For some moments, Mrs. Talcott, again, said nothing, but she no longer had an eye for the plants. Neither did she look at Karen; her gaze was fixed before her. "Is that so," was at last her comment.
The phrase might have expressed amazement, commiseration or protest; its sound remained ambiguous. They had come to a rustic bench. "Let's sit down for a while," she said; "I'm not as young as I was."
They sat down, the old woman heavily, and she drew a sigh of relief. Looking at her Karen saw that she, too, was very tired. And she, too—was it not strange that to-day she should see it for the first time?—was very lonely. A sudden pity, profound and almost passionate, filled her for Mrs. Talcott.
"You'll not mind having me here—for all the time now—again, will you?" she asked, smiling a little, with determination, for she did not wish Mrs. Talcott to guess what she had seen.
"No," said Mrs. Talcott, continuing to gaze before her, and shaking her head. "No, I'll be glad of that. We get on real well together, I think." And, after another moment of silence, she went on in the same contemplative tone: "I used to quarrel pretty bad with my husband when I was first married, Karen. He was the nicest, mildest kind of man, as loving as could be. But I guess most young things find it hard to get used to each other all at once. It ain't easy, married life; at least not at the beginning. You expect such a high standard of each other and everything seems to hurt. After a while you get so discouraged, perhaps, finding it isn't like what you expected, that you commence to think you don't care any more and it was all a mistake. I guess every young wife thinks that in the first year, and it makes you feel mighty sick. Why, if marriage didn't tie people up so tight, most of 'em would fly apart in the first year and think they just hated each other, and that's why it's such a good thing that they're tied so tight. Why I remember once the only thing that seemed to keep me back was thinking how Homer—Homer was my husband's name, Homer G. Talcott—sort of snorted when he laughed. I was awful mad with him and it seemed as if he'd behaved so mean and misunderstood me so that I'd got to go; but when I thought of that sort of childish snort he'd give sometimes, I felt I couldn't leave him. It's mighty queer, human nature, and the teeny things that seem to decide your mind for you; I guess they're not as teeny as they seem. But those hurt feelings are almost always a mistake—I'm pretty sure of it. Any two people find it hard to live together and get used to each other; it don't make any difference how much in love they are."
There was no urgency in Mrs. Talcott's voice and no pathos of retrospect. Its contemplative placidity might have been inviting another sad and wise old woman to recognize these facts of life with her.
Karen's mood, while she listened to her, was hardening to the iron of her final realization, the realization that had divided her and Gregory. "It isn't so with us, Mrs. Talcott," she said. "He has shown himself a man I cannot live with. None of our feelings are the same. All my sacred things he despises."
"Mercedes, you mean?" Mrs. Talcott suggested after a moment's silence.
"Yes. And more." Karen could not name her mother.
Mrs. Talcott sat silent.