Mrs. Fielden's motor car is still a matter of absorbing interest to the inhabitants of Stowel. When it breaks down, as it frequently does, there is always a crowd round it immediately. Our friends and neighbours in the town have an ingenuous respect for anything that costs a great deal of money, and they are quite congratulatory to any one who has been for a drive with Mrs. Fielden, and they talk about the motor and its owner, and who has seen it, and who has not, over their afternoon tea.
The motor car is a noisy, evil-smelling vehicle of somewhat rowdy appearance, which leaves a trail behind it as of a smoking lamp. It drew up at our door to-day, and kicked and snorted impatiently until we were ready to get into it. The next moment, with a final angry snort and plunge, it started down the drive and whizzed through the village and up the hill on the other side without pausing to take breath.
"The worst of a motor car is," said Mrs. Fielden, "that one gets through everything so quickly. In London I get my shopping done in about a quarter of an hour, and then I take a turn round Regent's Park, and I find I have put away about ten minutes, so I fly down to Richmond, and even then it is too early to go to tea anywhere. Talking of tea—isn't everybody very hungry? I am really ravenous—and that is the motor car's fault, too. Because one has learned to want one's meals by the amount of business one has got through, and when one has done a whole afternoon's work in three-quarters of an hour, one is dying for tea, just as if it were five o'clock."
"I have always been ravenous since I was in South Africa," said one of Mrs. Fielden's colonels, who had driven over in the motor car to take care of her and to bring us back. "I don't know when I shall satisfy the pangs of hunger which I acquired on the veldt."
"I think I shall call on Mr. Ellicomb," said Mrs. Fielden. "I believe he has excellent afternoon teas, and he is making me an enamel box which I should like to see."
Ellicomb said once or twice, as we sat in his picturesque house with its blue china and old brass work, that he only wished we had given him warning that we were coming. We found him with an apron on, working at his enamels; and when he had displayed this work to us, he showed us his bookbinding, and his fretwork-carving, and his type-writing machine. Afterwards we had tea, which Ellicomb poured very deftly into his blue cups, having first warmed the teapot and the cups, and flicked away one or two imaginary specks of dirt from the plates with what appeared to be a small lace-trimmed dinner-napkin.
Mrs. Fielden began to admire his majolica ware, of which she knows nothing whatever, and Ellicomb took her for a tour round his rooms, and asked her to guess the original uses of his drain-tiles and spittoons and copper ham-pots. Afterwards we were taken into a very small conservatory adjoining his house, where every plant was displayed to us in turn; and we were subsequently shown his coal-cellar and his larder and his ash-pit before we were allowed to return to the house.
Ellicomb smiles more often than any other man I know, and he had only one epithet to apply to his house. "It's so cosy," he said. "Isn't it cosy?" "I do think it's a cosy little place."
Mrs. Fielden was charmed with everything, and deprecated the idea that she might consider the little house very small after Stanby.
"I always think," she said, "that I should much prefer to live in a place like this, and then the people who come to see one really would pay one a little attention, instead of talking of nothing but the house."
The Colonel laughed and apologized.
"Oh, I know I'm not half good enough for Stanby," said Mrs. Fielden, smiling. "But I really can't help it! I was brought up in a house with hot and cold water upstairs, and white paint, and I suppose I never can really appreciate anything else."
The dignity of Mrs. Fielden's surroundings has never affected her in the very smallest degree, and I do not believe that the traditions of the house interest her in the very least. I am quite aware that she asked me to write out the history of Lady Hylda, for instance, simply because it is part of her charm always to ask one to do something for her. It is the fashion to wait upon Mrs. Fielden's behests, and it would appear almost an unkindness to her many men friends if she did not give them some commission to do when they go up to town. Her manner of thanking one for a service is almost as pretty as her manner of asking for it, and I am really not surprised that she is the most popular woman in the country-side.
Mr. Ellicomb said ecstatically that the dim twilight at Stanby was one of the most impressive things he knew; and he added, with a shudder, that he always expected to see ghosts there.
Mrs. Fielden does not believe in ghosts except on those occasions when she has some one very charming to defend her, and she spends her evenings in a cheerful white boudoir in the modern part of the house.
Having admired all the majolica plates in the house, and having completely bewildered her host by showing an interest in him and his possessions one minute, and complete indifference the next, Mrs. Fielden fell into one of those little silences which are so characteristic of her. Her silence is one of the most provoking things about her. She has been witty and amusing the moment before, and then relapses into silence in the most natural manner possible, and her face takes a certain wistful look, and a man wonders how he can comfort her or whether he has offended her.
"I think we ought to go now," she said, coming out of this wistful reverie like a child awaking from sleep. "Is every one ready?"
We got into the motor car again, and sped onwards along the smooth white road. Every turn made a picture which I suppose an artist would love to paint. There were red-roofed cottages smothered in orchards of plum blossom, and simple palings set across gaps in the hedges, with gardens beyond filled with spring flowers. Now a labourer, gray-coated and bent with age, passed by like a flash, as he tramped slowly homewards from his work; and some school children, loitering to pick primroses under a hedge, dropped their slates and satchels in the ditch, and called to each other to take care, while they clung together and shouted "Hurrah!" as we passed.
The park gates of Stanby are lion guarded and of stone, and then a long carriage-drive takes one up to the house. The park round the old gray pile was starred with primroses, and ghost-like little lambs were capering noiselessly in the fields. The scent of wallflowers was blown to us from a great brown ribbon of them round the walls of the lodgekeeper's house as we swung through the gates. The sheep in the park, bleating to their young, drew away from the palings where they had been rubbing their woolly sides, and made off to the farther corner of the field, and Mrs. Fielden's gray pony in the paddock tossed his heels in a vindictive fashion at us from a distance of fifty yards or more. And the motor car drew up with a jerk at the great doors of the house.
Stanby is not quite so large now as it originally was, immense though the house undoubtedly is, and only some ruins on the north side show where the chapel used to stand. A mound within the ruin's walls marks the resting-place of Hylda—Hylda, whose history I wrote out at the request of Mrs. Fielden, and sent to her; but I don't suppose she has ever read it.
The evening of our arrival at Stanby it pleased Mrs. Fielden to put on an old-fashioned dress of stiffest brocade, which she had found in some old chest in the house. She wore a high comb of pearls in her dark hair, and she looked a very regal and beautiful figure in the great dining-hall and drawing-rooms of her house. She did not play Bridge, as the others did, but sat on a carved high-backed chair near my sofa, and told me many of the old stories of the house, and asked me to write down some of them for her.
"I sent you the story of Hylda more than a week ago," I said, "and I don't suppose you ever read it."
"I did read it," said Mrs. Fielden gently, "and I liked it very much."
She had put on an unapproachable mood with her beautiful stiff brocade gown, and the gentleness of her voice seemed to heighten rather than to lessen her royalty. The radiance and the holiday air, which are Mrs. Fielden's by divine right, were not dimmed to-night so much as transformed. There was a subtle aromatic scent of dried rose-leaves clinging to the old brocade dress, and about herself a sort of fragrance of old-world dignity and beauty. The pearl comb in her hair made her look taller than usual.
A deerhound got up from his place by the fire and came and laid his head on her lap, and some footmen in old-fashioned bright blue liveries came in to arrange the card-tables and hand round coffee. Everything was stately and magnificent in the house.
"And you pretend," I said, "that you do nothing; yet probably the whole ordering of this house devolves upon you."
"I am quite a domestic person sometimes," said Mrs. Fielden.
"It is rather bewildering," I said, "to find that you are everything in turn."
And the next morning she wore a short blue skirt, with a silver belt round her waist, and spent the morning punting on the lake with Anthony Crawshay.
"I hope I look after you all properly," she said at lunch-time, in a certain charming deprecating way she has of speaking sometimes. "There really are punts, and horses, and motor cars, and things, if you want them. Will you all order what you like?"
Each man at the table then offered to take Mrs. Fielden for a ride, or a drive, or a row, and not one of them could be quite sure that she had refused to go with him.
"I want to go for a turn in the garden and talk about books," she said to me as we left the dining-room. And then I found that I was sitting in her boudoir having coffee with her, and that every one else was excluded from the room—how it was done I have not the slightest idea—and that by-and-by we left it by the open French windows, and were strolling in the garden in the spring sunshine. The garden, with its high walls, is sheltered from every wind that blows, and there are wide garden-seats in it painted white, and every border was bright with early spring flowers.
"I call this my Grove of Academe," said Mrs. Fielden.
"Why?"
"Because I think it has a nice classical sound; and it is here I come with my friends and discuss metaphysics."
"It seems to me you have a great many friends," I said.
"I was thinking," said Mrs. Fielden thoughtfully, "of adding another to their number."
"I have a constitutional dislike to worshipping in crowded temples," I said.
Mrs. Fielden became silent.
It would be forging a sword against themselves did men allow women to know what a powerful weapon silence is. A soft answer turneth away wrath, but a woman's silence makes a man's heart cry out: "My dear, did I hurt you? Forgive me!"
At the end of five minutes or so of silence Mrs. Fielden turned towards me and smiled, and the garden seemed to be filled with her. There was no room for anything else but herself and that bewildering smile she gave me.
"How is the diary getting on?" she said.
"The diary," I answered, "continues to record our godly, righteous, and sober life——"
"Oh," said Mrs. Fielden quickly, "don't you think it is possible to be too good sometimes? That is really what I wanted to say to you—I brought you into the garden to ask you that."
"It is an interesting suggestion," I remarked, "and I think we ought to give it to Eliza Jamieson for one of her discussions."
"I do not wish to discuss it with Eliza Jamieson," said Mrs. Fielden, "but with you. You know there really is a great danger in becoming too good; for although I do not think that you would grow wings, or hear passing bells, or anything of that sort, still you might become a little dull, might you not?"
"I don't think it would be possible to become duller than I am," I replied. "You have more than once told me that I am not amusing. So long as my sister is not aware of the fact, I do not in the least mind admitting that I find every day most horribly tedious. I suppose I shall get accustomed to it in time, but I don't enjoy being an invalid."
"You have watched the Jamiesons making flannel petticoats for the poor," went on Mrs. Fielden, "and you have had the Curate to tea, and you have been to the Taylors' party, and if it does not kill you, I am sure you will become like people in those books which one gives as prizes to choir-boys."
"One so often mistakes monotony for virtue," I said. "I believe I was beginning to think that there was almost a merit in getting accustomed to a sofa and a crutch."
"Oh, but it is a sin!" exclaimed Mrs. Fielden. "It is a sin to get accustomed to anything that is disagreeable. But that is what comes of studying philosophy!"
"I suppose reasoning is always bad," I said humbly.
"Yes," said Mrs. Fielden; "and it is so unnatural, too."
"I heard a man say the other day," I said, "that solitude is always sententious. And he pointed out that foreigners, who are never alone, base their ethics upon conduct; but that English people, who simply do not understand the life of the boulevards and cafés and family affection, sit apart in the solitude of their garrets or studies, and decide that the right or the wrong of a thing consists in what they think about it."
Then I recollected that this garden was the Grove of Academe, and that it was here that Mrs. Fielden discussed metaphysics with all her friends. "What cure do you propose?" I said shortly.
"Why not go to London for a little while and enjoy yourselves?" said Mrs. Fielden. "Put off the conventionalities of Stowel, as the Miss Traceys do, and do something amusing and gay."
"Did you ever hear of the man in the Bastille," I said, "who had been in prison so long that when he was offered his freedom he elected to remain where he was?"
"But you must break out of the Bastille long before it comes to that!" said Mrs. Fielden. "Couldn't you do something exciting? I am sure nothing else will restore your moral tone."
"How is it to be done?" I asked. "We must recognize the limitations of our environment."
"You are going to be philosophical," said Mrs. Fielden; "you are going to quote Protagoras, or Pythagoras, or Plato, which will not convince me in the least. Philosophy tries to make people believe that things are exactly the reverse of what they are. I don't think that alters the sum total of things very much. Because, by the time that you have proved that all agreeable things are disagreeable, and all unpleasant things are pleasant, you are in exactly the same position as you were before. I dare say it fills up people's time to turn everything upside down and stand everything on its head, but it is not amusing."
"What do you want me to do?" I asked.
"Couldn't you enjoy yourselves a little?" said Mrs. Fielden, putting on her wistful voice.
"As we are in the Grove of Academe, let me point out that the pursuit of pleasure for its own sake was one of the corrupt forms of a decadent epicureanism," I said sternly.
"I am quite sure it was," said Mrs. Fielden, smiling; "but we were talking about your visit to London, were we not?"
And so I knew that the thing was settled, and I thought it very odd that Palestrina and I had not thought of the plan before.
"As it is getting cold," said Mrs. Fielden, "I am going to be a peripatetic philosopher," and she rose from the seat where we were sitting and gave me her hand to help me up, for I am still awkward with my crutch, and then let me lean on her arm as we walked up and down the broad gravel pathway.
"Don't you think," she began, "that it is a great waste of opportunity not to be wild and wicked sometimes, when one is very good?"
"I am afraid I do not quite follow you."
"What I mean is, what is the good of filling up years of curates and Taylors and flannel petticoats, unless you are going to kick them all over some day, and have a good time. You see, if you and Palestrina were not so good you would always have to pretend to be tremendously circumspect. But it seems such waste of goodness not to be bad sometimes."
"Your argument being," I said, "that an honest man may sometimes steal a horse?"
"Yes, that is what I mean," said Mrs. Fielden delightedly.
"A dangerous doctrine, and one——"
"Not Plato, please," said Mrs. Fielden.
... It ended in our taking a flat in London for some weeks. It was a small dwelling, with an over-dressed little drawing-room, and a red dining-room, and a roomy cupboard for a smoking-room.
"Remember, Palestrina," I said to my sister when we settled down, "that we are under strict orders to live a very rapid and go-ahead life while we are in London. Can you suggest anything very rowdy that a crippled man with a crutch and a tendency to chills and malaria might undertake?"
"We might give a supper-party," said Palestrina brilliantly, "and have long-stemmed champagne-glasses, and perhaps cook something in a chafing-dish. I was reading a novel the other day in which the bad characters did this. I made a note of it at the time, meaning to ask you why it should be fast to cook things in a chafing-dish or to have long-stemmed champagne-glasses?"
When the evening came Mrs. Fielden dined with us, and she and Palestrina employed themselves after dinner in rehearsing how they should behave. My sister said in her low, gurgling voice: "I think I shall sit on the sofa with my arms spread out on the cushions on either side of me, and I shall thump them sometimes, as the adventuress in a play does."
"Or you might be singing at the piano," said Mrs. Fielden, "and then when the door opens you could toss the music aside and sail across the room, and give your left hand to whoever comes in first, and say, 'What a bore! you have come!' or something rude of that sort."
Mrs. Fielden's spirit of fun inspired my quiet sister to-night, and the two women, began masquerading in a way that was sufficiently amusing to a sick man lying on a sofa.
"Or you might continue playing the piano," Mrs. Fielden went on, "after any one has been announced. I notice that that is very often done, especially in books written by the hero himself in the first person. 'She did not leave the piano as I entered, but continued playing softly, her white hands gliding dreamily over the keys.'"
"I shall do my best," Palestrina answered; "and I thought of calling all our guests by their Christian names, if only I could recollect what they are."
"Nicknames would be better," said Mrs. Fielden. "We ought to have found out, I think, something about this matter before the night of the party."
"What shall we do till they arrive?" said Palestrina.
"We must read newspapers and periodicals," Mrs. Fielden replied, "and then fling them down on the carpet. There is something about seeing newspapers on a carpet which is certainly untidy, but has a distinctly Bacchanalian touch about it."
"I wish I had a red tea-gown," sighed my sister.
"Or a white one trimmed with some costly furs," said Mrs. Fielden. "Almost any tea-gown would do."
"One thing I will have!" she exclaimed, starting in an energetic manner to her feet. "I'll turn all the lamps low, and cover them with pink-paper shades. Where is the crinkly paper and some ribbon?"
After that we sat in a rose twilight so dim that we couldn't even read the evening newspaper.
"I don't think they need have come quite so early," I said, as the first ring was heard at the door-bell.
Mrs. Fielden had insisted upon it that one actress at least should be asked. "What is a supper-party without an actress?" she had said. And Mrs. Travers at present acting in Mr. Pinero's new play, was the first to arrive.
"I wonder if you know any of our friends who are coming to-night?" said Palestrina. "We expect Squash Bosanquet and Dickie Fenwick." Palestrina then broke down, because we had no idea if these two men had ever answered to these names in their lives. Also she blushed, which spoilt it all, and Mrs. Fielden began to smile.
Mrs. Travers came to the party in a very simple black evening gown, and Bosanquet and Charles Fenwick came almost immediately afterwards. Anthony Crawshay was amongst the friends whom we had invited, because, Palestrina said, as we did not seem to know many fast people, we had better have some one who was sporting. There was an artist whom we considered Bohemian because he wore his hair long, but he disappointed us by coming in goloshes.
Altogether we were eight at supper. There was an attractive menu, and the long-stemmed champagne-glasses were felt to be a distinct challenge to quiet behaviour.
Palestrina thought that if she were going to be really fast she had better talk about divorce, and I heard her ask Anthony in a diffident whisper if he had read any divorce cases lately. Anthony looked startled, and in his loud voice exclaimed, "Egad! I hopeyouhaven't!" Palestrina coloured with confusion, and I frowned heavily at her, which made it worse.
Mrs. Travers seemed to have taken it into her head that Palestrina was philanthropic, and she talked a great deal about factory girls, and Bosanquet talked about methylated ether. What it was that provoked his remarks on this subject I cannot now recall, nor why he discussed it without intermission almost throughout the entire evening, but I have a distinct recollection of hearing him dinning out the phrase "methylated ether."
It was, I think, the dullest party that even Palestrina and I have ever given, and I blame Mrs. Fielden for this. Mrs. Fielden refused to be the centre of the room. She became an onlooker at the party which she had planned, and she smiled affectionately at us both, and watched, I think, to see how the party would go off.
The long-stemmed champagne-glasses were hardly used. Several people said to me jocosely, "How is South Africa?" and to this I could think of no more suitable reply than, "It's all right." We longed for even the Pirate Boy to make a little disturbance. Palestrina whispered to me that she thought I might throw a piece of bread at some one, or do something. But the action she suggested seemed to me to be in too daring contrast to the general tone of the evening; and really, as I murmured back to her, there seemed to be very little point in throwing my bread at a guest who had done me no harm.
"I wish," she said to me when we returned to the drawing-room, "that I knew some daring little French songs. In books the girl always sings daring little French songs, and afterwards every one begins to be vulgar and delightful, like those people in 'The Christian.' I think I'll light a cigarette." She did so, and choked a little, and then wondered if Thomas would like her to smoke, and threw the cigarette into the fire. The Bohemian, who had travelled considerably, asked for a map, and told us of his last year's journeyings, tracing out the route of them for us on the map with a pin.
And Mrs. Fielden was smiling all the time.
"I suppose," I said to my sister when the last guest had departed, and we sat together in the pink light of the drawing-room before going to bed—"I suppose we carry about with us an atmosphere of slowness which it is impossible to penetrate. You are engaged to Thomas, and I am an invalid——"
"But in books," said Palestrina wistfully, "men talk about all sorts of things to girls whether they happen to be engaged or not, and they ask them to go to see galleries with them next day, or squeeze their hands. Of course, I should hate it if they did so, but still one rather expected it. To-night," she said regretfully, "no one talked to me of anything but Thomas."
"Charles Fenwick," I said, "who used to be considered amusing, has become simply idiotic since he married. He gave me an exact account of his little boy's sayings; he copied the way he asked for sugar, like the chirruping of a bird. You won't believe me, I know, but he put out his lips and chirped."
"I remember being positively warned against him," said Palestrina, "when I used to go to dances in London." She sighed, and added, "Do you think Mrs. Fielden enjoyed it?"
"I think Mrs. Fielden was distinctly amused," I replied.
"Do you think," said Palestrina, still in a disappointed tone, "that the men would have been more—more larky if we had been alone? Mrs. Fielden always looks so beautiful and dresses so well that I think she impresses people too much, and they are all trying to talk to her instead of making a row."
"I think we may as well go to bed," I said.
Palestrina rose slowly, and went towards the bell to ring for my man to help me. She lingered for a moment by my chair. "Yet books say that men require so much keeping in order," she said sadly. "I wish people would not write about what does not occur."
The Jamiesons have taken lodgings in West Kensington, which they describe as being "most central"—a phrase which I have begun to think means inexpensive—and near a line of omnibuses. George and the Pirate are assiduous in taking their sisters to the Play and other places of amusement, and are showing them something of London with a zeal which speaks much for their goodness of heart. Even Mrs. Jamieson has been out once or twice, and although doubly tearful on the morning following any little bit of dissipation, her family feel that the variety has been good for her. Eliza has found that London is radio-active, hence enjoyable. And Eliza had been only once to the Royal Institution when she said it! Maud's engagement to the Hampstead young man has been finally broken off, and Maud has cried so much that her family have forgiven her. Maud explains that it is such an upset for a girl to break off an engagement, and The Family say soothingly that she must just try and get over it.
"We hope," said Kate, "that next time things will arrange themselves more happily, and at least we can all feel that Maud might have married many times, had she wished to do so." There seems to be a strong feeling in The Family that Maud will go on having opportunities. Arguing from the general to the particular, they have proved, with a sort of tribal feeling of satisfaction, that Maud is undoubtedly very attractive to men, and that if one man likes her, why should not another?
Still, we all felt that we could not have sympathized immediately with another love affair of Maud's, and it was refreshing, not to say most pleasing and surprising, to find that since her arrival in Town, it was Margaret who attracted the notice of a gentleman, Mr. Swinnerton by name, a friend of George's, who brought him to supper one Sunday evening. The Jamiesons could see at a glance that Mr. Swinnerton was "struck," and, as he called two or three times in the following week, Margaret made the usual Jamieson opportunity of seeing Palestrina home, one afternoon when she had been to call, to embark in confidences about her lover in the usual Jamieson style. Margaret was diffident, bashful, shy, uncertain about Mr. Swinnerton's feelings for her, and hopelessly nervous lest her family should have had their expectations raised only to be disappointed. She implored Palestrina over and over again to say nothing about it to them, though it has been more than obvious to us all along how full of expectation every member of The Family is. It was a very wet evening as Margaret and my sister left the Jamiesons' lodgings, but she hardly seemed conscious of the inclemency of the weather, and begged Palestrina not to think of taking a cab, as she particularly wished to speak to her.
"At first," she began, "I thought it must be Maud, although she has but just broken off her engagement to Mr. Evans; still, one knows she is the pretty one, and if any one calls often, it is generally her."
It was a little difficult to follow Margaret's rapid, ungrammatical speech, but Palestrina and I both knew that to the vigorous minds of the Jamiesons there must be a direct purpose in every action, and that therefore if Mr. Swinnerton came to call he must have a purpose, presumably a matrimonial purpose, for paying his visits. After two or three afternoon calls from a gentleman the Jamiesons generally ask each other ingenuously, "Which of us is it?" It hardly seems to them respectable that a man should continue to pay them visits unless he means to show a preference for one of them.
Presuming that it was not Maud he came to see, Margaret, with modest hesitation and many blushes, asked Palestrina if she did not think it possible that these visits might be intended for her.
"Please do not say anything about it to the others. I always have hoped that if ever I had a love affair it would be when I was away from home. Do you know at all what they think about it?"
She did not pause for a reply, but began again: "You see he has called three times in one week, but" (hopelessly) "I am always surrounded by The Family, and he couldn't say anything if he wanted to. Of course I don't think it has come to anything of that sort yet; still, you know, we could get to know each other better if there were not so many of us always about. Maud doesn't mind a bit; she has had love affairs in front of us all, and she does not mind talking about them in the least, or even asking us to let her have the drawing-room to herself on certain afternoons. But I don't feel as if I could bear to have this discussed before anything is settled. And then we have so few opportunities. Maud generally takes them to a distant church, and then they have the walk home together. But I never quite know whether she makes the suggestion about church, or if she merely thinks it would be nice, and leaves the man to make it."
"Maud," I remarked parenthetically to Palestrina, "has raised love-making to a science—an exact science."
"I hope you don't think for a moment," Margaret had gone on, "that I am abusing Maud; you know how fond we all are of each other."
Maud's experiences on matters matrimonial are always quoted as precedent in the Jamieson family, and she is cited whenever anything of the sort is afoot. Each phase in her experience is frankly discussed, and conclusions are drawn from it; and I have heard the Jamiesons say, "Mr. So-and-so must be in love with Miss So-and-so; he looks at her in exactly the same way that Mr. Reddy used to look at Maud." Maud herself, unconsciously as I believe, makes a sort of calendar of her love affairs, and it is quite usual for her to date an event by referring to it as having happened "in the Albert Gore days," or "when Mr. Evans was hovering."
Margaret's voice had not ceased from the moment they left the lodgings together. "It is, however, no use trying to copy other people in your love affairs," she said, "because it seems to come to every one so differently, and then of course different people must call forth different feelings. I don't think I could have felt for Mr. Reddy, for instance, quite as I do now, even if he had been in love with me. You feel so bewildered somehow."
The walk had by this time become very rapid, and Margaret, in her short-sighted way, knocked against all the foot-passengers whom she met travelling in the opposite direction. Her umbrella showered raindrops upon Palestrina, and she became so incoherent that my sister suggested taking a cab to our flat, and talking things over quietly when they should get there.
It was about eleven o'clock that night when Margaret Jamieson took leave of us, and by that time I fancy the bridesmaids' dresses had been arranged.
A few days later Palestrina received a note by the hand of a messenger-boy; it bore the word "Immediate" on the cover, and had evidently been addressed in some haste.
"DEAR PALESTRINA (it ran),
"Can you possibly come to make a fourth at a concert this afternoon? Do come, even if it should be rather inconvenient to you. I want you so much. Mr. Swinnerton has asked mamma and me, and he has taken tickets. They are not reserved places, so we could easily arrange to meet at the door and sit together. Three is such an awkward number. I fear mamma does not care for him, and that is a great grief to me. I will tell you everything this afternoon.
"Yours affectionately,"MARGARET JAMIESON.
"P.S.—It is all going to come right, I believe, but I have had immense difficulties. Hardly ten minutes alone with him—you know we have only one sitting-room.—but the family have been sweet."
"Hugo," said Palestrina, "this is an occasion when you could give very substantial aid to a deserving family."
"I am sorry I am engaged this afternoon," I said, with an instinct of self-preservation, without, however, having any definite idea of what Palestrina might say next.
"It is I who am engaged this afternoon," said my sister smiling, "and you are perfectly aware of that fact. Thomas is taking me down to Richmond to introduce me to his aunt. Besides, Hugo, you know you like music."
"I am very sorry, Palestrina," I said, "but it is quite impossible."
"Margaret is the Jamieson you like best," said Palestrina, "and I hate to think of your being here alone a whole afternoon. What were you thinking of doing?"
I had been thinking of going to this concert, and Palestrina guessed it, of course....
I was at the door of the concert hall at two-thirty in the afternoon, and found Mrs. Jamieson and Margaret and the young man already on the pavement, looking as if they had stood there for a considerable time. Mr. Swinnerton is a large, rather stupid-looking man, with a red face, a crooked nose, and curly hair. He wore a dark blue overcoat, so thick and strong that it reminded one of some encasement of plaster of Paris, or of some heavy coat of mail. His hands were covered in yellow dogskin gloves, equally unyielding, so that Mr. Swinnerton appeared deprived of any agility of movement by his garments. Mr. Swinnerton is in the volunteers, and has "Captain Swinnerton" printed on his cards. He gave me the idea of seeming to think that every action of his was some epoch-making event, and during the afternoon he frequently referred to having seen a picture then on view at one of the galleries, as though this were rather an up-to-date, not to say remarkable, proceeding. Margaret seemed a good deal impressed by his manner, and the Jamiesons had decided that he was "smart," which was a further and quite unnecessary addition to Mr. Swinnerton's vanity, and very bad for a gentleman of his complacent character.
He ushered us into the Queen's Hall in an important sort of way, which gave one the impression that the place belonged to him; and the fact that I was making a third in a party under his guidance convinced me that I was in some sort adding to his self-satisfaction. Mr. Swinnerton had chosen shilling places, because, as he informed us a great number of times, these were in the best position for hearing the music. Mrs. Jamieson was disappointed. In her class of life a treat is given on a more magnificent scale.
"Shall I sit next you, Mrs. Jamieson?" I said, for I believed that this was what I was intended to say; but Mr. Swinnerton remarked to Margaret, "I'll go next; I like to divide myself amongst the ladies."
Mrs. Jamieson looked uncomfortable in the small amount of space a shilling had procured for her, and she suggested apologetically that she would like a programme; but the music was beginning, and Mr. Swinnerton put up his large, stiff-gloved hand like a slab, and said, "Hush!"
We went faithfully through the orthodox Queen's Hall concert from the very first note to the "Ride of the Valkyries," and after every item on the programme our host turned to us, moving his whole body in his stout coat, and said, "Isn't that nice now?—very nice I call it!" still with an air of ownership.
Mrs. Jamieson slept a little; but the hardness of her seat made it an uneasy resting-place, and it is to be feared that her mantle with the storm-collar was too hot; but, she whispered to me in a burst of confidence, she was unable to remove it owing to the fact that the bodice and skirt of her dress did not correspond.
"I always like these places," said Mr. Swinnerton again; "they are exactly in the centre of the hall, and another thing is, they are near the door in case of fire."
Margaret assented sweetly. I always thought until to-day that Margaret Jamieson was a plain woman; to-day I find she is good-looking.
"It is ridiculous," said Mr. Swinnerton, "to see the way people throw their money away on really inferior seats, just because they think they are fashionable."
Mrs. Jamieson stirred a little on her uneasy bench, and Mr. Swinnerton said in self-defence, "Don't you agree with me, eh?"
"I think," said Mrs. Jamieson politely, "that perhaps for a long concert thefotoyswould be more comfortable."
"Ah!" cried Mr. Swinnerton, "you want to be fashionable, I see; but there are many of the best people who come to these seats. I know of a Member of Parliament—I don't know him, I know of him" (we felt that some connection with the Member had been established)—"who comes regularly to these very places, and who declares they are the best in the house."
"Perhaps," said Mrs. Jamieson simply, "he had never tried thefotoys."
After the concert was over, Mr. Swinnerton suggested that Margaret and her mother should go and have tea at a bun-shop, qualifying the suggestion with the remark, "I know you ladies can never get on without afternoon tea." When with Mr. Swinnerton ladies are never allowed to forget that he is a gentleman and they are ladies, and that a certain forbearance is therefore extended to them. He offered his arm to Mrs. Jamieson, who gathered up her skirt and umbrella in one hand, and accepted the proffered support in some embarrassment. Margaret fell behind with me, and whispered in a sort of excited way,—
"Hasn't it been lovely? Do tell me what you think—I mean about him."
"I haven't had much chance of judging," I replied stupidly; "but he seems all right, although perhaps his ideas are not very large."
"Still, you mean that one could always alter that," said Margaret quickly, with the true Jamieson optimism, as applied to the beneficial results of matrimony. There is hardly, I believe, a defect that they think they will not be able to eradicate in a future husband, save, perhaps, the conical shape of Mr. Ward's head. "But I really do not think there is anything that I would like altered," she added simply.
"His name is Tudor," she went on. "George calls him that now, and Maud is beginning to do so—Maud is being so kind; she says it promotes a familiar tone which is very helpful, to call him 'Tudor'—but I can't call him anything but Mr. Swinnerton yet."
After tea Mr. Swinnerton asked us how we had enjoyed our entertainment, and Margaret expressed herself in the highest terms in praise of it. There seemed to be a lingering tendency on Mrs. Jamieson's part to revert to the superior comfort of seven-and-sixpenny places and armchairs, but we checked this by saying with emphasis that it was a friendly afternoon of this kind that we really enjoyed. Mr. Swinnerton then put the Jamiesons into an omnibus, and directed the conductor to "let these ladies out at the top of Sloane Street," in a tone of voice that suggested that they were to be caged and padlocked until that place of exit was reached. He lifted his hat with a fine air to them, and then, as I had called a hansom, he put me into it rather elaborately, and cautioned the commissionaire at the door to "take care of this gentleman."
He will probably call me a South African hero next; I wish he would keep his attentions to himself.
Last night we dined at the Darcey-Jacobs'. Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs is enjoying "one breath of life" at a hotel with the Major, and she has left quite a pathetic number of visiting-cards on all her friends, so that her short London season may be as full of gaiety as possible. Neither of us looked forward to the dinner-party being particularly lively, but we were a good deal amused at the turn the conversation took during dinner. I have often thought since that a certain dumbness which falls upon some entertainments can be dispersed if the subject of matrimony is started, and I will class with it a discussion on food, and personal experience at the hand of the dentist. Any of these three subjects can be thrown, as it were, into the stagnant deep waters of a voiceless party, and the surface will be instantly rippled with eager conversation.
Talk flagged a little in the private sitting-room of the hotel where the Darcey-Jacobs gave their dinner-party. Major Jacobs, in his guileless way, gave us an exhaustive list of the friends whom they had invited for that evening, but who had not been able to come; and this had a curiously depressing effect upon us all, and within ourselves we speculated unhappily as to whether we had been asked to fill up vacant places.
"Why are men always allowed to blunder?" said Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs, looking over her high nose at the gentleman next her, and tapping him on the arm with her lorgnettes.
Major Jacobs, from his end of the table, looked penitent but mystified.
"Happy is the woman," said Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs, "who has no men about her."
"I should like to have been born a widow," said a pretty girl with beseeching blue eyes and a soft, confiding expression, who sat a little lower down on my side of the table. And then the subject of matrimony was in full swing.
"Marriage is just an experience," said a shrill-voiced American widow who sat opposite. "Every one should try it, but that is no reason why one should not be thankful when it is over."
"I am much interested in what you say," said Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs, with a certain profound air suitable to so great a subject. One felt the want of the Jamiesons sadly during the ensuing discussion, and I almost found myself, in the words of Mettie, making the suggestion that marriage was a great risk.
"Some one once said," ventured Major Darcey-Jacobs, "that choosing a wife was like choosing a profession—it did not matter much what your choice was, so long as you stuck to it. It was a mere figure of speech, no doubt——"
"I hope so, indeed," said Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs.
"Marriage is the worst form of gambling," broke in an elderly gentleman; "it should be suppressed by law. Talk about lotteries! Talk about sweepstakes! Why, the worst you can do, if you put your money into them, is to draw a blank. Now, this is fair play, I consider; you either get a prize or you get nothing. But matrimony, sir, is a swindle compared with which the Missing Word Competition appears like a legal document beside a forged bank-note."
If the old gentleman had a wife present she was evidently of a callous disposition, for I saw no wrathful expression on any face.
Mr. Ellicomb—even in London Ellicomb and Anthony Crawshay are asked to meet us—gave it as his opinion that a woman's hand was wanted in the home. The voice was the voice of Ellicomb, the sentiment was the sentiment of Maud, and Palestrina and I very nearly exchanged glances.
After this, several people began to describe at one and the same time, in quite a breathless way, their own personal experiences of the happiness of wedded life.
"Of course," said Major Darcey-Jacobs, "a deal of forbearance must be exercised if married life is to be a success." And Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs said quickly, "I hope you do not intend to become personal, William." To which William replied that no such intention had been his.
Anthony said in his cheery voice, "Of course it is give and take, don't you know, and then it is all right."
Every one volunteered ideas on the subject—not once, but several times. And those who applauded the happy state shouted each other down by quoting examples of wedded bliss in such words as: "Look at Hawkins!" "Look at Jones!" "Look at the Menteiths!"
Quite suddenly Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs leaned across the table, smiled at her husband, and remarked, "Look at us, William!"
I do not think I have ever seen any one look so astonished as Major Jacobs. "That was very pretty of Maria," he said in a low voice; "very pretty of her, by Gad!" And we caught him looking at his wife several times that evening with a puzzled but delighted expression on his face.
After dinner we played Bridge. "I disapprove of the game myself," said Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs, who certainly was the worst player I have ever met, "but Mrs. Fielden likes it, and she has promised to come in in the evening."
Mrs. Fielden arrived at the same time as Colonel Jardine, and they played as partners together, with me and the American widow as opponents. Colonel Jardine wore some kind of lead ring on his finger, which he said cured gout, and gathered up his tricks in a stiff sort of way. He had a pet name for almost every card in the pack, and he babbled on without once ceasing throughout the rubber. "Now we'll see where old Mossy Face is. I think that draws the Curse of Scotland. Kinky takes that," and so on. It was perfectly maddening, but Mrs. Fielden seemed quite pleased. I don't suppose she ever feels irritated. The American widow, who was my partner, was only just learning the game. When I said to her, "May I play?" she always replied, if she had a bad hand, "No, certainly not." And when it was pointed out to her that she had either to say, "If you please," or "I double," she replied, "Don't ask me if you may play, if you mean to do it whether I like it or not." She always gave us such items of information as "I know what I should say if it was left to me this time," and she frequently doubled with nothing at all in her hand, because she said she liked to play a plucky game.
I have tried to cure Mrs. Fielden of saying "dah-monds" when she means "diamonds," but it is quite useless. She also says (with a radiant smile) "How tarsome!" when she has lost a rubber, although I have pointed out to her that that is not the phonetic pronunciation of the word. When we are all wrangling over the mistakes and misdeeds of the last round, Mrs. Fielden looks hopelessly at us and says, "Is it any one's deal?" And then we laugh and stop arguing. She never keeps the score, or picks up the cards, or deals for herself, or does anything useful.
The American widow did not stop talking most of the time, and the Colonel kept up his running commentary upon the cards he was playing, and then Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs joined us to look on, and she and the American widow plunged into a discussion on clothes, which they kept up vigorously all the time. This necessitated a number of questions relating to the game from the American widow, whenever she was recalled to the fact that she was playing Bridge: "May I see that laast trick? What's trumps? Does my hand go down on the table this time?" Mrs. Fielden beamed kindly upon her, even when the widow had debated five minutes which card to lead, and Colonel Jardine had begun to play the chromatic scale of impatience up and down the table with his stiff fingers.
"Waal," said the American widow to Mrs. Fielden, "I think you are just lovely, and I would like to play with you always. I believe most people would like to kill me at Bridge. Caan't think why. Colonel Jardine, did you play the lost chord?"
"I know the tune," said the Colonel; "but I don't play at all."
The American turned bewildered eyes upon Mrs. Fielden, who said, smiling, "Colonel Jardine is practising the chromatic scale. I think he will be a very good player some day."
"How was I to know," said the Colonel, spluttering over his whisky-and-soda when the American widow had left, "that she meant the last card? That woman would drive me crazy in six weeks."
"I liked her," said Mrs. Fielden, "and she is very pretty."
There is a certain large-heartedness about this pretty woman of fashion and of the world which constrains her to say something kind about every one. With her the absent are always right, and I do not think I have ever heard her say an unkind word about any one. At Stanby, when people who are staying there make a newly-departed guest run the gauntlet of criticism—not always of the kindest sort—Mrs. Fielden says, in that royal fashion of hers which makes her approval the final decision in all matters, "I liked him." And the departed guest's character and reputation are safe. Her charity is boundless and quite indiscriminate, save that she sends a trifle more rain and sunshine on the unjust than on the just.
"Come to lunch with me some day," she said to me in the off-hand way in which she generally gives an invitation. "I am always at home at two o'clock. Why not come to-morrow? You are leaving town almost immediately, are you not?"
Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs is also asked to lunch; every one is asked to lunch. When one goes to the pretty widow's house in South Street one generally finds a dozen people lunching with her.
... She came into the room—late, of course—and found ten or twelve people waiting for lunch. "I am so sorry! Do you all know each other?" she asked of the rather constrained group of strangers making frigid conversation to each other in the flower-filled drawing-room. And then she began to introduce us to each other, and forgot half our names, and we went downstairs in a buzz of conversation and laughter, and filled with something that is odd and magnetic, which only comes when Mrs. Fielden arrives.
As is always the way at her lunch-parties, her carriage drives up to the door before any one has finished coffee, and then we all say good-bye, complaining of the rush of London.
"I want you to drive with me this afternoon," said Mrs. Fielden, when I with the others was saying good-bye. I think she generally singles somebody out for a drive or a long talk, or to take her to a picture-gallery after lunch, and it is done in a way that makes the one thus singled out feel foolishly elated and flattered.
"I think we are going to drive down to Richmond and see some trees and grass, and behave in a rural sort of way this afternoon," she announced as she seated herself in the carriage.
"And what about all your engagements for this afternoon?" I asked. "And the Red Book, and the visiting-list, and the shopping-list, and the visiting-cards, which I see with you?"
"I never keep engagements," said Mrs. Fielden; "and every one knows my memory is so bad that they always forgive me. Some one gave me a little notebook the other day, with my initials in silver upon it—I can't remember who it was—and I put down in it all the tarsome things I ought to do, and then I lost the little pocket-book."
"If I ever find it," I said, "I shall bring it to you, and read out all your tarsome engagements to you."
"I didn't say 'tarsome,'" said Mrs. Fielden.
"I suppose you are whirling through the London season," I said presently; "and going everywhere, and having your frocks chronicled in the magazines, and going to a great many parties?"
"No," said Mrs. Fielden; "I have been down at Stanby."
"I wish," I remarked, "that you did not always give one unexpected replies. Why have you been down at Stanby? You didn't say anything about it when I saw you last night."
"Do you know old Miss Lydia Blind?" said Mrs. Fielden. "She is ill, and I got rather a pathetic letter from her, so I went down to Stanby to look after her."
She fumbled for the pocket of her dress, raising first what seemed to be a layer of lace, and then a number of layers of chiffon, and then, after rustling amongst some silk to find her artfully-concealed pocket, she produced a letter and handed it to me.
"Am I to read it?" I said; and Mrs. Fielden nodded.
"... One so often hears," so the letter ran, "of a case of long illness in which the one who is strong, and who acts as nurse to the invalid, breaks down before the end comes. To me it has always seemed to show that the strong one's courage has failed somehow, and that, had zeal been stronger or faith greater, she might have endured to the end...." And, again, in a postscript: "When I was younger I was very impatient, and I think I could not well have borne it had I known that life was to be a waiting time. I do not say this in any discontented spirit, dear, and I only write to you because you always understand...." And then the letter broke off suddenly, and I handed it back to Mrs. Fielden.
"So this is you, as Miss Lydia knows you," I said.
"I want you to go and see her when you go back to Stowel. Will you?" said Mrs. Fielden. "Miss Lydia is an angel, I think; the best woman really that ever lived. Will you take her some things I am sending her, and ask how she is when you go back?"
We drove under the trees of Richmond Park in Mrs. Fielden's big, luxurious carriage. She generally drives in a Victoria, and I asked her why she had the landau out this afternoon.
"A whim," said Mrs. Fielden. "I am full of whims."
But of course a landau is the only carriage in which a lame man, who has to sit with his foot up, can put it comfortably on the opposite seat.
We drove onwards, and she stopped the carriage to look at the view from Richmond Hill, and the soft air blew up to us in a manner very cool and refreshing; and then we got out and walked about for a time, and Mrs. Fielden gave me her arm.
"I don't really require an arm," I said, "but I like taking yours."
"It is a very strong arm," said Mrs. Fielden; and she exclaimed quickly, "I believe I am getting fat! My maid tells me all my dresses want altering. I wish it was time to think about beginning to hunt again."
"Do you know," I said, "I always thought, till I got back to England, that my leg had been taken off below the knee, and that I should be able to get astride of a horse again. I never used to see it, of course, when they dressed it; and when I counted up the things I should be able to do, riding was always one of them. I didn't sell my horses till just the other day."
Mrs. Fielden did not sympathize, but one of her silences fell between us. We did not speak again till she began to tell me an amusing story which made us both laugh; but when she was sitting in the carriage, and the footman was helping me in, and we were still laughing, I could have sworn that her eyes looked larger and softer than I have ever seen them.