Mrs. Ames (22 page)

Elsie, it so happened, was not at home that evening, and she and her husband dined alone, and strolled out in the garden afterwards.

‘You will miss your chess this evening, dear,' she said. ‘Or would it amuse you to give me a queen and a few bishops and knights, and see how long it takes you to defeat me? Or shall we spend a little cosy chatty evening together? I hope no horrid people will be taken ill, and send for you.'

‘So do I, little woman,' he said (she was getting to detest the appellation). ‘And as if I shouldn't enjoy a quiet evening of talk with you more than fifty games of chess! But, dear me, I shall be glad to get away to Harrogate this year! I need a month of it badly. I shall positively enjoy the foul old rotten-egg smell.'

She gave a little shudder.

‘Oh, don't talk of it,' she said. ‘It is bad enough without thinking of it beforehand.'

‘Poor little woman! Almost a pity you are not gouty too. Then we should both look forward to it.'

She sat down on one of the shrubbery seats, and drew aside her skirts, making room for him to sit beside her.

‘Yes, but as I am not gouty, Wilfred,' she said. ‘It is no use wishing I was. And I do hate Harrogate so. I wonder -'

She gave a little sigh and put her arm within his.

‘Well, what's the little woman wondering now?' he asked.

‘I hardly like to tell you. You are always so kind to me that I don't know why I am afraid. Wilfred, would you think it dreadful of me, if I suggested not going with you this
year? I'm sure it makes me ill to be there. You will have Elsie; you will play chess as usual with her all evening. You see all morning you are at your baths, and you usually are out bicycling all afternoon with her. I don't think you know how I hate it.'

She had begun in her shy, tentative manner. But her voice grew more cold and decided. She put forward her arguments like a woman who has thought it all carefully over, as indeed she had.

‘But what will you do with yourself, my dear?' he said. ‘It seems a funny plan. You can't stop here alone.'

She sat up, taking her hand from his arm.

‘Indeed, I should not be as lonely here as I am at Harrogate,' she said. ‘We don't know anybody there, and if you think of it, I am really alone most of the time. It is different for you, because it is doing you good, and, as I say, you are bicycling with Elsie all the afternoon, and you play chess together in the evening.'

A shade of trouble and perplexity came over the doctor's face; the indictment, for it was hardly less than that, was as well ordered and digested as if it had been prepared for a forensic argument. And the calm, passionless voice went on.

‘Think of my day there,' she said, going into orderly detail. ‘After breakfast you go off to your baths, and I have to sit in that dreadful sitting room while they clear the things away. Even a hotel would be more amusing than those furnished lodgings; one could look at the people going in and out. Or if I go for a stroll in the morning, I get tired, and must rest in the afternoon. You come in to lunch, and go off with Elsie afterwards. That is quite right; the exercise is good for you, but what is the use of my being there? There is nobody for me to go to see, nobody comes to see me. Then we have dinner, and I have
the excitement of learning where you and Elsie have been bicycling. You two play chess after dinner, and I have the excitement of being told who has won. Here, at any rate, I can sit in a room that doesn't smell of dinner, or I can sit in the garden. I have my own books and things about me, and there are people I know whom I can see and talk to.'

He got up, and began walking up and down the path in front of the bench where they had been sitting, his kindly soul in some perplexity.

‘Nothing wrong, little woman?' he asked.

‘Certainly not. Why should you think that? I imagine there is reason enough in what I have told you. I do get so bored there, Wilfred. And I hate being bored. I am sure it is not good for me, either. Try to picture my life there, and see how utterly different it is from yours. Besides, as I say, it is doing you good all the time, and as you yourself said, you welcome the thought of that horrible smelling water.'

He still shuffled up and down in the dusk. That, too, got on her nerves.

‘Pray sit down, Wilfred,' she said. ‘Your walking about like that confuses me. And surely you can say “Yes” or “No” to me. If you insist on my going with you, I shall go. But I shall think it very unreasonable of you.'

‘But I can't say “Yes” or “No” like that, little woman,' he said. ‘I don't imagine you have thought how dull Riseborough will be during August. Everybody goes away, I believe.'

For a moment she thought of telling him that the Ames' were going to stop here: then, with entirely misplaced caution, she thought wiser to keep that to herself. She, guilty in the real reason for wishing to remain here, though coherent and logical enough in the account she had given him of her reason, thought, grossly wronging him, that
some seed of suspicion might hereby enter her husband's mind.

‘There is sure to be someone here,' she said. ‘The Althams, for instance, do not go away till the middle of August.'

‘You do not particularly care for them,' said he.

‘No, but they are better than nobody. All day at Harrogate I have nobody. It is not companionship to sit in the room with you and Elsie playing chess. Besides, the Westbournes will be at home. I shall go over there a great deal, I dare say. Also I shall be in my own house, which is comfortable, and which I am fond of. Our lodgings at Harrogate disgust me. They are all oilcloth and plush; there is nowhere to sit when they are clearing away.'

His face was still clouded.

‘But it is so odd for a married woman to stop alone like that,' he said.

‘I think it is far odder for her husband to want her to spend a month of loneliness and boredom in lodgings,' she said. ‘Because I have never complained, Wilfred, you think I haven't detested it. But on thinking it over it seems to me more sensible to tell you how I detest it, and ask you that I shouldn't go.'

He was silent a moment.

‘Very well, little woman,' he said at length. ‘You shall do as you please.'

Instantly the cold precision of her speech changed. She gave that little sigh of conscious content with which she often woke in the morning, and linked her arm into his again.

‘Ah, that is dear of you,' she said. ‘You are always such a darling to me.'

He was not a man to give grudging consents, or spoil a gift by offering it except with the utmost cordiality.

‘I only hope you'll make a great success of it, little woman,' he said. ‘And it must be dull for you at Harrogate. So that's settled, and we're all satisfied. Let us see if Elsie has come in yet.'

She laughed softly.

‘You are a dear,' she said again.

Wilfred Evans was neither analytical regarding himself nor curious about analysis that might account for the action of others. Just as in his professional work he was rather old-fashioned, but eminently safe and sensible, so in the ordinary conduct of his life he did not seek for abstruse causes and subtle motives. It was quite enough for him that his wife felt that she would be excruciatingly bored at Harrogate, and less acutely desolate here. On the other hand, it implied violation of one of the simplest customs of life that a wife should be in one place and her husband in another. That was vaguely disquieting to him. Disquieting also was the cold, precise manner with which she had conducted her case. A dozen times only, perhaps, in all their married life had she assumed this frozen rigidity of demeanour; each time he had succumbed before it. In the ordinary way, if their inclinations were at variance, she would coax and wheedle him into yielding or, though quietly adhering to her own opinion, she would let him have his way. But with her calm rigidity, rarely assumed, he had never successfully combated; there was a steeliness about it that he knew to be stronger than any opposition he could bring to it. Nothing seemed to affect it, neither argument nor conjugal command. She would go on saying ‘I do not agree with you,' in the manner of cool water dripping on a stone. Or with the same inexorable quietness she would repeat, ‘I feel very strongly about it: I think it very unkind of you.' And a sufficiency of that always had rendered his opposition
impotent: her will, when once really aroused, seemed to paralyse his. Once or twice her line had turned out conspicuously ill. That seemed to make no difference: the cold, precise manner was on a higher plane than the material failure which had resulted therefrom. She would merely repeat, ‘But it was the best thing to do under the circumstances.'

In this instance he wondered a little that she had used this manner over a matter that seemed so little vital as the question of Harrogate, but by next morning he had ceased to concern himself further with it. She was completely her usual self again, and soon after breakfast set off to accomplish some little errands in the town, looking in on him in his laboratory to know if there were any commissions she could do for him. His eye at the moment was glued to his microscope: a culture of staphylococcus absorbed him, and without looking up, he said -

‘Nothing, thanks, little woman.'

He heard her pause: then she came across the room to him, and laid her cool hand on his shoulder.

‘Wilfred, you are such a dear to me,' she said. ‘You're not vexed with me?'

He interrupted his observations, and put his arm round her.

‘Vexed?' he said. ‘I'll tell you when I'm vexed.'

She smiled at him, dewily, timidly.

‘That's all right, then,' she said.

So her plan was accomplished.

The affair of the staphylococcus did not long detain the doctor, and presently after Major Ames was announced. He had come to consult Dr Evans with regard to certain gouty symptoms into which the doctor inquired and examined.

‘There's nothing whatever to worry about,' he said, after a very short investigation. ‘I should recommend you to cut off alcohol entirely, and not eat meat more than once a day.
A fortnight's dieting will probably cure you. And take plenty of exercise. I won't give you any medicine. There is no use in taking drugs when you can produce the same effect by not taking other things.'

Major Ames fidgeted and frowned a little.

‘I was thinking,' he said at length, ‘of taking myself more thoroughly in hand than that. I've never approved of half-measures, and I can't begin now. If a tooth aches have it out, and be done with it. No fiddling about for me. Now my wife does not want to go away this August, and it seemed to me that it would be a very good opportunity for me to go, as you do, I think, and take a course of waters. Get rid of the tendency, don't you know, eradicate it. What do you say to that? Harrogate now; I was thinking of Harrogate, if you approved. Harrogate does wonders for gout, does it not?'

The doctor laughed.

‘I am certainly hoping that Harrogate will do wonders for me,' he said. ‘I go there every year. And no doubt many of us who are getting on in years would be benefited by it. But your symptoms are very slight. I think you will soon get rid of them if you follow the course I suggest.'

But Major Ames showed a strange desire for Harrogate.

‘Well, I like to do things thoroughly,' he said. ‘I like getting rid of a thing root and branch, you know. You see I may not get another opportunity. Amy likes me to go with her on her holiday in August, but there is no reason why I should stop in Riseborough. I haven't spoken to her yet, but if I could say that you recommended Harrogate, I'm sure she would wish me to go. Indeed, she would insist on my going. She is often anxious about my gouty tendencies, more anxious, as I often tell her, than she has any need to be. But an aunt of hers had an attack which went to her heart quite unexpectedly, and killed her, poor thing.
I think, indeed, it would be a weight off Amy's mind if she knew I was going to take myself thoroughly in hand, not tinker and peddle about with diet only. So would you be able to recommend me to go to Harrogate?'

‘A course of Harrogate wouldn't be bad for any of us who eat a good dinner every night,' said Dr Evans. ‘But I think that if you tried -'

Major Ames got up, waving all further discussion aside.

‘That's enough, doctor,' he said. ‘If it would do me good, I know Amy would wish me to go; you know what wives are. Now I'm pressed for time this morning, and so I am sure are you. By the way, you needn't mention my plan till I've talked it over with Amy. But about lodgings, now. Do you recommend lodgings or an hotel?'

Dr Evans did not mention that his wife was not going to be with him this year, for, having obtained permission to say that Harrogate would do him good, Major Ames had developed a prodigious hurry, and a few moments after was going jauntily home, with the address of Dr Evans' lodgings in his pocket. He trusted to his own powers of exaggeration to remove all possible opposition on his wife's part, and felt himself the devil of a diplomatist.

So his plan was arranged.

The third factor in this network of misconceived plots occurred the same morning. Mrs Ames, visiting the High Street on account of an advanced melon, met Cousin Millie on some similar errand to the butcher's on account of advanced cutlets, for the weather was trying. It was natural that she announced her intention of remaining in Riseborough with her family during August: it was natural also that Cousin Millie signified the remission from Harrogate. Cousin Amy was cordial on the subject, and returned home. Probably she would have mentioned this fact to her husband,
if he had given her time to do it. But he was bursting with a more immediate communication.

‘I didn't like to tell you before, Amy,' he said, ‘because I didn't want to make you unnecessarily anxious. And there's no need for anxiety now.'