A Lame Dog's Diary

by S. Macnaughtan

"Engaged Cuthbertson. Greatly surprised. Deeply thankful.—ELIZA."

This rather mysterious message was followed, later in the day, by a letter four pages in length, and marked on the outside, for some reason best known to Eliza, "Immediate." The letter explained more fully the cause of Eliza's thankfulness, and who it was that was greatly surprised.

"If you had told me," wrote Eliza, "six weeks ago that I should now be engaged to Mr. Cuthbertson, I should hardly have believed it. I really had not a notion that he cared for me until he actually said the words. Is it not too strange to think that perhaps, after all, Maud may be one of the last of us to get married?"

Here followed the usual descriptive catalogue, so characteristic of the Jamiesons' letters. "Mr. Cuthbertson looks like a widower, though he is not one." Strangely enough, I could never think of any other words, when I came to know Mr. Cuthbertson, that described him so well as these, and I can only account for it by saying that the man's deep melancholy and the crape band that he habitually wore round his hat must have given one the feeling that at some time Mr. Cuthbertson had suffered a heavy bereavement. "I have only known him," Eliza's letter went on, "for six weeks, but even that time has shown me his worth. He has a very straight nose and a black beard, and his forehead is distinctly intellectual. I met him first at Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs', where, as you know, I had gone to stay to catalogue their library, and to do a little typewriting for her. You know, of course, that she has become a member of the S.R.S., and their library is a mine of information.

"At first I was afraid to say, or even to allow myself to think, he showed me any preference, but Maud thought from the first that he was struck, and I asked her not to appear at all until everything was settled, for you know how attractive she is. But I really don't think that even then I thought that there was anything serious in it." (For an intelligent woman Eliza's letter strikes one as being strangely lacking in concentration.) "I have just been to the meeting of the Browning Society—our first appearance in public together—and I read my paper on "The Real Strafford," but I could hardly keep my voice steady all the time. I wear his own signet-ring for the present, but we are going up to London next week, when he will buy me a hoop of pearls. I am sure that you will be glad to hear that he is comfortably off. When the right man comes preconceived objections to matrimony vanish, but it must be the right man."

Palestrina said that she was "thrilled" to hear of Eliza's engagement, because an engagement was always thrilling, and she instantly went to tell the news to Mr. Ellicomb. She told me afterwards that when she had said that one of the Jamiesons was engaged Mr. Ellicomb became suddenly very pale in his complexion, and exclaimed, in a most anxious tone of voice, "Which?"

The cold weather has set in very suddenly, and already there is a sprinkling of snow on some of the distant hills. The robins still sing cheerily, but the gulls on the shore, flying over the yellow seaweed, call to each other plaintively in the gray of the early twilight. The heavy-winged herons stand in an attitude of serious thought for hours on the cold rocks; then, as if suddenly making up their minds to something, they stretch out their red legs behind them, and flop with large wings over the waters of the loch. The red Virginian creeper has begun to drop its leaves regretfully, after a night or two of white frost, and the dahlias hang their heads, heavy with the moisture which their cups contain. The sun wakes late in the mornings now, but shines strong and warm when it does get up. Cottage lights and fires burn cheerily o' nights, and within the cottages the old folks and the young ones draw round the fires and speak eerily of wraiths and whaurlochs, and some will tell of death-lights which they have seen on the lonely shore road. The herring fishers who sail away in the early twilight wear good stout jerseys now, and red woollen "crauvats" which the "wumman at hame" has knitted. The Lord has sailed away to Dunoon to lay up for the winter, and the shepherds have gone away down South "to winter the hogs." The shepherds' wives sit alone in the little hillside cottages away up on the face of the brae, and "mak dae" with their slender money till their men come home again.

The old women in the village have begun their winter spinning, and the tap, tap, tap of the treadle on the floor gives a pleasant sound as one passes outside on the dark road. Old men tell tales of snow in the passes in winter-time, and of death on the bleak hillsides, and some wife, shuddering, will say, "Ay, I mind I saw his corp-licht the very evening he was lost." And then they tell tales of fantasy and signs and premonitions of death.

The Finlaysons are going to wind up their very successful autumn in the Highlands by giving what they insist upon calling a gillies' dance, though probably the revels will mostly be indulged in by their large retinue of English servants. Good-natured old Finlayson has more than once said that he hopes we shall all come to the gillies' dance, and that it will give ourselves and our guests a chance of seeing some Highland customs. A good many of us come to Scotland most years, and have seen gillies and pipers before, but our good-natured neighbours certainly out-distance any one I know in their Highland sympathies.

They invited us to dine with them before the dance should begin, and six of us went, feeling very like the Jamiesons, and resolved that when we got home we should never put a limit to their numbers when we send them an invitation again.