About this time he began to notice that instead of misty, in-the-distant-future glances at what marriage was to mean, came concrete, definite, recurring pictures of one scene after another in the life before them. His imagination, never very quickly aroused or very flexible by nature, began to be prodded by circumstances into an unwonted activity on the subject of Martha and this marriage. He saw her in his mind's eye across the breakfast table, on the other side of the hearth, or even sitting on the arm of his chair with his arm around her, as she often sat now while they talked over their plans. But (it was one of the first intimations he had of the storm before him) he encountered some curious dumb resistance deep in his heart when he tried to think of her more intimately with the veils of girlhood gone, as his wife. Something within flashed up with chivalric swiftness to shut out such thoughts. He amazed himself once or twice by feeling his face hot, as though with shame at the idea of making Martha, Martha whom he loved so much, his wife. What sort of morbid prudery was this? As soon as it was passed he found it incredible; and felt it again. "Perhaps it wasn't so incredible after all. Maybe that was the price you paid for knowing something about life." It was inevitable—what must be felt by every man who had not been brought up in a vacuum. And it was really all right and nothing to be squeamish over. Human nature is what it is, and there's no use dressing it up in high-sounding names!
If that had been all he had to worry him! But there were other things. More than once he had felt a new exasperation rise in him when Martha would go on discussing the color of wall-paper and window-curtains. Hang it all, he was ready to agree with her whatever way she wanted it—wasn't that enough without dragging him into a discussion of details he didn't understand or care about? Nothing of any great importance, such passing moments of impatience, and yet he had gloried in his certainty that Martha and he agreed on everything! More troubling still—he remembered so distinctly the first time—bending together over a book, a strand of Martha's hair had touched his cheek. He could still feel the shiver with which he had drawn away—true, he had not realized what was taking place—had felt subconsciously as if a spider were walking across his face—but just the same, three years ago though he might have recoiled, his next impulse would have been to snatch that tress of hair and kiss it. Why didn't he kiss it now? Why, here it was again, just as if they were married already: that was the way so many husbands he knew acted with their wives! Of course all this was to be expected, too: you get used to things; you can't go on being thrilled by familiar sensations. In the nature of things marriage could not be as transcendent as people pretended, when men and women are so far from being transcendent!
And yet little by little whenever in the pauses of his business he gave a thought to his personal future he felt it all there again, heavier and heavier, weighing down leadenly every thought which he tried to send ahead into the life he meant to make so happy for Martha.
At this, for a short time, he fell into an inner panic, lost his head, thought himself abnormal, incapable of ordinary human life. He was afraid to see Martha, and was in his heart immeasurably relieved when she was called off by a wedding in her Aunt's family to a somewhat lengthy visit in Ohio. He wanted to have it all out with himself while she was gone—make an end of all this nonsense. But what he did was to think of it as little as possible.
With Martha gone he was able to occupy his mind entirely with business problems, and the release from tormenting personal worries was grateful to him. He had been intensely ill-at-ease. He was relieved that his discomfort was passed, quite passed.
He opened Martha's first letter with pleasure. Letters were all right: they didn't harry you with emotional over-tones. He read her entertaining account of the prostrate condition of both families over the elaborate wedding ceremony impending. Everybody it seemed was frantic with nerves—except the bride-to-be and her young man, of course, who paid no attention to anybody or anything but themselves. Neale thought he felt a note of good-natured satire in this, and smiled appreciatively. That was exactly what he felt about fussy weddings. Martha always felt as he did.
With the thought an inner door clanged open, and sickeningly there was the whole thing to begin again! What if Martha had been feeling as he had? What did a decent girl feel before her marriage anyhow? Did she dread it perhaps—or on the other hand, had she too lost the thrill—were they already like some of the married couples he knew who kissed with listless lips, looked at one another with stolid glassy eyes? No, Martha was all right! Martha wouldn't change! But didn't that make it worse? What did she expect to find in marriage? Could he give Martha what she expected to find in marriage? He had never once before thought of that, absorbed as he had been by his own disquiet. He was overwhelmed by this new complication, and for many days would not allow himself even to glance at it. He hated the idea of thinking about it. He hated the whole idiotic tangle he kept getting into. Why, damn it, getting married was no such complicated affair! Look at all the imbeciles who sailed into it, a vacuous smile on their lips and nothing whatever in their heads, and made a success of it! A man wasn't a woman, thank God! and couldn't be expected to divine what a woman wanted out of marriage. People who did not expect too much of it, or of anything, were the only ones with intelligence.
Just at this time he got his first chance at a big order. An industrial suburb was projected to house the operatives of a new machine-tool manufacturing plant in the Connecticut valley. The contractors had never been Gates customers and no one in the office thought that young Crittenden had the ghost of a show of landing the order—no one, that is, but young Crittenden himself. The contract would run up into the millions of board feet: forgetting Martha, marriage, every personal element in life, Neale started after it.
He studied the buyer, the situation, the sort of lumber needed. He sat up nights going over the architect's specifications; made up alternative schedules for spruce, oak, yellow pine interior trim; clear or "grade A" shingles. Then, delving deep in the information he himself had collected, he rechecked his figures, shaving the margin of safety down till he was sure his bid would be lower than any other firm's, and yet safe—no danger of leaving the firm in the hole. The Gates Lumber Co. could count on its usual percentage of profit and Neale Crittenden on his biggest commission yet, to add to the sum he was laying aside for the new home.
When his bid was finally in the contractor's hands, and routine office and road work threatened to leave him with time to think, Neale turned hastily back to his private deal with Grandfather. Grandfather's intimate knowledge of all the possible timber-tracts in his region was a gold mine. There were always wood-lots in the back valleys being sold for taxes, or for very little because, all the older generation dying off, the western heirs did not care enough about the little old family land-holdings to come east and investigate them. And even if they had, knowing nothing of the eastern or indeed of any lumber market, they had no notion of the potential value of their inheritance. Neale resolved to take part of his little savings for the use of the new household, to buy up a few such wood-lots, and turn them over at a big profit. He felt sure of himself now, sure he could swing such an operation, and taking advantage of the Labor Day vacation, he went up to West Adams to spend the week-end and talk it over with Grandfather.