"We shall have to ask the engaged couple to dinner," I said to
Palestrina one morning a few days later. "And I suppose one or two
more of the rest of The Family would like to be asked at the same time."
"I never know in what quantities one ought to ask the Jamiesons," said
my sister, "nor how to make a proper selection. It seems invidious to
suggest that Kate and Eliza and Margaret should come, and not Maud and
Gracie; and yet what is one to do? The last time that you were away
from home I wrote and said, 'Will a few of you come?' And Mrs.
Jamieson, the Pirate Boy, and four sisters came."
"One feels sure," I replied, "that the Jamiesons thought that was quite
a modest number to take advantage of your invitation. One knows that
had they been inviting some girls from a boarding-school they would
have included the entire number of pupils."
Palestrina protested that as the meal to which our friends were to come
was dinner, it would be only reasonable to invite the same number of
ladies and gentlemen; and to this I assented. She suggested asking the
Darcey-Jacobs, whom we had not seen for a long time.
Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs is a woman who always affords one considerable
inward amusement, being herself, I believe, more conspicuously devoid
of humour than any one else I have ever met. Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs has
never been known to see a joke. That she herself should appear to any
one in a humorous light would, I know, appear an inconceivable
contingency to her. She has a high Roman nose, and rather faded yellow
hair, which was her principal claim to beauty when a girl. It is even
now thick and long, and is always worn in a sort of majestic coronet on
the top of her head. Her manner is somewhat formidable and emphatic,
and the alarm which this engenders in timid or diffident persons is
increased by the habit she has of accentuating many of her remarks by a
playful but really somewhat severe rap over the knuckles of the person
she is addressing, with her fan or lorgnettes. She dresses handsomely
in expensive materials somewhat gaudy in colour, and she has an erect
carriage, of which she is very proud. Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs has a good
deal to say on the subject of the feeble-mindedness of the male sex,
and when something has been proved impossible of attainment by them she
always says, "A woman could have done it in five minutes."
At the time of her marriage, Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs (Miss Foljambe she was
then) was a dowerless girl with two admirers, Major Jacobs and Mr.
Morgan. Not being, it would seem, a young lady of very deep
affections, her choice of a husband was decided entirely by the extent
of the worldly prospects he could offer, and the Major, being the
better match of the two, was accepted. But how cruel are the tricks
that fate will sometimes play! Not long after her marriage Mr. Morgan
not only inherited a large fortune, but shortly afterwards left this
world for a better, and Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs is in the habit of
remarking, with a good deal of feeling, "If I had only chosen the other
I might have been a happy widow now!"
Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs lives in our quiet country neighbourhood during the
greater part of the year, on the distinct understanding that she
loathes every hour of it. When she goes abroad or to London she talks
quite cheerfully of having had one breath of life. So fraught with
happy successes are these pilgrimages in her brocaded satin gowns into
the outer world that she often says that were she but free she might
have the world at her feet to-morrow. And she has been known to refer
to the Major, still in the tone of cheerful resignation and with her
emphasizing tap of the fan, as "a dead weight round her neck."
The Major himself is a guileless person, whose very simplicity causes
his wife more exquisite suffering than even a husband of keen,
vindictive temper could inflict.
Does Mrs. Jacobs give a dinner-party, it is not unusual for the master
of the house to remark in a congratulatory tone from his end of the
table, "What has Mullens been doing to the silver, my dear? it looks
unusually bright;" while his greeting to his friends as they arrive at
his house, though distinctly cordial, often takes the form of a hearty
"I had no idea that we were going to see you to-night." As Mrs.
Darcey-Jacobs always sends some kind message from the Major in her
notes of invitation, this of course is most disconcerting, both for her
and for her guests. This year when they were in Italy a friend of ours
in the same hotel overheard a lady ask the Major if he were related to
the Darceys of Mugthorpe. "I really can't tell you," said the Major;
"the Darcey was my wife's idea."
"Four Jamiesons," I said, "and the Darcey-Jacobs, and our two selves.
Isn't it humiliating to think that we have invariably to invite the
same two men to balance our numbers at a dinner-party? I can't help
remarking that Anthony Crawshay and Ellicomb are present at every
dinner-party in this neighbourhood, as surely as soup is on the table."
"We might ask Mrs. Fielden," said Palestrina; "she is sure to have some
colonels with her. Besides, I love Mrs. Fielden, though people say she
is a flirt. I think most men are in love with her; some propose to
her, and some do not, but they all love her."
"Even when she refuses to marry them?"
"I have heard Mrs. Fielden say that an offer of marriage should be
refused artistically," said Palestrina. "She says young girls hardly
ever do it properly, and that they are brusque and brutal. I suppose
she herself has some charming way of her own of refusing men which does
not hurt their feelings. I believe," said Palestrina, "that she would
marry Sir Anthony Crawshay if he could play Bridge."
"Anthony is an excellent fellow," I said.
Mr. Ellicomb is a young man of High Church principles and artistic
tastes who has taken an old Tudor farmhouse in the neighbourhood, and
has furnished it very well. He waxes eloquent on the monstrous
inelegance of modern dress, and the decadence of Japanese art, and he
says he would rather sit in the dark than burn gas in his house, and he
dusts his own blue china himself. In his house it is a sign of art to
divert anything from its proper use, and to use it for another purpose
than that for which it was originally intended. Poor Ellicomb uses a
cabbage-strainer as a fern-pot, a drain-tile for an umbrella-stand, his
mother's old lace veils as antimacassars, bed-posts as palm-stands, a
linen press as a book-case, and a brass spittoon for growing lilies.
It is almost like playing at guessing riddles to go over his house with
him, and to try and discover for what purpose some of his things were
originally created. Their conversion to another use is, I am sure, a
very high form of art.
"There are the Jamiesons," said my sister, as we sat in the hall ready
to receive our guests.
It does not require any occult power to sit indoors and to be able to
distinguish the Jamiesons' carriage-wheels from those of the other
arrivals, for the Jamiesons have, as usual, employed the "six-fifty"
bus on its return journey from the station to set them down at our
gate. It is quite a subject of interest with our neighbours to find
themselves fellow-passengers with the young ladies, in their black
skirts and their more dressy style of bodice concealed beneath tweed
capes. And it generally gets about in Stowel circles before the
evening is over, or certainly soon after the morning shopping has
begun, that the Miss Jamiesons have been dining at such or such a
house. Even the bus conductor has a sympathetic way of handing the
young ladies into his conveyance when they are going out to dinner, and
he fetches a wisp of straw and wipes down the step if the night is wet.
Mr. Ward piloted the independent Kate up the short carriage-drive with
quite an affectionate air of solicitude, frequently inquiring of her if
she did not feel her feet a little damp; and Kate answered cheerfully
and kindly, feeling, no doubt, that this sort of fussing was one of the
drawbacks of prospective matrimony, but that it was only right to
accept the little attentions in the spirit in which they were made.
The Pirate Boy, who followed with his sister Maud, begged her to take
his arm in a burly fashion, and fell a little distance behind. The
Pirate Boy thinks that it is etiquette to place himself at a distance
from any engaged couple, even during the shortest walk. He does so
even when he makes the untoward third in a party. On these occasions
he falls behind and puts on an air of abstraction a little overdone.
The Jacobs arrived next, and then Anthony Crawshay, who drove over in
his high dog-cart, with its flashing lamps and glittering wheels--a
very good light-running cart it is; Anthony and I used often to drive
in it together--and Ellicomb arrived in a brougham, in which we have a
shrewd suspicion that there is a foot-warmer.
Maud began to flirt with Mr. Ellicomb directly. I have never known her
to be for long in the society of a gentleman without doing so, and her
sisters are wont to say of Maud that she certainly has her
opportunities, while the criticism of an unprejudiced observer might be
that she certainly makes them. Mr. Ellicomb, it is believed, has
written an article in one of the magazines on the reformation of men's
clothing, and it is hoped he will become a member of the Reading
Society. He ate very little at dinner, and talked in a low, cultured
voice about Church matters the whole of the evening, and uttered some
very decided views upon the subject of the celibacy of the clergy.
"I must say," said Major Jacobs, "that I also approve of celibacy in
the Church, and I may say in the army and in the navy. If I had my
life to live over again----"
"William!" said Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs in an awful voice.
William was about to retreat precipitately from his position, but
catching sight perhaps of a sympathetic eye turned upon him from that
good comrade of his, Anthony Crawshay, he blundered on,--
"If Confession, now, became more general in the English Church," he
said, "secrets confided to the clergy could hardly be kept inviolate.
A clergyman's wife might almost--well, not to put too fine a point on
it--wring from him by force the secret that had been committed to him."
"I hope so, indeed," said Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs.
"The Anglican Church," said Mr. Ellicomb, "recognizes that difficulty,
and has met it in the persons of the Fathers of the Church."
Maud Jamieson raised soft eyes to his, and said that a woman might be a
help and a comfort to a man.
Mr. Ellicomb seemed disposed to admit that it might be so. "I have
been in retreat at Cowley for some weeks," he said, "and the cooking
was certainly monstrous, and, would you believe it, they did not allow
one to bring one's own servant with one." There is nothing monkish
about Ellicomb, nor is his asceticism overdone.
"I have been reading a book on sects and heresies," said Mrs. Fielden,
"and I find I belong to them all."
Mr. Ellicomb interposed eagerly by saying, "If I had to state my own
convictions exactly, I should certainly say that I was a Manichaean,
with just a touch of Sabellianism."
"I think," said Mrs. Fielden gravely, "that I am a Rosicrucian heretic."
Mr. Ellicomb was interested and delighted. "I know," he said, "that
many people would think that I had not exactly stated my position. For
instance, a lady to whom I described my symptoms the other day, told me
at once that I was a Buddhist by nature and an Antinomian by education,
and I felt that in part she was right."
Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs here interposed, and gave it as her opinion
emphatically that man was a contemptible creature whatever his beliefs
might be, and that he required a woman to look after him. "To look
after him," she repeated, in a tone that said as plainly as possible,
"to keep him in order," and she tapped Mr. Ellicomb sharply on the
knuckles.
The Pirate Boy had some brave notions about what he called The Sex, and
here plunged into a long description of how he had rescued a fair
creature out of the hands of cut-throats out there, and he illustrated
his action of saving the fair one by holding an imaginary six-shooter
to Palestrina's head in a very alarming way. He talked of man as The
Protector, and thrust his hand into his cummerbund--the action, I
suppose, being intended to show that the six-shooter had been
replaced--and glanced round the table with an air of defiance. "There
is not a man," he remarked, "I don't care who he is, if he fail in
respect to a woman when I am present, that shall not get a decanter
hurled straight at his head--straight at his head. I have said it!"
He laid his hand impetuously upon one of two heavy cut-glass bottles
that had been placed in front of me, and one trembled for the safety of
one's guests. "I remember," he said, "in one of those gambling-hells
in the Far West, where there was about as unruly a set of fellows and
cut-throats as ever I came across----" The rest of the story was so
evidently culled from the last number of the _Strand Magazine_ that it
hardly seemed rude of Palestrina to interrupt it by bowing to Mrs.
Fielden, and suggesting that they should adjourn. Maud Jamieson drew
my sister aside as they stood grouped round the fire-place in the hall
drinking their coffee, and thanked her for introducing Mr. Ellicomb to
her. "He is perfectly charming," she said. But Maud's sisters have
confided to us that this is her invariable conclusion about the last
man she has met, and it is intended as a sort of previndication of
herself. Maud, it seems, intends to flirt with every one she sees, but
if she pretends that her affections are really touched there can be no
upbraidings on the part of The Family.
Kate Jamieson sat on the sofa, and twisted her engagement ring
complacently round her finger. She thought that Mr. Ward had carried
himself very well this evening. His quietness throughout the dinner
compared favourably with the conversation of other guests. Kate said
once to Palestrina: "He is a man that I shall feel the utmost
confidence in taking about with me everywhere." And the remark
conveyed the suggestion that Mr. Ward would always be an appendage to
Kate Jamieson.
Anthony Crawshay is a very good fellow indeed. The most advanced and
cultured young lady will never get him to talk about metaphysics in the
crush of a ballroom, nor to concern himself about the inartistic shape
of the clothes we wear nowadays. "If I didn't like them, I shouldn't
wear them," says Anthony. He is a short, spare man, with a voice
somewhat out of proportion to his size, and the best cross-country
rider in the county. The habit he has of shouting all his remarks
seems rather pleasantly in accordance with his honest nature. Anthony
very seldom speaks of any one of whom he has not a good word to say;
but if he does mention any one whom he dislikes, he does so in a very
hearty manner, which is almost as good as many other people's praise.
He is as obstinate, as straightforward, and as good a fellow as a
country neighbour ought to be. "We have been hunting a May fox, by
Gad, Hugo," said Anthony, and he began to tell me about the run--a
thing I can hardly get any one to do nowadays.
The Pirate Boy, upon whom the word "horse" had a rousing effect,
condemned the whole breed of English horses in one short speech. "I
assure you," he said, getting up and sawing the air with his hand,
"there are some of those wild mustangs out there which would knock
spots out of any horses in your stables."
Thus challenged, Anthony, who was standing on the hearthrug, turned,
and stooping towards me asked, in what he intended to be a whisper, who
the young fellow was, and shouted abroad, "Rum chap that, very rum
chap!"
By-and-by Maud Jamieson went to the piano and began to sing ballads to
Mr. Ellicomb; and we have an inward conviction--Palestrina and I--that
this evening's report to the Jamieson family will be that Mr. Ellicomb
is "struck." Major Jacobs considers himself musical because he likes
hearing the words of a song distinctly pronounced. He was charmed with
Maud's singing, and Kate encouraged the girl in a little matronly way
which she has lately assumed. She called forth Maud's best efforts by
saying, "What was the pretty Irish song you sang the other night?" or
"You haven't given us 'We'd better bide a wee' yet, dear." Maud
responded with several ballads, and wished she had some of Lord Henry
Somerset's songs with her, Mr. Ellicomb having expressed a fondness for
them. An opportunity was thus given for suggesting a call at
Belmont--Maud knows mamma will be delighted--she wished Kennie were
better at that sort of thing; the invitation to come in some afternoon
might perhaps have come more properly from a brother.
It was very gratifying to find that Mr. Ward, fortified by dinner,
became more courageous than I have ever known him to be before. He
tip-toed almost boldly across the room, and sitting down beside my
sister began to make a series of deliberate remarks to her, mostly in
the form of interrogation: "Do you care for Scotch songs?" "Have you
ever been in Ireland?" "Do you know Wales at all?" And to these
important questions Palestrina made suitable replies. "That is _most_
interesting," I heard her say from time to time, using the formula of
those who are bored to the extent of complete absence of mind.
Mrs. Fielden crossed the room suddenly with a shimmer of silken skirts.
In spite of her frivolity she has a way of making herself necessary to
every party to which she goes. There used to be an old saying long ago
in Scotland that wherever The Macgregor sat was the head of the table.
Mrs. Fielden is always the centre of every party, although she has a
childish habit, which in another woman might be ascribed to shyness, of
taking the least conspicuous seat in the room. Consequently, when she
dispersed the little group that was standing or sitting about her,
applauding everything she said, and came across the room in pink satin
and roses and diamonds, and sat down beside my sofa, the action had
something regal about it, as though she had left a throne and come to
speak to me.
"I am going to teach you to play Bridge," she said.
"That is most kind of you."
"I am going to carry you off to Stanby next week to give you lessons,"
she went on.
I have a strong conviction that if Mrs. Fielden were to give a beggar a
halfpenny he would probably stoop down and kiss the edge of her skirt,
or do something equally unconventional and self-abasing. She might, as
a great favour, give a courtier who had risked his life for her, her
hand to kiss. When she smiles men become foolish about her.
"It is very kind of you to want us," I said.
"I want Bridge," said Mrs. Fielden, and, as usual when she is going to
be provoking, she looked prettier than ever, and began to smile.
"Any one will do to make up a rubber, I suppose?" I said.
"Oh yes, any one," said Mrs. Fielden.
"Consequently, my sister and I need not feel particularly distinguished
by being asked," I continued.
"I am so glad Palestrina is coming," said Mrs. Fielden, "because
several men have written to tell me they are coming to stay, just when
my sisters-in-law are leaving, and I suppose I oughtn't to entertain a
houseful of men alone, ought I?"
Mrs. Fielden does exactly as she pleases upon all occasions, but this
does not prevent her from pretending to have acute attacks of propriety
sometimes.
"We will play Bridge and chaperon you with pleasure," I said.
"I thought of drowning myself yesterday," said Mrs. Fielden, "because
it rained all day, and I had no one to amuse me, and then I thought I
would ask you to come over and play Bridge instead. When I am bored I
never can make up my mind whether I shall commit suicide, or go into a
convent, or get married. Which do you advise?"
"I should advise you to marry," I said. "As far as I can gather, a
great source of discord and danger in our neighbourhood would be
removed if you did so."
Mrs. Fielden said with her eyes, "Hugo, you are very cross." But being
the most good-natured woman in the world, and sharing that forbearance
which most people extend to an invalid, she smiled instead.
"Why do you stay here when you are feeling so tired?" she said to me
presently.
"Because," I replied, "my sister lies awake half the night and thinks I
am going to die, if I show any signs of fatigue, or go to bed early.
Besides, for us, you know, this is quite an exciting evening. We have
thought about our dinner-party for days past."
"If you were nice," said Mrs. Fielden after a pause, "you would ask me
to come into your library and smoke."
"Do you smoke?"
"No," said Mrs. Fielden, "I don't."
"I'm glad you don't," I said.
"For years," said Mrs. Fielden, "I tried to think it was wrong, and
then I quite enjoyed smoking; but there is a certain effort involved in
trying to raise an innocent occupation to the level of a crime."
"It is a very unfeminine habit," I said; partly because I was in a
contradictious mood, and partly because I wanted to snub Mrs. Fielden
for being so beautiful and young and charming.
"The last man," said Mrs. Fielden gravely, "who made that remark died
shortly afterwards."
She was gathering up my cushions and pillows as she spoke, and she
turned to my sister as she crossed the hall, and said, "We are going to
study philosophy in the library."
The library was lit by a single lamp, and the fire burned low in the
grate; but the room was illumined suddenly by a pink dress and roses
and diamonds, and Mrs. Fielden was arranging cushions, in the very
skilful way she has, on my sofa by the fire. She handed me my
cigarette-box and matches, and spread a rug over my leg. For some
occult reason the rustling pink dress only whispered softly over the
carpet now, like a woman's hushed voice in a sick-room, and Mrs.
Fielden, by the simple act of drawing up a chair to the fire and
sitting in it, took the head of the table again, and became the centre
of the room.
"May I really smoke," I asked, "after being such a brute as to say you
mustn't?"
"I look upon smoking as a purely feminine habit, like drinking tea, or
having headaches, or anything of that sort," said Mrs. Fielden. "It
was simply because it was so expensive that men took to it in the first
place. Ethics should not be based upon accident, should it?"
I handed Mrs. Fielden my cigarette-box.
"If you are quite sure you disapprove, I will have one," she said.
From the hall came the sound of Maud's singing. Her voice is not of
great compass, nor very strong, but it is clear and fresh, with a
tuneful cadence in it.
"You spend nearly all your days here?" said Mrs. Fielden, looking round
the room.
"Until the afternoon," I said; "and then Palestrina and I go for a
little walk, and at tea-time I go to the hall sofa, and she asks people
to come up and sit with me."
"I am glad you like books," said Mrs. Fielden.
"But really," I said, "the good folks in Stowel are all extraordinarily
kind to me, and some of the Jamiesons are up nearly every day."
"I like the Jamiesons," said Mrs. Fielden; "they are so intelligent.
Have you ever noticed that their watches all keep exact time, and that
they tell you the hour to the very second? And they always know what
day of the month it is, and when Easter falls, and how much stuff it
takes to make a blouse."
"You wrong Eliza Jamieson," I said; "she studies philosophy."
"Oh," said Mrs. Fielden eagerly, "I forgot to tell you, I have begun to
study philosophy. I began last week. Will you lend me some books,
please? I want to be very wise and learned."
"Why?" I asked.
"I think," said Mrs. Fielden, "that it might be nice if people did not
always call one frivolous; and that if I studied philosophy----"
"I shall not lend you any books," I said.
"That is rather disobliging of you."
"Because," I said, "our lives should always show a perfect equation.
If you are a frivolous person you should behave frivolously."
"You mean _as_ I am a frivolous person," said Mrs. Fielden.
"As you are a frivolous person," I repeated.
"And after all," said Mrs. Fielden with a contemplative air, "how silly
philosophy is! I asked somebody the other day the meaning of a
syllogism, and really I don't think I ever heard anything quite so
foolish."
"It is quite beneath your notice," I said.
"I did think of asking you if I might come over sometimes and read
these musty volumes of yours."
"You would probably find them as uninteresting as I am," I said.
Mrs. Fielden looked as if she thought that might be possible, and did
not press the matter.
I dislike being disloyal to my books, for they are such good friends of
mine. But a great wish came to me then to get up and do something,
instead of for ever reading the doings and the thoughts of other
people. I thought how much I should like to live again, and just for
once sleep on the veldt with the stars overhead, or longed that I could
get astride of a horse, and follow a burst of the hounds over the wet
fields in England. And so thinking I turned on the sofa and said
petulantly, "I wish Maud Jamieson would not sing that song."
"Oh, that we two were maying," she sang, in the song that tells of love
and separation, and the longings and heartbreaks which it is much
better not to speak about, and the things which we want and cannot have.
"I hate yearners," I said. "Why can't she sing something cheerful?"
Mrs. Fielden rose from her chair by the fire and crossed the hearthrug,
and came and sat down on my sofa. She took my hand in hers and said:
"Poor boy! is it very hard sometimes?"
"Of course," said Palestrina, as we went upstairs to bed after our
guests had departed, "you are sure to feel tired. The little party has
been too much for you, I'm afraid. It was very tiresome for you having
to leave us all."
"I felt rather a crock after dinner," I said, "and I think the hall
gets hot in the evening."
"I wish I could make you better," said Palestrina affectionately; "it
is horrid for you being ill."
"Every one," I said, "makes far too much fuss about health. Why, ten
officers of our regiment are buried in South Africa. I suppose half
the pensioners in Chelsea Hospital have had wounds as bad as mine, and
a cripple more or less in the world does not matter very much. Women
are kind enough to pity me. They even confide their troubles to me
sometimes, because I am a poor thing lying on a sofa. I am really
quite happy hobbling about with you, Palestrina; and when I am older, I
shall probably take an interest in the garden. There is a proper and
philosophical attitude of mind in respect of these things."
"O Hugo," said Palestrina, "I always know you are not happy when you
begin to be philosophical."
"Life is very easily explained without the assistance of philosophy
when everything goes all right," I replied.