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{76} 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{77} 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, 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{78} 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 to-day 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{79} 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 debateable 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{80} 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 any one looks at the speaker, with cheerful cordiality of face, and then turned to his mother again.{81}
“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 sea-side for a day.”
Harry interrupted in the critical manner.
“Why the sea-side?” he asked.
Mr. Pettit turned to him with unabated cordiality.
“How right to ask!” he said. “Because the sea is His, and He made it! Also, they will build sand-castles, and pick up shells. You must come too, my dear Harry, and help us to give them a nice day.”
Harry felt that this was a Philistine here, who needed to be put in his place. He was not really a very rude youth, but one who felt it incumbent on to oppose Christianity, which he regarded as superstition. A bright idea came into his head.
“But His hands prepared the dry land,” he said, “on the same supposition.”
“Certainly; and as the dear mites have always seen the dry land,” said Mr. Pettit, with the utmost good-humour, “we want to show them that God thought of something they never thought of. And then there are the sand-castles.”
Harry was tired, and did not proceed to crush Mr. Pettit with the atheistical arguments that were but commonplace to the Omar Khayyam Club. He was not worth argument: you could only really argue with the enlightened people who fundamentally agreed with you, and he was sure that Mr. Pettit did not fulfil that requirement. So, indulgently, he turned to Mrs. Altham.
“I saw you at Mrs. Evans’ garden-party yester{82}day,” he said. “I think she is the most wonderful person I ever met. She was dining here last night, and I took her into the garden——”
“And showed her the roses,” said Mrs. Altham, unable to restrain herself.
Harry became a parody of himself, though that might seem to be a feat of insuperable difficulty.
“I supposed it would get about,” he said. “That is the worst of a little place like this. Whatever you do is instantly known.”
The slightly viscous remains of the strawberry ice were being handed, and Mr. Pettit was talking to Mrs. Ames and his sister from a pitiably Christian standpoint.
“What did you hear?” asked Harry, in a low voice.
“Merely that she and you went out into the garden after dinner, and that you picked roses for her——”
Harry pushed back his lank hair with his bony hand.
“You have heard all,” he said. “There was nothing more than that. I did not see her home. Her carriage did not come: there was some mistake about it, I suppose. But it was my father who saw her home, not I.”
He laid down the spoon with which he had been consuming the viscous fluid.
“If you hear that I saw her home, Mrs. Altham,” he said, “tell them it is not true. From what you have already told me, I gather there is talk going on. There is no reason for such talk.”
He paused a moment, and then a line or two of the intensely Swinburnian effusion which he had written last night fermented in his head, making him infinitely more preposterous.{83}
“I assure you that at present there is no reason for such talk,” he said earnestly.
Now Mrs. Altham, with her wide interest in all that concerned anybody else, might be expected to feel the intensest curiosity on such a topic, but somehow she felt very little, since she knew that behind the talk there was really very little topic, and the gallant misgivings of poor, ugly Harry seemed to her destitute of any real thrill. On the other hand, she wanted very much to know where Major Ames was, and being endowed with the persistence of the household cat, which you may turn out of a particular arm-chair a hundred times, without producing the slightest discouragement in its mind, she reverted to her own subject again.
“I am sure there is no reason for such talk, Mr. Harry,” she said, with strangely unwelcome conviction, “and I will be sure to contradict it if ever I hear it. I am so glad to hear Major Ames is not ill. I was afraid that his absence from lunch to-day might mean that he was.”
Now Harry, as a matter of fact, had no idea where his father was, since the telephone message had been received by Mrs. Ames.
“Father is quite well,” he said. “He was picking sweet-peas half the morning. He picked a great bunch.”
Mrs. Altham looked round: the table was decorated with the roses of the dinner-party of the evening before.
“Then where are the sweet-peas?” she asked.
But Harry was not in the least interested in the question.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Perhaps they are in{84} the next room. I showed Mrs. Evans last night how the La France roses looked blue when dusk fell. She had never noticed it, though they turn as blue as her eyes.”
“How curious!” said Mrs. Altham. “But I didn’t see the sweet-peas in the next room. Surely if there had been a quantity of them I should have noticed them. Or perhaps they are in the drawing-room.”
At this moment, Mrs. Ames’ voice was heard from the other end of the table.
“Then shall we have our coffee outside?” she said. “Harry, if you will ring the bell——”
There was the pushing back of chairs, and Mrs. Altham passed along the table to the French windows that opened on to the verandah.
“I hear Major Ames has been picking the loveliest sweet-peas all the morning,” she said to her hostess. “It would be such a pleasure to see them. I always admire Major Ames’ sweet-peas.”
Now this was unfortunate, for Mrs. Altham desired information herself, but by her speech she had only succeeded in giving information to Mrs. Ames, who guessed without the slightest difficulty where the sweet-peas had gone, which she had not yet known had been picked. She was already considerably annoyed with her husband for his unceremonious desertion of her luncheon-party, and was aware that Mrs. Altham would cause the fact to be as well known in Riseborough as if it had been inserted in the column of local intelligence in the county paper. But she felt she would sooner put it there herself than let Mrs. Altham know where he and his sweet-peas were. She had no greater objection (or if she had, she studiously concealed it from herself even) to his going to lunch{85} in this improvising manner with Mrs. Evans than if he had gone to lunch with anybody else; what she minded was his non-appearance at an institution so firmly established and so faithfully observed as the lunch that followed the dinner-party. But at the moment her entire mind was set on thwarting Mrs. Altham. She looked interested.
“Indeed, has he been picking sweet-peas?” she said. “I must scold him if it was only that which kept him away from church. I don’t know what he has done with them. Very likely they are in his dressing-room: he often likes to have flowers there. But as you admire his sweet-peas so much, pray walk down the garden, and look at them. You will find them in their full beauty.”
This, of course, was not in the least what Mrs. Altham wanted, since she did not care two straws for the rest of the sweet-peas. But life was scarcely worth living unless she knew where those particular sweet-peas were. As for their being in his dressing-room, she felt that Mrs. Ames must have a very poor opinion of her intellectual capacities, if she thought that an old wife’s tale like that would satisfy it. In this she was partly right: Mrs. Ames had indeed no opinion at all of her mind; on the other hand, she did not for a moment suppose that this suggestion about the dressing-room would content that feeble organ. It was not designed to: the object was to stir it to a wilder and still unsatisfied curiosity. It perfectly succeeded, and from by-ways Mrs. Altham emerged full-speed, like a motor-car, into the high-road of direct question.
“I am sure they are lovely,” she said. “And where is Major Ames lunching?{86}”
Mrs. Ames raised the pieces of her face where there might have been eyebrows in other days. She told one of the truths that Bismarck loved.
“He did not tell me before he went out,” she said. “Perhaps Harry knows. Harry, where is your father lunching?”
Now this was ludicrous. As if it was possible that any wife in Riseborough did not know where her husband was lunching! Harry apparently did not know either, and Mrs. Ames, tasting the joys of the bull-baiter, goaded Mrs. Altham further by pointedly asking Parker, when she brought the coffee, if she knew where the Major was lunching. Of course Parker did not, and so Parker was told to cut Mrs. Altham a nice bunch of sweet-peas to carry away with her.
This pleasant duty of thwarting undue curiosity being performed, Mrs. Ames turned to Mr. Pettit, though she had not quite done with Mrs. Altham yet. For she had heard on the best authority that Mrs. Altham occasionally indulged in the disgusting and unfeminine habit of cigarette smoking. Mrs. Brooks had several times seen her walking about her garden with a cigarette, and she had told Mrs. Taverner, who had told Mrs. Ames. The evidence was overwhelming.
“Mr. Pettit, I don’t think any of us mind the smell of tobacco,” she said, “when it is out of doors, so pray have a cigarette. Harry will give you one. Ah! I forgot! Perhaps Mrs. Altham does not like it.”
Mrs. Altham hastened to correct that impression. At the same time she had a subtle and not quite comfortable sense that Mrs. Ames knew all about her and her cigarettes, which was exactly the impression which that lady sought to convey.{87}
These tactics were all sound enough in their way, but a profounder knowledge of human nature would have led Mrs. Ames not to press home her victory with so merciless a hand. In her determination to thwart Mrs. Altham’s odious curiosity, she had let it be seen that she was thwarting it: she should not, for instance, have asked Parker if she knew of the Major’s whereabouts, for it only served to emphasize the undoubted fact that Mrs. Ames knew (that might be taken for granted) and that she knew that Parker did not, for otherwise she would surely not have asked her.
Consequently Mrs. Altham (erroneously, as far as that went) came to the conclusion that the Major was lunching alone where his wife did not wish him to lunch alone. And in the next quarter of an hour, while they all sat on the verandah, she devoted the mind which her hostess so despised, to a rapid review of all houses of this description. Instantly almost, the wrong scent which she was following led her to the right quarry. She argued, erroneously, the existence of a pretty woman, and there was a pretty woman in Riseborough. It is hardly necessary to state that she made up her mind to call on that pretty woman without delay. She would be very much surprised if she did not find there an immense bunch of sweet-peas and perhaps their donor.
Mrs. Ames’ guests soon went their ways, Mr. Pettit and his sister to the children’s service at three, the Althams on their detective mission, and she was left to herself, except in so far as Harry, asleep in a basket chair in the garden, can be considered companionship. She was not gifted with any very great acuteness of imagination, but this afternoon she found{88} herself capable of conjuring up (indeed, she was incapable of not doing so) a certain amount of vague disquiet. Indeed, she tried to put it away, and refresh her mind with the remembrance of her thwarting Mrs. Altham, but though her disquiet was but vague, and was concerned with things that had at present no real existence at all, whereas her victory over that inquisitive lady was fresh and recent, the disquiet somehow was of more pungent quality, and at last she faced it, instead of attempting any longer to poke it away out of sight.
Millie Evans was undeniably a good-looking woman, undeniably the Major had been considerably attracted last night by her. Undeniably also he had done a very strange thing in stopping to have his lunch there, when he knew perfectly well that there were people lunching with them at home for that important rite of eating up the remains of last night’s dinner. Beyond doubt he had taken her this present of sweet-peas, of which Mrs. Altham had so obligingly informed her; beyond doubt, finally, she was herself ten years her husband’s senior.
It has been said that Mrs. Ames was not imaginative, but indeed, there seemed to be sufficient here, when it was all brought together, to occupy a very prosaic and literal mind. It was not as if these facts were all new to her: that disparity of age between herself and her husband had long lain dark and ominous, like a distant thunder-cloud on the horizon of her mind. Hitherto, it had been stationary there, not apparently coming any closer, and not giving any hint of the potential tempest which might lurk within it. But now it seemed to have moved a little up the sky, and (though this might be mere fancy on her part),{89} there came from it some drowsy and distant echo of thunder.
It must not be supposed that her disquiet expressed itself in Mrs. Ames’ mind in terms of metaphor like this, for she was practically incapable of metaphor. She said to herself merely that she was ten years older than her husband. That she had known ever since they married (indeed, she had known it before), but till now the fact had never seemed likely to be of any significance to her. And yet her grounds for supposing that it might be about to become significant were of the most unsubstantial sort. Certainly if Lyndhurst had not gone out to lunch to-day, she would never have dreamed of finding disquiet in the happenings of the evening before; indeed, apart from Harry’s absurd expedition into the garden, the party had been a markedly successful one, and she had determined to give more of those undomestic entertainments. But the principle of them assumed a strangely different aspect when her husband accepted an invitation of the kind instead of lunching at home, and that aspect presented itself in vivid colours when she reflected that he was ten years her junior.
Mrs. Ames was a practical woman, and though her imagination had run unreasonably riot, so she told herself, over these late events, so that she already contemplated a contingency that she had no real reason to anticipate, she considered what should be her practical conduct if this remote state of affairs should cease to be remote. She had altogether passed from being in love with her husband, so much so, indeed, that she could not recall, with any sense of reality, what that unquiet sensation was like. But she had been in love with him years ago, and that still{90} gave her a sense of possession over him. She had not been in the habit of guarding her possession, since there had never been any reason to suppose that anybody wanted to take it away, but she remembered with sufficient distinctness the sense that Lyndhurst’s garden was becoming to him the paramount interest in his life. At the time that sense had been composed of mixed feelings: neglect and relief were its constituents. He had ceased to expect from her that indefinable sensitiveness which is one of the prime conditions of love, and the growing atrophy of his demands certainly corresponded with her own inclinations. At the same time, though this cessation on his part of the imperative need of her, was a relief, she resented it. She would have wished him to continue being in love with her on credit, so to speak, without the settlement of the bill being applied for. Years had passed since then, but to-day that secondary discontent assumed a primary importance again. It was more acute now than it had ever been, for her possession was not being quietly absorbed into the culture of impersonal flowers, but, so it seemed possible, was directly threatened.
There was the situation which her imagination presented her with, practically put, and she proceeded to consider it from a practical standpoint. What was she to do?
She had the justice to acknowledge that the first clear signals of coolness in their mutual relations, now fifteen years ago, had been chiefly flown by her: she had essentially welcomed his transference of affection to his garden, though she had secretly resented it. At the least, the cooling had been condoned by her. Probably that had been a mistake on her part, and{91} she determined now to rectify it. She, pathetically enough, felt herself young still, and to confirm herself in her view, she took the trouble to go indoors, and look at herself in the glass that hung in the hall. It was inevitable that she should see there not what she really saw, but what, in the main, she desired to see. Her hair, always slightly faded in tone, was not really grey, and even if there were signs of greyness in it there was nothing easier, if you could trust the daily advertisements in the papers, than to restore the colour, not by dyes, but by “purely natural means.” There had been an advertisement of one such desirable lotion, she remembered, in the paper to-day, which she had noticed was supplied by any chemist. Certainly there was a little grey in her hair: that would be easy to remedy. That act of mental frankness led on to another. There were certain premonitory symptoms of stringiness about her throat and of loose skin round her mouth and eyes. But who could keep abreast of the times at all, and not know that there were skin-foods which were magical in their effect? There was one which had impressed itself on her not long before: an actress had written in its praise, affirming that her wrinkles had vanished with three nights’ treatment. Then there was a little, just a little, sallowness of complexion, but after all, she had always been rather sallow. It was a fortunate circumstance: when she got hot she never got crimson in the face like poor Mrs. Taverner.... She was going to town next week for a night, in order to see her dentist, a yearly precaution, unproductive of pain, for her teeth were really excellent, regular in shape, white, undecayed. Lyndhurst, in his early days, had told her they were like pearls, and she had told him{92} he talked nonsense. They were just as much like pearls still, only he did not tell her so. He, poor fellow, had had great trouble in this regard, but it might be supposed his trouble was over now, since artifice had done its utmost for him. She was much younger than him there, though his last set fitted beautifully. But probably Millie had seen they were not real. And then he was distinctly gouty, which she was not. Often had she heard his optimistic assertion that an hour’s employment with the garden-roller rendered all things of rheumatic tendency an impossibility. But she, though publicly she let these random statements pass, and even endorsed them, knew the array of bottles that beleaguered the washing-stand in his dressing-room, where the sweet-peas were not.
The silent colloquy with the mirror in the hall occupied her some ten minutes, but the ten minutes sufficed for the arrival of one conclusion—namely, that she did not intend to be an old woman yet. Subtle art, the art of the hair-restorer (which was not a dye), the art of the skin-feeder must be invoked. She no longer felt at all old, now that there was a possibility of her husband’s feeling young. And lip-salve: perhaps lip-salve, yet that seemed hardly necessary: a few little bitings and mumblings of her lips between her excellent teeth seemed to restore to them a very vivid colour.
She went back to the verandah, where her little luncheon-party had had their coffee, and pondered the practical man?uvres of her campaign of invasion into the territory of youth which had once been hers. The lotion for the hair, as she verified by a consultation with the Sunday paper, took but a fortnight’s application to complete its work. The wrinkle treat{93}ment was easily comprised in that, for it took, according to the eminent actress, no more than three days. It might therefore be wiser not to let the work of rejuvenation take place under Lyndhurst’s eye, for there might be critical passages in it. But she could go away for a fortnight (a fortnight was the utmost time necessary for the wonderful lotion to restore faded colour) and return again after correspondence that indicated that she felt much better and younger. Several times before she had gone to stay alone with a friend of hers on the coast of Norfolk: there would be nothing in the least remarkable in her doing it again.
An objection loomed in sight. If there was any reality in the supposition that prompted her desire to seem young again—namely, a possible attraction of her husband towards Millie Evans, she would but be giving facility and encouragement to that by her absence. But then, immediately the wisdom of the course, stronger than the objection to it, presented itself. Infinitely the wiser plan for her was to act as if unconscious of any such danger, to disarm him by her obvious rejection of any armour of her own. She must either watch him minutely or not at all. Mr. Pettit had alluded in his sermon that morning to the finer of the two attitudes when he reminded them that love thought no evil. It seemed to poor Mrs. Ames that if by her conduct she appeared to think no evil, it came to the same thing.
Her behaviour towards Lyndhurst, when he should come back from Millie’s house, followed as a corollary. She would be completely genial: she would hope he had had a pleasant lunch, and, if he made any apology for his absence, assure him that it was quite unnecessary. Her charity would carry her even further{94} than that: she would say that his absence had been deplored by her guests, but that she had been so glad that he had done as he felt inclined. She would hope that Millie was not tired with her party, and that she and her husband would come to dine with them again soon. It must be while Harry was at home, for he was immensely attracted by Millie. So good for a boy to think about a nice woman like that.
 
Mrs. Ames carried out her programme with pathetic fidelity. Her husband did not get home till nearly tea-time, and she welcomed him with a cordiality that would have been unusual even if he had not gone out to lunch at all. And to do him justice, it must be confessed that his wife’s scheme, as already recounted, was framed to meet a situation which at present had no real existence, except in the mind of a wife wedded to a younger husband. There were data for the situation, so to speak, rather than there was danger of it. He, on his side, was well aware of the irregularity of his conduct, and was prepared to accept, without retaliation, a modicum of blame for it. But no blame at all awaited him; instead of that a cordiality so genuine that, in spite of the fact that a particularly good dinner was provided him, the possible parallel of the prodigal son did not so much as suggest itself to his mind.
Harry had retired to his bedroom soon after dinner with a certain wildness of eye which portended poetry rather than repose, and after he had gone his father commented in the humorous spirit about this.
“Poor old Harry!” he said. “Case of lovely woman, eh, Amy? I was just the same at his age, until I met you, my dear.{95}”
This topic of Harry’s admiration for Mrs. Evans, which his mother had intended to allude to, had not yet been touched on, and she responded cordially.
“You think Harry is very much attracted by Millie, do you mean?” she said.
He chuckled.
“Well, that’s not very difficult to see,” he said. “Why, the rascal tore off a dozen of my best roses for her last night, though I hadn’t the heart to scold him for it. Not a bad thing for a young fellow to burn a bit of incense before a charming woman like that. Keeps him out of mischief, makes him see what a nice woman is like. As I said, I used to do just the same myself.”
“Tell me about it,” said she.
“Well, there was the Colonel’s wife. God bless me, how I adored her. I must have been just about Harry’s age, for I had only lately joined, and she was a woman getting on for forty. Good thing, too, for me, as I say, for it kept me out of mischief. They used to say she encouraged me, but I don’t believe it. Every woman likes to know that she’s admired, eh? She doesn’t snub a boy who takes her out in the garden, and picks his father’s roses for her. But we mustn’t have Harry boring her with his attentions. That’ll never do.”
It seemed to Mrs. Ames of singularly little consequence whether Harry bored Millie Evans or not. She would much have preferred to be assured that her husband did. But the subsequent conversation did not reassure her as to that.
“Nice little woman, she is,” he said. “Thoroughly nice little woman, and naturally enough, my dear, since she is your cousin, she likes being treated in{96} neighbourly fashion. We had a great talk after lunch to-day, and I’m sorry for her, sorry for her. I think we ought to do all we can to make life pleasant for her. drop in to tea, or drop in to lunch, as I did to-day. A doctor’s wife, you know. She told me that some days she scarcely set eyes on her husband, and when she did, he could think of nothing but microbes. And there’s really nobody in Riseborough, except you and me, with whom she feels—dear me, what’s that French word—yes, with whom she feels in her proper milieu. I should like us to be on such terms with her—you being her cousin—that we could always telephone to say we were dropping in, and that she would feel equally free to drop in. Dropping in, you know: that’s the real thing; not to be obliged to wait till you are asked, or to accept weeks ahead, as one has got to do for some formal dinner-party. I should like to feel that we mightn’t be surprised to find her picking sweet-peas in the garden, and that she wouldn’t be surprised to find you or me sitting under her mulberry-tree, waiting for her to come in. After all, intimacy only begins when formality ceases. Shall I give you some soda water?”
Mrs. Ames did not want soda-water: she wanted to think. Her husband had completely expressed the attitude she meant to adopt, but her own adoption of it had presupposed a certain contrition on his part with regard to his unusual behaviour. But he gave her no time for thought, and proceeded to propose just the same sort of thing as she (in her magnanimity) had thought of suggesting.
“Dinner, now,” he said. “Up till last night we have always been a bit formal about dinner here in Riseborough. If you asked General Snookes, you{97} asked Mrs. Snookes; if you asked Admiral Jones, you asked Lady Jones. You led the way, my dear, about that, and what could have been pleasanter than our little party last night? Let us repeat it: let us be less formal. If you want to see Mr. Altham, ask him to come. Mrs. Altham, let us say, wants to ask me: let her ask me. Or if you meet Dr. Evans in the street, and he says it is lunch time, go and have lunch with him, without bothering about me. I shall do very well at home. I’m told that in London it is quite a constant practice to invite like that. And it seems to me very sensible.”
All this had seemed very sensible to Mrs. Ames, when she had thought of it herself. It seemed a little more hazardous now. She was well aware that this plan had caused a vast amount of talk in Riseborough, the knowledge of which she had much enjoyed, since it was of the nature of subjects commenting on the movements of their queen, without any danger to her of dethronement. But she was not so sure that she enjoyed her husband’s cordial endorsement of her innovation. Also, in his endorsement there was some little insincerity. He had taken as instance the chance of his wishing to dine without his wife at Mrs. Altham’s, and they both knew how preposterous such a contingency would be. But did this only prepare the way for a further solitary excursion to Mrs. Evans’? Had Mrs. Evans asked him to dine there? She was immediately enlightened.
“Of course, we talked over your delightful dinner-party of last night,” he said, “and agreed in the agreeableness of it. And she asked me to dine there, en gar?on, on Tuesday next. Of course, I said I must consult you first; you might have asked other people{98} here, or we might be dining out together. I should not dream of upsetting any existing arrangement. I told her so: she quite understood. But if there was nothing going on, I promised to dine there en gar?on.”
That phrase had evidently taken Major Ames’ fancy; there was a ring of youth about it, and he repeated it with gusto. His wife, too, perfectly understood the secret smack of the lips with which he said it: she knew precisely how he felt. But she was wise enough to keep the consciousness of it completely out of her reply.
“By all means,” she said; “we have no engagement for that night. And I am thinking of proposing myself for a little visit to Mrs. Bertram next week, Lyndhurst. I know she is at Overstrand now, and I think ten days on the east coast would do me good.”
He assented with a cordiality that equalled hers.
“Very wise, I am sure, my dear,” he said. “I have thought this last day or two that you looked a little run down.”
A sudden misgiving seized her at this, for she knew quite well she neither looked nor felt the least run down.
“I thought perhaps you and Harry would take some little trip together while I was away,” she said.
“Oh, never mind us, never mind us,” said he. “We’ll rub along, en gar?on, you know. I daresay some of our friends will take pity on us, and ask us to drop in.”
This was not reassuring: nor would Mrs. Ames have been reassured if she could have penetrated at that moment unseen into Mrs. Altham’s drawing-room. She and her husband had gone straight from Mrs. Ames’ house that afternoon to call on Mrs. Evans,{99} and had been told she was not at home. But Mrs. Altham of the eagle-eye had seen through the opened front door an immense bowl of sweet-peas on the hall table, and by it a straw hat with a riband of regimental colours round it. Circumstantial evidence could go no further, and now this indefatigable lady was looking out Major Ames in an old army list.
“Ames, Lyndhurst Percy,” she triumphantly read out. “Born 1860, and I daresay he is older than that, because if ever there was a man who wanted to be thought younger than his years, that’s the one. So in any case, Henry, he is over forty-seven. And there’s the front-door bell. It will be Mrs. Brooks. She said she would drop in for a chat after dinner.”
There was plenty to chat about that evening.