Mrs. Ames

by E. F. Benson

  Riseborough is notable for the number of its churches, and before long the air was mellow with bells. As a rule, Millie Evans went to church on Sunday morning with the same regularity as she ate hot roast beef for lunch when it was over, but this morning she easily let herself be persuaded to refrain from any act of public worship. It seemed quite within the bounds of possibility that she might feel faint during the psalms and, on her husband’s advice, she settled to stop at home, leaving him and Elsie, who was quite unaware what faintness felt like, to attend. But it was not the fear of faintness that prompted her absence: she wanted, almost for the first time in her life, to be alone and to think. Even on the occasion of her marriage, she had not found it necessary to employ herself with original thought: her mother had done the thinking for her, and had advised her, as she felt quite sure, sensibly and well. Nor had she needed to think when she was expecting her only child, for on that occasion she had been perfectly content to do exactly as her husband told her. But now, at the age of thirty-seven, the sight of her own face in the glass had suggested to her certain possibilities, certain limitations.

  Ill-health had, on infrequent Sundays, prevented her attendance at church, and now, following merely the dictates of habit, she took out with her to a basket chair below the big mulberry tree in the garden, a Bible and prayer book, out of which she supposed that she would read the psalms and lessons for the day. But the Bible remained long untouched, and when she opened it eventually at random, she read but one verse. It was at the end of Ecclesiastes that the leaves parted, and she read, ‘When desire shall fail, because man goeth to his long home.’

  That was enough, for it was that, here succinctly expressed, which had been troubling her this morning, though so vaguely, that until she saw her symptoms written down shortly and legibly, she had scarcely known what they were. But certainly this line and a half described them. No doubt it was all very elementary; by degrees one ceased to care, and then one died. But her case was rather different from that, for she felt that with her desire had not failed, simply because she never had had desire. She had waked and slept, she had eaten and walked, she had had a child; but all these things had been of about the same value. Once she had had a tooth out, without gas; that was a slightly more vivid experience. But it was very soon over: she had not really cared.

  But though she had not cared for any of those things, she had not been bored with the repetition of them. It had seemed natural that one thing should follow another, that the days should become weeks, and the weeks should become months, insensibly. When the months added themselves into years, she took notice of that fact by having a birthday, and Wilfred, as he gave her some little present in a morocco case, told her that she looked as young as when they first met, which was very nearly true. She had a quantity of these morocco cases now: he never omitted the punctual presentation of each. And the mental vision of all these morocco cases, some round, some square, some oblong, and the thought of their contents - a little pearl brooch, a sapphire brooch, a pair of emerald earrings, a jewelled hatpin - suddenly came upon her with their cumulative effect. A lot of time had gone by; it chiefly lived in her now through the memory of the morocco cases.

  By virtue of her unemotional temperament and serene bodily health she looked very young still, and certainly did not feel old. But as the bells for church ceased to jangle and clash in the hot still air, leaving only for the ear the hum of multitudinous bees in the long flowerbed, it dawned on her that whatever she felt, and however she looked, she would soon be on the other side of that barrier which for woman marks the end of their essential and characteristic life. There were a few years left her yet out of the years of which she made so little use, and with a spasm, the keenest perhaps she had ever known, even including the extraction of the tooth without gas, the horror of middle age fell upon her, making her shiver. All her life she had felt nothing: soon she would be incapable of feeling, except in so far as regret, that pale echo of what might once have been emotion, can be considered an affair of the heart. To feel, she readily perceived, implied the existence of something or somebody to feel about. But she did not know where to look for her participant. Long ago her husband had become as much part of that dead level of life as had her breakfast or her dressing for dinner. Never had he stirred her from her placid passivity, she had never yearned for him, in the sense in which a thirsty man desires water. She had no love of nature: ‘the primrose by the river’s brim’ might have been a violet for anything that she cared; charity, in its technical sense, was distasteful to her, because the curious smell in the houses of the poor made her only long to get away. It was hard to know where to turn to find an outlet for that drowsily awakening recognition of life that today, so late and as yet so feebly, stirred within her. Yet, though it stirred but feebly, there was movement there: it wanted to be alive for a little, before it was indubitably dead.

  Her thoughts went back to the topic concerning which she had told her husband that there was nothing to be told -namely, the dinnerparty 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 paleblue, 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 parlourmaid who came towards her from the house. Personally, she thought it absurd not to keep menservants, but Wilfred always maintained that a couple of good parlourmaids 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 parlourmaid 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 na
turally 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 manoeuvre 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 manoeuvre 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, someone 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 believe 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, anyone 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 fingertips.

  ‘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.