“No. But I’m nearly thirty years older than I was then. Some women have bigger teats than others, too. Some people have bigger noses, or ears. Adelaide never heard about me and never saw another man—well, she did, come to think of it—but she never seemed to think I was out of the ordinary. Did you ever stop to think of how many tiny little women are married to big men? And how many big women marry little men? I think the whole thing is exaggerated. It’s a man and a woman getting together that counts.”
“Well, now you know why I smiled,” she said. “Why are you smiling?”
“I was thinking how quickly a million years can pass,” he said.
Adelaide Lockwood had never seen her husband walk across the street with another woman; now, in a fortnight at The Run, he had twice gone off alone with Martha Downs, on the pretext of showing her about the resort; but with Adelaide Lockwood life was extremely simple, and a man who went off alone with a woman, a woman who went off alone with a man, and the two gone together for hours at a time—that man and that woman wasted to be together to the exclusion of all others, and if they desired no other company, they desired each other. Desiring each other, given the opportunities, they would have each other. Thus her reasoning.
“What is there between you and Mrs. Downs?” she said, in their third week at The Run.
“You know what there is between me and Mrs. Downs. Nothing. She’s Harry’s widow, and I’ve been showing her around.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Suit yourself.”
“It stops, right now.”
“You can’t stop something that never began.”
“Yes you can. You can stop something before it begins.”
“She only has another week here.”
“Then you don’t have to show her around any more. She shouldn’t have come here. This is no place for her kind.”
“You’re talking nonsense. George and her son are going to be roommates next year, and her husband was an old friend of mine, and partner.”
“Such a friend you didn’t need, that stole money from you and never invited you to his home. I don’t want you to see this woman any more.”
“Who’s giving orders around here?”
“I never did, but I will now. I don’t want my home broken up. You’ve been with this woman, it’s no use lying to me. I can tell by looking at the both of you. And there’s other ways to tell. I’m twenty years married to you, don’t forget. Twenty years in the same bed with a man, a person isn’t easy to fool.”
“If that’s all you have to go on, you’re making a lot out of nothing. The first year we were married we did it every night.”
“Ah, stop your lying. I can always tell that, too, when you’re lying to me. I don’t know many men, but I know two. You, and my father. These two I know.”
Adelaide had not believed his lies and had left no doubt of her disbelief, so that in consequence her accusation stood undenied, the charge became the truth, accepted and in a sense acknowledged by them as the truth; the acceptance and the acknowledgement became a condition, and the condition was the cessation of their relations as man and wife. Although they had slept in the same bed throughout their married life, now after a few nights of the new coldness she put a cot on the porch and lay there. “Why did you do that?” he said.
“I don’t want you in bed with me, wet from her.”
“You want to let everybody know. The servants, the children.”
“Before was when you should have thought of that,” said Adelaide.
“Very well, then we’ll never sleep in the same bed again.”
“I the same as told you that, didn’t I?”
“I guess you did.”
“What if I have a man?”
“I’ll divorce you. Have you got one?”
“No, but I wanted to hear what you’d say.”
“Then you heard. Don’t have a man, or I’ll sue you for divorce.”
“You won’t always be here, Abraham. Think that over,” she smiled in a way that was extremely unpleasant for the absence of unpleasantness in the smile.
“Who would you have?”
“It could be anybody, Abraham. Just as long as he had a cock to give me.”
He slapped her.
“A cock to go in me,” she repeated, and he slapped her again. “Hit me as much as you want to, but now I got you worried.” She held her hands over her face to protect herself, but he did not again strike her.
“I’m not worried, but you’d better be,” he said.
“All the same, I’m not. You’re going to see how it feels for a change. Every time I talk to any man. Every time you go away. ‘Who is she with?’ you’ll say to yourself. I know who you’re with, but you’ll never know. Friends of yours, or the grocery boy. I could be doing the same things to the grocery boy while you’re with Mrs. Downs. If I go visit my father in Richterville, who am I with? You won’t know. Maybe I’ll be out in the back alley, Abraham. Do you remember me telling you about that? Maybe I’ll be like your younger sister.”
“You know where she died. In the crazy-house.”
“Put me there, I dare you. You don’t want any more disgrace. Disgrace you’d be afraid of. You started it, Abraham, but I know you. I know what you want. I know your weakness. The boys. The sons. Disgrace me, divorce me in the courthouse, but I’m not dumb, Abraham. You want everything for the sons, and that’s why you’ll never do anything else to me. Don’t ever hit me again, either. You did that for the last time.”
He went upstairs to their bedroom, where he kept his pistol in a locked drawer, but in the time it took to find the key his impulse to murder her subsided. To find the key, he had to think; and before he could think he had to regain some self-control. He sat on the edge of their bed, out of breath from fury and the dash up the stairs. He saw that his hand was shaking, making odd shadows on the floor under the weak light from the bracketed kerosene lamp. One of the sons— Penrose—was snoring in the boys’ room, and down under the boat landing the bullfrogs were grunting. A woman laughed in a nearby boathouse and her laugh was answered by a dog at the far end of the dam. For the moment he forgot why he was in the bedroom, then remembered again when he became aware that he was gazing at a tintype of his father, made three-quarter face so that the mutilated ear would not show. Moses Lockwood, who had killed two men. Who had killed more than two men, but was remembered only for those two. Now Abraham Lockwood knew where he had hidden the key, hidden it so that his sons would not play with the pistol. He got the key from its hiding place behind his father’s tintype, unlocked the drawer, unloaded the pistol, put the cartridges in a different drawer, locked both drawers and returned the key to its hiding place. A little delay had saved him once from committing murder; a longer delay might save him again. He blew out the lamp and lay in his bed. She had escaped death, she would never again be in danger of it from him, but she would never again delight him or be delighted by him, by touch, by word of mouth, by a smile of welcome understanding, by gladness seen or heard. Let her live that way; that could kill her, for her to deny love or for love to be denied her. She was not one to be sustained by hate. Let her waste, wither, die, and let her stay out of the way of The Concern.
They had put their sons on the train to Boston, and now, for a change, they could walk together publicly, for a few minutes, without causing suspicion. “I didn’t realize you had such a handsome son,” she said.
“You’d seen him before,” he said.