The young ladies at Allonby, though Effie thought they meant nothing
except to make conversation, had really more purpose in their
extravagances than that severe little critic thought. To young ladies
who have nothing to do a new idea in the way of entertainment is a fine
thing.
And though a garden party, or any kind of a party, is not an affair of
much importance, yet it holds really a large place in unoccupied lives.
Even going to it may mean much to the unconcerned and uninterested: the
most philosophical of men, the most passive of women, may thus find
their fate. They may drift up against a partner at tennis, or hand a
cup of tea to the predestined individual who is to make or mar their
happiness for life.
So that no human assembly is without its importance to some one,
notwithstanding that to the majority they may be collectively and
separately “a bore.” But to those who get them up they are still more
important, and furnish a much needed occupation and excitement, with the
most beneficial effect both upon health and temper.
The Miss Diroms were beginning to feel a little low; the country was
more humdrum than they had expected. They had not been quite sure when
they came to Scotland that there were not deer-forests on the Border.
They had a lingering belief that the peasants wore the tartan. They had
hoped for something feudal, some remnant of the Middle Ages.
But they found nothing of this sort they found a population which was
not at all feudal, people who were friendly but not over respectful,
unaccustomed to curtsy and disinclined to be patronized. They were
thrown back upon themselves. As for the aspect of the great people, the
Diroms were acquainted with much greater people, and thought little of
the county magnates.
It was a providential suggestion which put that idea about the music
under the cliff into the head of Doris. And as a garden party in
September, in Scotland, even in the south, is a ticklish performance,
and wants every kind of organization, the sisters were immediately
plunged into business. There was this in its favour, that they had the
power of tempering the calm of the Dumfriesshire aristocracy by visitors
from the greater world at that time scattered over all Scotland, and
open to variety wherever they could find it. Even of the Americans, for
whom the young ladies had sighed, there were three or four easily
attainable. And what with the story of Fair Helen and the little
churchyard and the ballad, these visitors would be fully entertained.
Everything was in train, the invitations sent out and accepted, the
house in full bustle of preparation, every one occupied and amused,
when, to the astonishment of his family, Mr. Dirom arrived upon a visit.
“I thought I’d come and look you up,” he said. He was, as he himself
described it, “in great force,” his white waistcoat ampler, his
watch-chain heavier, himself more beaming than ever.
His arrival always made a difference in the house, and it was not
perhaps an enjoyable difference. It introduced a certain anxiety--a new
element. The kind and docile mother who on ordinary occasions was at
everybody’s command, and with little resistance did what was told her,
became all at once, in the shadow of her husband, a sort of silent
authority. She was housekeeper no longer; she had to be consulted, and
to give, or pretend to give, orders, which was a trouble to her, as well
as to the usual rulers of the house. Nobody disliked it more than Mrs.
Dirom herself, who had to pretend that the party was her own idea, and
that she had superintended the invitations, in a way which was very
painful to the poor lady’s rectitude and love of truth.
“You should have confined yourself to giving dinners,” her husband
said--“as many dinners as you like. You’ve got a good cellar, or I’m
mistaken, and plenty of handsome plate, and all that sort of thing. The
dinners are the thing; men like ’em, and take my word for it, it’s the
men’s opinions that tell. Females may think they have it their own way
in society, but it’s the men’s opinion that tells.”
“You mean the males, I suppose,” said Doris. “Keep to one kind of word,
papa.”
“Yes, Miss D., I mean the males--your superiors,” said Mr. Dirom, with
first a stare at his critic and then a laugh. “I thought you might
consider the word offensive; but if you don’t mind, neither do I.”
“Oh, what is the use of quarrelling about a word?” said the mother
hastily. “We have had dinners. We have returned all that have been given
us. That is all any one can expect us to do, George. Then the girls
thought--for a little variety, to fill the house and amuse
everybody----”
“With tea and toast--and hot-water bottles, I hope to put under their
feet. I’ll tell you, Phyllis, what you ought to do. Get out all the
keepers and gardeners with warm towels to wipe off the rain off the
trees; and have the laundresses out to iron the grass--by Jove, that’s
the thing to do; reduce rheumatic fevers to a minimum, and save as many
bad colds as possible. I shall say you did it when I get back to my
club.”
Phyllis and Doris looked at each other.
“It might be really a good thing to do. And it would be Fun. Don’t you
think the electric light put on night and day for forty-eight hours
would do some good? What an excellent thing it is to have papa here! He
is so practical. He sees in a moment the right thing.”
This applause had the effect rarely attained, of confusing for a moment
the man of money.
“It appears I am having a success,” he said. “Or perhaps instead of
taking all this trouble you would like me to send a consignment of fur
cloaks from town for the use of your guests. The Scotch ladies would
like that best, for it would be something,” he said with his big laugh,
“to carry away.”
“And I believe,” said Mrs. Dirom, very anxious to be conciliatory, “you
could afford it, George.”
“Oh, afford it!” he said with again that laugh, in which there was such
a sound of money, of plenty, of a confidence inexhaustible, that nobody
could have heard it, and remained unimpressed. But all the same it was
an offensive laugh, which the more finely strung nerves of his children
could scarcely bear.
“After all,” said Fred, “we don’t want to insult our neighbours with our
money. If they are willing to run the risk, we may let them; and there
will always be the house to retire into, if it should be wet.”
“Oh, of course there would always be the house. It is a very fine thing
to have a good house to retire into, whatever happens. I should like you
to realize that, all of you, and make your hay while the sun shines.”
The room in which the family were sitting was not dark, as when they
were alone. The blinds were all drawn up, the sunshades, so often drawn
when there was no sun, elevated, though a ruddy westerly sky, in all the
force of approaching sunset, blazed down upon the front of the house.
The young people exchanged looks, in which there was a question.
What did he mean? He meant nothing, it appeared, since he followed up
his remarks by opening a parcel which he had brought down stairs in his
hand, and from which he took several little morocco boxes, of shape and
appearance calculated to make the hearts of women--or at least such
hearts of women as Mr. Dirom understood--beat high. They were some
“little presents” which he had brought to his family. He had a way of
doing it--and “for choice,” as he said, he preferred diamonds.
“They always fetch their price, and they are very portable. Even in a
woman’s useless pocket, or in her bag or reticule, or whatever you call
it, she might carry a little fortune, and no one ever be the wiser,” Mr.
Dirom said.
“When one has diamonds,” said Phyllis, “one wishes everybody to be the
wiser, papa; we don’t get them to conceal them, do we, Dor? Do you think
it will be too much to wear that pendant to-morrow--in daylight? Well,
it is a little ostentatious.”
“And you are rather too young for diamonds, Phyll--if your papa was not
so good to you,” said Mrs. Dirom in her uncertain voice.
“She’s jealous, girls,” said her husband, “though hers are the best.
Young! nobody is ever too young; take the good of everything while you
have it, and as long as you have it, that’s my philosophy. And look
here, there’s the sun shining--I shouldn’t be surprised if, after all,
to-morrow you were to have a fine day.”
They had a fine day, and the party was very successful. Doris had
carried out her idea about the music on the opposite bank, and it was
very effective. The guests took up this phrase from the sisters, who
asked, “Was it not very effective?” with ingenuous delight in their own
success.
It was no common band from the neighbourhood, nor even a party of
wandering Germans, but a carefully selected company of minstrels brought
from London at an enormous cost: and while half the county walked about
upon the tolerably dry lawn, or inspected the house and all the new and
elegant articles of art-furniture which the Diroms had brought, the
trembling melody of the violins quivered through the air, and the wind
instruments sighed and shouted through all the echoes of the Dene. The
whole scene was highly effective, and all the actors in it looking and
smiling their best.
The Marquis kindly paid Mr. Dirom a compliment on his “splendid
hospitality,” and the eloquent Americans who made pilgrimages to Adam
Fleming’s grave, and repeated tenderly his adjuration to “Helen fair,
beyond compare,” regarded everything, except Mr. Dirom in his white
waistcoat, with that mixture of veneration and condescension which
inspires the transatlantic bosom amid the immemorial scenery of old
England.
“Don’t you feel the spell coming over you, don’t you feel the mosses
growing?” they cried. “See, this is English dust and damp--the ethereal
mould which comes over your very hands, as dear John Burroughs says.
Presently, if you don’t wash ’em, little plants will begin to grow all
along your line of life. Wonderful English country--mother of the ages!”
This was what the American guests said to each other. It was the Miss
Dempsters, to whom Americans were as the South Sea Islanders, and who
were anxious to observe the customs and manners of the unknown race,
before whom these poetical exclamations were made.
“The English country may be wonderful, though I know very little about
it; but you are forgetting it is not here,” Miss Dempster said. “This is
Scotland; maybe you may never have heard the name before.”
It is needless to say that the ladies and gentlemen from across the
Atlantic smiled at the old native woman’s mistake.
“Oh yes, we know Scotland very well,--almost best of all,--for has not
everybody read the Waverleys?--at least all our fathers and mothers read
them, though they may be a little out of date in our day.”
“You must be clever indeed if Walter Scott is not clever enough for
you,” said the old lady grimly. “But here’s just one thing that a
foolish person like me, it seems, can correct you in, and that’s that
this countryside is not England. No, nor ever was; and Adam Fleeming in
his grave yonder could have told you that.”
“Was he a Border chief? was he one of the knights in Branksome Hall? We
know all about that. And to think you should be of the same race, and
have lived here always, and known the story, and sung the song all your
life!”
“I never was much addicted to singing songs, for my part. He must have
been a feckless kind of creature to let her get between him and the man
that wanted his blood. But he was very natural after that I will say. ‘I
hackit him in pieces sma’.’” said Miss Dempster; “that is the real
Border spirit: and I make little doubt he was English--the man with the
gun.”
The pretty young ladies in their pretty toilettes gathered about the old
lady.
“It is most interesting,” they said; “just what one wished to find in
the old country--the real accent--the true hereditary feeling.”
“You are just behaving like an old haverel,” said Miss Beenie to her
sister in an undertone. It seldom occurred to her to take the command
of affairs, but she saw her opportunity and seized it.
“For our part,” she said, “it is just as interesting to us to see real
people from America. I have heard a great deal about them, but I never
saw them before. It will be a great change to find yourselves in the
midst of ceevilization? And what was that about mosses growing on your
poor bit little hands? Bless me! I have heard of hair and fur, but never
of green growth. Will that be common on your side of the water?”
She spoke with the air of one who was seeking information. Mr. John
Burroughs himself, that charming naturalist, might have been
disconcerted by so serious a question. And the two old ladies remained
in possession of the field.
“I just answered a fool according to his folly,” Miss Beenie remarked,
with modest enjoyment of a triumph that seldom fell to her share, “for
you were carried away, Sarah, and let them go on with their impidence. A
set of young idiots out of a sauvage country that were too grand for
Walter Scott!”
It was on the whole a great day for the Miss Dempsters. They saw
everybody, they explored the whole house, and identified every piece of
furniture that was not Lady Allonby’s. They made a private inspection of
the dining-room, where there was a buffet--erected not only for light
refreshments, but covered with luxuries and delicacies of a more serious
description.
“Bless me, I knew there was tea and ices,” they said; “it’s like a ball
supper, and a grand one. Oh, those millionaires! they just cannot spend
money enough. But I like our own candlesticks,” said Miss Dempster, “far
better than these branchy things, like the dulse on the shore, the
candelawbra, or whatever they call it, on yon table.”
“They’re bigger,” said Miss Beenie; “but my opinion is that the branches
are all hollow, not solid like ours.”
“There’s not many like ours,” said Miss Dempster; “indeed I am disposed
to think they are just unique. Lord bless us, is that the doctor at the
side-table? He is eating up everything. The capacity that man has is
just extraordinary--both for dribblets of drink and for solid food.”
“Is that you, ladies?” said the doctor. “I looked for you among the
first, and now you’re here, let me offer you some of this raised pie.
It’s just particularly good, with truffles as big as my thumb. I take
credit for suggesting a game pie. I said they would send the whole
parish into my hands with their cauld ices that are not adapted to our
climate.”
“We were just saying ices are but a wersh provision, and make you
shiver to think of them at this time of the year; but many thanks to
you, doctor. We are not in the habit either of eating or drinking
between meals. Perhaps a gentleman may want it, and you have science to
help you down with it. But two women like us, we are just very well
content with a cup of tea.”
“Which is a far greater debauch,” said the doctor hotly, “for you are
always at it.” But he put down his plate. “The auld cats,” he said to
himself; “there’s not a drop passes my lips but they see it, and it will
be over all the parish that I was standing guzzlin’ here at this hour of
the day.”
But there were others beside the doctor who took advantage of the raised
pie and appreciated the truffles. People who have been whetted by music
and vague conversation and nothing to do or think of for a weary
afternoon, eat with enthusiasm when the chance occurs; they eat even
cake and bread and butter, how much more the luxurious _mayonnaise_ and
lobsters and _foie gras_. After the shiver of an ice it was grateful to
turn to better fare. And Mr. Dirom was in his glory in the dining-room,
which was soon filled by a crowd more animated and genial than that
which had strolled about the lawn.
“You will spoil your dinner,” the ladies said to their husbands, but
with small effect.
“Never mind the dinner,” said the master of the house. “Have a little of
this Château Yquem. It is not a wine you can get every day. I call it
melted gold; but I never ask the price of a wine so long as it’s good;
and there’s plenty more where that came from.”
His wealth was rampant, and sounded in his voice and in his laugh, till
you seemed to hear the money tinkle. Phyllis and Doris and Fred cast
piteous glances at each other when they met.
“Oh, will nobody take him away!” they cried under their breath. “Fred,
can’t you pretend there is a telegram and dreadful news? Can’t you say
the Bank of England is broke, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer has
run away?”
He wounded his children’s nerves and their delicacy beyond description,
but still it had to be allowed that he was the master of the house. And
so the party came to an end, and the guests, many of them with
indigestions, but with the most cordial smiles and applause and
hand-shakings, were gradually cleared away.