Читать книгу The Parts Men Play - Beverley Baxter - Страница 44

As Selwyn gave the necessary order to the waiter, a noisy hubbub of laughter from an adjoining cabinet particulier almost drowned his words. There was one woman's voice that was rasping and sustained with an abandon of vulgarity released by the potency of champagne.

Elise Durwent looked across the table at her companion. 'Are you bored with all my talk?' she said. 'You Americans aren't nearly so candid about such things as Englishmen.'

'On the contrary, Miss Durwent, I am deeply interested. Only, I am a little puzzled as to how you connect the usual functions of animals with woman's place in the world.'

With an air of abstraction she drew some pattern on the table-cloth with the prongs of a fork. 'I don't know,' she said dreamily, 'that I can apply the argument correctly, 'but—Mr. Selwyn, when I was a child playing about with my little brother "Boy-blue"—that was a pet name I had for him—I was just as happy to be a girl as he was to be a boy. I think that is true of all children. But ask any woman which she would rather be, a man or a woman, and unless she is trying to make you fall in love with her she will say the former. That is not as it should be, but it's true. Yet, if we are part of your great plan working towards the light, we're entitled to the same share in life as you—more, if anything, because we perpetuate life and have more in common with all that it holds than men have. There, that is a long speech for me.'

'Please don't stop.'

There was a howl in a man's voice from the noisy cabinet particulier, followed by a laugh from the same woman as before, which set the teeth on edge.

'That woman in there,' she went on, 'will partly show what I mean. In the beginning we were both given certain qualities. She has lost her modesty through disuse; I'm losing my womanliness and power of sympathy for the same reason. She's more candid about it, that's all. When Dick and I were youngsters I dreamed of life as Casim Baba's cave full of undiscovered treasures that would be endless. Now I look back upon those days as the only really happy ones I shall ever have.'

'You are—how old?'

'Twenty-three.'

'You will grow less cynical as you grow older,' he said, from the altitude of twenty-six.

'I agree,' she said. 'As, unlike the Japanese, we haven't the moral courage of suicide, I shall get used to the idea of being an Englishman's wife; of living in a calm routine of sport, bridge, week-ends, and small-talk—entertaining people who bore you, and in turn helping to bore those who entertain you. In time I'll forget that I was born, as most women are, with a fine perception of life's subtleties, and settle down to living year in and year out with no change except that each season you're less attractive and more petty. After a while I shall even get to like the calm level of being an Englishman's wife, and if I see any girl thinking as I do now, I'll know what a little fool she is. That's what happens to us—we get used to things. Those of us who don't, either get a divorce, or go to the devil, or just live out our little farce. It is a real tragedy of English life that women are losing through disuse the qualities that were given them. That is why an American like you comes here and says we do not edit ourselves cleverly.'

The rapid succession of sentences came to an end, and the colour which had mounted to her cheeks slowly subsided.