by E. F. Benson
“Snub him a bit, little woman,” he had said. “We’re having a little too much of him. It’s fairer on the boy, too. You’re too kind to him. A woman like you so easily turns a boy’s head. And you’ve often said he is rather a dreadful sort of youth.”
But for some reason she took the words in ill part, becoming rather precise.
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said. “Will you explain, please?”
“Easy enough, my dear. He’s here too much; he’s dangling after you. Laugh at him a little, or yawn a little.”
“You mean that he’s in love with me?”
“Well, that’s too big a word, little woman, though I’m sure you see what I mean.”
“I think I do. I think your suggestion is rather coarse, Wilfred, and quite ill-founded. Is every one who is polite and attentive supposed to be in love with me? I only ask for information.”
“I think your own good sense will supply you with all necessary information,” he said.
But her good sense apparently had done nothing of the kind, and eventually Dr. Evans had spoken to Harry’s father on the subject. The visits had ceased with amazing abruptness after that, and Dr. Evans had found himself treated to a stare of blank unrecognition when he passed Harry in the street, and a curl of the lip which he felt must have been practised in private. But the Omar Khayyam Club would be the gainers, for they owed to it those stricken and embittered stanzas called “Parted.”
Here comedy verged on farce, but the farce did not amuse him. He knew that his own interpretation of Harry’s assiduous presence was correct, so why should his wife have so precisely denied that those absurd attentions meant nothing? There was nothing to resent in the sensible warning that a man was greatly attracted by her. Nor was there warrant for Colonel Ames’ horror and dismay at the suggestion, when the doctor spoke to him about it. “Infamous young libertine” was surely a hyperbolical expression.
Dr. Evans unconsciously flicked the cob rather sharply with his whip-lash, to that excellent animal’s surprise, for he was covering his miles in five minutes apiece, and the doctor conveyed his apologies for his unintentional hint with a soothing remark. Then his thoughts drifted back again. That was not all the trouble with the Ames’ family, for his wife had had a quarrel with Mrs. Ames. This kindly man hated to quarrel with anybody, and, for his part, successfully refused to do so, and that his wife should find herself in such a predicament was equally distressing to him. No doubt it was all a storm in a tea-cup, but if you happen to be living in the tea-cup too, a storm there is just as upsetting as a gale on the high seas. It is worse, indeed, for on the high seas a ship can run into fairer weather, but there is no escape from these tea-cup disturbances. The entire tea-cup was involved: all Riseborough, which a year ago had seemed to him so suitable a place in which to pursue an unexacting practice, to conduct mild original work, in the peace and quiet of a small society and domestic comfort, was become a tempest of conflicting winds. “And all arising from such a pack of nonsense,” as the doctor thought impatiently to himself, only just checking the whip-lash from falling again on the industrious cob.
The interest of Mrs. Ames in the Suffragette movement had given rise to all this. She had announced a drawing-room meeting to be held in her house, now a fortnight ago, and the drawing-room meeting had exploded in mid-career, like a squib, scattering sparks and combustible material over all Riseborough. It appeared that Mrs. Ames, finding that the comprehension of Suffragette aims extended to the middle-class circles in Riseborough, had asked the wives and daughters of tradesmen to take part in it. It wanted but little after that to make Mrs. Altham remark quite audibly that she had not known that she was to have the privilege of meeting so many ladies with whom she was not previously acquainted, and the sarcastic intention of her words was not lost upon her new friends. Tea seemed but to increase the initial inflammation, and the interest Mrs. Ames had intended to awake on the subject of votes for women was changed into an interest in ascertaining who could be most offensively polite, a very pretty game. It is not to be wondered at that, before twenty-four hours had passed, Mrs. Altham had started an anti-Suffragette league, and Millie, still strong in the conviction that under no circumstances could she go to prison, had allowed herself to be drawn into it. Next night at dinner she softly made a terrible announcement.
“I passed Cousin Amy in the street just now,” she said; “she did not seem to see me.”
“Perhaps she didn’t see you, little woman,” said her husband.
“So I did not seem to see her,” added Millie, who had not finished her sentence. “But if she cares to come to see me and explain, I shall behave quite as usual to her.”
“Come, come, little woman!” said Dr. Evans in a conciliating spirit.
“And I do not see what is the good of saying ‘Come, come,’” she said, with considerable precision.
All this was sufficient to cause very sensible disquiet to a man who attached so proper an importance to peaceful and harmonious conditions of life, yet it was but a small thing compared to a far deeper anxiety that brooded over him. Till now he had not let himself directly contemplate it, but to-day, as he returned from his two visits, he made himself face this last secret trouble. He felt it was necessary for him to ascertain, for the sake of others no less than himself, what part, if any, of his disquiet was grounded on certainty, what part, if any, might be the figment of an over-anxious imagination. But he knew he was not anxious by temperament, nor given to imagine troubles. If anything, he was more prone, in his desire for a pleasant and studious life, to shut his eyes to the apparent approach of storm, trusting that it would blow by. He was anxious about Millie, not without cause; a hundred symptoms justified his anxiety. She who for so long had been of such imperturbable serenity of temper that a man who did not feel her charm might have called her jelly-fish was the prey of fifty moods a day. She had strange little fits of tenderness to him, with squalls of peevishness quite as strange. She was restless and filled with an energy that flamed and flickered and vanished, leaving her indolent and inert. She would settle herself for a morning of letter writing, and after tearing up a couple of notes, put on her gardening gloves and get as far as the herbaceous bed. Then she would find an imperative reason for going into the town, and so sit down at her piano to practise. Her appetite, usually of the steady reliable order, failed her, and she passed broken and tossing nights. Had she been a girl, he would have said those symptoms all pointed one way; and it would probably not have been difficult to guess who was the young man in question. Yet he could scarcely face the conclusion applied to his wife. It was a hideous thing that a husband should harbour such a suspicion, more hideous that the husband should be himself. And perhaps more hideous of all, that he should guess — again without difficulty — who was the man in question.
He had no conception what to do, or whether to do nothing; it seemed that action and inaction might alike end in disaster. And, again, the whole of his explanation of Millie’s symptoms might be erroneous. There might be other explanations — indeed, there were others possible. As to that, time would show; at present the best course, perhaps the only right course, was to be watchful, yet not suspicious, observant, not prying. Rather than pry or be suspicious he would go to Millie herself, and without reservation tell her all that had been in his mind. He was well aware what the heroic attitude, the attitude of the virile, impetuous Englishman, dear to melodrama, would have been. It was quite easy for him to “tax” Major Ames with baseness, to grind his teeth at his wife, and then burst into manly tears, each sob of which seemed to rend him. But to his quiet, sensible nature, it seemed difficult to see what was supposed to happen next. In melodrama the curtain went down, and you started ten years later in Queensland with regenerated natures distributed broadcast. But in actual life it was impossible to start again ten years later, or ten minutes later. You had to go on all the time. Willingly would he, on this divine October morning, have started again, indefinitely late
r. The difficulty was how to go on now.
His cases had not long detained him, and it was still not long after noon when the cob, still pleased and alert with motion, but with smoking flanks, drew up at his door. The clear chill of the morning had altogether passed, and the air in the basin or tea-cup of a town was still and sultry. There was a familiar hat on the table in the hall, a bunch of long-stemmed tawny chrysanthemums lay by it. And at that sight some distant echo of barbaric and simple man, deplorable to the smoothness of civilization and altogether obsolete, was resonant in him. He pitched the chrysanthemums into the street, where they flew like a shooting star close by the head of General Fortescue, who was tottering down to the club, and slammed the door. It was melodramatic and foolish enough, but the desire that prompted it was quite sincere and irresistible, and if at the moment Major Ames had been in that cool oak-panelled hall, there is little doubt that Dr. Evans would have done his best to pitch him out after his flowers.
The doctor gave himself a moment to recover from his superficial violence, and then went out into the garden. They were sitting together on the bench under the mulberry-tree, and Major Ames got up with his usual briskness as he approached. Somehow Dr. Evans felt as if he was being welcomed and made to feel at home.
“Good morning,” said Major Ames. “Glorious day, isn’t it? I just stepped over with a handful of flowers, and we’ve been having a bit of a chat, a bit of a chat.”
“Cousin Lyndhurst has very kindly come to talk over all these little disturbances,” said Millie.
She looked at him.
“Shall I explain?” she asked.
Dr. Evans took the seat that Major Ames had vacated, leaving him free to sit down in a garden chair opposite, or to stand, just as he pleased.
“It is like this, Wilfred,” she said. “Cousin Amy did not like my joining the anti-Suffragette league which Mrs. Altham started, and I have told Lyndhurst that I did not care a straw one way or the other, except that I could not go to prison to please Cousin Amy or any one else. But it looked like taking sides, she thought. So Lyndhurst thought it would make everything easy if I didn’t join any league at all. I think it very clever and tactful of him to think of that, and I will certainly tell Mrs. Altham I find I am too busy. Of course, there is no quarrel between Cousin Amy and me, and Lyndhurst wants to assure us that he isn’t mixed up in it, though there isn’t any — and, of course, if Cousin Amy didn’t see me the other day when I thought she pretended not to, it makes a difference.”
Millie delivered herself of these lucid statements with her usual deferential air.
“I think it is very kind of Cousin Lyndhurst to take so much trouble,” she added. “He is stopping to lunch.”
Major Ames made a noble little gesture that disclaimed any credit.
“It’s nothing, a mere nothing,” he said, quite truly. “But I’m sure you hate little domestic jars as much as I do. As Amy once said, my profession was to be a man of war, but my instinct was to be a man of peace. Ha! Ha! I’m only delighted my little olive branch has — has met with success,” he added rather feebly, being unable to think of any botanical metaphor.
The doctor got up. It is to be feared that, in his present state of mind, he felt not the smallest admiration or gratitude for the work of Lyndhurst the Peacemaker, but only saw in it a purely personal desire to secure an uninterrupted va et vient between the two houses.
“I’m sure I haven’t the slightest intention of quarrelling with anybody,” he said. “It seems to me the most deplorable waste of time and energy, besides being very uncomfortable. Let us go in to lunch, Millie; I have to go out again at two o’clock.”
Millie wrote an amiable and insincere little note to Mrs. Altham, which Major Ames undertook to deliver on his way home, explaining how, since Elsie had gone to Dresden to perfect herself in the German language, she herself had become so busy that she did not know which way to turn, besides missing Elsie very much. She felt, therefore, that since she would not be able to give as much time as she wished to this very interesting anti-Suffragette movement, it would be better not to give to it any time at all. This she wrote directly after her husband had gone out again, and brought to Major Ames, who was waiting for it. He, too, had said he would have to be off at once. She gave him the note.
“There it is,” she said; “and so many thanks for leaving it. But you are not hurrying away at once, are you?”
“Am I not keeping you in?” he asked.
She pulled down the lace blinds over the window that looked into the street; the October sun, it is true, beat rather hotly into the room, but the instinct that dictated her action was rather a desire for privacy.
“As if I would not sooner sit and talk to you,” she said, “than go out. I have no one to go out with. I am rather lonely since Elsie has gone, and I daresay I shall not see Wilfred again till dinner-time. It is rather amusing that I have just written to Mrs. Altham to say how busy I am.”
He came and sat a little closer to her.
“Upon my word,” he said, “I am in the same boat as you. I haven’t set eyes on Amy all morning, and this afternoon I know she has a couple of meetings. It’s extraordinary how this idea of votes for women has taken hold of her. Not a bad thing, though, as long as she doesn’t go making a fool of herself in public, and as long as she doesn’t have any more quarrels with you.”
“What would you have done if she had really wished to quarrel with me over Mrs. Altham’s league?” she asked.
“Just what I told her. I said I would be no partner to it, and as long as you would receive me here en garçon I should always come.”
“That was dear of you,” she said softly.
She paused a moment.
“Sometimes I think we made a mistake in coming to settle here,” she said; “but you know how obstinate Wilfred is, and how little influence I have with him. But then, again, I think of our friendship. I have not had many friends. I think, perhaps, I am too shy and timid with people. When I like them very much I find it difficult to express myself. It is rather sad not to be able to show what you feel quite frankly. It prevents your being understood by the people whom you most want to understand you.”
But beneath this profession of incompetence, it seemed to Major Ames that there lurked a very efficient strength. He felt himself being gradually overpowered by a superior force, a force that did not strike and disable and overbear, but cramped and paralysed the power of its adversary, enfolding him, clinging to him. There was still something in him, some part of his will which was hostile and opposed to her: it was just that which she assailed. And in alliance with that paralysing force was her attraction and charm — soft, yielding, feminine; the two advanced side by side, terrible twins.
He did not answer for a moment, and it flashed across his mind that this cool room, shaded from the street glare by the lace curtains, and suffused with the greenish glow of the sunlight reflected from the lawn outside, was like a trap. . . . She gave a little laugh.
“See how badly I express myself,” she said. “You are puzzling, frowning. Don’t frown, you look best when you are laughing. I get so tired of frowning faces. Wilfred so often frowns all dinner-time when he is thinking over something connected with microbes. And he frowns over his chess, when he cannot make up his mind whether to exchange bishops. We play chess every evening.”
Instinctively she had drawn back a little, when she saw he did not advance to meet her, and spoke as if chess and the pathos of her dumbness to express friendship were things of equal moment. There was no calculation about it: it was the expression of one type, the eternal feminine attracted and wishing to attract. Her descent to these commonplaces restored his confidence; the room was a trap no longer, but the pleasant drawing-room he knew so well, with its charming mistress seated by him. It was almost inevitable that he should contrast the hot plushes and saddle-bag cushions of his own, its angular chairs and Axminster carpets with the cool chintzes here, the lace-shrouded windows, the Pe
rsian rugs. More marked was the contrast between the mistresses of the two houses. Amy had been writing at her davenport a good deal lately, and her short, stiff back had been the current picture of her. Here was a woman, dim in the half light, wanting to talk to him, to make timid confidences, to make him realize how much his friendship meant to her. His confidence returned with disarming completeness.
“Well, I’m sure I should find it dismal enough at home,” he said, “if I hadn’t somewhere to go to, knowing I should find a welcome. Mind you, I don’t blame Amy. For years now, when we’ve been alone in the evening, she has done her work, and I have read the paper, and I daresay we haven’t said a dozen words till Parker brought in the bedroom candles, or sometimes we play picquet — for love. But now evenings spent like that seem to me very prosy and dismal. Perhaps it’s Harrogate that has made me a bit more supple and youthful, though I’m sure it’s ridiculous enough that a tough old campaigner like me should feel such things—”
Mrs. Evans put forward her chin, raising her face towards him.
“But why ridiculous?” she asked. “You must be so much younger than dear Cousin Amy. I wonder — I wonder if she feels that too?”
There was there a very devilish suggestion, the more so because, in proportion to the suggestion, so very little was stated. It succeeded admirably.
“Poor dear Amy!” said he.
He had said that once before, when Cleopatra-Amy was contrasted with Cleopatra-Millie. But there was a significance in the repetition of it. Once the assumed identity of character had suggested the comment, now there was no assumed character. It concerned Millie and Amy themselves.
Mrs. Evans put back her chin.
“I am sure Cousin Amy ought to be very happy,” she said softly. “You are so devoted to her, and all. I almost think you spoil her, Lyndhurst. It is all so romantic. Fancy being a woman, and as old as Cousin Amy, and yet having a young man so devoted. Harry, too!”