by E. F. Benson
Her thoughts went back to the topic concerning which she had told her husband that there was nothing to be told — namely, the dinner-party at the Ames’ last night. Certainly there was nothing remarkable about it: she had conducted herself as usual, with the usual result. She was accustomed to deal out her little smiles and deferential glances and flattering speeches to those who sat next her at dinner, because in herself a mild amiability prompted her to make herself pleasant, and because, with so little trouble to herself, she could make a man behave as agreeably as he was capable of behaving. She attracted men very easily, cursorily one might say, without attaching any importance to the interest she aroused, and without looking further than the dinner-table for the fruits of the attraction she exercised. But this morning, this tardy and drowsy recognition of life, beside which, so to speak, lay the shadow of middle-age, gave her pause. Was there some fruition and development of herself, before the withered and barren years came to her, to be found there? It would be quite beyond the mark to say that, sitting here, she definitely proposed to herself to try to make herself emotionally interested in somebody else, in case that might add a zest to life, but she considered the effect which she so easily produced in others, and wondered what it meant to feel like that. Certainly Major Ames had enjoyed escorting her home; certainly Harry had felt a touch of gauche romance when he showed her the effect of twilight on the complexion of some rose or other. He had given her a whole bunch of roses, with an attempt at a pretty speech. Yes, that was it — the shadows in them looked pale-blue, and he had said that they were just the colour of her eyes. But the roses were pretty: she hoped that somebody had put them in water.
She was already more than a little interested in her reflections: there was something original and exciting to her in them, and it was annoying to have them broken in upon by the parlour-maid who came towards her from the house. Personally, she thought it absurd not to keep men-servants, but Wilfred always maintained that a couple of good parlour-maids produced greater comfort with less disturbance, and yielding to him, as she always yielded to anybody who expressed a definite opinion, she had acquiesced in female service. But she always called the head parlour-maid Watkins, whereas her husband called her Mary.
“Major Ames wants to know if you will see him, ma’am,” said Watkins.
The interest returned.
“Yes, ask him to come out,” she said.
Watkins went back to the house and returned with Major Ames in tow, who carried a huge bouquet of sweet-peas. There then followed the difficulty of meeting and greeting gracefully and naturally which is usual when the visitor is visible a long way off. The Major put on a smile far too soon, and had to take it off again, since Mrs. Evans had not yet decided that it was time to see him. Then she began to smile, while he (without his smile) was looking abstractedly at the top of the mulberry-tree, as if he expected to find her there. He looked there a moment too long, for one of the lower branches suddenly knocked his straw hat off his head, and he said, “God bless my soul,” and dropped the sweet-peas. However, this was not an unmixed misfortune, for the recognition came quite naturally after that. She hoped he was not hurt, was he sure that silly branch had not hit his face? It must be taken off! What lovely flowers! And were they for her? They were.
Major Ames replaced his hat rather hastily, after a swift manœuvre with regard to his hair which Mrs. Evans did not accurately follow. The fact was (though he believed the fact not to be generally known) that the top of Major Ames’ head was entirely destitute of hair, and that the smooth crop which covered it was the produce of the side of his head — just above the ear — grown long, and brushed across the cranium so as to adorn it with seemingly local wealth and sleekness. The rough and unexpected removal of his hat by the bough of the mulberry-tree had caused a considerable portion of it to fall back nearly to the shoulder of the side on which it actually grew, and his hasty manœuvre with his gathered tresses was designed to replace them. Necessarily he put back his hat again quickly, in the manner of a boy capturing a butterfly.
His mind, and the condition of it, on this Sunday morning, would repay a brief analysis. Briefly, then, a sort of aurora borealis of youth had visited him: his heaven was streaked with inexplicable lights. He had told himself that a man of forty-seven was young still, and that when a most attractive woman had manifested an obvious interest in him, it was only reasonable to follow it up. He was not a coxcomb, he was not a loose liver; he was only a very ordinary man, well and healthy, married to a woman considerably older than himself, and living in a town which, in spite of his adored garden, presented but moderate excitements. But indeed, this morning call, paid with this solid tribute of sweet-peas, was something of an adventure, and had not been mentioned by him to his wife. He had seen her start for St. Barnabas, and then had hastily gathered his bouquet and set out, leaving Harry wandering dreamily about the cinder-paths in the kitchen garden, in the full glory of the discovery that the colour of the scarlet runners was like a clarion. Major Ames had plucked almost his rarest varieties, for to pluck the rarest, since he wished to save their first bloom for seed, would have been on the further side of quixotism and have verged on imbecility, but he had brought the best of his second-best. Last night, too, he had hinted at his own remissness in the matter of church attendance on Sunday-morning, and on his way up here had permitted himself to wonder whether Millie would prove (in consequence, perhaps, of that) to have abstained from worship also, expecting, or at least considering possible, a morning call from him. As a matter of fact she had not indulged in any such hopes, since it had been a matter of pure indifference to her whether he went to church on Sunday or not. But when he found on inquiry at the door that she was at home, it was scarcely unreasonable, on the part of a rather vain and gallantly minded man, to connect the fact with the information he had given.
So he hastily readjusted his hat.
“My own stupidity entirely,” he said; “do not blame the tree. Yes, I have brought you just a few flowers, and though they are not worthy of your acceptance, they are not the worst bunch of sweet-peas I have ever seen, not the worst. These, Catherine the Great, for instance, are not — well — they do not grow quite in every garden.”
Mrs. Evans opened her blue eyes a little wider.
“And are they really for me, Major Ames?” she asked again. “It is good of you. My precious flowers! They must be put in water at once. Watkins, bring me one of the big flower-bowls out here. I will arrange them myself.”
“Lucky flowers, lucky flowers,” chuckled Major Ames.
“It’s I who am lucky,” said she, acknowledging this subtle compliment with a little smile. “I stop away from church rather lazily, and am rewarded by a pleasant visit and a beautiful nosegay. And what a charming party we had last night! I could hardly believe it when I came back here and found it was nearly half-past eleven. Such hours!”
Major Ames gave his great loud laugh.
“You are making fun of us, Mrs. Evans,” he said; “‘pon my word you are making fun of us and our quiet ways down at Riseborough. I’ll be bound that when you were in London, half-past eleven was more the sort of time when you began to go out to your dances.”
“I used to go out a good deal when I was quite young,” she said. “Wilfred used quite to urge me to go out, and certainly people were very kind in asking me. I remember one night in the season, I was asked to two dinner-parties and a ball and an evening party. After all, it is natural to take pleasure in innocent gaiety when one is young.”
Major Ames felt very hot after his walk, and, forgetting the adventure of his hair, nearly removed his straw hat. But providentially he remembered it again just in time.
“Upon my word,” Mrs. Evans, he said jovially, “you make me feel a hundred years old when you talk like that, as if your days of youth and success were over. Why, some one at your garden-party yesterday afternoon told me for a fact that Miss Elsie was the daughter of your husband’s first wife. Wouldn’t beli
eve me when I said she was your daughter. Poor Sanders — it was Mr. Sanders who said it — had to pay ten shillings to me for his positiveness. He betted, you know, he insisted on betting. But really, any one who didn’t happen to know would be right to make such a bet ninety-nine times out of a hundred.”
She gave him a little smile with lowered eyelids.
“Dear Elsie!” she said. “She is such a comfort to me. She quite manages the house for me, and spares me all the trouble. She always knows how much asparagus ought to cost, and what happens to strawberry ice after a party. I never was a good housekeeper. Wilfred always used to say to me, ‘Go out and enjoy yourself, my dear, and I’ll pay the bills.’ Of course, it was all his kindness, I know, but sometimes I wonder if it would not have been truer kindness to have made me think and contrive more. Elsie does it all now, but when my little girl marries it will be my turn again. Tell me, Major Ames, is it you or cousin Amy who makes everything go so beautifully at your house? I think — shall I say it — I think it must be you. When a man manages a house there is always more precision somehow: you feel sure that everything has been foreseen and provided for. Printed menu-cards, for instance — so chic, so perfectly comme-il-faut.”
Watkins had brought out a large dish, rather like a sponging-tin, for the sweet-peas, and Mrs. Evans had begun the really Herculean labour of putting them in water. A grille of wire network fitted over the rim of it: each pea was stuck in separately. She looked up from her task at him.
“Am I right?” she asked.
Major Ames was not really an untruthful man, but many men who are not really untruthful get through a wonderful lot of misrepresentation.
“Oh, you mustn’t give me the credit for that,” he said (truthfully so far); “it’s a dodge we always used to have at mess, so why not at one’s own house also? It’s better than written cards, which take a lot of time to copy out again and again, and then, you see, my dear Amy is not very strong at French, and doesn’t want always to be bothering me to tell her whether there’s an accent in one word, or two ‘s’s’ in another. Saves time and trouble.”
Mrs. Evans applauded softly with pink finger-tips.
“Ah, I knew it was you!” she said.
Now, clearly (though almost without intention) Major Ames had gone too far to retreat: also retreat implied a flat contradiction of what Mrs. Evans said she knew, which would have been a rudeness from which his habitual gallantry naturally revolted. Consequently, being unable to retreat, he had to make himself as safe as possible, to entrench himself.
“Perhaps it’s a little extravagance,” he said. “Indeed, Amy thinks it is, and I never mention the subject of menu-cards to her. She’s apt to turn the subject a bit abruptly on the word menu-card. Dear Amy! After all, it would be a very dull affair, our pleasant life down here, if we all completely agreed with each other.”
She gave a little sigh, shaking her head, and smiling at her sweet-peas.
“Ah, how often I think that too,” she said. “At least, now you say it, I feel I have often thought it. It is so true. Dear Wilfred is such an angel to me, you see! Whatever I do, he is sure to think right. But sometimes you wonder whether the people who know you best, really understand you. It is like — it is like learning things by heart. If you learn a thing by heart, you so often cease to think what it means.”
Mrs. Evans, it must be confessed, did not mean anything very precisely by this: her life, that is to say, was not at all circumstanced in the manner that her speech implied it to be, except in so far that she often wished that more amusing things happened to her, and that she would not so soon be forty years old. But she certainly intended Major Ames to attach to her words their natural implication: she wanted to seem vaguely unappreciated. At the same time, she desired him to see that she in no way blamed her dear unconscious Wilfred. If Major Ames thought that, it would spoil a most essential feature of the picture she wished to present of herself. Why she wished to present it was also quite easy of comprehension. She wanted to be interesting, and was by nature silly. The fact that she was close on thirty-eight largely conduced to her speech.
Major Ames made a perfectly satisfactory interpretation of it. He saw all the things he was meant to see, and nothing else. And it was deliciously delivered, so affectionately as regarded Wilfred, so shyly as regarded herself. He instantly made the astounding mental discovery that she was somehow not very happy, owing to a failure in domestic affinities. He felt also that it was intuitive of him to have guessed that, since she had not actually said it. And he was tremendously conscious of the seduction of her presence, as she sat there, cool and white on this hot morning, putting in the last of the sweet-peas he had brought her. She looked enchantingly young and fresh, and evidently she found something in him which disposed her to confidences. In justice to him, it may be said that he did not inquire in his own mind as to what that was, but it was easy to see she trusted him.
“I think we all must feel that at times, my dear lady,” he said, anxious to haul the circumstance of his own home into the discussion. “I suppose that all of us who are not quite old yet, not quite quite old yet, let us say, in order to include me, feel at times that life is not giving us all that it might give; that people do not really understand us. No doubt many people, and I daresay those, as you said, who know one best, do not understand one. And then we mustn’t mind that, but march straight on, march straight on, according to orders.”
He sat up very straight in his chair as if about to march, as he made thrillingly noble remarks, and hit himself a couple of sounding blows with his clenched fist on his broad chest. Then a sudden suspicion seized him that he had displayed an almost too Spartan unflinchingness, as if soldiers had no hearts.
“And then perhaps we shall meet some one who does understand us,” he added.
The critical observer, the cynic, and that rarest of all products, the entirely sincere and straightforward person, would have found in this conversation nothing that would move anything beyond his raillery or disgust. Here sitting under the mulberry-tree in this pleasant garden, on a Sunday morning, were two people, the man nearly fifty, the woman nearly forty, both trying, with God knows how many little insincerities by the way, to draw near to each other. Both had reached ages that were dangerous to such as had lived (even as they had) extremely respectable and well-conducted lives, without any paramount reason for their morality. About Major Ames’ mode of life before he married, which, after all, was at the early age of twenty-five, nothing need be said, because there is really very little to say, and in any case the conduct of a young man not yet in his twenty-fifth year has almost nothing to do with the character of the same man when he is forty-seven. In that very long interval he had conducted himself always as a married man should, and those years, married as he was to a woman much his senior, had not been at all discreditably passed. This chronicle does not in the least intend to impute to him any high principled character, for he had nothing of Galahad in his composition. But he was not a satyr. Consequently, for this is part of the ironical composition of a man — just in the years with which we are dealing, at a time of life when a man might have been condoned for having sown wild oats and seen the huskiness of them, he was in that far more precarious position of not having sown them (except, so to speak, in the smallest of flower-pots), nor of having experienced the jejune quality of such a crop. But it is not implied that he now regretted the respectability of those twenty-two years. He did not do so: he had had a happy and contented life, but he would soon be old. Nor did he now at all contemplate adventure. Merely an Odysseus who had never voyaged wondered what voyaging was like. He was not in love with this seductive long-lashed face that bent over the sweet-peas he had brought her. But if he had the picking of those sweet-peas over again, he would probably have picked the very best, regardless of the fact that he wanted the seeds for next year’s sowing. So as regards him the cynic’s sneers would have been out of place; he contemplated nothing that the cynic would have
called “a conquest.” The sincere, straightforward gentleman would have been equally excessive in his disgust. There was nothing, except the slight absurdity of Major Ames’ nature, to justify either laughter or tears. He was a moderate man of middle-age, about as well intentioned as most of us.