It wasn’t long before the bottle was empty and the refuge, at least for one evening, no longer requisite. There was a dinner engagement and after that gambling or dancing; a city full of amusements to tempt my guest from my cozy parlor. At the door Joel took my hands and gave me a brotherly kiss on each cheek. “I am dining at your aunt’s on Saturday,” he said. “Will you be there?”
“I will make a point of it,” I said. Then he went out into the street.
I bolted the door and leaned against the wall, light-headed but not lighthearted; in fact a considerable darkness descended upon me. I went back to the settee and sat gazing into the fire.
Standing in the doorway, bidding Joel good-night, had made me think of my husband, of his visits in this house so long ago, when I was too naïve to understand the nature of the bargain I was making. I was young, I was pretty, and I had no money. My husband was of a good family, had expectations and a large house. I didn’t find him particularly attractive, but I felt no positive revulsion, and I enjoyed how strongly he seemed to be attracted to me. His eyes were always moving over me. If I let him touch my hand or my waist, I could feel his struggle to refrain from pulling me to him. Mother observed this and, as it didn’t disturb her, I took it to be in the proper order of things. “Mr. Gaudet is taken with you,” she said. “I think we needn’t worry too much about the dowry.” I had in myself, I concluded, some value, something more desirable to my husband than money. At the time, this struck me as unusual.
My invincible stupidity was revealed to me on my wedding night. My mother’s house having been reckoned too small, when the wedding celebrations were over I was arranged upon the bed in a room at my aunt’s house. The servant was sent away; my husband came in unfastening his cuffs. He pushed the door closed with his boot. Mother’s entire advice had been the word “submit,” but I had no more idea of what I would be submitting to than I had of the workings of a steam engine. A likely metaphor! My husband roared over me like a locomotive. There were moments when it seemed to me his object was to pull my limbs from their joints. I glanced over his shoulder at the mantel clock, anxious to know how long the operation might take. My breasts, which had never been touched by another, save a servant with a sponge, were so kneaded and sucked upon I feared they would be blackened by bruises. I wanted to shout to my mother, “Why did you not warn me?” but then it occurred to me that Father would never have subjected another creature to such an assualt. I looked into my husband’s reddened face, at his eyes, which seemed to start from their sockets, at his lips swollen by his passion. Was there to be no trace of feeling for my helplessness, no tenderness in my marital bed? The answer to both these questions was no, none. Afterward he was silent, not critical, there were no harsh words. He did not appear to be displeased. He had exhausted himself and within a few minutes was sound asleep. I touched the damp sheet beneath my hips and found my fingertips reddened with blood. I am married, I thought, looking at his sleeping face. His mouth was open, his breathing as easy and peaceful as a child’s. This is my husband, I thought.
We stayed in town for two weeks. I was given to understand by my aunt and my mother that these would be the happiest days of my marriage. That turned out to be true. I was not unhappy. There was the novelty of being greeted by friends who clearly thought I’d done well for myself. My husband had not yet begun his long descent into bankruptcy, so there was money to spend. We gave a dinner at the hotel which was heralded in the journals as one of the most delightful of the season.
The fury of my husband’s nightly assaults did not abate, but they interested me, and I soon discovered I was strong enough to withstand him. I persisted in the delusion that the intensity of his abandonment was the direct result of some power I had over him, which must somehow accrue to my benefit. I went so far as to anticipate his pleasure, I encouraged him, and found some pleasure in it. I entered the fray. Later, when I understood that my sense of having some particular value to him was a delusion, this willingness on my part became a source of deep humiliation.
I found our conversations more trying than those hours we spent in what passed for conjugal embracing. My husband could talk about sugar, he was knowledgeable about wine and spirits, he liked to shoot animals; this was the range of his interests. Art and music meant nothing to him; he could not concentrate on a picture long enough to see it. Five minutes of my performance upon a piano put him into a deep sleep. Whenever he spoke in company, I noticed the other young men politely waiting for him to finish so that the subject could be changed. When their repartee became sprightly, he looked from one to the other with a dumbfounded expression. He rarely laughed.