window playing with the cord of the blind. There had been rain all morning, and the roadway was full of irregularly shaped puddles through which there bumped an occasional tradesman’s van. Drops of rain were still starring the puddles from time to time, and the laurustinus behind the railings was dripping. The room behind her was dark in spite of a fire, but it was too early to switch on the lights, and at any rate she was bored to death with the room. She had read the last magazine; she knew by heart all the bits of music on the piano; she was fed up with the gramophone; it was too wet to play golf, and nobody was likely to call. Apparently the only thing that attracted her interest was the acorn-shaped wooden bob at the end of the blind cord.
Mabel was not the kind of woman to escape from her boredom by considering it as an objective phenomenon. Is it a peculiarly human affliction? she might have asked herself. Are cats ever bored? Would a child be bored if its parents left it alone on a desert island? None of these questions occurred to Mabel. It did not strike her that boredom was a remarkable state in a world full of things to smell, to touch, to taste, to listen to, and to think about. She assumed – and she may have been right – that the laurustinus was as bored as she was, and that the patient grass in the park opposite was bored by the rain.
She did not even wonder why she was bored. She knew. John, her husband, was too dull and elderly for her. He went to the office every day; he came home for meals; he went to church on Sundays; he kissed her every morning and every night; he gave her money when she asked for it. He wouldn’t dance; even the records he liked to hear on the gramophone were boring things without a decent tune; he wasn’t interested in her friends, and, in general, he was just a bore. Mabel let go the acorn bob so that it hit the window-pane with a sharp rap.
The only person he was really interested in, she thought, was his precious sister. And he was getting grumpy because he hadn’t heard yet whether she was coming or not. But if Lizzie Shand were in the south of France why on earth should she come to Calderwick in the middle of winter? Mabel had seen posters advertising the south of France, and as she gazed out of the window she noted that Calderwick was colourless – grey skies, grey pavements, grey people. She herself would become grey in the course of time. Sarah Murray, she thought with a flash of spitefulness and horror, was grey already, inside if not out, although she was only a little over thirty. Mabel looked down at the silken sleeve of her rose-coloured gown. Then she walked deliberately up to her bedroom, turned on the lights and drew the curtains.
Nearly an hour later she was standing with all the frocks she possessed scattered around her, hanging over chairs, and lying on the bed. Her hair was a little ruffled; her cheeks were glowing. She had tried the frocks on, every one, but she had now come to the last of them, and she did not know what to do next. She was no longer bored, however; she was pleased by her own prettiness, and with renewed self-confidence she began to approve of herself in other aspects also. For instance, she had conscientiously done her best for Hector.
Any other woman might have led him on after that sudden kiss in the back lane; it was nearly a whole week ago, but she still remembered the thrill that ran down her spine when he kissed her. A heartless woman would have made a fool of him; a prig would have told her husband; but she, Mabel, had magnanimously used her power over him to keep him out of temptation. Nor had she told Aunt Janet of her favourite’s lapse; she had instead urged on Aunt Janet the necessity of making Elizabeth into a better wife for Hector. She and Janet between them, she had suggested, could turn Elizabeth into more of a lady and less of a vulgar lump. Hector should be grateful. Why not pay a call at number twenty-six, just to show Elizabeth that bygones were bygones? She hadn’t seen either of them since that last Saturday. It was nearly half-past four now; Hector would be at home by five; they would all have tea together.
The last shreds of her boredom vanished into the wardrobe with her frocks. John could have tea by himself. She was going on an errand of mercy, as it were, and even wifely duty had to give way to larger issues, had it not? She put on her pearls.
The acorn bob hung listlessly at the window of the empty drawing-room.
Both Mr and Mrs Hector Shand were at home when Mabel was shown in. Elizabeth was coldly polite, but Mabel had expected that.
‘Got up to kill, aren’t you?’ said Hector, almost savagely. She laid her coat over his arm almost as if she were laying herself, he thought, and seizing her hat he brutally clapped it on his own head. The plume of cock’s feathers streamed out behind his ear.
‘All I want are a few kiss-curls,’ he said, his eyes glittering as he looked at Mabel, ‘and then I could play the peacock as well as any of you women.’
Mabel gave a little scream of concern.
‘You’ll ruin my hat, Hector! Take it off.’
‘You deserve to have it ruined.’ Hector twirled the hat on his hand.
Elizabeth was still cold.
‘Put Mabel’s things on the sofa,’ she said. ‘And ring the bell for another cup, please.’
Hector sniffed loudly as he sat down again.
‘Been drenching yourself with some kind of stink, haven’t you? All the street-walkers do that. I thought you were a respectable married woman?’
He had reverted to his old habit of baiting Mabel, but he was doing it with more venom than before, thought Elizabeth. She began to think he was going too far in his merciless criticism of Mabel’s clothes, voice, manner, and conventional standards. Mabel was showing more and more resentment. No wonder.
Mabel too was aware that there was a new undertone in Hector’s railing. It annoyed her, but it fluttered her with an excitement that was quite pleasurable. At any rate, Hector did not bore her as John did…. She was conscious of her own lithe figure under the rosy silk of her dress, and of her long, well-shaped legs.
‘By the Lord!’ said Hector, ‘I’ll have to thread pink ribbons through my pants, or something. If respectable married women can doll themselves up like that, I don’t see why respectable married men shouldn’t put up something of a show.’
Elizabeth smiled, but she was not amused by the duel.
Their voices got sharper and sharper. Mabel finally shed all her dignity and put out her tongue: and the more hoydenish she became the more quiet and detached was Elizabeth’s attitude.
When Mabel rose to go Hector growled:
‘I suppose you expect me to take you home in all this rain?’
‘You forget, Hector, we’re dining with the Scrymgeours to-night: there’s no time to spare,’ put in Elizabeth.
‘Thank God for that,’ said Hector. ‘The Scrymgeours, Mabel, your particular friends, did you notice? We’re having dinner with them.’
‘You were awfully rude to her,’ said Elizabeth, trying to laugh, when Mabel had departed, cock’s feathers and all.
‘She went off in a huff all right,’ Hector’s voice was complacent. ‘She deserved every bit of it after the things she said about you to Aunt Janet.’
Mabel was annoyed at first as she picked her steps in the dark wet streets. It wouldn’t have taken Hector a quarter of an hour to escort her. He was deteriorating. Aunt Janet was right in thinking that Elizabeth would be the ruin of him. Dining with the Scrymgeours were they? Indeed!
She was still smarting from the lash of his tongue. But, incomprehensibly, Hector’s rudeness was less offensive than Elizabeth’s stupid
