Marriage, Lucy found, was different from what she had supposed; Everard
was different; everything was different. For one thing she was always
sleepy. For another she was never alone. She hadn't realised how
completely she would never be alone, or, if alone, not sure for one
minute to the other of going on being alone. Always in her life there
had been intervals during which she recuperated in solitude from any
strain; now there were none. Always there had been places she could go
to and rest in quietly, safe from interruption; now there were none. The
very sight of their room at the hotels they stayed at, with Wemyss's
suitcases and clothes piled on the chairs, and the table covered with
his brushes and shaving things, for he wouldn't have a dressing-room,
being too natural and wholesome, he explained, to want anything separate
from his own woman--the very sight of this room fatigued her. After a
day of churches, pictures and restaurants--he was a most conscientious
sightseer, besides being greatly interested in his meals--to come back
to this room wasn't rest but further fatigue. Wemyss, who was never
tired and slept wonderfully--it was the soundness of his sleep that kept
her awake, because she wasn't used to hearing sound sleep so
close--would fling himself into the one easy-chair and pull her on to
his knee, and having kissed her a great many times he would ruffle her
hair, and then when it was all on ends like a boy's coming out of a
bath, look at her with the pride of possession and say, 'There's a wife
for a respectable British business man to have! Mrs. Wemyss, aren't you
ashamed of yourself?' And then there would be more kissing,--jovial,
gluttonous kisses, that made her skin rough and chapped.
'Baby,' she would say, feebly struggling, and smiling a little wearily.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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