A Lame Dog's Diary

by S. Macnaughtan

CHAPTER VI.

"We shall have to ask the engaged couple to dinner," I said to Palestrina one morning a few days later. "And I suppose one or two more of the rest of The Family would like to be asked at the same time."

"I never know in what quantities one ought to ask the Jamiesons," said my sister, "nor how to make a proper selection. It seems invidious to suggest that Kate and Eliza and Margaret should come, and not Maud and Gracie; and yet what is one to do? The last time that you were away from home I wrote and said, 'Will a few of you come?' And Mrs. Jamieson, the Pirate Boy, and four sisters came."

"One feels sure," I replied, "that the Jamiesons thought that was quite a modest number to take advantage of your invitation. One knows that had they been inviting some girls from a boarding-school they would have included the entire number of pupils."

Palestrina protested that as the meal to which our friends were to come was dinner, it would be only reasonable to invite the same number of ladies and gentlemen; and to this I assented. She suggested asking the Darcey-Jacobs, whom we had not seen for a long time.

Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs is a woman who always affords one considerable inward amusement, being herself, I believe, more conspicuously devoid of humour than any one else I have ever met. Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs has never been known to see a joke. That she herself should appear to any one in a humorous light would, I know, appear an inconceivable contingency to her. She has a high Roman nose, and rather faded yellow hair, which was her principal claim to beauty when a girl. It is even now thick and long, and is always worn in a sort of majestic coronet on the top of her head. Her manner is somewhat formidable and emphatic, and the alarm which this engenders in timid or diffident persons is increased by the habit she has of accentuating many of her remarks by a playful but really somewhat severe rap over the knuckles of the person she is addressing, with her fan or lorgnettes. She dresses handsomely in expensive materials somewhat gaudy in colour, and she has an erect carriage, of which she is very proud. Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs has a good deal to say on the subject of the feeble-mindedness of the male sex, and when something has been proved impossible of attainment by them she always says, "A woman could have done it in five minutes."

At the time of her marriage, Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs (Miss Foljambe she was then) was a dowerless girl with two admirers, Major Jacobs and Mr. Morgan. Not being, it would seem, a young lady of very deep affections, her choice of a husband was decided entirely by the extent of the worldly prospects he could offer, and the Major, being the better match of the two, was accepted. But how cruel are the tricks that fate will sometimes play! Not long after her marriage Mr. Morgan not only inherited a large fortune, but shortly afterwards left this world for a better, and Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs is in the habit of remarking, with a good deal of feeling, "If I had only chosen the other I might have been a happy widow now!"

Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs lives in our quiet country neighbourhood during the greater part of the year, on the distinct understanding that she loathes every hour of it. When she goes abroad or to London she talks quite cheerfully of having had one breath of life. So fraught with happy successes are these pilgrimages in her brocaded satin gowns into the outer world that she often says that were she but free she might have the world at her feet to-morrow. And she has been known to refer to the Major, still in the tone of cheerful resignation and with her emphasizing tap of the fan, as "a dead weight round her neck."

The Major himself is a guileless person, whose very simplicity causes his wife more exquisite suffering than even a husband of keen, vindictive temper could inflict.

Does Mrs. Jacobs give a dinner-party, it is not unusual for the master of the house to remark in a congratulatory tone from his end of the table, "What has Mullens been doing to the silver, my dear? it looks unusually bright;" while his greeting to his friends as they arrive at his house, though distinctly cordial, often takes the form of a hearty "I had no idea that we were going to see you to-night." As Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs always sends some kind message from the Major in her notes of invitation, this of course is most disconcerting, both for her and for her guests. This year when they were in Italy a friend of ours in the same hotel overheard a lady ask the Major if he were related to the Darceys of Mugthorpe. "I really can't tell you," said the Major; "the Darcey was my wife's idea."

"Four Jamiesons," I said, "and the Darcey-Jacobs, and our two selves. Isn't it humiliating to think that we have invariably to invite the same two men to balance our numbers at a dinner-party? I can't help remarking that Anthony Crawshay and Ellicomb are present at every dinner-party in this neighbourhood, as surely as soup is on the table."

"We might ask Mrs. Fielden," said Palestrina; "she is sure to have some colonels with her. Besides, I love Mrs. Fielden, though people say she is a flirt. I think most men are in love with her; some propose to her, and some do not, but they all love her."

"Even when she refuses to marry them?"

"I have heard Mrs. Fielden say that an offer of marriage should be refused artistically," said Palestrina. "She says young girls hardly ever do it properly, and that they are brusque and brutal. I suppose she herself has some charming way of her own of refusing men which does not hurt their feelings. I believe," said Palestrina, "that she would marry Sir Anthony Crawshay if he could play Bridge."

"Anthony is an excellent fellow," I said.

Mr. Ellicomb is a young man of High Church principles and artistic tastes who has taken an old Tudor farmhouse in the neighbourhood, and has furnished it very well. He waxes eloquent on the monstrous inelegance of modern dress, and the decadence of Japanese art, and he says he would rather sit in the dark than burn gas in his house, and he dusts his own blue china himself. In his house it is a sign of art to divert anything from its proper use, and to use it for another purpose than that for which it was originally intended. Poor Ellicomb uses a cabbage-strainer as a fern-pot, a drain-tile for an umbrella-stand, his mother's old lace veils as antimacassars, bed-posts as palm-stands, a linen press as a book-case, and a brass spittoon for growing lilies. It is almost like playing at guessing riddles to go over his house with him, and to try and discover for what purpose some of his things were originally created. Their conversion to another use is, I am sure, a very high form of art.

"There are the Jamiesons," said my sister, as we sat in the hall ready to receive our guests.

It does not require any occult power to sit indoors and to be able to distinguish the Jamiesons' carriage-wheels from those of the other arrivals, for the Jamiesons have, as usual, employed the "six-fifty" bus on its return journey from the station to set them down at our gate. It is quite a subject of interest with our neighbours to find themselves fellow-passengers with the young ladies, in their black skirts and their more dressy style of bodice concealed beneath tweed capes. And it generally gets about in Stowel circles before the evening is over, or certainly soon after the morning shopping has begun, that the Miss Jamiesons have been dining at such or such a house. Even the bus conductor has a sympathetic way of handing the young ladies into his conveyance when they are going out to dinner, and he fetches a wisp of straw and wipes down the step if the night is wet.

Mr. Ward piloted the independent Kate up the short carriage-drive with quite an affectionate air of solicitude, frequently inquiring of her if she did not feel her feet a little damp; and Kate answered cheerfully and kindly, feeling, no doubt, that this sort of fussing was one of the drawbacks of prospective matrimony, but that it was only right to accept the little attentions in the spirit in which they were made. The Pirate Boy, who followed with his sister Maud, begged her to take his arm in a burly fashion, and fell a little distance behind. The Pirate Boy thinks that it is etiquette to place himself at a distance from any engaged couple, even during the shortest walk. He does so even when he makes the untoward third in a party. On these occasions he falls behind and puts on an air of abstraction a little overdone. The Jacobs arrived next, and then Anthony Crawshay, who drove over in his high dog-cart, with its flashing lamps and glittering wheels—a very good light-running cart it is; Anthony and I used often to drive in it together—and Ellicomb arrived in a brougham, in which we have a shrewd suspicion that there is a foot-warmer.

Maud began to flirt with Mr. Ellicomb directly. I have never known her to be for long in the society of a gentleman without doing so, and her sisters are wont to say of Maud that she certainly has her opportunities, while the criticism of an unprejudiced observer might be that she certainly makes them. Mr. Ellicomb, it is believed, has written an article in one of the magazines on the reformation of men's clothing, and it is hoped he will become a member of the Reading Society. He ate very little at dinner, and talked in a low, cultured voice about Church matters the whole of the evening, and uttered some very decided views upon the subject of the celibacy of the clergy.

"I must say," said Major Jacobs, "that I also approve of celibacy in the Church, and I may say in the army and in the navy. If I had my life to live over again——"

"William!" said Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs in an awful voice.

William was about to retreat precipitately from his position, but catching sight perhaps of a sympathetic eye turned upon him from that good comrade of his, Anthony Crawshay, he blundered on,—

"If Confession, now, became more general in the English Church," he said, "secrets confided to the clergy could hardly be kept inviolate. A clergyman's wife might almost—well, not to put too fine a point on it—wring from him by force the secret that had been committed to him."

"I hope so, indeed," said Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs.

"The Anglican Church," said Mr. Ellicomb, "recognizes that difficulty, and has met it in the persons of the Fathers of the Church."

Maud Jamieson raised soft eyes to his, and said that a woman might be a help and a comfort to a man.

Mr. Ellicomb seemed disposed to admit that it might be so. "I have been in retreat at Cowley for some weeks," he said, "and the cooking was certainly monstrous, and, would you believe it, they did not allow one to bring one's own servant with one." There is nothing monkish about Ellicomb, nor is his asceticism overdone.

"I have been reading a book on sects and heresies," said Mrs. Fielden, "and I find I belong to them all."

Mr. Ellicomb interposed eagerly by saying, "If I had to state my own convictions exactly, I should certainly say that I was a Manichæan, with just a touch of Sabellianism."

"I think," said Mrs. Fielden gravely, "that I am a Rosicrucian heretic."

Mr. Ellicomb was interested and delighted. "I know," he said, "that many people would think that I had not exactly stated my position. For instance, a lady to whom I described my symptoms the other day, told me at once that I was a Buddhist by nature and an Antinomian by education, and I felt that in part she was right."

Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs here interposed, and gave it as her opinion emphatically that man was a contemptible creature whatever his beliefs might be, and that he required a woman to look after him. "To look after him," she repeated, in a tone that said as plainly as possible, "to keep him in order," and she tapped Mr. Ellicomb sharply on the knuckles.

The Pirate Boy had some brave notions about what he called The Sex, and here plunged into a long description of how he had rescued a fair creature out of the hands of cut-throats out there, and he illustrated his action of saving the fair one by holding an imaginary six-shooter to Palestrina's head in a very alarming way. He talked of man as The Protector, and thrust his hand into his cummerbund—the action, I suppose, being intended to show that the six-shooter had been replaced—and glanced round the table with an air of defiance. "There is not a man," he remarked, "I don't care who he is, if he fail in respect to a woman when I am present, that shall not get a decanter hurled straight at his head—straight at his head. I have said it!" He laid his hand impetuously upon one of two heavy cut-glass bottles that had been placed in front of me, and one trembled for the safety of one's guests. "I remember," he said, "in one of those gambling-hells in the Far West, where there was about as unruly a set of fellows and cut-throats as ever I came across——" The rest of the story was so evidently culled from the last number of the Strand Magazine that it hardly seemed rude of Palestrina to interrupt it by bowing to Mrs. Fielden, and suggesting that they should adjourn. Maud Jamieson drew my sister aside as they stood grouped round the fire-place in the hall drinking their coffee, and thanked her for introducing Mr. Ellicomb to her. "He is perfectly charming," she said. But Maud's sisters have confided to us that this is her invariable conclusion about the last man she has met, and it is intended as a sort of previndication of herself. Maud, it seems, intends to flirt with every one she sees, but if she pretends that her affections are really touched there can be no upbraidings on the part of The Family.

Kate Jamieson sat on the sofa, and twisted her engagement ring complacently round her finger. She thought that Mr. Ward had carried himself very well this evening. His quietness throughout the dinner compared favourably with the conversation of other guests. Kate said once to Palestrina: "He is a man that I shall feel the utmost confidence in taking about with me everywhere." And the remark conveyed the suggestion that Mr. Ward would always be an appendage to Kate Jamieson.

Anthony Crawshay is a very good fellow indeed. The most advanced and cultured young lady will never get him to talk about metaphysics in the crush of a ballroom, nor to concern himself about the inartistic shape of the clothes we wear nowadays. "If I didn't like them, I shouldn't wear them," says Anthony. He is a short, spare man, with a voice somewhat out of proportion to his size, and the best cross-country rider in the county. The habit he has of shouting all his remarks seems rather pleasantly in accordance with his honest nature. Anthony very seldom speaks of any one of whom he has not a good word to say; but if he does mention any one whom he dislikes, he does so in a very hearty manner, which is almost as good as many other people's praise. He is as obstinate, as straightforward, and as good a fellow as a country neighbour ought to be. "We have been hunting a May fox, by Gad, Hugo," said Anthony, and he began to tell me about the run—a thing I can hardly get any one to do nowadays.

The Pirate Boy, upon whom the word "horse" had a rousing effect, condemned the whole breed of English horses in one short speech. "I assure you," he said, getting up and sawing the air with his hand, "there are some of those wild mustangs out there which would knock spots out of any horses in your stables."

Thus challenged, Anthony, who was standing on the hearthrug, turned, and stooping towards me asked, in what he intended to be a whisper, who the young fellow was, and shouted abroad, "Rum chap that, very rum chap!"

By-and-by Maud Jamieson went to the piano and began to sing ballads to Mr. Ellicomb; and we have an inward conviction—Palestrina and I—that this evening's report to the Jamieson family will be that Mr. Ellicomb is "struck." Major Jacobs considers himself musical because he likes hearing the words of a song distinctly pronounced. He was charmed with Maud's singing, and Kate encouraged the girl in a little matronly way which she has lately assumed. She called forth Maud's best efforts by saying, "What was the pretty Irish song you sang the other night?" or "You haven't given us 'We'd better bide a wee' yet, dear." Maud responded with several ballads, and wished she had some of Lord Henry Somerset's songs with her, Mr. Ellicomb having expressed a fondness for them. An opportunity was thus given for suggesting a call at Belmont—Maud knows mamma will be delighted—she wished Kennie were better at that sort of thing; the invitation to come in some afternoon might perhaps have come more properly from a brother.

It was very gratifying to find that Mr. Ward, fortified by dinner, became more courageous than I have ever known him to be before. He tip-toed almost boldly across the room, and sitting down beside my sister began to make a series of deliberate remarks to her, mostly in the form of interrogation: "Do you care for Scotch songs?" "Have you ever been in Ireland?" "Do you know Wales at all?" And to these important questions Palestrina made suitable replies. "That is most interesting," I heard her say from time to time, using the formula of those who are bored to the extent of complete absence of mind.

Mrs. Fielden crossed the room suddenly with a shimmer of silken skirts. In spite of her frivolity she has a way of making herself necessary to every party to which she goes. There used to be an old saying long ago in Scotland that wherever The Macgregor sat was the head of the table. Mrs. Fielden is always the centre of every party, although she has a childish habit, which in another woman might be ascribed to shyness, of taking the least conspicuous seat in the room. Consequently, when she dispersed the little group that was standing or sitting about her, applauding everything she said, and came across the room in pink satin and roses and diamonds, and sat down beside my sofa, the action had something regal about it, as though she had left a throne and come to speak to me.

"I am going to teach you to play Bridge," she said.

"That is most kind of you."

"I am going to carry you off to Stanby next week to give you lessons," she went on.

I have a strong conviction that if Mrs. Fielden were to give a beggar a halfpenny he would probably stoop down and kiss the edge of her skirt, or do something equally unconventional and self-abasing. She might, as a great favour, give a courtier who had risked his life for her, her hand to kiss. When she smiles men become foolish about her.

"It is very kind of you to want us," I said.

"I want Bridge," said Mrs. Fielden, and, as usual when she is going to be provoking, she looked prettier than ever, and began to smile.

"Any one will do to make up a rubber, I suppose?" I said.

"Oh yes, any one," said Mrs. Fielden.

"Consequently, my sister and I need not feel particularly distinguished by being asked," I continued.

"I am so glad Palestrina is coming," said Mrs. Fielden, "because several men have written to tell me they are coming to stay, just when my sisters-in-law are leaving, and I suppose I oughtn't to entertain a houseful of men alone, ought I?"

Mrs. Fielden does exactly as she pleases upon all occasions, but this does not prevent her from pretending to have acute attacks of propriety sometimes.

"We will play Bridge and chaperon you with pleasure," I said.

"I thought of drowning myself yesterday," said Mrs. Fielden, "because it rained all day, and I had no one to amuse me, and then I thought I would ask you to come over and play Bridge instead. When I am bored I never can make up my mind whether I shall commit suicide, or go into a convent, or get married. Which do you advise?"

"I should advise you to marry," I said. "As far as I can gather, a great source of discord and danger in our neighbourhood would be removed if you did so."

Mrs. Fielden said with her eyes, "Hugo, you are very cross." But being the most good-natured woman in the world, and sharing that forbearance which most people extend to an invalid, she smiled instead.

"Why do you stay here when you are feeling so tired?" she said to me presently.

"Because," I replied, "my sister lies awake half the night and thinks I am going to die, if I show any signs of fatigue, or go to bed early. Besides, for us, you know, this is quite an exciting evening. We have thought about our dinner-party for days past."

"If you were nice," said Mrs. Fielden after a pause, "you would ask me to come into your library and smoke."

"Do you smoke?"

"No," said Mrs. Fielden, "I don't."

"I'm glad you don't," I said.

"For years," said Mrs. Fielden, "I tried to think it was wrong, and then I quite enjoyed smoking; but there is a certain effort involved in trying to raise an innocent occupation to the level of a crime."

"It is a very unfeminine habit," I said; partly because I was in a contradictious mood, and partly because I wanted to snub Mrs. Fielden for being so beautiful and young and charming.

"The last man," said Mrs. Fielden gravely, "who made that remark died shortly afterwards."

She was gathering up my cushions and pillows as she spoke, and she turned to my sister as she crossed the hall, and said, "We are going to study philosophy in the library."

The library was lit by a single lamp, and the fire burned low in the grate; but the room was illumined suddenly by a pink dress and roses and diamonds, and Mrs. Fielden was arranging cushions, in the very skilful way she has, on my sofa by the fire. She handed me my cigarette-box and matches, and spread a rug over my leg. For some occult reason the rustling pink dress only whispered softly over the carpet now, like a woman's hushed voice in a sick-room, and Mrs. Fielden, by the simple act of drawing up a chair to the fire and sitting in it, took the head of the table again, and became the centre of the room.

"May I really smoke," I asked, "after being such a brute as to say you mustn't?"

"I look upon smoking as a purely feminine habit, like drinking tea, or having headaches, or anything of that sort," said Mrs. Fielden. "It was simply because it was so expensive that men took to it in the first place. Ethics should not be based upon accident, should it?"

I handed Mrs. Fielden my cigarette-box.

"If you are quite sure you disapprove, I will have one," she said.

From the hall came the sound of Maud's singing. Her voice is not of great compass, nor very strong, but it is clear and fresh, with a tuneful cadence in it.

"You spend nearly all your days here?" said Mrs. Fielden, looking round the room.

"Until the afternoon," I said; "and then Palestrina and I go for a little walk, and at tea-time I go to the hall sofa, and she asks people to come up and sit with me."

"I am glad you like books," said Mrs. Fielden.

"But really," I said, "the good folks in Stowel are all extraordinarily kind to me, and some of the Jamiesons are up nearly every day."

"I like the Jamiesons," said Mrs. Fielden; "they are so intelligent. Have you ever noticed that their watches all keep exact time, and that they tell you the hour to the very second? And they always know what day of the month it is, and when Easter falls, and how much stuff it takes to make a blouse."

"You wrong Eliza Jamieson," I said; "she studies philosophy."

"Oh," said Mrs. Fielden eagerly, "I forgot to tell you, I have begun to study philosophy. I began last week. Will you lend me some books, please? I want to be very wise and learned."

"Why?" I asked.

"I think," said Mrs. Fielden, "that it might be nice if people did not always call one frivolous; and that if I studied philosophy——"

"I shall not lend you any books," I said.

"That is rather disobliging of you."

"Because," I said, "our lives should always show a perfect equation. If you are a frivolous person you should behave frivolously."

"You mean as I am a frivolous person," said Mrs. Fielden.

"As you are a frivolous person," I repeated.

"And after all," said Mrs. Fielden with a contemplative air, "how silly philosophy is! I asked somebody the other day the meaning of a syllogism, and really I don't think I ever heard anything quite so foolish."

"It is quite beneath your notice," I said.

"I did think of asking you if I might come over sometimes and read these musty volumes of yours."

"You would probably find them as uninteresting as I am," I said.

Mrs. Fielden looked as if she thought that might be possible, and did not press the matter.

I dislike being disloyal to my books, for they are such good friends of mine. But a great wish came to me then to get up and do something, instead of for ever reading the doings and the thoughts of other people. I thought how much I should like to live again, and just for once sleep on the veldt with the stars overhead, or longed that I could get astride of a horse, and follow a burst of the hounds over the wet fields in England. And so thinking I turned on the sofa and said petulantly, "I wish Maud Jamieson would not sing that song."

"Oh, that we two were maying," she sang, in the song that tells of love and separation, and the longings and heartbreaks which it is much better not to speak about, and the things which we want and cannot have.

"I hate yearners," I said. "Why can't she sing something cheerful?"

Mrs. Fielden rose from her chair by the fire and crossed the hearthrug, and came and sat down on my sofa. She took my hand in hers and said: "Poor boy! is it very hard sometimes?"

"Of course," said Palestrina, as we went upstairs to bed after our guests had departed, "you are sure to feel tired. The little party has been too much for you, I'm afraid. It was very tiresome for you having to leave us all."

"I felt rather a crock after dinner," I said, "and I think the hall gets hot in the evening."

"I wish I could make you better," said Palestrina affectionately; "it is horrid for you being ill."

"Every one," I said, "makes far too much fuss about health. Why, ten officers of our regiment are buried in South Africa. I suppose half the pensioners in Chelsea Hospital have had wounds as bad as mine, and a cripple more or less in the world does not matter very much. Women are kind enough to pity me. They even confide their troubles to me sometimes, because I am a poor thing lying on a sofa. I am really quite happy hobbling about with you, Palestrina; and when I am older, I shall probably take an interest in the garden. There is a proper and philosophical attitude of mind in respect of these things."

"O Hugo," said Palestrina, "I always know you are not happy when you begin to be philosophical."

"Life is very easily explained without the assistance of philosophy when everything goes all right," I replied.