Читать книгу Mrs. Ames - E F Benson - Страница 4

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Mrs. Ames put up her black and white sunshade as she stepped into the hot street outside Dr. Evans’ house, about half-past six on the evening of the twenty-eighth of June, and proceeded afoot past the half-dozen houses that lay between it and the High Street. In appearance she was like a small, good-looking toad in half-mourning; or, to state the comparison with greater precision, she was small for a woman, but good-looking for a toad. Her face had something of the sulky and satiated expression of that harmless reptile, and her mourning was for her brother, who had mercifully died of delirium tremens some six months before. This scarcely respectable mode of decease did not curtail his sister’s observance of the fact, and she was proposing to wear mourning for another three months.

She had not seen him much of late years, and, as a matter of fact, she thought it was much better that his inglorious career, since he was a hopeless drunkard, had been brought to a conclusion, but her mourning, in spite of this, was a faithful symbol of her regret. He had had the good looks and the frailty of her family, while she was possessed of its complementary plainness and strength, but she remembered with remarkable poignancy, even in her fifty-fifth year, birds’-nesting expeditions with him, and the alluring of fish in unpopulous waters. They had shared their pocket-money together, also, as children, and she had not been the gainer by it. Therefore she thought of him with peculiar tenderness.

It would be idle to deny that she was not interested in the Riseborough view of his blackness. It was quite well known that he was a drunkard, but she had stifled inquiry by stating that he had died of “failure.” What organ it was that failed could not be inquired into: any one with the slightest proper feeling—and she was well aware that Riseborough had almost an apoplexy of proper feeling—would assume that it was some organ not generally mentioned. She felt that there was no call on her to gratify any curiosity that might happen to be rampant. She also felt that the chief joy in the possession of a sense of humour lies in the fact that others do not suspect it. Riseborough would certainly have thought it very heartless of her to derive any amusement from things however remotely connected with her brother’s death; Riseborough also would have been incapable of crediting her with any tenderness of memory, if it had known that he had actually died of delirium tremens.

In this stifling weather she almost envied those who, like Dr. Evans, lived at the top of the town, where, in Castle Street, was situated the charming Georgian house in the garden of which he for a little while only, and his wife for three hours, had been entertaining their friends and detractors at the garden-party. Though the house was in a “Street,” and not a “Road,” it had a garden which anybody would expect to belong to a “Road,” if not a “Place.” Streets seemed to imply small backyards looking into the backs of other houses, whereas Dr. Evans’ house did not, at its back, look on other houses at all, but extended a full hundred yards, and then looked over the railway cutting of the South-Eastern line, on open fields. Should you feel unkindly disposed, it was easy to ask whether the noise of passing trains was not very disagreeable, and indeed, Mrs. Taverner, in a moment of peevishness arising from the fact that what she thought was champagne cup was only hock cup, had asked that very question of Millicent Evans this afternoon in Mrs. Ames’ hearing. But Millicent, in her most confiding and child-like manner, had given what Mrs. Ames considered to be a wholly admirable and suitable answer. “Indeed we do,” she had said, “and we often envy you your beautiful big lawn.” For everybody, of course, knew that Mrs. Taverner’s beautiful big lawn was a small piece of black earth diversified by plantains, and overlooked and made odorous by the new gasworks. Mrs. Taverner had, as was not unnatural, coloured up on receipt of this silken speech, until she looked nearly as red as Mrs. Altham. For herself, Mrs. Ames would not, even under this provocation, have made so ill-natured a reply, though she was rather glad that Millicent had done so, and to account for her involuntary smile, she instantly Mrs. Altham to lunch with her next day. Indeed, walking now down the High Street, she smiled again at the thought, and Mr. Pritchard, standing outside his grocery store, thought she smiled at him, and raised his hat. And Mrs. Ames rather hoped he saw how different a sort of smile she kept on tap, so to speak, for grocers.

Mrs. Ames knew very well the manner of speeches that Mrs. Altham had been indulging in during the last three weeks, about the little dinner-party she was giving this evening, for she had been indiscreet enough to give specimens of them to Millicent Evans, who had promptly repeated them to her, and it is impossible adequately to convey how unimportant she thought was anything that Mrs. Altham said. But the fact that she had said so much was indirectly connected with her asking Mrs. Altham (“and your husband, of course,” as she had rather pointedly added) to lunch to-morrow, for she knew that Mrs. Altham would be bursting with curiosity about the success of the new experiment, and she intended to let her burst. She disliked Mrs. Altham, but that lady’s hostility to herself only amused her. Of course, Mrs. Altham could not refuse to accept her invitation, because it was a point of honour in Riseborough that any one bidden to lunch the day after a dinner-party must, even at moderate inconvenience, accept, for otherwise what was to happen to the remains of salmon and of jelly too debilitated to be served in its original shape, even though untouched, but still excellent if eaten out of jelly-glasses? So much malice, then, must be attributed to Mrs. Ames, that she wished to observe the febrile symptoms of Mrs. Altham’s curiosity, and not to calm them, but rather excite them further.

Mrs. Ames would not naturally have gone for social purposes to the house of her doctor, had he not married Millicent, whose father was her own first cousin, and would have been baronet himself had he been the eldest instead of the youngest child. As it was, Dr. Evans was on a wholly different footing from that of an ordinary physician, for by marriage he, as she by birth, was connected with “County,” which naturally was the crown and cream of Riseborough society. Mrs. Ames was well aware that the profession of a doctor was a noble and self-sacrificing one, but lines had to be drawn somewhere, and it was impossible to contemplate visiting Dr. Holmes. A dentist’s profession was self-sacrificing, too, but you did not dine at your dentist’s, though his manipulations enabled you to dine with comfort and confident smiles elsewhere. Such lines as these she drew with precision, but automatic firmness, and the apparently strange case of Mr. Turner, whom she had induced her husband to propose for election at the club, whom, with his wife, she herself asked to dinner, was really no exception. For it was not Mr. Turner who had ever been a stationer in Riseborough, but his father, and he himself had been to a public school and a university, and had since then purged all taint of stationery away by twenty years’ impartiality as a police magistrate in London. True, he had not changed his name when he came back to live in Riseborough, which would have shown a greater delicacy of mind, and the present inscription above the stationer’s shop, “Burrows, late Turner,” was obnoxious, but Mrs. Ames was all against the misfortunes of the fathers being visited on the children, and Riseborough, with the exception of Mrs. Altham, had quite accepted Mr. and Mrs. Turner, who gave remarkably good dinners, which were quite equal to the finest efforts of the (Scotch) chef at the club. Mrs. Altham said that the Turners had eaten their way into the heart of Riseborough society, which sounded almost witty, until Mrs. Ames pointed out that it was Riseborough, not the Turners, who had done the eating. On which the wit in Mrs. Altham’s mot went out like a candle in the wind. It may, perhaps, be open to question whether Mrs. Altham’s rooted hostility to the Turners did not predispose Mrs. Ames to accept them before their quiet amiability disposed her to do so, for she was neither disposed nor predisposed to like Mrs. Altham.

Mrs. Ames’ way led through Queensgate Street, and she had to hold her black skirt rather high as she crossed the road opposite the club, for the dust was thick. She felt it wiser also to screw her small face up into a tight knot in order to avoid inhaling the fetid blue smoke from an over-lubricated motor-car that very rudely dashed by just in front of her. She did not regard motors with any favour, since there were financial reasons, whose validity was unassailable, why she could not keep one; indeed, partly no doubt owing to her expressed disapproval of them, but chiefly owing to similar financial impediments, Riseborough generally considered that hired flies were a more gentlemanly and certainly more leisurely form of vehicular transport. Mrs. Altham, as usual, raised a dissentient voice, and said that she and her husband could not make up their minds between a Daimler and a Rolles-Royce. This showed a very reasonable hesitancy, since at present they had no data whatever with regard to either.

Mrs. Ames permitted herself one momentary glance at the bow-window of the club, as she regained the pavement after this dusty passage, and then swiftly looked straight in front of her again, since it was not quite quite to look in at the window of a man’s club. But she had seen several things: her husband was standing there with face contorted by the imminent approach of a sneeze, which showed that his hayfever was not yet over, as he hoped it might be. There was General Fortescue with a large cigar in his mouth, and a glass, probably of sherry, in his hand; there was also the top of a bald head peering over the geraniums in the window like a pink full moon. That no doubt was Mr. Turner (for no one was quite so bald as he), enjoying the privilege which she had been instrumental in securing for him. Then Mrs. Altham passed her driving, and Mrs. Ames waved and kissed her black-gloved hand to her, thinking how very angular curiosity made people, while Mrs. Altham waved back thinking that it was no use trying to look important if you were only five foot two, so that honours were about divided. Finally, just before she turned into her own gate, she saw coming along the road, walking very fast, as his custom was, the man she respected and even revered more than any one in Riseborough. She would have liked to wave her hand to him too, only the Reverend Thomas Pettit would certainly have thought such a proceeding to be very odd conduct. He was county too—very much county, although a clergyman—being the son of that wealthy and distressing peer, Lord Evesham, who occasionally came into Riseborough on county business. On these occasions he lunched at the club, instead of going to his son’s house, but did not eat the club lunch, preferring to devour in the smoking-room, like an ogre with false teeth, sandwiches which seemed to be made of fish in their decline. Mrs. Ames, who could not be called a religious woman, but was certainly very high church, was the most notable of Mr. Pettit’s admirers, and, indeed, had set quite a fashion in going to the services at St. Barnabas’, which were copiously embellished by banners, vestments and incense. Indeed, she went there in adoration of him as much as for any other reason, for he seemed to her to be a perfect apostle. He was rich, and gave far more than half his goods to feed the poor; he was eloquent, and (she would not have used so common a phrase) let them all “have it” from his pulpit, and she was sure he was rapidly wearing himself out with work. And how thrilling it would be to address her rather frequent notes to him with the title ‘The Reverend The Lord Evesham!’ … She gave a heavy sigh, and decided to flutter her podgy hand in his direction for a greeting as she turned into her gate.

The little dinner which had so agitated Riseborough for the last three weeks gave Mrs. Ames no qualms at all. Whatever happened at her house was right, and she never had any reason to wonder, like minor dinner-givers, if things would go off well, since she and no other was responsible for the feast; it was Mrs. Ames’ dinner party. It was summoned for a quarter to eight, and at half-past ten somebody’s carriage would be announced, and she would say, “I hope nobody is thinking of going away yet,” in consequence of which everybody would go away at twenty minutes to eleven instead. If anybody expected to play cards or smoke in the drawing-room, he would be disappointed, because these diversions did not form part of the curriculum. The gentlemen had one cigarette in the dining-room after their wine and with their coffee: then they followed the ladies and indulged in the pleasures of conversation. Mrs. Ames always sat in a chair by the window, and always as the clock struck ten she re-sorted her conversationalists. That was (without disrespect) a parlour-trick of the most supreme and unfathomable kind. There was always some natural reason why she should get up, and quite as naturally two or three people got up too. Then a sort of involuntary general post took place. Mrs. Ames annexed the seat of the risen woman whose partner she intended to talk to, and instantly said, “Do tell me, because I am so much interested …” upon which her new partner sat down again. The ejected female then wandered disconsolately forward till she found herself talking to some man who had also got up. Therefore they sat down again together. But no one in Riseborough could do the trick as Mrs. Ames could do it. Mrs. Altham had often tried, and her efforts always ended in everybody sitting down again exactly where they had been before, after standing for a moment as if an inaudible grace was being said. But Mrs. Ames, though not socially jealous (for, being the queen of Riseborough society, she had nobody to be jealous of), was a little prone to spoil this parlour-trick when she was dining at other houses, by suddenly developing an earnest conversation with her already existing partner, when she saw that her hostess contemplated a copy of her famous manœuvre. Yet, after all, she was within her rights, for the parlour-trick was her own patent, and it was quite proper to thwart the attempted infringement of it.

Having waggled her hand in the direction of Mr. Pettit, she went straight to the dining-room, where the dinner-table was being laid. There was to be a company of eight to-night, and accordingly she took three little cardboard slips from the top left-hand drawer of her writing-table, on each of which was printed—

PLEASE TAKE IN

… … … …

TO DINNER.

These were presented in the hall to the men before dinner (it was unnecessary to write one for her husband), each folded, with the name of the guest in question being written on the back, while the name of the woman he was to take in filled the second line. Thus there were no separate and hurried communications to be made in the drawing-room, as everything was arranged already. This was not so original as the other parlour-trick, but at present nobody else in Riseborough had attempted it. Then out of the same drawer she took—what she took requires a fresh paragraph.

Printed Menu-cards. There were a dozen packets of them, each packet advertising a different dinner: an astounding device, requiring enlargement of explanation. She discovered them by chance in the Military Stores in London, selected a dozen packets containing fifty copies each, and kept the secret to herself. The parlour-maids had orders to tweak them away as soon as the last course was served, so that no menu-collector, if there was such retrospective glutton in Riseborough, could appropriate them, and thus, perhaps, ultimately get a clue which might lead him to the solution. For by a portent of ill-luck, it might then conceivably happen that a certain guest would find himself bidden for the third or fourth time to eat precisely the same dinner as his odious collection told him that he had eaten six months before. But the tweaking parlour-maids obviated that risk, and if the menu-cards were still absolutely “unsoiled,” Mrs. Ames used them again. There was one very sumptuous dinner among the twelve, there were nine dinners good enough for anybody, there were two dinners that might be described as “poor.” It was one of these, probably, which Mrs. Altham had in her mind when she was so ruthless in respect to Mrs. Ames’ food. But, poor or sumptuous, it appeared to the innocent Riseborough world that Mrs. Ames had her menu-cards printed as required; that, having constructed her dinner, she sent round a copy of it to the printer’s to be set up in type. Probably she corrected the proofs also. She never called attention to these menus, and seemed to take them as a matter of course. Mrs. Altham had once directly questioned her about them, asking if they were not a great expense. But Mrs. Ames had only shifted a bracelet on her wrist and said, “I am accustomed to use them.”

Mrs. Ames took four copies of one of these dinners which were good enough for anybody, and propped them up, two on each of the long sides of the table. Naturally, she did not want one herself, and her husband, also naturally, sometimes said, “What are you going to give us to-night, Amy?” In which case one of them was passed to him. But he had a good retentive memory with regard to food, and with a little effort he could remember what the rest of the dinner was going to be, when the nature of the soup had given him his cue. Occasionally he criticized, saying in his hearty voice (this would be in the autumn or winter), “What, what? Partridge again? Perdrix repetita, isn’t it, General, if you haven’t forgotten your Latin.” And Amy from the other end of the table replied, “Well, Lyndhurst, we must eat the game our friends are so kind as to send us.” And yet Mrs. Altham declared that she had seen partridges from the poulterers delivered at Mrs. Ames’ house! “But they are getting cheap now,” she added to her husband, “particularly the old birds. I got a leg, Henry, and the bird must have roosted on it for years before Mrs. Ames’ friends were so kind as to send it her.”

So Mrs. Ames propped up the printed menu-cards, and spoke a humorous word to her first parlour-maid.

“I have often told you, Parker, to wear gloves when you are putting out the silver. I am not a detective: I am not wanting to trace you by your finger-prints.”

Parker giggled discreetly. Somehow, Mrs. Ames’ servants adored their rather exacting mistress, and stopped with her for years. They did not get very high wages, and a great deal was required of them, but Mrs. Ames treated them like human beings and not like machines. It may have been only because they were so far removed from her socially; but it may have been that there was some essential and innate kindliness in her that shut up like a parasol when she had to deal with such foolish and trying folk as Mrs. Altham. Mrs. Altham, indeed, had tried to entice Parker away with a substantial rise in wages, and the prospect of less arduous service. But that admirable serving-maid had declined to be tempted. Also, she had reported the occurrence to her mistress. It only confirmed what Mrs. Ames already thought of the temptress. She did not add any further black mark.

The table at present was devoid of any floral decoration, but that was no part of Mrs. Ames’ province. Her husband, that premature gardener, was responsible for flowers and wine when Mrs. Ames gave a party, and always returned home half-an-hour earlier, to pick such of his treasures as looked as if they would begin to go off to-morrow, and make a subterranean excursion with a taper and the wine book to his cellar. In the domestic economy of the house he paid the rent, the rates and taxes, the upkeep of the garden, the wine bills, and the cost of their annual summer holiday, while Mrs. Ames’ budget was responsible for coal, electric light, servants’ wages, and catering bills. Arising out of this arrangement there occasionally arose clouds (though no bigger than Mrs. Ames’ own hand) that flecked the brightness of their domestic serenity. Occasionally—not often—Mrs. Ames would be pungent about the possibility of putting out the electric light on leaving a room, occasionally her husband had sent for his coat at lunch-time, to supplement the heat given out on a too parsimonious hearth. But such clouds were never seen by other eyes than theirs: the presence of guests led Major Ames to speak of the excellence of his wife’s cook and say, “’Pon my word, I never taste better cooking than what I get at home,” and suggested to his wife to say to Mrs. Fortescue, “My husband so much enjoys having the General to dinner, for he knows a glass of good wine.” She might with truth have said that he knew a good many glasses.

Finally, the two shared in equal proportions the upkeep of a rather weird youth who was the only offspring of their marriage, and was mistakenly called Harry, for the name was singularly ill-suited to him. He had lank hair, protuberant eyes, and a tendency to write poetry. Just now he was at home from Cambridge, and had rather agitated his mother that afternoon by approaching her dreamily at the garden-party and saying, “Mother, Mrs. Evans is the most wonderful creature I ever saw!” That seemed to her so wild an exaggeration as to be quite senseless, and to portend poetry. Harry made his father uncomfortable, too, by walking about with some quite common rose in his hand, and pretending that the scent of it was meat and drink to him. Also he had queer notions about vegetarianism, and said that a hunch of brown bread, a plate of beans, and a lump of cheese, contained more nourishment than quantities of mutton chops. But though not much of a hand at victuals, he found inspiration in what he called “yellow wine,” and he and a few similarly minded friends belonged to a secret Omar Khayyam Club at Cambridge, the proceedings of which were carried on behind locked doors, not for fear of the Jews, but of the Philistines. A large glass salad-bowl filled with yellow wine and sprinkled with rose-leaves was the inspirer of these mild orgies, and each Omarite had to write and read a short poem during the course of the evening. It was a point of honour among members always to be madly in love with some usually unconscious lady, and paroxysms of passion were punctuated by Byronic cynicism. Just now it seemed likely that Mrs. Evans would soon be the fount of aspiration and despair. That would create quite a sensation at the next meeting of the Omar Club: nobody before had been quite so daring as to fall in love with a married woman. But no doubt that phenomenon has occurred in the history of human passion, so why should it not occur to an Omarite?

The wine at Mrs. Ames’ parties was arranged by her husband on a scale that corresponded with the food. At either of the two “poor” dinners, for instance, a glass of Marsala was accorded with the soup, a light (though wholesome) claret moistened the rest of the meal, and a single glass of port was offered at dessert. The course of the nine dinners good enough for anybody was enlivened by the substitution of sherry for Marsala, champagne for claret, and liqueurs presented with coffee, while on the much rarer occasions of the one sumptuous dinner (which always included an ice) liqueur made its first appearance with the ice, and a glass of hock partnered the fish. To-night, therefore, sherry was on offer, and when, the dinner being fairly launched, Mrs. Ames took her first disengaged look round, she observed with some little annoyance, justifiable, even laudable, in a hostess, that Harry was talking in the wrong direction. In fact, he was devoting his attention to Mrs. Evans, who sat between him and his father, instead of entertaining Elsie, her daughter, whom he had taken in, and who now sat isolated and silent, since General Fortescue, who was on her other side, was naturally conversing with his hostess. Certainly it was rubbish to call Mrs. Evans a most wonderful creature; there was nothing wonderful about her. She was fair, with pretty yellow hair (an enthusiast might have called it golden), she had small regular features, and that look of distinction which Mrs. Ames (drawing herself up a little as she thought of it) considered to be inseparable from any in whose veins ran the renowned Westbourne blood. She had also that slim, tall figure which, though characteristic of the same race, was unfortunately not quite inseparable from its members, for no amount of drawing herself up would have conferred it on Mrs. Ames, and Harry took after her in this respect.

Dr. Evans had not long been settled in Riseborough—indeed, it was only last winter that he had bought his practice here, and taken the delightful house in which his wife had given so populous a garden-party that afternoon. Their coming, as advertised by Mrs. Ames, had been looked forward to with a high degree of expectancy, since a fresh tenant for the Red House, especially when he was known to be a man of wealth (though only a doctor), was naturally supposed to connote a new and exclusive entertainer, while his wife’s relationship to Sir James Westbourne made a fresh link between the “town” and the “county.” Hitherto, Mrs. Ames had been the chief link, and though without doubt she was a genuine one (her mother being a Westbourne), she had been a little disappointing in this regard, as she barely knew the present head of the family, and was apt to talk about old days rather than glorify the present ones by exhibitions of the family to which she belonged. But it was hoped that with the advent of Mrs. Evans a more living intimacy would be established.

Mrs. Evans was the fortunate possessor of that type of looks which wears well, and it was difficult to believe that Elsie, with her eighteen years and elderly manner, was her daughter. She was possessed of that unemotional temperament which causes the years to leave only the faintest traces of their passage, and they had graven on her face but little record of joys and sorrows. Her mouth still possessed the softness of a girl’s, and her eyes, large and blue, had something of the shy, unconscious wonder of childhood in their azure. To judge by appearances (which we shall all continue to do until the end of time, though we have made proverbs to warn us against the fallibility of such conclusions), she must have had the tender and innocent nature of a child, and though Mrs. Ames saw nothing wonderful about her, it was really remarkable that a woman could look so much and mean so little. She did not talk herself with either depth or volume, but she had, so to speak, a deep and voluminous way of listening which was immensely attractive. She made the man who was talking to her feel himself to be interesting (a thing always pleasant to the vainer sex), and in consequence he generally became interested. To fire the word “flirt” at her, point-blank, would have been a brutality that would have astounded her—nor, indeed, was she accustomed to use the somewhat obvious arts which we associate with those practitioners, but it is true that without effort she often established relations of intimacy with other people without any giving of herself in return. Both men and women were accustomed to take her into their confidence; it was so easy to tell her of private affairs, and her eyes, so wide and eager and sympathetic, gave an extraordinary tenderness to her commonplace replies, which accurately, by themselves, reflected her dull and unemotional mind. She possessed, in fact, as unemotional but comely people do, the potentiality of making a great deal of mischief without exactly meaning it, and it would be safe to predict that, the mischief being made, she would quite certainly acquit herself of any intention of having made it. It would be rash, of course, to assert that no breeze would ever stir the pearly sleeping sea of her temperament: all that can be said is that it had not been stirred yet.