What a Christmas it was going to be, she thought. Even last year had been better-that dreadful Christmas, her first away from home, her first in the status of a servant and yet not quite a servant. She had been able to celebrate the coming of Christ with neither the family nor the servants. Perhaps after all she would be no more alone this year than last, she thought in a final effort to console herself.
Lord Birkin stood at the window of his room, his lips compressed, his hands clasped behind him and beating a rhythmic tattoo against his back.
What a confounded turn of events.
“We should have come a week ago, like everyone else,” Lady Birkin said, “instead of staying in London until the last possible minute.”
She was seated on the edge of the bed behind him. He knew that if he turned and looked at her, he would see her the picture of dejection, all her beauty and animation marred by the rain and the poverty of her surroundings. She would hate having to spend Christmas here when they had been on their way to spend it with the Middletons and more than twenty of their relatives and friends.
“You would have missed the opera and the Stebbins’ ball,” he said without turning.
“And you would have missed a few days at your club,” she said, a note of bitterness in her voice.
“We could not have predicted the rain,” he said. “Not in this quantity anyway. I am sorry that you will miss all the Christmas entertainments, Sally.”
“And you will miss the shooting,” she said, that edge still in her voice. “And the billiards.”
He turned to look at her at last, broodingly. Marriage had turned out to be nothing like what he had expected. They were two people living their separate lives, he and Sally, with the encumbrance of the fact that they were legally bound together for life.
Were things quite as bad as that? They had been fond of each other when they had married, even though their parents on both sides had urged the match on them. He still was fond of her, wasn’t he? Yes, he was still fond of her. But somehow marriage had not drawn them closer together.
The occasional couplings, now no more frequent than once or twice a month, though they had not been married much longer than three years, brought with them no emotional bond. They both behaved on the mornings after the couplings as if they had never happened.
“I am sorry about the sparsity of rooms,” he said. “I am sorry we must share.”
His wife flushed and looked about the room rather than at him. It was going to be dreadful, she thought. Dreadful to be alone with him for what would probably be several days. Dreadful to have to share a room with him and a bed for that time. They had never shared a bed for longer than ten minutes at a time, and even those occasions had become rarer during the past year.
She had married him because she loved him and because she had thought he loved her, though he had never said so. Foolish girl. She must have appeared quite mousy to such a blond and beautiful man. He had married her because it was expected of him, because the connection was an eligible one. She knew now that she had never attracted him and never could. He rarely spent time with her. Their marital encounters were a bitter disappointment, and so rare that she did not even have the consolation of having conceived his child.
She knew about his mistresses, though he did not know that she knew. She had even seen his latest one, a creature of exquisite beauty and voluptuous charms. She herself had come to feel quite without beauty or charm or allure.
Except that she had not allowed herself to give in to self-pity. She had had a choice early in her marriage. Either she could retreat into herself and become the mousy, uninteresting thing he saw her as, or she could put her unhappiness and disappointment behind her and live a life of busy gaiety, as so many married ladies of her acquaintance did. She had chosen the latter course. He would never know for what foolish reason she had married him or what foolish hopes had been dashed early in their marriage.
“There is no point in apologizing for what cannot be helped, Henry,” she said. “Under the circumstances I suppose we are fortunate to have a roof over our heads. Though I could wish that it had happened at some other time of the year. It is going to be an unimaginably dull Christmas.”
She wondered what it would be like to lie all night in the large and rather lumpy bed with him beside her. Her breathing quickened at the thought, and she looked up at him with an unreasonable resentment.
“Yes,” he said. “Whoever heard of Christmas spent at an inn?”
“It would not have happened,” she said, hearing the irritability in her voice and knowing that she was being unfair, “if we had come a week ago, like everyone else.”
“As you keep reminding me,” he said. “Next year we will do things differently, Sally. Next year we will see to it that you are surrounded by friends and admirers well before Christmas itself comes along.”
“And that you have plenty of other gentlemen and gentlemen’s sports with which to amuse yourself,” she said. “Perhaps there will be some gentlemen here, Henry. Perhaps you will find some congenial companions with whom to talk the night away and forget the inconvenience of such congested quarters.”
“I can sleep in the taproom if you so wish,” he said, his voice cold.
They did not often quarrel. One or other of them usually left the room when a disagreement was imminent, as it was now.
“That would be foolish,” she said.
He was leaving the room now. He paused, with his hand on the doorknob.
“I doubt there is such a luxury as a private parlor in this apology for an inn,” he said. “We will have to eat in the public dining room, Sally.
I shall go and see when dinner will be ready.”
An excuse to get away from her, Lady Birkin thought as the door closed behind him. She concentrated on not crying and succeeded. She had perfected the skill over the years.
It was an excuse to get away from her, Lord Birkin thought as he descended the stairs. Away from her accusing voice and the knowledge that the worst aspect of the situation for her was being forced to spend a few days in his dull company. She did not sleep with any of her numerous admirers. He did not know quite how he could be sure of that, since he had never spied on her, but he did know it. She was faithful to him, or to their marriage, at least, as he was not. But he knew equally that she would prefer the company of any one of her admirers to his.
But she was stuck with it for several days. And at Christmas, of all times.
The Misses Amelia and Eugenia Horn, unmarried ladies of indeterminate years, had left their room in order to seek out the innkeeper. The sheets on their beds were damp, Miss Amelia Horn declared in a strident voice.
“Perhaps they are only cold, dear,” Miss Eugenia Horn suggested in a near whisper, embarrassed by the indelicate mention of bedsheets in the hearing of two gentlemen, not counting the innkeeper himself.
But her elder sister was made of sterner stuff and argued on. They were bitterly disappointed, Miss Eugenia Horn reflected, leaving the argument to her sister. They would not make it to dear Dickie’s house fifteen miles away and would not have the pleasure of their annual visit with their brother and sister-in-law and the dear children, though the youngest of Dickie’s offspring was now seventeen years old. How time did fly. They would all be made quite despondent by her absence and dear Amelia’s. Dickie was always too busy, the poor dear, to have them visit at any other time of the year.
Miss Eugenia Horn sighed.
Colonel Forbes, a large, florid-faced, white-haired gentleman of advanced years, was complaining to Lord Birkin, the innkeeper’s attention being otherwise occupied at the time. He deplored the absence of a private parlor for the convenience of his wife and himself.