Elsie was bored and angry, contemptuous of his jealousy, but far too much afraid of him to rebel openly.
She was more and more conscious of having made a mistake in her marriage, but her regrets were resentful rather than profound, and her facile nature found consolation in her own social advancement, her comfortable suburban home, and her tyrannical dominion over a capped and aproned maid.
She very seldom went to Hillbourne Terrace, and had quarrelled with her mother when Mrs. Palmer had suggested that it was time she had a baby.
Elsie did not want to have a baby at all. She feared pain and discomfort almost as much as she did the temporary eclipse of her good looks, and the thought of a child that should be Horace Williams’s as well as hers filled her with disgust.
She only spoke of this openly to Irene, and Irene undertook the purchase of certain drugs which she declared would render impossible the calamity dreaded by her friend. Elsie thankfully accepted the offer, and trusted implicitly to the efficacy of the bottles and packages that Irene bought.
Sometimes Horace declared that he wanted a son, and as time went on his taunts became less veiled, but Elsie cared little for them so long as she remained immune from the trial of motherhood.
She spent her days idly, doing very little housework, sometimes making or mending her own clothes, and often poring for a whole afternoon over a novel from the circulating library, or an illustrated paper, whilst she ate innumerable sweets out of little paper bags. She never remembered anything about the books that she read thus, and sometimes read the same one a second time without perceiving that she was doing so until she had nearly finished it.
After a time, Elsie became rather envious of the money that Irene was making as a munitions worker, and the “good time” that Geraldine enjoyed in the Government office where she had found a job. Elsie seriously told her husband that she felt she must go and do some “war work.”
“You are not in the same position as an unmarried girl, Elsie. You have other duties. These war jobs are for young women who have nothing else to do.”
“I don’t see that I’ve got so much to do.”