“To change,” said her husband thickly.
“What about the car?”
In a silence too charged for words, Peregrine turned.
“You see?” continued his wife. “Your own convenience first, and mine second. The car’s for me, the shoes are for you. Instinctively you put the shoes first. . . .” She shrugged her shoulders, and a bleak look settled on her face. “Of course I blame myself. I’ve spoiled you. You’re naturally selfish, and because I loved you and wanted you to be happy I spoiled you to death. And now I’m paying for it.” For a moment she appeared to contemplate her state. Then she flung up her head. “And you stand by, looking like a plaster saint!” Her eyes raked him vertically. “My word, that injured air! Always the little innocent—the poor little village idiot that’s always being accused of something he’s never done. I suppose you hope one day to get away with it. Melt my heart, or something. Well, the sooner you realize that martyrdom makes me tired, the better for you. If you don’t agree, why not say so and put your point like a man? But you could never do that. The trouble with you is that you weren’t at a Public School. There you’d have learned manners and—well, they’ve got a very short way with plaster saints.”
After a moment—
“I’ll go and order a car,” said her husband quietly, and left the room.
The disorder was a very ordinary one, but it was a bad case.
In the first place, it is due to Peregrine to say that he was not fair game.
When Mrs. Below observed that her husband ought to have gone to a public school she hit the nail on the head. That would have altered everything. But Peregrine was an only and delicate child. When he was twelve he had spent six years on his back. Not until he was twenty had he been ‘passed sound.’ His most impressionable years had been spent in a shelter such as only a widow’s devotion to a son who is not expected to live can ever erect. He certainly went to Oxford, but use held. His vacations were happier than the terms he kept, and after two years he returned to his mother’s side. Then the War came. . . . One morning his Commission arrived. His mother shared his joy, but died in her sleep that night. Three years later the sparrow fell on the ground.
Peregrine Carey Below had fallen in love with his wife, and she had exploited his fall to the top of her bent. I say ‘fallen.’ To be more accurate, he had ventured to look in the pool, and his future wife had promptly kicked him in.