Mrs. Ames

by E. F. Benson

  ‘It seems possible,’ said Mr Altham, not without enthusiasm, understanding that ‘doctor’ meant ‘doctor’, and which doctor.

  ‘We have all noticed how many visits he has been paying to - to Dr Jones,’ said Mrs Altham, ‘during the time Mrs Smith was away. But to pay another one on the very evening of her return looks as if - as if something serious was the matter.’

  ‘My dear, there’s nothing whatever to show that Major Ames went to the doctor’s last night,’ he said.

  Mrs Altham gave him an awful glance, for the parlourmaid was in the room, and this thoughtless remark rendered all the diplomatic substitution of another nomenclature entirely void and useless.

  ‘Mrs Smith, I should say,’ added Mr Altham in some confusion, proceeding to make it all quite clear to Jane, in case she had any doubts about it.

  ‘Suggest to me any other reasonable theory as to where he was, then,’ said Mrs Altham.

  ‘I can’t suggest where he was, my dear,’ said Mr Altham, finding his legal training supported him, ‘considering that there is no evidence of any kind that bears upon the matter. But to know that a man was not in one given place does not show with any positiveness that he was at any other given place.’

  ‘No doubt, then, he went shopping at half past ten last night,’ said Mrs Altham, with deep sarcasm. ‘There are so many shops open then. The High Street is a perfect blaze of light.’

  Mr Altham could be sarcastic, too, though he seldom exercised this gift.

  ‘It quite dazzles one,’ he observed.

  Mrs Altham no doubt was vexed at her husband’s sceptical attitude, and she punished him by refraining from discussing the point any further, and from giving him the rest of her news. But this severity punished herself also, for she was bursting to tell him. When Jane had finally withdrawn, the internal pressure became irresistible.

  ‘Mrs Ames has done something to her hair, Henry,’ she said; ‘and she has done something to her face. I had a good mind to ask her what she had used. I assure you there was not a grey hair left anywhere, and a fortnight ago she was as grey as a coot!’

  ‘Coots are bald, not grey,’ remarked her husband.

  ‘That is mere carping, Henry. She is brown now. Is this another fashion she is going to set us at Riseborough? What does it all mean? Shall we all have to plaster our faces with cold cream, and dye our hair blue?’

  Mr Altham was in a painfully literal mood this evening and could not disentangle information from rhetoric.

  ‘Has she dyed her hair blue?’ he asked in a slightly awestricken voice.

  ‘No, my dear: how can you be so stupid? And I told you just now she was brown. But at her age! As if anybody cared what colour her hair was. Her face, too! I don’t deny that the wrinkles are less marked, but who cares whether she is wrinkled or not?’

  These pleasant considerations were discontinued by the sound of the postman’s tap on the front door, and since the postman took precedence of everybody and everything, Mr Altham hurried out to see what excitements he had piloted into port. Unfortunately, there was nothing for him, but there was a large, promising-looking envelope for his wife. It was stiff, too, and looked like the receptacle of an invitation card.

  ‘One for you, my dear,’ he said.

  Mrs Altham tore it open, and gave a great gasp.

  ‘You would not guess in a hundred tries,’ she said.

  ‘Then be so kind as to tell me,’ remarked her husband.

  Mrs Altham read it out all in one breath without stops.

  ‘Mrs Evans at home Thursday July 20 10 p.m. Shakespeare Fancy Dress well I never!’

  For a little while the silence of stupefaction reigned. Then Mr Altham gave a great sigh.

  ‘I have never been to a fancy dress ball,’ he said. ‘I think I should feel very queer and uncomfortable. What are we meant to do when we get there, Julia? Just stand about and look at each other. It will seem very strange. What would you recommend me to be? I suppose we ought to be a pair.’

  Mrs Altham, to do her justice, had not thought seriously about her personal appearance for years. But, as she got up from the table, and consciously faced the looking glass over the chimney piece, it is idle to deny that she considered it now. She was not within ten years of Mrs Ames’ age, and it struck her, as she carefully regarded herself in a perfectly honest glass, that even taking into full consideration all that Mrs Ames had been doing to her hair and her face, she herself still kept the proper measure of their difference of years between them. But it was yet too early to consider the question of her impersonation. There were other things suggested by the contemplation of a fancy dress ball to be considered first. There was so much, in fact, that she hardly knew where to begin. So she whisked everything up together, in the manner of a sea pie, in which all that is possibly edible is put in the oven and baked.

  ‘There will be time enough to talk over that, my dear,’ she said, ‘for if Mrs Evans thinks we are all going to lash out into no end of expense in getting dresses for her party, she is wrong as far as I, for one, am concerned. For that matter you can put on your oldest clothes, and I can borrow Jane’s apron and cap, and we can go as Darby and Joan. Indeed, I do not know if I shall go at all - though, of course, one wouldn’t like to hurt Mrs Evans’ feelings by refusing. Do you know, Henry, I shouldn’t in the least wonder if we have seen the last of Mrs Ames and all her airs of superiority and leadership. You may depend upon it that Mrs Evans did not consult her before she settled to give a fancy dress party. It is far more likely that she and Major Ames contrived it all between them, while Mrs Ames was away, and settled what they should go as, and I daresay it will be Romeo and Juliet. I should not be in the least surprised if Mrs Ames did not go to the party at all, but tried to get something up on her own account that very night. It would be like her, I am sure. But whether she goes or not, it seems to me that we have seen the last of her queening it over us all. If she does not go, I should think she would be the only absentee, and if she does, she goes as Mrs Evans’ guest. All these years she has never thought of a fancy dress party - ’

  Mrs Altham broke off in the middle of her address, stung by the splendour of a sudden thought.

  ‘Or does all this staying away on her part,’ she said, ‘and dyeing her hair, and painting her face, mean that she knew about it all along, and was going to be the show-figure of it all? I should not wonder if that was it. As likely as not, she and Major Ames will come as Hamlet and Ophelia, or something equally ridiculous, though I am sure as far as the ‘too too solid flesh’ goes, Major Ames would make an admirable Hamlet, for I never saw a man put on weight in the manner he does, in spite of all the garden rolling, which I expect the gardener does for him really. But whatever is the truth of it all, and I’m sure everyone is so secretive here in Riseborough nowadays, that you never know how many dined at such a place on such a night unless you actually go to the poulterer’s and find out whether one chicken or two was sent, - what was I saying?’

  She had been saying a good deal. Mr Altham correctly guessed the train of thought which she desired to recall.

  ‘In spite of the secretiveness - ’ he suggested.

  That served the purpose.

  ‘No, my dear Henry,’ said his wife rapidly, ‘I accuse no one of secretiveness: if I did, you misunderstood me. All I meant was that when we have settled what we are to go as, we will tell nobody. There is very little sense in a fancy dress entertainment if you know exactly what you may expect, and as soon as you see a Romeo can say for certain that it is Major Ames, for instance; and I’m sure if he is to go as Romeo, it would be vastly suitable if Mrs Ames went as Juliet’s nurse.’

  ‘I am not sure that I shall like so much finery,’ said Mr Altham, who was thinking entirely about his own dress, and did not care two straws about Major or Mrs Ames. ‘It will seem very strange.’

  ‘Nonsense, my dear; we will dine in our fancy dresses for an evening or two before, and you will get quite used to it, whatever it is. H
enry, do you remember my white satin gown, which I scarcely wore a dozen times, because it seemed too grand for Riseborough? It was too, I am sure: you were quite right. It has been in camphor ever since. I used to wear my Roman pearls with it. There are three rows, and the clasp is of real pearls. The very thing for Cleopatra.’

  ‘I recollect perfectly,’ said Mr Altham. His mind instantly darted off again to the undoubted fact that whereas Major Ames was stout, he himself was very thin. If he had been obliged to describe his figure at that moment, he would have said it was boyish. The expense of a wig seemed of no account.

  ‘Well, my dear, white dress and pearls,’ said his wife. ‘You are not very encouraging. With that book of Egyptian antiquities, I can easily remodel the dress. And I remember reading in a Roman history that Cleopatra was well over thirty when Julius Caesar was so devoted to her. And by the busts he must have been much balder than you!’

  It is no use denying that this was a rather heavy blow. Ever since the mention of the word Cleopatra, he had seen himself complete, with a wig, in another character.

  ‘But Julius Caesar was sixty,’ he observed, with pardonable asperity. ‘I do not see how I could make up as a man of sixty. And for that matter, my dear, though I am sure no one would think you were within five years of your actual age, I do not see how you could make up as a mere girl of thirty. Why should we not go as ‘Antony and Cleopatra, ten years later’? It would be better than to go as Julius Caesar and Cleopatra ten years before!’

  Mrs Altham considered this. It was true that she would find it difficult to look thirty, however many Roman pearls she wore.

  ‘I do not know that it is such a bad idea of yours, Henry,’ she said. ‘Certainly there is no one in the world who cares about her age, or wants to conceal it, less than I. And there is something original about your suggestion - Antony and Cleopatra ten years later - Ah, there is the bell, that will be Mrs Brooks coming in. And there is the telephone also. Upon my word, we never have a moment to ourselves. I should not wonder if half of Riseborough came to see us tonight. Will you go to the telephone and tell it we are at home? And not a word to anybody, Henry, as to what we are thinking of going as. There will be our surprise, at any rate, however much other people go talking about their dresses. If you are being rung up to ask about your costume, say that you haven’t given it a thought yet.’

  For the next week Mrs Altham was thoroughly in her element. She had something to conceal, and was in a delicious state of tension with the superficial desire to disclose her own impersonation, and the deep-rooted satisfaction of not doing so. To complete her happiness, the famous white satin still fitted her, and she was nearly insane with curiosity to know what Major and Mrs Ames ‘were going to be’, and what the whole history of the projected festivity was. In various other respects her natural interest in the affairs of other people was satiated. Mrs Turner was to be Mistress Page, which was very suitable, as she was elderly and stout, and did not really in the least resemble Miss Ellen Terry. Mr Turner had selected Falstaff, and could be recognized anywhere. Young Morton, with unwonted modesty, had chosen the part of the Apothecary in Romeo and Juliet. Mrs Taverner was to be Queen Catherine, and - almost more joyous than all - she had persuaded Mrs Brooks not to attempt to impersonate Cleopatra. What Mrs Brooks’ feelings would be when it dawned on her, as it not inconceivably might, that Mrs Altham had seen in her a striking likeness to her conception of Hermione, because she did not want there to be two Cleopatras, did not particularly concern her. She had asked Mrs Brooks to dinner the day after the entertainment, and her acceptance would bury the hatchet, if indeed there was such a thing as a hatchet about. Finally, she had called on Mrs Evans, who had vaguely talked about A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Mrs Altham had taken that to be equivalent to the fact that she would appear as Titania, and Mrs Evans had distinctly intended that she should so take it. Indeed, the idea had occurred to her, but not very vividly. Her husband was going to be Timon of Athens. That, again, was quite satisfactory: nobody knew at all distinctly who Timon of Athens was, and nobody knew much about Dr Evans, except that he was usually sent for in the middle of something. Probably the same thing happened to Timon of Athens.

  Indeed, within a couple of hours of the reception of Mrs Evans’ invitations, which all arrived simultaneously by the local evening post, a spirit of demoniacal gaiety, not less fierce than that which inspired Mrs Altham, possessed the whole of those invited. Though it was gay, it was certainly demoniacal, for a quite prodigious amount of ill-feeling was mingled with it which from time to time threatened to wreck the proceedings altogether. For instance, only two days after all the invitations had been accepted, Mrs Evans had issued a further intimation that there was to be dancing, and that the evening would open at a quarter past ten precisely with a quadrille in which it was requested that everybody would take part. It is easy to picture the private consternation that presided over that evening; how in one house, Mrs Brooks having pushed her central drawing-room table to one side, all alone and humming to herself, stepped in perplexed and forgotten measures, and how next door Mrs and Mr Altham violently wrangled over the order of the figures, and hummed different tunes, to show each other, or pranced in different directions. For here was the bitter affair: these pains had to be suffered in loneliness, for it was clearly impossible to confess that the practice of quadrilles was so long past that the memory of them had vanished altogether. But luckily (though at the moment the suggestion caused a great deal of asperity in Mrs Altham’s mind) Mrs Ames came to the rescue with the suggestion that as many of them, no doubt, had forgotten the precise manner of quadrilles, she proposed to hold a class at half past four tomorrow afternoon, when they would all run through a quadrille together.

  ‘There! I thought as much!’ said Mrs Altham. ‘That means that neither Major nor Mrs Ames can remember how the quadrille goes, and we, forsooth, must go and teach them. And she puts it that she is going to teach us! I am sure she will never teach me: I shall not go near the house. I do not require to be taught quadrilles by anybody, still less by Mrs Ames. There is no answer,’ she added to Jane.

  Mr Altham fidgeted in his chair. Last night he had been quite sure he was right, in points where he and his wife differed, and that the particular ‘setting partners’ which they had shown each other so often did not come in the quadrille at all, but occurred in lancers, just before the ladies’ chain. But she had insisted that both the setting to partners and ladies’ chain came in quadrilles. This morning, however, he did not feel quite so certain about it.

  ‘You might send a note to Mrs Ames,’ he observed, ‘and tell her you are not coming.’

  ‘No answer was asked for,’ said his wife excitedly. ‘She just said there was to be a quadrille practice at half past four. Let there be. I am sure I have no objection, though I do think you might have thought of doing it first, Henry.’

  ‘But she will like to know how many to expect,’ said Henry. ‘If it is to be at half past four, she must be prepared for tea. It is equivalent to a tea party, unless you suppose that the class will be over before five.’

  During the night Mrs Altham had pondered her view about the ladies’ chain. It would be an awful thing if Henry happened to be right, and if, on the evening of the dance itself, she presented her hand for the ladies’ chain, and no chain of any sort followed. She decided on a magnanimous course.

  ‘Upon my word, I am not sure that I shall not go,’ she said, ‘just to see what Mrs Ames’ idea of a quadrille is. I should not wonder if she mixed it up with something quite different, which would be laughable. And after all, we ought not to be so unkind, and if poor Mrs Ames feels she will get into difficulties over the quadrille, I am sure I shall be happy to help her out. No doubt she has summoned us like this, so that she need not show that she feels she wants to be helped. We will go, Henry, and I daresay I shall get out of her what she means to dress up as! But pray remember to say that we, at any rate, have not given a thought to our costumes yet. And o
n our way, we may as well call in at Mr Roland’s, for if I am to wear my three rows of pearls, he must get me a few more, since I find there is a good deal of string showing. I daresay that ordinary pearl beads would answer the purpose perfectly. I have no intention of buying more of the real Roman pearls. They belonged to my mother, and I should not like to add to them. And if you will insist on having some red stone in your cap, to make a buckle for the feather, I am sure you could not do better than get a piece of what he called German ruby that is in his shop now. I do not suppose anybody in Riseborough could tell it from real, and after all this is over, I would wear it as a pendant for my pearls. If you wish, I will pay half of it, and it is but a couple of pounds altogether.’

  It did not seem a really handsome offer, but Henry had the sense to accept it. He wanted a stone to buckle the feather in a rather coquettish cap that they had decided to be suitable for Mark Antony, and did not really care what happened to it after he had worn it on this occasion, since it was unlikely that another similar occasion would arise. Deep in his mind had been an idea of turning it into a solitaire, but he knew he would not have the practical courage of this daring conception. It would want another setting, also.

  In other houses there were no fewer anticipatory triumphs and present perplexities. There was also, in some cases, wild and secret intrigue. For instance, a few evenings after, Mrs Brooks next door, sorting out garments in her wardrobe from which she might devise a costume that should remind the beholder of Hermione, looked from her bedroom window, where her quest was in progress, and saw a strange sight in the next garden. There was a lady in white satin with pearls; there was a gentleman in Roman toga with a feathered cap. The Roman gentleman was a dubious figure; the lady indubitable. If ever there was an elderly Cleopatra, this was she.