Mrs. Ames

by E. F. Benson

  ‘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 momen
t 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.

  IT 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.’

  ‘And the dinner?’ asked Mrs Altham. ‘At least, I need not ask that, since I am going to lunch there, and so I shall soon know as well as you what there was.’

  Mrs Brooks smiled in a rather superior manner.

  ‘I never know what I am eating,’ she said. And she looked as if it disagreed with her, too, whatever it was.

  This was not particularly thrilling, for though it was generally known that Harry had an emotional temperament and wrote amorous poems, he appeared to Mrs Altham an improbable Lothario. In any case, the slight interest that this aroused in her was nothing compared to that which awaited her and her husband when they arrived for lunch at Mrs Ames’.

  There had been a long-standing feud between Mrs Altham and her hostess on the subject of punctuality. About two years ago Mrs Ames had arrived at Mrs Altham’s at least ten minutes late for dinner, and Mrs Altham had very properly retorted by arriving a quarter of an hour late when next she was bidden to dinner with Mrs Ames, though that involved sitting in a dark cab for ten minutes at the corner of the next turning. So, next time that Mrs Altham ‘hoped to have the pleasure of seeing you and Major Ames at dinner on Thursday at a quarter to eight,’ she asked the rest of her guests at eight. With the effect that Mrs Ames and her husband arrived a few minutes before anybody else, and Riseborough generally considered that Mrs Altham had scored. Since then there had been but a sort of desultory pea-shooting kept up, such as would harm nobody, and today Mrs Altham and her husband arrived certainly within ten minutes of the hour named. Mr Pettit, who generally lunched with Mrs Ames or Mrs Brooks on Sunday, was already there with his sister. Harry was morosely fidgeting in a corner, and Mrs Ames was the only other person present in the small sitting room where she received her guests, instead of troubling them to go up to the drawing room and instantly to go down again. She gave Mrs Altham her fat little hand, and then made this remarkable statement.

  ‘We are not waiting for anybody else, I think.’

  Upon which they went into lunch, and Harry sat at the head of the table, instead of his father.

  Mrs Ames was in her most conversational mood, and it was not until the chaud-froid, consisting mainly of the legs of chickens pasted over with a yellow sauce that concealed the long blue hair roots with which Nature has adorned their lower extremities, was being handed round, that Mrs Altham had opportunity to ask the question that had been effervescing like an antiseptic lozenge on the tip of her tongue ever since she remarked the Major’s absence.

  ‘And where is Major Ames?’ she asked. ‘I hope he is not ill? I thought he looked far from well at Mrs Evans’ garden-party yesterday.’

  Mrs Ames set her mind at rest with regard to the second point, and inflamed it on the first.

  ‘Oh, no!’ she said. ‘Did you think he looked ill? How good of you to ask after him. But Lyndhurst is quite well. Mr Pettit, a little more chicken? After your sermon.’

  Mr Pettit had a shrewd, ugly, delightful face, very lean, very capable. Humanly speaking, he probably abhorred Mrs Ames. Humanely speaking, he knew there was a great deal of good in her, and a quantity of debatable stuff. He smiled, showing thick white teeth.

  ‘Before and after my sermon,’ he said. ‘Also before a children’s service and a Bible class. I cannot help thinking that God forgot his poor clergymen when he defined the seventh day as one of rest.’

  Mrs Ames hid a small portion of her little face with her little hand. She always said that Mr Pettit was not like a clergyman at all.

  ‘How naughty of you,’ she said. ‘But I must correct you. The seventh day has become the first day now.’

  Harry gave vent to a designedly audible sigh. The Omar Club were chiefly atheists, and he felt bound to uphold their principles.

  ‘That is the sort of thing that confuses me,’ he said. ‘Mr Pettit says Sunday was called a day of rest, and my mother says that God meant what we call Monday, or Saturday. I have been behaving as if it was Tuesday or Wednesday.’

  Mr Pettit gave him a kindly glance.

  ‘Quite right
, my dear boy,’ he said. ‘Spend your Tuesday or Wednesday properly and God won’t mind whether it is Thursday or Friday.’

  Harry pushed back his lank hair, and became Omar-ish.

  ‘Do you fast on Friday, may I ask?’ he said.

  Mrs Ames looked pained, and tried to think of something to say. She failed. But Mrs Altham thought without difficulty.

  ‘I suppose Major Ames is away, Mr Harry?’ she said.

  Even then, though her intentions might easily be supposed to be amiable, she was not allowed the privilege of being replied to, for Mr Pettit cheerfully answered Harry’s question, without a shadow of embarrassment, just as if he did not mind what the Omar Khayyam Club thought.

  ‘Of course I do, my dear fellow,’ he said, ‘because our Lord and dearest friend died that day. He allows us to watch and pray with Him an hour or two.’

  Harry appeared indulgent.

  ‘Curious,’ he said.

  Mr Pettit looked at him for just the space of time anyone looks at the speaker, with cheerful cordiality of face, and then turned to his mother again.

  ‘I want you at church next Sunday,’ he said, ‘with a fat purse, to be made thin. I am going to have an offertory to finance a children’s treat. I want to send every child in the parish to the seaside for a day.’

  Harry interrupted in the critical manner.

  ‘Why the seaside?’ he asked.

  Mr Pettit turned to him with unabated cordiality.