The idea detailed itself in plan and manœuvre. She wanted to burst on Lyndhurst like that, to let him see in a flash of revelation how bravely she could support the rôle of that sorceress.... At the moment the drawing-room door opened, and simultaneously they both began a sentence in identical words.
“Do you know, my dear, I’ve been thinking....”
They both stopped, and he gave his genial laugh.
“Upon my soul, my dear Amy,” he said, “I believe we always have the same thoughts. I’ll tell you what you were going to say. You were going to say, ‘I’ve been thinking it wouldn’t be very kind to dear Millie’—that is what you would say, of course—not very kind to Mrs. Evans if we declined. And I agree with you, my dear. No doubt she should have consulted you first, or if you were away she might even, as you suggested, have mentioned it to me. But you can afford to be indulgent, my dear—after all, she is your cousin—and you wouldn’t like to spoil her party, poor thing, by refusing to go. And if you go, why, of course, I shall put on one side my natural feelings about an old fogey like myself making a guy of himself, and I shall dress up somehow. I think I have an old costume with a Venetian cloak laid aside somewhere, though I daresay it’s moth-eaten and rusty now, and I’ll dress myself up somehow and come with you. I suppose there are some old stagers in Shakespeare—I must have a look at the fellow’s plays again—which even a retired old soldier can impersonate. Falstaff, for instance—some stout old man of that sort.”
Some of this speech, to say the least of it, was not, it is to be feared, quite absolutely ingenuous. But then, Major Ames was not naturally quite ingenuous. He had already satisfied himself that the old costume in question had been perfectly preserved by the naphthaline balls which he was careful to renew from time to time, and was not in the least moth-eaten or rusty. Again, since he had settled to go as Antony, it was not perfectly straightforward to make allusion to Falstaff. But after all, the speech expressed all he meant to say, and it is only our most fortunate utterances that can do as much. Indeed, perhaps it leaned over a little to the further side of expression, for it struck Mrs. Ames at that moment (struck her as violently and inexplicably as a cocoanut falling on her head) that the question of the Venetian cloak had not come into her husband’s mind for the first time that evening. She felt, without being able to explain her feeling, that the idea of the fancy dress ball was not new to him. But it was impossible to tax him with so profound a duplicity; indeed, when she gave a moment’s consideration to the question, she dismissed her suspicion. But the suspicion had been there.
She met him quite half-way.
“You have guessed quite right, Lyndhurst,” she said; “I think it would be unkind to dear Millie if you and I did not go. I dare say she will have difficulty enough as it is to make a gathering. I will write at once.”
This was soon done, and even as she wrote, poor Mrs. Ames’ vision of herself grew more roseate in her mind. But she must burst upon her husband, she must burst upon him. Supposing her preposterous suspicion of a moment before was true, there was all the more need for bursting upon him, for Cleopatraizing herself.... He, meantime, was wondering how on earth to keep the secret of his costume and his hostess’s, should Amy proceed to discuss costumes, or suggest the King and Queen of Denmark as suitable for themselves. It might even be better to accept the situation as such, and tell Mrs. Evans that his wife wanted to go as “a pair” (so Mrs. Altham expressed it) and that it was more prudent to abandon the idea of a stray Antony and a stray Cleopatra meeting on the evening itself unpremeditatedly. But her next words caused all these difficulties to disappear; they vanished as completely as a watch or a rabbit under the wave of the conjurer’s wand.
Mrs. Ames never licked envelopes; she applied water on a camel’s-hair brush, from a little receptacle like a tear-bottle.
“What nonsense, my dear Lyndhurst,” she said. “Fancy you going as Falstaff! You must think of something better than that! Dear me, it is a very bold idea of Millie’s, but really it seems to me that we might have great fun. I do hope that all Riseborough will not talk their costumes over together, so that we shall know exactly what to expect. There is little point in a fancy dress ball unless there are some surprises. I must think over my costume too. I am not so fortunate as to have one ready.”