On Monday I went to see Dr. Fergus about my leg, and did not get a very good report of it.
We returned from Clarkham on one of the hottest days I ever remember, and found Mrs. Fielden waiting for us in the hall.
"Every one seems to have come over to hear about your London visit," said Mrs. Fielden lightly, "for I found Mr. Ellicomb and Maud Jamieson here when I came in."
She began pouring out tea for us both as she spoke, and she signalled something to Palestrina, who replied as she stooped down to cut some cake, "Another operation—yes, four or five weeks in bed at least."
"I sent Maud and Mr. Ellicomb home together," said Mrs. Fielden, smiling. "He, poor man, is in a great state of mental perturbation, for it seems that he has heard that in South Africa pigs are fed upon arum lilies, and that so delicate is the flesh of the pork thus produced that some flower-growers in the Channel Isles are cultivating arum lilies for the purpose of feeding pigs, and to produce the same delicious pork. He was so agitated that he got up from his chair and walked up and down the room, repeating over and over again, 'Arum-fed pork! Monstrous, monstrous!' I really did not know how to comfort him, so I sent him home with Maud Jamieson, which seemed to please him very much."
"And you," I said, "following the Jamieson train of thought, have been saying to yourself ever since, 'Is there anything in it?'"
"She certainly had a soothing effect upon him," said Mrs. Fielden.
"Then," said I, "the second stage has been reached. When all the Jamiesons are married, I think I shall feel that romance is over."
"I know they have been to tea at the farm," said Mrs. Fielden, "because Mr. Ellicomb talked so much about his blue china, and Maud said a woman's hand was needed in the house."
"I wonder," I said, "what will be the special objection that Maud will raise when she becomes engaged to Mr. Ellicomb? He is not called Albert; he does not wear a white watered-silk waistcoat; his hair is certainly his own; and his mother is dead, so it cannot be said that he too closely resembles her."
One of the objections raised by Maud to a candidate for her hand, was that he was far too like his mother—a really delightful woman—but Maud declared, with tears, that she could never really look up to a man who was so like his mamma.
"At present," said Mrs. Fielden, "the blue china seems to be all in his favour; but one cannot feel sure that it will not be an obstacle later on, or Mr. Ellicomb's High Church principles, perhaps, may prove a deterrent to her ideas of perfect happiness."
"I wish," said Palestrina, "that Margaret's affairs were more settled. This summer has been a trying one for her."
"Oh, I forgot to tell you," said Mrs. Fielden, "that that was one of Maud's reasons for coming over to see you. She told me that Mr. Swinnerton is coming to pay them a visit. He has written, it seems, to make the offer himself, and Maud says she thinks it will be all right now."
Mrs. Fielden was in one of her most light-hearted moods. After the heat of the day there came a delightful coolness, and she stayed chatting till nearly dinner-time, and then decided that she would remain to dinner if we should ask her to do so.
"I have three dear old sisters-in-law staying with me," said Mrs. Fielden, "and they will doubtless drag all the ponds for my body."
"Won't they be anxious about you?" asked Palestrina.
"Perhaps," said Mrs. Fielden, raising her pretty eyebrows in the old affected way; "but then they will appreciate me so much more when I come back to them from the grave."
We sat out on the lawn after dinner till it was quite dark, and only Mrs. Fielden's white dress was visible in the gloom. For some reason best known to herself she put off her wilful mood out there in the gloom of the garden. She was not regal, not even amusing, only charming and full of a lovely kindness. Half the conversation between her and Palestrina began with the words, "Do you remember?" as they recalled old jokes and stories. Then her ever-present gaiety broke out again, and she laughed and said: "I believe I am becoming reminiscent. Why doesn't some one sit upon me, or tell me they will order the carriage for me if I really must go? But it is heavenly here in the cool—and in heaven, you know, we shall probably all be reminiscent."
Ten o'clock struck from the tower of the church down below in the village, and Mrs. Fielden said that now she really must go, or she would find the sisters-in-law saying a Requiem Mass for her; and Palestrina went indoors to order the carriage.
"To-morrow," I said, "I am going to have my last dissipation. I am going to the Traceys' tea-party."
"I am certainly going too," said Mrs. Fielden. "I believe I am getting as gay as the Miss Traceys themselves, though I can't help remarking that no one who goes to these tea-parties ever seems to be amused when they get there."
"Judging from my own standard of what I find amusing," I said, "I should be inclined to say that Stowel never enjoys itself extravagantly. Our neighbours never refuse invitations to even the smallest party; but the pleasure that they get from them, if it exists at all, is carefully concealed."
"I have felt that myself," said Mrs. Fielden. "I really don't begin to enjoy them till I get home."
"I believe you always enjoy yourself," I said resentfully.
After a little time Mrs. Fielden said wistfully, "You don't think there is only a certain amount of happiness in the world, do you, Hugo? And that if one person gets a great deal, it means that another will get less?"
She asks one questions in this way sometimes, as though one were a superior being who could dispel her perplexities for her.
"Probably," I said, "you know ten thousand times more about the subject than I do. You are happy, and I philosophize about it. Tell me which of us is most fitted to give a lecture on the subject?"
I thought Mrs. Fielden was going to say something after that, for she stretched out her hand in a certain impulsive way she has got, and gave mine just one moment's friendly pressure in the dark. And then Palestrina came back to say the carriage was at the door, and Mrs. Fielden said "Good-night."
I remember two things about the Miss Traceys' party—first, that Mrs. Fielden was not there, for one of the old sisters-in-law was ill suddenly, and she could not leave her; and the other thing I remember about it is that it was the last occasion on which I ever saw Margaret Jamieson look pretty.
There have been some strange innovations in tea-parties ever since Mrs. Taylor gave hers to meet The Uncle, and sent out visiting-cards instead of notes. Instead of having tea in the dining-room, all sitting round the table, as used to be the custom, it seems that dressing-tables are often brought down from upstairs and extended across the window. These are covered with white tablecloths, and behind them two maids stand and wait. The dressing-tables are called the "buffet," and both tea and coffee are provided, suggesting the elegance and savour of London refreshments. This is distinctly pleasing, though it is felt that a single cup of tea drunk while standing has not got the comfort of former old-fashioned days. Miss Belinda lives on at the little cottage with the green gate; and through the kindness of the General a lady has been found to wait upon her, and take her out to these small gaieties which she loves, and she sits shaking her poor, weak head, and muttering, "Glory, glory, glory!" It does not occur to her to stay at home during her period of mourning, and it is acknowledged on all sides that she does not miss Lydia much. The General has not come to stay with the Taylors again. In a long letter which he wrote to me after he left he said he would probably never come back to the place, and at the same time he thanked me in courteous, old-fashioned phraseology for being with him through what he called "one of the dark days that come sometimes." He would never see Miss Belinda, in spite of the many kind things he did for her; and I always feel that he resented the poor creature's long illness and weak, silly ways—which was only natural, no doubt.
The Vicar was present at his sisters' tea-party, "although," as Miss Ruby explained to me, "it is not as though this were an evening entertainment. My sister and I often give these little routs without him. Still, a gentleman is always something of an ornament at a party."
There were seven Jamiesons present, and two of them, Margaret and Maud, offered, in their usual friendly way, to walk home with Palestrina and me. Maud, one feels sure, engaged Palestrina in confidences directly; and Margaret whispered in a shy way to me, "Do you mind coming round by the post-office? I am expecting a letter." So we walked round by the High Street, and Margaret told me that Tudor had had to give up his visit to them, but that he was writing.
So we went into the post-office, and Margaret had her letter handed to her across the counter by the post-mistress, upon whom she bestowed a radiant smile. When we got outside she opened it and read it without a word; and then, quite suddenly, she gave a cry as though some one had struck her, and she handed the letter to me, and said, "Oh, Hugo, read it!" And I read:—
"I am sure you will be surprised when I tell you that I am going to be married; it will explain to you why it was that I was unable to fulfil my promise to come to see you. But sudden though my engagement to Miss Lloyd has been—very sudden, much more sudden indeed than I ever felt that such a serious step as marriage would be undertaken by me—I cannot but feel that it is for my happiness. Some day I hope you will make Miss Lloyd's acquaintance; she is staying with my mother just now, and she is already a great favourite. I cannot but feel that having seen so much of you and of your family last summer, and during your stay in London, that I may have raised expectations which I find myself unable to fulfil; but I am quite sure that a man's first duty is to himself in these matters, and that he should not undertake matrimony until he is thoroughly convinced it is for his happiness. Had I not met Miss Lloyd, I may say that my intentions to you were of the most serious nature, and I know that I have the power in me to make any girl happy. We shall live with my mother for the first year, and then I hope to settle somewhere near London, where it will be nice for me to get into the fresh air after my work in the City.
"Yours very truly,"TUDOR SWINNERTON.
"P.S.—Miss Lloyd and I are to be married next month in St. Luke's Church, quite near here."
I handed the letter back to Margaret, and we never spoke the whole way home. And that was the last day I ever saw Margaret Jamieson look pretty.
After the operation on my leg, I was laid up for a long time, and when I got about again, Palestrina and Thomas were married. Thomas has lately come into his kingdom in the shape of a lordly castle in Scotland, and for the life of me I can't say whether or not Palestrina hastened her wedding because the doctor ordered me to the North. If it was so, my sister's plans were frustrated by the fact that Thomas's ancient Scottish seat was pronounced uninhabitable by a sanitary surveyor, just as we proposed entering it under garlanded archways and mottoes on red cotton. Our old friend Mrs. Macdonald, hearing of our dilemma, very kindly invited us to stay with her while Palestrina and Thomas looked about for some little house that would take us in till their own place should be ready. The finding of the little house occupied some days, owing to the powers of imagination displayed by people when describing their property. One lady, to whom Palestrina wrote to ask if her house were to be let, replied, "Yes, madam; this dear, delightful, pretty house is to let;" and she pointed out in a letter, some four pages long, all the advantages that would accrue to us if we took it, ending up with the suggestion, subtly conveyed, that by taking the house we should be turning her into the street, but that she would bear this indignity in consideration of receiving ten guineas a week.
Palestrina went to see it, and returned in the evening, almost in tears, to say that the house was a semi-detached villa, and that she had found the week's washing spread out on the front lawn.
Thomas said that the railway companies ought to pay a percentage on all misleading advertisements which induce people to make these useless journeys.
The following day they returned from another fruitless expedition, having been to see a very small house owned by the widow of a sea-captain, with a strong Scottish accent. I have often noticed that the seafaring man's one idea of well-invested capital is house property—perhaps he alone knows how precarious is the life of the sea. And I shall like to meet the sailor who has invested his money in a shipping concern. The widow's house was so very small that it was almost impossible to believe that it contained the ten bedrooms as advertised in my sister's well-worn house-list. So small indeed were the rooms, that Palestrina said she felt sure that they must have been originally intended for cupboards. Nevertheless, the rent of the house was very high, and my sister ventured gently to hint this to the lady of the house—the sea-captain's widow with the strong Scottish accent.
"Of course, it is a very nice house," she said politely; "but the rent is a little more than we thought of paying for a house of this size."
"I ken it's mair than the hoose is worth," said the old dame; "but, ye see, I'm that fond o' money—aye, I'm fearfu' fond o' money."
Palestrina and Thomas spent most of their days in their search for a suitable house, and Mrs. Macdonald spends the greater part of her life house-keeping, so I was rather bored. What it actually is that occupies my hostess during the hours she spends in the back regions of her house I have never been able to discover. But the fact remains that we have to get up unusually early in the morning to allow time for Mrs. Macdonald's absorbing occupation. An old-fashioned Scotswoman of my acquaintance used to refuse all invitations to leave the house on Thursdays, because, as she explained, "I keep Thursdays for my creestal and my napery." The rest of her week, however, was comparatively free. At Mrs. Macdonald's, housekeeping is never over. And so systematic are the rules and regulations of the house, so many and so various are the lady's keys, that one finds one's self wondering if the rules of a prison or a workhouse can be more strict. TheTimesnewspaper arrives every evening after dinner; by lunch-time next day it is locked away in a cabinet, so that if one has not read the news by two o'clock, one must ask Mrs. Macdonald for the keys; this she does quite good-naturedly, but I have never discovered why old newspapers should be kept with so much care. On Saturdays an old man from the village comes in to do a little extra tidying-up in the garden. At nine o'clock precisely, Mrs. Macdonald is on the doorstep of her house, with a cup of tea in her hand, and a brisk, kindly greeting for John, and she stands over the old man while he drinks his tea, and then returns with the empty cup to the house.
Tuesday is the day on which her drawing-room is cleaned. At half-past nine precisely on Monday evenings Mrs. Macdonald says, "Monday, you know, is our early-closing night;" and she fetches you a candle and dispatches you to bed. Mrs. Macdonald and her housemaid—there seem to be plenty of servants to do the work of the house—walk the whole of the drawing-room furniture into the hall, Mrs. Macdonald loops up the curtains herself, and covers some appalling pictures and the mantelpiece ornaments with dust-sheets. At ten o'clock she removes a pair of housemaid's gloves, and an apron which she has donned for the occasion, and says, "There! that's all ready for Tuesday's cleaning;" and she briskly bids her housemaid good-night.
On Tuesdays we are not allowed to enter the drawing-room all day, and on Wednesdays the same restrictions are placed upon the dining-room. Indeed, on no day in the week is the whole of the house available, and upon no morning of the week has Mrs. Macdonald a spare moment to herself. After breakfast, when Palestrina and Thomas have gone, she conducts me to the morning-room, and placing theScotsman(theScotsmanis used for lighting the fires, and is formally handed to the housemaid at six o'clock in the evening) by my chair, she says, "I hope you will be all right," and shuts the door upon me. During the morning she pops her head in from time to time, like an attentive guard who has been told to look after a lady on a journey, and nodding briskly from the door, she asks, "Are you all right? Sure you would not like milk or anything?" and then disappears again. With a little stretch of imagination one can almost believe that the green flag has been raised to the engine-driver, and that the train is moving off. At lunch-time she is so busy giving directions to her servants that she hardly ever hears what one says, and the most interesting piece of news is met with the somewhat irrelevant reply, "The bread-sauce, please, Jane, and then the cauliflower." Turning to one, she explains, "I always train my servants myself.... What were you saying just now?"
"I saw in the newspaper this morning," I repeat, "that H.M.S. —— has foundered with all hands."
"In the middle of the table, if you please," says Mrs. Macdonald; "and then the coffee with the crystallized sugar—not the brown—and open the drawing-room windows when you have finished tidying there.... What were you saying? How sad these things are!"
The house is charmingly situated, with a most beautiful view over river and hills; but I really think my preoccupied friend hardly ever has time to look out of the window, and that to her the interior of a store-cupboard with neatly-filled shelves is more beautiful than anything which the realms of Nature can offer.
When Palestrina is present Mrs. Macdonald gives her recipes for making puddings and for taking stains out of carpets, and she advises her about spring-cleanings and the proper sifting of ashes at the back door. Mrs. Macdonald was brought up in the old days, when a young lady's training and education were frankly admitted to be a training for her as a wife. She belonged to the period when a girl with a taste for music was encouraged to practise "so that some day you may be able to play to your husband in the evenings, my dear," and was advised to be an early riser so that the house might be comfortable and in order when her husband should descend to breakfast. And now that that husband, having been duly administered to, is dead, Mrs. Macdonald's homely talents, once the means to an end, have resolved themselves into an end, a finality of effort. Mrs. Macdonald was brought up to be a housekeeper, and she remains a housekeeper, and jam-pots and preserving-pans form the boundary line of her life and the limit of her horizon.
Eliza Jamieson would probably tell us that even though Mrs. Macdonald's soups and preserves are excellent, these culinary efforts should not be the highest things required of a wife by her husband, and that therefore they are not a wife's highest duty, even during the time that her husband remains with her. And she would probably point out that servants and weekly bills, and an endeavour to render this creature complacent, have ruined many a woman's life. And I laugh as I think of Palestrina's rejoinder, "But then it is so much pleasanter when they are complacent."
One certainly imagined that the late Mr. Macdonald must have been well looked after during his life, and it was something of a shock to me to hear the account of his death, from the lodgekeeper's wife, one afternoon when she had come in to help with the cleaning, and was arranging my dressing-table for me. The rest of my bedroom furniture was then standing in the passage, and I had found my cap in one of the spare bedrooms, and all the boots of the house in the hall.
"He was a rale decent gentleman," said Mrs. Gemmil, "and awfy patient with the cleaning. But I am sure whiles I was sorry for him. He was shuftit and shuftit, and never knew in the morn whichna bed in the hoose he would be sleeping in at nicht. And we a' ken that it was the spring-cleaning, when he was pit to sleep ower the stables, that was, under Providence, the death o' him. He had aye to cross ower in the wat at nicht-time, and he juist took a pair o' cauld feet, and they settled on his lungs."
The day following my chat with Mrs. Gemmil was the day Palestrina found a house such as she had been looking for all along. The day was Saturday. Overnight she had announced her intention of being away all day, and Mrs. Macdonald had said delightedly that that would suit her admirably. "I do like the servants to have the entire day for the passages on Saturday," she remarked.
Even when the day dawned wet and cloudy, Palestrina had not the courage to suggest that she should stay at home, and thereby interfere with the cleaning of the passages.
The house she had found seemed to be everything that was desirable, and Palestrina returned in an elated frame of mind. "It is far away from everything," she said, "except the village people and the minister, and the 'big hoose,' as they call it, which some English bodies have rented for the autumn."
"It can't be far from the Melfords," said Thomas, pulling out a map. "Yes, I thought so; they are just the other side of the loch."
"We 'mussed the connaketion' on our way back," said Palestrina; "and I do believe there's nothing a Scottish porter enjoys telling one so much as this."
"I hope I am not unduly disparaging the railway system of my native land," said Thomas, "when I say that if you go by steamer and by train it is the remark that usually greets one, and it is always made in a tone of humorous satisfaction." And Thomas, with an exaggerated Scottish accent, which he does uncommonly well, began to tell me of their adventures. "We had a rush for the train," he said, "and I told an elderly Scot, who couldn't have hurried if he had had a mad bull behind him, to run and get us two first-class tickets. He walked slowly down the platform, muttering, 'Furrst, furrst,' and then he opened the door of a third-class carriage and shoved us in, saying, 'Ye've no occasion to travel furrst when there's plenty of room in the thurrds.'"
To get to the house one takes a steamer to the head of the loch, and from there old Hughie drives one in the coach, and deposits one at the cross-roads where the turf, short and green, is cut into the shape of a heart. On this green heart, in the old days, the girls and men of the glen were married. They stood side by side on the upper part of the heart, which is indented, and the minister stood at the point and wedded the pair. Here one leaves the coach, and a "machine" must take one on to the little house. A red creeper grows up its white walls, and from the terrace in front of the house one looks down upon the little Presbyterian church and the village, and these in their turn look on to the loch and the hills on the other side.
The people in the village afford one a good deal of amusement, but we have observed that the conversation is always about theology or the Royal Family. There is one story of the late Queen and the crown of Scotland which I have heard repeated many times with the utmost gravity in the Highlands.
"A gran' wumman," say the old villagers, "but we were no gaein' tae gie her the croon o' Scotland. Na, na. She would hae liked fine tae hev gotten it, but we were no gaein' tae gie her the croon o' Scotland. Ye'll mind when she went tae Scotland, it was the foremost thing that she spiered tae see. And when they showed it tae her, 'I would like fine tae pit it on ma heid,' said she. But they said 'No.' And syne she says, 'Wad ye no let me haud it in ma haund?' But they say 'No.' 'Weel,' she says, 'juist haud it aboon ma heid, and let me staun' underneath it.' But they said, 'No.'"
The villagers formed our only society until Evan Sinclair's tenants, who were known as "the folk at the big hoose," came to call upon us. It was very difficult indeed, and for some time we could hardly believe that these were the Finlaysons whom we had met at Clarkham, and who, we now remembered, had told us that they were going to take a place in Scotland. The change in the Finlaysons is startling and complete. It has taken them exactly two months to become Highlanders, and it is not too much to affirm that now the whole family may be said to reek of tartan. Only Mrs. Finlayson is unaffected by her life in the Highlands, although she says that she knows it is fashionable to be Scottish. "And so written up as it is at present," she adds; "and all the best people taking the deer-moors. Papa and the girls think all the world of Scotland. But no one can say it is comfortable, I'm sure."
The Finlaysons have a piper, and young Mr. Finlayson wears a kilt, and I think they are, without exception, the most strenuous supporters of Scottish customs I have ever met. The young ladies, who had always been associated in our mind with silk dresses and thin shoes, came to call clad in the very shortest and roughest tweed skirts that I have ever seen; and old Mr. Finlayson, whose mother was a Robinson, has discovered that that is pretty much the same as being a Robertson, and that therefore, in some mysterious way, he is entitled to wear the Macdonald tartan. They asked us to tea in a very polite and friendly way, and the old rooms were shown off to us with a good deal of pride. The architecture of the house seemed to throw a reflected glory on Mr. Finlayson.
"Pure Early Scottish," he said, pointing to the tall narrow windows with their shelving ledges.
"So dangerous," said Mrs. Finlayson, "for the servants cleaning the windows."
The drawing-room vases were all filled with heather, and the room smelt of damp dog and herrings. The Miss Finlaysons came in to tea in thick skirts and brogues, and they wore tartan tam-o'-shanters very becomingly placed upon their heads, and affixed to their hair with ornamental bonnet-pins. They ate cake with damp red hands, and seemed to pride themselves upon the fish-scales which still clung to their skirts, and imparted the rather unpleasant odour which I noticed in the room. Young Finlayson in his kilt showed a great expanse of red knee, and told tales of remarks made to him by the boatmen, which he considered equal to anything in Ian Maclaren's books.
Mrs. Finlayson took us out after tea to see the garden and tennis-court and the game-larder. "I always like a walled garden," she said; "it is so stylish." Mr. Finlayson found a reflected glory even in the loch and the hills, and he waved his fat hand towards them, and said: "We are able to do you a nice bit of view here, aren't we?"
"I tell papa," said Mrs. Finlayson, "that he will ruin the girls for anything else after this. The only thing we regret is the want of society. However, a few of the best people round about have called, and we are giving quite an informal little dinner-party to-morrow night."
Mrs. Finlayson then invited us to dinner, and when we hesitated, on the plea that we should have one or two friends with us, Mrs. Finlayson, in the most hospitable manner possible, said that she always had a "profusion on their own table," so there was nothing for it but to accept her invitation.
The dinner was one of those rather purposeless feasts which are given in the country, and the Finlaysons' neighbours who had been bidden to it bore upon their faces the peculiarly homeless look which one observes in the expressions of one's men friends especially, when they go out to a rural dinner—the look that says as plainly as possible that they are moving about in worlds not realized nor found particularly comfortable, and that they would infinitely prefer their own armchairs at home.
The minister took Palestrina in to dinner, and occupied himself throughout the evening by putting the most searching questions to her of an inquisitive nature. He asked how many servants we had, whether we were satisfied with our cook, where we came from, and why we had come. And he did it all with such keen interest and intelligence that Palestrina admitted that she really had felt flattered rather than provoked. His friend Evan Sinclair, who, having let his house to the Finlaysons, is living on a little farm close by, contradicted everything that the minister said, and the two quarrelled the whole evening.
Old Tyne Drum, who lives a good many miles away, but who with his wife had already been to call upon us, brewed himself the very largest glasses of whisky-toddy that I have ever seen, even on a big night at mess, and he proposed healths and drank the steaming mixture throughout dinner in a very commendable national spirit. His piper, who stood behind his chair, refused at last to pour out any further libations, and I heard him mutter to himself, "Ye'll no need tae say that Sandy Macnichol ever helpit ye tae the deil."
Young Finlayson is always very jocose upon the subject of whisky, as befits his ideas about the Highlands; and even the Misses Finlayson, in their faithful loyalty to all things Scottish, were quite pleased with Tyne Drum's performance, and would have scorned to look as though a whisky-drinking laird was a novelty to them.
Mrs. Finlayson told Thomas, in a very severe manner, and in her platform voice which I always find so impressive, that she considered intemperance a sin, but that that was what came of all this nonsense about Scotland. She gave him quite a lecture upon the subject, as though he, being Scottish born, was responsible for the old laird's backsliding.
When the unfortunate old gentleman came into the drawing-room to join the ladies and sat down next him, Mrs. Finlayson looked at Thomas as though she thought he was in some sort to blame for this behaviour.
Tyne Drum dropped heavily on to the ottoman, and I heard him say, "Do you know my wife?"
"Yes," replied Thomas. "I have met her several times since we came to the cottage."
"Hoo old should ye think she was?" (Tyne Drum is always broadly Doric in his speech.) Thomas calculated that the lady must be a long way the wrong side of sixty, and humbly suggested that she might perhaps be forty-five.
"Presairve us!" said the Laird. "This lad here says my wife is forty-five!" He began to sob bitterly, and, putting his handkerchief to his eyes, cried, "My pretty wee Jeannie, my bonnie wee wife, wha daurs tae say ye was forty-five!"
Thomas was so sorry for him and for what he had done that he did his best to cheer him up by telling him that what he had meant to say was twenty-five; but Tyne Drum was inconsolable, and went to sleep with the tear-drops on his cheeks.
When we got home in the evening Palestrina said, "We are far behind the Finlaysons in all things Scottish. I shall buy a Harris tweed skirt, and you and Thomas must buy something too." So we drove down in the coach to the ferry on a very wet and windy day to cross over to the "toon."
Our place on the coach was shared with a Scot, who was the most truculent defender of the Free Kirk I have ever met. He argued every single point of his creed, and became quite abusive at last, as he denounced the "Established" and all who belong to it.
The wind was high as we drove in the coach, and the rain fell heavily once or twice, but the voice of the gentleman rose higher and higher as the rain descended. Hughie, the coachman, chided him with no stint of words, and at every burst of eloquence on the passenger's part he remarked, "Anither worrd, and I'll pit ye in the ditch!"
This method of treating the argumentative passenger suggested the possibility of the coach being overturned in order to punish him, and Palestrina grew alarmed.
"I do hope," she said to Hughie, "that you will remember that we are not all Wee Frees, and that therefore we do not all require the same treatment meted out to us."
The guard at the back of the coach here showed his head over the pile of boxes covered with tarpaulin on the roof, and called out, "Pit him inside the coach wi' Mrs. Macfadyen, and she'll sort him! She'll gie him the Gaelic!"
Hughie chuckled and remarked, "Ay, she's the gran' wumman wi' her tongue!" And during the rest of the drive his threats to the eloquent passenger took the form of, "Anither worrd, and I'll pit ye in wi' Mrs. Macfadyen!"
There was a marked improvement in our friend's behaviour after this. He was in great difficulties when he came to get into the ferry-boat. It was easy enough to throw his first leg over the side while holding on by a thole-pin, but the balance required to convey the remaining limb into the boat was quite out of his power. And having made one or two ineffectual hops on the beach with the shore-loving member, he turned to the boatmen, and said gravely,—
"Lift in my leg, Angus! Juist gie me a hand wi' ma last leg!"
Palestrina chose the tweed for our coats and her skirt, and then we walked up to the Castle and called on the Melfords, who told us that Mrs. Fielden was coming to stay with them. They sang her praises, as most people do; she has heaps of friends. Then Palestrina did some shopping at the "flesher's" and the baker's, and we went down to the ferry again—a boy behind us laden with queer-looking parcels containing provisions, and Alloa yarn to knit into stockings, and paper-bags with ginger-bread cakes in them. When we got in and sat down under the brown sail of the heavy boat, the two sailors remained in their places, and did not show the least sign of getting under way. Thomas said to the elder of the two men, a fine old fellow with a face such as one connects with stories of the Covenanters,—
"Why don't you get off?"
And the old man replied unmoved, "I'm waiting for the Lord."
Palestrina, who is sympathetic in every matter, put on an expression of deep religious feeling, and we thought of the Irvingites, and wished that we had Eliza Jamieson with us "to look it up." As far as we knew, the Irvingites wait to perform every action until inspired to perform it. We had heard that in the smallest matter, such as beginning to eat their dinner, they will wait until this inspiration, as I suppose one must call it, is given to them. The question then arose, how long would it be before we would be likely to get under way? The two sailors sat on without moving, and the elder of them cut a wedge of tobacco and was filling his pipe, preparing to smoke. We wondered if the Irvingites often waited for an inspiration in this contented way. The big red-funnelled steamer from Greenock was, meanwhile, preparing to depart. It had poured its daily output of tourists for their half-hour's run in the town, which time they employ in buying mementoes of the place, and we had hurried down to the sailing-boat to escape this influx.
Thomas endeavoured to assist inspiration by saying it didn't seem much use waiting any longer, and that as time was getting on, did not our friend (the gray-bearded Covenanter) think that it was time to be moving? The Covenanter wrinkled up his nose, which already was a good deal wrinkled, and gazed upwards at the sail, or, as we interpreted it, to Heaven. Palestrina pressed Thomas's hand, and said gently, "Don't urge him, dear; we shall get off in time." And the younger sailor said, "We are waiting for the Lord." So we knew that they were both Irvingites, and the only scepticism that intruded itself upon us was this: Suppose inspiration never came, how should we get home?
The steamer now began to move away from the pier, with a great churning and hissing of water, and seething white foam fizzing round the staples of the pier. A band began to play on board, and the paddles broke the water with a fine sweep. Two youngsters on shore, to whom "the stimmer" is a daily excitement, then called out in shrill, high voices, "There's the Lord! She's aff!"
TheLord of the Isleshad moved off on her return journey to Greenock, and the notes on Scottish religion which Palestrina was carefully preparing were hastily destroyed. TheLordhad departed, and we sailed across the loch without waiting any longer.
When we got home, we found the minister awaiting us in the drawing-room, he having suggested that as we were not at home, he had better stay till our return. I found out, in the course of conversation, that he is a distant relation of old Captain Jamieson—the Jamiesons' father—so we had quite a long talk about our friends. The minister is one of those Scots whose national characteristics are always stronger than individual character. Take away his nationality from him, and Mr. Macorquodale would be nothing at all. His qualities being entirely Scottish, it is only logical to assume that if Mr. Macorquodale were not Scottish, he would be non-existent.
Palestrina came out on to the little terrace where we were sitting, and I explained to her that the minister was a cousin of the Jamiesons.
"How interesting!" said Palestrina in her usual kind way.
"Why?" said the minister. He has sandy hair and very round gray eyes, and looks like a football player.
"Oh, I don't know," said my sister; "it's always interesting, isn't it, to find that people are related?"
"Every one must have some relations," said Mr. Macorquodale; "and if my choice had been given me, I do not think I should have chosen those five gurrls."
"We like them so much," Palestrina said, smiling.
"Is that the truth?" said Mr. Macorquodale; and she replied firmly that it was.
"Um umph!" he said, as though considering a perfectly new problem, and then added: "Well, each man to his taste. How many of them have got husbands?"
I replied that Kate was married and Gracie engaged.
"Gracie?" said the minister simply. "Was that the one with a nose like a scone?"
We considered Grade's nose silently for a moment, and then admitted that perhaps the simile was not unjust.
"How did she get him?" said the minister presently.
The minister has a curious way of eating, which fascinates one to look at, while all the time there is a distinct feeling that an accident may happen at any moment. When tea was brought out he accepted some, and filled his mouth very full of cookie, stowing into it nearly a whole one at a time, and then raised his tea-cup to his lips. He persists in keeping his spoon in his cup as he drinks, and he prevents it from tumbling out by holding it with his thumb. A long draught of tea is then partaken of with a gurgling sound, and the minister swallows audibly. It is almost impossible to prevent one's self watching this process of eating and drinking during the whole of tea-time. For it seems so uncertain whether the spoon will remain in its place, and the cookie and the tea.
The minister is a very young man, with the pugnacity of an Edinburgh High School boy, and with the awful truthfulness which distinguishes his nation, but which is accentuated in such an alarming degree in a minister of the Kirk.
"I sent Kate a scent-bottle when she married," he remarked. "I won it at a bazaar for sixpence, so it was not expensive. I don't disapprove of raffles," he added, although he had not been asked for this piece of information—"that is, if ladies do not cheat over it, as they often do." Palestrina bristled at the insinuation, and the minister consoled her by saying: "Women sin in such wee ways—that's what I can't understand about them. However," he said, "I have never known a woman steal a thing yet that a man has not reaped some benefit by it. I can quote authority for my views from Adam and Eve downwards, to the newspapers of yesterday. I am engaged to be married myself, and I find the subject of feminine ethics absorbing. Good-bye," he said presently; "I hope you will not be disappointed with the clothes I hear you've ordered."
Alas! the tweed coat and skirt in which my sister hoped to rival the Miss Finlaysons proved an utter misfit, and she drove round the loch on the following day to take the garments back. Palestrina had prepared a severe reprimand for the tailor, but the old man took the wind out of her sails by stopping in amazement at the first word of annoyance which she uttered, and standing in the middle of the little fitting-room, with a yellow tape measure round his neck, and a piece of chalk in his hand, he shook his gray beard at us with something of apostolic fervour, and thus addressed us:—
"I'm amazed at ye! Do ye ever consider the system of planets, and that this world is one of the lesser points of light in space, and that even here there are countless millions of human beings, full of great resolves and high purposes. Get outside yourselves, ladies and gentlemen, and realize in the magnitude of the universe, and the immeasurable majesty of the planetary system, how small a thing is the ill-fit of a jacket."
We felt much humbled, Palestrina and I. And it was only when we were driving home afterwards that it even dimly suggested itself to us that we had right on our side at all. "After all," Palestrina said, "the coats did not fit; I really do not think he need have lectured us so severely."
At the time, however, I confess that our feelings were distinctly apologetic.
One wonders how a tailor who advanced the planetary system as a reproof to complaining customers would get on in London, and one realizes that English people have a great deal still to learn.
When Mrs. Fielden came to stay at the Melfords we saw a good deal of her. Their yacht used to steam up in the early morning, and they would take us off for a day's cruise on the loch or for a trip round to Oban. Mrs. Fielden used to sit on deck with a big red umbrella over her head and a white yachting gown on, and seemed serenely unconscious that she was looking very pretty and very smart. My sister tells me she never feels badly dressed till she meets Mrs. Fielden.
The Melfords have very pleasant people stopping with them always, and there are very jolly little parties on board their yacht. Mrs. Fielden, however, is in her most provoking and wilful mood. Every day it is the same thing—laughter and smiles for every one. But she has absolutely no heart. All the beautiful, kindly things she does are only the whim of the moment. They bespeak a generous nature, as easily moved to tears as to laughter; but she loves every one a little, and probably has no depth of affection or constancy in her. Lately, she has added another provoking habit to the many she already possesses. She exaggerates her pretence of having no memory, and indeed it may be she has not any.
When I left home, rather a wreck as regards health, and drove to the station in Mrs. Fielden's luxurious carriage, it was her hand that piled the cushions, as no one else can, behind me. And the last thing I saw was her smile as she waved her hand to me from my own door.
Last week, when we met again at the Melfords', she nodded to me in a little indifferent sort of way. She sat under a big cedar-tree on one of the lawns, and laughed, and talked a sort of brilliant nonsense the whole afternoon.
By-and-by I said to her—probably clumsily, certainly at the wrong time—"I never half thanked you for being so good to me when I was ill;" for she had come in like some radiant vision, day after day, in her beautiful summer gowns and rose-garlanded hats, and had sat by my couch, reading to me sometimes, talking to me at others in a voice as gentle as a dove's. Why will she not allow one to admire her? One only wants to do so humbly and at a distance. It was so pleasant up here in the Highlands, with the dear memory of those long days to look back upon. But Mrs. Fielden ruthlessly robbed me and sent me away empty the very first day of our meeting.
"Was I kind to you? I don't believe I was, really. If I was, I'm sure I forget all about it. Let me see, how long were you ill? It can't have been a bit amusing for you," and so on, laughing at my dull face and serious ways.
And this has gone on for a whole week. At the Melfords' parties she selects, quite indiscriminately, and in a royal way which she has, this man or that to be her escort or her companion. Now it is a mere boy whom she bewilders with a few of her radiant smiles, and now one of her elderly colonels whom she reduces to a state of abject admiration in a few hours. One man goes fishing with her, and another rows her on the loch. A third, hearing that Mrs. Fielden's life will be a blank if she does not possess a certain rare fern which may be found sometimes on the hillsides of Scotland, spends a whole day scrambling about looking for it, and returns triumphant in the evening. Mrs. Fielden has forgotten that she ever wanted it. When we sulk she does not notice it. When her colonels offer her their fatuous admiration she goes to sleep, and then, waking up, is so very, very sorry. "But you can't have amused me properly," she says, "or I should have stayed awake." When any one tries by avoiding her to show displeasure, Mrs. Fielden is oblivious of the fact. And when the penitence and boredom which immediately ensue when one has deprived Mrs. Fielden of one's company have led to ending the one-sided quarrel with an apology, it is only to find that Mrs. Fielden has been blissfully unconscious of one's absence. Summer and the air of the Highlands seem to be in her veins. Her happiness, like the quality of mercy, is twice blessed, making her, through her talent for enjoyment, diffuse something beautiful and gay about her.
After all, why should she care? Life was evidently made to give her pleasure. Why should a woman always be blamed for being loved? Mrs. Fielden's charm is of the irresponsible sort. To live and to be lovely are all one ought to demand of her, and at least she is without vanity. She seems to be entirely unconscious of the admiration she receives, or perhaps she is simply indifferent to it.
The Melfords adore her, and allow her to see it. They say no one knows her as they do. Probably we all feel that. This is one of Mrs. Fielden's most maddening charms. We have all found something in her that seems to belong to ourselves alone.
Lately I have discovered that she loves to wander up the hillside by herself, and listen to the plover's solitary cry, and sit in the sunshine with no companion near her. And one wonders why so frivolous a woman should care for this, and why when she comes back amongst us again her eyes should wear the wistful look which covers them like a veil sometimes.
When she left the Melfords' Palestrina asked her to come and stay with us; and rather to my surprise, Mrs. Fielden came. It seems to me she must find us a very dull lot after the Melfords' cheery house-parties. She arrived late one afternoon in the yacht, and the whole party came up to dine with us before returning to the castle. The little house was taxed to its utmost capacity, even to provide teacups for our guests. But the Melfords have a happy knack of seeming to find pleasure in everything. Mrs. Fielden's gaiety was infectious, and her lightheartedness knocked all one's serious world to pieces, while her beauty seemed almost extravagant in the plain setting of the little house.
She began to give us some of her experiences in Scotland. "Do you know," she said, putting on a charming gravity and lifting her eyebrows in a provoking, childish way, "that every single person in Scotland gets up at five o'clock in the morning? and all the coaches and excursions start at daybreak, and when you want to hit off what they call a 'connection' anywhere, you have to get up in the middle of the night?"
"I am afraid you had a horribly early start to join the yacht the other day," said Lord Melford, "but it was the only way we could manage to get to the Oban Gathering in time."
"I was there before you," said Mrs. Fielden; "and I had to rouse up the people at the inn to take me in and give me breakfast. Even they were not up at that hour! But after ringing twice, such a nice boots came and opened the door to me, and brought me some breakfast."
"The gathering was very good this year," said Lord Melford. "Why didn't some of you come? By-the-bye, your friend Mrs. Macdonald was there. Indeed, it was she who insisted on taking Mrs. Fielden to the Gaelic concert."
"Gaelic is rather an alarming language," said Mrs. Fielden. "I always feel as if I were being sworn at when I hear it."
One of Mrs. Fielden's admirers who had reached the savage and sarcastic stage here interposed, and said: "Poor Mrs. Fielden! I saw you at the concert. How did you manage to sit throughout a whole evening between Mrs. Macdonald and a wall?"
"Mrs. Macdonald is quite a dear!" said Mrs. Fielden. (Whom, in the name of Fortune, would Mrs. Fielden not find charming?)
"I don't know what you and Mrs. Macdonald can have found to talk about," said Palestrina, laughing.
"We discussed the training of servants most of the time," said Mrs. Fielden simply.
Every one laughed; and my sister, with a recollection of our visit to Mrs. Macdonald, said at once, "Did she give you any useful household recipes?"
"It is very odd that you should have asked me that," said Mrs. Fielden. "Do you know, that the whole of to-day I have been puzzling over a letter which I received this morning? I did not know the handwriting, and it was merely headed, 'Two recipes for boiling a ham, as requested.' Now, I cannot really have asked Mrs. Macdonald for recipes for boiling a ham, can I?"
We thought it highly probable that she had done so, and had done it, too, with an air of profound interest; and I think we said this, which Mrs. Fielden did not mind in the least.
"There is something rather horrible, don't you think so," she said, "in knowing how a thing is cooked?"
The minister, who is assiduous in calling, walked up after tea with his friend Evan Sinclair; and as we were already far too large a party for dinner, we asked them to stay too.
Mr. Macorquodale has frequently described himself to us as a grand preacher. He and Evan Sinclair live quite close to each other, and they are friends whose affection is rooted and maintained in warfare. For the minister and Sinclair to meet is one strenuous contest as to who shall have the last word. Politeness is not a strong motive with either of them—indeed, one would imagine that from the first it has been ruled out of place. The friendship and the warfare began at the Edinburgh High School years ago, and both the friendship and the warfare have lasted without intermission ever since. They meet every day, and often twice a day; they fish together, and in the winter they spend every evening with each other. Scottish people seem to have a sneaking liking for those who dislike them, and a certain pity mingled with contempt for those who show them favour and affection. The friendship of Evan and the minister is based upon feelings of the most respectful admiration for their mutual antipathy.
To keep alive this laudable and self-respecting warfare is the highest effort of genius of both Mr. Sinclair and the Reverend Alexander. To foster it they apply themselves to what they call "plain speaking" whenever they meet, and they conceal as much as possible from each other every single good quality that they possess.
The minister, who is a big man, always talks of Evan as "Wee Sinkler," and sneers at "heritors;" and Evan invariably addresses Macorquodale as "Taurbarrels," a name which he considers appropriate to the minister's black clothes and portly figure.
"The minister," said Evan, when he had walked up the hill to see us, "has been reading Josephus. We shall have some erudite learning from the pulpit for the next Sunday or two."
The minister was announced a moment later, and, before taking the trouble to shake hands with us, he looked Evan Sinclair over from top to toe, and remarked, "Ye're very attentive in calling upon ladies."
"I was just talking about your fine preaching," said Evan.
"I admit my gift," said the minister; "but I fear that I very often preach to a deaf adder which stops its ears." He nodded triumphantly at us, and it then occurred to him to shake hands.
Evan said at once that he got a better sleep in kirk on Sundays than he got during the whole of the week.
"Evan Sinclair," said the minister, "if I find you sleeping under me I'll denounce you from my pulpit, as a minister has the right to do."
"And we'll settle it in the graveyard afterwards," said Evan dryly. "And ye're not in very good training, my man."
Palestrina broke in gently to discuss a theological point which had puzzled us for several Sundays. On each Lord's Day as it came round we had prayed that we might become "a little beatle to the Lord." Doubtless the simile is a beautiful one, but its immediate bearing upon our needs was not too grossly evident. And it seemed almost dangerous to those who believe in the efficacy of prayer to put up this petition in its literal sense. We had decided for some time past that we should ask Mr. Macorquodale what it was exactly for which we made petition, when we prayed that we might become "a little beatle to the Lord."
"Similes," said Palestrina in her serious way, "are beautiful sometimes, but we can't quite understand one of the references that you make in your prayers on Sundays."
"We have prayed so fervently," said Mrs. Fielden, "without perhaps entirely understanding the portent of the petition, that we might become 'a little beatle to the Lord.'"
The thing was out now, and our curiosity, we hoped, would be gratified. There was a pause which suggested that our hearers were puzzled, and then Mr. Sinclair put a large pocket-handkerchief into his mouth and roared with laughter, and Mr. Macorquodale turned to my sister, who was trembling now, and remarked in an awful voice that he wondered that we didn't understand plain English.
Of course she apologized, and an explanation came afterwards from Evan Sinclair, who told us that the minister's prayer was that we—the church—might become a little Bethel, and that Beethel was his Doric pronunciation of the word.
It began to rain on Sunday, as it often does in Scotland—Nature itself seems to put on a more serious expression on the Sabbath—and it continued raining for four whole days. The rain came down steadily and mercilessly, shutting out the view of the hills, and turning the whole landscape into a big damp gray blanket. "I suppose," said Mrs. Fielden, who is never affected by bad weather, "that we shall all get very cross and quarrel with each other if the rain continues much longer."
"I think I shall write a number of unnecessary letters to absent friends," said Palestrina. "And Mr. Ellicomb and Sir Anthony Crawshay will arrive to-morrow, and we must tell them to amuse us."
It was a disappointment to find that Mr. Ellicomb's nerves and temper were seriously affected by the weather, and in moments of extreme depression his low spirits vented themselves in a rabid abuse of the Presbyterian Kirk. I cannot understand why Ellicomb should elect to wear a brown velvet shooting-jacket, and a pale-green tie, and neat boots laced half-way up his legs, in Scotland. He went to the village church in the rain on Sunday, and he has not been the same man since.
"Don't call it a church!" he cried as we went homewards up the hill, where the road was a watercourse and each tree poured down moisture. He seemed to think that he had done his soul an irreparable injury by entering a Presbyterian kirk.
Anthony said, "Oh! don't be an ass, Ellicomb." But even on Monday morning poor Ellicomb was still suffering from the weather and the effects of his churchgoing.
"Can he be in love?" said Palestrina; "and if so, as the Jamiesons would say, which is it?"
Palestrina is prettier than ever since her marriage. She still says, "Oh, that will be delightful!" to whatever Thomas and I suggest, and she never seems to have any occupation except to be with us when we want her, and to accede to everything we say, which of course, from a man's point of view, is a very delightful trait in a woman.
"I rather wonder," said Palestrina, "that I have not heard from any of the Jamiesons lately. They are usually such good writers."
"Depend upon it, there is a great bit of news coming," said Thomas. "The Jamiesons always maintain a dramatic silence just before announcing some tremendous piece of intelligence."
Thomas had hardly spoken the words before a telegram was handed to Palestrina, containing the following enigmatical words:—-