E. F. Benson

“ 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. ”

“ She gave him a little smile with lowered eyelids.
“Dear Elsie!” she said. “She is such a comfort to me. She quite manages the house for me, and spares me all the trouble. She always knows how much asparagus ought to cost, and what happens to strawberry ice after a party. I never was a good housekeeper. Wilfred always used to say to me, ‘Go out and enjoy yourself, my dear, and I’ll pay the bills.’ Of course, it was all his kindness, I know, but sometimes I wonder if it would not have been truer kindness to have made me think and contrive more. ”

“ Queensgate Street ran at right-angles to the High Street, debouching into that thoroughfare at the bottom of its steep slope, while the grocer’s shop lay at the top of it. The morning was a hot day of early June, but to a woman of Mrs. Altham’s spare frame and active limbs, the ascent was no more than a pleasurable exercise, and the vivid colour of her face (so unlike the discouraging hues of the breakfast{3} tongue) was not the result of her exertions. ”

“ I think, perhaps, I am too shy and timid with people. When I like them very much I find it difficult to express myself. It is rather sad not to be able to show what you feel quite frankly. It prevents your being understood by the people whom you most want to understand you.”
But beneath this profession of incompetence, it seemed to Major Ames that there lurked a very efficient strength. He felt himself being gradually overpowered by a superior force, a force that did not strike and disable and overbear, but cramped and paralysed the power of its adversary, enfolding him, clinging to him. ”

“ Ames, at any rate, almost wondered whether she had been right in crediting her with any hand in the Harrogate plans, so unruffled was her insipid and deferential cordiality, but down below she was exploring herself and discovering a capacity for feeling that astonished her by its intensity. All her life she had been content to arouse emotion without sharing it, liking to see men attentive to her, liking to see them attracted by her and disposed towards tenderness. ”

“ Major Ames became of lower voice and greater confidence.
“Amy doesn’t wholly agree with me,” he said; “and it’s a pleasure to thrash the matter out with somebody like yourself, who has sensible views on the subject. What use are women in politics? None at all, as you just said. It’s for women to rock the cradle, and rule the world. I say, and I have always said, that to give them a vote would be to wreck their influence, God bless them. But Amy doesn’t agree with me. I say that I will vote—she’s a Conservative, of course, and so am I—I will vote as she wishes me to. ”

“ Elsie does it all now, but when my little girl marries it will be my turn again. Tell me, Major Ames, is it you or cousin Amy who makes everything go so beautifully at your house? I think—shall I say it—I think it must be you. When a man manages a house there is always more precision somehow: you feel sure that everything has been foreseen and provided for. Printed menu-cards, for instance—so chic, so perfectly comme-il-faut.”
Watkins had brought out a large dish, rather like a sponging-tin, for the sweet-peas, and Mrs. Evans had begun the really Herculean labour of putting them in water. ”

“ For a little while, as she took her quick, short steps along these shining sands, she felt herself grow bitter towards Millie Evans. A sort of superior pity was mixed with the bitterness, for she told herself that poor Millie, if she had tried to flirt with Lyndhurst, would speedily find herself flirting all alone. Very likely Millie was guiltless in intention; she had only let her pretty face produce an unchecked effect. Men were attracted by a pretty face, but the owners of such faces ought to keep a curb on them, so to speak. ”

“ Subconsciously she wove images and dreams, scarcely yet knowing that it is out of such dreams that the events and deeds of life inevitably spring. She had scarcely admitted even to herself that her projects for August had gone crookedly: the conviction that Lyndhurst Ames had found himself gouty and in need of Harrogate punctually at the date when he knew that she might be expected there, sufficiently straightened them. ”

“ She felt very well, owing, no doubt, to the brisk air, the milk, the many hours spent out-of-doors, and in consequence she began to feel much younger. An unwonted activity and lightness pervaded her limbs: she took daily a walk of a couple of hours without fatigue, and was the life and soul of the dinner-table, whose other occupants were her hosts, Mrs. Bertram, a cold, grim woman with a moustache, and her husband, milder, with whiskers. Their only passion was for gardening, and they seldom left their grounds; thus Mrs. Ames took her walks unaccompanied. ”

“ Any blow would do: he had no defence: she could strike him as she pleased.
“Elsie comes home next week,” she said. “A pleasant home-coming. And Harry will have to leave Cambridge!”
“But I love her!” he said.
“Nonsense, my dear,” she said. “Men don’t ruin the women they love. Men, I mean!”
That stung; she meant that it should.
“But men keep their word,” he said. “Let me pass.”
“Keep your word to me,” said she, “and try to help poor Millie to keep hers to her husband. It is not a fine thing to steal a man’s wife, Lyndhurst. It is much finer to be respectable.” ”

“ I must go in for gardening, and will you begin to teach me a little? Why is it that your flowers are so much more beautiful than anybody’s? At least, I needn’t ask: it must be because you understand them better than anybody.”
Major Ames felt that this was an uncommonly agreeable woman, and for half a second contrasted her pleasant eagerness to hear about his garden with his wife’s complete indifference to it. She liked flowers on the table, but she scarcely knew a hollyhock from a geranium. ”

“ That violence at present lay dark and quiet within it; its sheath was smooth and faintly bright. It seemed but a play-thing, a parlour-ornament; it could stand on any table in any drawing-room. But the heart of it had never been penetrated by the love that could transform its violence into strength: now its cap was screwed and its fuse fixed. Until the damp and decay of age robbed it of its power, it would always be liable to wreck itself and its surroundings.
These same days that for her were kindling dangerous stuff, passed for Mrs. Ames in a crescendo of awakening interest. ”

“ But she had never denied herself anything in order to increase them, while the time she spent over the flowers was amply compensated for when she saw the eclipse they made of Mrs. Brooks’ embroideries, or when the lilies dropped their orange-staining pollen on to the altar-cloth. Stranger, perhaps, from the emotional point of view, had been her recently attempted rejuvenescence, but even that had been a calculated and materialistic effort. It had not been a manifestation of her love for her husband, or of a desire to awaken his love for her. ”

“ Altham. In the same way Major Ames, with his six feet of solid English bone and muscle, and his fifth decade of years still but half-consumed, felt that Mr. Altham had but provided a scale of comparison uncommonly flattering to himself. Simultaneously, Mr. Altham, with a laurel-wreath round his head, reflected how uncomfortable he would have felt if his laurel-wreath was anchored on no sounder a foundation than a wig, and wondered if gardening (on the principle that all flesh is grass) invariably resulted in so great a growth of tissue. ”

“ 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?” ”

“ There was the irresponsibility of fancy dress, there was the knowledge that Millie was not insensitive to him; there was the sense of his own big, shapely legs in tights, there was dancing and lanterns, and all had been potent intoxicants to Riseborough, which for so long had practised teetotalism with regard to such excitements. Amy herself had been so far carried away by this effervescence of gaiety as to smoke a cigarette, and Heaven knew how far removed from her ordinary code of conduct was such an adventure. ”

“ In the first place, there was the affair of Harry Ames, who, in a manner sufficiently ludicrous and calfish, had been making love to his wife. As any other sensible man would have done, Wilfred Evans had seen almost immediately on his return to Riseborough that Harry was disposed to make himself ridiculous, and had given a word of kindly warning to his wife.
“Snub him a bit, little woman,” he had said. “We’re having a little too much of him. It’s fairer on the boy, too. You’re too kind to him. A woman like you so easily turns a boy’s head. ”

“ Turner’s in a shut cab. As it was, there was no such excuse, and she felt that it would require an effort to walk past the club window, and to traverse the length of the High Street. Female Riseborough, on this warm sunny morning, she knew would be there in force, popping in and out of shops, and holding little conversations on the pavement. There would be but one topic to-day, and for many days yet; it would be long before the autumn novelty lost anything of its freshness. ”

“ Ames waved and kissed her black-gloved hand to her, thinking how very angular curiosity made people, while Mrs. Altham waved back thinking that it was no use trying to look important if you were only five foot two, so that honours were about divided. Finally, just before she turned into her own gate, she saw coming along the road, walking very fast, as his custom was, the man she respected and even revered more than any one in Riseborough. She would have liked to wave her hand to him too, only the Reverend Thomas Pettit would certainly have thought such a proceeding to be very odd conduct. ”

“ But if she were not so nice a woman, and so far from anything like flirtatiousness, I should feel myself obliged to speak to Harry and warn him. She seems very happy and cheerful. I daresay she feels like me, and is rejoiced to think that Harrogate is doing her husband good.
“Write to me soon again, my dear, and give me another excellent account of yourself. Was it not queer that you settled to go to Harrogate just when Millie settled not to? If you were not such good friends, one would think you wanted to avoid each other! Well, I must stop. Millie is dining with us, and I must order dinner.” ”

“ Many of them were unmarried and already of middle-age; their natural human instincts had never known the blossoming and honey which the fulfilment of their natures would have brought. To the eagerness and sincerity with which they welcomed a work that demanded justice for their sex, there was added this excitement of doing something at last. There was an opportunity of expansion, of stepping out, under the stimulus of an idea, into an experience that was real. ”

“ She, guilty in the real reason for wishing to remain here, though coherent and logical enough in the account she had given him of her reason, thought, grossly wronging him, that some seed of suspicion might hereby enter her husband’s mind.
“There is sure to be some one here,” she said. “The Althams, for instance, do not go away till the middle of August.”
“You do not particularly care for them,” said he.
“No, but they are better than nobody. All day at Harrogate I have nobody. It is not companionship to sit in the room with you and Elsie playing chess. Besides, the Westbournes will be at home. ”

“ Major Ames got up, pushing his chair violently back.
“Well, here’s a pretty state of things,” he cried; “that you should be telling me to apologize for last night’s degrading exhibition! I wonder what you’ll be asking next? A vote of thanks from the Mayor, I shouldn’t wonder, and an illuminated address. You teaching me what I ought to do! I should have thought a woman would have been only too glad to trust to her husband, if he was so kind, as I have been, as to want to get her out of the consequences of her folly. ”

“ I shall go over there a great deal, I dare say. Also I shall be in my own house, which is comfortable, and which I am fond of. Our lodgings at Harrogate disgust me. They are all oilcloth and plush; there is nowhere to sit when they are clearing away.”
His face was still clouded.
“But it is so odd for a married woman to stop alone like that,” he said.
“I think it is far odder for her husband to want her to spend a month of loneliness and boredom in lodgings,” she said. “Because I have never complained, Wilfred, you think I haven’t detested it. ”

“ But Amy got up quickly.
“Come and sit down at once, Millie,” she said. “We have got to talk. So let us make it as easy as we can for each other.”
Millie was holding her muff up to her face, and peered at her from above it, wild-eyed, terrified.
“It isn’t you I want,” she said. “Where is Lyndhurst? I—I had an appointment with him. He was late—we—we were going a drive together. What do you know, Cousin Amy?” she almost shrieked; “and where is he?”
“Sit down, Millie, as I tell you,” said Mrs. Ames very quietly. “There is nothing to be frightened at. I know everything.” ”

“ Evans gave a little sigh.
“I never heard it so beautifully expressed,” she said. “Major Ames, why don’t you go in for politics?{47}”
Major Ames felt himself flattered; he felt also that he deserved the flattery. Hence, to him now, it ceased to be flattery, and became a tribute. He became more confidential, and vastly more vapid.
“My dear lady,” he said, “politics is a dirty business now-a-days. We can serve our cause best by living a quiet and dignified life, without ostentation, as you see, but by being gentlemen. ”

“ Like a good child who eats and digests what is given him, so Mr. Altham, even in his early manhood, had accepted life exactly as he found it, and had seldom wondered what it was all about, or what it was made of. ”

“ 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!{294}”
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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.
There was a Suffragette meeting at four, but she was prepared to be late for that, or, if necessary, to fail in attendance altogether. ”

“ Don’t frown, you look best when you are laughing. I get so tired of frowning faces. Wilfred so often frowns all dinner-time when he is thinking over something connected with microbes. And he frowns over his chess, when he cannot make up his mind whether to exchange bishops. We play chess every evening. ”

“ But will they really take my cousin James’s place away from him? I think Radicals must be wicked.”
“More fools than knaves, I always say,” said Major Ames magnanimously. “They are deluded, like the poor Suffragettes. Suffragettes now! A woman’s sphere of influence lies in her home. Women are the queens of the earth; I’ve often said that, and what do queens want with votes? Would Amy have any more influence in Riseborough if she had a vote? ”

“ 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. ”

“ Ideas are dangerous things, and should be kept behind a fireguard, for fear that the children, of whom this world largely consists, should burn their fingers, thinking that these bright, sparkling toys are to be played with. Mrs. Ames, in spite of her unfamiliarity with them, did not fall into this error. She realized that if she was to warm herself, to get the glow of the fire in her cramped and frozen limbs, she must treat it with respect, and learn to handle it. ”