Cover Page

Title Page

Faithful Are the Wounds

A Novel

May Sarton

Dedication

For Eleanor and Kenneth Murdock

The Author wishes to express her gratitude to Bryn Mawr College which awarded the Lucy Martin Donnelly Fellowship to her in 1953, thus making possible the writing of this novel.

Prologue

PROLOGUE

Isabel lay on her bed in a fog of fatigue, too tired even to undress. She could hear Henry splashing about in the shower, giving a shout of pleasure as he turned the taps from hot to cold, and in her mind’s eye she visualized him, brown, compact, his very skin prickling with resilience, and she smiled. It was astonishing to realize that John and Lillian were almost grown-up, that she had been married nearly twenty years, safe, she thought, for nearly twenty years, and still it could seem like a miracle, so that she never wrote her name “Mrs. Henry Thomas Ferrier” without pride. She was rehearsing this pleasure in her husband and in her life, because all evening as they sat playing backgammon, and for weeks before, she had been fighting off the sensation that she was walking on very thin ice, that just below was darkness, black despair—the more frightening because there seemed to be no reason for it. It was impossible to fight an anxiety which had no name, which one couldn’t face with reason because it wasn’t there, because as she told herself again, “it’s all imagination,” forcing herself through an organized pattern each day, taking more trouble than usual with the cooking, dressing with more than usual care, keeping the house immaculate. She pulled a blanket up because her teeth had begun to chatter. Yet all around her the room spoke of peace, order. She had chosen this exact shade of salmon for the curtains with care, chosen the texture, nubbly against the pale gray surface of the walls.… She opened her eyes and forced herself to pay attention, to be in this room, in her life and not somewhere else, where the unknown chaos waited to invade her like the cold fogs which swept over the harbor these October evenings and shut out the lights of San Francisco across the bay.

When the phone buzzed, she thought, Let Henry go. There was silence in the bathroom—couldn’t he hear it? But now he was brushing his teeth noisily; she would have to answer—some drunken friend no doubt—noting that the clock at her side said midnight.

“Boston calling. A person-to-person call for Mrs. Henry Ferrier.”

“This is Mrs. Ferrier.”

“Go ahead, Boston.”