nation, this certainly must be numbered among the fairest.
At the reception, at which Patterson got a little drunk on the champagne that old man Crown had put away before Prohibition, Patterson had said, looking a little maliciously around the room, “This is a damned peculiar wedding. There isn’t a guest here who has slept with the bride.” The people who heard him laughed, and it added to his reputation as a wit and as a man in whom it was dangerous to confide too much.
When Patterson took the train home for Hartford the next day, with Catherine, his wife, he sat, leaning against the window, conscious of his head, and conscious, too, that his own marriage, now thirteen months old, was a mistake. There was nothing to be done about it, and it wasn’t Catherine’s fault, and Patterson knew that he wasn’t going to do anything about it, and that he was going to make Catherine suffer as little as possible from it. Sitting there, closing his eyes against the last fumes of the wedding champagne, he knew that it was going to be a long, quiet, submerged mistake. At that period he was a cynic and a pessimist, and he felt that it was quite normal to realize, about the age of twenty-seven, that you had made a mistake that you would have to live with for the rest of your life.
When they got back from their honeymoon, Oliver and Lucy Crown lived, for a while, exactly as they had planned. They had an apartment on Murray Hill, with a large living room, which, more often than not, was full of the kind of ambitious young people who were flooding into New York at the time. Oliver went every morning to the little factory outside Jersey City and crashed occasionally in meadows and salt flats in the planes that he and his partners manufactured and Lucy took the subway five days a week to the laboratory and the algae on Morningside Heights and came home to make dinner or give a party or go to the theatre, or, more rarely, to work on the thesis she was preparing for her Ph.D. She no longer wore her aunt’s clothes, but it turned out that her own taste was uncertain, or perhaps deliberately plain, out of some adolescent concept of modesty, and she never really looked as though she belonged in New York.
Patterson came to the city as often as he could. He came without Catherine when he could manage it, and always made the Crown apartment his headquarters, adding to the long list of things he envied Oliver Crown, the place he lived in and the friends he saw. It occurred to Patterson at that time that although Lucy looked quietly happy, she seemed almost to be visiting the marriage rather than being a full partner in it. This was in some measure due to her shyness, which had not yet left her, and Oliver’s quality of dominating and directing, cheerfully, politely, without effort and often without desiring it, whatever company he was in.
After one of Patterson’s visits to New York, Catherine asked him if he thought Lucy was happy. Patterson hesitated, and then said, “Yes, I think so. Or almost happy. But she expects to be happier later on …”
Oliver’s father drowned off Watch Hill and Lucy gave birth to a son in the same year. Oliver went up to Hartford, looked at the books of the printing company, talked to his mother and the plant manager, then came home and told Lucy to start packing. They were going to have to live in Hartford, for a long time. Whatever regrets he had about giving up the airplane business, and giving up New York, he swallowed on the trip back in the train and never mentioned them either to Lucy or to Patterson, or, as far as Patterson knew, to anyone else. Lucy packed the notes that she had collected for the thesis that she was never going to write, had a farewell lunch with the researcher in single-celled marine life, closed the apartment and followed her husband to the big Crown house in Hartford in which he had been born and in which he had grown up and which he had tried, for so long, to leave.
Selfishly,
At the reception, at which Patterson got a little drunk on the champagne that old man Crown had put away before Prohibition, Patterson had said, looking a little maliciously around the room, “This is a damned peculiar wedding. There isn’t a guest here who has slept with the bride.” The people who heard him laughed, and it added to his reputation as a wit and as a man in whom it was dangerous to confide too much.
When Patterson took the train home for Hartford the next day, with Catherine, his wife, he sat, leaning against the window, conscious of his head, and conscious, too, that his own marriage, now thirteen months old, was a mistake. There was nothing to be done about it, and it wasn’t Catherine’s fault, and Patterson knew that he wasn’t going to do anything about it, and that he was going to make Catherine suffer as little as possible from it. Sitting there, closing his eyes against the last fumes of the wedding champagne, he knew that it was going to be a long, quiet, submerged mistake. At that period he was a cynic and a pessimist, and he felt that it was quite normal to realize, about the age of twenty-seven, that you had made a mistake that you would have to live with for the rest of your life.
When they got back from their honeymoon, Oliver and Lucy Crown lived, for a while, exactly as they had planned. They had an apartment on Murray Hill, with a large living room, which, more often than not, was full of the kind of ambitious young people who were flooding into New York at the time. Oliver went every morning to the little factory outside Jersey City and crashed occasionally in meadows and salt flats in the planes that he and his partners manufactured and Lucy took the subway five days a week to the laboratory and the algae on Morningside Heights and came home to make dinner or give a party or go to the theatre, or, more rarely, to work on the thesis she was preparing for her Ph.D. She no longer wore her aunt’s clothes, but it turned out that her own taste was uncertain, or perhaps deliberately plain, out of some adolescent concept of modesty, and she never really looked as though she belonged in New York.
Patterson came to the city as often as he could. He came without Catherine when he could manage it, and always made the Crown apartment his headquarters, adding to the long list of things he envied Oliver Crown, the place he lived in and the friends he saw. It occurred to Patterson at that time that although Lucy looked quietly happy, she seemed almost to be visiting the marriage rather than being a full partner in it. This was in some measure due to her shyness, which had not yet left her, and Oliver’s quality of dominating and directing, cheerfully, politely, without effort and often without desiring it, whatever company he was in.
After one of Patterson’s visits to New York, Catherine asked him if he thought Lucy was happy. Patterson hesitated, and then said, “Yes, I think so. Or almost happy. But she expects to be happier later on …”
Oliver’s father drowned off Watch Hill and Lucy gave birth to a son in the same year. Oliver went up to Hartford, looked at the books of the printing company, talked to his mother and the plant manager, then came home and told Lucy to start packing. They were going to have to live in Hartford, for a long time. Whatever regrets he had about giving up the airplane business, and giving up New York, he swallowed on the trip back in the train and never mentioned them either to Lucy or to Patterson, or, as far as Patterson knew, to anyone else. Lucy packed the notes that she had collected for the thesis that she was never going to write, had a farewell lunch with the researcher in single-celled marine life, closed the apartment and followed her husband to the big Crown house in Hartford in which he had been born and in which he had grown up and which he had tried, for so long, to leave.
Selfishly,
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