Major Ames

“ Major Ames turned to Millie Evans again.
“Beg your pardon, Mrs. Evans,” he said, “but General Fortescue likes to know what’s before him. Yes, downright wicked of you! I’m sure I wish Amy had asked Dr. Evans to-night, but there—you know what Amy is. She’s got a notion that it will make a pleasanter dinner-table not to ask husband and wife always together. She says it’s done a great deal in London now. But they can’t put on to their tables in London such sweet-peas as I grow here in my bit of a garden. Look at those in front of you. Black Michaels, they are. Look at the size of them. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If you didn’t hear me, I said, ‘What’s to be done now?’ I don’t know how you can look Riseborough in the face again, and, upon my word, I don’t see how I can. They’ll point at me in the street, and say, ‘That’s Major Ames, whose wife made a fool of herself.’ That’s what you did, Amy. You made a fool of yourself. And what was the good of it all? Are you any nearer getting the vote than before, because you’ve screamed ‘Votes for Women’ a dozen times? You’ve only given a proof the more of how utterly unfit you are to have anything at all of your own, let alone a vote. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 don’t try stopping in Riseborough, my dear Amy. At least, if you take my advice, you won’t.{179}”
Major Ames was not very intelligent, but the highest intelligence could not have done better. He had learned the trick of slight opposition, just as a stupid dog with a Conservative master can learn to growl for Asquith by incessant repetition. When it has learned it, it does it right. The Major had done it right on this occasion.
“I do not see why Harry should not have a voice in the question of where we spend his vacation,” she said. ”

“ Major Ames put down the glass of champagne he had just sipped, in order to give his loud, hearty laugh.
“Well, well,” he said, “I’m pretty vigorous yet, and can pull the heavy garden roller as well as a couple of gardeners could. I never have a gardener more than a couple of days a week. I do all the work myself. Capital exercise, rolling the lawn, and then I take a rest with a bit of weeding, or picking a bunch of flowers for Amy’s table. ”

“ After all, it is natural to take pleasure in innocent gaiety when one is young.”
Major Ames felt very hot after his walk, and, forgetting the adventure of his hair, nearly removed his straw hat. But providentially he remembered it again just in time.
“Upon my word, Mrs. Evans,” he said jovially, “you make me feel a hundred years old when you talk like that, as if your days of youth and success were over. Why, some one at your garden-party yesterday afternoon told me for a fact that Miss Elsie was the daughter of your husband’s first wife. ”

“ 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, 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. ”

“ But she was markedly less elderly now than she had been at the formal dinner-party of the night before.
Dr. Evans arrived last at the mulberry-tree.
“Jove! what jolly flowers,” he said. “That’s you, Major Ames, isn’t it? How de’do? Well, little woman, how goes it? You did well not to come to church. Awfully hot it was.”
“And a very long sermon, Daddy,” said Elsie.
“Twenty-two minutes: I timed it. Very interesting, though. You’ll stop to lunch, Major Ames, won’t you? We lunch at one always on Sunday.” ”

“ All I meant was that when we have settled what we are to go as, we will tell nobody. There is very little sense in a fancy dress entertainment if you know exactly what you may expect, and as soon as you see a Romeo can say for certain that it is Major Ames, for instance; and I’m sure if he is to go as Romeo, it would be vastly suitable if Mrs. Ames went as Juliet’s nurse.”
“I am not sure that I shall like so much finery,” said Mr. Altham, who was thinking entirely about his own dress, and did not care two straws about Major or Mrs. Ames. “It will seem very strange.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ I’ve been up a couple of hours; nothing like a spell of exercise to buck one up after late hours.”
“Will you have your tea now, Lyndhurst?” she asked.
“Have it now, or wait till I get it, eh? I’ll have it now. Delicious! I always say that nobody makes tea like you.”
Now boisterous spirits at breakfast were not usual with Major Ames, and, as has been said, his wife easily detected a false air about them. Her vague sense of disappointment and grievance began to take more solid outlines. ”

“ Evans; I must say Amy has a famous cook. And what do you think of us all down at Riseborough, now you’ve had time to settle down and look about you? I daresay you and your husband say some sharp things about us, hey? Find us very stick-in-the-mud after London?”
She gave him one of those shy little deprecating glances that made him involuntarily feel that he was a most agreeable companion.
“Ah, you are being wicked now!” she said. “Every one is delightful. So kind, so hospitable. Now, Major Ames, do tell me more about your flowers. ”

“ Barnabas, and then had hastily gathered his bouquet and set out, leaving Harry wandering dreamily about the cinder-paths in the kitchen garden, in the full glory of the discovery that the colour of the scarlet runners was{65} like a clarion. Major Ames had plucked almost his rarest varieties, for to pluck the rarest, since he wished to save their first bloom for seed, would have been on the further side of quixotism and have verged on imbecility, but he had brought the best of his second-best. ”

“ Therefore he mildly remonstrated.
“You would regret it before the month was out,” he said. “For me, I’m an old campaigner, and I hope I can make myself comfortable anywhere. But you would get bored before the end of August, Amy, and when you get bored your digestion is invariably affected.”
“I should like to stop in Riseborough,” said Harry. “I hate the sea.”
“You will go wherever your mother settles to go, my boy,” said Major Ames, still pursuing his plan. “If she wishes to go to Sheffield for August, you and I will go too, and—and no doubt learn something useful about cutlery. ”

“ Nor was the imputation groundless; for failure fatigues any one when under the same conditions success would only stimulate. And in the consciousness of that, her bitterness rose once more to her lips.
“You mustn’t catch cold,” she said. “Let us go in.”
It was still only half-past ten: all this flatness and failure had lasted but a couple of hours, and Major Ames, as soon as his wife had gone upstairs, let himself out of the house. His way lay past the doors of the club, but he did not enter, merely observing through its lit windows that there were a good many men in the smoking-room. ”

“ It concerned Millie and Amy themselves.
Mrs. Evans put back her chin.{236}
“I am sure Cousin Amy ought to be very happy,” she said softly. “You are so devoted to her, and all. I almost think you spoil her, Lyndhurst. It is all so romantic. Fancy being a woman, and as old as Cousin Amy, and yet having a young man so devoted. Harry, too!”
Again a billow of confidence tinged with self-appreciation surged over Major Ames. After all, his wife was much older than him, for he was still a young man, and his youth was being expanded on sweet-peas and the garden roller. ”

“ Well, I flared up at that: what man of spirit wouldn’t have flared up? I left the house at once, and went and finished my breakfast at the club. I should have choked—upon my word, I should have choked if I had stopped there, or got an apoplexy. As it is, I feel devilish unwell.”
Millie got up, and stood for a moment in silence, looking out of the window, white and willowy.
“I can never forgive Cousin Amy,” she said at length. “Never!”
“Well, it is hard,” said Major Ames. “And after all these years! It isn’t exactly the return one might expect, perhaps.”
“It is infamous,” said Millie. ”

“ It was also their duty, when not otherwise engaged, to manufacture snowballs. The General's staff consisted of five Templars (I among the number, with the rank of major) , who carried the General's orders and looked after the wounded.
General Mat Ames, a veteran commander, was no less wide-awake in the disposition of his army. Five companies, each numbering but six men, in order not to present too big a target to our [202] sharpshooters, were to charge the fort from different points, their advance being covered by a heavy fire from the gunners posted in the rear. ”

“ My agent’s pretty wide awake. He would have known if there was likely to be any disturbance. No thanks, Major, one glass of champagne is all I allow myself before making a speech. Capital wine, I know; I always say you give one the best glass of wine to be had in Kent. How’s time, by the way? Ah, we’ve got plenty of time yet.”
“I like to have five minutes’ quiet before going on to the platform,” said Mr. Chilcot.
“Yes, that will be all right. Perhaps we might have the motor five minutes earlier, Cousin Amy. No, no sweetbread thanks. Dear me, what a great dinner you are giving us.” ”

“ 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. ”