Mrs. Altham considered this. It was true that she would find it difficult to look thirty, however many Roman pearls she wore.
“I do not know that it is such a bad idea of yours, Henry,” she said. “Certainly there is no one in the world who cares about her age, or wants to conceal it, less than I. And there is something original about your suggestion—Antony and Cleopatra ten years later—Ah, there is the bell, that will be Mrs. Brooks coming in. And there is the telephone also. Upon my word, we never have a moment to ourselves. I should not wonder if half Riseborough came to see us to-night. Will you go to the telephone and tell it we are at home? And not a word to anybody, Henry, as to what we are thinking of going as. There will be our surprise, at any rate, however much other people go talking about their dresses. If you are being rung up to ask about your costume, say that you haven’t given it a thought yet.”
For the next week Mrs. Altham was thoroughly in her element. She had something to conceal, and was in a delicious state of tension with the superficial desire to disclose her own impersonation, and the deep-rooted satisfaction of not doing so. To complete her happiness, the famous white satin still fitted her, and she was nearly insane with curiosity to know what Major and Mrs. Ames “were going to be,” and what the whole history of the projected festivity was. In various other respects her natural interest in the affairs of other people was satiated. Mrs. Turner was to be Mistress Page, which was very suitable, as she was elderly and stout, and did not really in the least resemble Miss Ellen Terry. Mr. Turner had selected Falstaff, and could be recognized anywhere. Young Morton, with unwonted modesty, had chosen the part of the Apothecary in Romeo and Juliet. Mrs. Taverner was to be Queen Catherine, and—almost more joyous than all—she had persuaded Mrs. Brooks not to attempt to impersonate Cleopatra. What Mrs. Brooks’ feelings would be when it dawned on her, as it not inconceivably might, that Mrs. Altham had seen in her a striking likeness to her conception of Hermione, because she did not want there to be two Cleopatras, did not particularly concern her. She had asked Mrs. Brooks to dinner the day after the entertainment, and her acceptance would bury the hatchet, if indeed there was such a thing as a hatchet about. Finally, she had called on Mrs. Evans, who had vaguely talked about Midsummer Night’s Dream. Mrs. Altham had taken that to be equivalent to the fact that she would appear as Titania, and Mrs. Evans had distinctly intended that she should so take it. Indeed, the idea had occurred to her, but not very vividly. Her husband was going to be Timon of Athens. That, again, was quite satisfactory: nobody knew at all distinctly who Timon of Athens was, and nobody knew much about Dr. Evans, except that he was usually sent for in the middle of something. Probably the same thing happened to Timon of Athens.
Indeed, within a couple of hours of the reception of Mrs. Evans’ invitations, which all arrived simultaneously by the local evening post, a spirit of demoniacal gaiety, not less fierce than that which inspired Mrs. Altham, possessed the whole of those invited. Though it was gay, it was certainly demoniacal, for a quite prodigious amount of ill-feeling was mingled with it which from time to time threatened to wreck the proceedings altogether. For instance, only two days after all the invitations had been accepted, Mrs. Evans had issued a further intimation that there was to be dancing, and that the evening would open at a quarter past ten precisely with a quadrille in which it was requested that everybody would take part. It is easy to picture the private consternation that presided over that evening; how in one house, Mrs. Brooks having pushed her central drawing-room table to one side, all alone and humming to herself, stepped in perplexed and forgotten measures, and how next door Mrs. and Mr. Altham violently wrangled over the order of the figures, and hummed different tunes, to show each other, or pranced in different directions. For here was the bitter affair: these pains had to be suffered in loneliness, for it was clearly impossible to confess that the practice of quadrilles was so long past that the memory of them had vanished altogether. But luckily (though at the moment the suggestion caused a great deal of asperity in Mrs. Altham’s mind) Mrs. Ames came to the rescue with the suggestion that as many of them, no doubt, had forgotten the precise manner of quadrilles, she proposed to hold a class at half-past four to-morrow afternoon, when they would all run through a quadrille together.
“There! I thought as much!” said Mrs. Altham. “That means that neither Major nor Mrs. Ames can remember how the quadrille goes, and we, forsooth, must go and teach them. And she puts it that she is going to teach us! I am sure she will never teach me: I shall not go near the house. I do not require to be taught quadrilles by anybody, still less by Mrs. Ames. There is no answer,” she added to Jane.
Mr. Altham fidgeted in his chair. Last night he had been quite sure he was right, in points where he and his wife differed, and that the particular “setting partners” which they had shown each other so often did not come in the quadrille at all, but occurred in lancers, just before the ladies’ chain. But she had insisted that both the setting to partners and ladies’ chain came in quadrilles. This morning, however, he did not feel quite so certain about it.
“You might send a note to Mrs. Ames,” he observed, “and tell her you are not coming.”
“No answer was asked for,” said his wife excitedly. “She just said there was to be a quadrille practice at half-past four. Let there be. I am sure I have no objection, though I do think you might have thought of doing it first, Henry.”
“But she will like to know how many to expect,” said Henry. “If it is to be at half-past four, she must be prepared for tea. It is equivalent to a tea-party, unless you suppose that the class will be over before five.”
During the night Mrs. Altham had pondered her view about the ladies’ chain. It would be an awful thing if Henry happened to be right, and if, on the evening of the dance itself, she presented her hand for the ladies’ chain, and no chain of any sort followed. She decided on a magnanimous course.