A Lame Dog's Diary Part 13

"Perhaps," said Mrs. Jamieson simply, "he had never tried the _fotoys_."

After the concert was over, Mr. Swinnerton suggested that Margaret and her mother should go and have tea at a bun-shop, qualifying the suggestion with the remark, "I know you ladies can never get on without afternoon tea." When with Mr. Swinnerton ladies are never allowed to forget that he is a gentleman and they are ladies, and that a certain forbearance is therefore extended to them. He offered his arm to Mrs.

Jamieson, who gathered up her skirt and umbrella in one hand, and accepted the proffered support in some embarra.s.sment. Margaret fell behind with me, and whispered in a sort of excited way,--

"Hasn't it been lovely? Do tell me what you think--I mean about him."

"I haven't had much chance of judging," I replied stupidly; "but he seems all right, although perhaps his ideas are not very large."

"Still, you mean that one could always alter that," said Margaret quickly, with the true Jamieson optimism, as applied to the beneficial results of matrimony. There is hardly, I believe, a defect that they think they will not be able to eradicate in a future husband, save, perhaps, the conical shape of Mr. Ward's head. "But I really do not think there is anything that I would like altered," she added simply.

"His name is Tudor," she went on. "George calls him that now, and Maud is beginning to do so--Maud is being so kind; she says it promotes a familiar tone which is very helpful, to call him 'Tudor'--but I can't call him anything but Mr. Swinnerton yet."

After tea Mr. Swinnerton asked us how we had enjoyed our entertainment, and Margaret expressed herself in the highest terms in praise of it.

There seemed to be a lingering tendency on Mrs. Jamieson's part to revert to the superior comfort of seven-and-sixpenny places and armchairs, but we checked this by saying with emphasis that it was a friendly afternoon of this kind that we really enjoyed. Mr. Swinnerton then put the Jamiesons into an omnibus, and directed the conductor to "let these ladies out at the top of Sloane Street," in a tone of voice that suggested that they were to be caged and padlocked until that place of exit was reached. He lifted his hat with a fine air to them, and then, as I had called a hansom, he put me into it rather elaborately, and cautioned the commissionaire at the door to "take care of this gentleman."

He will probably call me a South African hero next; I wish he would keep his attentions to himself.

CHAPTER XI.

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 cla.s.s 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 Compet.i.tion appears like a legal doc.u.ment 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 p.r.o.nunciation 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 fas.h.i.+on 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 fas.h.i.+on 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 suns.h.i.+ne 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.