Last night we dined at the Darcey-Jacobs'. Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs is
enjoying "one breath of life" at a hotel with the Major, and she has
left quite a pathetic number of visiting-cards on all her friends, so
that her short London season may be as full of gaiety as possible.
Neither of us looked forward to the dinner-party being particularly
lively, but we were a good deal amused at the turn the conversation
took during dinner. I have often thought since that a certain dumbness
which falls upon some entertainments can be dispersed if the subject of
matrimony is started, and I will class with it a discussion on food,
and personal experience at the hand of the dentist. Any of these three
subjects can be thrown, as it were, into the stagnant deep waters of a
voiceless party, and the surface will be instantly rippled with eager
conversation.
Talk flagged a little in the private sitting-room of the hotel where
the Darcey-Jacobs gave their dinner-party. Major Jacobs, in his
guileless way, gave us an exhaustive list of the friends whom they had
invited for that evening, but who had not been able to come; and this
had a curiously depressing effect upon us all, and within ourselves we
speculated unhappily as to whether we had been asked to fill up vacant
places.
"Why are men always allowed to blunder?" said Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs,
looking over her high nose at the gentleman next her, and tapping him
on the arm with her lorgnettes.
Major Jacobs, from his end of the table, looked penitent but mystified.
"Happy is the woman," said Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs, "who has no men about
her."
"I should like to have been born a widow," said a pretty girl with
beseeching blue eyes and a soft, confiding expression, who sat a little
lower down on my side of the table. And then the subject of matrimony
was in full swing.
"Marriage is just an experience," said a shrill-voiced American widow
who sat opposite. "Every one should try it, but that is no reason why
one should not be thankful when it is over."
"I am much interested in what you say," said Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs, with a
certain profound air suitable to so great a subject. One felt the want
of the Jamiesons sadly during the ensuing discussion, and I almost
found myself, in the words of Mettie, making the suggestion that
marriage was a great risk.
"Some one once said," ventured Major Darcey-Jacobs, "that choosing a
wife was like choosing a profession--it did not matter much what your
choice was, so long as you stuck to it. It was a mere figure of
speech, no doubt----"
"I hope so, indeed," said Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs.
"Marriage is the worst form of gambling," broke in an elderly
gentleman; "it should be suppressed by law. Talk about lotteries!
Talk about sweepstakes! Why, the worst you can do, if you put your
money into them, is to draw a blank. Now, this is fair play, I
consider; you either get a prize or you get nothing. But matrimony,
sir, is a swindle compared with which the Missing Word Competition
appears like a legal document beside a forged bank-note."
If the old gentleman had a wife present she was evidently of a callous
disposition, for I saw no wrathful expression on any face.
Mr. Ellicomb--even in London Ellicomb and Anthony Crawshay are asked to
meet us--gave it as his opinion that a woman's hand was wanted in the
home. The voice was the voice of Ellicomb, the sentiment was the
sentiment of Maud, and Palestrina and I very nearly exchanged glances.
After this, several people began to describe at one and the same time,
in quite a breathless way, their own personal experiences of the
happiness of wedded life.
"Of course," said Major Darcey-Jacobs, "a deal of forbearance must be
exercised if married life is to be a success." And Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs
said quickly, "I hope you do not intend to become personal, William."
To which William replied that no such intention had been his.
Anthony said in his cheery voice, "Of course it is give and take, don't
you know, and then it is all right."
Every one volunteered ideas on the subject--not once, but several
times. And those who applauded the happy state shouted each other down
by quoting examples of wedded bliss in such words as: "Look at
Hawkins!" "Look at Jones!" "Look at the Menteiths!"
Quite suddenly Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs leaned across the table, smiled at
her husband, and remarked, "Look at us, William!"
I do not think I have ever seen any one look so astonished as Major
Jacobs. "That was very pretty of Maria," he said in a low voice; "very
pretty of her, by Gad!" And we caught him looking at his wife several
times that evening with a puzzled but delighted expression on his face.
After dinner we played Bridge. "I disapprove of the game myself," said
Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs, who certainly was the worst player I have ever met,
"but Mrs. Fielden likes it, and she has promised to come in in the
evening."
Mrs. Fielden arrived at the same time as Colonel Jardine, and they
played as partners together, with me and the American widow as
opponents. Colonel Jardine wore some kind of lead ring on his finger,
which he said cured gout, and gathered up his tricks in a stiff sort of
way. He had a pet name for almost every card in the pack, and he
babbled on without once ceasing throughout the rubber. "Now we'll see
where old Mossy Face is. I think that draws the Curse of Scotland.
Kinky takes that," and so on. It was perfectly maddening, but Mrs.
Fielden seemed quite pleased. I don't suppose she ever feels
irritated. The American widow, who was my partner, was only just
learning the game. When I said to her, "May I play?" she always
replied, if she had a bad hand, "No, certainly not." And when it was
pointed out to her that she had either to say, "If you please," or "I
double," she replied, "Don't ask me if you may play, if you mean to do
it whether I like it or not." She always gave us such items of
information as "I know what I should say if it was left to me this
time," and she frequently doubled with nothing at all in her hand,
because she said she liked to play a plucky game.
I have tried to cure Mrs. Fielden of saying "dah-monds" when she means
"diamonds," but it is quite useless. She also says (with a radiant
smile) "How tarsome!" when she has lost a rubber, although I have
pointed out to her that that is not the phonetic pronunciation of the
word. When we are all wrangling over the mistakes and misdeeds of the
last round, Mrs. Fielden looks hopelessly at us and says, "Is it any
one's deal?" And then we laugh and stop arguing. She never keeps the
score, or picks up the cards, or deals for herself, or does anything
useful.
The American widow did not stop talking most of the time, and the
Colonel kept up his running commentary upon the cards he was playing,
and then Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs joined us to look on, and she and the
American widow plunged into a discussion on clothes, which they kept up
vigorously all the time. This necessitated a number of questions
relating to the game from the American widow, whenever she was recalled
to the fact that she was playing Bridge: "May I see that laast trick?
What's trumps? Does my hand go down on the table this time?" Mrs.
Fielden beamed kindly upon her, even when the widow had debated five
minutes which card to lead, and Colonel Jardine had begun to play the
chromatic scale of impatience up and down the table with his stiff
fingers.
"Waal," said the American widow to Mrs. Fielden, "I think you are just
lovely, and I would like to play with you always. I believe most
people would like to kill me at Bridge. Caan't think why. Colonel
Jardine, did you play the lost chord?"
"I know the tune," said the Colonel; "but I don't play at all."
The American turned bewildered eyes upon Mrs. Fielden, who said,
smiling, "Colonel Jardine is practising the chromatic scale. I think
he will be a very good player some day."
"How was I to know," said the Colonel, spluttering over his
whisky-and-soda when the American widow had left, "that she meant the
last card? That woman would drive me crazy in six weeks."
"I liked her," said Mrs. Fielden, "and she is very pretty."
There is a certain large-heartedness about this pretty woman of fashion
and of the world which constrains her to say something kind about every
one. With her the absent are always right, and I do not think I have
ever heard her say an unkind word about any one. At Stanby, when
people who are staying there make a newly-departed guest run the
gauntlet of criticism--not always of the kindest sort--Mrs. Fielden
says, in that royal fashion of hers which makes her approval the final
decision in all matters, "I liked him." And the departed guest's
character and reputation are safe. Her charity is boundless and quite
indiscriminate, save that she sends a trifle more rain and sunshine on
the unjust than on the just.
"Come to lunch with me some day," she said to me in the off-hand way in
which she generally gives an invitation. "I am always at home at two
o'clock. Why not come to-morrow? You are leaving town almost
immediately, are you not?"
Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs is also asked to lunch; every one is asked to lunch.
When one goes to the pretty widow's house in South Street one generally
finds a dozen people lunching with her.
... She came into the room--late, of course--and found ten or twelve
people waiting for lunch. "I am so sorry! Do you all know each
other?" she asked of the rather constrained group of strangers making
frigid conversation to each other in the flower-filled drawing-room.
And then she began to introduce us to each other, and forgot half our
names, and we went downstairs in a buzz of conversation and laughter,
and filled with something that is odd and magnetic, which only comes
when Mrs. Fielden arrives.
As is always the way at her lunch-parties, her carriage drives up to
the door before any one has finished coffee, and then we all say
good-bye, complaining of the rush of London.
"I want you to drive with me this afternoon," said Mrs. Fielden, when I
with the others was saying good-bye. I think she generally singles
somebody out for a drive or a long talk, or to take her to a
picture-gallery after lunch, and it is done in a way that makes the one
thus singled out feel foolishly elated and flattered.
"I think we are going to drive down to Richmond and see some trees and
grass, and behave in a rural sort of way this afternoon," she announced
as she seated herself in the carriage.
"And what about all your engagements for this afternoon?" I asked.
"And the Red Book, and the visiting-list, and the shopping-list, and
the visiting-cards, which I see with you?"
"I never keep engagements," said Mrs. Fielden; "and every one knows my
memory is so bad that they always forgive me. Some one gave me a
little notebook the other day, with my initials in silver upon it--I
can't remember who it was--and I put down in it all the tarsome things
I ought to do, and then I lost the little pocket-book."
"If I ever find it," I said, "I shall bring it to you, and read out all
your tarsome engagements to you."
"I didn't say 'tarsome,'" said Mrs. Fielden.
"I suppose you are whirling through the London season," I said
presently; "and going everywhere, and having your frocks chronicled in
the magazines, and going to a great many parties?"
"No," said Mrs. Fielden; "I have been down at Stanby."
"I wish," I remarked, "that you did not always give one unexpected
replies. Why have you been down at Stanby? You didn't say anything
about it when I saw you last night."
"Do you know old Miss Lydia Blind?" said Mrs. Fielden. "She is ill,
and I got rather a pathetic letter from her, so I went down to Stanby
to look after her."
She fumbled for the pocket of her dress, raising first what seemed to
be a layer of lace, and then a number of layers of chiffon, and then,
after rustling amongst some silk to find her artfully-concealed pocket,
she produced a letter and handed it to me.
"Am I to read it?" I said; and Mrs. Fielden nodded.
"... One so often hears," so the letter ran, "of a case of long illness
in which the one who is strong, and who acts as nurse to the invalid,
breaks down before the end comes. To me it has always seemed to show
that the strong one's courage has failed somehow, and that, had zeal
been stronger or faith greater, she might have endured to the end...."
And, again, in a postscript: "When I was younger I was very impatient,
and I think I could not well have borne it had I known that life was to
be a waiting time. I do not say this in any discontented spirit, dear,
and I only write to you because you always understand...." And then
the letter broke off suddenly, and I handed it back to Mrs. Fielden.
"So this is you, as Miss Lydia knows you," I said.
"I want you to go and see her when you go back to Stowel. Will you?"
said Mrs. Fielden. "Miss Lydia is an angel, I think; the best woman
really that ever lived. Will you take her some things I am sending
her, and ask how she is when you go back?"
We drove under the trees of Richmond Park in Mrs. Fielden's big,
luxurious carriage. She generally drives in a Victoria, and I asked
her why she had the landau out this afternoon.
"A whim," said Mrs. Fielden. "I am full of whims."
But of course a landau is the only carriage in which a lame man, who
has to sit with his foot up, can put it comfortably on the opposite
seat.
We drove onwards, and she stopped the carriage to look at the view from
Richmond Hill, and the soft air blew up to us in a manner very cool and
refreshing; and then we got out and walked about for a time, and Mrs.
Fielden gave me her arm.
"I don't really require an arm," I said, "but I like taking yours."
"It is a very strong arm," said Mrs. Fielden; and she exclaimed
quickly, "I believe I am getting fat! My maid tells me all my dresses
want altering. I wish it was time to think about beginning to hunt
again."
"Do you know," I said, "I always thought, till I got back to England,
that my leg had been taken off below the knee, and that I should be
able to get astride of a horse again. I never used to see it, of
course, when they dressed it; and when I counted up the things I should
be able to do, riding was always one of them. I didn't sell my horses
till just the other day."
Mrs. Fielden did not sympathize, but one of her silences fell between
us. We did not speak again till she began to tell me an amusing story
which made us both laugh; but when she was sitting in the carriage, and
the footman was helping me in, and we were still laughing, I could have
sworn that her eyes looked larger and softer than I have ever seen them.