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Programming Entity Framework Building Data Centric Apps with the ADO NET Entity Framework Second Edition Julia Lerman

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Programming Entity Framework Building Data Centric Apps with the ADO NET Entity Framework Second Edition Julia Lerman Programming Entity Framework Building Data Centric Apps with the ADO NET Entity Framework Second Edition Julia Lerman Programming Entity Framework Building Data Centric Apps with the ADO NET Entity Framework Second Edition Julia Lerman

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Programming Entity Framework Building Data Centric Apps with the ADO NET Entity Framework Second Edition Julia Lerman
Programming Entity Framework Building Data Centric Apps with the ADO NET Entity Framework Second Edition Julia Lerman Digital Instant Download Author(s): Julia Lerman ISBN(s): 9780596807269, 0596807260 Edition: Second Edition File Details: PDF, 9.09 MB Year: 2010 Language: english
Programming Entity Framework Building Data Centric Apps with the ADO NET Entity Framework Second Edition Julia Lerman
Programming Entity Framework Building Data Centric Apps with the ADO NET Entity Framework Second Edition Julia Lerman
SECOND EDITION Programming Entity Framework Julia Lerman Beijing • Cambridge • Farnham • Köln • Sebastopol • Taipei • Tokyo
Programming Entity Framework, Second Edition by Julia Lerman Copyright © 2010 Julia Lerman. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. Published by O’Reilly Media, Inc., 1005 Gravenstein Highway North, Sebastopol, CA 95472. O’Reilly books may be purchased for educational, business, or sales promotional use. Online editions are also available for most titles (http://my.safaribooksonline.com). For more information, contact our corporate/institutional sales department: 800-998-9938 or corporate@oreilly.com. Editors: Mike Hendrickson and Laurel Ruma Production Editor: Loranah Dimant Copyeditor: Audrey Doyle Proofreader: Sada Preisch Indexer: Ellen Troutman Zaig Cover Designer: Karen Montgomery Interior Designer: David Futato Illustrator: Robert Romano Printing History: February 2009: First Edition. August 2010: Second Edition. Nutshell Handbook, the Nutshell Handbook logo, and the O’Reilly logo are registered trademarks of O’Reilly Media, Inc. Programming Entity Framework, the image of a Seychelles blue pigeon, and related trade dress are trademarks of O’Reilly Media, Inc. Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this book, and O’Reilly Media, Inc., was aware of a trademark claim, the designations have been printed in caps or initial caps. .NET is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation. While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the publisher and author assume no responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from the use of the information con- tained herein. ISBN: 978-0-596-80726-9 [SB] 1281106344
Table of Contents Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxi Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxiii 1. Introducing the ADO.NET Entity Framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 The Entity Relationship Model: Programming Against a Model, Not the Database 2 The Entity Data Model: A Client-Side Data Model 3 Entities: Blueprints for Business Classes 6 The Backend Database: Your Choice 7 Database Providers 8 Access and ODBC 9 Entity Framework Features: APIs and Tools 9 Metadata 10 Entity Data Model Design Tools 10 Object Services 11 POCO Support 12 Change Tracking 12 Relationship Management and Foreign Keys 13 Data Binding 13 n-Tier Development 14 EntityClient 14 The Entity Framework and WCF Services 15 What About ADO.NET DataSets and LINQ to SQL? 15 DataSets 15 LINQ to SQL 16 Entity Framework Pain Points Are Fading Away 16 Programming the Entity Framework 17 2. Exploring the Entity Data Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Why Use an Entity Data Model? 19 iii
The EDM Within the Entity Framework 20 Walkthrough: Building Your First EDM 21 Inspecting the EDM in the Designer Window 24 Entity Container Properties 26 Entity Properties 26 Entity Property Properties 27 The Model’s Supporting Metadata 29 Viewing the Model in the Model Browser 31 Viewing the Model’s Raw XML 31 CSDL: The Conceptual Schema 33 EntityContainer 34 EntitySet 35 EntityType 36 Associations 38 Navigation Property 41 Navigation Properties That Return Collections 42 SSDL: The Store Schema 43 MSL: The Mappings 45 Database Views in the EDM 46 Summary 47 3. Querying Entity Data Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 Query the Model, Not the Database 49 Your First EDM Query 50 Where Did the Context and Classes Come From? 51 Querying with LINQ to Entities 55 Writing Your First LINQ to Entities Query 55 Querying with Object Services and Entity SQL 57 Why Another Way to Query? 57 Entity SQL 58 The Parameterized ObjectQuery 60 Querying with Methods 61 Querying with LINQ Methods 61 Querying with Query Builder Methods and Entity SQL 64 The Shortest Query 66 ObjectQuery, ObjectSet, and LINQ to Entities 66 Querying with EntityClient to Return Streamed Data 68 EntityConnection and the Connection String 70 EntityCommand 71 ExecuteReader 71 Forward-Only Access to the Fields 71 Translating Entity Queries to Database Queries 71 Pay Attention to the .NET Method’s Impact on Generated SQL 72 iv | Table of Contents
Avoiding Inadvertent Query Execution 74 Summary 75 4. Exploring LINQ to Entities in Greater Depth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 Getting Ready with Some New Lingo 78 Projections in Queries 78 Projections in LINQ to Entities 79 VB and C# Syntax Differences 79 LINQ Projections and Special Language Features 80 Projections with LINQ Query Methods 84 Using Navigations in Queries 84 Navigating to an EntityReference 84 Filtering and Sorting with an EntityReference 86 Navigating to Entity Collections 86 Projecting Properties from EntityCollection Entities 87 Filtering and Sorting with EntityCollections 88 Aggregates with EntityCollections 88 Aggregates in LINQ Methods 89 Joins and Nested Queries 90 Joins 90 Nested Queries 91 Grouping 93 Naming Properties When Grouping 94 Chaining Aggregates 95 Filtering on Group Conditions 95 Shaping Data Returned by Queries 97 Limiting Which Related Data Is Returned 99 Loading Related Data 100 Controlling Lazy Loading 101 Explicitly Loading Entity Collections and Entity References 101 Using the Include Method to Eager-Load 103 Pros and Cons of Load and Include 106 Retrieving a Single Entity 107 Retrieving a Single Entity with GetObjectByKey 108 Finding More Query Samples 109 Summary 109 5. Exploring Entity SQL in Greater Depth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 Literals in Entity SQL 111 Expressing a DateTime Literal 112 Expressing a Decimal Literal 112 Using Additional Literal Types 112 Projecting in Entity SQL 113 Table of Contents | v
DbDataRecords and Nonscalar Properties 114 Projecting with Query Builder Methods 115 Using Navigation in Entity SQL Queries 115 Navigating to an EntityReference 115 Filtering and Sorting with an EntityReference 116 Filtering and Sorting with EntityCollections 116 Aggregating with EntityCollections 117 Using Entity SQL SET Operators 117 Aggregating with Query Builder Methods 118 Using Joins 118 Nesting Queries 119 Grouping in Entity SQL 120 Returning Entities from an Entity SQL GROUP BY Query 121 Filtering Based on Group Properties 121 Shaping Data with Entity SQL 122 Using Include with an ObjectQuery and Entity SQL 123 Understanding Entity SQL’s Wrapped and Unwrapped Results 124 Entity SQL Rules for Wrapped and Unwrapped Results 126 Digging a Little Deeper into EntityClient’s Results 126 Summary 127 6. Modifying Entities and Saving Changes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129 Keeping Track of Entities 129 Managing an Entity’s State 130 Saving Changes Back to the Database 131 Inserting New Objects 134 Inserting New Parents and Children 135 Deleting Entities 137 Summary 139 7. Using Stored Procedures with the EDM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 Updating the Model from a Database 142 Working with Functions 143 Function Attributes 144 Mapping Functions to Entities 146 Mapping Insert, Update, and Delete Functions to an Entity 148 Inspecting Mappings in XML 152 Using Mapped Functions 153 Using the EDM Designer Model Browser to Import Additional Functions into Your Model 155 Mapping the First of the Read Stored Procedures: ContactsbyState 156 Using Imported Functions 158 Avoiding Inadvertent Client-Side Processing 159 vi | Table of Contents
Mapping a Function to a Scalar Type 159 Mapping a Function to a Complex Type 160 Summary 163 8. Implementing a More Real-World Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165 Introducing the BreakAway Geek Adventures Business Model and Legacy Database 166 Creating a Separate Project for an EDM 168 Inspecting and Cleaning Up a New EDM 168 Modifying the Names of Entities and Properties 170 Resolving Collisions Between Property Names and Entity Names 172 Cleaning Up Navigation Property Names 172 Setting Default Values 174 Mapping Stored Procedures 175 Using the Use Original Value Checkbox in Update Mappings 176 Working with Many-to-Many Relationships 178 Inspecting the Completed BreakAway Model 181 Building the BreakAway Model Assembly 182 Looking at the Compiled Assembly 183 Splitting Out the Model’s Metadata Files 184 Summary 185 9. Data Binding with Windows Forms and WPF Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187 Data Binding with Windows Forms Applications 187 Creating a Windows Forms Application 188 Using Windows Forms Data Sources 189 Creating an Object Data Source for a Customer Entity 190 Getting an Entity’s Details onto a Form 191 Adding Code to Query an EDM When a Form Loads 194 Binding Without a BindingSource 196 Adding an EntityCollection to the Form 198 Displaying the Properties of Related Data in the Grid 199 Allowing Users to Edit Data 201 Editing Navigation Properties (and Shrinking the Query) 202 Replacing the Navigation Property TextBoxes with ComboBoxes 204 Adding New Customers 208 Deleting Reservations 211 Data Binding with WPF Applications 213 Creating the WPF Form 213 Creating the WPF Project 214 Adding the Necessary Data Source Objects 215 Inspecting the XAML and Code Generated by the Automated Data Binding 215 Table of Contents | vii
Adding Code to Query the EDM When the Window Loads 216 Customizing the Display of the Controls 218 Selecting an Entity and Viewing Its Details 219 Adding Another EntityCollection to the Mix 222 Editing Entities and Their Related Data 224 Using SortDescriptions to Keep Sorting in Sync with Data Modifica- tions 225 Adding Items to the Child EntityCollection 226 The Last Task: Adding New Trips to the Catalog 227 Summary 230 10. Working with Object Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231 Where Does Object Services Fit into the Framework? 231 Processing Queries 233 Parsing Queries: From Query to Command Tree to SQL 234 Understanding Query Builder Methods 235 Analyzing a Query with ObjectQuery Methods and Properties 238 Executing Queries with ToList, ToArray, First or Single 241 Executing Queries with the Execute Method 242 Overriding a Default Connection with ObjectContext.Connection 242 Handling Command Execution with EntityClient 244 Materializing Objects 244 Managing Object State 246 Using EntityKey to Manage Objects 246 Merging Results into the Cache with MergeOptions 247 Inspecting ObjectStateEntry 248 Maintaining EntityState 249 Managing Relationships 252 Attaching and Detaching Objects from the ObjectContext 253 Taking Control of ObjectState 257 ObjectStateManager Methods 257 ObjectStateEntry State Methods for Managing State 258 ObjectSet State Methods 259 Sending Changes Back to the Database 259 ObjectContext.SaveChanges 259 Affecting SaveChanges Default Behavior 260 Overriding SaveChanges Completely 261 Data Validation with the SavingChanges Event 261 Concurrency Management 261 Transaction Support 262 Implementing Serialization, Data Binding, and More 263 Object Services Supports XML and Binary Serialization 263 Object Services Supports Data Binding 265 viii | Table of Contents
Summary 266 11. Customizing Entities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267 Partial Classes 267 Using Partial Methods 269 The OnContextCreated Method 269 The On[Property]Changed and On[Property]Changing Methods 271 Using PropertyChanged to Calculate Database-Computed Columns Locally 273 Subscribing to Event Handlers 274 The ObjectContext.ObjectMaterialized Event 275 The ObjectContext.SavingChanges Event 276 The EntityObject.PropertyChanging and EntityObject.PropertyChanged Events 280 The AssociationChanged Event 282 Creating Your Own Partial Methods and Properties 284 Overriding the Object Constructor 284 Overriding ObjectContext.SaveChanges 285 Creating Custom Properties 286 Overloading Entity Creation Methods 289 Using Partial Classes for More Than Just Overriding Methods and Events 290 Overriding Default Code Generation 291 Switching to a Template 292 Reading the Template 292 Modifying the Template 293 Customizing a Template for Major Class Modifications 295 Switching Between the Default Template and a Custom Template 295 Summary 296 12. Data Binding with RAD ASP.NET Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297 Using the EntityDataSource Control to Access Flat Data 298 Creating the Hello Entities Project 298 Creating a GridView and an EntityDataSource Concurrently 299 Configuring an EntityDataSource with Its Wizard 299 Formatting the GridView 301 Testing the Web Application 303 Understanding How the EntityDataSource Retrieves and Updates Your Data 304 EntityDataSource and Its Query 304 EntityDataSource and Its ObjectContext 305 EntityDataSource Context Events 306 EntityDataSource and ViewState 306 Table of Contents | ix
Accessing Foreign Keys When There Is No Foreign Key Property 308 Working with Related EntityReference Data 309 Using EntityDataSource.Include to Get Related Data 309 Displaying Data That Comes from EntityReference Navigation Properties 310 Using a New EntityDataSource Control to Enable Editing of EntityReference Navigation Properties 312 Editing EntityReferences That Cannot Be Satisfied with a Drop-Down List 313 Binding an EntityDataSource to Another Control with WhereParameters 314 Editing Related Data Concurrently with Multiple EntityDataSource Controls 316 Working with Hierarchical Data in a Master/Detail Form 317 Setting Up the Web Application 317 Specifying Your Own Entity SQL Query Expression for an EntityDataSource 318 Binding a DropDownList to an EntityDataSource Control 319 Creating a Parent EntityDataSource That Is Controlled by the DropDownList and Provides Data to a DetailsView 320 Using the EntityDataSource.Where Property to Filter Query Results 321 Displaying Read-Only Child Data Through the Parent EntityDataSource 321 Using a New EntityDataSource to Add a Third Level of Hierarchical Data to the Master/Detail Form 323 Using the EntityDataSource.Inserting Event to Help with Newly Added Entities 325 Testing the Application 326 Exploring EntityDataSource Events 327 Building Dynamic Data Websites 329 Summary 332 13. Creating and Using POCO Entities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335 Creating POCO Classes 336 Creating an ObjectContext Class to Manage the POCOs 339 Change Tracking with POCOs 341 Understanding the Importance of DetectChanges 341 Loading Related Data with POCOs 341 Loading from the Context 342 Lazy Loading from a Dynamic Proxy 342 Exploring and Correcting POCOs’ Impact on Two-Way Relationships 342 Using the DetectChanges Method to Fix Relationships 343 Enabling Classes to Fix Their Own Relationships 344 x | Table of Contents
Using Proxies to Enable Change Notification, Lazy Loading, and Relationship Fix-Up 345 Change Notification by Proxy 346 Lazy Loading by Proxy 346 Exploring the Proxy Classes 347 Synchronizing Relationships by Proxy 348 Using T4 to Generate POCO Classes 350 Modifying the POCO Template 354 Creating a Model That Works with Preexisting Classes 358 Code First: Using Entity Framework with No Model at All 359 Summary 359 14. Customizing Entity Data Models Using the EDM Designer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361 Mapping Table per Type Inheritance for Tables That Describe Derived Types 362 Mapping TPT Inheritance 363 Querying Inherited Types 365 POCO Classes and Inherited Objects 366 Inserting TPT Inherited Types 366 Specifying or Excluding Derived Types in Queries 368 Creating New Derived Entities When the Base Entity Already Exists 370 TPT with Abstract Types 371 Mapping Unique Foreign Keys 373 Mapping an Entity to More Than One Table 375 Merging Multiple Entities into One 376 Querying, Editing, and Saving a Split Entity 378 Mapping Stored Procedures to Split Tables and More 380 Splitting a Single Table into Multiple Entities 381 Filtering Entities with Conditional Mapping 383 Creating a Conditional Mapping for the Activity Entity 385 Querying, Inserting, and Saving with Conditional Mappings 385 Filtering on Other Types of Conditions 387 Removing the Conditional Mapping from Activity and Re-creating the Category Property 388 Implementing Table per Hierarchy Inheritance for Tables That Contain Multiple Types 389 Creating the Resort Derived Type 390 Setting a Default (Computed) Value on the Table Schema 391 Testing the TPH Mapping 392 Choosing to Turn a Base Class into an Abstract Class 393 Creating Complex Types to Encapsulate Sets of Properties 393 Defining a Complex Type 394 Reusing Complex Types 396 Table of Contents | xi
Querying, Creating, and Saving Entities That Contain Complex Types 397 Removing the Complex Types from the Model 398 Using Additional Customization Options 399 Using GUIDs for EntityKeys 399 Mapping Stored Procedures 399 Mapping Multiple Entity Sets per Type 399 Mapping Self-Referencing Associations 400 Summary 401 15. Defining EDM Mappings That Are Not Supported by the Designer . . . . . . . . . . . . . 403 Using Model-Defined Functions 403 Using Model-Defined Functions to Return More Complex Results 407 Consuming the Complex Results 408 Reading the Results from a Complex Function 408 Mapping Table per Concrete (TPC) Type Inheritance for Tables with Overlapping Fields 409 Using QueryView to Create Read-Only Entities and Other Specialized Mappings 411 Finding a Common Use Case for QueryView 413 Creating a CustomerNameAndID Entity 413 Creating a QueryView Mapping for CustomerNameAndID 414 Testing the QueryView 416 Deconstructing the QueryView 416 Summary 417 16. Gaining Additional Stored Procedure and View Support in the Raw XML . . . . . . . 419 Reviewing Procedures, Views, and UDFs in the EDM 419 Working with Stored Procedures That Return Data 420 Using Functions That Match an Entity Whose Property Names Have Been Changed 420 Query Stored Procedures and Inherited Types 421 Composing Queries Against Functions 423 Replacing Stored Procedures with Views for Composability 423 Queries That Return Multiple Result Sets 424 Executing Queries on Demand with ExecuteStoreQuery 424 Querying to a Class That Is Not an Entity 424 Querying into an Entity 425 Adding Native Queries to the Model 426 Defining a Complex Type in the Model Browser 427 Adding Native Views to the Model 429 DefiningQuery Is Already in Your Model 429 Using DefiningQuery to Create Your Own Views 431 Implementing a DefiningQuery 433 xii | Table of Contents
Creating Associations with the New Entity 437 Using DefiningQuery to Solve More Complex Problems 438 Using Commands That Affect the Database 440 Executing SQL on the Fly with ExecuteStoreCommand 440 Using Functions to Manipulate Data in the Database 441 Mapping Insert/Update/Delete to Types Within an Inheritance Structure 444 What If Stored Procedures Affect Multiple Entities in an Inheritance Structure? 445 Implementing and Querying with User-Defined Functions (UDFs) 445 Summary 447 17. Using EntityObjects in WCF Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 449 Planning for an Entity Framework–Agnostic Client 450 Assessing the Pros and Cons of an Entity Framework–Agnostic Consumer 451 Building a Simple WCF Service with EntityObjects 452 Creating the Service 453 Defining the Service Operations 454 Defining Extra Service Classes 455 Exposing Custom Properties 456 Implementing the Service Interface 457 Adding Graphs to ObjectContext 460 Deleting Objects 461 Updating the Object Graph 463 Client Rules for Identifying Changes in an EntityCollection 463 The UpdateCustomer Method 463 Handling New and Existing Reservations 465 Deleting Reservations 466 Building a Simple Console App to Consume an EntityObject Service 467 Enabling the Client Application to Receive Large Messages from the Service 468 Creating Methods to Test the Service Operations 469 Analyzing the GetAndUpdateCustomer Method 473 Testing Out the Other Service Operations 474 Creating WCF Data Services with Entities 474 Putting WCF Data Services in Perspective 475 Creating a WCF Data Service 475 Filtering at the Service Level Using QueryInterceptor 480 Anticipating Exceptions 481 Exposing Related Data Through the Service 481 Preparing for WCF Data Services’ Limitations 483 Modifying Data Through a Service 484 Learning More About Creating and Consuming WCF Data Services 485 Table of Contents | xiii
Understanding How WCF RIA Services Relates to the Entity Framework 485 Summary 487 18. Using POCOs and Self-Tracking Entities in WCF Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 489 Creating WCF-Friendly POCO Classes 490 Updating the POCO Classes Based on the Current BreakAway Model 490 Isolating the POCO Entities in Their Own Project 491 Adding Custom Logic to the POCO Entities with a Base Class 493 Following WCF Collection Rules 495 Preventing Properties from Being Marked As Virtual 496 Building a WCF Service That Uses POCO Classes 497 Implementing the Interface 498 Using the Service 500 Using the Self-Tracking Entities Template for WCF Services 503 Creating and Exploring the Self-Tracking Entities 503 Putting the Change-Tracking Logic Where It’s Needed 505 Creating a WCF Service That Uses Self-Tracking Entities 506 Watching Self-Tracking Entities Under the Covers 507 Inspecting the Generated Context Class and Extensions 513 Using POCO Entities with WCF Data and RIA Services 515 Preparing for WCF Data Services 515 Using POCO Entities in WCF RIA Services 517 Sorting Out the Many Options for Creating Services 519 Summary 520 19. Working with Relationships and Associations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 521 Deconstructing Relationships in the Entity Data Model 522 Understanding How the Entity Data Model Wizard Creates the Association 523 Understanding Additional Relationship Items 525 Handling Nonessential Navigation Properties 526 Understanding the Major Differences Between Foreign Key Associations and Independent Associations 527 Defining Associations in Metadata 528 Detecting Associations at Runtime 528 Deconstructing Relationships Between Instantiated Entities 529 Understanding Relationship Manager and the IRelatedEnd Interface 530 Late-Binding Relationships 530 Taking a Peek Under the Covers: How Entity Framework Manages Relationships 531 Understanding Navigation Properties 534 Understanding Referential Integrity and Constraints 537 Implementing Deletes and Cascading Deletes 540 xiv | Table of Contents
Defining Relationships Between Entities 542 The CLR Way: Setting a Navigation Property to an Entity 543 Setting a Foreign Key Property 544 Setting an EntityReference Using an EntityKey 544 Loading, Adding, and Attaching Navigation Properties 545 Lazy Loading 545 EntityReference.Load and EntityCollection.Load 547 Loading from Detached Entities: Lazy and Explicit 547 Using EntityCollection.Add 548 Using Attach and Remove 549 Moving an Entity to a New Graph 550 Learning a Few Last Tricks to Make You a Relationship Pro 551 Using CreateSourceQuery to Enhance Deferred Loading 551 Getting a Foreign Key Value in an Independent Association 552 Summary 553 20. Real World Apps: Connections, Transactions, Performance, and More . . . . . . . . . . 555 Entity Framework and Connections 555 Overriding EntityConnection Defaults 556 Working with Connection Strings Programmatically 557 Opening and Closing Connections 560 Getting the Store Connection from EntityConnection 562 Disposing Connections 562 Pooling Connections 563 Fine-Tuning Transactions 564 Why Use Your Own Transaction? 564 Understanding Implicit Entity Framework Transactions 565 Specifying Your Own Read/Write Transactions 566 Specifying Your Own Read-Only Transactions 569 Rolling Back Transactions 570 Understanding Security 571 Guarding Against SQL Injection 571 Guarding Against Connection Piggybacks 573 Fine-Tuning Performance 574 Measuring Query Performance 575 Measuring Startup Performance 579 Reducing the Cost of Query Compilation 580 Caching for Entity SQL Queries 580 Precompiling Views for Performance 582 Precompiling LINQ to Entities Queries for Performance 585 Fine-Tuning Updates for Performance? 589 Lacking Support for Full Text Searches 590 Exploiting Multithreaded Applications 591 Table of Contents | xv
Forcing an ObjectContext to Use Its Own Thread 591 Implementing Concurrent Thread Processing 593 Exploiting .NET 4 Parallel Computing 596 Summary 596 21. Manipulating Entities with ObjectStateManager and MetadataWorkspace . . . . . 597 Manipulating Entities and Their State with ObjectStateManager 598 Refreshing Your High-Level Understanding of ObjectStateEntry 599 Getting an ObjectStateManager and Its Entries 599 Building Extension Methods to Overload GetObjectStateEntries 600 Building a Method to Return Managed Entities 602 Using GetObjectStateEntry and TryGetObjectStateEntry 603 Mining Entity Details from ObjectStateEntry 604 Leveraging the ObjectStateManager During Saves 609 Using ObjectStateManager to Build an EntityState Visualizer 611 Retrieving an ObjectStateEntry Using an EntityKey 612 Reading the OriginalValues and CurrentValues of an ObjectStateEntry 613 Determining Whether a Property Has Been Modified 614 Displaying the State and Entity Type 614 Getting ComplexType Properties Out of ObjectStateEntry 615 Modifying Values with ObjectStateManager 619 Working with Relationships in ObjectStateManager 620 Using the MetadataWorkspace 622 Loading the MetadataWorkspace 622 Clearing the MetadataWorkspace from Memory 623 Understanding the MetadataWorkspace ItemCollections 624 Retrieving Metadata from the MetadataWorkspace 625 Querying the Metadata with LINQ to Objects 628 Building Dynamic Queries and Reading Results 629 Building Entity SQL Queries Dynamically Using Metadata 629 Creating Queries on the Fly with CreateObjectSet and Query Builder Methods 632 Reading the Results of a Dynamically Created Query 634 Creating and Manipulating Entities Dynamically 637 Creating EntityObjects Without Entity Classes 637 Creating Entities and Graphs Dynamically 640 Summary 643 22. Handling Exceptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 645 Preparing for Exceptions 645 Handling EntityConnectionString Exceptions 647 xvi | Table of Contents
Connection String Can’t Be Found or Is Improperly Configured: System.ArgumentException 648 Metadata Files Cannot Be Found: System.Data.MetadataException 648 Handling Connection String Exceptions 649 Handling Query Compilation Exceptions 649 Invalid LINQ to Entities Query Expressions: System.NotSupportedException 649 Invalid Entity SQL Query Expressions: EntitySqlException 650 EntityCommandCompilationException Thrown by the Store Provider 652 Creating a Common Wrapper to Handle Query Execution Exceptions 652 Handling Exceptions Thrown During SaveChanges Command Execution 654 UpdateException: Thrown When Independent Association Mapping Constraints Are Broken 654 UpdateException: Thrown by Broken Constraints in the Database 655 Relying on Entity Framework to Automatically Roll Back When an UpdateException Occurs 656 Gleaning Details from UpdateException 656 Planning for Other Exceptions Related to the Entity Framework 657 Handling Concurrency Exceptions 658 Summary 658 23. Planning for Concurrency Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 659 Understanding Database Concurrency Conflicts 660 Understanding Optimistic Concurrency Options in the Entity Frame- work 660 Ignoring Concurrency Conflicts 661 Forcing the User’s Data to the Server (ClientWins) 661 Refreshing the User’s Data with Server Data (StoreWins) 661 Determining the Scope of Changes 662 Using rowversion (a.k.a. timestamp) for Concurrency Checks 662 Implementing Optimistic Concurrency with the Entity Framework 663 Flagging a Property for Concurrency Checking 664 How the Entity Framework Uses the ConcurrencyMode Property 665 Concurrency Checking Without a rowversion Field 666 Concurrency Checking on a Checksum in the Data Store 666 Concurrency Checks for EntityReference Navigation Properties 667 Concurrency Checks and Inherited Types 667 Concurrency Checks and Stored Procedures 668 Handling OptimisticConcurrencyExceptions 670 Using ObjectContext.Refresh 671 Using Refresh with ClientWins 671 Using Refresh with StoreWins 673 Table of Contents | xvii
Refreshing Collections of Entities 673 Refreshing Related Entities in a Graph 675 Rewinding and Starting Again, and Maybe Again After That 676 Reporting an Exception 678 Handling Concurrency Exceptions at a Lower Level 678 Handling Exceptions in a Granular Way Without User Intervention 678 Handling Multiple Conflicts 680 Handling Exceptions When Transactions Are Your Own 682 Summary 683 24. Building Persistent Ignorant, Testable Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 685 Testing the BreakAway Application Components 686 Getting Started with Testing 687 Writing an Integration Test That Hits the Database 687 Inspecting a Failed Test 689 Writing a Unit Test That Focuses on Custom Logic 689 Creating Persistent Ignorant Entities 693 Planning the Project Structure 695 Starting with the Model and Its POCO Entities 697 Building an Interface to Represent a Context 698 Modifying the BAEntities ObjectContext Class to Implement the New Interface 699 Creating the IEntityRepository Interface 702 Creating the Repository Classes 703 Testing GetReservationsForCustomer Against the Database 706 Creating a Fake Context 708 Creating a FakeObjectSet Class 710 Completing the Fake Context 712 Building Tests That Do Not Hit the Database 714 Adding Validation Logic to the POCO Class 714 Adding Validation Logic to the Context 716 Providing ManagedEntities in the FakeContext 716 Hiding the Context from the Lower Layers with Unit of Work 718 Testing UnitOfWork Against the Database 720 Enabling Eager Loading in IContext 721 Leveraging Precompiled Queries in Your Repositories 722 Using the New Infrastructure in Your Application 723 Adding a UI Layer That Calls the Repository 723 Application Architecture Benefits from Designing Testable Code 724 Considering Mocking Frameworks? 725 Summary 725 xviii | Table of Contents
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“Tell me about it,” said she. “Well, there was the Colonel’s wife. God bless me, how I adored her. I must have been just about Harry’s age, for I had only lately joined, and she was a woman getting on for forty. Good thing, too, for me, as I say, for it kept me out of mischief. They used to say she encouraged me, but I don’t believe it. Every woman likes to know that she’s admired, eh? She doesn’t snub a boy who takes her out in the garden, and picks his father’s roses for her. But we mustn’t have Harry boring her with his attentions. That’ll never do.” It seemed to Mrs. Ames of singularly little consequence whether Harry bored Millie Evans or not. She would much have preferred to be assured that her husband did. But the subsequent conversation did not reassure her as to that. “Nice little woman, she is,” he said. “Thoroughly nice little woman, and naturally enough, my dear, since she is your cousin, she likes being treated in neighbourly fashion. We had a great talk after lunch to-day, and I’m sorry for her, sorry for her. I think we ought to do all we can to make life pleasant for her. Drop in to tea, or drop in to lunch, as I did to-day. A doctor’s wife, you know. She told me that some days she scarcely set eyes on her husband, and when she did, he could think of nothing but microbes. And there’s really nobody in Riseborough, except you and me, with whom she feels— dear me, what’s that French word—yes, with whom she feels in her proper milieu. I should like us to be on such terms with her—you being her cousin —that we could always telephone to say we were dropping in, and that she would feel equally free to drop in. Dropping in, you know: that’s the real thing; not to be obliged to wait till you are asked, or to accept weeks ahead, as one has got to do for some formal dinner-party. I should like to feel that we mightn’t be surprised to find her picking sweet-peas in the garden, and that she wouldn’t be surprised to find you or me sitting under her mulberry- tree, waiting for her to come in. After all, intimacy only begins when formality ceases. Shall I give you some soda water?” Mrs. Ames did not want soda-water: she wanted to think. Her husband had completely expressed the attitude she meant to adopt, but her own adoption of it had presupposed a certain contrition on his part with regard to his unusual behaviour. But he gave her no time for thought, and proceeded
to propose just the same sort of thing as she (in her magnanimity) had thought of suggesting. “Dinner, now,” he said. “Up till last night we have always been a bit formal about dinner here in Riseborough. If you asked General Snookes, you asked Mrs. Snookes; if you asked Admiral Jones, you asked Lady Jones. You led the way, my dear, about that, and what could have been pleasanter than our little party last night? Let us repeat it: let us be less formal. If you want to see Mr. Altham, ask him to come. Mrs. Altham, let us say, wants to ask me: let her ask me. Or if you meet Dr. Evans in the street, and he says it is lunch time, go and have lunch with him, without bothering about me. I shall do very well at home. I’m told that in London it is quite a constant practice to invite like that. And it seems to me very sensible.” All this had seemed very sensible to Mrs. Ames, when she had thought of it herself. It seemed a little more hazardous now. She was well aware that this plan had caused a vast amount of talk in Riseborough, the knowledge of which she had much enjoyed, since it was of the nature of subjects commenting on the movements of their queen, without any danger to her of dethronement. But she was not so sure that she enjoyed her husband’s cordial endorsement of her innovation. Also, in his endorsement there was some little insincerity. He had taken as instance the chance of his wishing to dine without his wife at Mrs. Altham’s, and they both knew how preposterous such a contingency would be. But did this only prepare the way for a further solitary excursion to Mrs. Evans’? Had Mrs. Evans asked him to dine there? She was immediately enlightened. “Of course, we talked over your delightful dinner-party of last night,” he said, “and agreed in the agreeableness of it. And she asked me to dine there, en garçon, on Tuesday next. Of course, I said I must consult you first; you might have asked other people here, or we might be dining out together. I should not dream of upsetting any existing arrangement. I told her so: she quite understood. But if there was nothing going on, I promised to dine there en garçon.” That phrase had evidently taken Major Ames’ fancy; there was a ring of youth about it, and he repeated it with gusto. His wife, too, perfectly understood the secret smack of the lips with which he said it: she knew precisely how he felt. But she was wise enough to keep the consciousness of it completely out of her reply.
“By all means,” she said; “we have no engagement for that night. And I am thinking of proposing myself for a little visit to Mrs. Bertram next week, Lyndhurst. I know she is at Overstrand now, and I think ten days on the east coast would do me good.” He assented with a cordiality that equalled hers. “Very wise, I am sure, my dear,” he said. “I have thought this last day or two that you looked a little run down.” A sudden misgiving seized her at this, for she knew quite well she neither looked nor felt the least run down. “I thought perhaps you and Harry would take some little trip together while I was away,” she said. “Oh, never mind us, never mind us,” said he. “We’ll rub along, en garçon, you know. I daresay some of our friends will take pity on us, and ask us to drop in.” This was not reassuring: nor would Mrs. Ames have been reassured if she could have penetrated at that moment unseen into Mrs. Altham’s drawing-room. She and her husband had gone straight from Mrs. Ames’ house that afternoon to call on Mrs. Evans, and had been told she was not at home. But Mrs. Altham of the eagle-eye had seen through the opened front door an immense bowl of sweet-peas on the hall table, and by it a straw hat with a riband of regimental colours round it. Circumstantial evidence could go no further, and now this indefatigable lady was looking out Major Ames in an old army list. “Ames, Lyndhurst Percy,” she triumphantly read out. “Born 1860, and I daresay he is older than that, because if ever there was a man who wanted to be thought younger than his years, that’s the one. So in any case, Henry, he is over forty-seven. And there’s the front-door bell. It will be Mrs. Brooks. She said she would drop in for a chat after dinner.” There was plenty to chat about that evening.
CHAPTER V Mrs. Ames might or might not have been run down when she left Riseborough the following week, but nothing can be more certain than that she was considerably braced up seven days after that. The delicious freshness of winds off the North Sea, tempering the heat of brilliant summer suns, may have had something to do with it, and she certainly had more colour in her face than was usual with her, which was the legitimate effect of the felicitous weather. There was more colour in her hair also, and though that, no doubt, was a perfectly legitimate effect too, being produced by purely natural means, as the label on the bottle stated, the sun and wind were not accountable for this embellishment. She had spent an afternoon in London—chiefly in Bond Street—on her way here, and had gone to a couple of addresses which she had secretly snipped out of the daily press. The expenditure of a couple of pounds, which was already yielding her immense dividends in encouragement and hope, had put her into possession of a bottle with a brush, a machine that, when you turned a handle, quivered violently like a motor-car that is prepared to start, and a small jar of opaque glass, which contained the miraculous skin-food. With these was being wrought the desired marvels; with these, as with a magician’s rod, she was conjuring, so she believed, the remote enchantments of youth back to her. After quite a few days change became evident, and daily that change grew greater. As regards her hair, the cost, both of time and material, in this miracle-working, was of the smallest possible account. Morning and evening, after brushing it, she rubbed in a mere teaspoonful of a thin yellow liquid, which, as the advertisement stated, was quite free from grease or obnoxious smell, and did not stain the pillow. This was so simple that it really required faith to embark upon the treatment, for from the time of Hebrew prophets, mankind have found it easier to do “some great thing” than merely to wash in the Jordan. But Mrs. Ames, luckily, had shown her faith, and by the end of a week the marvellous lotion had shown its works. Till now, though her hair could not be described as grey, there was a considerable quantity of grey in it: now she examined it with an eye that sought for instead of shutting itself to such blemish, and the reward of its
search was of the most meagre sort. There was really no grey left in it: it might have been, as far as colour could be taken as a test of age, the hair of a young woman. It was not very abundant in quantity, but the lotion had held out no promises on that score; quality, not quantity, was the sum of its beckoning. The application of the skin-food was more expensive: she had to use more and it took longer. Nightly she poured a can of very hot water into her basin, and with a towel over her head to concentrate the vapour, she steamed her face over it for some twenty minutes. Emerging red and hot and stifled, she wiped off the streams of moisture, and with finger-tips dipped in this marvellous cream, tapped and dabbed at the less happy regions between her eyebrows, outside her eyes, across her forehead, at the corners of her mouth, and up and down her neck. Then came the use of the palpitating machine; it whirred and buzzed over her, tickling very much. For half-an-hour she would make a patient piano of her face, then gently remove such of the skin-food as still stayed on the surface, and had not gone within to do its nurturing work. Certainly this was a somewhat laborious affair, but the results were highly prosperous. There was no doubt that to a perfectly candid and even sceptical eye, a week’s treatment had produced a change. The wrinkles were beginning to be softly erased: there was a perceptible plumpness observable in the leaner places. Between the bouts of tapping and dabbing she sipped the glass of milk which she brought up to bed with her, as the deviser of the skin-food recommended. She drank another such glass in the middle of the morning, and digested them both perfectly. As these external signs appeared and grew there went on within her an accompanying and corresponding rejuvenation of spirit. She felt very well, owing, no doubt, to the brisk air, the milk, the many hours spent out-of- doors, and in consequence she began to feel much younger. An unwonted activity and lightness pervaded her limbs: she took daily a walk of a couple of hours without fatigue, and was the life and soul of the dinner-table, whose other occupants were her hosts, Mrs. Bertram, a cold, grim woman with a moustache, and her husband, milder, with whiskers. Their only passion was for gardening, and they seldom left their grounds; thus Mrs. Ames took her walks unaccompanied. Miles of firm sands, when the tide was low, subtended the cliffs on which Mr. Bertram’s house stood, and often Mrs. Ames preferred to walk along the margin of the sea rather than pursue more inland routes, and to-
day, after her large and wholesome lunch (the physical stimulus of the east coast, combined with this mental stimulus of her object in coming here, gave her an appetite of dimensions unknown at Riseborough) she took a maritime way. The tide was far out, and the lower sands, still shining and firm from the retained moisture of its retreat, made uncommonly pleasant walking. She had abandoned heeled footgear, and had bought at a shop in the village, where everything inexpensive, from wooden spades to stamps and sticking plaster was sold, a pair of canvas coverings technically known as sand-shoes. They laced up with a piece of white tape, and were juvenile, light, and easily removable. They, and the great sea, and the jetsam of stranded seaweed, and the general sense of youth and freshness, made most agreeable companions, and she felt, though neither Mr. nor Mrs. Bertram was with her, charmingly accompanied. Her small, toadlike face expressed a large degree of contentment, and piercing her pleasant surroundings as the smell of syringa pierces through the odour of all other flowers, was the sense of her brown hair and fast-fading wrinkles. That gave her an inward happiness which flushed with pleasure and interest all she saw. In the lines of pebbles left by the retreating tide was an orange-coloured cornelian, which she picked up, and put in her pocket. She could have bought the same, ready polished, for a shilling at the cheap and comprehensive shop, but to find it herself gave her a pleasure not to be estimated at all in terms of silver coinage. Further on there was an attractive-looking shell, which she also picked up, and was about to give as a companion to the cornelian, when a sudden scurry of claw-like legs about its aperture showed her that a hermit-crab was domiciled within, and she dropped it with a little scream and a sense of danger escaped both by her and the hermit-crab. There were attractive pieces of seaweed, which reminded her of years when she collected the finer sorts, and set them, with the aid of a pin, on cartridge- paper, spreading out their delicate fronds and fern-like foliage. There were creamy ripples of the quiet sea, long-winged gulls that hovered fishing; above all there was the sense of her brown hair and smoothed face. She felt years younger, and she felt she looked years younger, which was scarcely less solid a satisfaction. It pleased her, but not acutely or viciously, to think of Mrs. Altham’s feelings when she made her rejuvenated appearance in Riseborough. It was quite certain that Mrs. Altham would suspect that she had been “doing something to herself,” and that Mrs. Altham would burst with envy and
curiosity to know what it was she had done. Although she felt very kindly towards all the world, she did not deceive herself to such an extent as to imagine that she would tell Mrs. Altham what she had done. Mrs. Altham was ingenious and would like guessing. But that lady occupied her mind but little. The main point was that in a week from now she would go home again, and that Lyndhurst would find her young. She might or might not have been right in fearing that Lyndhurst was becoming sentimentally interested in Millie Evans, and she was quite willing to grant that her grounds for that fear were of the slenderest. But all that might be dismissed now. She herself, in a week from now, would have recaptured that more youthful aspect which had been hers while he was still of loverlike inclination towards her. What might be called regular good looks had always been denied her, but she had once had her share of youth. To-day she felt youthful still, and once again, she believed, looked as if she belonged to the enchanted epoch. She had no intention of using this recapture promiscuously: she scarcely desired general admiration: she only desired that her husband should find her attractive. For a little while, as she took her quick, short steps along these shining sands, she felt herself grow bitter towards Millie Evans. A sort of superior pity was mixed with the bitterness, for she told herself that poor Millie, if she had tried to flirt with Lyndhurst, would speedily find herself flirting all alone. Very likely Millie was guiltless in intention; she had only let her pretty face produce an unchecked effect. Men were attracted by a pretty face, but the owners of such faces ought to keep a curb on them, so to speak. Their faces were not their faults, but rather their misfortunes. A woman with a pretty face would be wise to make herself rather reserved, so that her manner would chill anybody who was inclined.... But the whole subject now was obsolete. If there had been any danger, there would not be any more, and she did not blame Millie. She must ask Millie to dine with them en famille, which was much nicer than en garçon, as soon as she got back. It might be gathered from this account of Mrs. Ames’ self-communings that deep down in her nature their lay a strain of almost farcical fatuousness. But she was not really fatuous, unless it is fatuous to have preserved far out into the plains of middle-age some vision of the blue mountains of youth. It is true that for years she had been satisfied to dwell on these plains; now, her fear that her husband, so much younger than
herself, was turning his eyes to blue mountains that did not belong to him, made her desire to get out of the plains and ascend her own blue mountains again and wave to him from there, and encourage his advance. She felt exceedingly well, and in consequence told herself that in mind, as well as physical constitution, she was young still, while the effect of the bottles which she used with such regularity made her believe that the outward signs of age were erasible. She seemed to have been granted a new lease of life in a tenement that it was easy to repair. Her whole nature felt itself to be quickened and vivified. She had gone far along the sands, and the tide was beginning to flow again. All round her were great empty spaces, a shipless sea, a cloudless sky, a beach with no living being in sight. A sudden unpremeditated impulse seized her, and without delay she sat down on the shore, and took off her shoes and stockings. Then, pulling up her skirts, she hastily ran down to the edge of the water, across a little belt of pebbles that tickled and hurt her soft-soled feet, and waded out into the liquid rims of the sea. She was astonished and amazed at herself that the idea of paddling had ever come into her head, and more amazed that she had had the temerity to put it into execution. For the first minute or two the cold touch of the water on her unaccustomed ankles and calves made her gasp a little, but for all the strangeness of these sensations she felt that paddling, playing like a child in the shallow waters, expressed the tone of her mind, just as the melody of a song expresses the words to which it is set. If she had had a spade, she would certainly have built a sand-castle and dug moats about it, and a smile lit up her small face at the thought of purchasing one at the universal shop, and furtively conveying it to these unfrequented beaches. And the smile almost ended in a blush when she tried to imagine what Riseborough society would say if it became known that their queen not only paddled in the sea, but seriously contemplated buying a wooden spade in order to conduct building operations on lonely shores. The paddling, though quite pleasant, was not so joyous as the impulse to paddle had been, and it was not long before she sat down again on the beach and tried to get the sand out of the small, tight places between her toes, and to dry her feet and plump little legs with a most exiguous handkerchief. But even in the midst of these troublesome operations, her mind still ran riot, and she planned to secrete about her person one of her smaller bedroom towels when she went for her walk next day. And she felt
as if this act of paddling must have aided in the elimination of wrinkles. For who except the really young could want to paddle? To find that she had the impulse of the really young was even better than to cultivate, though with success, the appropriate appearance. All the way home this effervescence of spirit was hers, which, though it definitely sprang from the effects of the lotion, the skin-food and the tonic air, produced in her an illusion that was complete. She was certainly ascending her remote blue mountains again, and through a clarified air she could look over the plains, and see how very flat they had been. That must all be changed: there must be more variety and gaiety introduced into her days. For years, as she saw now, her life had been spent in small, joyless hospitalities, in keeping her place as accredited leader of Riseborough’s socialities, in paying her share towards the expenses of the house. They did not laugh much at home: there had seemed nothing particular to laugh about, and certainly they did not paddle. She was forming no plan for paddling there now, irrespective of the fact that a muddy canal, which was the only water in the neighbourhood, did not encourage the scheme, but there must be introduced into her life and Lyndhurst’s more of the spirit that had to-day prompted her paddling. Exactly what form it should take she did not clearly foresee, but when she had recaptured the spirit as well as the appearance of youth, there was no fear that it would find any difficulty in expressing itself suitably. All aglow, especially as to her feet, which tingled pleasantly, she arrived at her host’s house again. They were both at work in the garden: Mrs. Bertram was killing slugs in the garden beds, Mr. Bertram worms on the lawn. Major Ames proved himself during the next week to be a good correspondent, if virtue in correspondents is to be measured by the frequency of their communications. His letters were not long, but they were cheerful, since the garden was coming on well in this delightful weather, which he hoped embraced Cromer also, and since he had on two separate occasions made a grand slam when playing Bridge at the club. He and Harry were jogging along quite pleasantly, but there had been no gaieties to take them out, except a tea-party with ices at Mrs. Brooks’. Unfortunately, some disaster had befallen the ices: personally, he thought it was salt instead of sugar, but Harry had been unwell afterwards, which suggested sour cream. But his indisposition had been but short, though violent. He himself had dropped in to dine en garçon with the Evans’, and the doctor was very busy. Finally (this came at the end of every letter), as the place
was doing her so much good, why not stop for another week? He was sure the Bertrams (poor things!) would be delighted if she would. But that suggestion did not commend itself to Mrs. Ames. She had come here for a definite purpose, and when on the morning before her departure she looked very critically at herself in the glass, she felt that her purpose had been accomplished. Her skin had not, so much she admitted, the unruffled smoothness of a young woman’s, but she had not been a young woman when she married. But search where she might in her hair, there was no sign of greyness in it all, while the contents of the bottle were not yet half used. But she would take back the more than moiety with her, since an occasional application when the hair had resumed its usual colour was recommended. It appeared to her that it undoubtedly had resumed its original colour: the change, though slight (for grey had never been conspicuous), was complete; she felt equipped for youth again. And psychologically she felt equipped: every day since the first secret paddling she had paddled again in secret, and from a crevice in a tumble of fallen rock she daily extracted a small wooden spade, by aid of which, with many glancings around for fear of possible observers, she dug in the sand, making moats and ramparts. The “first fine careless rapture” of this, it must be admitted, had evaporated: after one architectural afternoon she had dug not because this elementary pursuit expressed what she felt, so much as because it expressed what she desired to feel. After all, she did not propose to rejuvenate herself to the extent of being nine or ten years old again.... The manner of her return to Riseborough demanded consideration: it was not sufficient merely to look up in a railway guide the swiftest mode of transit and adopt it, for this was not quite an ordinary entry, and it would never do to take the edge off it by making a travel-soiled and dusty first appearance. So she laid down a plan. The bare facts about the trains were these. A train starting at a convenient hour would bring her to London a short half-hour before another convenient train from another and distant terminus started for Riseborough. It was impossible to make certain of catching this, so she wrote to her husband saying that she would in all probability get to Riseborough by a later train that arrived there at eight. She begged him not to meet her at the station, but to order dinner for half-past eight. It would be nice to be at
home again. Then came the plan. Clearly it would never do to burst on him like that, to sit down opposite him at the dinner-table beneath the somewhat searching electric light there, handicapped by the fatigues of a hot journey only imperfectly repaired by a hasty toilet. She must arrive by the early train, though not expected till the later. Thus she would secure a quiet two hours for bathing, resting and dressing. If Lyndhurst did not expect her to arrive till eight it was a practical certainty that he would be at the club till that hour, and walk home in time to welcome her arrival. He would then learn that she had already come and was dressing. She would be careful to let him go downstairs first, and a minute later she would follow. He should see.... So in order to catch this earlier train from town she left Cromer while morning was yet dewy, and had the peculiar pleasure, on her arrival at Riseborough, of seeing her husband, from the windows of her cab, passing along the street to the club. She had a moment’s qualm that he would see her initialled boxes on the top, but by grace of a punctual providence Mrs. Brooks came out of her house at the moment, and the Major raised a gallant hat and spoke a cheerful word to her. Certainly he looked very handsome and distinguished, and Mrs. Ames felt a little tremor of anticipation in thinking of the chapters of life that were to be re-read by them. She felt confident also; it never entered her head to have any misgivings as to what the last fortnight, which had contained so much for her, might have contained for him. Harry had gone back to Cambridge for the July term the day before, and she found on her arrival that she had the house to herself. The afternoon had turned a little chilly, and she enjoyed the invigoration of a hot bath, and a subsequent hour’s rest on her sofa. Then it was time to dress, and though the dinner was of the simplest conjugal character, she put on a dress she had worn but some half-dozen of times before, but which on this one occasion it was meet should descend from the pompous existence that was its destiny for a year or two to come. It was of daring rose-colour, the most resplendent possible, and never failed to create an impression. Indeed, she had, on one of its infrequent appearances, heard Lyndhurst say to his neighbour in an undertone, “Upon my soul, Amy looks very well to-night.” And Amy meant to look very well again. All happened as she had planned. Shortly after eight Lyndhurst tapped at her door on his return from the club, but could not be admitted, and at half-
past, having heard him go downstairs, she followed him. He had not dressed, according to their custom when they were alone. Major Ames was writing a note when she entered, and only turned round in his chair, not getting up. “Glad to see you home, my dear,” he said. “Excuse me one moment. I must just direct this.” She kissed him and waited while he scrawled an address. Then he got up and rang the bell. “Just in time to catch the post,” he said. “By Jove! Amy, you’ve put on the famous pink gown. I would have dressed if I had known. You’re tired with your journey, I expect. It was a very hot day here, until a couple of hours ago.” He gave the note to the servant. “And dinner’s ready, I think,” he said. They sat down opposite each other at ends of the rather long table. There were no flowers on it, for it had not occurred to him to get the garden to welcome her home-coming, and the whole of her resplendency was visible to him. He began eating his soup vigorously. “Capital plan in summer to have dinner at half-past eight,” he said. “Gives one most of the daylight and not so long an evening afterwards. Excellent pea-soup, this. Fresh peas from my garden. The Evans’ dine at eight-thirty. And how have you been, Amy?” Some indefinable chill of misgiving, against which she struggled, had laid cold fingers on her. Things were not going any longer as she had planned them. He had noticed her gown, but he had noticed nothing else. But then he had scarcely looked up since they had come into the dining- room. But now he finished his soup, and she challenged his attention. “I have been very well indeed,” she said. “Don’t I look it?” He looked her straight in the face, saw all that had seemed almost a miracle to her—the softened wrinkles, the recovered colour of her hair. “Yes, I think you do,” he said. “You’ve got a bit tanned too, haven’t you, with the sun?” The cold fingers closed a little more tightly on her. “Have I?” she said. “That is very likely. I was out-of-doors all day. I used to take quite long walks every afternoon.”
He glanced at the menu-card. “I hope you’ll like the dinner I ordered you,” he said. “Your cook and I had a great talk over it this morning. ‘She’ll have been in the train all day,’ I said, ‘and will feel a little tired. Appetite will want a bit of tempting, eh?’ So we settled on a grilled sole, and a chicken and a macédoine of fruit. Hope that suits you, Amy. So you used to take long walks, did you? Is the country pretty round about? Bathing, too. Is it a good coast for bathing?” Again he looked at her as he spoke, and for the moment her heart-beat quickened, for it seemed that he could not but see the change in her. Then his sole required dissection, and he looked at his plate again. “I believe it is a good coast,” she said. “There were a quantity of bathing-machines. I did not bathe.” “No. Very wise, I am sure. One has to be careful about chills as one gets on. I should have been anxious about you, Amy, if I had thought you would be so rash as to bathe.” Some instinct of protest prompted her. “There would have been nothing to be anxious about,” she said. “I seldom catch a chill. And I often paddled.” He laid down his knife and fork and laughed. “You paddled!” he asked. “Nonsense, nonsense!” She had not meant to tell him, for her reasonable mind had informed her all the time that this was a secret expression of the rejuvenation she was conscious of. But it had slipped out, a thoughtless assertion of the youthfulness she felt. “I did indeed,” she said, “and I found it very bracing and invigorating.” Then for a moment a certain bitterness welled up within her, born from disappointment at his imperceptiveness. “You see I never suffer from gout or rheumatism like you, Lyndhurst,” she said. “I hope you have been quite free from them since I have been away.” But his amusement, though it had produced this spirit of rancour in her, had not been in the least unkindly. It was legitimate to find entertainment in the thought of a middle-aged woman gravely paddling, so long as he had no idea that there was a most pathetic side to it. Of that he had no inkling: he was unaware that this paddling was expressive of her feeling of recaptured
youth, just as he was unaware that she believed it to be expressed in her face and hair. But this remark was distinctly of the nature of an attack: she was retaliating for his laughter. He could not resist one further answer which might both soothe and smart (like a patent ointment) before he changed the subject. “Well, my dear, I’m sure you are a wonderful woman for your years,” he said. “By Jove! I shall be proud if I’m as active and healthy as you in ten years’ time.” Dinner was soon over after this, and she left him, as usual, to have his cigarette and glass of port, and went into the drawing-room, and stood looking on the last fading splendour of the sunset in the west. The momentary bitterness in her mind had quite died down again: there was nothing left but a vague, dull ache of flatness and disappointment. He had noticed nothing of all that had caused her such tremulous and secret joy. He had looked on her smoothed and softened face, and seen no difference there, on her brown unfaded hair and found it unaltered. He had only seen that she had put her best gown on, and she had almost wished that he had not noticed that, since then she might have had the consolation of thinking that he was ill. It was not, it must be premised, that she meant she would find pleasure in his indisposition, only that an indisposition would have explained his imperceptiveness, which she regretted more than she would have regretted a slight headache for him. For a few minutes she was incapable of more than blank and empty contemplation of the utter failure of that from which she had expected so much. Then, like the stars that even now were beginning to be lit in the empty spaces of the sky, fresh points in the dreary situation claimed her attention. Was he preoccupied with other matters, that he was blind to her? His letters, it is true, had been uniformly cheerful and chatty, but a preoccupied man can easily write a letter without betraying the preoccupation that is only too evident in personal intercourse. If this was so, what was the nature of his preoccupation? That was not a cheerful star: there was a green light in it.... Another star claimed her attention. Was it Lyndhurst who was blind, or herself who saw too much? She had no idea till she came to look into the matter closely, how much grey hair was mingled with the brown. Perhaps he had no idea either: its restoration,
therefore, would not be an affair of surprise and admiration. But the wrinkles.... She faced round from the window as he entered, and made another call on her courage and conviction. Though he saw so little, she, quickened perhaps by the light of the green star, saw how good-looking he was. For years she had scarcely noticed it. She put up her small face to him in a way that suggested, though it did not exactly invite a kiss. “It is so nice to be home again,” she said. The suggestion that she meant to convey occurred to him, but, very reasonably, he dismissed it as improbable. A promiscuous caress was a thing long obsolete between them. Morning and evening he brushed her cheek with the end of his moustaches. “Well, then, we’re all pleased,” he said good-humouredly. “Shall I ring for coffee, Amy?” She was not discouraged. “Do,” she said, “and when we have had coffee, will you fetch a shawl for me, and we will stroll in the garden. You shall show me what new flowers have come out.” The intention of that was admirable, the actual proposal not so happy, since a glimmering starlight through the fallen dusk would not conduce to a perception of colour. “We’ll stroll in the garden by all means,” he said, “if you think it will not be risky for you. But as to flowers, my dear, it will be easier to appreciate them when it is not dark.” Again she put up her face towards him. This time he might, perhaps, have taken the suggestion, but at the moment Parker entered with the coffee. “How foolish of me,” she said. “I forgot it was dark. But let us go out anyhow, unless you were thinking of going round to the club.” “Oh, time for that, time for that,” said he. “I expect you will be going to bed early after your long journey. I may step round then, and see what’s going on.” Without conscious encouragement or welcome on her part, a suspicion darted into her mind. She felt by some process, as inexplicable as that by
which certain people are aware of the presence of a cat in the room, that he was going round to see Mrs. Evans. “I suppose you have often gone round to the club in the evening since I have been away,” she said. “Yes, I have looked in now and again,” he said. “On other evenings I have dropped in to see our friends. Lonely old bachelor, you know, and Harry was not always very lively company. It’s a good thing that boy has gone back to Cambridge, Amy. He was always mooning round after Mrs. Evans.” That was a fact: it had often been a slightly inconvenient one. Several times the Major had “dropped in” to see Millie, and found his son already there. “But I thought you were rather pleased at that, Lyndhurst,” she said. “You told me you considered it not a bad thing: that it would keep Harry out of mischief.” He finished his coffee rather hastily. “Yes, within reason, within reason,” he said. “Well, if we are to stroll in the garden, we had better go out. You wanted a shawl, didn’t you? Very wise: where shall I find one?” That diverted her again to her own personal efforts. “There are several in the second tray of my wardrobe,” she said. “Choose a nice one, Lyndhurst, something that won’t look hideous with my pink silk.” The smile, as you might almost say, of coquetry, which accompanied this speech, faded completely as soon as he left the room, and her face assumed that business-like aspect, which the softest and youngest faces wear, when the object is to attract, instead of letting a mutual attraction exercise its inevitable power. Even though Mrs. Ames’ object was the legitimate and laudable desire to attract her own husband, it was strange how common her respectable little countenance appeared. She had adorned herself to attract admiration: coquetry and anxiety were pitifully mingled, even as you may see them in haunts far less respectable than this detached villa, and on faces from which Mrs. Ames would instantly have averted her own. She hoped he would bring a certain white silk shawl: two nights ago she had worn it on the verandah after dinner at Overstrand, and the reflected light from it, she had noticed, as she stood beneath a light opposite a mirror in the hall, had
made her throat look especially soft and plump. She stood underneath the light now waiting for his return. Fortune was favourable: it was that shawl that he brought, and she turned round for him to put it on her shoulders. Then she faced him again in the remembered position, underneath the light, smiling. “Now, I am ready, Lyndhurst,” she said. He opened the French window for her, and stood to let her pass out. Again she smiled at him, and waited for him to join her on the rather narrow gravel path. There was actually room for two abreast on it, for, on the evening of her dinner-party, Harry had walked here side by side with Mrs. Evans. But there was only just room. “You go first, Amy,” he said, “or shall I? We can scarcely walk abreast here.” But she took his arm. “Nonsense, my dear,” she said. “There: is there not heaps of room?” He felt vaguely uncomfortable. It was not only the necessity of putting his feet down one strictly in front of the other that made him so. “Anything the matter, my dear?” he asked. The question was not cruel: it was scarcely even careless. He could hardly be expected to guess, for his perceptions were not fine. Also he was thinking about somebody else, and wondering how late it was. But even if he had had complete knowledge of the situation about which he was completely ignorant, he could not have dealt with it in a more peremptory way. The dreary flatness to which she had been so impassive a prey directly after dinner, the sense of complete failure enveloped her like impenetrable fog. Out of that fog, she hooted, so to speak, like an undervitalized siren. “I am only so glad to get back,” she said, pressing his arm a little. “I hoped you were glad, too, that I was back. Tell me what you have been doing all the time I have been away.” This, like banns, was for the third time of asking. He recalled for her the days one by one, leaving out certain parts of them. Even at the moment, he was astonished to find how vivid his recollection of them was. On Thursday, when he had played golf in the morning, he had lunched with the Evans’ (this he stated, for Harry had lunched there too) and he had culled probably the last dish of asparagus in the afternoon. He had dined alone
with Harry that night, and Harry had toothache. Next day, consequently, Harry went to the dentist in the morning, and he himself had played golf in the afternoon. That he remembered because he had gone to tea with Mrs. Evans afterwards, but that he did not mention, for he had been alone with her, and they had talked about being misunderstood and about affinities. On Saturday Harry had gone back to Cambridge, but, having missed his train, he had made a second start after lunch. He had met Dr. Evans in the street that day, going up to the golf links, and since he would otherwise be quite alone in the evening, he had dined with them, “en garçon.” This catalogue of trivial happenings took quite a long time in the recitation. But below the trivialities there was a lurking significance. He was not really in love with Millie Evans, and his assurance to himself on that point was perfectly honest. But (this he did not put so distinctly to himself) he thought that she was tremendously attracted by him. Here was an appeal to a sort of deplorable sense of gallantry—so terrible a word only can describe his terrible mind—and mentally he called her “poor little lady.” She was pretty, too, and not very happy. It seemed to be incumbent on him to interest and amuse her. His “droppings in” amused her: when he got ready to drop out again, she always asked when he would come to see her next. These “droppings in” were clearly bright spots to her in a drab day. They were also bright spots to him, for he was more interested in them than in all his sweet-peas. There was a “situation” come into his life, something clandestine. It would never do, for instance, to let Amy or the estimable doctor get a hint of it. Probably they would misunderstand it, and imagine there was something to conceal. He had the secret joys of a bloodless intrigue. But, considering its absolute bloodlessness, he was amazingly wrapped up in it. It was no wonder that he did not notice the restored colour of Amy’s hair. He, or rather Mrs. Evans, had made a conditional appointment for to- night. If possible, the possibility depending on Amy’s fatigue, he was going to drop in for a chat. Primarily the chat was to be concerned with the lighting of the garden by means of Chinese lanterns, for a nocturnal fête that Mrs. Evans meant to give on her birthday. The whole garden was to be lit, and since the entertainment of an illuminated garden, with hot soup, quails and ices, under the mulberry-tree was obviously new to Riseborough, it would be sufficiently amusing to the guests to walk about the garden till supper-time. But there would be supererogatory diversions beyond that,
bridge-tables in the verandah, a small band at the end of the garden to intervene its strains between the guests and the shrieks of South-Eastern expresses, and already there was an idea of fancy dress. Major Ames favoured the idea of fancy dress, for he had a red velvet garment, sartorially known as a Venetian cloak, locked away upstairs, which was a dazzling affair if white tights peeped out from below it. He knew he had a leg, and only lamented the scanty opportunities of convincing others of the fact. But the lighting of the garden had to be planned first: there was no use in having a leg in a garden, if the garden was not properly lit. But the whole affair was as yet a pledged secret: he could not, as a man of honour, tell Amy about it. Short notice for a fête of this sort was of no consequence, for it was to be a post-prandial entertainment, and the only post-prandial entertainment at present existent in Riseborough was going to bed. Thus everybody would be able to be happy to accept. A rapid résumé of this made an undercurrent in his mind, as he went through, in speaking voice, the history of the last days. Up and down the narrow path they passed, she still with her hand in his arm, questioning, showing an inconceivable interest in the passage of the days from which he had left out all real points of interest. His patience came to an end before hers. “Upon my word, my dear,” he said, “it’s getting a little chilly. Shall we go in, do you think? I’m sure you are tired with your journey.” There was nothing more coming: she knew that. But even in the midst of her disappointment, she found consolation. Daylight would show the re- establishment of her youthfulness more clearly than electric light had done. Every one looked about the same by electric light. And though, in some secret manner, she distrusted his visit to the club, she knew how impolitic it would be to hint, however remotely, at such distrust. It was much better this evening to acquiesce in the imputation of fatigue. Nor was the imputation groundless; for failure fatigues any one when under the same conditions success would only stimulate. And in the consciousness of that, her bitterness rose once more to her lips. “You mustn’t catch cold,” she said. “Let us go in.” It was still only half-past ten: all this flatness and failure had lasted but a couple of hours, and Major Ames, as soon as his wife had gone upstairs, let himself out of the house. His way lay past the doors of the club, but he did
not enter, merely observing through its lit windows that there were a good many men in the smoking-room. On arrival at the Doctor’s he found that Elsie and her father were playing chess in the drawing-room, and that Mrs. Evans was out in the garden. He chose to go straight into the garden, and found her sitting under the mulberry, dressed in white, and looking rather like the Milky Way. She did not get up, but held out her hand to him. “That is nice of you,” she said. “How is Cousin Amy?” “Amy is very well,” said he. “But she’s gone to bed early, a little tired with the journey. And how is Cousin Amy’s cousin?” He sat down on the basket chair close beside her which creaked with his weight. “I must have a special chair made for you,” she said. “You are so big and strong. Have you seen Cousin Amy’s cousin’s husband?” “No: I heard you were out here. So I came straight out.” She got up. “I think it will be better, then, if we go in, and tell him you are here,” she said. “He might think it strange.” Major Ames jumped up with alacrity: with his alacrity was mingled a pleasing sense of adventure. “By all means,” he said. “Then we can come out again.” She smiled at him. “Surely. He is playing chess with Elsie. I do not suppose he will interrupt his game.” Apparently Dr. Evans did not think anything in the least strange. On the whole, this was not to be wondered at, since he knew quite well that Major Ames was coming to talk over garden illumination with his wife. “Good evening, Major,” he said; “kind of you to come. You and my little woman are going to make a pauper of me, I’m told. There, Elsie, what do you say to my putting my knight there? Check.” “Pig!” said Elsie. “Then shall we go out, Major Ames?” said Millie. “Are you coming out, Wilfred?”
“No, little woman. I’m going to defeat your daughter indoors. Come and have a glass of whisky and soda with me before you go, Major.” They went out again accordingly into the cool starlight. “Wilfred is so fond of chess,” she said. “He plays every night with Elsie, when he is at home. Of course, he is often out.” This produced exactly the effect that she meant. She did not comment or complain: she merely made a statement which arose naturally from what was going on in the drawing-room. But Major Ames drew the inference that he was expected to draw. “Glad I could come round,” he said. “Now for the lanterns. We must have them all down the garden wall, and not too far apart, either. Six feet apart, eh? Now I’ll step the wall and we can calculate how many we shall want there. I think I step a full yard still. Not cramped in the joints yet.” It took some half hour to settle the whole scheme of lighting, which, since Major Ames was not going to pay for it, he recommended being done in a somewhat lavish manner. With so large a number of lanterns, it would be easily possible to see his leg, and he was strong on the subject of fancy dress. “There’ll be some queer turn-outs, I shouldn’t wonder,” he said; “but I expect there will be some creditable costumes too. By Jove! it will be quite the event of the year. Amy and I, with our little dinners, will have to take a back seat, as they say.” “I hope Cousin Amy won’t think it forward of me,” said Millie. Major Ames said that which is written “Pshaw.” “Forward?” he cried. “Why, you are bringing a bit of life among us. Upon my word, we wanted rousing up a bit. Why, you are a public benefactor.” They had sat down to rest again after their labour of stepping out the brick walls under the mulberry-tree, where the grass was dry, and only a faint shimmer of starlight came through the leaves. At the bottom of the garden a train shrieked by, and the noise died away in decrescent thunder. She leaned forward a little towards him, putting up her face much as Amy had done.
“Ah, if only I thought I was making things a little pleasant,” she said. Suddenly it struck Major Ames that he was expected to kiss her. He leaned forward, too. “I think you know that,” he said. “I wish I could thank you for it.” She did not move, but in the dusk he could see she was smiling at him. It looked as if she was waiting. He made an awkward forward movement and kissed her. There was silence a moment: she neither responded to him nor repelled him. “I suppose people would say I ought not to have let you,” she said. “But there is no harm, is there? After all, you are a—a sort of cousin. And you have been so kind about the lanterns.” Major Ames was thinking almost entirely about himself, hardly at all about her. An adventure, an intrigue had begun. He had kissed somebody else’s wife and felt the devil of a fellow. But with the wine of this emotion was mingled a touch of alarm. It would be wise to call a halt, take his whisky and soda with her husband, and get home to Amy.
CHAPTER VI Mrs. Altham waited with considerable impatience next day for the return of her husband from the club, where he went on most afternoons, to sit in an arm-chair from tea-time to dinner and casually to learn what had happened while he had been playing golf. She had been to call on Mrs. Ames in the afternoon, and in consequence had matter of considerable importance to communicate. She could have supported that retarded spate of information, though she wanted to burst as soon as possible, but she had also a question to ask Henry on which a tremendous deal depended. At length she heard the rattle of his deposited hat and stick in the hall, and she went out to meet him. “How late you are, Henry,” she said; “but you needn’t dress. Mrs. Brooks, if she does come in afterwards, will excuse you. Dinner is ready: let us come in at once. Now, you were at the club last night, after dinner. You told me who was there; but I want to be quite sure.” Mr. Altham closed his eyes for a moment as he sat down. It looked as if he was saying a silent grace, but appearances were deceptive. He was only thinking, for he knew his wife would not ask such a question unless something depended on it, and he desired to be accurate. Then he opened them again, and helped the soup with a name to each spoonful. “General Fortescue,” he said. “Young Morton. Mr. Taverner, Turner, Young Turner.” That was five spoonfuls—three for his wife, two for himself. He was not very fond of soup. “And you were there all the time between ten and eleven?” asked his wife. “Till half-past eleven.” “And there was no one else?” Mr. Altham looked up brightly. “The club waiter,” he said, “and the page. The page has been dismissed for stealing sugar. The sugar bill was preposterous. That was how we found out. Did you mean to ask about that?”
“No, my dear. Nor do I want to know.” At the moment the parlour-maid left the room, and she spoke in an eager undertone. “Mrs. Ames told me that Major Ames went up to the club last night, when she went to bed at half-past ten,” she said. “You told me at breakfast whom you found there, but I wanted to be sure. Call them Mr. and Mrs. Smith and then we can go on talking.” The parlour-maid came back into the room. “Yes, Mr. Smith apparently went up to the club at half-past ten,” she said. “But he can’t have gone to the club, for in that case you would have seen him. It has occurred to me that he didn’t feel well, and went to the doctor’s.” “It seems possible,” said Mr. Altham, not without enthusiasm, understanding that “doctor” meant “doctor,” and which doctor. “We have all noticed how many visits he has been paying to—to Dr. Jones,” said Mrs. Altham, “during the time Mrs. Smith was away. But to pay another one on the very evening of her return looks as if—as if something serious was the matter.” “My dear, there’s nothing whatever to show that Major Ames went to the doctor’s last night,” he said. Mrs. Altham gave him an awful glance, for the parlour-maid was in the room, and this thoughtless remark rendered all the diplomatic substitution of another nomenclature entirely void and useless. “Mrs. Smith, I should say,” added Mr. Altham in some confusion, proceeding to make it all quite clear to Jane, in case she had any doubts about it. “Suggest to me any other reasonable theory as to where he was, then,” said Mrs. Altham. “I can’t suggest where he was, my dear,” said Mr. Altham, finding his legal training supported him, “considering that there is no evidence of any kind that bears upon the matter. But to know that a man was not in one given place does not show with any positiveness that he was at any other given place.” “No doubt, then, he went shopping at half-past ten last night,” said Mrs. Altham, with deep sarcasm. “There are so many shops open then. The High
Street is a perfect blaze of light.” Mr. Altham could be sarcastic, too, though he seldom exercised this gift. “It quite dazzles one,” he observed. Mrs. Altham no doubt was vexed at her husband’s sceptical attitude, and she punished him by refraining from discussing the point any further, and from giving him the rest of her news. But this severity punished herself also, for she was bursting to tell him. When Jane had finally withdrawn, the internal pressure became irresistible. “Mrs. Ames has done something to her hair, Henry,” she said; “and she has done something to her face. I had a good mind to ask her what she had used. I assure you there was not a grey hair left anywhere, and a fortnight ago she was as grey as a coot!” “Coots are bald, not grey,” remarked her husband. “That is mere carping, Henry. She is brown now. Is this another fashion she is going to set us at Riseborough? What does it all mean? Shall we all have to plaster our faces with cold cream, and dye our hair blue?” Mr. Altham was in a painfully literal mood this evening and could not disentangle information from rhetoric. “Has she dyed her hair blue?” he asked in a slightly awestricken voice. “No, my dear: how can you be so stupid? And I told you just now she was brown. But at her age! As if anybody cared what colour her hair was. Her face, too! I don’t deny that the wrinkles are less marked, but who cares whether she is wrinkled or not?” These pleasant considerations were discontinued by the sound of the postman’s tap on the front door, and since the postman took precedence of everybody and everything, Mr. Altham hurried out to see what excitements he had piloted into port. Unfortunately, there was nothing for him, but there was a large, promising-looking envelope for his wife. It was stiff, too, and looked like the receptacle of an invitation card. “One for you, my dear,” he said. Mrs. Altham tore it open, and gave a great gasp. “You would not guess in a hundred tries,” she said. “Then be so kind as to tell me,” remarked her husband. Mrs. Altham read it out all in one breath without stops.
“Mrs. Evans at home Thursday July 20 10 p.m. Shakespeare Fancy Dress well I never!” For a while little the silence of stupefaction reigned. Then Mr. Altham gave a great sigh. “I have never been to a fancy dress ball,” he said. “I think I should feel very queer and uncomfortable. What are we meant to do when we get there, Julia? Just stand about and look at each other. It will seem very strange. What would you recommend me to be? I suppose we ought to be a pair.” Mrs. Altham, to do her justice, had not thought seriously about her personal appearance for years. But, as she got up from the table, and consciously faced the looking-glass over the chimney-piece, it is idle to deny that she considered it now. She was not within ten years of Mrs. Ames’ age, and it struck her, as she carefully regarded herself in a perfectly honest glass, that even taking into full consideration all that Mrs. Ames had been doing to her hair and her face, she herself still kept the proper measure of their difference of years between them. But it was yet too early to consider the question of her impersonation. There were other things suggested by the contemplation of a fancy-dress ball to be considered first. There was so much, in fact, that she hardly knew where to begin. So she whisked everything up together, in the manner of a sea-pie, in which all that is possibly edible is put in the oven and baked. “There will be time enough to talk over that, my dear,” she said, “for if Mrs. Evans thinks we are all going to lash out into no end of expense in getting dresses for her party, she is wrong as far as I, for one, am concerned. For that matter you can put on your oldest clothes, and I can borrow Jane’s apron and cap, and we can go as Darby and Joan. Indeed, I do not know if I shall go at all—though, of course, one wouldn’t like to hurt Mrs. Evans’ feelings by refusing. Do you know, Henry, I shouldn’t in the least wonder if we have seen the last of Mrs. Ames and all her airs of superiority and leadership. You may depend upon it that Mrs. Evans did not consult her before she settled to give a fancy dress party. It is far more likely that she and Major Ames contrived it all between them, while Mrs. Ames was away, and settled what they should go as, and I daresay it will be Romeo and Juliet. I should not be in the least surprised if Mrs. Ames did not go to the party at all, but tried to get something up on her own account that very night. It would be like her, I am sure. But whether she goes or not, it seems
to me that we have seen the last of her queening it over us all. If she does not go, I should think she would be the only absentee, and if she does, she goes as Mrs. Evans’ guest. All these years she has never thought of a fancy dress party——” Mrs. Altham broke off in the middle of her address, stung by the splendour of a sudden thought. “Or does all this staying away on her part,” she said, “and dyeing her hair, and painting her face, mean that she knew about it all along, and was going to be the show-figure of it all? I should not wonder if that was it. As likely as not, she and Major Ames will come as Hamlet and Ophelia, or something equally ridiculous, though I am sure as far as the ‘too too solid flesh’ goes, Major Ames would make an admirable Hamlet, for I never saw a man put on weight in the manner he does, in spite of all the garden rolling, which I expect the gardener does for him really. But whatever is the truth of it all, and I’m sure every one is so secretive here in Riseborough nowadays, that you never know how many dined at such a place on such a night unless you actually go to the poulterer’s and find out whether one chicken or two was sent,—what was I saying?” She had been saying a good deal. Mr. Altham correctly guessed the train of thought which she desired to recall. “In spite of the secretiveness——” he suggested. That served the purpose. “No, my dear Henry,” said his wife rapidly, “I accuse no one of secretiveness: if I did, you misunderstood me. All I meant was that when we have settled what we are to go as, we will tell nobody. There is very little sense in a fancy dress entertainment if you know exactly what you may expect, and as soon as you see a Romeo can say for certain that it is Major Ames, for instance; and I’m sure if he is to go as Romeo, it would be vastly suitable if Mrs. Ames went as Juliet’s nurse.” “I am not sure that I shall like so much finery,” said Mr. Altham, who was thinking entirely about his own dress, and did not care two straws about Major or Mrs. Ames. “It will seem very strange.” “Nonsense, my dear; we will dine in our fancy dresses for an evening or two before, and you will get quite used to it, whatever it is. Henry, do you remember my white satin gown, which I scarcely wore a dozen times, because it seemed too grand for Riseborough? It was too, I am sure: you
were quite right. It has been in camphor ever since. I used to wear my Roman pearls with it. There are three rows, and the clasp is of real pearls. The very thing for Cleopatra.” “I recollect perfectly,” said Mr. Altham. His mind instantly darted off again to the undoubted fact that whereas Major Ames was stout, he himself was very thin. If he had been obliged to describe his figure at that moment, he would have said it was boyish. The expense of a wig seemed of no account. “Well, my dear, white dress and pearls,” said his wife. “You are not very encouraging. With that book of Egyptian antiquities, I can easily remodel the dress. And I remember reading in a Roman history that Cleopatra was well over thirty when Julius Cæsar was so devoted to her. And by the busts he must have been much balder than you!” It is no use denying that this was a rather heavy blow. Ever since the mention of the word Cleopatra, he had seen himself complete, with a wig, in another character. “But Julius Cæsar was sixty,” he observed, with pardonable asperity. “I do not see how I could make up as a man of sixty. And for that matter, my dear, though I am sure no one would think you were within five years of your actual age, I do not see how you could make up as a mere girl of thirty. Why should we not go as ‘Antony and Cleopatra, ten years later’? It would be better than to go as Julius Cæsar and Cleopatra ten years before!” 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. “Upon my word, I am not sure that I shall not go,” she said, “just to see what Mrs. Ames’ idea of a quadrille is. I should not wonder if she mixed it up with something quite different, which would be laughable. And after all, we ought not to be so unkind, and if poor Mrs. Ames feels she will get into difficulties over the quadrille, I am sure I shall be happy to help her out. No doubt she has summoned us like this, so that she need not show that she feels she wants to be helped. We will go, Henry, and I daresay I shall get out of her what she means to dress up as! But pray remember to say that we, at any rate, have not given a thought to our costumes yet. And on our way, we may as well call in at Mr. Roland’s, for if I am to wear my three rows of pearls, he must get me a few more, since I find there is a good deal of string showing. I daresay that ordinary pearl beads would answer the purpose perfectly. I have no intention of buying more of the real Roman pearls. They belonged to my mother, and I should not like to add to them. And if you will insist on having some red stone in your cap, to make a buckle for the feather, I am sure you could not do better than get a piece of what he called German ruby that is in his shop now. I do not suppose anybody in Riseborough could tell it from real, and after all this is over, I would wear it as a pendant for my pearls. If you wish, I will pay half of it, and it is but a couple of pounds altogether.” It did not seem a really handsome offer, but Henry had the sense to accept it. He wanted a stone to buckle the feather in a rather coquettish cap that they had decided to be suitable for Mark Antony, and did not really care what happened to it after he had worn it on this occasion, since it was unlikely that another similar occasion would arise. Deep in his mind had been an idea of turning it into a solitaire, but he knew he would not have the practical courage of this daring conception. It would want another setting, also.
In other houses there were no fewer anticipatory triumphs and past perplexities. There was also, in some cases, wild and secret intrigue. For instance, a few evenings after, Mrs. Brooks next door, sorting out garments in her wardrobe from which she might devise a costume that should remind the beholder of Hermione, looked from her bedroom window, where her quest was in progress, and saw a strange sight in the next garden. There was a lady in white satin with pearls; there was a gentleman in Roman toga with a feathered cap. The Roman gentleman was a dubious figure; the lady indubitable. If ever there was an elderly Cleopatra, this was she. Mrs. Brooks sat heavily down, after observing this sight. It certainly was Cleopatra in the next garden: as certainly it was a snake in the grass. In a moment her mind was made up. She saw why she had been discouraged from being Cleopatra; the false Mrs. Altham had wanted to be Cleopatra herself, without rival. But she would be Cleopatra too. Riseborough should judge between the effectiveness of the two representations. Of course, every one knew that Mrs. Altham had three rows of Roman pearls, which were nothing but some sort of vitreous enamel. But Mrs. Brooks, as Riseborough also knew, had five or six rows of real seed-pearls. It was impossible to denigrer seed-pearls: they were pearls, though small, and did not pretend to be anything different to what they were. But the Roman prefix, to any fair- minded person, invalidated the word “pearls.” Besides, even as Cleopatra without pearls, she would have been willing to back herself against Mrs. Altham. Cleopatra ought to be tall, which she was. Also Cleopatra ought to be beautiful, which neither was. And Mrs. Altham had urged her to go as Hermione! Of course, she had to revise her toilet, but luckily it had progressed no further than the sewing of white rosettes on to a pair of slightly worn satin shoes, which were equally suitable for any of Shakespeare’s heroines. The week which had passed for Mr. and Mrs. Altham in a succession of so pleasing excitements and anxieties, had not been without incident to Mrs. Ames. When (by the same post that bore their invitations to the other guests) the announcement of the fancy dress ball reached her, and she read it out to her husband (even as Mrs. Altham had done) towards the end of dinner, he expressed his feelings with a good deal of pooh-ing and the opinion that he, at any rate, was past the years of dressing-up. This attitude (for it had been settled that the invitation was to come as a surprise to him) he somewhat overdid, and found to his dismay that his wife quite agreed
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  • 5. Programming Entity Framework Building Data Centric Apps with the ADO NET Entity Framework Second Edition Julia Lerman Digital Instant Download Author(s): Julia Lerman ISBN(s): 9780596807269, 0596807260 Edition: Second Edition File Details: PDF, 9.09 MB Year: 2010 Language: english
  • 8. SECOND EDITION Programming Entity Framework Julia Lerman Beijing • Cambridge • Farnham • Köln • Sebastopol • Taipei • Tokyo
  • 9. Programming Entity Framework, Second Edition by Julia Lerman Copyright © 2010 Julia Lerman. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. Published by O’Reilly Media, Inc., 1005 Gravenstein Highway North, Sebastopol, CA 95472. O’Reilly books may be purchased for educational, business, or sales promotional use. Online editions are also available for most titles (http://my.safaribooksonline.com). For more information, contact our corporate/institutional sales department: 800-998-9938 or [email protected]. Editors: Mike Hendrickson and Laurel Ruma Production Editor: Loranah Dimant Copyeditor: Audrey Doyle Proofreader: Sada Preisch Indexer: Ellen Troutman Zaig Cover Designer: Karen Montgomery Interior Designer: David Futato Illustrator: Robert Romano Printing History: February 2009: First Edition. August 2010: Second Edition. Nutshell Handbook, the Nutshell Handbook logo, and the O’Reilly logo are registered trademarks of O’Reilly Media, Inc. Programming Entity Framework, the image of a Seychelles blue pigeon, and related trade dress are trademarks of O’Reilly Media, Inc. Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this book, and O’Reilly Media, Inc., was aware of a trademark claim, the designations have been printed in caps or initial caps. .NET is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation. While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the publisher and author assume no responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from the use of the information con- tained herein. ISBN: 978-0-596-80726-9 [SB] 1281106344
  • 10. Table of Contents Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxi Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxiii 1. Introducing the ADO.NET Entity Framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 The Entity Relationship Model: Programming Against a Model, Not the Database 2 The Entity Data Model: A Client-Side Data Model 3 Entities: Blueprints for Business Classes 6 The Backend Database: Your Choice 7 Database Providers 8 Access and ODBC 9 Entity Framework Features: APIs and Tools 9 Metadata 10 Entity Data Model Design Tools 10 Object Services 11 POCO Support 12 Change Tracking 12 Relationship Management and Foreign Keys 13 Data Binding 13 n-Tier Development 14 EntityClient 14 The Entity Framework and WCF Services 15 What About ADO.NET DataSets and LINQ to SQL? 15 DataSets 15 LINQ to SQL 16 Entity Framework Pain Points Are Fading Away 16 Programming the Entity Framework 17 2. Exploring the Entity Data Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Why Use an Entity Data Model? 19 iii
  • 11. The EDM Within the Entity Framework 20 Walkthrough: Building Your First EDM 21 Inspecting the EDM in the Designer Window 24 Entity Container Properties 26 Entity Properties 26 Entity Property Properties 27 The Model’s Supporting Metadata 29 Viewing the Model in the Model Browser 31 Viewing the Model’s Raw XML 31 CSDL: The Conceptual Schema 33 EntityContainer 34 EntitySet 35 EntityType 36 Associations 38 Navigation Property 41 Navigation Properties That Return Collections 42 SSDL: The Store Schema 43 MSL: The Mappings 45 Database Views in the EDM 46 Summary 47 3. Querying Entity Data Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 Query the Model, Not the Database 49 Your First EDM Query 50 Where Did the Context and Classes Come From? 51 Querying with LINQ to Entities 55 Writing Your First LINQ to Entities Query 55 Querying with Object Services and Entity SQL 57 Why Another Way to Query? 57 Entity SQL 58 The Parameterized ObjectQuery 60 Querying with Methods 61 Querying with LINQ Methods 61 Querying with Query Builder Methods and Entity SQL 64 The Shortest Query 66 ObjectQuery, ObjectSet, and LINQ to Entities 66 Querying with EntityClient to Return Streamed Data 68 EntityConnection and the Connection String 70 EntityCommand 71 ExecuteReader 71 Forward-Only Access to the Fields 71 Translating Entity Queries to Database Queries 71 Pay Attention to the .NET Method’s Impact on Generated SQL 72 iv | Table of Contents
  • 12. Avoiding Inadvertent Query Execution 74 Summary 75 4. Exploring LINQ to Entities in Greater Depth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 Getting Ready with Some New Lingo 78 Projections in Queries 78 Projections in LINQ to Entities 79 VB and C# Syntax Differences 79 LINQ Projections and Special Language Features 80 Projections with LINQ Query Methods 84 Using Navigations in Queries 84 Navigating to an EntityReference 84 Filtering and Sorting with an EntityReference 86 Navigating to Entity Collections 86 Projecting Properties from EntityCollection Entities 87 Filtering and Sorting with EntityCollections 88 Aggregates with EntityCollections 88 Aggregates in LINQ Methods 89 Joins and Nested Queries 90 Joins 90 Nested Queries 91 Grouping 93 Naming Properties When Grouping 94 Chaining Aggregates 95 Filtering on Group Conditions 95 Shaping Data Returned by Queries 97 Limiting Which Related Data Is Returned 99 Loading Related Data 100 Controlling Lazy Loading 101 Explicitly Loading Entity Collections and Entity References 101 Using the Include Method to Eager-Load 103 Pros and Cons of Load and Include 106 Retrieving a Single Entity 107 Retrieving a Single Entity with GetObjectByKey 108 Finding More Query Samples 109 Summary 109 5. Exploring Entity SQL in Greater Depth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 Literals in Entity SQL 111 Expressing a DateTime Literal 112 Expressing a Decimal Literal 112 Using Additional Literal Types 112 Projecting in Entity SQL 113 Table of Contents | v
  • 13. DbDataRecords and Nonscalar Properties 114 Projecting with Query Builder Methods 115 Using Navigation in Entity SQL Queries 115 Navigating to an EntityReference 115 Filtering and Sorting with an EntityReference 116 Filtering and Sorting with EntityCollections 116 Aggregating with EntityCollections 117 Using Entity SQL SET Operators 117 Aggregating with Query Builder Methods 118 Using Joins 118 Nesting Queries 119 Grouping in Entity SQL 120 Returning Entities from an Entity SQL GROUP BY Query 121 Filtering Based on Group Properties 121 Shaping Data with Entity SQL 122 Using Include with an ObjectQuery and Entity SQL 123 Understanding Entity SQL’s Wrapped and Unwrapped Results 124 Entity SQL Rules for Wrapped and Unwrapped Results 126 Digging a Little Deeper into EntityClient’s Results 126 Summary 127 6. Modifying Entities and Saving Changes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129 Keeping Track of Entities 129 Managing an Entity’s State 130 Saving Changes Back to the Database 131 Inserting New Objects 134 Inserting New Parents and Children 135 Deleting Entities 137 Summary 139 7. Using Stored Procedures with the EDM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 Updating the Model from a Database 142 Working with Functions 143 Function Attributes 144 Mapping Functions to Entities 146 Mapping Insert, Update, and Delete Functions to an Entity 148 Inspecting Mappings in XML 152 Using Mapped Functions 153 Using the EDM Designer Model Browser to Import Additional Functions into Your Model 155 Mapping the First of the Read Stored Procedures: ContactsbyState 156 Using Imported Functions 158 Avoiding Inadvertent Client-Side Processing 159 vi | Table of Contents
  • 14. Mapping a Function to a Scalar Type 159 Mapping a Function to a Complex Type 160 Summary 163 8. Implementing a More Real-World Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165 Introducing the BreakAway Geek Adventures Business Model and Legacy Database 166 Creating a Separate Project for an EDM 168 Inspecting and Cleaning Up a New EDM 168 Modifying the Names of Entities and Properties 170 Resolving Collisions Between Property Names and Entity Names 172 Cleaning Up Navigation Property Names 172 Setting Default Values 174 Mapping Stored Procedures 175 Using the Use Original Value Checkbox in Update Mappings 176 Working with Many-to-Many Relationships 178 Inspecting the Completed BreakAway Model 181 Building the BreakAway Model Assembly 182 Looking at the Compiled Assembly 183 Splitting Out the Model’s Metadata Files 184 Summary 185 9. Data Binding with Windows Forms and WPF Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187 Data Binding with Windows Forms Applications 187 Creating a Windows Forms Application 188 Using Windows Forms Data Sources 189 Creating an Object Data Source for a Customer Entity 190 Getting an Entity’s Details onto a Form 191 Adding Code to Query an EDM When a Form Loads 194 Binding Without a BindingSource 196 Adding an EntityCollection to the Form 198 Displaying the Properties of Related Data in the Grid 199 Allowing Users to Edit Data 201 Editing Navigation Properties (and Shrinking the Query) 202 Replacing the Navigation Property TextBoxes with ComboBoxes 204 Adding New Customers 208 Deleting Reservations 211 Data Binding with WPF Applications 213 Creating the WPF Form 213 Creating the WPF Project 214 Adding the Necessary Data Source Objects 215 Inspecting the XAML and Code Generated by the Automated Data Binding 215 Table of Contents | vii
  • 15. Adding Code to Query the EDM When the Window Loads 216 Customizing the Display of the Controls 218 Selecting an Entity and Viewing Its Details 219 Adding Another EntityCollection to the Mix 222 Editing Entities and Their Related Data 224 Using SortDescriptions to Keep Sorting in Sync with Data Modifica- tions 225 Adding Items to the Child EntityCollection 226 The Last Task: Adding New Trips to the Catalog 227 Summary 230 10. Working with Object Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231 Where Does Object Services Fit into the Framework? 231 Processing Queries 233 Parsing Queries: From Query to Command Tree to SQL 234 Understanding Query Builder Methods 235 Analyzing a Query with ObjectQuery Methods and Properties 238 Executing Queries with ToList, ToArray, First or Single 241 Executing Queries with the Execute Method 242 Overriding a Default Connection with ObjectContext.Connection 242 Handling Command Execution with EntityClient 244 Materializing Objects 244 Managing Object State 246 Using EntityKey to Manage Objects 246 Merging Results into the Cache with MergeOptions 247 Inspecting ObjectStateEntry 248 Maintaining EntityState 249 Managing Relationships 252 Attaching and Detaching Objects from the ObjectContext 253 Taking Control of ObjectState 257 ObjectStateManager Methods 257 ObjectStateEntry State Methods for Managing State 258 ObjectSet State Methods 259 Sending Changes Back to the Database 259 ObjectContext.SaveChanges 259 Affecting SaveChanges Default Behavior 260 Overriding SaveChanges Completely 261 Data Validation with the SavingChanges Event 261 Concurrency Management 261 Transaction Support 262 Implementing Serialization, Data Binding, and More 263 Object Services Supports XML and Binary Serialization 263 Object Services Supports Data Binding 265 viii | Table of Contents
  • 16. Summary 266 11. Customizing Entities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267 Partial Classes 267 Using Partial Methods 269 The OnContextCreated Method 269 The On[Property]Changed and On[Property]Changing Methods 271 Using PropertyChanged to Calculate Database-Computed Columns Locally 273 Subscribing to Event Handlers 274 The ObjectContext.ObjectMaterialized Event 275 The ObjectContext.SavingChanges Event 276 The EntityObject.PropertyChanging and EntityObject.PropertyChanged Events 280 The AssociationChanged Event 282 Creating Your Own Partial Methods and Properties 284 Overriding the Object Constructor 284 Overriding ObjectContext.SaveChanges 285 Creating Custom Properties 286 Overloading Entity Creation Methods 289 Using Partial Classes for More Than Just Overriding Methods and Events 290 Overriding Default Code Generation 291 Switching to a Template 292 Reading the Template 292 Modifying the Template 293 Customizing a Template for Major Class Modifications 295 Switching Between the Default Template and a Custom Template 295 Summary 296 12. Data Binding with RAD ASP.NET Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297 Using the EntityDataSource Control to Access Flat Data 298 Creating the Hello Entities Project 298 Creating a GridView and an EntityDataSource Concurrently 299 Configuring an EntityDataSource with Its Wizard 299 Formatting the GridView 301 Testing the Web Application 303 Understanding How the EntityDataSource Retrieves and Updates Your Data 304 EntityDataSource and Its Query 304 EntityDataSource and Its ObjectContext 305 EntityDataSource Context Events 306 EntityDataSource and ViewState 306 Table of Contents | ix
  • 17. Accessing Foreign Keys When There Is No Foreign Key Property 308 Working with Related EntityReference Data 309 Using EntityDataSource.Include to Get Related Data 309 Displaying Data That Comes from EntityReference Navigation Properties 310 Using a New EntityDataSource Control to Enable Editing of EntityReference Navigation Properties 312 Editing EntityReferences That Cannot Be Satisfied with a Drop-Down List 313 Binding an EntityDataSource to Another Control with WhereParameters 314 Editing Related Data Concurrently with Multiple EntityDataSource Controls 316 Working with Hierarchical Data in a Master/Detail Form 317 Setting Up the Web Application 317 Specifying Your Own Entity SQL Query Expression for an EntityDataSource 318 Binding a DropDownList to an EntityDataSource Control 319 Creating a Parent EntityDataSource That Is Controlled by the DropDownList and Provides Data to a DetailsView 320 Using the EntityDataSource.Where Property to Filter Query Results 321 Displaying Read-Only Child Data Through the Parent EntityDataSource 321 Using a New EntityDataSource to Add a Third Level of Hierarchical Data to the Master/Detail Form 323 Using the EntityDataSource.Inserting Event to Help with Newly Added Entities 325 Testing the Application 326 Exploring EntityDataSource Events 327 Building Dynamic Data Websites 329 Summary 332 13. Creating and Using POCO Entities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335 Creating POCO Classes 336 Creating an ObjectContext Class to Manage the POCOs 339 Change Tracking with POCOs 341 Understanding the Importance of DetectChanges 341 Loading Related Data with POCOs 341 Loading from the Context 342 Lazy Loading from a Dynamic Proxy 342 Exploring and Correcting POCOs’ Impact on Two-Way Relationships 342 Using the DetectChanges Method to Fix Relationships 343 Enabling Classes to Fix Their Own Relationships 344 x | Table of Contents
  • 18. Using Proxies to Enable Change Notification, Lazy Loading, and Relationship Fix-Up 345 Change Notification by Proxy 346 Lazy Loading by Proxy 346 Exploring the Proxy Classes 347 Synchronizing Relationships by Proxy 348 Using T4 to Generate POCO Classes 350 Modifying the POCO Template 354 Creating a Model That Works with Preexisting Classes 358 Code First: Using Entity Framework with No Model at All 359 Summary 359 14. Customizing Entity Data Models Using the EDM Designer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361 Mapping Table per Type Inheritance for Tables That Describe Derived Types 362 Mapping TPT Inheritance 363 Querying Inherited Types 365 POCO Classes and Inherited Objects 366 Inserting TPT Inherited Types 366 Specifying or Excluding Derived Types in Queries 368 Creating New Derived Entities When the Base Entity Already Exists 370 TPT with Abstract Types 371 Mapping Unique Foreign Keys 373 Mapping an Entity to More Than One Table 375 Merging Multiple Entities into One 376 Querying, Editing, and Saving a Split Entity 378 Mapping Stored Procedures to Split Tables and More 380 Splitting a Single Table into Multiple Entities 381 Filtering Entities with Conditional Mapping 383 Creating a Conditional Mapping for the Activity Entity 385 Querying, Inserting, and Saving with Conditional Mappings 385 Filtering on Other Types of Conditions 387 Removing the Conditional Mapping from Activity and Re-creating the Category Property 388 Implementing Table per Hierarchy Inheritance for Tables That Contain Multiple Types 389 Creating the Resort Derived Type 390 Setting a Default (Computed) Value on the Table Schema 391 Testing the TPH Mapping 392 Choosing to Turn a Base Class into an Abstract Class 393 Creating Complex Types to Encapsulate Sets of Properties 393 Defining a Complex Type 394 Reusing Complex Types 396 Table of Contents | xi
  • 19. Querying, Creating, and Saving Entities That Contain Complex Types 397 Removing the Complex Types from the Model 398 Using Additional Customization Options 399 Using GUIDs for EntityKeys 399 Mapping Stored Procedures 399 Mapping Multiple Entity Sets per Type 399 Mapping Self-Referencing Associations 400 Summary 401 15. Defining EDM Mappings That Are Not Supported by the Designer . . . . . . . . . . . . . 403 Using Model-Defined Functions 403 Using Model-Defined Functions to Return More Complex Results 407 Consuming the Complex Results 408 Reading the Results from a Complex Function 408 Mapping Table per Concrete (TPC) Type Inheritance for Tables with Overlapping Fields 409 Using QueryView to Create Read-Only Entities and Other Specialized Mappings 411 Finding a Common Use Case for QueryView 413 Creating a CustomerNameAndID Entity 413 Creating a QueryView Mapping for CustomerNameAndID 414 Testing the QueryView 416 Deconstructing the QueryView 416 Summary 417 16. Gaining Additional Stored Procedure and View Support in the Raw XML . . . . . . . 419 Reviewing Procedures, Views, and UDFs in the EDM 419 Working with Stored Procedures That Return Data 420 Using Functions That Match an Entity Whose Property Names Have Been Changed 420 Query Stored Procedures and Inherited Types 421 Composing Queries Against Functions 423 Replacing Stored Procedures with Views for Composability 423 Queries That Return Multiple Result Sets 424 Executing Queries on Demand with ExecuteStoreQuery 424 Querying to a Class That Is Not an Entity 424 Querying into an Entity 425 Adding Native Queries to the Model 426 Defining a Complex Type in the Model Browser 427 Adding Native Views to the Model 429 DefiningQuery Is Already in Your Model 429 Using DefiningQuery to Create Your Own Views 431 Implementing a DefiningQuery 433 xii | Table of Contents
  • 20. Creating Associations with the New Entity 437 Using DefiningQuery to Solve More Complex Problems 438 Using Commands That Affect the Database 440 Executing SQL on the Fly with ExecuteStoreCommand 440 Using Functions to Manipulate Data in the Database 441 Mapping Insert/Update/Delete to Types Within an Inheritance Structure 444 What If Stored Procedures Affect Multiple Entities in an Inheritance Structure? 445 Implementing and Querying with User-Defined Functions (UDFs) 445 Summary 447 17. Using EntityObjects in WCF Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 449 Planning for an Entity Framework–Agnostic Client 450 Assessing the Pros and Cons of an Entity Framework–Agnostic Consumer 451 Building a Simple WCF Service with EntityObjects 452 Creating the Service 453 Defining the Service Operations 454 Defining Extra Service Classes 455 Exposing Custom Properties 456 Implementing the Service Interface 457 Adding Graphs to ObjectContext 460 Deleting Objects 461 Updating the Object Graph 463 Client Rules for Identifying Changes in an EntityCollection 463 The UpdateCustomer Method 463 Handling New and Existing Reservations 465 Deleting Reservations 466 Building a Simple Console App to Consume an EntityObject Service 467 Enabling the Client Application to Receive Large Messages from the Service 468 Creating Methods to Test the Service Operations 469 Analyzing the GetAndUpdateCustomer Method 473 Testing Out the Other Service Operations 474 Creating WCF Data Services with Entities 474 Putting WCF Data Services in Perspective 475 Creating a WCF Data Service 475 Filtering at the Service Level Using QueryInterceptor 480 Anticipating Exceptions 481 Exposing Related Data Through the Service 481 Preparing for WCF Data Services’ Limitations 483 Modifying Data Through a Service 484 Learning More About Creating and Consuming WCF Data Services 485 Table of Contents | xiii
  • 21. Understanding How WCF RIA Services Relates to the Entity Framework 485 Summary 487 18. Using POCOs and Self-Tracking Entities in WCF Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 489 Creating WCF-Friendly POCO Classes 490 Updating the POCO Classes Based on the Current BreakAway Model 490 Isolating the POCO Entities in Their Own Project 491 Adding Custom Logic to the POCO Entities with a Base Class 493 Following WCF Collection Rules 495 Preventing Properties from Being Marked As Virtual 496 Building a WCF Service That Uses POCO Classes 497 Implementing the Interface 498 Using the Service 500 Using the Self-Tracking Entities Template for WCF Services 503 Creating and Exploring the Self-Tracking Entities 503 Putting the Change-Tracking Logic Where It’s Needed 505 Creating a WCF Service That Uses Self-Tracking Entities 506 Watching Self-Tracking Entities Under the Covers 507 Inspecting the Generated Context Class and Extensions 513 Using POCO Entities with WCF Data and RIA Services 515 Preparing for WCF Data Services 515 Using POCO Entities in WCF RIA Services 517 Sorting Out the Many Options for Creating Services 519 Summary 520 19. Working with Relationships and Associations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 521 Deconstructing Relationships in the Entity Data Model 522 Understanding How the Entity Data Model Wizard Creates the Association 523 Understanding Additional Relationship Items 525 Handling Nonessential Navigation Properties 526 Understanding the Major Differences Between Foreign Key Associations and Independent Associations 527 Defining Associations in Metadata 528 Detecting Associations at Runtime 528 Deconstructing Relationships Between Instantiated Entities 529 Understanding Relationship Manager and the IRelatedEnd Interface 530 Late-Binding Relationships 530 Taking a Peek Under the Covers: How Entity Framework Manages Relationships 531 Understanding Navigation Properties 534 Understanding Referential Integrity and Constraints 537 Implementing Deletes and Cascading Deletes 540 xiv | Table of Contents
  • 22. Defining Relationships Between Entities 542 The CLR Way: Setting a Navigation Property to an Entity 543 Setting a Foreign Key Property 544 Setting an EntityReference Using an EntityKey 544 Loading, Adding, and Attaching Navigation Properties 545 Lazy Loading 545 EntityReference.Load and EntityCollection.Load 547 Loading from Detached Entities: Lazy and Explicit 547 Using EntityCollection.Add 548 Using Attach and Remove 549 Moving an Entity to a New Graph 550 Learning a Few Last Tricks to Make You a Relationship Pro 551 Using CreateSourceQuery to Enhance Deferred Loading 551 Getting a Foreign Key Value in an Independent Association 552 Summary 553 20. Real World Apps: Connections, Transactions, Performance, and More . . . . . . . . . . 555 Entity Framework and Connections 555 Overriding EntityConnection Defaults 556 Working with Connection Strings Programmatically 557 Opening and Closing Connections 560 Getting the Store Connection from EntityConnection 562 Disposing Connections 562 Pooling Connections 563 Fine-Tuning Transactions 564 Why Use Your Own Transaction? 564 Understanding Implicit Entity Framework Transactions 565 Specifying Your Own Read/Write Transactions 566 Specifying Your Own Read-Only Transactions 569 Rolling Back Transactions 570 Understanding Security 571 Guarding Against SQL Injection 571 Guarding Against Connection Piggybacks 573 Fine-Tuning Performance 574 Measuring Query Performance 575 Measuring Startup Performance 579 Reducing the Cost of Query Compilation 580 Caching for Entity SQL Queries 580 Precompiling Views for Performance 582 Precompiling LINQ to Entities Queries for Performance 585 Fine-Tuning Updates for Performance? 589 Lacking Support for Full Text Searches 590 Exploiting Multithreaded Applications 591 Table of Contents | xv
  • 23. Forcing an ObjectContext to Use Its Own Thread 591 Implementing Concurrent Thread Processing 593 Exploiting .NET 4 Parallel Computing 596 Summary 596 21. Manipulating Entities with ObjectStateManager and MetadataWorkspace . . . . . 597 Manipulating Entities and Their State with ObjectStateManager 598 Refreshing Your High-Level Understanding of ObjectStateEntry 599 Getting an ObjectStateManager and Its Entries 599 Building Extension Methods to Overload GetObjectStateEntries 600 Building a Method to Return Managed Entities 602 Using GetObjectStateEntry and TryGetObjectStateEntry 603 Mining Entity Details from ObjectStateEntry 604 Leveraging the ObjectStateManager During Saves 609 Using ObjectStateManager to Build an EntityState Visualizer 611 Retrieving an ObjectStateEntry Using an EntityKey 612 Reading the OriginalValues and CurrentValues of an ObjectStateEntry 613 Determining Whether a Property Has Been Modified 614 Displaying the State and Entity Type 614 Getting ComplexType Properties Out of ObjectStateEntry 615 Modifying Values with ObjectStateManager 619 Working with Relationships in ObjectStateManager 620 Using the MetadataWorkspace 622 Loading the MetadataWorkspace 622 Clearing the MetadataWorkspace from Memory 623 Understanding the MetadataWorkspace ItemCollections 624 Retrieving Metadata from the MetadataWorkspace 625 Querying the Metadata with LINQ to Objects 628 Building Dynamic Queries and Reading Results 629 Building Entity SQL Queries Dynamically Using Metadata 629 Creating Queries on the Fly with CreateObjectSet and Query Builder Methods 632 Reading the Results of a Dynamically Created Query 634 Creating and Manipulating Entities Dynamically 637 Creating EntityObjects Without Entity Classes 637 Creating Entities and Graphs Dynamically 640 Summary 643 22. Handling Exceptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 645 Preparing for Exceptions 645 Handling EntityConnectionString Exceptions 647 xvi | Table of Contents
  • 24. Connection String Can’t Be Found or Is Improperly Configured: System.ArgumentException 648 Metadata Files Cannot Be Found: System.Data.MetadataException 648 Handling Connection String Exceptions 649 Handling Query Compilation Exceptions 649 Invalid LINQ to Entities Query Expressions: System.NotSupportedException 649 Invalid Entity SQL Query Expressions: EntitySqlException 650 EntityCommandCompilationException Thrown by the Store Provider 652 Creating a Common Wrapper to Handle Query Execution Exceptions 652 Handling Exceptions Thrown During SaveChanges Command Execution 654 UpdateException: Thrown When Independent Association Mapping Constraints Are Broken 654 UpdateException: Thrown by Broken Constraints in the Database 655 Relying on Entity Framework to Automatically Roll Back When an UpdateException Occurs 656 Gleaning Details from UpdateException 656 Planning for Other Exceptions Related to the Entity Framework 657 Handling Concurrency Exceptions 658 Summary 658 23. Planning for Concurrency Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 659 Understanding Database Concurrency Conflicts 660 Understanding Optimistic Concurrency Options in the Entity Frame- work 660 Ignoring Concurrency Conflicts 661 Forcing the User’s Data to the Server (ClientWins) 661 Refreshing the User’s Data with Server Data (StoreWins) 661 Determining the Scope of Changes 662 Using rowversion (a.k.a. timestamp) for Concurrency Checks 662 Implementing Optimistic Concurrency with the Entity Framework 663 Flagging a Property for Concurrency Checking 664 How the Entity Framework Uses the ConcurrencyMode Property 665 Concurrency Checking Without a rowversion Field 666 Concurrency Checking on a Checksum in the Data Store 666 Concurrency Checks for EntityReference Navigation Properties 667 Concurrency Checks and Inherited Types 667 Concurrency Checks and Stored Procedures 668 Handling OptimisticConcurrencyExceptions 670 Using ObjectContext.Refresh 671 Using Refresh with ClientWins 671 Using Refresh with StoreWins 673 Table of Contents | xvii
  • 25. Refreshing Collections of Entities 673 Refreshing Related Entities in a Graph 675 Rewinding and Starting Again, and Maybe Again After That 676 Reporting an Exception 678 Handling Concurrency Exceptions at a Lower Level 678 Handling Exceptions in a Granular Way Without User Intervention 678 Handling Multiple Conflicts 680 Handling Exceptions When Transactions Are Your Own 682 Summary 683 24. Building Persistent Ignorant, Testable Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 685 Testing the BreakAway Application Components 686 Getting Started with Testing 687 Writing an Integration Test That Hits the Database 687 Inspecting a Failed Test 689 Writing a Unit Test That Focuses on Custom Logic 689 Creating Persistent Ignorant Entities 693 Planning the Project Structure 695 Starting with the Model and Its POCO Entities 697 Building an Interface to Represent a Context 698 Modifying the BAEntities ObjectContext Class to Implement the New Interface 699 Creating the IEntityRepository Interface 702 Creating the Repository Classes 703 Testing GetReservationsForCustomer Against the Database 706 Creating a Fake Context 708 Creating a FakeObjectSet Class 710 Completing the Fake Context 712 Building Tests That Do Not Hit the Database 714 Adding Validation Logic to the POCO Class 714 Adding Validation Logic to the Context 716 Providing ManagedEntities in the FakeContext 716 Hiding the Context from the Lower Layers with Unit of Work 718 Testing UnitOfWork Against the Database 720 Enabling Eager Loading in IContext 721 Leveraging Precompiled Queries in Your Repositories 722 Using the New Infrastructure in Your Application 723 Adding a UI Layer That Calls the Repository 723 Application Architecture Benefits from Designing Testable Code 724 Considering Mocking Frameworks? 725 Summary 725 xviii | Table of Contents
  • 26. Discovering Diverse Content Through Random Scribd Documents
  • 27. “Tell me about it,” said she. “Well, there was the Colonel’s wife. God bless me, how I adored her. I must have been just about Harry’s age, for I had only lately joined, and she was a woman getting on for forty. Good thing, too, for me, as I say, for it kept me out of mischief. They used to say she encouraged me, but I don’t believe it. Every woman likes to know that she’s admired, eh? She doesn’t snub a boy who takes her out in the garden, and picks his father’s roses for her. But we mustn’t have Harry boring her with his attentions. That’ll never do.” It seemed to Mrs. Ames of singularly little consequence whether Harry bored Millie Evans or not. She would much have preferred to be assured that her husband did. But the subsequent conversation did not reassure her as to that. “Nice little woman, she is,” he said. “Thoroughly nice little woman, and naturally enough, my dear, since she is your cousin, she likes being treated in neighbourly fashion. We had a great talk after lunch to-day, and I’m sorry for her, sorry for her. I think we ought to do all we can to make life pleasant for her. Drop in to tea, or drop in to lunch, as I did to-day. A doctor’s wife, you know. She told me that some days she scarcely set eyes on her husband, and when she did, he could think of nothing but microbes. And there’s really nobody in Riseborough, except you and me, with whom she feels— dear me, what’s that French word—yes, with whom she feels in her proper milieu. I should like us to be on such terms with her—you being her cousin —that we could always telephone to say we were dropping in, and that she would feel equally free to drop in. Dropping in, you know: that’s the real thing; not to be obliged to wait till you are asked, or to accept weeks ahead, as one has got to do for some formal dinner-party. I should like to feel that we mightn’t be surprised to find her picking sweet-peas in the garden, and that she wouldn’t be surprised to find you or me sitting under her mulberry- tree, waiting for her to come in. After all, intimacy only begins when formality ceases. Shall I give you some soda water?” Mrs. Ames did not want soda-water: she wanted to think. Her husband had completely expressed the attitude she meant to adopt, but her own adoption of it had presupposed a certain contrition on his part with regard to his unusual behaviour. But he gave her no time for thought, and proceeded
  • 28. to propose just the same sort of thing as she (in her magnanimity) had thought of suggesting. “Dinner, now,” he said. “Up till last night we have always been a bit formal about dinner here in Riseborough. If you asked General Snookes, you asked Mrs. Snookes; if you asked Admiral Jones, you asked Lady Jones. You led the way, my dear, about that, and what could have been pleasanter than our little party last night? Let us repeat it: let us be less formal. If you want to see Mr. Altham, ask him to come. Mrs. Altham, let us say, wants to ask me: let her ask me. Or if you meet Dr. Evans in the street, and he says it is lunch time, go and have lunch with him, without bothering about me. I shall do very well at home. I’m told that in London it is quite a constant practice to invite like that. And it seems to me very sensible.” All this had seemed very sensible to Mrs. Ames, when she had thought of it herself. It seemed a little more hazardous now. She was well aware that this plan had caused a vast amount of talk in Riseborough, the knowledge of which she had much enjoyed, since it was of the nature of subjects commenting on the movements of their queen, without any danger to her of dethronement. But she was not so sure that she enjoyed her husband’s cordial endorsement of her innovation. Also, in his endorsement there was some little insincerity. He had taken as instance the chance of his wishing to dine without his wife at Mrs. Altham’s, and they both knew how preposterous such a contingency would be. But did this only prepare the way for a further solitary excursion to Mrs. Evans’? Had Mrs. Evans asked him to dine there? She was immediately enlightened. “Of course, we talked over your delightful dinner-party of last night,” he said, “and agreed in the agreeableness of it. And she asked me to dine there, en garçon, on Tuesday next. Of course, I said I must consult you first; you might have asked other people here, or we might be dining out together. I should not dream of upsetting any existing arrangement. I told her so: she quite understood. But if there was nothing going on, I promised to dine there en garçon.” That phrase had evidently taken Major Ames’ fancy; there was a ring of youth about it, and he repeated it with gusto. His wife, too, perfectly understood the secret smack of the lips with which he said it: she knew precisely how he felt. But she was wise enough to keep the consciousness of it completely out of her reply.
  • 29. “By all means,” she said; “we have no engagement for that night. And I am thinking of proposing myself for a little visit to Mrs. Bertram next week, Lyndhurst. I know she is at Overstrand now, and I think ten days on the east coast would do me good.” He assented with a cordiality that equalled hers. “Very wise, I am sure, my dear,” he said. “I have thought this last day or two that you looked a little run down.” A sudden misgiving seized her at this, for she knew quite well she neither looked nor felt the least run down. “I thought perhaps you and Harry would take some little trip together while I was away,” she said. “Oh, never mind us, never mind us,” said he. “We’ll rub along, en garçon, you know. I daresay some of our friends will take pity on us, and ask us to drop in.” This was not reassuring: nor would Mrs. Ames have been reassured if she could have penetrated at that moment unseen into Mrs. Altham’s drawing-room. She and her husband had gone straight from Mrs. Ames’ house that afternoon to call on Mrs. Evans, and had been told she was not at home. But Mrs. Altham of the eagle-eye had seen through the opened front door an immense bowl of sweet-peas on the hall table, and by it a straw hat with a riband of regimental colours round it. Circumstantial evidence could go no further, and now this indefatigable lady was looking out Major Ames in an old army list. “Ames, Lyndhurst Percy,” she triumphantly read out. “Born 1860, and I daresay he is older than that, because if ever there was a man who wanted to be thought younger than his years, that’s the one. So in any case, Henry, he is over forty-seven. And there’s the front-door bell. It will be Mrs. Brooks. She said she would drop in for a chat after dinner.” There was plenty to chat about that evening.
  • 30. CHAPTER V Mrs. Ames might or might not have been run down when she left Riseborough the following week, but nothing can be more certain than that she was considerably braced up seven days after that. The delicious freshness of winds off the North Sea, tempering the heat of brilliant summer suns, may have had something to do with it, and she certainly had more colour in her face than was usual with her, which was the legitimate effect of the felicitous weather. There was more colour in her hair also, and though that, no doubt, was a perfectly legitimate effect too, being produced by purely natural means, as the label on the bottle stated, the sun and wind were not accountable for this embellishment. She had spent an afternoon in London—chiefly in Bond Street—on her way here, and had gone to a couple of addresses which she had secretly snipped out of the daily press. The expenditure of a couple of pounds, which was already yielding her immense dividends in encouragement and hope, had put her into possession of a bottle with a brush, a machine that, when you turned a handle, quivered violently like a motor-car that is prepared to start, and a small jar of opaque glass, which contained the miraculous skin-food. With these was being wrought the desired marvels; with these, as with a magician’s rod, she was conjuring, so she believed, the remote enchantments of youth back to her. After quite a few days change became evident, and daily that change grew greater. As regards her hair, the cost, both of time and material, in this miracle-working, was of the smallest possible account. Morning and evening, after brushing it, she rubbed in a mere teaspoonful of a thin yellow liquid, which, as the advertisement stated, was quite free from grease or obnoxious smell, and did not stain the pillow. This was so simple that it really required faith to embark upon the treatment, for from the time of Hebrew prophets, mankind have found it easier to do “some great thing” than merely to wash in the Jordan. But Mrs. Ames, luckily, had shown her faith, and by the end of a week the marvellous lotion had shown its works. Till now, though her hair could not be described as grey, there was a considerable quantity of grey in it: now she examined it with an eye that sought for instead of shutting itself to such blemish, and the reward of its
  • 31. search was of the most meagre sort. There was really no grey left in it: it might have been, as far as colour could be taken as a test of age, the hair of a young woman. It was not very abundant in quantity, but the lotion had held out no promises on that score; quality, not quantity, was the sum of its beckoning. The application of the skin-food was more expensive: she had to use more and it took longer. Nightly she poured a can of very hot water into her basin, and with a towel over her head to concentrate the vapour, she steamed her face over it for some twenty minutes. Emerging red and hot and stifled, she wiped off the streams of moisture, and with finger-tips dipped in this marvellous cream, tapped and dabbed at the less happy regions between her eyebrows, outside her eyes, across her forehead, at the corners of her mouth, and up and down her neck. Then came the use of the palpitating machine; it whirred and buzzed over her, tickling very much. For half-an-hour she would make a patient piano of her face, then gently remove such of the skin-food as still stayed on the surface, and had not gone within to do its nurturing work. Certainly this was a somewhat laborious affair, but the results were highly prosperous. There was no doubt that to a perfectly candid and even sceptical eye, a week’s treatment had produced a change. The wrinkles were beginning to be softly erased: there was a perceptible plumpness observable in the leaner places. Between the bouts of tapping and dabbing she sipped the glass of milk which she brought up to bed with her, as the deviser of the skin-food recommended. She drank another such glass in the middle of the morning, and digested them both perfectly. As these external signs appeared and grew there went on within her an accompanying and corresponding rejuvenation of spirit. She felt very well, owing, no doubt, to the brisk air, the milk, the many hours spent out-of- doors, and in consequence she began to feel much younger. An unwonted activity and lightness pervaded her limbs: she took daily a walk of a couple of hours without fatigue, and was the life and soul of the dinner-table, whose other occupants were her hosts, Mrs. Bertram, a cold, grim woman with a moustache, and her husband, milder, with whiskers. Their only passion was for gardening, and they seldom left their grounds; thus Mrs. Ames took her walks unaccompanied. Miles of firm sands, when the tide was low, subtended the cliffs on which Mr. Bertram’s house stood, and often Mrs. Ames preferred to walk along the margin of the sea rather than pursue more inland routes, and to-
  • 32. day, after her large and wholesome lunch (the physical stimulus of the east coast, combined with this mental stimulus of her object in coming here, gave her an appetite of dimensions unknown at Riseborough) she took a maritime way. The tide was far out, and the lower sands, still shining and firm from the retained moisture of its retreat, made uncommonly pleasant walking. She had abandoned heeled footgear, and had bought at a shop in the village, where everything inexpensive, from wooden spades to stamps and sticking plaster was sold, a pair of canvas coverings technically known as sand-shoes. They laced up with a piece of white tape, and were juvenile, light, and easily removable. They, and the great sea, and the jetsam of stranded seaweed, and the general sense of youth and freshness, made most agreeable companions, and she felt, though neither Mr. nor Mrs. Bertram was with her, charmingly accompanied. Her small, toadlike face expressed a large degree of contentment, and piercing her pleasant surroundings as the smell of syringa pierces through the odour of all other flowers, was the sense of her brown hair and fast-fading wrinkles. That gave her an inward happiness which flushed with pleasure and interest all she saw. In the lines of pebbles left by the retreating tide was an orange-coloured cornelian, which she picked up, and put in her pocket. She could have bought the same, ready polished, for a shilling at the cheap and comprehensive shop, but to find it herself gave her a pleasure not to be estimated at all in terms of silver coinage. Further on there was an attractive-looking shell, which she also picked up, and was about to give as a companion to the cornelian, when a sudden scurry of claw-like legs about its aperture showed her that a hermit-crab was domiciled within, and she dropped it with a little scream and a sense of danger escaped both by her and the hermit-crab. There were attractive pieces of seaweed, which reminded her of years when she collected the finer sorts, and set them, with the aid of a pin, on cartridge- paper, spreading out their delicate fronds and fern-like foliage. There were creamy ripples of the quiet sea, long-winged gulls that hovered fishing; above all there was the sense of her brown hair and smoothed face. She felt years younger, and she felt she looked years younger, which was scarcely less solid a satisfaction. It pleased her, but not acutely or viciously, to think of Mrs. Altham’s feelings when she made her rejuvenated appearance in Riseborough. It was quite certain that Mrs. Altham would suspect that she had been “doing something to herself,” and that Mrs. Altham would burst with envy and
  • 33. curiosity to know what it was she had done. Although she felt very kindly towards all the world, she did not deceive herself to such an extent as to imagine that she would tell Mrs. Altham what she had done. Mrs. Altham was ingenious and would like guessing. But that lady occupied her mind but little. The main point was that in a week from now she would go home again, and that Lyndhurst would find her young. She might or might not have been right in fearing that Lyndhurst was becoming sentimentally interested in Millie Evans, and she was quite willing to grant that her grounds for that fear were of the slenderest. But all that might be dismissed now. She herself, in a week from now, would have recaptured that more youthful aspect which had been hers while he was still of loverlike inclination towards her. What might be called regular good looks had always been denied her, but she had once had her share of youth. To-day she felt youthful still, and once again, she believed, looked as if she belonged to the enchanted epoch. She had no intention of using this recapture promiscuously: she scarcely desired general admiration: she only desired that her husband should find her attractive. For a little while, as she took her quick, short steps along these shining sands, she felt herself grow bitter towards Millie Evans. A sort of superior pity was mixed with the bitterness, for she told herself that poor Millie, if she had tried to flirt with Lyndhurst, would speedily find herself flirting all alone. Very likely Millie was guiltless in intention; she had only let her pretty face produce an unchecked effect. Men were attracted by a pretty face, but the owners of such faces ought to keep a curb on them, so to speak. Their faces were not their faults, but rather their misfortunes. A woman with a pretty face would be wise to make herself rather reserved, so that her manner would chill anybody who was inclined.... But the whole subject now was obsolete. If there had been any danger, there would not be any more, and she did not blame Millie. She must ask Millie to dine with them en famille, which was much nicer than en garçon, as soon as she got back. It might be gathered from this account of Mrs. Ames’ self-communings that deep down in her nature their lay a strain of almost farcical fatuousness. But she was not really fatuous, unless it is fatuous to have preserved far out into the plains of middle-age some vision of the blue mountains of youth. It is true that for years she had been satisfied to dwell on these plains; now, her fear that her husband, so much younger than
  • 34. herself, was turning his eyes to blue mountains that did not belong to him, made her desire to get out of the plains and ascend her own blue mountains again and wave to him from there, and encourage his advance. She felt exceedingly well, and in consequence told herself that in mind, as well as physical constitution, she was young still, while the effect of the bottles which she used with such regularity made her believe that the outward signs of age were erasible. She seemed to have been granted a new lease of life in a tenement that it was easy to repair. Her whole nature felt itself to be quickened and vivified. She had gone far along the sands, and the tide was beginning to flow again. All round her were great empty spaces, a shipless sea, a cloudless sky, a beach with no living being in sight. A sudden unpremeditated impulse seized her, and without delay she sat down on the shore, and took off her shoes and stockings. Then, pulling up her skirts, she hastily ran down to the edge of the water, across a little belt of pebbles that tickled and hurt her soft-soled feet, and waded out into the liquid rims of the sea. She was astonished and amazed at herself that the idea of paddling had ever come into her head, and more amazed that she had had the temerity to put it into execution. For the first minute or two the cold touch of the water on her unaccustomed ankles and calves made her gasp a little, but for all the strangeness of these sensations she felt that paddling, playing like a child in the shallow waters, expressed the tone of her mind, just as the melody of a song expresses the words to which it is set. If she had had a spade, she would certainly have built a sand-castle and dug moats about it, and a smile lit up her small face at the thought of purchasing one at the universal shop, and furtively conveying it to these unfrequented beaches. And the smile almost ended in a blush when she tried to imagine what Riseborough society would say if it became known that their queen not only paddled in the sea, but seriously contemplated buying a wooden spade in order to conduct building operations on lonely shores. The paddling, though quite pleasant, was not so joyous as the impulse to paddle had been, and it was not long before she sat down again on the beach and tried to get the sand out of the small, tight places between her toes, and to dry her feet and plump little legs with a most exiguous handkerchief. But even in the midst of these troublesome operations, her mind still ran riot, and she planned to secrete about her person one of her smaller bedroom towels when she went for her walk next day. And she felt
  • 35. as if this act of paddling must have aided in the elimination of wrinkles. For who except the really young could want to paddle? To find that she had the impulse of the really young was even better than to cultivate, though with success, the appropriate appearance. All the way home this effervescence of spirit was hers, which, though it definitely sprang from the effects of the lotion, the skin-food and the tonic air, produced in her an illusion that was complete. She was certainly ascending her remote blue mountains again, and through a clarified air she could look over the plains, and see how very flat they had been. That must all be changed: there must be more variety and gaiety introduced into her days. For years, as she saw now, her life had been spent in small, joyless hospitalities, in keeping her place as accredited leader of Riseborough’s socialities, in paying her share towards the expenses of the house. They did not laugh much at home: there had seemed nothing particular to laugh about, and certainly they did not paddle. She was forming no plan for paddling there now, irrespective of the fact that a muddy canal, which was the only water in the neighbourhood, did not encourage the scheme, but there must be introduced into her life and Lyndhurst’s more of the spirit that had to-day prompted her paddling. Exactly what form it should take she did not clearly foresee, but when she had recaptured the spirit as well as the appearance of youth, there was no fear that it would find any difficulty in expressing itself suitably. All aglow, especially as to her feet, which tingled pleasantly, she arrived at her host’s house again. They were both at work in the garden: Mrs. Bertram was killing slugs in the garden beds, Mr. Bertram worms on the lawn. Major Ames proved himself during the next week to be a good correspondent, if virtue in correspondents is to be measured by the frequency of their communications. His letters were not long, but they were cheerful, since the garden was coming on well in this delightful weather, which he hoped embraced Cromer also, and since he had on two separate occasions made a grand slam when playing Bridge at the club. He and Harry were jogging along quite pleasantly, but there had been no gaieties to take them out, except a tea-party with ices at Mrs. Brooks’. Unfortunately, some disaster had befallen the ices: personally, he thought it was salt instead of sugar, but Harry had been unwell afterwards, which suggested sour cream. But his indisposition had been but short, though violent. He himself had dropped in to dine en garçon with the Evans’, and the doctor was very busy. Finally (this came at the end of every letter), as the place
  • 36. was doing her so much good, why not stop for another week? He was sure the Bertrams (poor things!) would be delighted if she would. But that suggestion did not commend itself to Mrs. Ames. She had come here for a definite purpose, and when on the morning before her departure she looked very critically at herself in the glass, she felt that her purpose had been accomplished. Her skin had not, so much she admitted, the unruffled smoothness of a young woman’s, but she had not been a young woman when she married. But search where she might in her hair, there was no sign of greyness in it all, while the contents of the bottle were not yet half used. But she would take back the more than moiety with her, since an occasional application when the hair had resumed its usual colour was recommended. It appeared to her that it undoubtedly had resumed its original colour: the change, though slight (for grey had never been conspicuous), was complete; she felt equipped for youth again. And psychologically she felt equipped: every day since the first secret paddling she had paddled again in secret, and from a crevice in a tumble of fallen rock she daily extracted a small wooden spade, by aid of which, with many glancings around for fear of possible observers, she dug in the sand, making moats and ramparts. The “first fine careless rapture” of this, it must be admitted, had evaporated: after one architectural afternoon she had dug not because this elementary pursuit expressed what she felt, so much as because it expressed what she desired to feel. After all, she did not propose to rejuvenate herself to the extent of being nine or ten years old again.... The manner of her return to Riseborough demanded consideration: it was not sufficient merely to look up in a railway guide the swiftest mode of transit and adopt it, for this was not quite an ordinary entry, and it would never do to take the edge off it by making a travel-soiled and dusty first appearance. So she laid down a plan. The bare facts about the trains were these. A train starting at a convenient hour would bring her to London a short half-hour before another convenient train from another and distant terminus started for Riseborough. It was impossible to make certain of catching this, so she wrote to her husband saying that she would in all probability get to Riseborough by a later train that arrived there at eight. She begged him not to meet her at the station, but to order dinner for half-past eight. It would be nice to be at
  • 37. home again. Then came the plan. Clearly it would never do to burst on him like that, to sit down opposite him at the dinner-table beneath the somewhat searching electric light there, handicapped by the fatigues of a hot journey only imperfectly repaired by a hasty toilet. She must arrive by the early train, though not expected till the later. Thus she would secure a quiet two hours for bathing, resting and dressing. If Lyndhurst did not expect her to arrive till eight it was a practical certainty that he would be at the club till that hour, and walk home in time to welcome her arrival. He would then learn that she had already come and was dressing. She would be careful to let him go downstairs first, and a minute later she would follow. He should see.... So in order to catch this earlier train from town she left Cromer while morning was yet dewy, and had the peculiar pleasure, on her arrival at Riseborough, of seeing her husband, from the windows of her cab, passing along the street to the club. She had a moment’s qualm that he would see her initialled boxes on the top, but by grace of a punctual providence Mrs. Brooks came out of her house at the moment, and the Major raised a gallant hat and spoke a cheerful word to her. Certainly he looked very handsome and distinguished, and Mrs. Ames felt a little tremor of anticipation in thinking of the chapters of life that were to be re-read by them. She felt confident also; it never entered her head to have any misgivings as to what the last fortnight, which had contained so much for her, might have contained for him. Harry had gone back to Cambridge for the July term the day before, and she found on her arrival that she had the house to herself. The afternoon had turned a little chilly, and she enjoyed the invigoration of a hot bath, and a subsequent hour’s rest on her sofa. Then it was time to dress, and though the dinner was of the simplest conjugal character, she put on a dress she had worn but some half-dozen of times before, but which on this one occasion it was meet should descend from the pompous existence that was its destiny for a year or two to come. It was of daring rose-colour, the most resplendent possible, and never failed to create an impression. Indeed, she had, on one of its infrequent appearances, heard Lyndhurst say to his neighbour in an undertone, “Upon my soul, Amy looks very well to-night.” And Amy meant to look very well again. All happened as she had planned. Shortly after eight Lyndhurst tapped at her door on his return from the club, but could not be admitted, and at half-
  • 38. past, having heard him go downstairs, she followed him. He had not dressed, according to their custom when they were alone. Major Ames was writing a note when she entered, and only turned round in his chair, not getting up. “Glad to see you home, my dear,” he said. “Excuse me one moment. I must just direct this.” She kissed him and waited while he scrawled an address. Then he got up and rang the bell. “Just in time to catch the post,” he said. “By Jove! Amy, you’ve put on the famous pink gown. I would have dressed if I had known. You’re tired with your journey, I expect. It was a very hot day here, until a couple of hours ago.” He gave the note to the servant. “And dinner’s ready, I think,” he said. They sat down opposite each other at ends of the rather long table. There were no flowers on it, for it had not occurred to him to get the garden to welcome her home-coming, and the whole of her resplendency was visible to him. He began eating his soup vigorously. “Capital plan in summer to have dinner at half-past eight,” he said. “Gives one most of the daylight and not so long an evening afterwards. Excellent pea-soup, this. Fresh peas from my garden. The Evans’ dine at eight-thirty. And how have you been, Amy?” Some indefinable chill of misgiving, against which she struggled, had laid cold fingers on her. Things were not going any longer as she had planned them. He had noticed her gown, but he had noticed nothing else. But then he had scarcely looked up since they had come into the dining- room. But now he finished his soup, and she challenged his attention. “I have been very well indeed,” she said. “Don’t I look it?” He looked her straight in the face, saw all that had seemed almost a miracle to her—the softened wrinkles, the recovered colour of her hair. “Yes, I think you do,” he said. “You’ve got a bit tanned too, haven’t you, with the sun?” The cold fingers closed a little more tightly on her. “Have I?” she said. “That is very likely. I was out-of-doors all day. I used to take quite long walks every afternoon.”
  • 39. He glanced at the menu-card. “I hope you’ll like the dinner I ordered you,” he said. “Your cook and I had a great talk over it this morning. ‘She’ll have been in the train all day,’ I said, ‘and will feel a little tired. Appetite will want a bit of tempting, eh?’ So we settled on a grilled sole, and a chicken and a macédoine of fruit. Hope that suits you, Amy. So you used to take long walks, did you? Is the country pretty round about? Bathing, too. Is it a good coast for bathing?” Again he looked at her as he spoke, and for the moment her heart-beat quickened, for it seemed that he could not but see the change in her. Then his sole required dissection, and he looked at his plate again. “I believe it is a good coast,” she said. “There were a quantity of bathing-machines. I did not bathe.” “No. Very wise, I am sure. One has to be careful about chills as one gets on. I should have been anxious about you, Amy, if I had thought you would be so rash as to bathe.” Some instinct of protest prompted her. “There would have been nothing to be anxious about,” she said. “I seldom catch a chill. And I often paddled.” He laid down his knife and fork and laughed. “You paddled!” he asked. “Nonsense, nonsense!” She had not meant to tell him, for her reasonable mind had informed her all the time that this was a secret expression of the rejuvenation she was conscious of. But it had slipped out, a thoughtless assertion of the youthfulness she felt. “I did indeed,” she said, “and I found it very bracing and invigorating.” Then for a moment a certain bitterness welled up within her, born from disappointment at his imperceptiveness. “You see I never suffer from gout or rheumatism like you, Lyndhurst,” she said. “I hope you have been quite free from them since I have been away.” But his amusement, though it had produced this spirit of rancour in her, had not been in the least unkindly. It was legitimate to find entertainment in the thought of a middle-aged woman gravely paddling, so long as he had no idea that there was a most pathetic side to it. Of that he had no inkling: he was unaware that this paddling was expressive of her feeling of recaptured
  • 40. youth, just as he was unaware that she believed it to be expressed in her face and hair. But this remark was distinctly of the nature of an attack: she was retaliating for his laughter. He could not resist one further answer which might both soothe and smart (like a patent ointment) before he changed the subject. “Well, my dear, I’m sure you are a wonderful woman for your years,” he said. “By Jove! I shall be proud if I’m as active and healthy as you in ten years’ time.” Dinner was soon over after this, and she left him, as usual, to have his cigarette and glass of port, and went into the drawing-room, and stood looking on the last fading splendour of the sunset in the west. The momentary bitterness in her mind had quite died down again: there was nothing left but a vague, dull ache of flatness and disappointment. He had noticed nothing of all that had caused her such tremulous and secret joy. He had looked on her smoothed and softened face, and seen no difference there, on her brown unfaded hair and found it unaltered. He had only seen that she had put her best gown on, and she had almost wished that he had not noticed that, since then she might have had the consolation of thinking that he was ill. It was not, it must be premised, that she meant she would find pleasure in his indisposition, only that an indisposition would have explained his imperceptiveness, which she regretted more than she would have regretted a slight headache for him. For a few minutes she was incapable of more than blank and empty contemplation of the utter failure of that from which she had expected so much. Then, like the stars that even now were beginning to be lit in the empty spaces of the sky, fresh points in the dreary situation claimed her attention. Was he preoccupied with other matters, that he was blind to her? His letters, it is true, had been uniformly cheerful and chatty, but a preoccupied man can easily write a letter without betraying the preoccupation that is only too evident in personal intercourse. If this was so, what was the nature of his preoccupation? That was not a cheerful star: there was a green light in it.... Another star claimed her attention. Was it Lyndhurst who was blind, or herself who saw too much? She had no idea till she came to look into the matter closely, how much grey hair was mingled with the brown. Perhaps he had no idea either: its restoration,
  • 41. therefore, would not be an affair of surprise and admiration. But the wrinkles.... She faced round from the window as he entered, and made another call on her courage and conviction. Though he saw so little, she, quickened perhaps by the light of the green star, saw how good-looking he was. For years she had scarcely noticed it. She put up her small face to him in a way that suggested, though it did not exactly invite a kiss. “It is so nice to be home again,” she said. The suggestion that she meant to convey occurred to him, but, very reasonably, he dismissed it as improbable. A promiscuous caress was a thing long obsolete between them. Morning and evening he brushed her cheek with the end of his moustaches. “Well, then, we’re all pleased,” he said good-humouredly. “Shall I ring for coffee, Amy?” She was not discouraged. “Do,” she said, “and when we have had coffee, will you fetch a shawl for me, and we will stroll in the garden. You shall show me what new flowers have come out.” The intention of that was admirable, the actual proposal not so happy, since a glimmering starlight through the fallen dusk would not conduce to a perception of colour. “We’ll stroll in the garden by all means,” he said, “if you think it will not be risky for you. But as to flowers, my dear, it will be easier to appreciate them when it is not dark.” Again she put up her face towards him. This time he might, perhaps, have taken the suggestion, but at the moment Parker entered with the coffee. “How foolish of me,” she said. “I forgot it was dark. But let us go out anyhow, unless you were thinking of going round to the club.” “Oh, time for that, time for that,” said he. “I expect you will be going to bed early after your long journey. I may step round then, and see what’s going on.” Without conscious encouragement or welcome on her part, a suspicion darted into her mind. She felt by some process, as inexplicable as that by
  • 42. which certain people are aware of the presence of a cat in the room, that he was going round to see Mrs. Evans. “I suppose you have often gone round to the club in the evening since I have been away,” she said. “Yes, I have looked in now and again,” he said. “On other evenings I have dropped in to see our friends. Lonely old bachelor, you know, and Harry was not always very lively company. It’s a good thing that boy has gone back to Cambridge, Amy. He was always mooning round after Mrs. Evans.” That was a fact: it had often been a slightly inconvenient one. Several times the Major had “dropped in” to see Millie, and found his son already there. “But I thought you were rather pleased at that, Lyndhurst,” she said. “You told me you considered it not a bad thing: that it would keep Harry out of mischief.” He finished his coffee rather hastily. “Yes, within reason, within reason,” he said. “Well, if we are to stroll in the garden, we had better go out. You wanted a shawl, didn’t you? Very wise: where shall I find one?” That diverted her again to her own personal efforts. “There are several in the second tray of my wardrobe,” she said. “Choose a nice one, Lyndhurst, something that won’t look hideous with my pink silk.” The smile, as you might almost say, of coquetry, which accompanied this speech, faded completely as soon as he left the room, and her face assumed that business-like aspect, which the softest and youngest faces wear, when the object is to attract, instead of letting a mutual attraction exercise its inevitable power. Even though Mrs. Ames’ object was the legitimate and laudable desire to attract her own husband, it was strange how common her respectable little countenance appeared. She had adorned herself to attract admiration: coquetry and anxiety were pitifully mingled, even as you may see them in haunts far less respectable than this detached villa, and on faces from which Mrs. Ames would instantly have averted her own. She hoped he would bring a certain white silk shawl: two nights ago she had worn it on the verandah after dinner at Overstrand, and the reflected light from it, she had noticed, as she stood beneath a light opposite a mirror in the hall, had
  • 43. made her throat look especially soft and plump. She stood underneath the light now waiting for his return. Fortune was favourable: it was that shawl that he brought, and she turned round for him to put it on her shoulders. Then she faced him again in the remembered position, underneath the light, smiling. “Now, I am ready, Lyndhurst,” she said. He opened the French window for her, and stood to let her pass out. Again she smiled at him, and waited for him to join her on the rather narrow gravel path. There was actually room for two abreast on it, for, on the evening of her dinner-party, Harry had walked here side by side with Mrs. Evans. But there was only just room. “You go first, Amy,” he said, “or shall I? We can scarcely walk abreast here.” But she took his arm. “Nonsense, my dear,” she said. “There: is there not heaps of room?” He felt vaguely uncomfortable. It was not only the necessity of putting his feet down one strictly in front of the other that made him so. “Anything the matter, my dear?” he asked. The question was not cruel: it was scarcely even careless. He could hardly be expected to guess, for his perceptions were not fine. Also he was thinking about somebody else, and wondering how late it was. But even if he had had complete knowledge of the situation about which he was completely ignorant, he could not have dealt with it in a more peremptory way. The dreary flatness to which she had been so impassive a prey directly after dinner, the sense of complete failure enveloped her like impenetrable fog. Out of that fog, she hooted, so to speak, like an undervitalized siren. “I am only so glad to get back,” she said, pressing his arm a little. “I hoped you were glad, too, that I was back. Tell me what you have been doing all the time I have been away.” This, like banns, was for the third time of asking. He recalled for her the days one by one, leaving out certain parts of them. Even at the moment, he was astonished to find how vivid his recollection of them was. On Thursday, when he had played golf in the morning, he had lunched with the Evans’ (this he stated, for Harry had lunched there too) and he had culled probably the last dish of asparagus in the afternoon. He had dined alone
  • 44. with Harry that night, and Harry had toothache. Next day, consequently, Harry went to the dentist in the morning, and he himself had played golf in the afternoon. That he remembered because he had gone to tea with Mrs. Evans afterwards, but that he did not mention, for he had been alone with her, and they had talked about being misunderstood and about affinities. On Saturday Harry had gone back to Cambridge, but, having missed his train, he had made a second start after lunch. He had met Dr. Evans in the street that day, going up to the golf links, and since he would otherwise be quite alone in the evening, he had dined with them, “en garçon.” This catalogue of trivial happenings took quite a long time in the recitation. But below the trivialities there was a lurking significance. He was not really in love with Millie Evans, and his assurance to himself on that point was perfectly honest. But (this he did not put so distinctly to himself) he thought that she was tremendously attracted by him. Here was an appeal to a sort of deplorable sense of gallantry—so terrible a word only can describe his terrible mind—and mentally he called her “poor little lady.” She was pretty, too, and not very happy. It seemed to be incumbent on him to interest and amuse her. His “droppings in” amused her: when he got ready to drop out again, she always asked when he would come to see her next. These “droppings in” were clearly bright spots to her in a drab day. They were also bright spots to him, for he was more interested in them than in all his sweet-peas. There was a “situation” come into his life, something clandestine. It would never do, for instance, to let Amy or the estimable doctor get a hint of it. Probably they would misunderstand it, and imagine there was something to conceal. He had the secret joys of a bloodless intrigue. But, considering its absolute bloodlessness, he was amazingly wrapped up in it. It was no wonder that he did not notice the restored colour of Amy’s hair. He, or rather Mrs. Evans, had made a conditional appointment for to- night. If possible, the possibility depending on Amy’s fatigue, he was going to drop in for a chat. Primarily the chat was to be concerned with the lighting of the garden by means of Chinese lanterns, for a nocturnal fête that Mrs. Evans meant to give on her birthday. The whole garden was to be lit, and since the entertainment of an illuminated garden, with hot soup, quails and ices, under the mulberry-tree was obviously new to Riseborough, it would be sufficiently amusing to the guests to walk about the garden till supper-time. But there would be supererogatory diversions beyond that,
  • 45. bridge-tables in the verandah, a small band at the end of the garden to intervene its strains between the guests and the shrieks of South-Eastern expresses, and already there was an idea of fancy dress. Major Ames favoured the idea of fancy dress, for he had a red velvet garment, sartorially known as a Venetian cloak, locked away upstairs, which was a dazzling affair if white tights peeped out from below it. He knew he had a leg, and only lamented the scanty opportunities of convincing others of the fact. But the lighting of the garden had to be planned first: there was no use in having a leg in a garden, if the garden was not properly lit. But the whole affair was as yet a pledged secret: he could not, as a man of honour, tell Amy about it. Short notice for a fête of this sort was of no consequence, for it was to be a post-prandial entertainment, and the only post-prandial entertainment at present existent in Riseborough was going to bed. Thus everybody would be able to be happy to accept. A rapid résumé of this made an undercurrent in his mind, as he went through, in speaking voice, the history of the last days. Up and down the narrow path they passed, she still with her hand in his arm, questioning, showing an inconceivable interest in the passage of the days from which he had left out all real points of interest. His patience came to an end before hers. “Upon my word, my dear,” he said, “it’s getting a little chilly. Shall we go in, do you think? I’m sure you are tired with your journey.” There was nothing more coming: she knew that. But even in the midst of her disappointment, she found consolation. Daylight would show the re- establishment of her youthfulness more clearly than electric light had done. Every one looked about the same by electric light. And though, in some secret manner, she distrusted his visit to the club, she knew how impolitic it would be to hint, however remotely, at such distrust. It was much better this evening to acquiesce in the imputation of fatigue. Nor was the imputation groundless; for failure fatigues any one when under the same conditions success would only stimulate. And in the consciousness of that, her bitterness rose once more to her lips. “You mustn’t catch cold,” she said. “Let us go in.” It was still only half-past ten: all this flatness and failure had lasted but a couple of hours, and Major Ames, as soon as his wife had gone upstairs, let himself out of the house. His way lay past the doors of the club, but he did
  • 46. not enter, merely observing through its lit windows that there were a good many men in the smoking-room. On arrival at the Doctor’s he found that Elsie and her father were playing chess in the drawing-room, and that Mrs. Evans was out in the garden. He chose to go straight into the garden, and found her sitting under the mulberry, dressed in white, and looking rather like the Milky Way. She did not get up, but held out her hand to him. “That is nice of you,” she said. “How is Cousin Amy?” “Amy is very well,” said he. “But she’s gone to bed early, a little tired with the journey. And how is Cousin Amy’s cousin?” He sat down on the basket chair close beside her which creaked with his weight. “I must have a special chair made for you,” she said. “You are so big and strong. Have you seen Cousin Amy’s cousin’s husband?” “No: I heard you were out here. So I came straight out.” She got up. “I think it will be better, then, if we go in, and tell him you are here,” she said. “He might think it strange.” Major Ames jumped up with alacrity: with his alacrity was mingled a pleasing sense of adventure. “By all means,” he said. “Then we can come out again.” She smiled at him. “Surely. He is playing chess with Elsie. I do not suppose he will interrupt his game.” Apparently Dr. Evans did not think anything in the least strange. On the whole, this was not to be wondered at, since he knew quite well that Major Ames was coming to talk over garden illumination with his wife. “Good evening, Major,” he said; “kind of you to come. You and my little woman are going to make a pauper of me, I’m told. There, Elsie, what do you say to my putting my knight there? Check.” “Pig!” said Elsie. “Then shall we go out, Major Ames?” said Millie. “Are you coming out, Wilfred?”
  • 47. “No, little woman. I’m going to defeat your daughter indoors. Come and have a glass of whisky and soda with me before you go, Major.” They went out again accordingly into the cool starlight. “Wilfred is so fond of chess,” she said. “He plays every night with Elsie, when he is at home. Of course, he is often out.” This produced exactly the effect that she meant. She did not comment or complain: she merely made a statement which arose naturally from what was going on in the drawing-room. But Major Ames drew the inference that he was expected to draw. “Glad I could come round,” he said. “Now for the lanterns. We must have them all down the garden wall, and not too far apart, either. Six feet apart, eh? Now I’ll step the wall and we can calculate how many we shall want there. I think I step a full yard still. Not cramped in the joints yet.” It took some half hour to settle the whole scheme of lighting, which, since Major Ames was not going to pay for it, he recommended being done in a somewhat lavish manner. With so large a number of lanterns, it would be easily possible to see his leg, and he was strong on the subject of fancy dress. “There’ll be some queer turn-outs, I shouldn’t wonder,” he said; “but I expect there will be some creditable costumes too. By Jove! it will be quite the event of the year. Amy and I, with our little dinners, will have to take a back seat, as they say.” “I hope Cousin Amy won’t think it forward of me,” said Millie. Major Ames said that which is written “Pshaw.” “Forward?” he cried. “Why, you are bringing a bit of life among us. Upon my word, we wanted rousing up a bit. Why, you are a public benefactor.” They had sat down to rest again after their labour of stepping out the brick walls under the mulberry-tree, where the grass was dry, and only a faint shimmer of starlight came through the leaves. At the bottom of the garden a train shrieked by, and the noise died away in decrescent thunder. She leaned forward a little towards him, putting up her face much as Amy had done.
  • 48. “Ah, if only I thought I was making things a little pleasant,” she said. Suddenly it struck Major Ames that he was expected to kiss her. He leaned forward, too. “I think you know that,” he said. “I wish I could thank you for it.” She did not move, but in the dusk he could see she was smiling at him. It looked as if she was waiting. He made an awkward forward movement and kissed her. There was silence a moment: she neither responded to him nor repelled him. “I suppose people would say I ought not to have let you,” she said. “But there is no harm, is there? After all, you are a—a sort of cousin. And you have been so kind about the lanterns.” Major Ames was thinking almost entirely about himself, hardly at all about her. An adventure, an intrigue had begun. He had kissed somebody else’s wife and felt the devil of a fellow. But with the wine of this emotion was mingled a touch of alarm. It would be wise to call a halt, take his whisky and soda with her husband, and get home to Amy.
  • 49. CHAPTER VI Mrs. Altham waited with considerable impatience next day for the return of her husband from the club, where he went on most afternoons, to sit in an arm-chair from tea-time to dinner and casually to learn what had happened while he had been playing golf. She had been to call on Mrs. Ames in the afternoon, and in consequence had matter of considerable importance to communicate. She could have supported that retarded spate of information, though she wanted to burst as soon as possible, but she had also a question to ask Henry on which a tremendous deal depended. At length she heard the rattle of his deposited hat and stick in the hall, and she went out to meet him. “How late you are, Henry,” she said; “but you needn’t dress. Mrs. Brooks, if she does come in afterwards, will excuse you. Dinner is ready: let us come in at once. Now, you were at the club last night, after dinner. You told me who was there; but I want to be quite sure.” Mr. Altham closed his eyes for a moment as he sat down. It looked as if he was saying a silent grace, but appearances were deceptive. He was only thinking, for he knew his wife would not ask such a question unless something depended on it, and he desired to be accurate. Then he opened them again, and helped the soup with a name to each spoonful. “General Fortescue,” he said. “Young Morton. Mr. Taverner, Turner, Young Turner.” That was five spoonfuls—three for his wife, two for himself. He was not very fond of soup. “And you were there all the time between ten and eleven?” asked his wife. “Till half-past eleven.” “And there was no one else?” Mr. Altham looked up brightly. “The club waiter,” he said, “and the page. The page has been dismissed for stealing sugar. The sugar bill was preposterous. That was how we found out. Did you mean to ask about that?”
  • 50. “No, my dear. Nor do I want to know.” At the moment the parlour-maid left the room, and she spoke in an eager undertone. “Mrs. Ames told me that Major Ames went up to the club last night, when she went to bed at half-past ten,” she said. “You told me at breakfast whom you found there, but I wanted to be sure. Call them Mr. and Mrs. Smith and then we can go on talking.” The parlour-maid came back into the room. “Yes, Mr. Smith apparently went up to the club at half-past ten,” she said. “But he can’t have gone to the club, for in that case you would have seen him. It has occurred to me that he didn’t feel well, and went to the doctor’s.” “It seems possible,” said Mr. Altham, not without enthusiasm, understanding that “doctor” meant “doctor,” and which doctor. “We have all noticed how many visits he has been paying to—to Dr. Jones,” said Mrs. Altham, “during the time Mrs. Smith was away. But to pay another one on the very evening of her return looks as if—as if something serious was the matter.” “My dear, there’s nothing whatever to show that Major Ames went to the doctor’s last night,” he said. Mrs. Altham gave him an awful glance, for the parlour-maid was in the room, and this thoughtless remark rendered all the diplomatic substitution of another nomenclature entirely void and useless. “Mrs. Smith, I should say,” added Mr. Altham in some confusion, proceeding to make it all quite clear to Jane, in case she had any doubts about it. “Suggest to me any other reasonable theory as to where he was, then,” said Mrs. Altham. “I can’t suggest where he was, my dear,” said Mr. Altham, finding his legal training supported him, “considering that there is no evidence of any kind that bears upon the matter. But to know that a man was not in one given place does not show with any positiveness that he was at any other given place.” “No doubt, then, he went shopping at half-past ten last night,” said Mrs. Altham, with deep sarcasm. “There are so many shops open then. The High
  • 51. Street is a perfect blaze of light.” Mr. Altham could be sarcastic, too, though he seldom exercised this gift. “It quite dazzles one,” he observed. Mrs. Altham no doubt was vexed at her husband’s sceptical attitude, and she punished him by refraining from discussing the point any further, and from giving him the rest of her news. But this severity punished herself also, for she was bursting to tell him. When Jane had finally withdrawn, the internal pressure became irresistible. “Mrs. Ames has done something to her hair, Henry,” she said; “and she has done something to her face. I had a good mind to ask her what she had used. I assure you there was not a grey hair left anywhere, and a fortnight ago she was as grey as a coot!” “Coots are bald, not grey,” remarked her husband. “That is mere carping, Henry. She is brown now. Is this another fashion she is going to set us at Riseborough? What does it all mean? Shall we all have to plaster our faces with cold cream, and dye our hair blue?” Mr. Altham was in a painfully literal mood this evening and could not disentangle information from rhetoric. “Has she dyed her hair blue?” he asked in a slightly awestricken voice. “No, my dear: how can you be so stupid? And I told you just now she was brown. But at her age! As if anybody cared what colour her hair was. Her face, too! I don’t deny that the wrinkles are less marked, but who cares whether she is wrinkled or not?” These pleasant considerations were discontinued by the sound of the postman’s tap on the front door, and since the postman took precedence of everybody and everything, Mr. Altham hurried out to see what excitements he had piloted into port. Unfortunately, there was nothing for him, but there was a large, promising-looking envelope for his wife. It was stiff, too, and looked like the receptacle of an invitation card. “One for you, my dear,” he said. Mrs. Altham tore it open, and gave a great gasp. “You would not guess in a hundred tries,” she said. “Then be so kind as to tell me,” remarked her husband. Mrs. Altham read it out all in one breath without stops.
  • 52. “Mrs. Evans at home Thursday July 20 10 p.m. Shakespeare Fancy Dress well I never!” For a while little the silence of stupefaction reigned. Then Mr. Altham gave a great sigh. “I have never been to a fancy dress ball,” he said. “I think I should feel very queer and uncomfortable. What are we meant to do when we get there, Julia? Just stand about and look at each other. It will seem very strange. What would you recommend me to be? I suppose we ought to be a pair.” Mrs. Altham, to do her justice, had not thought seriously about her personal appearance for years. But, as she got up from the table, and consciously faced the looking-glass over the chimney-piece, it is idle to deny that she considered it now. She was not within ten years of Mrs. Ames’ age, and it struck her, as she carefully regarded herself in a perfectly honest glass, that even taking into full consideration all that Mrs. Ames had been doing to her hair and her face, she herself still kept the proper measure of their difference of years between them. But it was yet too early to consider the question of her impersonation. There were other things suggested by the contemplation of a fancy-dress ball to be considered first. There was so much, in fact, that she hardly knew where to begin. So she whisked everything up together, in the manner of a sea-pie, in which all that is possibly edible is put in the oven and baked. “There will be time enough to talk over that, my dear,” she said, “for if Mrs. Evans thinks we are all going to lash out into no end of expense in getting dresses for her party, she is wrong as far as I, for one, am concerned. For that matter you can put on your oldest clothes, and I can borrow Jane’s apron and cap, and we can go as Darby and Joan. Indeed, I do not know if I shall go at all—though, of course, one wouldn’t like to hurt Mrs. Evans’ feelings by refusing. Do you know, Henry, I shouldn’t in the least wonder if we have seen the last of Mrs. Ames and all her airs of superiority and leadership. You may depend upon it that Mrs. Evans did not consult her before she settled to give a fancy dress party. It is far more likely that she and Major Ames contrived it all between them, while Mrs. Ames was away, and settled what they should go as, and I daresay it will be Romeo and Juliet. I should not be in the least surprised if Mrs. Ames did not go to the party at all, but tried to get something up on her own account that very night. It would be like her, I am sure. But whether she goes or not, it seems
  • 53. to me that we have seen the last of her queening it over us all. If she does not go, I should think she would be the only absentee, and if she does, she goes as Mrs. Evans’ guest. All these years she has never thought of a fancy dress party——” Mrs. Altham broke off in the middle of her address, stung by the splendour of a sudden thought. “Or does all this staying away on her part,” she said, “and dyeing her hair, and painting her face, mean that she knew about it all along, and was going to be the show-figure of it all? I should not wonder if that was it. As likely as not, she and Major Ames will come as Hamlet and Ophelia, or something equally ridiculous, though I am sure as far as the ‘too too solid flesh’ goes, Major Ames would make an admirable Hamlet, for I never saw a man put on weight in the manner he does, in spite of all the garden rolling, which I expect the gardener does for him really. But whatever is the truth of it all, and I’m sure every one is so secretive here in Riseborough nowadays, that you never know how many dined at such a place on such a night unless you actually go to the poulterer’s and find out whether one chicken or two was sent,—what was I saying?” She had been saying a good deal. Mr. Altham correctly guessed the train of thought which she desired to recall. “In spite of the secretiveness——” he suggested. That served the purpose. “No, my dear Henry,” said his wife rapidly, “I accuse no one of secretiveness: if I did, you misunderstood me. All I meant was that when we have settled what we are to go as, we will tell nobody. There is very little sense in a fancy dress entertainment if you know exactly what you may expect, and as soon as you see a Romeo can say for certain that it is Major Ames, for instance; and I’m sure if he is to go as Romeo, it would be vastly suitable if Mrs. Ames went as Juliet’s nurse.” “I am not sure that I shall like so much finery,” said Mr. Altham, who was thinking entirely about his own dress, and did not care two straws about Major or Mrs. Ames. “It will seem very strange.” “Nonsense, my dear; we will dine in our fancy dresses for an evening or two before, and you will get quite used to it, whatever it is. Henry, do you remember my white satin gown, which I scarcely wore a dozen times, because it seemed too grand for Riseborough? It was too, I am sure: you
  • 54. were quite right. It has been in camphor ever since. I used to wear my Roman pearls with it. There are three rows, and the clasp is of real pearls. The very thing for Cleopatra.” “I recollect perfectly,” said Mr. Altham. His mind instantly darted off again to the undoubted fact that whereas Major Ames was stout, he himself was very thin. If he had been obliged to describe his figure at that moment, he would have said it was boyish. The expense of a wig seemed of no account. “Well, my dear, white dress and pearls,” said his wife. “You are not very encouraging. With that book of Egyptian antiquities, I can easily remodel the dress. And I remember reading in a Roman history that Cleopatra was well over thirty when Julius Cæsar was so devoted to her. And by the busts he must have been much balder than you!” It is no use denying that this was a rather heavy blow. Ever since the mention of the word Cleopatra, he had seen himself complete, with a wig, in another character. “But Julius Cæsar was sixty,” he observed, with pardonable asperity. “I do not see how I could make up as a man of sixty. And for that matter, my dear, though I am sure no one would think you were within five years of your actual age, I do not see how you could make up as a mere girl of thirty. Why should we not go as ‘Antony and Cleopatra, ten years later’? It would be better than to go as Julius Cæsar and Cleopatra ten years before!” 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.”
  • 55. 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
  • 56. 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.”
  • 57. “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. “Upon my word, I am not sure that I shall not go,” she said, “just to see what Mrs. Ames’ idea of a quadrille is. I should not wonder if she mixed it up with something quite different, which would be laughable. And after all, we ought not to be so unkind, and if poor Mrs. Ames feels she will get into difficulties over the quadrille, I am sure I shall be happy to help her out. No doubt she has summoned us like this, so that she need not show that she feels she wants to be helped. We will go, Henry, and I daresay I shall get out of her what she means to dress up as! But pray remember to say that we, at any rate, have not given a thought to our costumes yet. And on our way, we may as well call in at Mr. Roland’s, for if I am to wear my three rows of pearls, he must get me a few more, since I find there is a good deal of string showing. I daresay that ordinary pearl beads would answer the purpose perfectly. I have no intention of buying more of the real Roman pearls. They belonged to my mother, and I should not like to add to them. And if you will insist on having some red stone in your cap, to make a buckle for the feather, I am sure you could not do better than get a piece of what he called German ruby that is in his shop now. I do not suppose anybody in Riseborough could tell it from real, and after all this is over, I would wear it as a pendant for my pearls. If you wish, I will pay half of it, and it is but a couple of pounds altogether.” It did not seem a really handsome offer, but Henry had the sense to accept it. He wanted a stone to buckle the feather in a rather coquettish cap that they had decided to be suitable for Mark Antony, and did not really care what happened to it after he had worn it on this occasion, since it was unlikely that another similar occasion would arise. Deep in his mind had been an idea of turning it into a solitaire, but he knew he would not have the practical courage of this daring conception. It would want another setting, also.
  • 58. In other houses there were no fewer anticipatory triumphs and past perplexities. There was also, in some cases, wild and secret intrigue. For instance, a few evenings after, Mrs. Brooks next door, sorting out garments in her wardrobe from which she might devise a costume that should remind the beholder of Hermione, looked from her bedroom window, where her quest was in progress, and saw a strange sight in the next garden. There was a lady in white satin with pearls; there was a gentleman in Roman toga with a feathered cap. The Roman gentleman was a dubious figure; the lady indubitable. If ever there was an elderly Cleopatra, this was she. Mrs. Brooks sat heavily down, after observing this sight. It certainly was Cleopatra in the next garden: as certainly it was a snake in the grass. In a moment her mind was made up. She saw why she had been discouraged from being Cleopatra; the false Mrs. Altham had wanted to be Cleopatra herself, without rival. But she would be Cleopatra too. Riseborough should judge between the effectiveness of the two representations. Of course, every one knew that Mrs. Altham had three rows of Roman pearls, which were nothing but some sort of vitreous enamel. But Mrs. Brooks, as Riseborough also knew, had five or six rows of real seed-pearls. It was impossible to denigrer seed-pearls: they were pearls, though small, and did not pretend to be anything different to what they were. But the Roman prefix, to any fair- minded person, invalidated the word “pearls.” Besides, even as Cleopatra without pearls, she would have been willing to back herself against Mrs. Altham. Cleopatra ought to be tall, which she was. Also Cleopatra ought to be beautiful, which neither was. And Mrs. Altham had urged her to go as Hermione! Of course, she had to revise her toilet, but luckily it had progressed no further than the sewing of white rosettes on to a pair of slightly worn satin shoes, which were equally suitable for any of Shakespeare’s heroines. The week which had passed for Mr. and Mrs. Altham in a succession of so pleasing excitements and anxieties, had not been without incident to Mrs. Ames. When (by the same post that bore their invitations to the other guests) the announcement of the fancy dress ball reached her, and she read it out to her husband (even as Mrs. Altham had done) towards the end of dinner, he expressed his feelings with a good deal of pooh-ing and the opinion that he, at any rate, was past the years of dressing-up. This attitude (for it had been settled that the invitation was to come as a surprise to him) he somewhat overdid, and found to his dismay that his wife quite agreed
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