would be changed. I felt certain that when we came up here, I would ‘conceive.’ ” The habit of speaking in quotation marks was one the two young women had acquired in college; Martha had trained herself out of it, professionally, but when she was with Dolly the mannerism reasserted itself.
“Maybe you will, Martha.” Martha shook her head. “I’m thirty-three. A little too old really, for a first baby. And years ago I had an abortion. It may have done something to my insides. Anyway, it’s probably wrong to have a baby as a ‘solution.’ One ought to have it for no reason, just for itself.” Her hand was on the doorknob, but she still lingered. “Come to dinner tomorrow. I’ll cook something vainglorious for you. Maybe we’ll go mushrooming first. John has found a new kind. And we have some beautiful poisonous ones, waxy yellows and exotic carmines, that we thought you might like to paint. The poisonous ones, naturally, are the prettiest.” She was speaking, all at once, very rapidly, in a disjointed manner. Dolly looked at her wonderingly. “Thank you for the tea,” added Martha. “Thank you for the tarragon,” said Dolly, slowly getting up. “I really must go,” said Martha, still not moving. “John will worry. That’s the disadvantage of your not having a telephone. Dolly, are you lonely here?” “I like it,” said Dolly.
The two young women’s eyes slowly canvassed each other. “One more thing,” said Martha, hurriedly, in an offhand tone but holding her friend’s gaze. “About the baby. It occurred to me last night that the reason I wanted one was because of them.” Dolly dropped her eyes. “You mean the Murphys,” she muttered, staring at the floor. Martha nodded. “They have a baby. I want a better one. It stands to reason. I never thought seriously of having one till we came up here.” Dolly’s figure stiffened, as though a pain had shot through it, as she listened to this abrupt confession. “You mustn’t say that,” she admonished. “I know,” gravely agreed Martha. “If I ever should have a baby, you must promise to forget that I told you. It may not even be true.” She tossed the last phrase off lightly and stood on tiptoe to give Dolly a kiss. Dolly received the kiss absently and remained where she was, leaning slightly forward, like a pillar, as she heard the door shut and Martha’s quick, lively step crackle the twigs in the path outside. The horn played a flourish, in farewell, and the pond sent the sound back, a distant airy cadenza.
Dolly drew her thumb slowly across her jaw. She frowned. Her neat dish face wore a mazed look of consternation. She shook herself, dog style, and went, still frowning, to pick up the tea things. “You must not be shocked,” she said to herself aloud, in stern bell tones, as she headed toward the little kitchen.