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 cafes 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 hope _you_
haven'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."