She stopped and waited and was apparently listening for some sound in the hot dusk, but actually she was only giving him time to say something or strike her or do what he felt impelled to do in the circumstances. She still did not look at him, but she knew that he had not moved and was still sitting with his head back against the swing, and she had a feeling that his eyes were closed and had been closed all the time she had been talking. After a while he repeated his long sigh.
“Is that all?” he said.
“No, it is not all, but perhaps it is enough.”
“I want you to tell it all.”
“All right. Just as you wish. Bella was the last. I met her in a park during a particularly bad time, and we met there two or three times afterward, and I went to live with her in her apartment. It was never very good with Bella, not like with the others, but it was better than being alone, and I stayed with her until it was no longer possible. She found out that my family had money and wanted me to help her blackmail them, and it was this that made it impossible to stay. Against my will, she contacted my brother Carl and had him come to the apartment, and he came and paid her five thousand dollars, and this was the night he took me away with him and three or four days later took me to Miami.”
He stirred and sighed again and spoke so softly that she could barely hear him.
“To meet me.”
“Yes. You were in bad luck. You probably won’t believe it, but I’m truly sorry.”
“Why did you marry me?”
“For asylum. Carl thought that marriage would eventually convert me to normalcy, that it was the only way. He had been very kind to me, and I wanted to please him. He wanted me to change, and I honestly wanted to change myself. I even convinced myself that it would be possible in the way you offered, but now I know that it is not possible and can never be accomplished. I’m sorry for the hurt I’ve done you.”
“You needn’t be. I deserve what I’ve received.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“I had no capacity for marriage myself. I was using you as much as you were using me.”
“Oh, that. That’s different.”
“Yes? How?”
“Impotence can be adjusted to. Even compensated for. If only that were between us, we would have no great problem. Anyhow, it will serve no purpose now to weigh the blame. You said that yourself a little while ago, and I agree with you. The only question is, what do you intend to do about it?”
“Do? What’s to be done?”
“I must say you are taking it very calmly. Don’t you find me disgusting? Don’t you want to strike me or curse me or even kill me?”
“No.”
“I don’t understand it.”
“Maybe I am too tired. Do you think you are the only one who has ever been tired or depressed or has wanted to die?”
His voice did not rise with emotion. It was perfectly flat and lifeless. She turned her head and looked at him for the first time since his arrival, and he was sitting as she had thought he was, with his head back and his eyes closed, and his face had in the dusk the stiff, waxen look of a face that had been embalmed.
“I told you I should go away,” she said, “and now I will go.”
“Break your promise?”
“I think you are now willing to relieve me of it.”
“No. I am not.”
“Why? Do you want me to stay so that you can punish me in some way? If you do, I will not blame you.”
“I don’t want to punish you. I am in no position to assume a judicial role, God knows.”
“Then why do you want me to stay?”
“Because I am obligated by the fraud I practiced on you, which was as great, in spite of what you say, as the one you practiced on me. Because I cannot release you without first trying to help you. What does it matter? You have made a promise, and I will hold you to it.”
“You are being kind, and I wish you wouldn’t. No good has come of kindness. Carl was kind, and you can see what it has come to.”
“I will take you somewhere for treatment.”
“I won’t go. No good has come of treatment, either. If you have faith in treatment, why haven’t you sought it for yourself?”
“I don’t know. At any rate, I won’t try to force you to do anything you don’t want to do. Do you intend to stay?”
“If you still want it.”
“I do. I am trying to think why it is that I want it, and I believe it is because I am convinced that this is the last chance for both of us, and if it can’t be the beginning of something better, it should at least be the end of everything bad.”
“All right. If I am going to stay, I had better tell you that I invited Emerson and Ed Page to the party Saturday night.”
For a moment he did not understand what she had said, his mind struggling to adjust to the incredibly quick shift of hers from their personal tragic relationship to such petty business. Actually, the shift was not so abrupt nor the new subject so unassociated as they appeared, but this was something he did not know.
“Party? Oh, yes. Em and Ed? Why did you do that?”
“Because I wanted them to come. They are the only people in Corinth I can tolerate. Do you object?”
“No. Of course not. I’m a little surprised that they accepted.”
“It was he who accepted. I don’t think he wanted to, but I rather tricked him into it.”
“Well, they’re welcome. I like Em. Perhaps he’ll help to make the evening bearable.” He opened his eyes and stood up slowly, as if the action required tremendous effort. “I’m going up to the house now. Are you ready to come?”
“Not yet. I want to sit here a little longer.”
“Will you be all right?”
“Perfectly. If you are afraid I may throw myself off the bluff after all, you needn’t be. I am really too great a coward.”
Turning, he walked away. She listened to his footsteps receding on the dry grass. The valley of the river was filling with darkness.
Chapter VI
Section 1
Awakening very early in the morning, she knew at once that it was going to be a bad day. Bad days were in her life nothing unusual, of course, but some days were bad even in comparison with other days that were bad, and it had been that kind of day when she had taken the barbiturates quite a while ago, and it had been that kind of day when she had gone to the park and met Bella, and every time a day like that came along she knew that she would be far better off if she didn’t have to live it. She lay quietly in bed with the still house around her and the bad day ahead of her, and pretty soon she realized that it was Saturday, the day of the party at the country club, and that, however bad the day might be, the night would certainly be worse. Lying there with her eyes closed and not moving a muscle, she tried to think of a way to avoid the bad day and the worse night, but she couldn’t think of a way for the simple reason that there wasn’t any, and then she thought that she would continue to lie quietly in the darkness behind her lids until she went to sleep again, thereby at least-shortening the day if not the night, but she couldn’t do that, either. She opened her eyes and began waiting for whatever was going to happen to start happening.