“No!” Pixie shook her head. “I know better. There’s time yet, if you’ll be warned. Last night, when you were comforting Jack after his tumble, Geoffrey sat watching you as Dick watches Bridgie. It can’t be all gone, when he looks like that. He has loved you, been proud of you, been patient with you for—how long is it you have been married? Seven years, and you need a lot of patience, Esmeralda! I suppose it’s come to this—that you’ve used up all the patience he has.”
It said volumes for Joan’s penitence that she allowed such a statement to pass unchallenged, and even assented to it with meekness.
“I suppose that’s it. For the first few years it was all right. When I got angry he only laughed; then he began to get impatient himself, and this last year things have been going from bad to worse. When he spoke straight out it was easier; there was a row royal, and a grand ‘make up’ at the end, but now he’s so cold and calm.” Esmeralda’s lip trembled at the remembrance of the scene downstairs of the averted figure writing stolidly at the desk. She stared before her in silence for a dismal moment, then added sharply: “And what in the world set him off at a tangent this morning, of all others? There have been dozens of times when I should have expected him to be furious, and he’s been as mild as a lamb; and then of a sudden, when I was all innocent and unsuspicious, to flare up like that! There’s no sense in it!”
“It’s always the way with men. You can’t reckon on them,” announced Pixie, with the seasoned air of one who has endured three husbands at least. “Dick’s the same—an angel of patience till just the moment when you’ve made sure of him, and then in a moment he snaps off your head—my head, I mean, never Bridgie’s. There’s too much—bloom.” She put her little head on one side and pursed her lips in thought, with the characteristic Pixie air which carried Joan back to the days of childhood. “Now, isn’t it odd, Esmeralda, how people cultivate almost every good quality, and leave love to chance? They practise patience and unselfishness, but seem to think love is beyond control. It comes, or—it goes. Tant mieux! Tant pis! My dear, if I married a husband who loved me as Geoffrey loved you, it would be the big work of my life to keep him at it, and I’d expect it to be work! You get nothing worth having without trouble, so why should you expect an exception for the very best thing? And the poor man deserves some encouragement. I’d give it to him!”
Joan’s lips twisted into a sad smile.
“You understand a great deal, Pixie—more than I do, it seems, even after seven years! I never looked at things in that light. I just expected Geoffrey to keep on adoring, whatever I did. What made you think such things?”
“Nature!” said Pixie promptly. “And, my dear, I’m clever at loving—I always was. It’s my only gift, and I have studied it just as other people study drawing and music. What you have to do, Esmeralda, is to forget everything and every one else for a while, and comfort Geoffrey. Don’t make a scene and worry the poor man. Don’t make a grand programme of reformation, for that will put him off at the start. Just begin to-night and be sweet to him for a change. If you feel temper coming on, have it out on me! I’m used to you from a child, and if I get too much of it I can always run away and leave you; Geoffrey can’t. It’s mean to take advantage of a man that’s bound.”
“If he wanted to go,” began Joan haughtily, then subsided into tears and helplessness. “Pixie! Pixie! It’s so difficult! What can I do?”
“D’you need me to tell you? Isn’t it the easiest thing in the world to make love to your own husband, in your own house? Talk of propinquity! Always ready, always handy, if you can’t manage that! My dear girl, the game’s in your own hands.”
“Can a leopard change its spots?”