Mrs. Ames

by E. F. Benson

  She gave a little laugh; in the dusk it sounded no louder than a breeze stirring.

  ‘You needn’t have added that,’ she said.

  Where she stood a diaper of light and shadow played over her. A little spray of laburnum between her face and the lights on the lawn outside, swaying gently in a breeze that had gone astray in this calm night, cast wavering shadows over her. Now her arms shone white under freckles of shadow, now it was her face that was a moon to him. Or again, both would be in shade and a diamond star on her bright yellow hair concentrated all the light into itself. All the elusive mysterious charm of her womanhood was there, made more real by the fantastic setting. He was kindled to a greater warmth than he had yet known, but, all the time, some dreadful creature in his semi-puritanical semi-immoral brain, told him that this was all ‘devilish naughty’. He was as unused to such scruples as he was unused to such temptations, and in some curious fashion he felt as ashamed of the one as he felt afraid of the other. At length he summed up the whole of these despicable conclusions.

  ‘Will you give me just one kiss, Millie!’ he said; ‘just one cousin kiss, before we go and dance?’

  Such early worms next morning in Major Ames’ garden as had escaped the early bird, must certainly have all been caught and laid out flat by the garden roller, so swift and incessant were its journeyings. For though the dawn had overspread the sky with the hueless tints of approaching day when Antony and Cleopatra were charioteered home again by a somnolent cabman; though Major Ames’ repose had been of the most fragmentary kind, and though breakfast, in anticipation of late hours, had been ordered the night before at an unusual half past nine, he found his bed an intolerable abode by seven o’clock, and had hoped to expatriate somewhat disquieting thoughts from his mind by the application of his limbs to severe bodily exertion.

  He and his wife had been the last guests to leave; indeed, after the others had gone they lingered a little, smoking a final cigarette. Even Mrs Ames had been persuaded to light one, but a convulsive paroxysm of coughing, which made the pear-shaped pearl to quiver and shake like an aspen leaf, led her to throw it away, saying she enjoyed it very much. He had danced with Mrs Evans three or four times; three or four times they had sat in the cool darkness of the shrubbery, and he had said to her several things which at the moment it seemed imperative to say, but which he did not really mean. But as the evening went on he had meant them more; she had a helpless, childlike charm about her that began to stir his senses. And yet below that childlike confiding manner he was dimly aware that there was an eager woman’s soul that sought him. Her charm was a weapon; a very efficient will wielded it. All the same, he reflected as the honest dews of toil poured from his forehead this morning in the hot early sunlight, he had not said very much … he had said that Riseborough was a different place since she - or had he said ‘they’? had come there; that her eyes looked black in the starlight, that - honestly, he could not remember anything more intimate than this. But that which had made his bed intolerable was the sense that the situation had not terminated last night, that his boat, so to speak, had not been drawn up safely ashore, but was still in the midst of accelerating waters. And yet it was in his own power to draw the boat ashore at any moment; he had but to take a decisive stroke to land, to step out and beach it, to return - surely it was not difficult - to his normal thoughts and activities. For years his garden, his club, his domestic concerns, his daily paper, had provided him with a sufficiency of pursuits; he had but to step back into their safe if monotonous circle, and look upon these disturbances as episodic. But already he had ceased to think of Mrs Evans as ‘dear little woman’ or ‘poor little woman’; somehow it seemed as if she had got her finger - to use a prosaic metaphor - into his works. She was prodding about among the internal wheels and springs of his mechanism. Yet that was stating his case too strongly; it was that of contingency that he was afraid. But with the curious irresponsibility of a rather selfish and unimaginative man, the fact that he had allowed himself to prod about in her internal mechanism represented itself to him as an unimportant and negligible detail. It was only when she began prodding about in him, producing, as it were, extraordinary little whirrings and racings of wheels that had long gone slow and steady, that he began to think that anything significant was occurring. But, after all, there was nothing like a pull at the garden roller for giving a fellow an appetite for breakfast and for squashing worms and unprofitable reflections.

  Though half past nine had seemed ‘late enough for anybody’, as Mrs Ames had said the evening before, it was not till nearly ten that she put an extra spoonful of tea into her silver teapot, for she felt that she needed a more than usually fortifying beverage, to nullify her disinclination for the day’s routine. The sight of her Cleopatra costume also, laid upon the sofa in her bedroom, and shone upon by a cheerful and uncompromising summer sun, had awakened in her mind a certain discontent, a certain sense of disappointment, of age, of grievance. The gilt paper had moulted off one of the sandal straps, a spilt dropping of strawberry ice made a disfiguring spot on the tunic of Arab shawl, and she herself felt vaguely ungilded and disfigured.

  The cigarette, too - she had so often said in the most liberal manner that she did not think it wicked of women to smoke, but only horrid. Certainly she did not feel wicked this morning, but as certainly she felt disposed to consider anybody else horrid, and - and possibly wicked. Decidedly a cup of strong tea was indicated.

  Major Ames had gone upstairs again to have his bath, and to dress after his exercise in the garden, and came down a few minutes later, smelling of soap, with a jovial boisterousness of demeanour that smelt of unreality.

  ‘Good morning, my dear Amy,’ he said. ‘And how do you feel after the party? I’ve been up a couple of hours; nothing like a spell of exercise to buck one up after late hours.’

  ‘Will you have your tea now, Lyndhurst?’ she asked.

  ‘Have it now, or wait till I get it, eh? I’ll have it now. Delicious! I always say that nobody makes tea like you.’

  Now boisterous spirits at breakfast were not usual with Major Ames, and, as has been said, his wife easily detected a false air about them. Her vague sense of disappointment and grievance began to take more solid outlines.

  ‘It is delightful to see you in such good spirits, Lyndhurst,’ she observed, with a faint undertone of acidity. ‘Sitting up late does not usually agree with you.’

  There was enough here to provoke repartee. Also his superficial boisterousness was rapidly disappearing before his wife’s acidity, like stains at the touch of ammonia.

  ‘It does not, in this instance, seem to have agreed with you, my dear,’ he said. ‘I hope you have not got a headache. It was unwise of you to stop so late. However, no doubt we shall feel better after breakfast. Shall I give you some bacon? Or will you try something that appears to be fish?’

  ‘A little kedjeree, please,’ said Mrs Ames, pointedly ignoring this innuendo on her cook.

  ‘Kedjeree, is it? Well, well, live and learn.’

  ‘If you have any complaint to make about Jephson,’ said she, ‘pray do so.’

  ‘No, not at all. One does not expect, a cordon bleu. But I dare say Mrs Evans pays no more for her cook than we do, and look at the supper last night.’

  ‘I thought the quails were peculiarly tasteless,’ said Mrs Ames; ‘and if you are to be grand and have péches à la Melba, I should prefer to offer my guests real peaches and proper ice cream, instead of tinned peaches and custard. I say nothing about the champagne, because I scarcely tasted it.’

  ‘Well then, my dear, I’m sure you are quite right not to criticize it. All I can say is that I never want to eat a better supper.’

  Suddenly Mrs Ames became aware that another piece of solid outline had appeared round her vague discontent and reaction.

  ‘No doubt you think that all Millie’s arrangements are perfect in every way,’ she observed.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean by that,’ said h
e, rather hotly; ‘but I do know that when a woman has been putting herself to all that trouble and expense to entertain her friends, her friends would show a nicer spirit if they refrained from carping and depreciating her.’

  ‘No amount of appreciation would make tinned peaches fresh, or turn custard into ice cream,’ said Mrs Ames, laying down the fork with which she had dallied with the kedjeree, which indeed was but a sordid sort of creation. ‘It is foolish to pretend that a thing is perfect when it is not. Nor do I consider her manners as a hostess by any means perfect. She looked as cross as two sticks when poor Mrs Brooks appeared. I suppose she thought that nobody had a right to be Cleopatra besides herself. To be sure poor Mrs Brooks looked very silly, but if everybody who looked silly last night should have stayed away, there would not have been much dancing done.’

  She took several more sips of the strong tea, while he unfolded and appeared engrossed in the morning paper, and under their stimulating influence saw suddenly and distinctly how ill-advised was her attack. She had yielded to temporary ill temper, which is always a mistake. It was true that in her mind she was feeling that Lyndhurst last night had spent far too much time with his hostess; in a word, she felt jealous. It was, therefore, abominably stupid, from a merely worldly point of view, to criticize and belittle Millie to him. If there was absolutely no ground for her jealousy - which at present was but a humble little green bud - such an attack was uncalled for; if there was ground it was most foolish, at this stage, at any rate, to give him the least cause for suspecting that it existed. But she was wise enough now, not to hasten to repair her mistake, but to repair it slowly and deliberately, as if no repair was going on at all.

  ‘But I must say the garden looked charming,’ she said after a pause. ‘Did she tell you, Lyndhurst, whether it was she or her husband who saw to the lighting? The scheme was so comprehensive; it took in the whole of the lawn; there was nothing patchy about it. I suspect Dr Evans planned it; it looked somehow more like a man’s work.’

  A look of furtive guilt passed over the Major’s face; luckily it was concealed by the Daily Mail.

  ‘No; Evans told me himself that he had nothing to do with it,’ he said. ‘It was pretty, I thought; very pretty.’

  ‘If the nights continue hot,’ said she, ‘it would be nice to have the garden illuminated one night, if dear Millie did not think we were appropriating her ideas. I do not think she would; she is above that sort of thing. Well, dear, I must go and order dinner. Have you any wishes?’

  Clearly it was wiser, from the Major’s point of view, to accept this bouquet of olive branches. After all, Amy was far too sensible to imagine that there could be anything to rouse the conjugal watchdog. Nor was there; hastily he told himself that. A cousinly kiss, which at the moment he would willingly have foregone.

  Certainly last night he had been a little super-stimulated. There was the irresponsibility of fancy dress, there was the knowledge that Millie was not insensitive to him; there was the sense of his own big, shapely legs in tights, there was dancing and lanterns, and all had been potent intoxicants to Riseborough, which for so long had practised teetotalism with regard to such excitements. Amy herself had been so far carried away by this effervescence of gaiety as to smoke a cigarette, and Heaven knew how far removed from her ordinary code of conduct was such an adventure. Generously, he had forborne to brandish that cigarette as a weapon against her during this acrimonious episode at breakfast, and he had no conscious intention of hanging it, like Damocles’ sword over her head, in case she pursued her critical and carping course against Millie. But whatever he had said last night, she had done that. Without meaning to make use of his knowledge, he knew it was in his power to do so. What would not Mrs Altham, for instance, give to be informed by an eyewitness that Mrs Ames had blown - it was no more than that - on the abhorred weed? So, conscious of a position that he could make offensive at will, he accepted the olive branch, and suggested a cold curry for lunch.

  Breakfast at Mrs Altham’s reflected less complicated conditions of mind. Both she and her husband were extremely pleased with themselves, and in a state of passion with regard to everybody else. Since their attitude was typical of the view that Riseborough generally took of last night’s festivity, it may be given compendiously in a rhetorical flight of Mrs Altham’s, with which her husband was in complete accord.

  In palliation, it may be mentioned that they had both partaken of large quantities of food at an unusual hour. It is through the body that the entry is made by the subtle gateways of the soul, and vitriolic comments in the morning are often the precise equivalent of unusual indulgence the night before.

  ‘Well, I’m sure if I had known,’ said Mrs Altham, ‘I should not have taken the trouble I did. Of course, everybody said ‘How lovely your dress is,’ simply to make one say the same to them. And I never want to hear the word Cleopatra again, Henry, so pray don’t repeat it. Fancy Mrs Ames appearing as Cleopatra, and us taking the trouble to say we were Antony and Cleopatra ten years later! Twenty years before would have been more the date if we had known. Perhaps I am wrong, but when a woman arrives at Mrs Ames’ time of life, whether she dyes her hair or not, she is wiser to keep her feet concealed, not to mention what she must have looked like in the face of half the tradesmen of Riseborough who were lining the pavements when she stepped out of her cab. I thought I heard a great roar of laughter as we were driving up the High Street; I should not wonder if it was the noise of them all laughing as she got out of her carriage. Of course, it was all very prettily done, as far as poor Mrs Evans was concerned, but I wonder that Dr Evans likes her to spend money like that, for, however unsuitable the supper was, I feel sure it was very expensive, for it was all truffles and aspic. There must have been a sirloin of beef in the cup of soup I took between two of the dances, and strong soup like that at dead of night fills one up dreadfully. And Mrs Brooks appearing as another Cleopatra, after all I had said about Hermione! Well, I’m sure if she chooses to make a silly of herself like that, it is nobody’s concern but hers. She looked like nothing so much as a great white mare with the staggers. If you are going up to the club, Henry, I should not wonder if I came out with you. It seems to me a very stuffy morning, and a little fresh air would do me good. As for the big German ruby in your cap, I don’t believe a soul noticed it. They were all looking at Mrs Evans’ long white arms. Poor thing, she is probably very anaemic; I never saw such pallor. I saw little of her the whole evening. She seemed to be popping in and out of the shrubbery like a rabbit all the time with Major Ames. I should not wonder if Mrs Ames was giving him a good talking-to at this moment.’

  Then, like all the rest of Riseborough, and unlike the scorpion, there was a blessing instead of a sting in her tail.

  ‘But certainly it was all very pretty,’ she said; ‘though it all seemed very strange at the time. I can hardly believe this morning that we were all dressed up like that, hopping about out of doors. Fancy dress balls are very interesting; you see so much of human nature, and though I looked the procession up and down, Henry, I saw nobody so well dressed as you. But I suppose there is a lot of jealousy everywhere. And anyhow, Mrs Evans has quite ousted Mrs Ames now. Nobody will talk about anything but last night for the next fortnight, and I’m sure that when Mrs Ames had the conjurer who turned the omelette into the watch, we had all forgotten about it three days afterwards. And after all, Mrs Evans is a very pleasant and hospitable woman, and I wouldn’t have missed that party for anything. If you hear anything at the club about her wanting to sell her Chinese lanterns and fairy lights second-hand, Henry, or if you find any reason to believe that she had hired them out for the night from the Mercantile Stores, you might ask the price, and if it is reasonable get a couple of dozen. If the weather continues as hot as this we might illuminate the garden when we give our August dinner party. At least, I suppose Mrs Evans does not consider that she has a monopoly of lighting up gardens!’

  Henry found himself quite in accord with the spirit
of this address.

  ‘I will remember, my dear,’ he said; ‘if I hear anything said at the club. I shall go up there soon, for I should not be surprised if most of the members spent their morning there. I think I will have another cup of tea.’

  ‘You have had two already,’ said his wife.

  He was feeling a little irritable.

  ‘Then this will make three,’ he observed.

  Mrs Evans, finally, had breakfast in her room. When she came downstairs, she found that her husband had already left the house on his visits, which was a relief. She felt that if she had seen his cheerful smiling face this morning, she would almost have hated it.

  She ordered dinner, and then went out into the garden. Workmen were already there, removing the dancing floor, and her gardener was collecting the fairy lights in trays, and carrying them indoors. Here and there were charred, burnt places on the grass, and below the mulberry tree the debris of supper had not yet been removed. But the shrubbery, as last night, was sequestered and cool, and she sat for an hour there on the garden bench overlooking the lawn. Little flakes of golden sunlight filtered down through the foliage, and a laburnum, delicate-sprayed, oscillated in the light breeze. She scarcely knew whether she was happy or not, and she gave no thought to that. But she felt more consciously alive than ever before.

  DISCUSSION about the fancy dress ball, as Mrs Altham had said, was paramount over all other topics for at least a fortnight after the event, and the great question which annually became of such absorbing interest during July - namely, as to where to spend August, was dwarfed and never attained to its ordinary proportions till quite late on in the month. These discussions did not, as a rule, bear fruit of any kind, since, almost without exception, everybody spent August exactly where August had been spent by him for the last dozen years or so, but it was clearly wise to consider the problem afresh every year, and be prepared, in case some fresh resort suggested itself, to change the habit of years, or at least to consider doing so. The lists of hotels at the end of Bradshaw, and little handbooks published by the South-Eastern Railway were, as a rule, almost the only form of literature indulged in during these evenings of July, and Mr Altham, whose imagination was always fired by pictures of ships, often studied the sailings of River Plate steamers, and considered that the fares were very reasonable, especially steerage. The fact that he was an appalling bad sailor in no way diminished the zest with which he studied their sailings and the prices thereof. Subsequently he and Mrs Altham always spent August at Littlestoneon-Sea, in a completely detached villa called Blenheim, where a capable Scotchwoman, who, to add colour to the illusion, maintained that her name really was Churchill, boarded and lodged them on solid food and feather beds. During July, it may be remarked, Mrs Altham usually contrived to quarrel with her cook, who gave notice. Thus there was one mouth less to feed while they were away, and yearly, on their return, they had the excitement of new and surprising confections from the kitchen.