The Noise of the World by Adriana Spadoni

The next morning Roger went before Anne awoke. In the afternoon a messenger brought a note asking to have his things sent to the office. At dusk the express came and Anne watched Roger's trunk down the stairs and the truck clang away over the grass-grown cobbles. When the last sound had died she went in, fed Rogie and let him kick for a while naked before the fire. When he crumpled in sleep upon the rug, Anne carried him to bed, to the crib back now beside the wide bed, hers alone. A little later she was asleep beside him.

The hours heaped themselves to days, the days dropped under their weight to nights. Each day was the same as another. Anne neither cried, regretted, nor rebelled. She did not even think. She seemed to be moving in a clear, white light that illuminated every cranny of the past, so that the shadows which had been her thoughts and reactions to Roger and the world, were now obliterated in this dazzling lucidity, a light so vivid and intense that nothing but itself existed, a wordless understanding and acceptance. Anne could not have said what it was she so clearly understood, but she moved in a petrifaction of calm. Her exhausted nerves were dead.

On the tenth day, Anne received a short note enclosing two-thirds of Roger's salary, with the receipt for the rent and the electric bill and asking her to make some arrangement for his seeing Rogie. On the third reading, the meaning penetrated and Anne faced the future.

The clear white light was gone. It was unclear and confused, filled with sudden, new needs and readjustments. Roger could not go on sending her so much of his salary. Nor did she wish to be dependent on him. If she gave nothing, she would take nothing for herself.

She would go back to work. She would have to sell her brain and obedience again to the highest bidder, give of her best, suit her hours to the order of another, give to the limit of her power, always conscious of others waiting to snatch this privilege from her. Outwardly her life would be the life before she met Roger. Inwardly it could never be that again. Rogie made it impossible. Neither girl nor wife, Anne faced the years. Only motherhood was left.

Hour after hour, Anne sat, tense and still, staring out across the garden, moving only to the need of Rogie. Unsuspected threads crossed and tangled her clearest purposes. She would go back again into the prison cell of some law office. She would begin again the deadening round that had once so disturbed Roger. Now it would not disturb him. From depths within, anger rose at the world, at life, at Roger. Into the pit of his belief he could throw all his own energy and hope, even the first loneliness, -- if he felt any, -- for past material comfort and little Rogie. She had no such pit. She would walk through the days, physically weary, empty of purpose except for Rogie. And he was so little, his demands for food and sleep and cleanliness, any kind woman could meet.

Anne sat until dawn, the darkness within as dense as the night without. Not until the first faint streaks of silver broke in the east did Anne see the thread of a path before her. She could not move on blindly into the future -- a future like Hilda's Niche. To the limit of her power, she would straighten it, begin her new life with no thread running to the past. She would get a legal divorce, stipulate a small amount for Rogie's maintenance and fixed times and ways for Roger to see him.

Late that morning Anne went to a lawyer. As she moved across the outer office to the door marked private it gave her an extraordinary feeling of being two people, in two different spots at the same time -- Anne Mitchell, private secretary, going to take dictation, and Anne Barton, wife of Roger Barton, mother of Roger Mitchell Barton, going to seek a divorce.

The lawyer Anne had selected because she had once written him a letter in a case John Lowell was handling, was an elderly man with sagging cheeks, passion-weary eyes, and a fastidious nicety of dress. Within the casque of his manner and clothes, the soul of man was rotted. His surprise at Anne's blond youth flashed for a second in his eyes, and then with lowered head, he listened with professional interest while she stated her wish briefly. When she had finished he looked up.

"Ah -- incompatible, you say, quite incompatible. A great pity. Are you sure you've given the matter every possible consideration, Mrs. Barton?"

"Every possible consideration," Anne said sharply.

"Incompatible," he repeated, and his eyes stripped from the word every meaning but the connotation of physical repulsion. Anne's hands clenched and she wanted to run. But where? The world would give this same interpretation; under all the large vague terms with which people might cover them, this would be their thought. She turned her eyes quickly from the eyes moving with pretense of deep consideration over her flaming face and neck and body.

"Suppose you don't do anything definite for a time, Mrs. Barton. Nearly all young couples -- ah -- after the first two or three years -- reach this point. It seems as if the first passion almost invariably runs its course in that time then -- after a period of physical indifference -- aversion often -- if you have intellectual interests -- -- "

Anne rose. "If you do not wish to take the case, please say so. I am not doing this hastily. I have thought it over very carefully."

"Ah -- then there is perhaps nothing else to do," he said with a sudden change of tone. He was like a well-trained dog, refusing a bone until his master's permission allows him to snatch it. "You wish to institute proceedings directly, I suppose?"

"Yes. I would like you to act right away."

"Certainly. After all, Mrs. Barton, that is the brave thing to do -- think, decide and act. " His smile admitted Anne to the regions of masculine logic, uncluttered by the usual feminine sentimentality.