He stood at the hall door turning the ring, turning the heavy signet ring upon his little finger while his glance travelled coolly, deliberately, over the round tables and basket chairs scattered about the glassed-in veranda. He pursed his lips — he might have been going to whistle — but he did not whistle — only turned the ring — turned the ring on his pink, freshly washed hands.
Over in the corner sat The Two Topknots, drinking a decoction they always drank at this hour — something whitish, greyish, in glasses, with little husks floating on the top — and rooting in a tin full of paper shavings for pieces of speckled biscuit, which they broke, dropped into the glasses and fished for with spoons. Their two coils of knitting, like two snakes, slumbered beside the tray.
Detail is everything! The short story like poetry is a highly thrifty selective genre and the details volunteered must represent the distilled resonances of the words that are thrown away. Here, the signet ring suggests a habit reassuring yet imprisoning. Ritual suggests other rituals and the reader becomes progressively aware during the course of the narrative that this world is one of daily repetition and ‘care’ . The pinkness of the hands seems repulsive and ‘feminine’ or certainly desexed, and perhaps it is the idea of emasculation through the ‘shackling’ care of the exiled husband for the ailing wife that forms the central theme of this story.
The caricatured nature of the other guests- how Dickensian is Mansfield’s fondness for metonymy, underlines the grotesque estrangement of the couple from their original home. They are not ‘at home’ literally or metaphorically. they are lost somewhere in Europe seeking a cure from an unnamed illness affecting the wife who may exploit her illness in order to control every movement of her partner. And it is the transience and dependency of the couple’s situation here that affects the detail and tone of the tale.
The husband cannot whistle. A brilliant inisght. He is too ‘owned’ by circumstance and partner; besides, the affectation of pleasure would be utterly incongruent anyway!