It was still early in the course of dinner.
“Light the fire in the drawing-room, Parker,” said Mrs. Ames. “Let there be a good fire when we come out of dinner.”
“Get roasted alive,” said Major Ames, half to himself, but intending to be heard.
But Mrs. Ames’ mind had been feasting for weeks past on things which had a solider existence than her husband’s unreasonable strictures. Since this new diet had been hers, his snaps and growls had produced no effect: they often annoyed her into repartee, and as likely as not, a few months ago, she would have said that his claret seemed a very poor kind of beverage. But to-night she felt not the smallest desire to retort. She was very sorry for his lumbago, but felt no inclination to carry the war into his territories, or to tell him that if people, perspiring freely, and of gouty habit, choose to sit down without changing, and get chilly, they must expect reprisal for their imprudence.
“Then we will open the window, dear,” she said, “if we find we are frizzling. But I don’t think it will be too hot. Evenings are chilly in October. Did you have a pleasant lunch, Lyndhurst? Indeed, I don’t know where you lunched. I ordered curry for you. I sat down at a quarter to two as you did not come in.”
It was all so infinitesimal ... yet it was the mental diet which had supported her for years. Perhaps after dinner they would play picquet. The garden, the kitchen, for years, except for gossip infinitely less real, these had been the topics. There had been no joy for him in the beauty of the garden, only a pleased sense of proprietorship, if a rare plant flowered, or if there were more roses than usual. For her, she had been vaguely pleased if Lyndhurst had taken two helpings of a dish, and both of them had been vaguely disquieted if Harry quoted Swinburne.
“I lunched with the Evans’,” he said. “By the way, I met your cousin James Westbourne this afternoon, when I was on my walk. Extraordinarily cordial he gets when there’s business ahead that brings him into Riseborough, and he wants to cadge a dinner or two. It’s little notice he takes of us the rest of the year, and I’m sure it’s a couple of years since he so much as sent us a brace of pheasants, and more than that since he asked me to shoot there. But as I say, when he wants to pick up a dinner or two in Riseborough, he’s all heartiness, and saying he doesn’t see half enough of us. He doesn’t seem to strain himself in trying to see more, and there’s seldom a week-end when he and that great guy of a wife of his don’t have the house packed with people. I suppose we’re not smart enough for them, except when it’s convenient to dine in Riseborough. Then he’s not above drinking a bottle of my champagne.”
Mrs. Ames was eager in support of her husband.
“I’m sure there’s no call for you to open any more bottles for him, my dear,” she said. “If Cousin James wants to see us, he can take his turn in asking us. And Harriet is a great guy, as you say, with her big fiddle-head.”
Major Ames shrugged his shoulders rather magnificently.