“Ah, if only I thought I was making things a little pleasant,” she said.
Suddenly it struck Major Ames that he was expected to kiss her. He leaned forward, too.
“I think you know that,” he said. “I wish I could thank you for it.”
She did not move, but in the dusk he could see she was smiling at him. It looked as if she was waiting. He made an awkward forward movement and kissed her.
There was silence a moment: she neither responded to him nor repelled him.
“I suppose people would say I ought not to have let you,” she said. “But there is no harm, is there? After all, you are a—a sort of cousin. And you have been so kind about the lanterns.”
Major Ames was thinking almost entirely about himself, hardly at all about her. An adventure, an intrigue had begun. He had kissed somebody else’s wife and felt the devil of a fellow. But with the wine of this emotion was mingled a touch of alarm. It would be wise to call a halt, take his whisky and soda with her husband, and get home to Amy.
Mrs. Althamwaited with considerable impatience next day for the return of her husband from the club, where he went on most afternoons, to sit in an arm-chair from tea-time to dinner and casually to learn what had happened while he had been playing golf. She had been to call on Mrs. Ames in the afternoon, and in consequence had matter of considerable importance to communicate. She could have supported that retarded spate of information, though she wanted to burst as soon as possible, but she had also a question to ask Henry on which a tremendous deal depended. At length she heard the rattle of his deposited hat and stick in the hall, and she went out to meet him.
“How late you are, Henry,” she said; “but you needn’t dress. Mrs. Brooks, if she does come in afterwards, will excuse you. Dinner is ready: let us come in at once. Now, you were at the club last night, after dinner. You told me who was there; but I want to be quite sure.”
Mr. Altham closed his eyes for a moment as he sat down. It looked as if he was saying a silent grace, but appearances were deceptive. He was only thinking, for he knew his wife would not ask such a question unless something depended on it, and he desired to be accurate.
Then he opened them again, and helped the soup with a name to each spoonful.
“General Fortescue,” he said. “Young Morton. Mr. Taverner, Turner, Young Turner.”
That was five spoonfuls—three for his wife, two for himself. He was not very fond of soup.
“And you were there all the time between ten and eleven?” asked his wife.
“Till half-past eleven.”
“And there was no one else?”
Mr. Altham looked up brightly.
“The club waiter,” he said, “and the page. The page has been dismissed for stealing sugar. The sugar bill was preposterous. That was how we found out. Did you mean to ask about that?”
“No, my dear. Nor do I want to know.”
At the moment the parlour-maid left the room, and she spoke in an eager undertone.
“Mrs. Ames told me that Major Ames went up to the club last night, when she went to bed at half-past ten,” she said. “You told me at breakfast whom you found there, but I wanted to be sure. Call them Mr. and Mrs. Smith and then we can go on talking.”
The parlour-maid came back into the room.
“Yes, Mr. Smith apparently went up to the club at half-past ten,” she said. “But he can’t have gone to the club, for in that case you would have seen him. It has occurred to me that he didn’t feel well, and went to the doctor’s.”
“It seems possible,” said Mr. Altham, not without enthusiasm, understanding that “doctor” meant “doctor,” and which doctor.
“We have all noticed how many visits he has been paying to—to Dr. Jones,” said Mrs. Altham, “during the time Mrs. Smith was away. But to pay anotherone on the very evening of her return looks as if—as if something serious was the matter.”
“My dear, there’s nothing whatever to show that Major Ames went to the doctor’s last night,” he said.
Mrs. Altham gave him an awful glance, for the parlour-maid was in the room, and this thoughtless remark rendered all the diplomatic substitution of another nomenclature entirely void and useless.
“Mrs. Smith, I should say,” added Mr. Altham in some confusion, proceeding to make it all quite clear to Jane, in case she had any doubts about it.
“Suggest to me any other reasonable theory as to where he was, then,” said Mrs. Altham.
“I can’t suggest where he was, my dear,” said Mr. Altham, finding his legal training supported him, “considering that there is no evidence of any kind that bears upon the matter. But to know that a man was not in one given place does not show with any positiveness that he was at any other given place.”
“No doubt, then, he went shopping at half-past ten last night,” said Mrs. Altham, with deep sarcasm. “There are so many shops open then. The High Street is a perfect blaze of light.”
Mr. Altham could be sarcastic, too, though he seldom exercised this gift.
“It quite dazzles one,” he observed.
Mrs. Altham no doubt was vexed at her husband’s sceptical attitude, and she punished him by refraining from discussing the point any further, and from giving him the rest of her news. But this severity punished herself also, for she was bursting to tell him. When Jane had finally withdrawn, the internal pressure became irresistible.
“Mrs. Ames has done something to her hair,Henry,” she said; “and she has done something to her face. I had a good mind to ask her what she had used. I assure you there was not a grey hair left anywhere, and a fortnight ago she was as grey as a coot!”
“Coots are bald, not grey,” remarked her husband.
“That is mere carping, Henry. She is brown now. 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?”
These pleasant considerations were discontinued by the sound of the postman’s tap on the front door, and since the postman took precedence of everybody and everything, Mr. Altham hurried out to see what excitements he had piloted into port. Unfortunately, there was nothing for him, but there was a large, promising-looking envelope for his wife. It was stiff, too, and looked like the receptacle of an invitation card.
“One for you, my dear,” he said.
Mrs. Altham tore it open, and gave a great gasp.
“You would not guess in a hundred tries,” she said.
“Then be so kind as to tell me,” remarked her husband.
Mrs. Altham read it out all in one breath without stops.
“Mrs. Evans at home Thursday July 20 10 p.m. Shakespeare Fancy Dress well I never!”
For a while little the silence of stupefaction reigned. Then Mr. Altham gave a great sigh.
“I have never been to a fancy dress ball,” he said. “I think I should feel very queer and uncomfortable. What are we meant to do when we get there, Julia? Just stand about and look at each other. It will seem very strange. What would you recommend me to be? I suppose we ought to be a pair.”
Mrs. Altham, to do her justice, had not thought seriously about her personal appearance for years. But, as she got up from the table, and consciously faced the looking-glass over the chimney-piece, it is idle to deny that she considered it now. She was not within ten years of Mrs. Ames’ age, and it struck her, as she carefully regarded herself in a perfectly honest glass, that even taking into full consideration all that Mrs. Ames had been doing to her hair and her face, she herself still kept the proper measure of their difference of years between them. But it was yet too early to consider the question of her impersonation. There were other things suggested by the contemplation of a fancy-dress ball to be considered first. There was so much, in fact, that she hardly knew where to begin. So she whisked everything up together, in the manner of a sea-pie, in which all that is possibly edible is put in the oven and baked.
“There will be time enough to talk over that, my dear,” she said, “for if Mrs. Evans thinks we are allgoing to lash out into no end of expense in getting dresses for her party, she is wrong as far as I, for one, am concerned. For that matter you can put on your oldest clothes, and I can borrow Jane’s apron and cap, and we can go as Darby and Joan. Indeed, I do not know if I shall go at all—though, of course, one wouldn’t like to hurt Mrs. Evans’ feelings by refusing. Do you know, Henry, I shouldn’t in the least wonder if we have seen the last of Mrs. Ames and all her airs of superiority and leadership. You may depend upon it that Mrs. Evans did not consult her before she settled to give a fancy dress party. It is far more likely that she and Major Ames contrived it all between them, while Mrs. Ames was away, and settled what they should go as, and I daresay it will be Romeo and Juliet. I should not be in the least surprised if Mrs. Ames did not go to the party at all, but tried to get something up on her own account that very night. It would be like her, I am sure. But whether she goes or not, it seems to me that we have seen the last of her queening it over us all. If she does not go, I should think she would be the only absentee, and if she does, she goes as Mrs. Evans’ guest. All these years she has never thought of a fancy dress party——”
Mrs. Altham broke off in the middle of her address, stung by the splendour of a sudden thought.
“Or does all this staying away on her part,” she said, “and dyeing her hair, and painting her face, mean that she knew about it all along, and was going to be the show-figure of it all? I should not wonder if that was it. As likely as not, she and Major Ames will come as Hamlet and Ophelia, or something equally ridiculous, though I am sure as far as the ‘tootoo solid flesh’ goes, Major Ames would make an admirable Hamlet, for I never saw a man put on weight in the manner he does, in spite of all the garden rolling, which I expect the gardener does for him really. But whatever is the truth of it all, and I’m sure every one is so secretive here in Riseborough nowadays, that you never know how many dined at such a place on such a night unless you actually go to the poulterer’s and find out whether one chicken or two was sent,—what was I saying?”
She had been saying a good deal. Mr. Altham correctly guessed the train of thought which she desired to recall.
“In spite of the secretiveness——” he suggested.
That served the purpose.
“No, my dear Henry,” said his wife rapidly, “I accuse no one of secretiveness: if I did, you misunderstood me. 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.”
“Nonsense, my dear; we will dine in our fancy dresses for an evening or two before, and you will get quite used to it, whatever it is. Henry, do you remember my white satin gown, which I scarcely wore a dozen times, because it seemed too grand forRiseborough? It was too, I am sure: you were quite right. It has been in camphor ever since. I used to wear my Roman pearls with it. There are three rows, and the clasp is of real pearls. The very thing for Cleopatra.”
“I recollect perfectly,” said Mr. Altham. His mind instantly darted off again to the undoubted fact that whereas Major Ames was stout, he himself was very thin. If he had been obliged to describe his figure at that moment, he would have said it was boyish. The expense of a wig seemed of no account.
“Well, my dear, white dress and pearls,” said his wife. “You are not very encouraging. With that book of Egyptian antiquities, I can easily remodel the dress. And I remember reading in a Roman history that Cleopatra was well over thirty when Julius Cæsar was so devoted to her. And by the busts he must have been much balder than you!”
It is no use denying that this was a rather heavy blow. Ever since the mention of the word Cleopatra, he had seen himself complete, with a wig, in another character.
“But Julius Cæsar was sixty,” he observed, with pardonable asperity. “I do not see how I could make up as a man of sixty. And for that matter, my dear, though I am sure no one would think you were within five years of your actual age, I do not see how you could make up as a mere girl of thirty. Why should we not go as ‘Antony and Cleopatra, ten years later’? It would be better than to go as Julius Cæsar and Cleopatra ten years before!”
Mrs. Altham considered this. It was true that she would find it difficult to look thirty, however many Roman pearls she wore.
“I do not know that it is such a bad idea of yours, Henry,” she said. “Certainly there is no one in the world who cares about her age, or wants to conceal it, less than I. And there is something original about your suggestion—Antony and Cleopatra ten years later—Ah, there is the bell, that will be Mrs. Brooks coming in. And there is the telephone also. Upon my word, we never have a moment to ourselves. I should not wonder if half Riseborough came to see us to-night. Will you go to the telephone and tell it we are at home? And not a word to anybody, Henry, as to what we are thinking of going as. There will be our surprise, at any rate, however much other people go talking about their dresses. If you are being rung up to ask about your costume, say that you haven’t given it a thought yet.”
For the next week Mrs. Altham was thoroughly in her element. She had something to conceal, and was in a delicious state of tension with the superficial desire to disclose her own impersonation, and the deep-rooted satisfaction of not doing so. To complete her happiness, the famous white satin still fitted her, and she was nearly insane with curiosity to know what Major and Mrs. Ames “were going to be,” and what the whole history of the projected festivity was. In various other respects her natural interest in the affairs of other people was satiated. Mrs. Turner was to be Mistress Page, which was very suitable, as she was elderly and stout, and did not really in the least resemble Miss Ellen Terry. Mr. Turner had selected Falstaff, and could be recognized anywhere. Young Morton, with unwonted modesty, had chosen the part of the Apothecary inRomeo and Juliet. Mrs. Taverner was to be Queen Catherine, and—almost more joyous than all—she had persuaded Mrs. Brooks not to attempt to impersonate Cleopatra. What Mrs. Brooks’ feelings would be when it dawned on her, as it not inconceivably might, that Mrs. Altham had seen in her a striking likeness to her conception of Hermione, because she did not want there to be two Cleopatras, did not particularly concern her. She had asked Mrs. Brooks to dinner the day after the entertainment, and her acceptance would bury the hatchet, if indeed there was such a thing as a hatchet about. Finally, she had called on Mrs. Evans, who had vaguely talked about Midsummer Night’s Dream. Mrs. Altham had taken that to be equivalent to the fact that she would appear as Titania, and Mrs. Evans had distinctly intended that she should so take it. Indeed, the idea had occurred to her, but not very vividly. Her husband was going to be Timon of Athens. That, again, was quite satisfactory: nobody knew at all distinctly who Timon of Athens was, and nobody knew much about Dr. Evans, except that he was usually sent for in the middle of something. Probably the same thing happened to Timon of Athens.
Indeed, within a couple of hours of the reception of Mrs. Evans’ invitations, which all arrived simultaneously by the local evening post, a spirit of demoniacal gaiety, not less fierce than that which inspired Mrs. Altham, possessed the whole of those invited. Though it was gay, it was certainly demoniacal, for a quite prodigious amount of ill-feeling was mingled with it which from time to time threatened to wreck the proceedings altogether. For instance,only two days after all the invitations had been accepted, Mrs. Evans had issued a further intimation that there was to be dancing, and that the evening would open at a quarter past ten precisely with a quadrille in which it was requested that everybody would take part. It is easy to picture the private consternation that presided over that evening; how in one house, Mrs. Brooks having pushed her central drawing-room table to one side, all alone and humming to herself, stepped in perplexed and forgotten measures, and how next door Mrs. and Mr. Altham violently wrangled over the order of the figures, and hummed different tunes, to show each other, or pranced in different directions. For here was the bitter affair: these pains had to be suffered in loneliness, for it was clearly impossible to confess that the practice of quadrilles was so long past that the memory of them had vanished altogether. But luckily (though at the moment the suggestion caused a great deal of asperity in Mrs. Altham’s mind) Mrs. Ames came to the rescue with the suggestion that as many of them, no doubt, had forgotten the precise manner of quadrilles, she proposed to hold a class at half-past four to-morrow afternoon, when they would all run through a quadrille together.
“There! I thought as much!” said Mrs. Altham. “That means that neither Major nor Mrs. Ames can remember how the quadrille goes, and we, forsooth, must go and teach them. And she puts it that she is going to teach us! I am sure she will never teach me: I shall not go near the house. I do not require to be taught quadrilles by anybody, still less by Mrs. Ames. There is no answer,” she added to Jane.
Mr. Altham fidgeted in his chair. Last night hehad been quite sure he was right, in points where he and his wife differed, and that the particular “setting partners” which they had shown each other so often did not come in the quadrille at all, but occurred in lancers, just before the ladies’ chain. But she had insisted that both the setting to partners and ladies’ chain came in quadrilles. This morning, however, he did not feel quite so certain about it.
“You might send a note to Mrs. Ames,” he observed, “and tell her you are not coming.”
“No answer was asked for,” said his wife excitedly. “She just said there was to be a quadrille practice at half-past four. Let there be. I am sure I have no objection, though I do think you might have thought of doing it first, Henry.”
“But she will like to know how many to expect,” said Henry. “If it is to be at half-past four, she must be prepared for tea. It is equivalent to a tea-party, unless you suppose that the class will be over before five.”
During the night Mrs. Altham had pondered her view about the ladies’ chain. It would be an awful thing if Henry happened to be right, and if, on the evening of the dance itself, she presented her hand for the ladies’ chain, and no chain of any sort followed. She decided on a magnanimous course.
“Upon my word, I am not sure that I shall not go,” she said, “just to see what Mrs. Ames’ idea of a quadrille is. I should not wonder if she mixed it up with something quite different, which would be laughable. And after all, we ought not to be so unkind, and if poor Mrs. Ames feels she will get into difficulties over the quadrille, I am sure I shall be happy to help her out. No doubt she has summonedus like this, so that she need not show that she feels she wants to be helped. We will go, Henry, and I daresay I shall get out of her what she means to dress up as! But pray remember to say that we, at any rate, have not given a thought to our costumes yet. And on our way, we may as well call in at Mr. Roland’s, for if I am to wear my three rows of pearls, he must get me a few more, since I find there is a good deal of string showing. I daresay that ordinary pearl beads would answer the purpose perfectly. I have no intention of buying more of the real Roman pearls. They belonged to my mother, and I should not like to add to them. And if you will insist on having some red stone in your cap, to make a buckle for the feather, I am sure you could not do better than get a piece of what he called German ruby that is in his shop now. I do not suppose anybody in Riseborough could tell it from real, and after all this is over, I would wear it as a pendant for my pearls. If you wish, I will pay half of it, and it is but a couple of pounds altogether.”
It did not seem a really handsome offer, but Henry had the sense to accept it. He wanted a stone to buckle the feather in a rather coquettish cap that they had decided to be suitable for Mark Antony, and did not really care what happened to it after he had worn it on this occasion, since it was unlikely that another similar occasion would arise. Deep in his mind had been an idea of turning it into a solitaire, but he knew he would not have the practical courage of this daring conception. It would want another setting, also.
In other houses there were no fewer anticipatory triumphs and past perplexities. There was also,in some cases, wild and secret intrigue. For instance, a few evenings after, Mrs. Brooks next door, sorting out garments in her wardrobe from which she might devise a costume that should remind the beholder of Hermione, looked from her bedroom window, where her quest was in progress, and saw a strange sight in the next garden. There was a lady in white satin with pearls; there was a gentleman in Roman toga with a feathered cap. The Roman gentleman was a dubious figure; the lady indubitable. If ever there was an elderly Cleopatra, this was she.
Mrs. Brooks sat heavily down, after observing this sight. It certainly was Cleopatra in the next garden: as certainly it was a snake in the grass. In a moment her mind was made up. She saw why she had been discouraged from being Cleopatra; the false Mrs. Altham had wanted to be Cleopatra herself, without rival. But she would be Cleopatra too. Riseborough should judge between the effectiveness of the two representations. Of course, every one knew that Mrs. Altham had three rows of Roman pearls, which were nothing but some sort of vitreous enamel. But Mrs. Brooks, as Riseborough also knew, had five or six rows of real seed-pearls. It was impossible todenigrerseed-pearls: they were pearls, though small, and did not pretend to be anything different to what they were. But the Roman prefix, to any fair-minded person, invalidated the word “pearls.” Besides, even as Cleopatra without pearls, she would have been willing to back herself against Mrs. Altham. Cleopatra ought to be tall, which she was. Also Cleopatra ought to be beautiful, which neither was. And Mrs. Altham had urged her to go as Hermione! Of course, she had to revise her toilet, but luckily ithad progressed no further than the sewing of white rosettes on to a pair of slightly worn satin shoes, which were equally suitable for any of Shakespeare’s heroines.
The week which had passed for Mr. and Mrs. Altham in a succession of so pleasing excitements and anxieties, had not been without incident to Mrs. Ames. When (by the same post that bore their invitations to the other guests) the announcement of the fancy dress ball reached her, and she read it out to her husband (even as Mrs. Altham had done) towards the end of dinner, he expressed his feelings with a good deal of pooh-ing and the opinion that he, at any rate, was past the years of dressing-up. This attitude (for it had been settled that the invitation was to come as a surprise to him) he somewhat overdid, and found to his dismay that his wife quite agreed with him, and was prepared as soon as dinner was over to write regrets. The reason was not far to seek.
“I hope I am not what—what the servants call ‘touchy,’”she said (and indeed, it was difficult to see what else the servants could call it), “but I must say that, considering the length of time we have been in Riseborough, and the number of entertainments we have provided for the people here, I think dear Millie might have consulted me—or you, of course, Lyndhurst, in my absence—as to any such novelty as a fancy dress ball. I have no wish to interfere in any way with any little party that dear Millie may choose to give, but I suppose since she can plan it without me, she can also enjoy it without me. I am aware I am by no means necessary to the success of any party. And since you think that you are a little beyond the age of dressing up, Lyndhurst—thoughI do not say I agree with you—I think we shall be happier at home that night. I will write quite kindly to dear Millie, and say we are engaged. No doubt the Althams would dine with us, as I do not imagine that she would care to get up in fancy dress.”
Major Ames was not a quick thinker, but he saw several things without a pause. One was that he, at any rate, must certainly go, but that he did not much care whether Amy went or not. A second was that, having expressed surprise at the announcement of the party, it was too late now to say that he knew about it from the first, and was going to impersonate Antony, while Mrs. Evans was to be Cleopatra. A third was that something had to be done, a fourth that he did not know what.
“I will leave you to your cigarette, Lyndhurst,” said his wife, rising, “and will write to dear Millie. Let us stroll in the garden again to-night.”
She passed out of the dining-room, he closed the door behind her, and she went straight to her writing-table in the drawing-room. Above it hung a looking-glass, and (still not in the frame of mind which servants call “touchy”) she sat down to write the kind note. A considerable degree of sunset still lingered in the western sky, and there would be no need to light a candle to write by. There was light enough also for her to see a rosy-tinted image of herself in the glass, and she paused. She saw there, what she was aware Mrs. Altham had seen this afternoon—namely, the absence of grey in her hair, and the softened and liquated wrinkles of her face. True, not even yet had her husband observed, or at any rate commented on those refurbished signals ofher youth, but Mrs. Ames had by no means yet despaired, and daily (as directed) tapped in the emollient cream. This rosy light of sunset gave her face a flush of delicate colour, and she unconsciously claimed for her own the borrowed enchantment of the light.... Then that which was not touchiness underwent a similar softening to that of her wrinkles. She knew she had been guilty of sarcastic intention when she said she was aware that her presence was not necessary to the success of any party. It would be unkind to dear Millie if she refused to go, for a dinner-party at home was no excuse at all; she could perfectly well go on there when carriages came at twenty minutes to eleven. Also it was absurd for Lyndhurst to say that he was past the age when “dressing up” is seemly. In spite of his hair, which he managed very well, he was still young enough in face to excuse the yielding to the temptation of embellishing himself, and a Venetian mantle would naturally conceal his tendency to corpulence. No doubt dear Millie had not meant to put herself forward in any way; no doubt she had not yet really grasped the fact that Mrs. Ames was acknowledged autocrat in all that concerned festivity.
All this train of thought needed but a few seconds for passage, and, as she still regarded herself, the name of the heroines of enchantment sounded delicately in her brain. Juliet and Ophelia she passed over without a pang, for she was not so unfocussed of imagination as to see her reflection capable of recapturing the budding spring of those, or the slim youthfulness of Rosalind. She wanted no girlish rôle, nor did she read into herself the precocious dignity of Portia. But was there not one who came down the greenNile to the sound of flutes in a gilded barge—no girl, but a woman in the charm of her full maturity?
The idea detailed itself in plan and manœuvre. She wanted to burst on Lyndhurst like that, to let him see in a flash of revelation how bravely she could support the rôle of that sorceress.... At the moment the drawing-room door opened, and simultaneously they both began a sentence in identical words.
“Do you know, my dear, I’ve been thinking....”
They both stopped, and he gave his genial laugh.
“Upon my soul, my dear Amy,” he said, “I believe we always have the same thoughts. I’ll tell you what you were going to say. You were going to say, ‘I’ve been thinking it wouldn’t be very kind to dear Millie’—that is whatyouwould say, of course—not very kind to Mrs. Evans if we declined. And I agree with you, my dear. No doubt she should have consulted you first, or if you were away she might even, as you suggested, have mentioned it to me. But you can afford to be indulgent, my dear—after all, she is your cousin—and you wouldn’t like to spoil her party, poor thing, by refusing to go. And if you go, why, of course, I shall put on one side my natural feelings about an old fogey like myself making a guy of himself, and I shall dress up somehow. I think I have an old costume with a Venetian cloak laid aside somewhere, though I daresay it’s moth-eaten and rusty now, and I’ll dress myself up somehow and come with you. I suppose there are some old stagers in Shakespeare—I must have a look at the fellow’s plays again—which even a retired old soldier can impersonate. Falstaff, for instance—some stout old man of that sort.”
Some of this speech, to say the least of it, was not, it is to be feared, quite absolutely ingenuous. But then, Major Ames was not naturally quite ingenuous. He had already satisfied himself that the old costume in question had been perfectly preserved by the naphthaline balls which he was careful to renew from time to time, and was not in the least moth-eaten or rusty. Again, since he had settled to go as Antony, it was not perfectly straightforward to make allusion to Falstaff. But after all, the speech expressed all he meant to say, and it is only our most fortunate utterances that can do as much. Indeed, perhaps it leaned over a little to the further side of expression, for it struck Mrs. Ames at that moment (struck her as violently and inexplicably as a cocoanut falling on her head) that the question of the Venetian cloak had not come into her husband’s mind for the first time that evening. She felt, without being able to explain her feeling, that the idea of the fancy dress ball was not new to him. But it was impossible to tax him with so profound a duplicity; indeed, when she gave a moment’s consideration to the question, she dismissed her suspicion. But the suspicion had been there.
She met him quite half-way.
“You have guessed quite right, Lyndhurst,” she said; “I think it would be unkind to dear Millie if you and I did not go. I dare say she will have difficulty enough as it is to make a gathering. I will write at once.”
This was soon done, and even as she wrote, poor Mrs. Ames’ vision of herself grew more roseate in her mind. But she must burst upon her husband, she must burst upon him. Supposing her preposterous suspicion of a moment before was true, there was all the more need for bursting upon him, for Cleopatraizing herself.... He, meantime, was wondering how on earth to keep the secret of his costume and his hostess’s, should Amy proceed to discuss costumes, or suggest the King and Queen of Denmark as suitable for themselves. It might even be better to accept the situation as such, and tell Mrs. Evans that his wife wanted to go as “a pair” (so Mrs. Altham expressed it) and that it was more prudent to abandon the idea of a stray Antony and a stray Cleopatra meeting on the evening itself unpremeditatedly. But her next words caused all these difficulties to disappear; they vanished as completely as a watch or a rabbit under the wave of the conjurer’s wand.
Mrs. Ames never licked envelopes; she applied water on a camel’s-hair brush, from a little receptacle like a tear-bottle.
“What nonsense, my dear Lyndhurst,” she said. “Fancy you going as Falstaff! You must think of something better than that! Dear me, it is a very bold idea of Millie’s, but really it seems to me that we might have great fun. I do hope that all Riseborough will not talk their costumes over together, so that we shall know exactly what to expect. There is little point in a fancy dress ball unless there are some surprises. I must think over my costume too. I am not so fortunate as to have one ready.”
She got up from the table, still with the roseate image of herself in her mind.
“I think I shall not tell you who I am going to be,” she said, “even when I have thought of something suitable. I shall keep myself as a surprise for you. And keep yourself as a surprise for me, Lyndhurst. Let us meet for the first time in our costumes when the carriage is at the door ready to take us to the party. Do you not think that would be fun? But you must promise me, my dear, that you will not make yourself up as Falstaff, or any old guy. Else I shall be quite ashamed of you.”
He rang the bell effusively (the heartiness of the action was typical of the welcome he gave to his wife’s suggestion), and ordered the note to be sent.
“By Jove! Amy,” he said, “what a one you always are for thinking of things. And if you wish it, I’ll try to make a presentable figure of myself, though I’m sure I should be more in place at home waiting for your return to hear all about it. But I’ll do my best, I’ll do my best, and I dare say the Venetian cloak isn’t so shabby after all. I have always been careful to keep a bit of naphthaline in the box with it.”
Flirtation may not be incorrectly defined as making the pretence of being in love, and yet it is almost too solid a word to apply to Major Ames’ relations with Mrs. Evans during the week or two before the ball, and it would be more accurate to say that he was making the pretence of having a flirtation. Even as when he kissed her on that daring evening already described, he was thinking entirely about himself and the dashingness of this proceeding, so in the days that succeeded, this same inept futility and selfsatisfaction possessed him. He made many secret visits to the house, entering like a burglar, in the middle of the afternoon, by an unfrequented passage from the railway cutting, at hours when she told him that her husband and daughter would certainlybe out, and the secrecy of those meetings added spice to them. He felt—so deplorable a frame of mind almost defies description—he felt a pleasing sense of wickedness which was endorsed, so to speak, by the certificate which attested to his complete innocence. As far as he was concerned, it was a mere farce of a flirtation. But the farce filled him with a kind of childish glee; he persuaded himself that his share in it was real, and that by a tragic fate he and the woman who were made for each other were forbidden to find the fruition of their affinity. It was an adventure without danger, a mine without gunpowder. For even on two occasions when he was paying one of these clandestine visits, Dr. Evans had unexpectedly returned and found them together. The poor blind man, it seemed, suspected nothing; indeed, his welcome had been extremely cordial.
“Good of you to come and help my wife over her party,” he said. “What you’d do without Major Ames, little woman, I don’t know. Won’t you stop for dinner, Major?”
Then, after a suitable reply, and a digression to other matters, the Major’s foolish eye would steal a look at Millie, and for a moment her eyes would meet his, and flutter and fall. And considering that there was not in all the world probably a worse judge of human nature than Major Ames, it is a strange thing that his mental comment was approximately true.
“Dear little woman,” he said to himself; “she’s deuced fond of me!”
Jupiter Pluvius, or Mr. J. Pluvius, by which name Major Ames was facetiously wont to allude to the weather, seemed amiably inclined to co-operate with Mrs. Evans’ scheme, for the evening of her party promised to be ideal for the purpose. The few days previous had been very hot, and no particle of moisture lurked in the baked lawns, so that her guests would be able to wander at will without risk of contracting catarrh, or stains on such shoes as should prove to be white satin. Moreover, by a special kindness of Providence, there was no moon, so that the illumination of fairy-lights and Chinese lanterns would suffer no dispiriting comparison with a more potent brightness. Over a large portion of the lawn Mrs. Evans, at Major Ames’ suggestion (not having to pay for these paraphernalia he was singularly fruitful in suggestions), had caused a planked floor to be laid; here the opening procession and quadrille and the subsequent dances would take place, while conveniently adjacent was the mulberry-tree under shade of which were spread the more material hospitalities. Tree and dancing-floor were copiously outlined with lanterns, and straight rows of fairy-lights led to them from the garden door of the house. Similarly outlined was the garden wall and the hedge by the railway-cutting, while the band (piano, two strings and a cornet of amazingly piercing quality) was to be concealed in the smallcul-de-sacwhich led to thepotting shed and garden roller. The shrubbery was less vividly lit; here Hamlets and Rosalinds could stray in sequestered couples, unharassed by too searching an illumination. Major Ames had paid his last clandestine visit this afternoon, and had expressed himself as perfectly pleased with the arrangements. Both Elsie and the doctor had been there.
The party had been announced to begin at half-past ten, and it was scarcely that hour when Mrs. Ames came downstairs from her bedroom where she had so long been busy since the end of the early dinner. Her arms were bare from finger-tip to her little round shoulders, over which were clasped, with handsome cairngorm brooches, the straps of her long tunic. But there was no effect of an excessive display of human flesh, since her arms were very short, and in addition they were plentifully bedecked. On one arm a metallic snake writhed from wrist to elbow, on the other there was clasped above the elbow a plain circlet of some very bright and shining metal. A net of blue beads altogether too magnificent to be turquoises, was pinned over her unfaded hair, and from the front of it there depended on her forehead a large pear-shaped pearl, suggestive of the one which the extravagant queen subsequently dissolved in vinegar. Any pearl, so scientists tell us, which is capable of solution in vinegar must be a curious pearl; that which Mrs. Ames wore in the middle of her forehead was curious also. Art had been specially invoked, over and above the normal skin-food to-night, in the matter of Mrs. Ames’ face, and a formal Egyptian eyebrow, as indicated in the illustration to “Rameses” in theEncyclopædia, decorated in charcoal the place where her own eyebrow once was. Below her eye a touch of the same charcoal added brilliancy to the eye itself; several touches of rouge contributed their appropriate splendour to her cheeks.
The long tunic which was held up over her shoulders by the cairngorm brooches, reached to her knee. It was a little tight, perhaps, but when you have only one Arab shawl, shot with copious gold thread, you have to make it go as far as it can, and after all, it went to her knees. A small fold of it was looped up, and fell over her yellow girdle, it was parted at the sides below the hips, and disclosed a skirt made of two Arab shawls shot with silver, which, stitched together, descended to her ankle. She did not mean to dance anything except the opening quadrille. Below this silver-streaked skirt appeared, as was natural, her pretty plump little feet. On them she wore sandals which exhibited their plumpness and prettiness and smallness to the fullest extent. A correct strap lay between the great toe and the next, and the straps were covered with silver paper. For years Riseborough had known how small were her shoes; to-night Riseborough should see that those shoes had been amply large enough for what they contained. Round her neck, finally, were four rows of magnificent pearl beads; no wonder Cleopatra thought nothing of dissolving one pearl, when its dissolution would leave intact so populous a company of similar treasures.
As she came downstairs she heard a sudden noise in the drawing-room, as if a heavy man had suddenly stumbled. It required no more ingenuity than was normally hers to conjecture that Lyndhurst was already there, and had tripped himself up in some novel accoutrement. And at that, a sudden flush of excitement and anticipation invaded her, and shewondered what he would be like. As regards herself she felt the profoundest confidence in the success of her garniture. He could scarcely help being amazed, delighted. And an emotion never keenly felt by her, but as such long outworn, shook her and made her knees tremulous. She felt so young, so daring. She wished that at this moment he would come out, for as she descended the stairs he could not but see how small and soft were her feet....
Almost before her wish was formed, it was granted. A well-smothered oath succeeded the stumbling noise, and Major Ames, in white Roman toga and tights came out into the hall. There was no vestige of Venetian cloak about him; he was altogether different from what she had expected. A profuse wig covered his head, the toga completely masked what the exercise with the garden roller had not completely removed, and below, his big calves rose majestic over his classical laced shoes. If ever there was a Mark Antony with a military moustache, he was not in Egypt nor in Rome, but here; by a divine chance, without consultation, he had chosen for himself the character complementary to hers. He looked up and saw her, she looked down and saw him.
“Bless my soul,” he said. “Amy! Cleopatra!”
She gave him a happy little smile.
“Bless my soul,” she said. “Lyndhurst! Mark Antony!”
There was a long and an awful pause. It was quite clear to her that something had occurred totally unexpected. She had wanted to be unexpected, but there was something wrong about the quality of his surprise. Then such manliness as there was in him came to his aid.
“Upon my word,” he said, “you have got yourselfup splendidly, Amy. Cleopatra now, pearls and all, and sandals! Why, you’ll take the shine out of them all! Here we go, eh? Antony and Cleopatra! Who would have thought of it! The cab’s round, dear. We had better be starting, if we’re to take part in the procession. Not want a cloak or anything? Antony and Cleopatra; God bless my soul!”
That was sufficient to allay the immediate embarrassment. True, he had not been knocked over by this apparition of her in the way she had meant, and the astonished pause, she was afraid, was not one of surrendering admiration. And yet, perhaps, he was feeling shy, even as she was; standing here in all this splendour of shining pantomime he might well feel her to be as strange to him, as she felt him to be to her. Moreover, she had not only to look Cleopatra, but to be Cleopatra, to behave herself with the gaiety and youth which her appearance gave him the right to expect. In the meantime he also had earned her compliments, for no man who thinks it worth while to assume a fancy dress has a soul so unhuman as to be unappreciative of applause.
She fell back a step or two to regard him comprehensively.
“My dear,” she said, “you are splendid; that toga suits you to admiration. And your arms look so well coming out of the folds of it. What great strong arms, Lyndhurst! You could pick up your little Cleopatra and carry her back—back to Egypt so easily.”
Something of their irresponsibility which, as by a special Providence, broods over the audacity of assuming strange guises, descended on her. She could no more have made such a speech to him in her ordinary morning-clothes, nor yet in the famousrose-coloured silk, than she could have flown. But now her costume unloosed her tongue. And despite the dreadful embarrassment that he knew would await him when they got to the party, and a second Cleopatra welcomed them, this intoxication of costume (liable, unfortunately, to manifest itself not only invin gai) mounted to his head also.
“Ma reine!” he said, feeling that French brought them somehow closer to the appropriate Oriental atmosphere.
She held up her skirt with one hand, and gave him the other.
“We must be off, my Antony,” she said.
They got into the cab; a somewhat jaded-looking horse was lashed into a slow and mournful trot, and they rattled away down the hard, dry road.
A queue of carriages was already waiting to disembark its cargoes when they drew near the house, and leaning furtively and feverishly from the window, Mrs. Ames saw a Hamlet or two and some Titanias swiftly and shyly cross the pavement between two rows of the astonished proletariat. Beside her in the cab her husband grunted and fidgeted; she guessed that to him this entrance was of the nature of bathing on a cold day; however invigorating might be the subsequent swim, the plunge was chilly. But she little knew the true cause of his embarrassment and apprehension; had his military career ever entailed (which it had not) the facing of fire, it was probable, though his courage was of no conspicuous a kind, that he would have met the guns with greater blitheness than he awaited the moment that now inevitably faced him. Then came their turn; there was a pause, and then their carriage door was flung open, and they descended from the innocent vehiclethat to him was as portentous as a tumbril. In a moment Cleopatra would meet Cleopatra, and he could form no idea how either Cleopatra would take it. The Cleopatra-hostess, as he knew, was going to wear sandals also; snakes were to writhe up her long white arms....
Mrs. Ames adjusted the pear-shaped pearl on her forehead.
“I think if we say half-past one it will be late enough, Lyndhurst,” she said. “If we are not ready he can wait.”
It seemed to Lyndhurst that half-past one would probably be quite late enough.
The assemblage of guests took place in the drawing-room which opened into the garden; a waiter from the “Crown” inn, with a chin beard and dressed in a sort of white surplice and carrying a lantern in his hand, who might with equal reasonableness be supposed to be the Man in the Moon out of theMidsummer Night’s Dream, or a grave-digger out ofHamlet, said “Character names, please, ma’am,” and preceded them to the door of this chamber. He bawled out “Cleopatra and Mark Antony.”
Another Cleopatra, a “different conception of this part,” as theKent Chroniclesaid in its next issue, a Cleopatra dim and white and willowy, advanced to them. She looked vexed, but as she ran her eyes up and down Mrs. Ames’ figure, like a practised pianist playing a chromatic scale, her vexation seemed completely to clear.
“Dear Cousin Amy,” she said, “how perfectly lovely! I never saw—Wilfred, make your bow to Cleopatra. And Antony! Oh, Major Ames!”
Again she made the chromatic scale, starting atthe top, so to speak (his face), with a long note, and dwelling there again when she returned to it.
Other arrivals followed, and this particular Antony and Cleopatra mingled with such guests as were already assembled. The greater part had gathered, and Mrs. Ames’ habitual manner and bearing suited excellently with her regal rôle. The Turner family, at any rate, who were standing a little apart from the others, not being quite completely “in” Riseborough society, and, feeling rather hot and feverish in the thick brocaded stuffs suitable to Falstaff, Mistress Page and King Theseus, felt neither more nor less uncomfortable when she made a few complimentary remarks to them than they did when, with her fat prayer-book in her hand, she spoke to them after church on Sunday. Elsewhere young Morton, with a white face and a red nose, was the traditional Apothecary, and Mrs. Taverner was so copiously apparalled as Queen Catherine that she was looking forward very much indeed to the moment when the procession should go forth into the greater coolness of the night air. Then a stentorian announcement from the waiter at the Crown made every one turn again to the door.
“Antony and Cleopatra ten years later,” he shouted.
There was a slight pause. Then entered Mr. and Mrs. Altham with high-held hands clasped at finger-tips. They both stepped rather high, she holding her skirt away from her feet, and both pointing their toes as if performing apavanne. This entry had been much rehearsed, and it was arresting to the point of producing a sort of stupefaction.
Mrs. Evans ran her eye up and down the pair, and was apparently satisfied.
“Dear Mrs. Altham,” she said, “how perfectlylovely!AndMr. Altham. But ten years later! You must not ask us to believe that.”
She turned to her husband and spoke quickly, with a look on her face less amiable than she usually wore in public.
“Wilfred,” she said, “tell the band to begin the opening march at once for the procession, in case there are any more——”
But he interrupted—
“Here’s another, Millie,” he said cheerfully. “Yes, we’d better begin.”
His speech was drowned by the voice of the brazen-lunged waiter.
“Cleopatra!” he shouted.
Mrs. Brooks entered with all the rows of seed-pearls.
Riseborough, if the census papers were consulted, might perhaps not prove to have an abnormally large percentage of inhabitants who had reached middle-age, but certainly in the festivities of its upper circles, maturity held an overwhelming majority over youth. It was so to-night, and of the half-hundred folk who thus masqueraded, there were few who were not, numerically speaking, of thoroughly discreet years. The diffused knowledge of this undoubtedly gave confidence to their gaiety, for there was no unconscious standard of sterling youth by which their slightly mature exhilaration could be judged and found deficient in genuine and natural effervescence. Thus, despite the somewhat untoward conjunction of four matronly Cleopatras, a spirit of extraordinary gaiety soon possessed the entire party. Odious comparisons might conceivably spring up mushroom-like to-morrow, and (unmushroom-like) continue to wax and flourish through many days and dinners, butto-night so large an environment of elderly people gave to every one of those elderly people a pleasant sense of not suffering but rather shining in comparison with the others. Even the Cleopatras themselves were content; Mrs. Ames, for instance, saw how sensible it was that Mrs. Altham should announce herself as a Cleopatra of ten years later, while Mrs. Altham, observing Mrs. Ames, saw how supererogatory her titular modesty had been, and wondered that Mrs. Ames cared to show her feet like that, while Mrs. Brooks knew that everybody was mentally contrasting her queenliness of height with Mrs. Ames’ paucity of inches, and her abundance of beautiful hair with Mrs. Altham’s obvious wig. While, all the time, Mrs. Evans, whom the appearance of a fourth Cleopatra had considerably upset for the moment, felt that at this rate she could easily continue being Cleopatra for more years than “the ten after,” so properly assumed by Mrs. 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. But all these pleasant self-communings were, indeed, but a minor tributary to the real river of enjoyment that danced and chattered through the starlit hours of this July night. Somehow the whole assembly seemed to have shifted off themselves the natural and inevitable burden of their years;they danced and mildly flirted, they sat out in the dim shrubbery, and played on the sea-shore of life again, finding the sand-castles had become real once more. Mrs. Ames, for instance, had intended to dance nothing but the opening quadrille, but before the second dance, which was a waltz, had come to a close, she had accepted Mr. Altham’s offer, and was slowly capering round with him. A little care was necessary in order not to put too unjust a strain on the sandal straps, but she exercised this precaution, and was sorry, though hot, when the dance came to an end. Then Major Ames, who had been piloting Mrs. Altham, joined them at the moselle-cup table.
“’Pon my word, Altham,” he said, “I don’t know what to say to you. You’ve taken my Cleopatra, but then I’ve taken yours. Exchange no robbery, hey?”
His wife tapped him on the arm with her palmette fan.
“Lyndhurst, go along with you!” she said, employing an expression, the mental equivalent of which she did not know ever existed in her mind.
“I’ll go along,” he said. “But which is my Cleopatra?”
At the moment, Mrs. Evans approached.
“My two Cleopatras must excuse me,” said this amazing man. “I am engaged for this next dance to the Cleopatra of us all. Ha! Ha!”
He offered his arm to Mrs. Evans, and they went out of the cave of the mulberry-tree again.
The band had not yet struck up for the next dance, the majority of the guests were flocking under the mulberry-tree at the conclusion of the last, and for the moment they had the cool starlit dusk to themselves. And then, all at once, the Major’s sense of boisterous enjoyment deserted him; he felt embarrassed with a secret knowledge that he was expected to say something in tune with this privacy. How that expectation was conveyed he hardly knew; the slight pressure on his arm seemed to announce it unmistakably. It reminded him that he was a man, and yet with all that gaiety and gallantry that were so conspicuous a feature in his behaviour to women in public, he felt awkward and ill at ease. He embarked on a course of desperate and fulsome eulogy, longing in his private soul for the band to begin.
“’Pon my soul, you are an enchantress, Millie!” he said. “You come to our staid, respectable old Riseborough, and before you have been here six months you take us all into fairyland. Positively fairyland. And—and I’ve never seen you looking so lovely as to-night.”
“Let us stroll all round the garden,” she said. “I want you to see it all now it is lit up. And the shrubbery is pretty, too, with—with the filter of starlight coming through the trees. Do tell me truthfully, like a friend, is it going all right? Are they enjoying themselves?”
“Kicking up their heels like two-year-olds,” said Major Ames.
“How wicked of you to say that! But really I had one bad moment, when—when the last Cleopatra came in.”
She paused a moment. Then in her clear, silky voice—
“Dear old things!” she said.
Now Mrs. Evans was not in any way a clever woman, but had she had the brains and the wit of Cleopatra herself, she could not have spoken three more consummately chosen words. All the cool, instinctive confidence of a younger woman, and apretty woman speaking of the more elderly and plain was there; there, too, was the deliberate challenge of the coquette. And Major Ames was quite helpless against the simplicity of such art. Mere manners, the ordinary code of politeness, demanded that he should agree with his hostess. Besides, though he was not in any way in love with her, he could not resist the assumption that her words implied, and, after all, she was a pretty woman, whom he had kissed, and he was alone in the star-hung dusk with her.
“Poor dear Amy!” he said.
Millie Evans gave a soft little sigh, as of a contented child. He had expressed with the most ruthless accuracy exactly what she wished him to feel. Then, in the manner of a woman whose nature is warped throughout by a slight but ingrained falsity, she spoke as if it was not she who had prompted the three words which she had almost made him say.
“She is enjoying herself so,” she said. “I have never seen Cousin Amy look so thoroughly pleased and contented. I thought she looked so charming, too, and what dear, plump little feet she has. But, my dear, it was rather a surprise when you and she were announced. It looked as if this poor Cleopatra was going to be Antony-less! Dear me, what a word.”
Here was a more direct appeal, and again Major Ames was powerless in her soft clutch. Hers was not exactly an iron hand in a velvet glove, but a hand made of fly-catching paper. She had taken her glove off now. And he was beginning to stick to her.
“Pshaw!” he said.
That, again, had a perfectly satisfactory sound to her ears. The very abruptness and bluffness of it pleased her more than any protestation could have done. He was so direct, so shy, so manly.
She laughed softly.
“Hush, you mustn’t say those things,” she said. “Ah, there is the band beginning, and it is our dance. But let us just walk through the shrubbery before we go back. The dusk and quiet are such a relief after the glare. Lyndhurst—ah, dear me. Cousin Lyndhurst I ought to say—you really must not go home till my little dance is quite finished. You make things go so well. Dear Wilfred is quite useless to me. Does he not look an old darling as Timon of Athens? A sort of mixture between George the Fourth in tights and a lion-tamer.”
Mrs. Evans was feeling more actively alive to-night than she had felt for years. Her tongue, which was generally a rather halting adjutant to her glances and little sinuous movements, was almost vivified to wit. Certainly her description of her husband had acuteness and a sense of the ludicrous to inspire it. Through the boughs of laburnums in the shrubbery they could see him now, escorting the tallest and oldest Cleopatra, who was Mrs. Brooks, to the end of the garden. Dimly, through the curtain of intervening gloom, they saw the populous wooden floor that had been laid down on the grass; Mrs. Ames—the dance was a polka—was frankly pirouetting in the arms of a redoubtable Falstaff. Mrs. Altham was wrestling with the Apothecary, and Elsie Evans, one of the few young people present, was vainly trying to galvanize General Fortescue, thinly disguised as Henry VII, into some semblance of activity.
Mrs. Evans gave another sigh, a sigh of curious calibre.
“It all seems so distant,” she said. “All the lights and dancing are less real than the shadows and the stillness.”
That was not quite extemporaneous; she had thought over something of the sort. It had the effect of making Major Ames feel suddenly hot with an anxious kind of heat. He was beginning to perceive the truth of that which he had foppishly imagined in his own self-communings, namely, that this “poor little lady” was very, very much attached to him. He had often dwelt on the thought before with odious self-centred satisfaction; now the thought was less satisfactory; it was disquieting and mildly alarming. Like the fly on the fly-paper, with one leg already englued, he put down a second to get leverage with which to free the first, and found that it was adhering also.
Mrs. Evans spoke again.
“I took such pleasure in all the preparations,” she said. “You were so much interested in it all. Tell me, Cousin Lyndhurst, that you are not disappointed.”
It was hardly possible for him to do less than what he did. What he did was little enough. He pressed the arm that lay in his rather close to his white toga, and an unwonted romanticism of speech rose to his lips.
“You have enchanted me,” he said. “Me, us, all of us.”
She gave a little laugh; in the dusk it sounded no louder than a breeze stirring.
“You needn’t have added that,” she said.
Where she stood a diaper of light and shadow played over her. A little spray of laburnum between her face and the lights on the lawn outside, swaying gently in a breeze that had gone astray in this calm night, cast wavering shadows over her. Now her arms shone white under freckles of shadow, now it was her face that was a moon to him. Or again,both would be in shade and a diamond star on her bright yellow hair concentrated all the light into itself. All the elusive mysterious charm of her womanhood was there, made more real by the fantastic setting. He was kindled to a greater warmth than he had yet known, but, all the time, some dreadful creature in his semi-puritanical semi-immoral brain, told him that this was all “devilish naughty.” He was as unused to such scruples as he was unused to such temptations, and in some curious fashion he felt as ashamed of the one as he felt afraid of the other. At length he summed up the whole of these despicable conclusions.
“Will you give me just one kiss, Millie!” he said; “just one cousin-kiss, before we go and dance?”
Such early worms next morning in Major Ames’ garden as had escaped the early bird, must certainly have all been caught and laid out flat by the garden roller, so swift and incessant were its journeyings. For though the dawn had overspread the sky with the hueless tints of approaching day when Antony and Cleopatra were charioteered home again by a somnolent cabman; though Major Ames’ repose had been of the most fragmentary kind, and though breakfast, in anticipation of late hours, had been ordered the night before at an unusual half-past nine, he found his bed an intolerable abode by seven o’clock, and had hoped to expatriate somewhat disquieting thoughts from his mind by the application of his limbs to severe bodily exertion.
He and his wife had been the last guests to leave; indeed, after the others had gone they lingered a little, smoking a final cigarette. Even Mrs. Ames had been persuaded to light one, but a convulsiveparoxysm of coughing, which made the pear-shaped pearl to quiver and shake like an aspen-leaf, led her to throw it away, saying she enjoyed it very much. He had danced with Mrs. Evans three or four times; three or four times they had sat in the cool darkness of the shrubbery, and he had said to her several things which at the moment it seemed imperative to say, but which he did not really mean. But as the evening went on he had meant them more; she had a helpless, childlike charm about her that began to stir his senses. And yet below that childlike confiding manner he was dimly aware that there was an eager woman’s soul that sought him. Her charm was a weapon; a very efficient will wielded it. All the same, he reflected as the honest dews of toil poured from his forehead this morning in the hot early sunlight, he had not said very much ... he had said that Riseborough was a different place since she—or had he said “they”? had come there; that her eyes looked black in the starlight, that—honestly, he could not remember anything more intimate than this. But that which had made his bed intolerable was the sense that the situation had not terminated last night, that his boat, so to speak, had not been drawn up safely ashore, but was still in the midst of accelerating waters. And yet it was in his own power to draw the boat ashore at any moment; he had but to take a decisive stroke to land, to step out and beach it, to return—surely it was not difficult—to his normal thoughts and activities. For years his garden, his club, his domestic concerns, his daily paper, had provided him with a sufficiency of pursuits; he had but to step back into their safe if monotonous circle, and look upon these disturbances as episodic. But already he had ceased to think ofMrs. Evans as “dear little woman” or “poor little woman”; somehow it seemed as if she had got her finger—to use a prosaic metaphor—into his works. She was prodding about among the internal wheels and springs of his mechanism. Yet that was stating his case too strongly; it was that of contingency that he was afraid. But with the curious irresponsibility of a rather selfish and unimaginative man, the fact that he had allowed himself to prod about in her internal mechanism represented itself to him as an unimportant and negligible detail. It was only when she began prodding about in him, producing, as it were, extraordinary little whirrings and racings of wheels that had long gone slow and steady, that he began to think that anything significant was occurring. But, after all, there was nothing like a pull at the garden roller for giving a fellow an appetite for breakfast and for squashing worms and unprofitable reflections.
Though half-past nine had seemed “late enough for anybody,” as Mrs. Ames had said the evening before, it was not till nearly ten that she put an extra spoonful of tea into her silver teapot, for she felt that she needed a more than usually fortifying beverage, to nullify her disinclination for the day’s routine. The sight of her Cleopatra costume also, laid upon the sofa in her bedroom, and shone upon by a cheerful and uncompromising summer sun, had awakened in her mind a certain discontent, a certain sense of disappointment, of age, of grievance. The gilt paper had moulted off one of the sandal-straps, a spilt dropping of strawberry-ice made a disfiguring spot on the tunic of Arab shawl, and she herself felt vaguely ungilded and disfigured.
The cigarette, too—she had so often said in themost liberal manner that she did not think it wicked of women to smoke, but only horrid. Certainly she did not feel wicked this morning, but as certainly she felt disposed to consider anybody else horrid, and—and possibly wicked. Decidedly a cup of strong tea was indicated.
Major Ames had gone upstairs again to have his bath, and to dress after his exercise in the garden, and came down a few minutes later, smelling of soap, with a jovial boisterousness of demeanour that smelt of unreality.
“Good-morning, my dear Amy,” he said. “And how do you feel after the party? 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.
“It is delightful to see you in such good spirits, Lyndhurst,” she observed, with a faint undertone of acidity. “Sitting up late does not usually agree with you.”
There was enough here to provoke repartee. Also his superficial boisterousness was rapidly disappearing before his wife’s acidity, like stains at the touch of ammonia.
“It does not, in this instance, seem to have agreed with you, my dear,” he said. “I hope you havenot got a headache. It was unwise of you to stop so late. However, no doubt we shall feel better after breakfast. Shall I give you some bacon? Or will you try something that appears to be fish?”