“Ah, that is dear of you,” she said. “You are always such a darling to me.”
He was not a man to give grudging consents, or spoil a gift by offering it except with the utmost cordiality.
“I only hope you’ll make a great success of it, little woman,” he said. “And it must be dull for you at Harrogate. So that’s settled, and we’re all satisfied. Let us see if Elsie has come in yet.”
She laughed softly.
“You are a dear,” she said again.
Wilfred Evans was neither analytical regarding himself nor curious about analysis that might account for the action of others. Just as in his professional work he was rather old-fashioned, but eminently safe and sensible, so in the ordinary conduct of his life he did not seek for abstruse causes and subtle motives. It was quite enough for him that his wife felt that she would be excruciatingly bored at Harrogate, and less acutely desolate here. On the other hand, it implied violation of one of the simplest customs of life that a wife should be in one place and her husband in another. That was vaguely disquieting to him. Disquieting also was the cold, precise manner with which she had conducted her case. A dozen times only, perhaps, in all their married life had she assumed this frozen rigidity of demeanour; each time he had succumbed before it. In the ordinary way, if their inclinations were at variance, she would coax and wheedle him into yielding or, though quietly adhering to her own opinion, she would let him have his way. But with her calm rigidity, rarely assumed, he had never successfully combated; there was a steeliness about it that he knew to be stronger than any opposition he could bring to it. Nothing seemed to affect it, neither argument nor conjugal command. She would go on saying “I do not agree with you,” in the manner of cool water dripping on a stone. Or with the same inexorable quietness she would repeat, “I feel very strongly about it: I think it very unkind of you.” And a sufficiency of that always had rendered his opposition impotent: her will, when once really aroused, seemed to paralyse his. Once or twice her line had turned out conspicuously ill. That seemed to make no difference: the cold, precise manner was on higher plane than the material failure which had resulted therefrom. She would merely repeat, “But it was the best thing to do under the circumstances.”
In this instance he wondered a little that she had used this manner over a matter that seemed so little vital as the question of Harrogate, but by next morning he had ceased to concern himself further with it. She was completely her usual self again, and soon after breakfast set off to accomplish some little errands in the town, looking in on him in his laboratory to know if there were any commissions she could do for him. His eye at the moment was glued to his microscope: a culture of staphylococcus absorbed him, and without looking up, he said—
“Nothing, thanks, little woman.”
He heard her pause: then she came across the room to him, and laid her cool hand on his shoulder.
“Wilfred, you are such a dear to me,” she said. “You’re not vexed with me?”