Affinities and Other Stories Part 16

"He was a dear. Sometimes I think he was the most generous soul in the world. I cannot imagine his fussing about a necklace, or sulking for hours over a bit of innocent pleasure like my playing a game of pool after a lot of sleepyheads had gone to bed."

"What time did you and Bill go upstairs?"

"Something after two. We got tired of playing and sat out here and talked. I knew you wouldn't mind, Clara. You've got too much sense.

Surely a woman ought to be allowed friends, even if she is married."

"Oh, friends!" I retorted. "If she's going to keep her husband a friend she's got her hands full. Certainly I'm not jealous of you and Bill, Carrie. But it's not friends most of us want, if you're after the truth.

We want pa.s.sionate but perfectly respectable, commandment-keeping lovers!"

Carrie laughed, but her colour died down.

"How silly you are!" she said, and got up. "Maybe we'd like to feel that we're not clear out of the game, but that's all. We're a little tired of being taken for granted. I don't want a lover; I want amus.e.m.e.nt, and if I'd married Harry Delaney I'd have had it."

"If you'd married him he would have been down there at the pool, showing off like a goldfish in a bowl, the same as the others."

"He would not. He can't swim," said Carrie, and sauntered away. Somehow I got the impression that she had been sounding me, and had got what she wanted. She looked very handsome that night, and wore the necklace.

Someone commented on it at dinner, and Wallie glared across at it.

"It isn't paid for," he said, "and as far as I can see, it never will be."

Of course, even among old friends, that was going rather far.

Well, the usual thing happened after dinner. The men smoked and argued, and we sat on the terrace and yawned. When they did come out it was to say that golf and swimming had made them sleepy, and Jim Elliott went asleep in his chair. Carrie said very little, except once to lean over and ask me if I remembered the name of the man Alice Warrington had thrown over for Ted. When I told her she settled back into silence again.

The next morning all the husbands were up early and off to the club for a Sunday's golfing. At ten o'clock a note came in on my breakfast tray from Carrie.

"Slip on something and come to my room," it said.

When I got there Ida and Alice Warrington were there already, and Carrie was sitting up in bed, with the same spots of colour I'd seen before. I curled up on the bed with my hands round my knees.

"Go to it, Carrie," I said. "If it's church, it's too late. If it's a picnic, it looks like rain."

"Close the door, Ida," said Carrie. "Girls, I'm getting pretty tired of this."

"Of what?"

"Of dragging the matrimonial ball and chain wherever I go, and having to hear it clank and swear and sulk, and--all the rest. I'm tired, and so are all of you. Only I'm more honest."

"It's all rather a mess," Ida said languidly. "But divorce is a mess too. And, anyhow, what's the use of changing? Just as one gets to know a man's pet stories, and needn't pretend to laugh at them any more, why take on a new bunch of stories--or habits?"

"The truth is," said Carrie, ignoring her, "that they have all the good times. They don't have to look pretty. Their clothes last forever. And they're utterly selfish socially. You girls know how much they dance with the married women when there are any debutantes about."

We knew.

"The thing to do," said Carrie, "is to bring them back to a sense of obligation. They've got us. We stay put. They take us to parties and get up a table of bridge for us, and go off to a corner with a chit just out of school, or dance through three handkerchiefs and two collars, and grumble at paying our bridge losses. Or else they stay at home, and nothing short of a high explosive would get them out of their chairs."

"Destructive criticism," said Alice Warrington, "never gets anywhere. We agree with you. There's no discussion. Are you recommending the high explosive?"

"I am," said Carrie calmly. "I propose to wake them up, and to have a good time doing it."

Well, as it turned out, it was I who wakened them up, and n.o.body had a very good time about it.

"There's just one man a husband is always jealous of," Carrie went on, and her eyes were slitted as usual. "That's the man his wife could have married and didn't."

I expect I coloured, for Bill has always been insanely jealous of Roger Waite, although honestly I never really cared for Roger. We used to have good times together, of course. You know.

Carrie's plan came out by degrees.

"It will serve two purposes," she said. "It will bring the men to a sense of responsibility, and stop this silly nonsense about bills and all that sort of thing. And it will be rather fun. It's a sin to drop old friends. Does Wallie drop his? Not so you could notice it. Every time I'm out of town he lives at Grace Barnabee's."

Carrie had asked us all to spend the next week-end with her, but the husbands were going to New York for the polo game and she had called the party off. But now it was on again.

"Do you girls remember the house party I had when Wallie was in Cuba, before we were engaged? We had a gorgeous time. I'm going to repeat it.

It's silly to say lightning doesn't strike twice in the same place. Of course it does, if one doesn't use lightning rods. Peter Arundel for Alice, and Roger for you, Clara. Ida, you were in Europe, but we'll let you in. Who'll you have?"

"Only one?" asked Ida.

"Only one."

Ida chose Wilbur Bayne, and Carrie wrote the notes right there in bed, with a pillow for a desk, and got ink on my best linen sheets.

"I'm sorry I never thought of it before," she said. "The house party is bound to be fun, and if it turns out well we'll do it regularly. I'll ask in a few people for dancing Sat.u.r.day night, but we'll keep Sunday for ourselves. We'll have a deliciously sentimental day."

She sat back and threw out her arms.

"Good Lord," she said, "I'm just ripe for a bit of sentiment. I want about forty-eight hours without bills or butlers or bridge. I'm going to send my diamond necklace to a safe deposit, and get out my debutante pearls, and have the wave washed out of my hair, and fill in the necks of one or two gowns. I warn you fairly, there won't be a cigarette for any of you."

When I left them they were already talking clothes, and Carrie had a hand gla.s.s and was looking at herself intently in it.

"I've changed, of course," she sighed. "One can't have two children and not show the wear and tear of maternity. I could take off five pounds by going on a milk diet. I think I will."

She went on the diet at luncheon that day, and Wallie told her that if she would cut out heavy dinners and wine her stomach would be her friend, not her enemy. She glanced at me, but I ignored her. Somehow I was feeling blue.

The week-end had not been a success, and the girls had not been slow to tell me about it. The very eagerness with which they planned for the next week told me what a failure I'd had. Even then the idea of getting even somehow with Carrie was in the back of my mind.

The men did some trap shooting that afternoon, and during dinner Jim started a discussion about putting women on a clothes allowance and making them keep within it.

"I can systematise my business," he said, "but I can't systematise my home. I'm spending more now than I'm getting out of the mill."

Wallie Smith came up to scratch about that time by saying that his mother raised him with the a.s.sistance of a nursemaid, and no governess and trained nurse nonsense.

"That is why I insist on a trained nurse and a governess," said Carrie coldly, and took another sip of milk.

They went home that night, and Bill, having seen them into the motors, came up on the terrace.

"Bully party, old dear," he said enthusiastically. "Have 'em often, won't you?"

He sat down near me and put a hand over mine. All at once I was sorry I'd accepted Carrie's invitation. Not that there would be any harm in seeing Roger again, but because Bill wouldn't like it. The touch of his warm hand on mine, the quiet of the early summer night after the noise that had gone before, the scent of the honeysuckle over the pergola, all combined to soften me.