Part 21

Sitting there, button-hook held in her right hand, Anna went over her life as it drifted back to her. First, years of school, slow, stupid years, of little quarrels with playmates, little misunderstandings with her teachers, lessons at night at a round table, with Sophie and Ruth; occasionally very dull parties on Friday evenings. Then, the death of her parents. Then, school days were over and the dull years stretched into long days of working and long evenings with “the boys” and “the girls.” “The boys” were the masculine set, who, attracted by “the girls,” took them to possible social diversions. Fred had been one of “the boys.” Three years of a dull monotone of a courtship and she and Fred were married and the years had gone on—and she had dressed each morning for a day of colourless calm and undressed in the evening to get rest for another.

All things had come to Anna, and yet nothing had come. School, courtship, marriage, and then, after two years, a baby, a sickly, crying boy baby, who had taken all of her time from useless things to the doing of little, constantly repeated things for him. And then, after a year of the baby, he had died and she and Fred had decided that they did not want another. Mourning, then, calm, placid. And then two years of absolute blankness.

Then, Anna had had an admirer. It had seemed the one experience that her grey life had missed, the one thing that might have had some significance. Her admirer had been the family dentist, a ruddy young fellow, getting bald too young. In the unpicturesque pose of being open-mouthed in a dentist chair she had fallen in love with him and he had seemingly reciprocated her affection.

Anna’s passion had been brief, shallow. There had been a number of pseudo-appointments, which had been given over to love-making.

Then the dentist, his first name was Harvey, had called during the mornings, when Anna knew “the girls” weren’t likely to come in. Harvey had stayed for lunch, and, as that was the one meal of the day which Anna did not usually have to prepare, she rebelled at having to cook it for her lover, who had a large appetite. After only the smallest glimmer of pleasurable excitement, Harvey had dimmed into the monotony of her regular life, his visits, the lunches with him, the fear of being discovered with her lover gradually blotched into the background.

And, as unexcitedly as he had drifted in, Harvey, perhaps finding Anna as monotonous as she found him, perhaps because a prettier patient appeared, drifted out.

Anna did not grieve for him. Occasionally she shuddered at the thought of what might have happened if Fred or Ruth had discovered the affair, but even the shudders grew to lack distinction.

After Harvey, Anna had had no more lovers. Now, thinking about it, Anna found that she had not talked, seriously, to a man alone, for over three years. There was no one she was interested in, no one she knew or cared to know whom being alone with was worth the effort of planning for it. She knew so few men. There was a stupid grocer’s clerk with long lashes, a drug clerk who simpered at her and a friend of Fred’s, who held her hand when he told her good-night—and they all lacked sex interest.

Anna knew that Ruth was having a silly affair with a friend of Dick’s, but it didn’t bother her. It didn’t interest her enough to make her wish that Ruth would get confidential about it. She had had her affair. She knew what a bore affairs were.

Anna had hoped, when she was younger, that she might have a real lover, a great passion, but, as the years passed, and she saw her youth slipping away, saw that her social position was not one to attract men and that she had no special gift of attraction, anyhow, she almost forgot about it.

She thought of Fred, pleasantly. Fred was good, awfully good and awfully, awfully tiresome. There hadn’t been a surprise in anything that Fred had done in five years. Anna knew that he never could do anything but calm, expected things. Fred had always been kind to her. How different from Sophie’s husband, who was such a terror. Poor Sophie! She tried so hard, always, to conceal things. Well, there was nothing she could do to help her, so she had never spoken to Sophie about it, let her believe that no one knew what a brute Steve was. Anna knew she wouldn’t have stood him a week.

Anna thought of other things, of money. She knew Fred worried quite a lot about it. She would have liked to have money, too, of course, but, as long as Fred made a good living, and she felt that he always would do that, the question of finances did not greatly concern her. She would have liked to have been rich, but, after all, they were poor people and she had been brought up modestly.

She still sat, button-hook in hand. And she looked at the button-hook—and at her spats—and thought of the thousands of other buttons that would have to be attended to, on thousands of succeeding days. What was the use of it all, anyhow? Why keep on? Why bother? She really wasn’t interested in living, in anything. Why, there was a way out, a way that meant no buttons at all!

Anna felt, suddenly, that she couldn’t stand it another day. The years that stretched out—the years of getting old, monotonously, of hundreds of calls on and from “the girls,” thousands of moving pictures with Fred, thousands of dishes, thousands of—buttons. She couldn’t stand it! Anything else!

She threw the button-hook on the floor. It hit the mahogany door, which she rubbed down so carefully, every week, so it would retain its shine. And Anna smiled. She could get out of polishing that door! It had never occurred to her before. It had never entered her mind that she washed the dishes and talked to Fred and buttoned and unbuttoned because she wanted to—because she chose that way. There was another way, after all, a way that might hold something else or nothing else at the end, but that, at least, would end, for always, the things that kept on, unbearable, now.

She went into the bathroom. From the top shelf of the medicine chest she took a large blue bottle. On the label it was marked “Poison” in large, black letters. It was an excellent germicide.

Anna tasted it. It rather burnt her lips a little and was decidedly unpleasant. But—after all—it would taste unpleasant for only a few minutes. And then it would all be over—everything would be over.

It seemed a miracle that things could be ended thus, slightly. One drink and dirty dishes, bedmaking, dresssheitel and undressing would cease to be. Fred would cease to be—for her. There would be no need of trying to appear interested when he was talking to her, of trying to say things that would interest him. No dinners to plan or cook. Nothing to have to waste time over! No time that needed wasting! And she had never thought of it before! Anna looked at her tan spats. They were buttoned—and would stay that way—until some other hands than hers unbuttoned them. If it hadn’t been for the spats, now, for that last straw of additional buttons....

Anna poured the poison into a glass—she never liked to drink things out of a bottle—and tasted it again. Then she remembered what she was doing, and smiled. It seemed unbelievable that there could be such an easy solution. She drank the glassful.

Ruth, coming in, later in the afternoon, with the extra key, found her.

THE END

Transcriber’s Notes

Pg 11 Changed: like furniture—curliques and frills To: like furniture—curlicues and frills

Pg 158 Changed: other women, chosing those that were To: other women, choosing those that were

Pg 280 Changed: gossipping with the other girls To: gossiping with the other girls