Mrs. Ames

 

 

 

THE BLOOMSBURY GROUP

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by Rachel Ferguson
Miss Hargreaves
by Frank Baker
Love's Shadow
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A Kid for Two Farthings
by Wolf Mankowitz
Mrs Tim of the Regiment
by D. E. Stevenson
Let's Kill Uncle
by Rohan O'Grady
Mrs Harris Goes to Paris and Mrs Harris Goes to New York
by Paul Gallico

 

 

 

A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR

 

The son of E. W. Benson, an archbishop of Canterbury (1883–96), E. F. BENSON was educated at Marlborough School and at King's College, Cambridge. After graduation he worked from 1892 to 1895 in Athens for the British School of Archaeology and later in Egypt for the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies. In 1893 he published
Dodo
, a novel that attracted wide attention. It was followed by a number of other successful novels including his hugely popular
Mapp and Lucia
series. In 1938 he was made an honorary fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge. He died in February, 1940.

 

 

 

Mrs Ames
first published in Great Britain 1912
This electronic edition published in 2010 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Copyright by The Executors of the Estate of K S P McDowall

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Ex libris illustration © Penelope Beech 2010

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 36 Soho Square, London W1D 3QY

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved
You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages

ISBN 978 1 4088 1379 9 (ebook)

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E. F. Benson

 

 

 

 

 

B   L   O   O   M   S   B   U   R   Y
LONDON • BERLIN • NEW YORK

C
ERTAINLY
the breakfast tongue, which was cut for the first time that morning, was not of the pleasant reddish hue which Mrs Altham was justified in expecting, considering that the delicacy in question was not an ordinary tinned tongue (you had to take things as you found them, if your false sense of economy led you to order tinned goods) but one that came out of a fine glass receptacle with an eminent label on it. It was more of the colour of cold mutton, unattractive if not absolutely unpleasant to the eye, while to the palate it proved to be singularly lacking in flavour. Altogether it was a great disappointment, and for this reason, when Mr Altham set out at a quarter past twelve to stroll along to the local club in Queensgate Street with the ostensible purpose of seeing if there was any fresh telegram about the disturbances in Morocco, his wife accompanied him to the door of that desirable mansion, round which was grouped a variety of chained-up dogs in various states of boredom and irritation, and went on into the High Street in order to make in person a justifiable complaint at her grocer's. She would be sorry to have to take
her custom elsewhere, but if Mr Pritchard did not see his way to sending her another tongue (of course without further charge) she would be obliged …

So this morning there was a special and imperative reason why Mrs Altham should walk out before lunch to the High Street, and why her husband should make a morning visit to the club. But to avoid misconception it may be stated at once that there was, on every day of the week except Sunday, some equally compelling cause to account for these expeditions. If it was very wet, perhaps, Mrs Altham might not go to the High Street, but wet or fine her husband went to his club. And exactly the same thing happened in the case of most of their friends and acquaintances, so that Mr Altham was certain of meeting General Fortescue, Mr Brodie, Major Ames, and others in the smoking room, while Mrs Altham encountered their wives and sisters on errands like her own in the High Street. She often professed superior distaste for gossip, but when she met her friends coming in and out of shops, it was but civil and reasonable that she should have a few moments' chat with them. Thus, if any striking events had taken place since the previous afternoon, they all learned about them. Simultaneously there was a similar interchange of thought and tidings going on in the smoking room at the club, so that when Mr Altham had drunk his glass of sherry and returned home to lunch at one-thirty, there was probably little of importance and interest which had not reached the ears of himself or his wife. It could then be discussed at that meal.

Queensgate Street ran at right angles to the High Street, debouching into that thoroughfare at the bottom of its steep slope, while the grocer's shop lay at the top of it. The morning was a hot day of early June, but to a woman of Mrs Altham's spare frame and active limbs, the ascent was
no more than a pleasurable exercise, and the vivid colour of her face (so unlike the discouraging hues of the breakfast tongue) was not the result of her exertions. It was habitually there, and though that and the restlessness of her dark and rather beady eyes might have made a doctor, on a cursory glance (especially if influenza was about), think that she suffered from some slight rise of temperature, he would have been in error. Her symptoms betokened not an unnatural warmth of the blood, but were the visible sign of her eager and slightly impatient mind. Like the inhabitants of ancient Athens, she was always on the alert to hear some new thing (though she disliked gossip), but her mind appreciated the infinitesimal more than the important. The smaller a piece of news was, the more vivid was her perception of it, and the firmer her grip of it: large questions produced but a vague impression on her.

Her husband, a retired solicitor, was singularly well adapted to be the partner of her life, for his mind was very much akin to hers, and his appetite for news no less rapacious. Indeed, the chief difference between them in this respect was that she snapped at her food like a wolf in winter, whereas he took it quietly, in the manner of a leisurely boa constrictor. But his capacity was in no way inferior to hers. Similarly, they practised the same harmless hypocrisies on each other, and politely forbore to question each other's sincerity. An instance has already been recorded where such lack of trust might have been manifested, but it never entered Mrs Altham's head to tell her husband just now that he cared nothing whatever about the disturbances in Morocco, while she would have thought it very odd conduct on his part to suggest that a sharply worded note to Mr Pritchard would save her the walk uphill on this hot morning. But it was only sensible to go on their quests; had they not
ascertained if there was any news, they would have had nothing to talk about at lunch. As it was, conversation never failed them, for this little town of Riseborough was crammed with interest and incident, for all who felt a proper concern in the affairs of other people.

The High Street this morning was very full, for it was market day, and Mrs Altham's progress was less swift than usual. Barrows of itinerant vendors were crowded into the road from the edge of the pavements, leaving a straitened channel for a traffic swelled by farmers' carts and occasional droves of dusty and perplexed looking cattle, being driven in from the country round. More than once Mrs Altham had to step into the doorway of some shop to avoid the random erring of a company of pigs or sheep which made irruption on to the pavement. But it was interesting to observe, in one such enforced pause, the impeded passage of Sir James Westbourne's motor, with the owner, broad-faced and good-humoured, driving himself, and to conjecture as to what business brought him into the town. Then she saw that there was his servant sitting in the body of the car, while there were two portmanteaus on the luggage rail behind. There was no need for further conjecture: clearly he was coming from the South-Eastern station at the top of the hill, and was driving out to his place four miles distant along the Maidstone road. Then he caught sight of somebody on the pavement whom he knew, and, stopping the car, entered into conversation.

For the moment Mrs Altham could not see who it was; then, as the car moved on again, there appeared from behind it the tall figure of Dr Evans. Mrs Altham was not so foolish as to suppose that their conversation had necessarily anything to do with medical matters; she did not fly to the conclusion that Lady Westbourne or any of the children
must certainly be ill. To a person of her mental grasp it was sufficient to remember that Mrs Evans was Sir James' first cousin. She heard also the baronet's cheerful voice as the two parted, saying, ‘Saturday the twenty-eighth, then. I'll tell my wife.' That, of course, settled it; it required only a moment's employment of her power of inference to make her feel convinced that Saturday the twenty-eighth would be the date for Mrs Evans' garden party. There were a good many garden parties in Riseborough about then, for strawberries might be expected to be reasonably cheap. Probably the date had been settled only this morning; she might look forward to receiving the ‘At Home' card (four to seven) by the afternoon post.

The residential quarters of Riseborough lay both at the top of the hill, on which the town stood, clustering round the fine old Norman church, and at the bottom, along Queensgate Street, which passed into the greater spaciousness of St Barnabas Road. On the whole, that might be taken to be the Park Lane of the place, and commanded the highest rents; every house there, in addition to being completely detached, had a small front garden with a carriage drive long enough to hold three carriages simultaneously, if each horse did not mind putting its nose within rubbing distance of the carriage in front of it, while the foremost projected a little into the road again. But there were good houses also at the top of the hill, where Dr Evans lived, and those who lived below naturally considered themselves advantageously placed in being sheltered from the bleak easterly winds which often prevailed in spring, while those at the top wondered among themselves in sultry summer days how it was possible to exist in the airless atmosphere below. The middle section of the town was mercantile, and it was here that the ladies of the place, both from above and below,
met each other with such invariable fortuitousness in the hours before lunch. Today, however, though the street was so full, it was for purposes of news-gathering curiously deserted, and apart from the circumstance of inferentially learning the date of Mrs Evans' garden party, Mrs Altham found nothing to detain her until she had got to the very door of Mr Pritchard's grocery. But there her prolonged fast was broken; Mrs Taverner was ready to give and receive, and after the business of the colourless tongue was concluded in a manner that was perfectly creditable to Mr Pritchard, the two ladies retraced their steps (for Mrs Taverner was of St Barnabas Road) down the hill again.