A Charmed Life Read Online Free PDF Page B

we’re laughing at them. “I thought,” retorted John, “that we were laughing at ourselves.” “It’s the same thing,” pointed out Martha. “You’re not supposed to laugh at a joke life is playing on you.”
    She held up her dripping finger ruefully, like an admonishment. “We’re just like the others,” she repeated. “‘He hath put down the mighty from their seats.’” John nodded. For the first time, he let himself yield to Martha’s sibylline wisdom. She was right, he said darkly to himself: they should never have come back here. And at once he felt pity for her, as for any doomed, fluttering creature; he thought of the bird that had been caught last week in the chimney. “Come here,” he ordered. He took a gauze pad from its envelope and wrapped it around her finger. “Poor mouse,” he said tenderly. “Poor, frightened, jumpy mouse.” He put an arm about her as she stood leaning against him. “Poor John,” she replied. They smiled sadly at each other; the air was cleansed of reproaches. “So where do we go from here?” he muttered, rhetorically, tightening his arm about her waist.
    But Martha had made up her mind. “To the doctor, of course,” she said lightly, whirling out of his embrace. She threw the chopped vegetables into the pan with the chicken, poured in some white wine, turned the stove on low, and went into the next room to telephone. “The doctor will wait for us,” she reported, coming back. John did not protest. He had decided to trust her. Her own cut was not serious, but it was a warning that his must be attended to; this was Martha’s logic. “We’ll have liquor on our breath,” he said mildly. Martha shrugged. “And people will say we’ve been fighting,” she added. “Don’t you care?” inquired John, as he rose and let her put his coat around his shoulders. “No,” she said. “After all, it’s true—in a way.”
    They went out into the starry night.
    She was happy, he saw, as she always was when she had come to a decision. In despair, Martha found hope. The notion that they were just like the others had lifted her spirits. She did not really believe it, he suddenly perceived. More than ever now, she felt that they were different. She was a little tipsy and she stumbled. “Don’t fall into the herb box,” she cautioned, with a giggle. John took her arm firmly in his.

TWO
    J ANE AND WARREN COE had asked the Miles Murphys over from Digby for the day. Everybody in New Leeds had been counting on Jane to do it; the community wanted to know how Miles Murphy was taking his second wife’s return. “Why, it’s simple as pie,” Jane had been scoffing, cheerfully, all summer long. “I’ll just ask them down. They won’t see anything strange in it. We always ask them down in October, to go for a walk or something. Don’t we, Warren?” “Nearly always,” emended Warren, who was a very conscientious person. “Why, if we don’t ask them this year,” yawned Jane, through September, “Miles will be hurt. Miles is awfully touchy. He’ll think it’s because of Martha.”
    Nevertheless, when the appointed day came, both the Coes felt uneasy. They were afraid Martha would find out, and though, of course, it was not Martha’s business whom they asked where, they now wished they had told her. The most horrible contingency had presented itself to Warren, a poor sleeper, during the night: he imagined Martha and John, out for a walk on the beach, surprising him and Jane with the Murphys. “Wouldn’t that be awful?” agreed Jane, in a solemn whisper, when he confided this fear to her at breakfast. She clapped her hand to her cheek and dropped her big, undershot jaw, staring at Warren over the toaster. But secretly she was excited by the prospect; her schoolgirlish heart throbbed to adventure. She liked the plot to thicken, so long as she and Warren could figure in it as innocent spectators. “How could I know?” she already heard herself lamenting, her