But she was a better wife, too, for just what reason Judith did not know, though she was beginning to have vague thoughts on the subject. There appeared to be between her and Dan a settled, comfortable intimacy based on as perfect an understanding as can exist between a man and a woman. She bullied and nagged him a good deal about various things: his habits of drinking and fox hunting, his muddy shoes, his carelessness of her company table cloth. But she did not mean a great deal by the scoldings and he took them complacently. He on his side, though decidedly selfish in personal matters like most husbands, adored his family and considered his wife the sum of all perfections. Judith was quite sure that Jerry no longer regarded herself as perfect. What was worse, she felt her feelings gradually numbing into a growing indifference toward him. She saw quite clearly that Lizzie May and Dan got on much better than she and Jerry.
As a mother, too, Lizzie May was better than she. She hardly ever slapped her children or fell into a rage with them. They did not seem to annoy her. Why was this, Judith asked herself uneasily. She thought she loved her children quite as much as Lizzie May loved hers. Perhaps she did; but then quite possibly she did not. What was the matter with herself that she should be a failure? She began to brood and look into herself.
There was not the least doubt that she was a failure. It did not need comparison with Lizzie May to convince her of this. When she thought about it, as she did increasingly long and often, she faced the fact quite calmly and almost coldly, as she was in the habit of facing facts. She had always disliked housework. Now she loathed it as the galley slave loathes the oar. She let things slide as much as she could. The floor remained unscrubbed and the stove unpolished. Fluff collected in feathery rolls under the beds, and layer after layer of greasy smut formed on the outsides of the pots and pans. In the dark corners of the cupboard mice made nests of torn up bits of paper and rag and left little mounds of corn hulls and little black oblongs to show where they had feasted. When she opened the cupboard door, a stale and pungent smell testified to their presence. Dust collected on the shelves, cobwebs in the corners, and bedbugs in the beds.
Once in a while when the house got too distressingly dirty, she would have a grand clean up. She would spend two or three febrile days going into everything, cleaning the cupboards, sweeping down the walls, taking the beds apart, and soaking them with kerosene, washing the windows, polishing the stove. At such times her eyes sparkled and her cheeks glowed with excitement. When it was all done she would sink back, tired but happy, and register a determination to keep things looked after in future so that such a thorough going over would never again be necessary.
It seemed to her that she was an even greater failure with the children. She cared more for them than for anything else in her life, she felt quite sure of that. She was consumed with anxiety lest they should fall sick. In summer she cooled and strained the milk with the greatest care, fearful of dysentery; and in winter she was anxiously mindful of draughts and chills, worried as to whether the babies were warmly enough dressed and constantly on the watch for the first signs of the much dreaded colds so common in all the leaky, draughty shanties during the winter season.
Nevertheless, in spite of her anxiety about the health and comfort of the children, she felt more and more that she begrudged them something. She did not serve them wholeheartedly, devotedly, joyfully, like Lizzie May. She wearied of the constant putting on and pulling off of little garments. More and more she chafed against the never relaxing strain of being always in bondage to them, always a victim of their infantile caprices, always at their beck and call seven days a week through weeks that were always the same.
They were so imperious, so rigorously demanding in the supreme confidence of their complete power over her. They were so clinchingly sure of their ascendancy. They gripped her with hooks stronger than the finest steel. If only she could have been a willing victim, like Lizzie May. But she could not. She strained away, and the hooks bit into her shuddering flesh, unalterably firm, enduring, and invincible. She knew that they would never let her go.
She found herself longing ardently for a single day, even a single hour when she could be by herself, quite alone and free to do as she chose.
At first when this wish formed itself in her mind the nostalgia of the fields and roads took possession of her. She imagined herself taking a long, carefree ride on horseback or following a turkey hen over the hills and hollows; and having found the hidden nest, coming back leisurely, aimlessly, enjoying the warmth of the sunshine and the touch of the wind on her face, feeling herself, as she had used to do, a part of the out of doors, untroubled by thoughts and happy that she was alive. Later on, in the winter, when the strain of her captivity dragged more and more wearyingly on exhausted nerves, she forgot the old nostalgia, forgot even to look out of the window, and longed for only one thing: quiet and peace—peace and deep, long sleep.