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 inthe 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 lunchin 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?”
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.
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 foundherself 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),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 stillgave 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, andshe 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 himhe 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 manœuvres 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 treatment 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 furtherthan 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.”
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 inneighbourly 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 propermilieu. 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, youasked 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 garçon, on Tuesday next. Of course, I said I must consult you first; you might have asked other peoplehere, 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 thereen garçon.”
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 garçon, 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,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.
Mrs. Amesmight or might not have been run down when she left Riseborough the following week, but nothing can be more certain than that she was considerably braced up seven days after that. The delicious freshness of winds off the North Sea, tempering the heat of brilliant summer suns, may have had something to do with it, and she certainly had more colour in her face than was usual with her, which was the legitimate effect of the felicitous weather. There was more colour in her hair also, and though that, no doubt, was a perfectly legitimate effect too, being produced by purely natural means, as the label on the bottle stated, the sun and wind were not accountable for this embellishment.
She had spent an afternoon in London—chiefly in Bond Street—on her way here, and had gone to a couple of addresses which she had secretly snipped out of the daily press. The expenditure of a couple of pounds, which was already yielding her immense dividends in encouragement and hope, had put her into possession of a bottle with a brush, a machine that, when you turned a handle, quivered violently like a motor-car that is prepared to start, and a small jar of opaque glass, which contained the miraculous skin-food. With these was being wrought the desired marvels; with these, as with a magician’s rod, she was conjuring, so she believed, the remote enchantments of youth back to her.
After quite a few days change became evident, and daily that change grew greater. As regards her hair, the cost, both of time and material, in this miracle-working, was of the smallest possible account. Morning and evening, after brushing it, she rubbed in a mere teaspoonful of a thin yellow liquid, which, as the advertisement stated, was quite free from grease or obnoxious smell, and did not stain the pillow. This was so simple that it really required faith to embark upon the treatment, for from the time of Hebrew prophets, mankind have found it easier to do “some great thing” than merely to wash in the Jordan. But Mrs. Ames, luckily, had shown her faith, and by the end of a week the marvellous lotion had shown its works. Till now, though her hair could not be described as grey, there was a considerable quantity of grey in it: now she examined it with an eye that sought for instead of shutting itself to such blemish, and the reward of its search was of the most meagre sort. There was really no grey left in it: it might have been, as far as colour could be taken as a test of age, the hair of a young woman. It was not very abundant in quantity, but the lotion had held out no promises on that score; quality, not quantity, was the sum of its beckoning. The application of the skin-food was more expensive: she had to use more and it took longer. Nightly she poured a can of very hot water into her basin, and with a towel over her head to concentrate the vapour, she steamed her face over it for some twenty minutes. Emerging red and hot and stifled, she wiped off the streams of moisture, and with finger-tips dipped in this marvellous cream, tapped and dabbed at the less happy regions between her eyebrows, outsideher eyes, across her forehead, at the corners of her mouth, and up and down her neck. Then came the use of the palpitating machine; it whirred and buzzed over her, tickling very much. For half-an-hour she would make a patient piano of her face, then gently remove such of the skin-food as still stayed on the surface, and had not gone within to do its nurturing work. Certainly this was a somewhat laborious affair, but the results were highly prosperous. There was no doubt that to a perfectly candid and even sceptical eye, a week’s treatment had produced a change. The wrinkles were beginning to be softly erased: there was a perceptible plumpness observable in the leaner places. Between the bouts of tapping and dabbing she sipped the glass of milk which she brought up to bed with her, as the deviser of the skin-food recommended. She drank another such glass in the middle of the morning, and digested them both perfectly.
As these external signs appeared and grew there went on within her an accompanying and corresponding rejuvenation of spirit. 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.
Miles of firm sands, when the tide was low, subtendedthe cliffs on which Mr. Bertram’s house stood, and often Mrs. Ames preferred to walk along the margin of the sea rather than pursue more inland routes, and to-day, after her large and wholesome lunch (the physical stimulus of the east coast, combined with this mental stimulus of her object in coming here, gave her an appetite of dimensions unknown at Riseborough) she took a maritime way. The tide was far out, and the lower sands, still shining and firm from the retained moisture of its retreat, made uncommonly pleasant walking. She had abandoned heeled footgear, and had bought at a shop in the village, where everything inexpensive, from wooden spades to stamps and sticking plaster was sold, a pair of canvas coverings technically known as sand-shoes. They laced up with a piece of white tape, and were juvenile, light, and easily removable. They, and the great sea, and the jetsam of stranded seaweed, and the general sense of youth and freshness, made most agreeable companions, and she felt, though neither Mr. nor Mrs. Bertram was with her, charmingly accompanied. Her small, toadlike face expressed a large degree of contentment, and piercing her pleasant surroundings as the smell of syringa pierces through the odour of all other flowers, was the sense of her brown hair and fast-fading wrinkles. That gave her an inward happiness which flushed with pleasure and interest all she saw. In the lines of pebbles left by the retreating tide was an orange-coloured cornelian, which she picked up, and put in her pocket. She could have bought the same, ready polished, for a shilling at the cheap and comprehensive shop, but to find it herself gave her a pleasure not to be estimated at all in terms of silver coinage. Furtheron there was an attractive-looking shell, which she also picked up, and was about to give as a companion to the cornelian, when a sudden scurry of claw-like legs about its aperture showed her that a hermit-crab was domiciled within, and she dropped it with a little scream and a sense of danger escaped both by her and the hermit-crab. There were attractive pieces of seaweed, which reminded her of years when she collected the finer sorts, and set them, with the aid of a pin, on cartridge-paper, spreading out their delicate fronds and fern-like foliage. There were creamy ripples of the quiet sea, long-winged gulls that hovered fishing; above all there was the sense of her brown hair and smoothed face. She felt years younger, and she felt she looked years younger, which was scarcely less solid a satisfaction.
It pleased her, but not acutely or viciously, to think of Mrs. Altham’s feelings when she made her rejuvenated appearance in Riseborough. It was quite certain that Mrs. Altham would suspect that she had been “doing something to herself,” and that Mrs. Altham would burst with envy and curiosity to know what it was she had done. Although she felt very kindly towards all the world, she did not deceive herself to such an extent as to imagine that she would tell Mrs. Altham what she had done. Mrs. Altham was ingenious and would like guessing. But that lady occupied her mind but little. The main point was that in a week from now she would go home again, and that Lyndhurst would find her young. She might or might not have been right in fearing that Lyndhurst was becoming sentimentally interested in Millie Evans, and she was quite willing to grant that her grounds for that fear were of the slenderest.But all that might be dismissed now. She herself, in a week from now, would have recaptured that more youthful aspect which had been hers while he was still of loverlike inclination towards her. What might be called regular good looks had always been denied her, but she had once had her share of youth. To-day she felt youthful still, and once again, she believed, looked as if she belonged to the enchanted epoch. She had no intention of using this recapture promiscuously: she scarcely desired general admiration: she only desired that her husband should find her attractive.
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. Their faces were not their faults, but rather their misfortunes. A woman with a pretty face would be wise to make herself rather reserved, so that her manner would chill anybody who was inclined.... But the whole subject now was obsolete. If there had been any danger, there would not be any more, and she did not blame Millie. She must ask Millie to dine with themen famille, which was much nicer thanen garçon, as soon as she got back.
It might be gathered from this account of Mrs. Ames’ self-communings that deep down in her nature their lay a strain of almost farcical fatuousness. Butshe was not really fatuous, unless it is fatuous to have preserved far out into the plains of middle-age some vision of the blue mountains of youth. It is true that for years she had been satisfied to dwell on these plains; now, her fear that her husband, so much younger than herself, was turning his eyes to blue mountains that did not belong to him, made her desire to get out of the plains and ascend her own blue mountains again and wave to him from there, and encourage his advance. She felt exceedingly well, and in consequence told herself that in mind, as well as physical constitution, she was young still, while the effect of the bottles which she used with such regularity made her believe that the outward signs of age were erasible. She seemed to have been granted a new lease of life in a tenement that it was easy to repair. Her whole nature felt itself to be quickened and vivified.
She had gone far along the sands, and the tide was beginning to flow again. All round her were great empty spaces, a shipless sea, a cloudless sky, a beach with no living being in sight. A sudden unpremeditated impulse seized her, and without delay she sat down on the shore, and took off her shoes and stockings. Then, pulling up her skirts, she hastily ran down to the edge of the water, across a little belt of pebbles that tickled and hurt her soft-soled feet, and waded out into the liquid rims of the sea. She was astonished and amazed at herself that the idea of paddling had ever come into her head, and more amazed that she had had the temerity to put it into execution. For the first minute or two the cold touch of the water on her unaccustomed ankles and calves made her gasp a little, but for all the strangeness of these sensations she felt that paddling, playing like a child in the shallow waters, expressed the tone of her mind, just as the melody of a song expresses the words to which it is set. If she had had a spade, she would certainly have built a sand-castle and dug moats about it, and a smile lit up her small face at the thought of purchasing one at the universal shop, and furtively conveying it to these unfrequented beaches. And the smile almost ended in a blush when she tried to imagine what Riseborough society would say if it became known that their queen not only paddled in the sea, but seriously contemplated buying a wooden spade in order to conduct building operations on lonely shores.
The paddling, though quite pleasant, was not so joyous as the impulse to paddle had been, and it was not long before she sat down again on the beach and tried to get the sand out of the small, tight places between her toes, and to dry her feet and plump little legs with a most exiguous handkerchief. But even in the midst of these troublesome operations, her mind still ran riot, and she planned to secrete about her person one of her smaller bedroom towels when she went for her walk next day. And she felt as if this act of paddling must have aided in the elimination of wrinkles. For who except the really young could want to paddle? To find that she had the impulse of the really young was even better than to cultivate, though with success, the appropriate appearance. All the way home this effervescence of spirit was hers, which, though it definitely sprang from the effects of the lotion, the skin-food and the tonic air, produced in her an illusion that was complete. She was certainly ascending her remote blue mountains again,and through a clarified air she could look over the plains, and see how very flat they had been. That must all be changed: there must be more variety and gaiety introduced into her days. For years, as she saw now, her life had been spent in small, joyless hospitalities, in keeping her place as accredited leader of Riseborough’s socialities, in paying her share towards the expenses of the house. They did not laugh much at home: there had seemed nothing particular to laugh about, and certainly they did not paddle. She was forming no plan for paddling there now, irrespective of the fact that a muddy canal, which was the only water in the neighbourhood, did not encourage the scheme, but there must be introduced into her life and Lyndhurst’s more of the spirit that had to-day prompted her paddling. Exactly what form it should take she did not clearly foresee, but when she had recaptured the spirit as well as the appearance of youth, there was no fear that it would find any difficulty in expressing itself suitably. All aglow, especially as to her feet, which tingled pleasantly, she arrived at her host’s house again. They were both at work in the garden: Mrs. Bertram was killing slugs in the garden beds, Mr. Bertram worms on the lawn.
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 quitepleasantly, 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 dineen garçonwith 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 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 fearof 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 itsdestiny 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 thathe 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 mostpathetic 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 had 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 ourfriends. 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 thisdetached 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 undervitalized 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 to-night. If possible, the possibility depending on 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 wholegarden 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 supper-time. But there would be supererogatory 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.
A rapidrésuméof this made an undercurrent in his mind, as he went through, in speaking voice, the history of the last days. Up and down the narrow path they passed, she still with her hand in his arm, questioning, showing an inconceivable interest in the passage of the days from which he had left out all real points of interest. His patience came to an end before hers.
“Upon my word, my dear,” he said, “it’s getting a little chilly. Shall we go in, do you think? I’m sure you are tired with your journey.”
There was nothing more coming: she knew that. But even in the midst of her disappointment, she found consolation. Daylight would show the re-establishment of her youthfulness more clearly than electric light had done. Every one looked about the same by electric light. And though, in some secret manner, she distrusted his visit to the club, she knew how impolitic it would be to hint, however remotely, at such distrust. It was much better this evening to acquiesce in the imputation of fatigue. 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. On arrival at the Doctor’s he found that Elsie and her father were playing chess in the drawing-room, and that Mrs. Evans was out in the garden. He chose to go straight into the garden, and found her sitting under the mulberry, dressed in white, and looking rather like the Milky Way. She did not get up, but held out her hand to him.
“That is nice of you,” she said. “How is Cousin Amy?”
“Amy is very well,” said he. “But she’s gone tobed early, a little tired with the journey. And how is Cousin Amy’s cousin?”
He sat down on the basket chair close beside her which creaked with his weight.
“I must have a special chair made for you,” she said. “You are so big and strong. Have you seen Cousin Amy’s cousin’s husband?”
“No: I heard you were out here. So I came straight out.”
She got up.
“I think it will be better, then, if we go in, and tell him you are here,” she said. “He might think it strange.”
Major Ames jumped up with alacrity: with his alacrity was mingled a pleasing sense of adventure.
“By all means,” he said. “Then we can come out again.”
She smiled at him.
“Surely. He is playing chess with Elsie. I do not suppose he will interrupt his game.”
Apparently Dr. Evans did not think anything in the least strange. On the whole, this was not to be wondered at, since he knew quite well that Major Ames was coming to talk over garden illumination with his wife.
“Good evening, Major,” he said; “kind of you to come. You and my little woman are going to make a pauper of me, I’m told. There, Elsie, what do you say to my putting my knight there? Check.”
“Pig!” said Elsie.
“Then shall we go out, Major Ames?” said Millie. “Are you coming out, Wilfred?”
“No, little woman. I’m going to defeat yourdaughter indoors. Come and have a glass of whisky and soda with me before you go, Major.”
They went out again accordingly into the cool starlight.
“Wilfred is so fond of chess,” she said. “He plays every night with Elsie, when he is at home. Of course, he is often out.”
This produced exactly the effect that she meant. She did not comment or complain: she merely made a statement which arose naturally from what was going on in the drawing-room.
But Major Ames drew the inference that he was expected to draw.
“Glad I could come round,” he said. “Now for the lanterns. We must have them all down the garden wall, and not too far apart, either. Six feet apart, eh? Now I’ll step the wall and we can calculate how many we shall want there. I think I step a full yard still. Not cramped in the joints yet.”
It took some half hour to settle the whole scheme of lighting, which, since Major Ames was not going to pay for it, he recommended being done in a somewhat lavish manner. With so large a number of lanterns, it would be easily possible to see his leg, and he was strong on the subject of fancy dress.
“There’ll be some queer turn-outs, I shouldn’t wonder,” he said; “but I expect there will be some creditable costumes too. By Jove! it will be quite the event of the year. Amy and I, with our little dinners, will have to take a back seat, as they say.”
“I hope Cousin Amy won’t think it forward of me,” said Millie.
Major Ames said that which is written “Pshaw.” “Forward?” he cried. “Why, you are bringing a bit of life among us. Upon my word, we wanted rousing up a bit. Why, you are a public benefactor.”
They had sat down to rest again after their labour of stepping out the brick walls under the mulberry-tree, where the grass was dry, and only a faint shimmer of starlight came through the leaves. At the bottom of the garden a train shrieked by, and the noise died away in decrescent thunder. She leaned forward a little towards him, putting up her face much as Amy had done.