for the cuppie o’ tea.’
Mary Ann bustled to the stove.
‘All right, Mary Ann.’ Elizabeth slipped off the table. ‘Bring it into the drawing-room.’
Her half-conscious wish to talk to somebody became a definite desire to consult Emily Scrymgeour. She felt that she was blindly going round and round in circles and that talking to a third person might clear her vision. Since that unlucky evening of the dinner-party she had not seen Emily, but that active lady had already guessed something of what was happening. Scandal in Calderwick percolates at first by a kind of osmosis from one mind to another long before it becomes current, and various people had remarked Hector’s frequent appearances in Mabel’s new car and his increasing devotion to the whisky at the Club. In fact, Emily was waiting for her friend’s confidences.
‘I’m sorry for her, mind you,’ she said to the doctor, ‘but she’s such a queer mixture that she’d shy off if she thought I was trying to poke my nose in too far, even although she thinks the world of me. She’s really very reserved – like you.’
That judgment would have amazed Elizabeth.
‘She takes the wrong things too seriously,’ said the doctor. ‘Bound to get hurt.’
‘Jim! And you’ve only seen her once! You are a clever wee man, you know. It isn’t everybody can get a husband like you.’
This complacent reflection was never absent from the background of Emily Scrymgeour’s thoughts, and made her tolerant of other wives’ difficulties.
Elizabeth did not suspect that she was falling like a seed into a carefully prepared bed when she walked into Emily’s drawing-room, apologizing diffidently for her defection of the past week. She did not realize it even when Emily sent Teddy out with Peggy the maid, averring that she had so much sewing piled up in the basket that she could not afford to go out, and that anyway it was better to sew with somebody to keep one company.
‘Don’t you hate sewing and darning?’ said Elizabeth.
‘No, I love it. Haven’t you ever seen my white embroidery? I like working with my hands and I make all Teddy’s clothes myself. Look at the design on this romper….’
‘I wish I was some good at sewing,’ burst out Elizabeth. ‘I can’t even knit.’
‘Your hands look capable enough,’ returned Emily, working busily with her own quick short fingers. ‘I hate to see women with helpless-looking hands, but yours aren’t like that.’
Elizabeth, thus admitted to the same pinnacle of womanliness as her friend, squirmed there in silence for a minute and then abased herself.
‘My hands are all thumbs, Emily, in every way. You don’t know what a fool I am.’
Her voice roughened as she said this, for she was executing one of those complicated manœuvres of which the human spirit is strangely capable. Her vanity and her love were hurt, her pride was bewildered, and she had a longing to weep on Emily’s shoulder; but at the same time she could not abuse her husband to anybody, and the only alternative was to abuse herself. The savage roughness in her voice was caused by anger, and as she started up to walk about the room her anger increased. She was contemptuously furious with herself.
‘A fool!’ she kept on saying. ‘A damned fool!’
‘It’s unlikely that you’re the only fool in the world,’ said Emily, laying her work aside. ‘People do quarrel with their husbands, you know.’
She laughed at Elizabeth’s startled face and patted the sofa, on which she had expressly seated herself.
‘Don’t prowl like that, but come and sit down and tell me all about it. I’ve been married for eight years, Elizabeth.’
‘How did you know?’
‘It’s not difficult to guess, is it? What else could it be?’
‘Oh – anything. I’m an ignorant fool, I tell you. I never suspected that I was a half-wit, and it’s unpleasant to discover it.’
‘Do you think I’m a half-wit too?’ said Emily, smiling.
‘I think you’re the only intelligent woman in Calderwick.’
‘Do sit down and be sensible.’ Emily was still smiling. ‘What you really mean is that you didn’t learn at the University how to manage a husband.’
‘I haven’t learned how to manage myself; that’s what’s bothering me.’
Elizabeth ceased prowling, and looked directly at her friend.
‘I feel that myself has let me down. I don’t know at any minute what damned silly thing I’ll do next. Yes, I have quarrelled with Hector, but that’s not the worst of it. The worst of it is that I haven’t sense enough to know how to set things right. Emily, I can’t speak to him without bursting into silly tears.’ This was the most revealing speech that Elizabeth had ever made, even to herself, and for a moment she had the feeling that something within her was struggling into consciousness, some recognition of an incompatibility too fundamental for compromise.
Emily brushed it away.
‘You take the wrong things too seriously.’
‘Do I?’
‘Of course you do. You are turning a simple quarrel into something much too tragic. My dear Elizabeth, I’ve known you for long enough to see that.’
‘Do I?’ repeated Elizabeth. Almost absent-mindedly she sat down beside Emily, and leaned forward, clasping her hands together.
‘It’s not such a simple quarrel,’ she said suddenly. ‘I don’t think he loves me any more.’
‘What makes you think that?’ Emily quietly resumed her sewing. To herself she said: Aha! Now we’re getting at it.
‘Because if he loved me as – as I love him,’ Elizabeth’s voice faltered, but she went on, ‘he couldn’t keep things up against me the way he does. Emily, if you love a person you love a person, no matter what’s said or done. Quarrels are only on the surface —’
‘That may be true of women, but men are different. Now, listen to me.’ She checked Elizabeth’s protest, laying a hand on her arm. ‘There’s a lot of nonsense being talked about the equality of the sexes, chiefly by mannish women. I’m not a mannish woman; I don’t believe in them. Men and women are quite different. I’m going to talk to you very frankly. Hector is the first man you ever slept with, isn’t he?’
Elizabeth nodded, blushing.
‘But you’re not the first woman he ever had.’
Elizabeth’s blush deepened.
‘Of course you’re not. It doesn’t mean so much to him as it does to you. It’s you who will have the babies. That makes a big difference, don’t you see? Every wife has the same handicap in her relation to her husbnad. Marriage for a woman, my dear, is an art – the art of managing a husband – and that means not taking his passing phases too seriously. Strategy
