Page 13 of Beguiled
Once David had been round all the other guests, he approached Euan and Elizabeth. They stood a little apart, talking together, their heads bent close. He felt, oddly, like an intruder as he drew near.
“Would you like some more lemonade, Lady Kinnell? Or more ale for you, Mr. MacLennan?”
They looked up simultaneously, both of them seeming surprised to see him standing there for an instant before they each began to refuse his offer, their words tumbling together then petering out into awkward silence.
After a pause, Elizabeth said, more collectedly, “Mr. MacLennan was just telling me about the people he works with.”
“Oh yes?” David looked at Euan enquiringly.
“I was telling Lady Kinnell about Mr. and Mrs. Gilmour, the owners ofFlint’s,” Euan said, a hint of defiance in his tone, as though he thought David wouldn’t approve. “I was explaining that it was Mr. Gilmour who founded the paper,but Mrs. Gilmour is just as involved. As we all are. It is a collective endeavour. We all have a say-so in what happens.”
He glanced at Elizabeth. “I wish you could meet them,” he said. “They are a most unusual couple.”
Elizabeth tilted her head to the side. “Oh? Why is that?”
“They live as equal partners,” Euan said. “They drew up an agreement before their marriage that whatever the law might say, Mrs. Gilmour’s property was to remain her own, that her rights over their children would be equal to her husband’s, and that she owed him no obligation to obey his commands.”
Elizabeth was silent for a moment; then she said, sounding bewildered, “Why would they do that?”
“They believe that Woman should not be Man’s slave,” Euan said simply. “And if I ever marry, I will do just as they have done. If I marry, I don’t want a domestic slave.”
“No?”
“No. Man’s oppression of Woman is the first, and worst, act of oppression in human history. Until we repair that, how can we repair the other inequalities all around us? Every child grows up witnessing this most grievous form of slavery. We drink it in with our mothers’ milk and take it for the natural order. But it isnot.”
Elizabeth swallowed, as though past a lump, her pale throat working almost painfully. She looked away, averting her face.
“You are passionate about this,” David observed into the silence that followed. It occurred to him that if he was being a proper host, he would change a subject that seemed to be causing one of his guests distress, but he couldn’t help thinking that it may do Elizabeth good to hear this.
Euan turned his head to look at David. “I am,” he admitted. “My father beat my mother like a dog. One night, it was so bad Peter took a poker to him and drove him out of the house. He never came back. Peter was only fourteen, and the rest of us all under ten. Mam died a few days later. He’d broken something inside her, and we couldn’t afford a physician.”
Elizabeth made a choked sound at that, and Euan turned to her at once, paling at her look of distress.
“I’m so sorry,” he said. “I forgot myself—I shouldn’t have spoken so frankly.”
“No, no,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s just that—it’s horrible, Mr. MacLennan. Losing your mother in such an awful way. My own father is such agentleman, isn’t he, Mr. Lauriston?”
David nodded. “Your father is the very best of men,” he agreed, noticing she made no mention of her husband.
“Why can’t all men be like that?” she asked, and though the question was put quietly, somehow David knew it was a cry from the heart. Those expressive eyes, wounded and astonished, gave her away.
David watched her carefully. “I don’t understand it,” he said. “There were at least two women in my home village who were regularly beaten by their husbands. One of them was a cousin of my mother’s. She used to take refuge in our home when her man had been drinking. It’s worst for women like that, who are poor. They have no power to change their circumstances. No financial power—”
“Nowoman has any financial power!” Elizabeth interrupted raggedly.
David fell silent.
“No married woman,” she added, shambling her neutral mask back on.
“You’re right, of course,” David agreed evenly, watching her. The swift rise and fall of her chest betrayed her extreme agitation. “Even a rich woman is a pauper in marriage.”
“It’s not merely that married womenhaveno property, Mr. Lauriston,” Elizabeth replied quietly. “It’s that theyareproperty.”
“Mrs. Gilmour says that marriage is a form of slavery, under the law,” Euan said then. “It is the greatest of all injustices.”
Elizabeth nodded, then flushed, as though she’d only just realised what she’d given away. She averted her gaze and shrugged one slender shoulder. “I suppose it could be like slavery, if the husband wields his power unfairly.” She gave a false little laugh. “Goodness, how serious we are being, and on such a day! Do you think the procession will come back down the hill soon? I am going to have a look.”
Just like that, she broke away from the two men and hastened across the room to the window where her sister stood. Putting an arm around the other woman’s waist, she tilted her head to rest on Catherine’s shoulder.