Mrs. Ames

by E. F. Benson

  She looked up at him with her chin raised.

  ‘I think you are wonderful,’ she said, ‘to be able even to think of forgiving her. If I had behaved like that, I should not expect Wilfred to forgive me. But then you are so big, so big. She does not understand you: she can’t understand one thing about you. She doesn’t know - oh, how blind some women are!’

  It was little wonder that by this time Major Ames was beginning to feel an extraordinarily fine fellow, nor was it more wonderful that he basked in the warm sense of being understood. But from the first Millie had understood him. He felt that particularly now, at this moment, when Amy had so hideously flouted and wronged him. All through this last summer, the situation of today had been foreshad-owed; it had always been in this house rather than in his own that he had been welcomed and appreciated. He had been the architect and adviser in the Shakespeare ball, while at home Amy dealt out her absurd printed menu cards without consulting him. And the garden which he loved -who had so often said, ‘These sweet flowers, are they really for me?’ Who, on the other hand, had so often said, ‘The sweet peas are not doing very well, are they?’ And then he looked at Millie’s soft, youthful face, her eyes, that sought his in timid, sensitive appeal, her dim golden hair, her mouth, childish and mysterious. For contrast there was the small, strong, toad’s face, the rather beady eyes, the hair -grey or brown, which was it? Also, Millie understood; she saw him as he was - generous, perhaps, to a fault, but big, big, as she had so properly said. She always made him feel so comfortable, so contented with himself. That was the true substance of a woman’s mission, to make her husband happy, to make him devoted to her, instead of raising hell in the town hall, and insisting on apologies afterwards.

  ‘You’ve cheered me up, Millie,’ he said; ‘you’ve made me feel that I’ve got a friend, after all, a friend who feels with me. I’m grateful; I’m - I’m more than grateful. I’m a tough old fellow, but I’ve got a heart still, I believe. What’s to happen to us all?’

  It was emotion, real and genuine emotion, that made Millie clever at that moment. Her mind was of no high order; she might, if she thought about a thing, be trusted to exhibit nothing more subtle than a fair grasp of the obvious. But now she did not think: she was prompted by an instinct that utterly transcended any achievement of which her brain was capable.

  ‘Go back to your house,’ she said, ‘and be ready for Cousin Amy to say she is sorry. Very likely she is waiting for you there now. Oh, Lyndhurst - ’

  He got up at once: those few words made him feel completely noble; they made her feel noble likewise. The atmosphere of nobility was almost suffocating …

  ‘You are right,’ he said; ‘you are always all that is right and good and delicious? Ha!’

  There was no question about the cousinly relations between them. So natural and spontaneous a caress needed no explanation.

  The house was apparently empty when he got back, but he made sufficiently noisy an entry to advise the drawing room, in any case, that he was returned, and personally ready, since he did not enter ‘full of wrath’, like Hyperion, to accept apologies. Eventually he went in there, as if to look for a paper, in case of its being occupied, and, with the same pretext, strolled into his wife’s sitting room. Then, still casually, he went into his dressing room, where he had slept last night, and satisfied himself that she was not in her bedroom. Her penitence, therefore, which would naturally be manifested by her waiting, dim-eyed, for his return, had not been of any peremptory quality.

  He went out into the garden, and surveyed the damage of last night’s rain. There was no need to punish the plants because Amy had been guilty of behaviour which her own cousin said was infamous: he also wanted something to employ himself with till lunchtime. As his hands worked mechanically, tying up some clumps of chrysanthemums which had a few days more of flame in their golden hearts, removing a debris of dead leaves and fallen twigs, his mind was busy also, working not mechanically but eagerly and excitedly. How different was the sympathy with which he was welcomed and comforted by Millie from the misunderstandings and quarrels which made him feel that he had wasted his years with one who was utterly unappreciative of him. Yet, if Amy was sorry, he was ready to do his best. But he wondered whether he wanted her to be sorry or not.

  At half past one the bell for lunch sounded, and, going into the drawing room, he found that she had returned and was writing a note at her table. She did not look up, but said to him, just as if nothing had happened -

  ‘Will you go in and begin, Lyndhurst? I want to finish my note.’

  He did not answer, but passed into the dining room. In a little while she joined him.

  ‘There seems to have been a good deal of rain in the night,’ she said. ‘I am afraid your flowers have suffered.’

  Certainly this did not look like penitence, and he had no reply for her. In some strange way this seemed to him the dignified and proper course.

  Then Mrs Ames spoke for the third time.

  ‘I think, Lyndhurst, if we are not going to talk,’ she said, ‘I shall see what news there is. Parker, please fetch me the morning paper.’

  At that moment he hated her.

  THREE days later Major Ames was walking back home in the middle of the afternoon, returning from the house in which he had lately spent so considerable a portion of his time. But this was the last day on which he would go there, nor would he, except for this one time more, cross the threshold of his own house. The climax had come, and within an hour or two he and Millie were going to leave Riseborough together.

  Now that their decision had been made, it seemed to him that it had been inevitable from the first. Ever since the summer, when, from some mixture of genuine liking and false gallantry, he had allowed himself to drift into relations with her, the force that drew and held him had steadily increased in strength, and today it had proved itself irresistible. The determining factor no doubt had been his quarrel with his wife; that gave the impulse that had been still lacking, the final push which upset the equilibrium of that which was tottering and ready to fall over.

  The scene this afternoon had been both short and quiet, as such scenes are. Dr Evans had been called up to town on business yesterday morning, returning possibly this evening but more probably tomorrow, and they had lunched alone. Afterwards Major Ames had again spoken of his wife.

  ‘The situation is intolerable,’ he had said. ‘I can’t stand it. If it wasn’t for you, Millie, I should go away.’

  She had come close to him.

  ‘I’m not very happy, either,’ she said. ‘If it wasn’t for you, I don’t think I could stand it.’

  And then it was already inevitable.

  ‘It’s too strong for us,’ she said. ‘We can’t help it. I will face anything with you. We will go right away, Lyndhurst, and live, instead of being starved like this.’

  She took both his hands in hers, completely carried away for the first time in her life by something outside herself. Treacherous and mean as was that course on which she was determined, she was, perhaps, a finer woman at this moment of supreme disloyalty than in all the years of her blameless married life.

  ‘I’ve never loved before, Lyndhurst,’ she said quietly, ‘nor have I ever known what it meant. Now I can’t consider anything else; it doesn’t matter what happens to Wilfred and Elsie. Nothing matters except you.’

  This time it was not he who kissed her; it was she who pressed her mouth to his.

  There was but little to settle, their plans were perfectly simple and ruthless. They would cross over to Boulogne that night, and, as soon as the law set them free, marry each other. A train to Folkestone left Riseborough in a little over an hour’s time, running in connection with the boat. They could easily catch it. But it was wiser not to go to the station together: they would meet there.

  As he walked home through the gleaming October afternoon, Major Ames was conscious neither of struggle nor regret. The power which Millie had had over him all these months,
so that it was she always who really took the lead, and urged him one step forward and then another, gripped him and led him on here to the last step of all. He still obeyed and followed that slender, fragile woman who so soon would be his; it was as necessary to do her bidding here as it had been to kiss her, when first, under the mulberry tree, she had put up her face towards his. These last days seemed to have killed all sense of loyalty and manhood within him; he gave no thought at all to his wife, and thought of Harry only as Amy’s son. Besides, he was not responsible: man though he was, he was completely in the hands of this woman. All his life he had had no real principles to direct him, he had lived a decent life only because no temptation to live otherwise had ever really come near him, and even now it was in no way the wickedness of what he purposed that at all dragged him back; it was mere timidity at taking an irrevocable step.

  Amy, he knew, was out: at breakfast she had announced to him that she did not expect to be in till dinnertime, and he had told her that he would be out for dinner. Such sentences dealing with household arrangements had been the sum of their discourse for the last days, and they were spoken not so much to each other as to the air, heard by, rather than addressed to anyone in particular.

  And yet the prospect of the life that should open for him, when once this irrevocable step had been taken, did not fill him with the resistless longing which, though it cannot excuse, at any rate accounts for the step itself. Millie, though throughout she had led him on until the climax was reached, had at least the authentic goad to drive her: life with him seemed to her to be real life: it was passionately that she desired it. But with him, apart from the force with which she dominated him, it was the escape from the very uncomfortable circumstances of home that chiefly attracted him. In a way, he loved her; he felt for her a warmth and a tenderness of stronger quality than he could remember having ever experienced before, and since it is not given to all men to love violently, it may be granted that he was feeling the utmost fire of which his nature was capable. But it was of sufficient ardour to burn up in his mind the rubbish of minor considerations and material exigencies.

  Cabs were of infrequent occurrence at this far end of St Barnabas Road, and meeting one by hazard just outside his house, he told the driver to wait. Then, letting himself in, he went straight up to his dressing room. There was not time for him to pack his whole wardrobe, and a moderate portmanteau would be all he really needed. And here the trivialities began to wax huge and engrossing: though the afternoon was warm, it would no doubt be fresh, if not chilly on the boat, and it would certainly be advisable to take his thick overcoat, which at present had not left its summer quarters. Those were in a big cupboard in the passage outside, overlooking the garden, where it was packed away with prophylactic little balls of naphthaline. These had impregnated it somewhat powerfully, but it was better to be odorously than insufficiently clad. Passing the window he saw that the chrysanthemums had responded bravely to his comforting a few mornings ago: if there was no more frost they would be gay for another fortnight yet. Should he take a bouquet of them with him? He did not see why he should not have the enjoyment of them. Yet there was scarcely time to pick them: he must hurry on with the packing of his small portmanteau, which presented endless problems.

  A panama hat should certainly be included; also a pair of white tennis shoes, in which he saw himself promenading on the parade: a white flannel suit, though it was October, seemed to complete the costume. He need not cumber himself with a dress coat: a dinner jacket was all that would be necessary. She had told him she had six hundred a year of her own: he had another three. It was annoying that his sponge was rather ragged; he had meant to buy a new one this morning. Perhaps Parker could draw it together with a bit of thread. An untidy sponge always vexed him: it was unsoldierly and slovenly. ‘Show me a man’s washhand-stand,’ he had once said, ‘and I’ll tell you about the owner.’ His own did not invite inspection, with its straggly sponge.

  Then for a moment all these trivialities stood away from him, and for an interval he saw where he stood and what he was doing - the vileness, the sordidness, the vulgarity of it. High principles, nobility of life were not subjects with which hitherto he had much concerned himself, and it would be useless to expect that they should come to his rescue now, but for this moment his kindliness, such as it was, his affection for his wife, such as it was, but above all the continuous, unbroken smug respectability of his days read him a formidable indictment. What could he plead against such an accusation? No irresistible or imperative necessity of soul that claimed Millie as his by right of love. He knew that his desire for her was not of that fiery order, for he could see, undazzled and unburned, the qualities which attracted him. He admired her frail beauty, the youth that still encompassed her, he fed with the finest appetite on the devotion and admiration which she brought him. He loved being the god and the hero of this attractive woman, and it was this, far more than the devotion he brought her, that dominated him.

  Respectability cried out against him and his foolishness. There would be no more strutting and swelling about the club among the mild and honourable men who frequented it, and looked up to him as an authority on India and gardening, nor any more of those pompous and satisfactory evenings when General Fortescue assured him that there was not such a good glass of port in Kent as that with which the Major supplied his guests. To be known as Major Ames, late of the Indian Army, had been to command respect; now, the less that he was known as Major Ames, late of Riseborough, the better would be the chance of being held in esteem. And to what sort of life would he condemn the woman, who for his sake was leaving a respectability no less solid than his own? To the companionship of such as herself, to the soiled doves of a French watering place. That, of course, would be but a temporary habitation, but after that, what? Where was the society which would receive them, by which there would be any satisfaction in being received? Neither of them had the faintest touch of Bohemianism in their natures: both were of the school that is accustomed to silver teapots and life in houses with a garden behind. For a moment he hesitated as he folded back the sleeves of his dinner jacket: then the tide of trivialities swept over him again, and he noticed that there was a spot of spilled wax on the cuff.

  Among other engagements that Saturday afternoon, Mrs Ames was occupied with the decoration of St Barnabas’ Church for the Sunday service next day, and she had gone there after lunch with an adornment of foliage tinted red by October, for she had not felt disposed to ask Lyndhurst if she might pick the remnant of his chrysanthemums. She, too, like him, felt the impossibility of the present situation, and, as she worked, she asked herself if it was in any way in her power to end this parody of domestic life. Every day she had made the attempt to begin the breaking of this ridiculous and most uncomfortable silence which lay between them, by the introduction of ordinary topics, hoping by degrees to build up again the breach that yawned between them, but at present she had got no sense of the slightest answering effort on his side. Psychically no less than conversationally he had nothing whatever to say to her. If in the common courtesies of daily life he had nothing for her, it seemed idle to hope to find further receptiveness if she opened discussion of their quarrel. Besides, a certain very natural pride blocked her way: he owed her an apology, and when she indicated that, he had sworn at her. It did not seem unreasonable (even when decorating a church) to expect the initiatory step to be taken by him. But what if he did not do so?

  Mrs Ames gave a little sigh, and her mouth and throat worked uncomfortably. The quarrel was so childish, yet it was serious, for it was not a light thing, whatever her provocation might have been, to pass days like these. Half a dozen times she went over the circumstances, and half a dozen times she felt that it was only just that he should make the advance to her, or at any rate behave with ordinary courtesy in answer to her ordinary civilities. It was true that the original dissension was due to her, but she believed with her whole heart in the cause for which she provoked it. Al
l these last months she had felt her nature expand under the influence of this idea: she knew herself to be a better and a bigger woman than she had been. She believed in the rights of her sex, but had they not their duties too? It was nearly twenty-five years since she had voluntarily undertaken a certain duty. What if that came first, before any rights or privileges? What if that which she had undertaken then as a duty was in itself a right?

  Yet even then, what could she do? In itself, she was very far from being ashamed of the part she had taken, yet was it possible to weigh this independently, without considering the points at which it conflicted with duties which certainly concerned her no less? She could not hope to convince her husband of the justice of the cause, nor of the expediency of promoting it in ways like these. For herself, she knew the justice of it, and saw no other expedient for promoting it. Those who had worked for the cause for years said that all else had been tried, that there remained only this violent crusading. But was not she personally, considering what her husband felt about it, debarred from taking part in the crusade? She had deeply offended and vexed him. Could anything but the stringency of moral law justify that? Nothing that he had done, nothing that he could do, short of the violation of the essential principles of married life, could absolve her from the accomplishment of one tittle of her duty towards him.

  For a moment, in spite of her perplexity and the difficulty of her decision, Mrs Ames smiled at herself for the mental use of all these great words like duty and privilege, over so small an incident. For what had happened? She had been a militant Suffragette on one occasion only, and at breakfast next morning he had, in matters arising there-from, allowed himself to swear at her. Yet it seemed to her that, with all the pettiness and insignificance of it, great laws were concerned. For the law of kindness is broken by the most trumpery exhibition of inconsiderateness, the law of generosity by the most minute word of spite or backbiting. Indeed, it is chiefly in little things, since most of us are not concerned with great matters, that these violations occur, and in cups of cold water that they are fulfilled. And for once Mrs Ames did not finish her decoration with tidiness and precision, a fact clearly noted by Mrs Altham next day.