The Marbeck Inn: A Novel

by Harold Brighouse

The little thing which counted heavily against her, almost at once, was simply that Ada was untidy. She did not invent places for things, or, if she did, they were never used. She left her clothes downstairs after she had been out, and the piano is not the place for a hat or the sofa for an umbrella. It annoyed Sam to distraction to find her clothes distributed about their bedroom, slung carelessly over chair backs, pitched on the floor.

Men are not the untidy sex: the virtue of tidiness, like most others, is evenly distributed. Sam was tidy by nature, and habit is stronger still. Ada’s misfortune was that he was used to Anne, that Anne was neat and Ada a slut. Sam did not know until he missed it how much he appreciated Anne’s tidiness, how much he needed it and how much he hated untidiness until he lived with it in Ada. In London, in the hotel, he had excused what he saw of it, because it was in an hotel; which was also why there had been little to see, by reason of a good chambermaid.

At home, it hurt him and he could do nothing. Ada did nothing, either. She had not married for love, and one does not change a habit without strong motive. His hints appeared to Ada peevish and unreasonable. She thought he made mountains out of molehills and despised him for small-mindedness; he thought a woman who could not put a petticoat into a drawer when he asked her was wilfully provoking him.

She was not wilful of set purpose. She simply refused to disturb her habits, to accommodate herself to him, to make a sacrifice to love. She had no love to which to sacrifice.

And presently he found out that he, too, did not love. But that was all. Then and afterwards that was, damnably, all. He did not love, but neither did he hate. He had never loved her deeply enough to hate her. That was the tragedy of Sam’s marriage: indifference, the deadliest sin.

He was indifferent to her, to her untidiness and even to her extravagance. She could not treat clothes reasonably, she did not know how to wear them when she had them, but she lusted madly to possess them. She was grossly, inexcusably extravagant, and he was indifferent. He was indifferent because he was growing rich, and wanted his energies for the purpose of growing richer, not of quarrelling with her.

That was another tragedy. They never quarrelled. They never cleared the air, they never flushed the drain. They did not make adjustments, but left things where they were, in a bad place. On honeymoon, they turned from looking at each other to look at London, and at home, after one experience of revelation, they did not seek another, but rebounded and looked anywhere but at themselves.

But Peter was looking, and Anne, through the eyes of George, was looking, and it seemed to her that things were happening as she had expected they would happen. She had said the girl was no good and what George told her in his fumbling way gave her to see that the girl turned wife was equally no good. Anne tightened her lips grimly and went on with her efficient charring. She thought her time would come.

Peter looked for the coming of love to bless this marriage to which he had consented in the belief that his God of love would sanctify. He had trusted to the strength of Sam, and to the hope that Sam’s strength would turn to sweetness; and it only turned to business. It did not lead Ada from materialism, but drew Peter himself, unwittingly at first, towards it. Peter found himself selecting texts for Sam’s “Church Child’s Calendar,” a labour of love, which nevertheless had nothing to do with Ada, except in the most indirect way, and nothing to do with the Sam and Ada situation.

It was the fact that, to them, there seemed to be no situation which distressed Peter. They simply let things be, and things let be obey the law of gravity. He hoped, ardently, for children. Children blessed marriage in the physical sense, and from that blessing the other, the spiritual blessing, might arise.