Mrs. Ames by E. F. Benson Read Free Book Online Page A

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 manwho 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.
    Mrs Ames could not permit Elsie’s isolation to continue, and she said firmly to Harry, ‘Tell Miss Evans all about Cambridge,’ which straightened conversation out again, and allowed Mrs Evans to direct all her glances and little sentences to Major Ames. As was usual with men who had the privilege of talking to her, he soon felt himself a vivid conversationalist.
    â€˜Yes, gardening was always a hobby of mine,’ he was saying, ‘and in the regiment they used to call me Adam. The grand old gardener, you know, as Tennyson says. Not that there was ever anything grand about me.’
    Mrs Evans’ mouth quivered into a little smile.
    â€˜Nor old, either, Major Ames,’ she said.
    Major Ames put down the glass of champagne he had just sipped, in order to give his loud, hearty laugh.
    â€˜Well, well,’ he said, ‘I’m pretty vigorous yet, and can pull the heavy garden roller as well as a couple of gardeners could. I never have a gardener more than a couple of days a week. I do all the work myself. Capital exercise, rolling the lawn, and then I take a rest with a bit of weeding, or picking a bunch of flowers for Amy’s table. Weeding, too -
    â€˜An hour’s weeding a day
Keeps the doctor away.’
    I defy you to get lumbago if you do a bit of weeding every morning.’
    Again a little shy smile quivered on Millie Evans’ mouth.
    â€˜I shall tell my husband,’ she said. ‘I shall say you told me you spend an hour a day in weeding, so that you shouldn’t ever set eyes on him. And then you make poetry about it afterwards.’
    Again he laughed.
    â€˜Well, now, I call that downright wicked of you,’ he said, ‘twisting my words about in that way. General, I want your opinion about that glass of champagne. It’s a ’96 wine, and wants drinking.’
    The General applied his fishlike mouth to his glass.
    â€˜Wants