As it turned out she used neither of those phrases; the communication was made impromptu one evening late in December, a day or two after Christmas. Throughout dinner, which she had cooked at the apartment, he seemed nervous and preoccupied, talking but little; and finally, swallowing his last mouthful of salad, he unburdened his mind. He began by glancing across at her and saying with an extravagant effort to be casuaclass="underline"
“Has anyone been here asking about me?”
What is it now, she thought. She replied, “No, who would be asking about you?”
“Oh — I just wondered.” He emptied his wine glass. “You’re sure no one has been here?”
“No. Unless they came while I was out.”
“Sure. Of course. I suppose if you weren’t home they might ask the janitor.” He flushed, and then the flush went away and he frowned. “See here, Lo, I hope you won’t mind. I told them I was married — I put myself down that way. The draft board, you know. After all, what’s the difference, I’m supporting you just the same, I can’t see that it makes any difference. It’s wrong to make a man go to war that feels about it the way I do. The trouble is I don’t know whether they investigate these things or not, but there have been rumors lately, I’ve been worried — I thought I’d better tell you because if they come around asking questions and you didn’t know about it naturally you wouldn’t know what to say and then I would be in for it. I don’t know how much they go into it — just age and a few things like that I suppose — I’m thirty-one, thirty-one last May — and they’d ask if you were my wife and if you just said yes that would be all there’d be to it.”
“Well, that’s easy,” Lora said.
“You’re sure you won’t mind?”
“Lord, no, why should I? I don’t know anything about the war and I don’t care anything.”
“That’s just the way I feel.” He reached across the table and patted her hand. “You’re fine, Lo. Fine all the way through. I never had more respect for you than I have this minute. Anyway, as I said before, I’m supporting you and providing for you, what’s the difference whether we’re married or not?”
“Yes, you’re supporting two of us.”
“Oh, well, as for that, that hardly counts, I’d have to support myself in any event—”
“Two others, I mean. Two besides yourself. I’m pregnant.”
“You’re what?” he exclaimed in astonishment.
Heaven help me, thought Lora, I’ll bet he doesn’t know what it means. “I’m pregnant,” she repeated, carefully getting out all the consonants and raising her voice a little. It is hard to pronounce, she thought.
“But how — I don’t see — good god it isn’t possible.” From the expression on his face it might have been thought she had told him she had a shameful disease. He looked pale, incredulous, permanently stupefied. “You must be mistaken — how do you know — really you must be mistaken...”
Lora shook her head. “I know all right.”
“But I don’t see — I thought it was necessary—” He was speechless. Then, “It’s my damn ignorance, that’s what it is!” he exploded furiously. “Good god, what a mess! I don’t even know what to do. I suppose you do — you ought to know — it takes a doctor of course — that’s the only way out I suppose, I don’t know — it certainly is a fine mess, it certainly is—”
“I don’t think it’s such a mess,” Lora said scornfully.
“Oh, you don’t? You don’t, eh? Do you happen to know that abortion is a crime? Well, it is. I’ve heard the fellows talk about it — my god, I never thought I’d be tangled up in it. It’s a crime, don’t you know that? Women die of it too. It’s dangerous any way you look at it; it’s sickening.”
“I won’t die of it.”
“You might as well as the next one.”
“Well, I won’t. I’m not going to have an abortion, I’m going to have a baby.”
That made it worse than ever. His stupefaction returned, his jaw hung open, he glared at her in the effort to comprehend this new threat in all its enormity. Finally, so pale now that faint purple tracings showed on his forehead, stunned out of his fury into the chill of fear, he stammered at her:
“I see — that’s it — that’s the trick, is it — you think I’ll have to marry you — that’s it—”
Lora wanted to throw something at him. It was unbelievable, she thought, that any man could be so great an idiot. Such a talent for asininity transcended all ignorance; you couldn’t even laugh at it; it befuddled you and made you think you were standing on your head. She made him sit down again, for he had got to his feet and stepped back as if to retreat from imminent and deadly peril; she made him sit down, held him there with her eyes, and explained carefully and lucidly that, first, she did not want an abortion, second, she did not want to be married, third, she would be at pains to inform any inquirers that she was his lawful wife, and fourth, she would leave, or he could leave without interference from her, at any time that such a course seemed to either of them desirable. No repetition of these assurances could remove all his suspicion; plainly he was still harassed by the possibility of deception and disaster; but at length he grew much easier. There did remain the fact, as he himself remarked, that it was easy enough for her to talk of non-interference with his freedom when she knew very well that he was practically chained to her by the necessity of maintaining his claim, as good as publicly made, to the responsibilities of a husband; but to this she replied that an explanation could be found for that if necessary, and anyway such things were almost certainly not investigated — if all those details had to be checked up for everyone who registered it would take a whole army just for that. This seemed to satisfy him; he admitted its reasonableness; but his brow remained clouded, hours later even, after he had got his pipe lit, turned on the reading-lamp, adjusted the easy chair by the table, and sat down with a book.
That night she left the inner room to him, making up a bed for herself on the wide low couch in the living room. It was soft and comfortable, but it was a cold night even for December and there were not enough blankets, so she used their overcoats and a rug from the bedroom floor. This arrangement he tacitly accepted; as she was spreading the sheets on the couch she saw him watching her over the top of his book and thought he was about to remark on it, but he said nothing.
The following afternoon he arrived home a little later than usual, carrying an enormous bundle; it proved to contain two pairs of thick warm blankets and some sheets and pillowcases. “The landlord really should furnish extra bedding, what would you do if you had guests,” he observed; and Lora nodded, and thanked him. The new blankets were much softer and finer than the others; she started to use them in the bedroom, but he insisted that she keep them on the couch for herself. “I’m something of a Spartan that way,” he declared, “I’m not at all particular just so I don’t freeze.”
The blankets were his last gift, and that was almost his last speech — at any rate the last which contained any friendly implications. More than four months were to pass before his final flight, months during which Lora often felt that if she were called upon for one more sacrifice — of pride, or convenience, or more especially of the skin of her defense against the scratches and lacerations of his suddenly hostile and alien claws — one more sacrifice for the sake of a breath of a hope which she scarcely dared believe in — she would — she would — well, she would do something. Only there was nothing to do; she was trapped. So without any outward sign she accepted the rather difficult conditions which followed upon Steve’s emancipation from his novitiate. His gifts ceased abruptly; within a month he had stopped entirely coming to the flat for dinner, though he still slept there. For a while he continued to give her money, a little now and then, but it was not long before that too stopped. She tried running a bill at the delicatessen shop, but at the end of the week he refused flatly to pay it, standing at the door with his hat on, on his way to the office, looking her straight in the eye and reminding her that she had said he was free to leave whenever he wished. “If I was gone I wouldn’t be paying your bills, would I?” he demanded, which of course was unanswerable. Lora, not bothering even to observe that the delicatessen account included the morning coffee and cream which he helped to consume, let him go without a reply, and then systematically and thoroughly went over everything in the house. When she got through she had a pile on the living-room table of varied and miscellaneous objects: an etching he had once bought for her, two little figures of carved ivory, a fur neck-piece, three pairs of gloves she had never worn, bracelets, earrings, finger rings, a fountain pen, fifteen or twenty books, a tiny gold compact. Then she stood and considered: what to do with them? She bethought herself of two girls in the flat on the ground floor whom she’d grown to know fairly well; one was Janet Poole, who did designs for wallpaper, and the other Anne Whitman, a slim pale quiet girl, younger than Janet, who was studying at a music school. She went down and rang the bell; Anne opened the door and invited her in.