A Lame Dog's Diary Part 11

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 circ.u.mspect. 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-gla.s.ses, 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-gla.s.ses?"

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 Baccha.n.a.lian 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 d.i.c.kie 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-gla.s.ses 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-gla.s.ses 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."