It was, of course, as inevitable as the return of day that Mrs. Altham
should start half-an-hour earlier than was necessary to go to church
that morning, in order to return to Mrs. Brooks, who had been dining
last night at the Ames’, a couple of books that had been lent her a
month or two ago, and that Mrs. Brooks should recount to her the unusual
incident of Harry’s taking Mrs. Evans into the garden after dinner, and
giving her a gradually growing bouquet of roses torn from his father’s
trees. Indeed, it was difficult to settle satisfactorily which part of
Harry’s conduct was the most astounding, with such completeness had he
revolted against both beneficiaries of the fifth commandment.
“They can’t have been out in the garden for less than twenty minutes,”
said Mrs. Brooks; “and I shouldn’t wonder if it was more. For we had
scarcely settled ourselves after the gentlemen came in from the
dining-room, when they went out, and I’m sure we had hardly got talking
again after they came back, before my maid was announced. To be sure the
gentlemen sat a long time after dinner before joining us, which I notice
is always the case when General Fortescue is at a party, but it can’t
have been less than half-an-hour that they were in the garden now one
comes to add it up.”
Mrs. Brooks surveyed for a moment in silence her piece of embroidery.
Not for a moment must it be supposed that she would have done
embroidery for her own dress on Sunday morning; this was a frontal for
the lectern at St. Barnabas, which would make it impossible for Mrs.
Ames to decorate the lectern any more with her flowers. There was a
cross, and a crown, and some initials, and some rays of light, and a
heart, and some passion flowers, and a dove worked on it, with a
profusion of gold thread that was positively American in its opulence.
Hitherto, the lectern had always been the field of one of Mrs. Ames’
most telling embellishments. When this embroidery was finished (which it
soon would be) she would be driven from the lectern in disorder and
discomfiture.
“A very rich effect,” said Mrs. Altham sympathetically. “Half-an-hour!
Dear me! And then I think you said she came back with a dozen roses.”
Mrs. Brooks closed her eyes, and made a short calculation.
“More than a dozen,” she said. “I daresay there were twenty roses. It
was very marked, very marked indeed. And if you ask me what I think of
Mrs. Ames’ plan of asking husband without wife and wife without husband,
I must say I do not like it at all. Depend upon it, if Dr. Evans had
come too, there would have been no walking about in the garden with our
Master Harry. But far be it from me to say there was any harm in it,
far! I hope I am not one who condemns other people’s actions because I
would not commit them myself. All I know is that the first time my late
dear husband asked me to walk about the garden after dinner with him, he
proposed to me; and the second time he asked me to walk in the garden
with him he proposed again, and I accepted him. But then I was not
engaged to anybody else at the time, far less married, like Mrs. Evans.
But it is none of my business, I am glad to say.”
“Indeed, no, it does not concern us,” said Mrs. Altham, with avidity;
“and as you say, there may be no harm in it at all. But young men are
very impressionable, even if most unattractive, and I call it distinct
encouragement to a young man to walk about after dinner in the garden
with him, and receive a present of roses. And I’m sure Mrs. Evans is old
enough to be his mother.”
Mrs. Brooks tacked down a length of gold thread which was to form part
of the longest ray of all, and made another little calculation. It was
not completely satisfactory.
“Anyhow, she is old enough to know better,” she said; “but I have
noticed that being old enough to know better often makes people behave
worse. Mind, I do not blame her: there is nothing I detest so much as
this censorious attitude; and I only say that if I gave so much
encouragement to any young man I should blame myself.”
“And the dinner?” asked Mrs. Altham. “At least, I need not ask that,
since I am going to lunch there, so I shall soon know as well as you
what there was.”
Mrs. Brooks smiled in a rather superior manner.
“I never know what I am eating,” she said. And she looked as if it
disagreed with her, too, whatever it was.
This was not particularly thrilling, for though it was generally known
that Harry had an emotional temperament and wrote amorous poems, he
appeared to Mrs. Altham an improbable Lothario. In any case, the slight
interest that this aroused in her was nothing compared to that which
awaited her and her husband when they arrived for lunch at Mrs. Ames’.
There had been a long-standing feud between Mrs. Altham and her hostess
on the subject of punctuality. About two years ago Mrs. Ames had arrived
at Mrs. Altham’s at least ten minutes late for dinner, and Mrs. Altham
had very properly retorted by arriving a quarter of an hour late when
next she was bidden to dinner with Mrs. Ames, though that involved
sitting in a dark cab for ten minutes at the corner of the next turning.
So, next time that Mrs. Altham “hoped to have the pleasure of seeing you
and Major Ames at dinner on Thursday at a quarter to eight,” she asked
the rest of her guests at eight. With the effect that Mrs. Ames and her
husband arrived a few minutes before anybody else, and Riseborough
generally considered that Mrs. Altham had scored. Since then there had
been but a sort of desultory pea-shooting kept up, such as would harm
nobody, and to-day Mrs. Altham and her husband arrived certainly within
ten minutes of the hour named. Mr. Pettit, who generally lunched with
Mrs. Ames or Mrs. Brooks on Sunday, was already there with his sister.
Harry was morosely fidgeting in a corner, and Mrs. Ames was the only
other person present in the small sitting-room where she received her
guests, instead of troubling them to go up to the drawing-room and
instantly to go down again. She gave Mrs. Altham her fat little hand,
and then made this remarkable statement.
“We are not waiting for anybody else, I think.”
Upon which they went into lunch, and Harry sat at the head of the table,
instead of his father.
Mrs. Ames was in her most conversational mood, and it was not until the
_chaud-froid_, consisting mainly of the legs of chickens pasted over
with a yellow sauce that concealed the long blue hair-roots with which
Nature has adorned their lower extremities, was being handed round, that
Mrs. Altham had opportunity to ask the question that had been
effervescing like an antiseptic lozenge on the tip of her tongue ever
since she remarked the Major’s absence.
“And where is Major Ames?” she asked. “I hope he is not ill? I thought
he looked far from well at Mrs. Evans’ garden-party yesterday.”
Mrs. Ames set her mind at rest with regard to the second point, and
inflamed it on the first.
“Oh, no!” she said. “Did you think he looked ill? How good of you to ask
after him. But Lyndhurst is quite well. Mr. Pettit, a little more
chicken? After your sermon.”
Mr. Pettit had a shrewd, ugly, delightful face, very lean, very capable.
Humanly speaking, he probably abhorred Mrs. Ames. Humanely speaking, he
knew there was a great deal of good in her, and a quantity of debateable
stuff. He smiled, showing thick white teeth.
“Before and after my sermon,” he said. “Also before a children’s service
and a Bible class. I cannot help thinking that God forgot his poor
clergymen when he defined the seventh day as one of rest.”
Mrs. Ames hid a small portion of her little face with her little hand.
She always said that Mr. Pettit was not like a clergyman at all.
“How naughty of you,” she said. “But I must correct you. The seventh day
has become the first day now.”
Harry gave vent to a designedly audible sigh. The Omar Club were
chiefly atheists, and he felt bound to uphold their principles.
“That is the sort of thing that confuses me,” he said. “Mr. Pettit says
Sunday was called a day of rest, and my mother says that God meant what
we call Monday, or Saturday. I have been behaving as if it was Tuesday
or Wednesday.”
Mr. Pettit gave him a kindly glance.
“Quite right, my dear boy,” he said. “Spend your Tuesday or Wednesday
properly and God won’t mind whether it is Thursday or Friday.”
Harry pushed back his lank hair, and became Omar-ish.
“Do you fast on Friday, may I ask?” he said.
Mrs. Ames looked pained, and tried to think of something to say. She
failed. But Mrs. Altham thought without difficulty.
“I suppose Major Ames is away, Mr. Harry?” she said.
Even then, though her intentions might easily be supposed to be amiable,
she was not allowed the privilege of being replied to, for Mr. Pettit
cheerfully answered Harry’s question, without a shadow of embarrassment,
just as if he did not mind what the Omar Khayyam Club thought.
“Of course I do, my dear fellow,” he said, “because our Lord and dearest
friend died that day. He allows us to watch and pray with Him an hour or
two.”
Harry appeared indulgent.
“Curious,” he said.
Mr. Pettit looked at him for just the space of time any one looks at the
speaker, with cheerful cordiality of face, and then turned to his mother
again.
“I want you at church next Sunday,” he said, “with a fat purse, to be
made thin. I am going to have an offertory to finance a children’s
treat. I want to send every child in the parish to the sea-side for a
day.”
Harry interrupted in the critical manner.
“Why the sea-side?” he asked.
Mr. Pettit turned to him with unabated cordiality.
“How right to ask!” he said. “Because the sea is His, and He made it!
Also, they will build sand-castles, and pick up shells. You must come
too, my dear Harry, and help us to give them a nice day.”
Harry felt that this was a Philistine here, who needed to be put in his
place. He was not really a very rude youth, but one who felt it
incumbent on to oppose Christianity, which he regarded as superstition.
A bright idea came into his head.
“But His hands prepared the dry land,” he said, “on the same
supposition.”
“Certainly; and as the dear mites have always seen the dry land,” said
Mr. Pettit, with the utmost good-humour, “we want to show them that God
thought of something they never thought of. And then there are the
sand-castles.”
Harry was tired, and did not proceed to crush Mr. Pettit with the
atheistical arguments that were but commonplace to the Omar Khayyam
Club. He was not worth argument: you could only really argue with the
enlightened people who fundamentally agreed with you, and he was sure
that Mr. Pettit did not fulfil that requirement. So, indulgently, he
turned to Mrs. Altham.
“I saw you at Mrs. Evans’ garden-party yesterday,” he said. “I think
she is the most wonderful person I ever met. She was dining here last
night, and I took her into the garden----”
“And showed her the roses,” said Mrs. Altham, unable to restrain
herself.
Harry became a parody of himself, though that might seem to be a feat of
insuperable difficulty.
“I supposed it would get about,” he said. “That is the worst of a little
place like this. Whatever you do is instantly known.”
The slightly viscous remains of the strawberry ice were being handed,
and Mr. Pettit was talking to Mrs. Ames and his sister from a pitiably
Christian standpoint.
“What did you hear?” asked Harry, in a low voice.
“Merely that she and you went out into the garden after dinner, and that
you picked roses for her----”
Harry pushed back his lank hair with his bony hand.
“You have heard all,” he said. “There was nothing more than that. I did
not see her home. Her carriage did not come: there was some mistake
about it, I suppose. But it was my father who saw her home, not I.”
He laid down the spoon with which he had been consuming the viscous
fluid.
“If you hear that I saw her home, Mrs. Altham,” he said, “tell them it
is not true. From what you have already told me, I gather there is talk
going on. There is no reason for such talk.”
He paused a moment, and then a line or two of the intensely Swinburnian
effusion which he had written last night fermented in his head, making
him infinitely more preposterous.
“I assure you that at present there is no reason for such talk,” he said
earnestly.
Now Mrs. Altham, with her wide interest in all that concerned anybody
else, might be expected to feel the intensest curiosity on such a topic,
but somehow she felt very little, since she knew that behind the talk
there was really very little topic, and the gallant misgivings of poor,
ugly Harry seemed to her destitute of any real thrill. On the other
hand, she wanted very much to know where Major Ames was, and being
endowed with the persistence of the household cat, which you may turn
out of a particular arm-chair a hundred times, without producing the
slightest discouragement in its mind, she reverted to her own subject
again.
“I am sure there is no reason for such talk, Mr. Harry,” she said, with
strangely unwelcome conviction, “and I will be sure to contradict it if
ever I hear it. I am so glad to hear Major Ames is not ill. I was afraid
that his absence from lunch to-day might mean that he was.”
Now Harry, as a matter of fact, had no idea where his father was, since
the telephone message had been received by Mrs. Ames.
“Father is quite well,” he said. “He was picking sweet-peas half the
morning. He picked a great bunch.”
Mrs. Altham looked round: the table was decorated with the roses of the
dinner-party of the evening before.
“Then where are the sweet-peas?” she asked.
But Harry was not in the least interested in the question.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Perhaps they are in the next room. I showed
Mrs. Evans last night how the La France roses looked blue when dusk
fell. She had never noticed it, though they turn as blue as her eyes.”
“How curious!” said Mrs. Altham. “But I didn’t see the sweet-peas in the
next room. Surely if there had been a quantity of them I should have
noticed them. Or perhaps they are in the drawing-room.”
At this moment, Mrs. Ames’ voice was heard from the other end of the
table.
“Then shall we have our coffee outside?” she said. “Harry, if you will
ring the bell----”
There was the pushing back of chairs, and Mrs. Altham passed along the
table to the French windows that opened on to the verandah.
“I hear Major Ames has been picking the loveliest sweet-peas all the
morning,” she said to her hostess. “It would be such a pleasure to see
them. I always admire Major Ames’ sweet-peas.”
Now this was unfortunate, for Mrs. Altham desired information herself,
but by her speech she had only succeeded in giving information to Mrs.
Ames, who guessed without the slightest difficulty where the sweet-peas
had gone, which she had not yet known had been picked. She was already
considerably annoyed with her husband for his unceremonious desertion of
her luncheon-party, and was aware that Mrs. Altham would cause the fact
to be as well known in Riseborough as if it had been inserted in the
column of local intelligence in the county paper. But she felt she would
sooner put it there herself than let Mrs. Altham know where he and his
sweet-peas were. She had no greater objection (or if she had, she
studiously concealed it from herself even) to his going to lunch in
this improvising manner with Mrs. Evans than if he had gone to lunch
with anybody else; what she minded was his non-appearance at an
institution so firmly established and so faithfully observed as the
lunch that followed the dinner-party. But at the moment her entire mind
was set on thwarting Mrs. Altham. She looked interested.
“Indeed, has he been picking sweet-peas?” she said. “I must scold him if
it was only that which kept him away from church. I don’t know what he
has done with them. Very likely they are in his dressing-room: he often
likes to have flowers there. But as you admire his sweet-peas so much,
pray walk down the garden, and look at them. You will find them in their
full beauty.”
This, of course, was not in the least what Mrs. Altham wanted, since she
did not care two straws for the rest of the sweet-peas. But life was
scarcely worth living unless she knew where those particular sweet-peas
were. As for their being in his dressing-room, she felt that Mrs. Ames
must have a very poor opinion of her intellectual capacities, if she
thought that an old wife’s tale like that would satisfy it. In this she
was partly right: Mrs. Ames had indeed no opinion at all of her mind; on
the other hand, she did not for a moment suppose that this suggestion
about the dressing-room would content that feeble organ. It was not
designed to: the object was to stir it to a wilder and still unsatisfied
curiosity. It perfectly succeeded, and from by-ways Mrs. Altham emerged
full-speed, like a motor-car, into the high-road of direct question.
“I am sure they are lovely,” she said. “And where is Major Ames
lunching?”
Mrs. Ames raised the pieces of her face where there might have been
eyebrows in other days. She told one of the truths that Bismarck loved.
“He did not tell me before he went out,” she said. “Perhaps Harry knows.
Harry, where is your father lunching?”
Now this was ludicrous. As if it was possible that any wife in
Riseborough did not know where her husband was lunching! Harry
apparently did not know either, and Mrs. Ames, tasting the joys of the
bull-baiter, goaded Mrs. Altham further by pointedly asking Parker, when
she brought the coffee, if she knew where the Major was lunching. Of
course Parker did not, and so Parker was told to cut Mrs. Altham a nice
bunch of sweet-peas to carry away with her.
This pleasant duty of thwarting undue curiosity being performed, Mrs.
Ames turned to Mr. Pettit, though she had not quite done with Mrs.
Altham yet. For she had heard on the best authority that Mrs. Altham
occasionally indulged in the disgusting and unfeminine habit of
cigarette smoking. Mrs. Brooks had several times seen her walking about
her garden with a cigarette, and she had told Mrs. Taverner, who had
told Mrs. Ames. The evidence was overwhelming.
“Mr. Pettit, I don’t think any of us mind the smell of tobacco,” she
said, “when it is out of doors, so pray have a cigarette. Harry will
give you one. Ah! I forgot! Perhaps Mrs. Altham does not like it.”
Mrs. Altham hastened to correct that impression. At the same time she
had a subtle and not quite comfortable sense that Mrs. Ames knew all
about her and her cigarettes, which was exactly the impression which
that lady sought to convey.
These tactics were all sound enough in their way, but a profounder
knowledge of human nature would have led Mrs. Ames not to press home her
victory with so merciless a hand. In her determination to thwart Mrs.
Altham’s odious curiosity, she had let it be seen that she was thwarting
it: she should not, for instance, have asked Parker if she knew of the
Major’s whereabouts, for it only served to emphasize the undoubted fact
that Mrs. Ames knew (that might be taken for granted) and that she knew
that Parker did not, for otherwise she would surely not have asked her.
Consequently Mrs. Altham (erroneously, as far as that went) came to the
conclusion that the Major was lunching alone where his wife did not wish
him to lunch alone. And in the next quarter of an hour, while they all
sat on the verandah, she devoted the mind which her hostess so despised,
to a rapid review of all houses of this description. Instantly almost,
the wrong scent which she was following led her to the right quarry. She
argued, erroneously, the existence of a pretty woman, and there was a
pretty woman in Riseborough. It is hardly necessary to state that she
made up her mind to call on that pretty woman without delay. She would
be very much surprised if she did not find there an immense bunch of
sweet-peas and perhaps their donor.
Mrs. Ames’ guests soon went their ways, Mr. Pettit and his sister to the
children’s service at three, the Althams on their detective mission, and
she was left to herself, except in so far as Harry, asleep in a basket
chair in the garden, can be considered companionship. She was not gifted
with any very great acuteness of imagination, but this afternoon she
found herself capable of conjuring up (indeed, she was incapable of not
doing so) a certain amount of vague disquiet. Indeed, she tried to put
it away, and refresh her mind with the remembrance of her thwarting Mrs.
Altham, but though her disquiet was but vague, and was concerned with
things that had at present no real existence at all, whereas her victory
over that inquisitive lady was fresh and recent, the disquiet somehow
was of more pungent quality, and at last she faced it, instead of
attempting any longer to poke it away out of sight.
Millie Evans was undeniably a good-looking woman, undeniably the Major
had been considerably attracted last night by her. Undeniably also he
had done a very strange thing in stopping to have his lunch there, when
he knew perfectly well that there were people lunching with them at home
for that important rite of eating up the remains of last night’s dinner.
Beyond doubt he had taken her this present of sweet-peas, of which Mrs.
Altham had so obligingly informed her; beyond doubt, finally, she was
herself ten years her husband’s senior.
It has been said that Mrs. Ames was not imaginative, but indeed, there
seemed to be sufficient here, when it was all brought together, to
occupy a very prosaic and literal mind. It was not as if these facts
were all new to her: that disparity of age between herself and her
husband had long lain dark and ominous, like a distant thunder-cloud on
the horizon of her mind. Hitherto, it had been stationary there, not
apparently coming any closer, and not giving any hint of the potential
tempest which might lurk within it. But now it seemed to have moved a
little up the sky, and (though this might be mere fancy on her part),
there came from it some drowsy and distant echo of thunder.
It must not be supposed that her disquiet expressed itself in Mrs. Ames’
mind in terms of metaphor like this, for she was practically incapable
of metaphor. She said to herself merely that she was ten years older
than her husband. That she had known ever since they married (indeed,
she had known it before), but till now the fact had never seemed likely
to be of any significance to her. And yet her grounds for supposing that
it might be about to become significant were of the most unsubstantial
sort. Certainly if Lyndhurst had not gone out to lunch to-day, she would
never have dreamed of finding disquiet in the happenings of the evening
before; indeed, apart from Harry’s absurd expedition into the garden,
the party had been a markedly successful one, and she had determined to
give more of those undomestic entertainments. But the principle of them
assumed a strangely different aspect when her husband accepted an
invitation of the kind instead of lunching at home, and that aspect
presented itself in vivid colours when she reflected that he was ten
years her junior.
Mrs. Ames was a practical woman, and though her imagination had run
unreasonably riot, so she told herself, over these late events, so that
she already contemplated a contingency that she had no real reason to
anticipate, she considered what should be her practical conduct if this
remote state of affairs should cease to be remote. She had altogether
passed from being in love with her husband, so much so, indeed, that she
could not recall, with any sense of reality, what that unquiet sensation
was like. But she had been in love with him years ago, and that still
gave her a sense of possession over him. She had not been in the habit
of guarding her possession, since there had never been any reason to
suppose that anybody wanted to take it away, but she remembered with
sufficient distinctness the sense that Lyndhurst’s garden was becoming
to him the paramount interest in his life. At the time that sense had
been composed of mixed feelings: neglect and relief were its
constituents. He had ceased to expect from her that indefinable
sensitiveness which is one of the prime conditions of love, and the
growing atrophy of his demands certainly corresponded with her own
inclinations. At the same time, though this cessation on his part of the
imperative need of her, was a relief, she resented it. She would have
wished him to continue being in love with her on credit, so to speak,
without the settlement of the bill being applied for. Years had passed
since then, but to-day that secondary discontent assumed a primary
importance again. It was more acute now than it had ever been, for her
possession was not being quietly absorbed into the culture of impersonal
flowers, but, so it seemed possible, was directly threatened.
There was the situation which her imagination presented her with,
practically put, and she proceeded to consider it from a practical
standpoint. What was she to do?
She had the justice to acknowledge that the first clear signals of
coolness in their mutual relations, now fifteen years ago, had been
chiefly flown by her: she had essentially welcomed his transference of
affection to his garden, though she had secretly resented it. At the
least, the cooling had been condoned by her. Probably that had been a
mistake on her part, and she determined now to rectify it. She,
pathetically enough, felt herself young still, and to confirm herself in
her view, she took the trouble to go indoors, and look at herself in the
glass that hung in the hall. It was inevitable that she should see there
not what she really saw, but what, in the main, she desired to see. Her
hair, always slightly faded in tone, was not really grey, and even if
there were signs of greyness in it there was nothing easier, if you
could trust the daily advertisements in the papers, than to restore the
colour, not by dyes, but by “purely natural means.” There had been an
advertisement of one such desirable lotion, she remembered, in the paper
to-day, which she had noticed was supplied by any chemist. Certainly
there was a little grey in her hair: that would be easy to remedy. That
act of mental frankness led on to another. There were certain
premonitory symptoms of stringiness about her throat and of loose skin
round her mouth and eyes. But who could keep abreast of the times at
all, and not know that there were skin-foods which were magical in their
effect? There was one which had impressed itself on her not long before:
an actress had written in its praise, affirming that her wrinkles had
vanished with three nights’ treatment. Then there was a little, just a
little, sallowness of complexion, but after all, she had always been
rather sallow. It was a fortunate circumstance: when she got hot she
never got crimson in the face like poor Mrs. Taverner.... She was going
to town next week for a night, in order to see her dentist, a yearly
precaution, unproductive of pain, for her teeth were really excellent,
regular in shape, white, undecayed. Lyndhurst, in his early days, had
told her they were like pearls, and she had told him he talked
nonsense. They were just as much like pearls still, only he did not tell
her so. He, poor fellow, had had great trouble in this regard, but it
might be supposed his trouble was over now, since artifice had done its
utmost for him. She was much younger than him there, though his last set
fitted beautifully. But probably Millie had seen they were not real. And
then he was distinctly gouty, which she was not. Often had she heard his
optimistic assertion that an hour’s employment with the garden-roller
rendered all things of rheumatic tendency an impossibility. But she,
though publicly she let these random statements pass, and even endorsed
them, knew the array of bottles that beleaguered the washing-stand in
his dressing-room, where the sweet-peas were not.
The silent colloquy with the mirror in the hall occupied her some ten
minutes, but the ten minutes sufficed for the arrival of one
conclusion--namely, that she did not intend to be an old woman yet.
Subtle art, the art of the hair-restorer (which was not a dye), the art
of the skin-feeder must be invoked. She no longer felt at all old, now
that there was a possibility of her husband’s feeling young. And
lip-salve: perhaps lip-salve, yet that seemed hardly necessary: a few
little bitings and mumblings of her lips between her excellent teeth
seemed to restore to them a very vivid colour.
She went back to the verandah, where her little luncheon-party had had
their coffee, and pondered the practical manœuvres of her campaign of
invasion into the territory of youth which had once been hers. The
lotion for the hair, as she verified by a consultation with the Sunday
paper, took but a fortnight’s application to complete its work. The
wrinkle treatment was easily comprised in that, for it took, according
to the eminent actress, no more than three days. It might therefore be
wiser not to let the work of rejuvenation take place under Lyndhurst’s
eye, for there might be critical passages in it. But she could go away
for a fortnight (a fortnight was the utmost time necessary for the
wonderful lotion to restore faded colour) and return again after
correspondence that indicated that she felt much better and younger.
Several times before she had gone to stay alone with a friend of hers on
the coast of Norfolk: there would be nothing in the least remarkable in
her doing it again.
An objection loomed in sight. If there was any reality in the
supposition that prompted her desire to seem young again--namely, a
possible attraction of her husband towards Millie Evans, she would but
be giving facility and encouragement to that by her absence. But then,
immediately the wisdom of the course, stronger than the objection to it,
presented itself. Infinitely the wiser plan for her was to act as if
unconscious of any such danger, to disarm him by her obvious rejection
of any armour of her own. She must either watch him minutely or not at
all. Mr. Pettit had alluded in his sermon that morning to the finer of
the two attitudes when he reminded them that love thought no evil. It
seemed to poor Mrs. Ames that if by her conduct she appeared to think no
evil, it came to the same thing.
Her behaviour towards Lyndhurst, when he should come back from Millie’s
house, followed as a corollary. She would be completely genial: she
would hope he had had a pleasant lunch, and, if he made any apology for
his absence, assure him that it was quite unnecessary. Her charity would
carry her even further than that: she would say that his absence had
been deplored by her guests, but that she had been so glad that he had
done as he felt inclined. She would hope that Millie was not tired with
her party, and that she and her husband would come to dine with them
again soon. It must be while Harry was at home, for he was immensely
attracted by Millie. So good for a boy to think about a nice woman like
that.
* * * * *
Mrs. Ames carried out her programme with pathetic fidelity. Her husband
did not get home till nearly tea-time, and she welcomed him with a
cordiality that would have been unusual even if he had not gone out to
lunch at all. And to do him justice, it must be confessed that his
wife’s scheme, as already recounted, was framed to meet a situation
which at present had no real existence, except in the mind of a wife
wedded to a younger husband. There were data for the situation, so to
speak, rather than there was danger of it. He, on his side, was well
aware of the irregularity of his conduct, and was prepared to accept,
without retaliation, a modicum of blame for it. But no blame at all
awaited him; instead of that a cordiality so genuine that, in spite of
the fact that a particularly good dinner was provided him, the possible
parallel of the prodigal son did not so much as suggest itself to his
mind.
Harry had retired to his bedroom soon after dinner with a certain
wildness of eye which portended poetry rather than repose, and after he
had gone his father commented in the humorous spirit about this.
“Poor old Harry!” he said. “Case of lovely woman, eh, Amy? I was just
the same at his age, until I met you, my dear.”
This topic of Harry’s admiration for Mrs. Evans, which his mother had
intended to allude to, had not yet been touched on, and she responded
cordially.
“You think Harry is very much attracted by Millie, do you mean?” she
said.
He chuckled.
“Well, that’s not very difficult to see,” he said. “Why, the rascal tore
off a dozen of my best roses for her last night, though I hadn’t the
heart to scold him for it. Not a bad thing for a young fellow to burn a
bit of incense before a charming woman like that. Keeps him out of
mischief, makes him see what a nice woman is like. As I said, I used to
do just the same myself.”
“Tell me about it,” said she.
“Well, there was the Colonel’s wife. God bless me, how I adored her. I
must have been just about Harry’s age, for I had only lately joined, and
she was a woman getting on for forty. Good thing, too, for me, as I say,
for it kept me out of mischief. They used to say she encouraged me, but
I don’t believe it. Every woman likes to know that she’s admired, eh?
She doesn’t snub a boy who takes her out in the garden, and picks his
father’s roses for her. But we mustn’t have Harry boring her with his
attentions. That’ll never do.”
It seemed to Mrs. Ames of singularly little consequence whether Harry
bored Millie Evans or not. She would much have preferred to be assured
that her husband did. But the subsequent conversation did not reassure
her as to that.
“Nice little woman, she is,” he said. “Thoroughly nice little woman, and
naturally enough, my dear, since she is your cousin, she likes being
treated in neighbourly fashion. We had a great talk after lunch to-day,
and I’m sorry for her, sorry for her. I think we ought to do all we can
to make life pleasant for her. Drop in to tea, or drop in to lunch, as I
did to-day. A doctor’s wife, you know. She told me that some days she
scarcely set eyes on her husband, and when she did, he could think of
nothing but microbes. And there’s really nobody in Riseborough, except
you and me, with whom she feels--dear me, what’s that French word--yes,
with whom she feels in her proper _milieu_. I should like us to be on
such terms with her--you being her cousin--that we could always
telephone to say we were dropping in, and that she would feel equally
free to drop in. Dropping in, you know: that’s the real thing; not to be
obliged to wait till you are asked, or to accept weeks ahead, as one has
got to do for some formal dinner-party. I should like to feel that we
mightn’t be surprised to find her picking sweet-peas in the garden, and
that she wouldn’t be surprised to find you or me sitting under her
mulberry-tree, waiting for her to come in. After all, intimacy only
begins when formality ceases. Shall I give you some soda water?”
Mrs. Ames did not want soda-water: she wanted to think. Her husband had
completely expressed the attitude she meant to adopt, but her own
adoption of it had presupposed a certain contrition on his part with
regard to his unusual behaviour. But he gave her no time for thought,
and proceeded to propose just the same sort of thing as she (in her
magnanimity) had thought of suggesting.
“Dinner, now,” he said. “Up till last night we have always been a bit
formal about dinner here in Riseborough. If you asked General Snookes,
you asked Mrs. Snookes; if you asked Admiral Jones, you asked Lady
Jones. You led the way, my dear, about that, and what could have been
pleasanter than our little party last night? Let us repeat it: let us be
less formal. If you want to see Mr. Altham, ask him to come. Mrs.
Altham, let us say, wants to ask me: let her ask me. Or if you meet Dr.
Evans in the street, and he says it is lunch time, go and have lunch
with him, without bothering about me. I shall do very well at home. I’m
told that in London it is quite a constant practice to invite like that.
And it seems to me very sensible.”
All this had seemed very sensible to Mrs. Ames, when she had thought of
it herself. It seemed a little more hazardous now. She was well aware
that this plan had caused a vast amount of talk in Riseborough, the
knowledge of which she had much enjoyed, since it was of the nature of
subjects commenting on the movements of their queen, without any danger
to her of dethronement. But she was not so sure that she enjoyed her
husband’s cordial endorsement of her innovation. Also, in his
endorsement there was some little insincerity. He had taken as instance
the chance of his wishing to dine without his wife at Mrs. Altham’s, and
they both knew how preposterous such a contingency would be. But did
this only prepare the way for a further solitary excursion to Mrs.
Evans’? Had Mrs. Evans asked him to dine there? She was immediately
enlightened.
“Of course, we talked over your delightful dinner-party of last night,”
he said, “and agreed in the agreeableness of it. And she asked me to
dine there, _en garçon_, on Tuesday next. Of course, I said I must
consult you first; you might have asked other people here, or we might
be dining out together. I should not dream of upsetting any existing
arrangement. I told her so: she quite understood. But if there was
nothing going on, I promised to dine there _en garçon_.”
That phrase had evidently taken Major Ames’ fancy; there was a ring of
youth about it, and he repeated it with gusto. His wife, too, perfectly
understood the secret smack of the lips with which he said it: she knew
precisely how he felt. But she was wise enough to keep the consciousness
of it completely out of her reply.
“By all means,” she said; “we have no engagement for that night. And I
am thinking of proposing myself for a little visit to Mrs. Bertram next
week, Lyndhurst. I know she is at Overstrand now, and I think ten days
on the east coast would do me good.”
He assented with a cordiality that equalled hers.
“Very wise, I am sure, my dear,” he said. “I have thought this last day
or two that you looked a little run down.”
A sudden misgiving seized her at this, for she knew quite well she
neither looked nor felt the least run down.
“I thought perhaps you and Harry would take some little trip together
while I was away,” she said.
“Oh, never mind us, never mind us,” said he. “We’ll rub along, _en
garçon_, you know. I daresay some of our friends will take pity on us,
and ask us to drop in.”
This was not reassuring: nor would Mrs. Ames have been reassured if she
could have penetrated at that moment unseen into Mrs. Altham’s
drawing-room. She and her husband had gone straight from Mrs. Ames’
house that afternoon to call on Mrs. Evans, and had been told she was
not at home. But Mrs. Altham of the eagle-eye had seen through the
opened front door an immense bowl of sweet-peas on the hall table, and
by it a straw hat with a riband of regimental colours round it.
Circumstantial evidence could go no further, and now this indefatigable
lady was looking out Major Ames in an old army list.
“Ames, Lyndhurst Percy,” she triumphantly read out. “Born 1860, and I
daresay he is older than that, because if ever there was a man who
wanted to be thought younger than his years, that’s the one. So in any
case, Henry, he is over forty-seven. And there’s the front-door bell. It
will be Mrs. Brooks. She said she would drop in for a chat after
dinner.”
There was plenty to chat about that evening.