A Lame Dog's Diary Part 2

"Did I?"

When Mrs. Fielden is provoking she always looks ten times prettier than she does at other times.

"A good many people in this little place," I said, "have made up their minds to 'do the work that's nearest' and to help 'a lame dog over stiles.' I think I should be rather a brute if I didn't respond to their good intentions."

"I don't think they need invent stiles, though!" said Mrs. Fielden quickly; "wood-carving, and beating bra.s.s, and playing the zither----"

"I do not play the zither," I said.

"--are not stiles. They are making a sort of obstacle race of your life."

"Since I have begun to write the diary," I said, "I've been able to excuse myself attempting these things, even when tools are kindly brought to me. And, so far, no one has so absolutely forgotten that there is a lingering spark of manhood in me as to suggest that I should crochet or do cross-st.i.tch."

"You know I am going to help to write the diary," said Mrs. Fielden, "only I'm afraid I shall have to go to all their tea-parties, shan't I, to get copy?"

"You will certainly have to go," I said.

"I'm dreadfully bored to-night; aren't you?" she said confidentially, and in a certain radiant fas.h.i.+on as distant as the Poles from boredom.

"No one can really enjoy this sort of thing, do you think? It's like being poor, or anything disagreeable of that sort. People think they ought to pretend to like it, but they don't."

"I wish I could entertain you better," I said sulkily; "but I'm afraid I never was the least bit amusing."

Mrs. Fielden relapsed into one of her odd little silences, and I determined I would not ask her what she was thinking about.

Presently Colonel Jardine joined us, and she said to him: "Please see if you can get my carriage; it must be five o'clock in the morning at least." And the next moment I was made to feel the egotism of imagining I had been punished, when she bade me a charming "good-night." She smiled congratulations on her hostesses on the success of the party, and pleaded the long drive to Stanby as an excuse for leaving early. The Colonel wrapped her in a long, beautiful cloak of some pale coloured velvet and fur--a sumptuous garment at which young ladies in shawls looked admiringly--and Mrs. Fielden slipped it on negligently, and got into her brougham.

"Oh, how tired I am!" she said.

"It was pretty deadly," said the Colonel. "Did you taste the claret-cup?" he added, making a grimace in the dark.

"Oh, I found it excellent," said Mrs. Fielden quickly.

Margaret Jamieson now took her place at the piano, to enable the blind man to go and have some supper; but, having had it, he slept so peacefully that no one could bear to disturb him, so between them the young ladies shared his duties till the close of the evening.

Palestrina had suggested, as a little occupation for me, that I should write out programmes for the dance, and I had done so. Surely programmes were never so little needed before! Every grown man had left the a.s.sembly long before twelve o'clock struck, the feebleness of the excuses for departing thus early being only equalled by the gravity with which they were made. Even the lawyer, who we thought would have remained faithful to the end, pleaded that since he ricked his knee he is obliged to have plenty of rest. The Pirate Boy had had some bitter words with the lawyer at a previous stage in the evening about the way in which the lancers should be danced, and had muttered darkly, "I won't make a disturbance in a lady's house, but I have seen a fellow called out for less." He considered that the lawyer was running away, unable to bear his cold, keen eye upon him during the next lancers, and he watched him depart, standing at the head of the tiny staircase, beneath the display of bunting, with his arms folded in a Napoleonic att.i.tude.

All good things come to an end, and even the Vicar of Stowel must have felt that there are limits to the most conscientious energy. And girls, dancing with each other, learn perhaps that the merriment caused by acting as a man is not altogether lasting; while elderly young ladies, although agreed in smiling to the very end, must be aware how fixed in expression such a smile may become towards the end of a long evening.

Good-nights were said, and carriages were called up with a good deal of unnecessary shouting, while the Pirate Boy insisted upon going to the heads of the least restive horses and soothing them in a way which he said he had learned from those Gaucho fellows out there.

I have never been able to tell what the Miss Traceys thought about their dance. If they were disappointed, the world was not allowed to probe that tender spot. Possibly they were satisfied with its success; the proprietary instinct of admiration applies to entertainments as well as to tangible possessions. But that satisfaction, if it existed, was modestly veiled--the house-warming was less discussed by them than by any one else. Miss Ruby spoke rather wistfully one day about simple pleasures being the best and safest after all, and she alluded with a sigh to the time which must come some day when she would be no longer young. Miss Tracey drew herself up and said: "A woman is only as old as she looks, my dear," and glanced admiringly at her sister.

The diluted Essence of Claret-cup was bottled, and formed a nice light luncheon wine at the Miss Tracey's for many weeks afterwards. The furniture was brought down from the spare bedroom by the maids, who walked the heavier pieces in front of them with a curious tip-toeing movement of the castors of the several easy-chairs. The art tiles in the grate were cleared of their faded burden of evergreens, and The Palm was carried into the bay-window, where it could be seen from the road.

I drove over to see Mrs. Fielden and to ask her if she thought I had been a sulky brute at the dance.

"Were you?" said Mrs. Fielden, lifting her pretty dark eyebrows; "I forget."

CHAPTER II.

Palestrina and I live in the country, and whenever we are dull or sad, like the sailors in Mr. Gilbert's poem, we decide that our neighbourhood is too deadly uninteresting, and then we go and see the Jamiesons. They are our nearest neighbours, as they are also amongst our greatest friends, and the walk to their house is a distance that I am able to manage. I believe that our visits to the Jamiesons are most often determined by the state of the weather. If we have pa.s.sed a long wet day indoors I feel that it is going to be a Jamieson day, and I know that my sister will say to me after tea, "Suppose we go over and see the Jamiesons;" and she generally adds that it is much better than settling down for the evening at five o'clock in the afternoon.

I do not think that Palestrina was so sociable a young woman, nor did she see so much of her neighbours, before I came home an invalid from South Africa--I got hit in the legs at Magersfontein, and had the left one taken off in the hospital at Wynberg--but she believes, no doubt rightly, that the variety that one gets by seeing one's fellow-men is good for a poor lame dog who lies on a sofa by the fire the greater part of the day, wis.h.i.+ng he could grow another leg or feel fit again.

Acting upon this unalterable conviction of my sister, we drive about in the afternoon and see people, and they come and see me and suggest occupations for me. In Lent I had a more than usual number of callers, which says much for the piety of the place, as well as for the goodness of heart of its inhabitants.

There is a slight coolness between what is known as the "County" and the Jamiesons, and their name is never mentioned without the accompanying piece of information, "You know, old Jamieson married his cook!" To be more exact, Mrs. Jamieson was a small farmer's daughter, and Captain Jamieson fell in love with her when, having left the army, he went to learn practical farming at old Higgins's, and he loved her faithfully to the day of his death. She is a stout, elderly woman who speaks very little, but upon whom an immense amount of affection seems to be lavished by her family of five daughters and two sons. And it has sometimes seemed to my sister and me that her good qualities are of a lasting and pa.s.sive sort, which exist in large measure in the hearts of those who bestow this boundless affection. Mrs. Jamieson's form of introducing herself to any one she meets consists in giving an account of the last illness and death of her husband. There is hardly a poultice which was placed upon that poor man which her friends have not heard about. And when she has finished, in her flat, sad voice, giving every detail of his last disorder, Mrs. Jamieson's conversation is at an end. She has learned, no doubt unconsciously, to gauge the characters of new acquaintances by the degree of interest which they evince in Captain Jamieson's demise. It is Mrs. Jamieson's test of their true worth.

Of the other sorrow which saddened a nature that perhaps was never very gay, Mrs. Jamieson rarely speaks. Possibly because she thinks of it more than of anything else in the world. Among her eight children there was only one who appeared to his mother to combine all perfection in himself. He was killed by an accident in his engineering works seven years ago, and although his friends will, perhaps, only remember him as a stout young fellow who sang sea-songs with a distended chest, his mother buried her heart with him in his grave, and even the voice of strangers is lowered as they say, "She lost a son once."

The late Captain Jamieson, a kindly, shrewd man and a Scotchman withal, was agent to Mrs. Fielden, widow of the late member for Stanby, and when he died his income perished with him, and The Family of Jamieson--a large one, as has been told--were thankful enough to subsist on their mother's inheritance of some four or five hundred a year, bequeathed to her by the member of the non-ill.u.s.trious house of Higgins, late farmer deceased. It is a hospitable house, for all its narrow means, and there live not, I believe, a warmer-hearted or more generous family than these good Jamiesons. The girls are energetic, bright, and honest; their slender purses are at the disposal of every scoundrel in the parish; and their time, as well as their boundless energy, is devoted to the relief of suffering or to the betterment of mankind.

Mrs. Fielden is of the opinion that nothing gives one a more perfect feeling of rest than going to Belmont, as the Jamiesons' little house is called, and watching them work. She calls it the "Rest Cure."

Every one of the five sisters, except Maud, who is the beauty of the family, wears spectacles, and behind these their bright, intelligent small eyes glint with kindness and brisk energy. The worst feature of this excellent family is their habit of all talking at the same time, in a certain emphatic fas.h.i.+on which renders it difficult to catch what each individual is saying, and this is especially the case when three of the sisters are driving sewing-machines simultaneously. They have a genius for buying remnants of woollen goods at a small price, and converting them into garments for the poor; and their first question often is, as they hold a piece of flannel or serge triumphantly aloft, "What do you think I gave for that?" Palestrina always names at least twice the sum that has purchased the goods, and has thereby gained a character for being dreadfully extravagant but sympathetic.

"I do not believe," I said to Palestrina the other day, "that these good Jamiesons have a thought beyond making other people happy."

"That and getting married are the sole objects of their existence,"

said Palestrina.

"It is very odd," I said, "that women so devoid of what might be called sentiment are yet so bent upon this very thing."

"Eliza told me to-day," said Palestrina, "that as Kate has not mentioned one single man in her letters home, they cannot help thinking that there is something in it."

The Jamiesons have the same vigorous, energetic ideas about matrimony that they have about everything else, and almost their sole grievance, navely expressed, is that Maud, "who gets them all"--meaning, I believe, offers of marriage--is the only one of the family who is unable to make up her mind clearly on this momentous question.

"We should not mind," say the conclave of sisters during one of the numerous family discussions on this subject, "even if she does get all the admirers--for of course she is the pretty one--if only she would accept one of them. But she always gets undecided and silly as soon as they come to the point."

It should be observed in pa.s.sing that the different stages of development in love affairs are shrewdly noted and commented upon by the Jamiesons. The first evidence of a man's preference is that he "is struck;" and the second, when he begins to visit at the house, is known as "hovering." An inquiry after Maud's health will sometimes elicit the unexpected reply that another admirer is hovering at present. The third stage is reached when the lover is said to be "dangling;" and the final triumph, when Maud has received a proposal, is noted as having "come to the point."

If Maud's triumphs are watched with small sighs of envy by her sisters, they are a source of nothing but gratification to them to retail to the outside world. There is a strict account kept of Maud's "conquests" in the letters sent to relatives, and the evening's post will sometimes contain the startling announcement that Maud has had a fourth in one year.

"Of course, you know how fond we all are of each other," said Eliza Jamieson to me one day with one of those unexpected confidences which the effeminacy of sickness seems to warrant, if not actually to invite, "but we can't help thinking that, humanly speaking, we should all have a better chance if only Maud would marry. No one would wish her to marry without love, but we fear she is looking for perfection, and _that_ she will never get; and it was really absurd of her to be so upset when she discovered, after nearly getting engaged to Mr. Reddy, that he wore a wig. After all, a man may be a good Christian in spite of having no hair."

"That is undoubtedly a fact," I said warmly.

"And Mr. Reddy had excellent prospects," said Eliza, "although perhaps nothing very tangible at present. Then there was Albert Gore, to whom, one must admit, Maud gave every encouragement, and we had begun to think it quite hopeful; but just at the end she discovered that she could not care for any one called Albert, which was too silly."

"She might have called him Bertie," I suggested.

"Yes," said Eliza eagerly; "and you see, none of us hope or expect to marry a man who has not some of these little drawbacks, so I really do not see why Maud should expect it."

Five matrimonial alliances in one house are, perhaps, not easily arranged in a quiet country neighbourhood, yet there is always a hopeful tone about these family discussions, and it is very common to hear the Miss Jamiesons relate at length what they intend to do when they are married.

And there is yet another maiden to be arranged for in the little house; Mettie is the Jamiesons' cousin who lives with them, and I believe that what appeals to me most strongly in this unknown provincial family is their kindness to the little shrunken, tiresome cousin who shares their home. Mettie is like some strange little bright bird, utterly devoid of intelligence, and yet with the alertness of a sparrow. Her beady eyes are a-twinkle in a restless sort of way all day long, and her large thin nose has always the appearance of having the skin stretched unpleasantly tightly across it. The good Jamiesons never seem to be ruffled by her presence among them, and this forbearance certainly commands one's respect. Mettie travesties the Jamiesons in every particular. She has adopted their matrimonial views with interest, and she utters little plat.i.tudes upon the subject with quite a surprising air of sapience. One avoids being left alone with Mettie whenever it is possible to do so, for, gentle creature though she is, her remarks are so singularly devoid of interest that one is often puzzled to understand why they are made. Yet I see one or other of the Jamiesons walk to the village with her every day--her little steps pattering beside their giant strides, while the bird-like tongue chirps gaily all the way.