Mrs. Ames (9 page)

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 someone 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 flowerpots), 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.

Mrs Evans, perhaps, was less laudable, and more deserved laughter and tears. She had consciously tried to produce a false impression without saying false things - a lamentable
posture. She had wanted, as was her nature, to attract without being correspondingly attracted. She was prepared for him to go a little further, which is characteristic of the flirt. She succeeded, as the flirt usually does.

His last sentence was received in silence, and he thought well to repeat it with slight variation. The theme was clear.

‘We may meet someone who understands us,' he said. ‘Who looks into us, not at us, eh? Who sees not what we wish only, but what we want.'

She put the last sweet pea into the wire netting.

‘Oh, yes, yes,' she said; ‘how beautiful that distinction is.'

He was not aware of its being particularly beautiful, until she mentioned it, but then it struck him that it was rather fine. Also the respectability of all his long years tugged at him, as with a chain. He was quite conscious that he was encouraged, and so he was slightly terrified. He had not much power of imagination, but he could picture to himself a very uncomfortable home …

Providence came to his aid - probably Providence. Church time was spent, and two black Aberdeen terriers, followed by Elsie, followed by Dr Evans, came out of the drawing-room door on to the lawn. They were all in the genial exhilaration that accompanies the sense of duty done. The dogs had been let out from the house, where they were penned on Sunday morning to prevent their unexpected appearance in church; the other two had been let out from church.

Wilfred Evans had most clearly left church behind him: he had also left in the house not only his top hat but his coat, as befitted the heat of the morning, and appeared, stout, and strong, and brisk. Elsie was less vigorous: she sat down on the grass as soon as she reached the shade of the
tree. She had the good sense to shake hands with Major Ames first: otherwise her mother would have made remarks to him about her manners. But she was markedly less elderly now than she had been at the formal dinner party of the night before.

Dr Evans arrived last at the mulberry tree.

‘Jove! What jolly flowers,' he said. ‘That's you, Major Ames, isn't it? How de'do? Well, little woman, how goes it? You did well not to come to church. Awfully hot it was.'

‘And a very long sermon, Daddy,' said Elsie.

‘Twenty-two minutes: I timed it. Very interesting, though. You'll stop to lunch, Major Ames, won't you? We lunch at one always on Sunday.'

Now Major Ames knew quite well that there was going to be at his house the lunch that followed parties, the resurrection lunch of what was dead last night. There would be little bits of salmon slightly greyer than on the evening before, peeping out from the fresh salad that covered them. There would be some sort of chaud-froid; there would be a pink and viscous fluid which was the debilitated descendant of the strawberry ice which Amy had given them. There would also be several people, including Mrs Altham, who had not been bidden to the feast last night, but who, since they came according to the authorized Riseborough version of festivities, to the lunch next day, would certainly be bidden to dinner on the next occasion. Also, he knew well, he would have to say to Mrs Altham, ‘Amy has given us cold luncheon today. Well, I don't mind a cold luncheon on as hot a day as it is. Chaud-froid of chicken, Mrs Altham. I think you'll find that Amy's cook understands chaud-froid.'

And all the time he knew that chaud-froid meant a dinner-party on the night before. So did the viscous fluid in the jelly glasses, so did everything else. And of course
Mrs Altham knew: everybody knew all about the lunch that followed a dinner party. Even if the dinner party last night had been as secret as George the Fourth's marriage with Mrs Fitzherbert, the lunch today would have made it as public as any function at St Peter's, Eaton Square.

He thought over the unimaginable dislocation in all this routine that his absence would entail.

‘I wonder if I ought to,' he said. ‘I fancy Amy told me she had a few friends to lunch.'

Millie Evans looked up at him. Infinitesimal as was the point as to whether he should lunch here or at home, she knew that she definitely entered herself against his wife at this moment.

‘Ah, do stop,' she said. ‘If Cousin Amy has a few friends why shouldn't we have one?'

He got up: he nearly took off his hat again, but again remembered.

‘I take it as a command,' he said. ‘Am I ordered to stop?'

‘Certainly. Telephone to Mrs Ames, Wilfred, and say that Major Ames is lunching with us.'

‘À les ordres de votre Majesté,' said he brightly, forgetting for the moment that his wife came to him for help with the elusive language of our neighbours. But the Frenchness of his bearing and sentiment, perhaps, diverted attention from the curious character of his grammar.

I
T
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.'