But Early Ann had her own opinion.
3
There are nights when men and women cannot sleep but lie awake talking until almost dawn, nights when they feel suddenly articulate after long months or even years of silence. These nights are better spent in talking than in sleep or even in love.
Stanley and Sarah Brailsford went up to their room with a lamp. A cool wind was blowing from the lake rustling the old lace curtains at the window. Stanley set the lamp with its brightly polished chimney, neatly trimmed wick, and glass base filled with kerosene (in which the lower end of the wick floated like some pale, peculiar fish) upon the jig-sawed walnut bureau with its cracked mirror, and tatted bureau runner.
The lamp light emphasized his gigantic proportions, projecting his huge shadow on the walls and ceiling, lighting one half of his strong face and leaving the other in darkness. He took off his number eleven shoes, red and white cotton socks, and coarse blue shirt stained at the arm pits. He yawned enormously.
Quickly, with little movements almost shy, Sarah Brailsford unfastened her gray-sprigged percale waist and skirt. She took off her shoes and stockings as though she were ashamed to have Stanley notice that the shoes were cracked, misshapen, and run over at the heel, the black lisle stockings one great mass of careful darns. Before she removed her undergarments she slipped her nightgown on over her head and worked beneath the gown unfastening her patched unmentionables. Sarah wished she could have pretty bloomers like the ones on the Barton line. Stud could afford a new thrashing machine that year but no new clothes for the family. She hung her garments neatly on a chair.
Unlike his careful wife, Stud Brailsford threw off his clothes and strode about the room in his long knit drawers like an early picture of John L. Sullivan if you overlooked Stud's graying hair. He stood at the window looking out at the moonlit night, enjoying the tickle of the wind in the heavy damp mat of hair on his big chest. He scratched luxuriously with big blunt fingers, then turned and rubbed his back against the window frame, yawned, blew out the light, kicked off his drawers, and threw himself naked upon the cool sheet.
The slats of the bed creaked and groaned under his weight, and Sarah, as always, held herself a little rigid so that she would not roll down into the hollow he created. By morning she might be snugly against him, but that would come about slowly through the relaxation of sleep during the long night.
Moonlight flooded the room glinting upon the flaked mirror, the oval chromos in walnut frames on either side of the dresser, the big white and gold washbowl and pitcher on the warped wash-stand, the tin chimney-hole cover gilded and decorated with a romantic landscape, the enamelware pot underneath the bed. It came sweetly over the face of Sarah who in this light was beautiful even at the age of forty-three.