Mrs. Ames (36 page)

Millie wavered where she stood, then she stumbled into a chair.

‘Has he given me up?' she said.

‘Yes, if you care to put it like that. It would be truer to say that he has saved you and himself. But he is not coming with you.'

‘You made him?' she asked.

‘I helped to make him,' said Mrs Ames.

Millie got up again.

‘I want to see him,' she said. ‘You don't understand, Cousin Amy. He has got to come. I don't care whether it is wicked or not. I love him. You don't understand him either.
You don't know how splendid he is. He is unhappy at home; he has often told me so.'

Mrs Ames took hold of the wretched woman by both hands.

‘You are raving, Millie,' she said. ‘You must stop being hysterical. You hardly know whom you are talking to. If you do not pull yourself together, I shall send for your husband, and say you have been taken ill.'

Millie gave a sudden gasp of laughter.

‘Oh, I am not so stupid as you think!' she said. ‘Wilfred is away. Where is Lyndhurst?'

Mrs Ames did not let go of her.

‘Millie,' she said, ‘if you are not sensible at once, I will tell you what I shall do. I shall call Parker, and together we will put you into your cab, and you shall be driven straight home. I am perfectly serious. I hope you will not oblige me to do that. You will be much wiser to pull yourself together, and let us have a talk. But understand one thing quite clearly. You are not going to see Lyndhurst.'

The tension of those wide, childish eyes slowly relaxed, and her head sank forward, and there came the terrible and blessed tears, in wild cataract and streaming storm. And Mrs Ames, looking at her, felt all her righteousness relax; she had only pity for this poor destitute soul, who was blind to all else by force of that mysterious longing which, in itself, is so divine that, though it desires the disgraceful and the impossible, it cannot wholly make itself abominable, nor discrown itself of its royalty. Something of the truth of that, though no more than mere fragments and moulted feather, came to Mrs Ames now, as she sat waiting till the tempest of tears should have abated. The royal eagle had passed over her; as sign of his passage there was this feather that had fallen, and she understood its significance.

Slowly the tears ceased and the sobs were still, and Millie raised her dim, swollen eyes.

‘I had better go home,' she said. ‘I wonder if you would let me wash my face, Cousin Amy. I must be a perfect fright.'

‘Yes, dear Millie,' said she; ‘but there is no hurry. See, shall I send your cab back to your house? It has your luggage on it; yes? Then Parker shall go with it, and tell them to take it back to your room and unpack it, and put everything back in place. Afterwards, when we have talked a little, I will walk back with you.'

Again the comfort of having little things attended to reached Millie, that and the sense that she was not quite alone. She was like a child that has been naughty and has been punished, and she did not much care whether she had been naughty or not. What she wanted primarily was to be comforted, to be assured that everybody was not going to be angry with her for ever. Then, returning, Mrs Ames made her some fresh tea, and that comforted her too.

‘But I don't see how I can ever be happy again,' she said.

There was something childlike about this, as well as childish.

‘No, Millie,' said the other. ‘None of us three see that exactly. We shall all have to be very patient. Very patient and ordinary.'

There was a long silence.

‘I must tell you one thing,' said Millie, ‘though I daresay that will make you hate me more. But it was my fault from the first. I led him on - I - I didn't let him kiss me, I made him kiss me. It was like that all through!'

She felt that Mrs Ames was waiting for something more, and she knew exactly what it was. But it required a greater effort to speak of that than she could at once command. At last she raised her eyes to those of Mrs Ames.

‘No, never,' she said.

Mrs Ames nodded.

‘I see,' she said baldly. ‘Now, as I said, we have got to be patient and ordinary. We have got, you and I, to begin again. You have your husband, so have I. Men are so easily pleased and made happy. It would be a shame if we failed.'

Again the helpless, puzzled look came over Millie's face.

‘But I don't see how to begin,' she said. ‘Tomorrow, for instance, what am I to do all tomorrow? I shall only be thinking of what might have happened.'

Mrs Ames took up her soft, unresisting, unresponsive hand.

‘Yes, by all means, think what might have happened,' she said. ‘Utter ruin, utter misery, and - and all your fault. You led him on, as you said. He didn't care as you did. He wouldn't have thought of going away with you, if he hadn't been so furious with me. Think of all that.'

Some straggler from that host of sobs shook Millie for a moment.

‘Perhaps Wilfred would take me away instead,' she said. ‘I will ask him if he cannot. Do you think I should feel better if I went away for a fortnight, Cousin Amy?'

Mrs Ames' twisted little smile played about her mouth.

‘Yes,' she said. ‘I think that is an excellent plan. I am quite sure you will feel better in a fortnight, if you can look forward like that, and want to be better. And now would you like to wash your face? After that, I will walk home with you.'

I
T
was a brisk morning in November, and Mr and Mrs Altham, who breakfasted at half past eight in the summer, and nine in the winter, were seated at breakfast, and Mr Altham was thinking how excellent was the savour of grilled kidneys. But he was not sure if they were really wholesome, and he was playing an important match at golf this afternoon. Perhaps two kidneys approached the limits of wisdom. Besides, his wife was speaking of really absorbing things; he ought to be able to distract his mind from the kidneys he was proposing to deny himself, under the sting of so powerful a counter-interest.

‘And to think that Mrs Ames isn't going to be a Suffragette any more!' she said. ‘I met Mrs Turner when I took my walk just now, and she told me all about it.'

A word of explanation is necessary. The fact was that Swedish exercises, and a short walk on an empty stomach, were producing wonderful results in Riseborough at the moment, especially among its female inhabitants. They now, instead of meeting in the High Street before lunch, to stand about on the pavement and exchange news, met there before
breakfast, when on these brisk autumn mornings it was wiser not to stand about. They therefore skimmed rapidly up and down the street together, in short skirts and walking boots. Rain and sunny weather, in this first glow of enthusiasm, were alike to them, and they had their baths afterwards. These exercises gave a considerable appetite for breakfast, and produced a very pleasant and comfortable feeling of fatigue. But this fatigue was a legitimate, indeed, a desirable effect, for their systems naturally demanded repose after exertion, and an hour's rest after breakfast was recommended. Thus this getting up earlier did not really result in any actual saving of time, though it made everybody feel very busy, and they all went to bed a little earlier.

Mr Altham found he got on very nicely without these gymnastics, but then he played golf after lunch. It was no use playing tricks with your health if it was already excellent: you might as well poke about in the works of a punctual watch. He had already had a pretty sharp lesson on this score, over the consumption of sour milk. It had made him exceedingly unwell, and he had sliced his drive for a fortnight afterwards. Just now he weaned his mind from the thoughts of kidneys, and gave it in equitable halves to marmalade and his wife's conversation. To enjoy either, required silence on his part.

‘She went to a meeting yesterday,' said Mrs Altham, ‘so Mrs Turner told me, and said that though she had the success of the cause so deeply at heart as ever, she would not be able to take any active part in it. That is a very common form of sympathy. I suppose, from what one knows of Mrs Ames, we might have expected something of the sort. Do you remember her foolish scheme of asking wives without husbands, and husbands without wives? I warned you at the time, Henry, not to take any notice of it, because
I was sure it would come to nothing, and I think I may say I am justified. I don't know what YOU think.'

Mr Altham, by a happy coincidence, had finished masticating his last piece of toast at this moment, and was at liberty to reply.

‘I do not think anything about it at present,' said he. ‘I daresay you are quite right, but why?'

Mrs Altham gave a little shrill laugh. The sprightliness at breakfast produced by this early walk and the exercises was very marked.

‘I declare,' she said, ‘that I had forgotten to tell you. Mrs Ames wrote to ask us both to dine on Saturday. I had quite forgotten! There is something in the air before breakfast that makes one forgetful of trifles. It says so in the pamphlet. Worries and household cares vanish, and it becomes a joy to be alive. I don't think we have any engagement. Pray do not have a third cup of tea, Henry. Tannin combines the effects of stimulants and narcotics. A cup of hot water, now - you will never regret it. Let me see! Yes, dinner at the Ameses on Saturday, and she isn't a Suffragette any longer. As I said, one might have guessed. I daresay her husband gave her a good talking-to, after the night when she threw the water at the policeman. I should not wonder if there was madness in the family. I think I heard that Sir James' mother was very queer before she died!'

‘She lived till ninety,' remarked Mr Altham.

‘That is often the case with deranged people,' said Mrs Altham. ‘Lunatics are notoriously long-lived. There is no strain on the brain.'

‘And she wasn't any relation of Mrs Ames,' continued Henry. ‘Mrs Ames is related to the Westbournes. She has no more to do with Sir James' mother than I have to do with yours. I will take tea, my dear, not hot water.'

‘You want to catch me up, Henry,' said she, ‘and prove I am wrong somehow. I was only saying that very likely there is madness in Mrs Ames' family, and I was going to add that I hoped it would not come out in her. But you must allow that she has been very flighty. You would have thought that an elderly woman like that could make up her mind once and for all about things, before she made an exhibition of herself. She thinks she is like some royal person who goes and opens a bazaar, and then has nothing more to do with it, but hurries away to Leeds or somewhere to unveil a memorial. She thinks it is sufficient for her to help at the beginning, and get all the advertisement, and then drop it all like cold potatoes.'

‘Hot,' said Henry.

‘Hot or cold: that is just like her. She plays hot and cold. One day she is a Suffragette and the next day she isn't. As likely as not she will be a vegetarian on Saturday, and we shall be served with cabbages.'

‘Major Ames went over to Sir James' to shoot, - she wasn't asked,' said Henry, reverting to a previous topic.

‘There you are!' exclaimed Mrs Altham. ‘That will account for her abandoning this husband and wife theory. I am sure she did not like that, she being Sir James' relative and not being asked. But I never could quite understand what the relationship is, though I daresay Mrs Ames can make it out. There are people who say they are cousins, because a grandmother's niece married the other grandmother's nephew. We can all be descendants of Queen Elizabeth or of Charles the Second at that rate.'

‘It would be easier to be a descendant of Charles the Second than of Queen Elizabeth, my dear,' remarked Henry.

Mrs Altham pursed her lips up for a moment.

‘I do not think we need enter into that,' she said. ‘I was asking you if you wished to accept Mrs Ames' invitation for
Saturday. She says she expects Sir James and his wife, so perhaps we shall hear some more about this wonderful relationship, and Dr Evans and his wife and one or two others. To my mind that looks rather as if the husband and wife plan was not quite what she expected it would be. And giving up all active part in the Suffragette movement, too! But I daresay she feels her age, though goodness only knows what it is. However, it is clearly going to be a grand party on Saturday, and the waiter from the Crown will be there to help Parker, going round and pouring a little foam into everybody's glass. I do not know where Major Ames gets his champagne from, but I never get anything but foam. But I am sure I do not wish to be unkind, and certainly poor Major Ames does not look well. I daresay he has worries we do not know of, and, of course, there is no reason why he should speak of them to us. The Evanses, too! I never satisfied myself as to why they went away in October. They must have been away nearly three weeks, for it was only yesterday that I saw them driving down from the station, with so much luggage on the top of the cab I wonder it did not fall over.'

‘It can't have been yesterday, my dear,' said Mr Altham, ‘because you spoke of it to me two days ago.'