Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  Major Ames proved himself during the next week to be a good correspondent, if virtue in correspondents is to be measured by the frequency of their communications. His letters were not long, but they were cheerful, since the garden was coming on well in this delightful weather, which he hoped embraced Cromer also, and since he had on two separate occasions made a grand slam when playing Bridge at the club. He and Harry were jogging along quite pleasantly, but there had been no gaieties to take them out, except a tea-party with ices at Mrs. Brooks’. Unfortunately, some disaster had befallen the ices: personally, he thought it was salt instead of sugar, but Harry had been unwell afterwards, which suggested sour cream. But his indisposition had been but short, though violent. He himself had dropped in to dine en garçon with the Evans’, and the doctor was very busy. Finally (this came at the end of every letter), as the place was doing her so much good, why not stop for another week? He was sure the Bertrams (poor things!) would be delighted if she would.

  But that suggestion did not commend itself to Mrs. Ames. She had come here for a definite purpose, and when on the morning before her departure she looked very critically at herself in the glass, she felt that her purpose had been accomplished. Her skin had not, so much she admitted, the unruffled smoothness of a young woman’s, but she had not been a young woman when she married. But search where she might in her hair, there was no sign of greyness in it all, while the contents of the bottle were not yet half used. But she would take back the more than moiety with her, since an occasional application when the hair had resumed its usual colour was recommended. It appeared to her that it undoubtedly had resumed its original colour: the change, though slight (for the grey had never been conspicuous), was complete; she felt equipped for youth again. And psychologically she felt equipped: every day since the first secret paddling she had paddled again in secret, and from a crevice in a tumble of fallen rock she daily extracted a small wooden spade, by aid of which, with many glancings around for fear of possible observers, she dug in the sand, making moats and ramparts. The “first fine careless rapture” of this, it must be admitted, had evaporated: after one architectural afternoon she had dug not because this elementary pursuit expressed what she felt, so much as because it expressed what she desired to feel. After all, she did not propose to rejuvenate herself to the extent of being nine or ten years old again. . . .

  The manner of her return to Riseborough demanded consideration: it was not sufficient merely to look up in a railway guide the swiftest mode of transit and adopt it, for this was not quite an ordinary entry, and it would never do to take the edge off it by making a travel-soiled and dusty first appearance. So she laid down a plan.

  The bare facts about the trains were these. A train starting at a convenient hour would bring her to London a short half-hour before another convenient train from another and distant terminus started for Riseborough. It was impossible to make certain of catching this, so she wrote to her husband saying that she would in all probability get to Riseborough by a later train that arrived there at eight. She begged him not to meet her at the station, but to order dinner for half-past eight. It would be nice to be at home again. Then came the plan. Clearly it would never do to burst on him like that, to sit down opposite him at the dinner-table beneath the somewhat searching electric light there, handicapped by the fatigues of a hot journey only imperfectly repaired by a hasty toilet. She must arrive by the early train, though not expected till the later. Thus she would secure a quiet two hours for bathing, resting and dressing. If Lyndhurst did not expect her to arrive till eight it was a practical certainty that he would be at the club till that hour, and walk home in time to welcome her arrival. He would then learn that she had already come and was dressing. She would be careful to let him go downstairs first, and a minute later she would follow. He should see. . . .

  So in order to catch this earlier train from town she left Cromer while morning was yet dewy, and had the peculiar pleasure, on her arrival at Riseborough, of seeing her husband, from the windows of her cab, passing along the street to the club. She had a moment’s qualm that he would see her initialled boxes on the top, but by grace of a punctual providence Mrs. Brooks came out of her house at the moment, and the Major raised a gallant hat and spoke a cheerful word to her. Certainly he looked very handsome and distinguished, and Mrs. Ames felt a little tremor of anticipation in thinking of the chapters of life that were to be re-read by them. She felt confident also; it never entered her head to have any misgivings as to what the last fortnight, which had contained so much for her, might have contained for him.

  Harry had gone back to Cambridge for the July term the day before, and she found on her arrival that she had the house to herself. The afternoon had turned a little chilly, and she enjoyed the invigoration of a hot bath, and a subsequent hour’s rest on her sofa. Then it was time to dress, and though the dinner was of the simplest conjugal character, she put on a dress she had worn but some half-dozen of times before, but which on this one occasion it was meet should descend from the pompous existence that was its destiny for a year or two to come. It was of daring rose-colour, the most resplendent possible, and never failed to create an impression. Indeed, she had, on one of its infrequent appearances, heard Lyndhurst say to his neighbour in an undertone, “Upon my soul, Amy looks very well to-night.” And Amy meant to look very well again.

  All happened as she had planned. Shortly after eight Lyndhurst tapped at her door on his return from the club, but could not be admitted, and at half-past, having heard him go downstairs, she followed him. He had not dressed, according to their custom when they were alone.

  Major Ames was writing a note when she entered, and only turned round in his chair, not getting up.

  “Glad to see you home, my dear,” he said. “Excuse me one moment. I must just direct this.”

  She kissed him and waited while he scrawled an address. Then he got up and rang the bell.

  “Just in time to catch the post,” he said. “By Jove! Amy, you’ve put on the famous pink gown. I would have dressed if I had known. You’re tired with your journey, I expect. It was a very hot day here, until a couple of hours ago.”

  He gave the note to the servant.

  “And dinner’s ready, I think,” he said.

  They sat down opposite each other at ends of the rather long table. There were no flowers on it, for it had not occurred to him to get the garden to welcome her home-coming, and the whole of her resplendency was visible to him. He began eating his soup vigorously.

  “Capital plan in summer to have dinner at half-past eight,” he said. “Gives one most of the daylight and not so long an evening afterwards. Excellent pea-soup, this. Fresh peas from my garden. The Evans’ dine at eight-thirty. And how have you been, Amy?”

  Some indefinable chill of misgiving, against which she struggled, had laid cold fingers on her. Things were not going any longer as she had planned them. He had noticed her gown, but he had noticed nothing else. But then he had scarcely looked up since they had come into the dining-room. But now he finished his soup, and she challenged his attention.

  “I have been very well indeed,” she said. “Don’t I look it?”

  He looked her straight in the face, saw all that had seemed almost a miracle to her — the softened wrinkles, the recovered colour of her hair.

  “Yes, I think you do,” he said. “You’ve got a bit tanned too, haven’t you, with the sun?”

  The cold fingers closed a little more tightly on her.

  “Have I?” she said. “That is very likely. I was out-of-doors all day. I used to take quite long walks every afternoon.”

  He glanced at the menu-card.

  “I hope you’ll like the dinner I ordered you,” he said. “Your cook and I had a great talk over it this morning. ‘She’ll have been in the train all day,’ I said, ‘and will feel a little tired. Appetite will want a bit of tempting, eh?’ So we settled on a grilled sole, and a chicken and a macédoine of fruit. Hope that suits you,
Amy. So you used to take long walks, did you? Is the country pretty round about? Bathing, too. Is it a good coast for bathing?”

  Again he looked at her as he spoke, and for the moment her heart-beat quickened, for it seemed that he could not but see the change in her. Then his sole required dissection, and he looked at his plate again.

  “I believe it is a good coast,” she said. “There were a quantity of bathing-machines. I did not bathe.”

  “No. Very wise, I am sure. One has to be careful about chills as one gets on. I should have been anxious about you, Amy, if I had thought you would be so rash as to bathe.”

  Some instinct of protest prompted her.

  “There would have been nothing to be anxious about,” she said. “I seldom catch a chill. And I often paddled.”

  He laid down his knife and fork and laughed.

  “You paddled!” he asked. “Nonsense, nonsense!”

  She had not meant to tell him, for her reasonable mind had informed her all the time that this was a secret expression of the rejuvenation she was conscious of. But it had slipped out, a thoughtless assertion of the youthfulness she felt.

  “I did indeed,” she said, “and I found it very bracing and invigorating.”

  Then for a moment a certain bitterness welled up within her, born from disappointment at his imperceptiveness.

  “You see I never suffer from gout or rheumatism like you, Lyndhurst,” she said. “I hope you have been quite free from them since I have been away.”

  But his amusement, though it had produced this spirit of rancour in her, had not been in the least unkindly. It was legitimate to find entertainment in the thought of a middle-aged woman gravely paddling, so long as he had no idea that there was a most pathetic side to it. Of that he had no inkling: he was unaware that this paddling was expressive of her feeling of recaptured youth, just as he was unaware that she believed it to be expressed in her face and hair. But this remark was distinctly of the nature of an attack: she was retaliating for his laughter. He could not resist one further answer which might both soothe and smart (like a patent ointment) before he changed the subject.

  “Well, my dear, I’m sure you are a wonderful woman for your years,” he said. “By Jove! I shall be proud if I’m as active and healthy as you in ten years’ time.”

  Dinner was soon over after this, and she left him, as usual, to have his cigarette and glass of port, and went into the drawing-room, and stood looking on the last fading splendour of the sunset in the west. The momentary bitterness in her mind had quite died down again: there was nothing left but a vague, dull ache of flatness and disappointment. He had noticed nothing of all that had caused her such tremulous and secret joy. He had looked on her smoothed and softened face, and seen no difference there, on her brown unfaded hair and found it unaltered. He had only seen that she had put her best gown on, and she almost wished that he had not noticed that, since then she might have had the consolation of thinking that he was ill. It was not, it must be premised, that she meant she would find pleasure in his indisposition, only that an indisposition would have explained his imperceptiveness, which she regretted more than she would have regretted a slight headache for him.

  For a few minutes she was incapable of more than blank and empty contemplation of the utter failure of that from which she had expected so much. Then, like the stars that even now were beginning to be lit in the empty spaces of the sky, fresh points in the dreary situation claimed her attention. Was he preoccupied with other matters, that he was blind to her? His letters, it is true, had been uniformly cheerful and chatty, but a preoccupied man can easily write a letter without betraying the preoccupation that is only too evident in personal intercourse. If this was so, what was the nature of his preoccupation? That was not a cheerful star: there was a green light in it. . . . Another star claimed her attention. Was it Lyndhurst who was blind, or herself who saw too much? She had no idea, till she came to look into the matter closely, how much grey hair was mingled with the brown. Perhaps he had no idea either: its restoration, therefore, would not be an affair of surprise and admiration. But the wrinkles. . . .

  She faced round from the window as he entered, and made another call on her courage and conviction. Though he saw so little, she, quickened perhaps by the light of the green star, saw how good-looking he was. For years she had scarcely noticed it. She put up her small face to him in a way that suggested, though it did not exactly invite a kiss.

  “It is so nice to be home again,” she said.

  The suggestion that she meant to convey occurred to him, but, very reasonably, he dismissed it as improbable. A promiscuous caress was a thing long obsolete between them. Morning and evening he brushed her cheek with the end of his moustaches.

  “Well, then, we’re all pleased,” he said good-humouredly. “Shall I ring for coffee, Amy?”

  She was not discouraged.

  “Do,” she said, “and when we have had coffee, will you fetch a shawl for me, and we will stroll in the garden. You shall show me what new flowers have come out.”

  The intention of that was admirable, the actual proposal not so happy, since a glimmering starlight through the fallen dusk would not conduce to a perception of colour.

  “We’ll stroll in the garden by all means,” he said, “if you think it will not be risky for you. But as to flowers, my dear, it will be easier to appreciate them when it is not dark.”

  Again she put up her face towards him. This time he might, perhaps, have taken the suggestion, but at the moment Parker entered with the coffee.

  “How foolish of me,” she said. “I forgot it was dark. But let us go out anyhow, unless you were thinking of going round to the club.”

  “Oh, time for that, time for that,” said he. “I expect you will be going to bed early after your long journey. I may step round then, and see what’s going on.”

  Without conscious encouragement or welcome on her part, a suspicion darted into her mind. She felt by some process, as inexplicable as that by which certain people are aware of the presence of a cat in the room, that he was going round to see Mrs. Evans.

  “I suppose you have often gone round to the club in the evening since I have been away,” she said.

  “Yes, I have looked in now and again,” he said. “On other evenings I have dropped in to see our friends. Lonely old bachelor, you know, and Harry was not always very lively company. It’s a good thing that boy has gone back to Cambridge, Amy. He was always mooning round after Mrs. Evans.”

  That was a fact: it had often been a slightly inconvenient one. Several times the Major had “dropped in” to see Millie, and found his son already there.

  “But I thought you were rather pleased at that, Lyndhurst,” she said. “You told me you considered it not a bad thing: that it would keep Harry out of mischief.”

  He finished his coffee rather hastily.

  “Yes, within reason, within reason,” he said. “Well, if we are to stroll in the garden, we had better go out. You wanted a shawl, didn’t you? Very wise: where shall I find one?”

  That diverted her again to her own personal efforts.

  “There are several in the second tray of my wardrobe,” she said. “Choose a nice one, Lyndhurst, something that won’t look hideous with my pink silk.”

  The smile, as you might almost say, of coquetry, which accompanied this speech, faded completely as soon as he left the room, and her face assumed that business-like aspect, which the softest and youngest faces wear, when the object is to attract, instead of letting a mutual attraction exercise its inevitable power. Even though Mrs. Ames’ object was the legitimate and laudable desire to attract her own husband, it was strange how common her respectable little countenance appeared. She had adorned herself to attract admiration: coquetry and anxiety were pitifully mingled, even as you may see them in haunts far less respectable than this detached villa, and on faces from which Mrs. Ames would instantly have averted her own. She hoped he would bring a certain white silk shaw
l: two nights ago she had worn it on the verandah after dinner at Overstrand, and the reflected light from it, she had noticed, as she stood beneath a light opposite a mirror in the hall, had made her throat look especially soft and plump. She stood underneath the light now waiting for his return.