"The plain truth is," said Carrie Smith, "that, no matter how happy two
people may be together, the time comes when they are bored to death with
each other."
Nobody said anything. It was true and we knew it. Ida Elliott put down
the scarf she was knitting for the Belgians and looked down over the
hill to where a lot of husbands were playing in the swimming pool.
"It isn't just a matter of being bored, you know, Carrie," she said. "A
good many of us have made mistakes." Then she sighed. Ida is not really
unhappy, but she likes to think she is.
None of the rest made any comment. But one or two of the other girls put
down their knitting and looked out over the hills.
"I hope you don't mind my saying it, Clara," Carrie said, turning to me;
"but it's a mistake to have a week-end party like this. Last night when
I played pool with your Bill after the rest of you had gone upstairs,
Wallie refused to speak to me when I went to bed. He's still sulking."
I am not sensitive; but when they everyone turned on me and said it was
a beautiful party, but why, in heaven's name, had I asked only husbands
and not one extra man, it made me a trifle hot.
"As most of us see our husbands only during week-ends," I said tartly,
"I should think this sort of family reunion would be good for us."
Carrie sniffed.
"See them!" she snapped. "They've been a part of the landscape since we
came, and that's all. Either they're in the pool, or playing clock golf,
or making caricatures of themselves on the tennis court. A good
photograph would be as comforting, and wouldn't sulk."
Well, the whole thing really started from that. I made up my mind,
somehow or other, to even up with them. I'd planned a really nice party,
and even if they were bored they might have had the politeness to
conceal it.
Even now, badly as things turned out, I maintain that the idea was a
good one. I had a bad time, I'll admit that. But the rest of them were
pretty unhappy for a while. The only thing I can't quite forgive is that
Bill--but that comes later on.
There had been very little doing all spring. Everybody was poor, and
laying up extra motors, and trying to side-step appeals for Eastern
relief, and hiding dressmakers' bills. There were hardly any dividends
at all, and what with the styles completely changing from wide skirts
to narrow ones, so that not a thing from last year would do, and the men
talking nothing but retrenchment and staying at the table hours after
every dinner party, fighting the war over again, while we sat and
knitted, I never remember a drearier spring.
"Although," Carrie Smith said with truth, "the knitting's rather good
for us. No woman can enjoy a cigarette and knit at the same time."
The craze for dancing was dying away, too, and nothing came along to
take its place. The débutantes were playing tennis, but no woman over
twenty-two should ever play tennis, so most of us were out of that.
Anyhow it's violent. And bridge, for anything worth while, was apt to be
too expensive.
But to go back.
We sat and knitted and yawned, and the husbands put on dressing gowns
and ambled up the hill and round to the shower baths in the basement. I
looked at Bill. Bill is my husband and I'm fond of Bill. But there are
times when he gets on my nerves. He has a faded old bathrobe that saw
him through college and his honeymoon, and that he still refuses to part
with, and he had it on.
It was rather short, and Bill's legs, though serviceable, are not
beautiful.
He waved his hand to me.
"If you'd do a little of that sort of thing, Clara," he called, "you
wouldn't need to have the fat rubbed off you by an expensive masseuse."
"Quite a typical husbandly speech!" said Carrie Smith.
"Do they ever think of anything but exercise and expense?"
Well, the men bathed and dressed and had whisky-and-sodas, and came out
patronisingly and joined us at tea on the terrace. But inside of ten
minutes they were in a group round the ball news and the financial page
of the evening papers, and we were alone again.
Carrie Smith came over and sat down beside me, with her eyes narrowed to
a slit.
"I didn't want to hurt your feelings, Clara," she said, "but you see
what I mean. They're not interested in us. We manage their houses and
bring up their children. That's all."
As Carrie was the only one who had any children, and as they were being
reared by a trained nurse and a governess, and the baby yelled like an
Apache if Carrie went near him, her air of virtue was rather out of
place. However:
"What would you recommend?" I asked wearily. "They're all alike, aren't
they?"
"Not all." Her eyes were still narrowed. And at that moment Wallie Smith
came over and threw an envelope into her lap.
"It came to the office by mistake," he said grimly. "What made you have
your necklace reset when I'm practically bankrupt?"
"I bought hardly any new stones," she flashed at him. "Anyhow, I intend
to be decently clothed. Tear it up; nobody's paying any bills."
He stalked away, and Carrie looked at me.
"No," she said slowly, "they are not all alike. Thank heaven there are a
few men who don't hoist the dollar mark as a flag. Clara, do you
remember Harry Delaney?"