Mrs. Ames (14 page)

‘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 heartbeat 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 that 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 that 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 businesslike 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 shawl: 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.

Fortune was favourable: it was that shawl that he brought, and she turned round for him to put it on her shoulders. Then she faced him again in the remembered position, underneath the light, smiling.

‘Now, I am ready, Lyndhurst,' she said.

He opened the French window for her, and stood to let her pass out. Again she smiled at him, and waited for him to join her on the rather narrow gravel path. There was actually room for two abreast on it, for, on the evening of her dinner party, Harry had walked here side by side with Mrs Evans. But there was only just room.

‘You go first, Amy,' he said, ‘or shall I? We can scarcely walk abreast here.'

But she took his arm.

‘Nonsense, my dear,' she said. ‘There: is there not heaps of room?'

He felt vaguely uncomfortable. It was not only the necessity of putting his feet down one strictly in front of the other that made him so.

‘Anything the matter, my dear?' he asked.

The question was not cruel: it was scarcely even careless. He could hardly be expected to guess, for his perceptions were not fine. Also he was thinking about somebody else, and wondering how late it was. But even if he had had complete knowledge of the situation about which he was completely ignorant, he could not have dealt with it in a more peremptory way. The dreary flatness to which she had been so impassive a prey directly after dinner, the sense of complete failure enveloped her like impenetrable fog. Out of that fog, she hooted, so to speak, like an under-vitalized siren.

‘I am only so glad to get back,' she said, pressing his arm a little. ‘I hoped you were glad, too, that I was back. Tell me what you have been doing all the time I have been away.'

This, like banns, was for the third time of asking. He recalled for her the days one by one, leaving out certain parts of them. Even at the moment, he was astonished to find how vivid his recollection of them was. On Thursday, when he had played golf in the morning, he had lunched with the Evans' (this he stated, for Harry had lunched there too) and he had culled probably the last dish of asparagus in the afternoon. He had dined alone with Harry that night, and Harry had toothache. Next day, consequently, Harry went to the dentist in the morning, and he himself had played golf in the afternoon. That he remembered because he had gone to tea with Mrs Evans afterwards, but that he did not mention, for he had been alone with her, and they had talked about being misunderstood and about affinities. On Saturday Harry had gone back to Cambridge, but, having missed his train, he had made a second start after lunch. He had met Dr Evans in the street that day, going up to the golf links, and since he would otherwise be quite alone in the evening, he had dined with them, ‘en garçon'.

This catalogue of trivial happenings took quite a long time in the recitation. But below the trivialities there was a lurking significance. He was not really in love with Millie Evans, and his assurance to himself on that point was perfectly honest. But (this he did not put so distinctly to himself) he thought that she was tremendously attracted by him. Here was an appeal to a sort of deplorable sense of gallantry - so terrible a word only can describe his terrible mind - and mentally he called her ‘poor little lady.' She was pretty, too, and not very happy. It seemed to be incumbent on him to interest and amuse her. His ‘droppings in' amused her: when he got ready to drop out again, she always asked when he would come to see her next. These ‘droppings in' were clearly bright spots to her in a drab day. They were also bright spots to him, for he was more interested in them than in all his sweet peas. There was a ‘situation' come into his life, something clandestine. It would never do, for instance, to let Amy or the estimable doctor get a hint of it. Probably they would misunderstand it, and imagine there was something to conceal. He had the secret joys of a bloodless intrigue. But, considering its absolute bloodlessness, he was amazingly wrapped up in it. It was no wonder that he did not notice the restored colour of Amy's hair.

He, or rather Mrs Evans, had made a conditional appointment for tonight. If possible, the possibility depending upon Amy's fatigue, he was going to drop in for a chat. Primarily the chat was to be concerned with the lighting of the garden by means of Chinese lanterns, for a nocturnal fête that Mrs Evans meant to give on her birthday. The whole garden was to be lit, and since the entertainment of an illuminated garden, with hot soup, quails and ices, under the mulberry tree was obviously new to Riseborough, it would be sufficiently amusing to the guests to walk about the
garden till suppertime. But there would be super erogatory diversions beyond that, bridge tables in the verandah, a small band at the end of the garden to intervene its strains between the guests and the shrieks of South-Eastern expresses, and already there was an idea of fancy dress. Major Ames favoured the idea of fancy dress, for he had a red velvet garment, sartorially known as a Venetian cloak, locked away upstairs, which was a dazzling affair if white tights peeped out from below it. He knew he had a leg, and only lamented the scanty opportunities of convincing others of the fact. But the lighting of the garden had to be planned first: there was no use in having a leg in a garden, if the garden was not properly lit. But the whole affair was as yet a pledged secret: he could not, as a man of honour, tell Amy about it. Short notice for a fête of this sort was of no consequence, for it was to be a post-prandial entertainment, and the only post-prandial entertainment at present existent in Riseborough was going to bed. Thus everybody would be able to be happy to accept.