For years they had been a physical and mental outlet for her nature. That love had no question of reciprocity or merit. She had always been willing for them. Only it seemed to her all the rest of love should come first. It occurred to her ironically how happy her marriage would have been without her husband.
What was his love worth? It was only taxation—taxation without representation. Had either of them any real love left?
Suddenly she stood on the brink of black emptiness. To live without love; her whole nature, every life-habit, changed! Oh, no, no, no! So the cold water sets the suicide struggling for shore.
Dear, dear! This would not do. Her nerves were getting the best of her; she was losing her own dignity and sweetness—was on the verge of a breakdown.
But to say so would be to invoke doctors, pointless questions, futile drugs, and a period of acute affection from Sam—affection that took the form chiefly of expecting it of her.
At times Judith thought of death as an escape, but she thought of no other as being any more in her own hands; like so many people, she quoted the Episcopal marriage-service as equal authority with the Bible. She was too live to droop and break as some do. She had not made herself the one armor that would have been effective—her own shell. Friction that does not callous, forms a sore. Her love, her utmost self, ached like an exposed nerve. She had not dreamed one’s whole being could be so alive to suffering. She must be alone, to get a hand on herself and things again.
At table one night she wanted them all to know she was going away, for several months perhaps, leaving her cousin Anne in charge. It was all arranged.
The amazing innovation surprised Sam into speechlessness.
Judith had had few vacations. There had always been the babies, of course. And Sam’s consent had always been so hard to get. His first impulse about everything was to refuse, contradict, begrudge. Then certainly he mustn’t be too easily convinced. After that he always moped through her preparations; counted and recounted the cost, and at the last perhaps gave her a handsome new bag when her old one was particularly convenient, and he had supplied only half she had asked for clothes; would hardly tell her good-by for desolate devotion; tracked her with letters full of loneliness, ailments, discomforts. When she had cut short her plans and hurried back, a bit quiet and unresponsive perhaps, “How truly gracious your unselfishness is, my dear!” he observed. “If it comes so hard to show me a little consideration, you would really better keep doing your own way.”
“I never do my own way.”