She controlled herself, but her voice was breaking. 'Stephen, I want to be your wife. I want you to love me. What's the matter? Why won't you tell me?' She began to cry. He stepped to Laura and put an arm around her. It was an arm of comfort, not fully an arm of affection.
'Laura, I don't know what's bothering you, but we can discuss it tonight, if you wish.'
'You're going to your political union tonight. You won't be home till midnight. You're always going to-'
He stole a glance at his watch and interrupted her. 'I have a class in half an hour, Laura,' he said. 'I'm sorry. I have to go.' He walked out of the bedroom and did not return until after she had gone to sleep that evening.
The next morning Laura sat down at the dining table in the house near the Yale campus. Stephen was out already. Laura opened a box of stationery and wrote a long mournful letter to her father. She sealed it. Then she tore it up. It was only when she went to burn it that other burning letters flashed back to her. And she thought of Peter Whiteside again.
She took another sheet of paper. On it, she wrote simply,
Peter, I'm not happy. Laura.
She wrote her return address on the top left corner of the envelope and she posted it airmail.
The response arrived sixteen days later.
Dearest Laura, England is very beautiful in early summer. We would all cherish seeing you. If I may be of any help… Peter
Laura read the letter and cried.
Then, a few days thereafter, and just as unpredictably as ever, Stephen broke free from at least some of his invisible restraints. He began writing again, then held the floor at the political union until the early morning hours. He spoke, wrote, and lived like a man possessed.
He had examined every bit of his philosophy, he declared, and had found it entirely lacking. Not in reason, but in compassion. In human spirit, he said, he had been entirely mistaken about many things.
Spain, for example. Germany, for another example.
'It is the full responsibility of any Christian,' Stephen declared, first in a political forum at Yale and then in writing in The American Mercury and then- addressing different questions, of course-in The Atlantic, 'to combat totalitarianism and oppression wherever it is found.'
He cited the gospels of Mark and John and the teachings of Paul. Examining his own change of spirit, his conversion, as it were, he cited his own 'youthful naivete and a muddled idea of what this world is capable of being.' On his own road to Damascus, Stephen had had his own vision. It was now his contention, in complete contradiction to everything he had previously felt, 'that any Christian is one of God's soldiers. As in the time of Jesus and as in the time of the Crusades, there is often a time when a moral man must bear arms and fight.
“The Holy Land,' he concluded, 'takes different forms to different generations. In this century, the Holy Land may be Spain or Germany or all of Europe. God willing, the tyrants of Western Europe will not push moral men to the point where reaching for a rifle is the only act remaining for a Christian of conscience.'
'And what about you?' Laura asked Stephen when she had read his manuscript. 'Are you going to pick up a rifle and go to Spain? To combat the Fascists?'
His answer surprised her. 'Perhaps,' he said in the library of their home.
'And what should I do while you're off fighting?' she asked tartly. 'Wait to see if I'm a widow? Have an affair with some student or professor? Go with you?'
'I don't know, Laura,' he answered. 'We're entering an era of sacrifices for the good of humanity. Maybe you should examine your own priorities. Your own sense of selfishness, perhaps.'
He had that way of always turning a discussion back against her. Selfishness! She felt wounded.
Stephen had emerged from his trance and had reversed his political point of view almost completely. But at home, nothing changed. He was silent in the evenings. They had long since ceased to entertain their friends. And physically, well, she realized, Stephen did not seem to want her anymore. That was all there was to it.
Gradually, it occurred to her. This was what a crumbling marriage was all about. She had to get away. She would go crazy if she did not.
She had put money away from her teaching salary. Now she dipped a little deeper into each week's paycheck and squirreled away the extra dollar or two when she could. Laura knew exactly where she wanted to go. She knew just who she wanted to see. By mid-May, merely days before Stephen's graduation exercises, she had enough money to visit a travel agent in New Haven.
Stephen returned home in the middle of one afternoon. In his hand he held a letter which he read and reread. He wore an expression bordering upon extreme apprehension. Stephen found Laura in the living room, waiting for him. She was going to speak first. But he looked up only once and then his eyes settled back to the correspondence.
'What's that?' she inquired.
'My appointment,' he said. 'The Lutheran Council is sending me to New Jersey. After my ordination, of course.'
His tone was much calmer than she had heard it in several months. 'There's a little parish in a town called Liberty Circle,' he said. 'Northern New Jersey, I think. Ever heard of it?'
She shook her head.
'I haven't, either.' He reread a few more lines. 'I'm to assist an older minister who'll be retiring within two years. I'm to meet his parish and assume some of his duties. I presume I'll then be staying there.'
She nodded.
'Why the long face?' he asked. He began to fold the letter. 'New Jersey's not so bad. Not even so far from here, is it?'
He tucked the letter away.
'I'm going back to England,' she said softly.
His face paled, then flushed with an expression she had never seen before, hurt mingled with indignation and confusion. It took him several seconds to absorb her simple announcement.
'When?' he finally said.
'Next week.'
She said that she had tried to talk to him a thousand times, but had never been successful. She said it was partly her fault, but definitely not entirely hers. She wanted breathing room, she insisted, if she couldn't be loved, instead. She wanted to see the things that remained eternal for her. England. Her father. The charming, rickety house in Salisbury which he, as a moneyed American, could probably never comprehend. But that was moving into personalities, which she did not wish to do. Throughout all this, her husband was either expressionless or slightly nodding.
There were other things that went unsaid: all this could have been avoided if maybe once in the last few months he had whispered that he loved her. But he did not know the phrase anymore. He knew only the church and global politics. She wanted to say that she did not really want to separate from him, and she wanted Stephen to rush to her, embrace her, and cry that he did not want this, either.
Instead, he looked at her with growing understanding. And then the nodding was more evident.
'It doesn't have to be permanent,' she added toward the end. 'But we need to put each other in perspective.'
His response stunned her. 'I think it's a good idea, Laura,' he finally said softly. 'For both of us. I'll be honest. I've felt this way for quite some time myself. We need some time apart.'
There was little else to add. Only the details. Her ship would sail from New York the following Wednesday. She would miss his graduation. Her transit was already paid. She had purchased one-way fare and the ship was named the SS Panama.
'I've never heard of it,' Stephen said. 'But you're not taking it. Not on that date.'
'And why not?'
'You're married to me, Laura,' he said. 'And that means something. The least you can do, even if you're not happy here, is stay until June. We're moving to New Jersey. I can't do that without you.'
Reluctantly, she agreed.
In the weeks that followed, Laura spent a great deal of time on small matters of organization, inventorying
