A Lame Dog's Diary Part 20

"Lift in my leg, Angus! Juist gie me a hand wi' ma last leg!"

Palestrina chose the tweed for our coats and her skirt, and then we walked up to the Castle and called on the Melfords, who told us that Mrs. Fielden was coming to stay with them. They sang her praises, as most people do; she has heaps of friends. Then Palestrina did some shopping at the "flesher's" and the baker's, and we went down to the ferry again--a boy behind us laden with queer-looking parcels containing provisions, and Alloa yarn to knit into stockings, and paper-bags with ginger-bread cakes in them. When we got in and sat down under the brown sail of the heavy boat, the two sailors remained in their places, and did not show the least sign of getting under way.

Thomas said to the elder of the two men, a fine old fellow with a face such as one connects with stories of the Covenanters,--

"Why don't you get off?"

And the old man replied unmoved, "I'm waiting for the Lord."

Palestrina, who is sympathetic in every matter, put on an expression of deep religious feeling, and we thought of the Irvingites, and wished that we had Eliza Jamieson with us "to look it up." As far as we knew, the Irvingites wait to perform every action until inspired to perform it. We had heard that in the smallest matter, such as beginning to eat their dinner, they will wait until this inspiration, as I suppose one must call it, is given to them. The question then arose, how long would it be before we would be likely to get under way? The two sailors sat on without moving, and the elder of them cut a wedge of tobacco and was filling his pipe, preparing to smoke. We wondered if the Irvingites often waited for an inspiration in this contented way.

The big red-funnelled steamer from Greenock was, meanwhile, preparing to depart. It had poured its daily output of tourists for their half-hour's run in the town, which time they employ in buying mementoes of the place, and we had hurried down to the sailing-boat to escape this influx.

Thomas endeavoured to a.s.sist inspiration by saying it didn't seem much use waiting any longer, and that as time was getting on, did not our friend (the gray-bearded Covenanter) think that it was time to be moving? The Covenanter wrinkled up his nose, which already was a good deal wrinkled, and gazed upwards at the sail, or, as we interpreted it, to Heaven. Palestrina pressed Thomas's hand, and said gently, "Don't urge him, dear; we shall get off in time." And the younger sailor said, "We are waiting for the Lord." So we knew that they were both Irvingites, and the only scepticism that intruded itself upon us was this: Suppose inspiration never came, how should we get home?

The steamer now began to move away from the pier, with a great churning and hissing of water, and seething white foam fizzing round the staples of the pier. A band began to play on board, and the paddles broke the water with a fine sweep. Two youngsters on sh.o.r.e, to whom "the stimmer" is a daily excitement, then called out in shrill, high voices, "There's the Lord! She's aff!"

The _Lord of the Isles_ had moved off on her return journey to Greenock, and the notes on Scottish religion which Palestrina was carefully preparing were hastily destroyed. The _Lord_ had departed, and we sailed across the loch without waiting any longer.

When we got home, we found the minister awaiting us in the drawing-room, he having suggested that as we were not at home, he had better stay till our return. I found out, in the course of conversation, that he is a distant relation of old Captain Jamieson--the Jamiesons' father--so we had quite a long talk about our friends. The minister is one of those Scots whose national characteristics are always stronger than individual character. Take away his nationality from him, and Mr. Macorquodale would be nothing at all. His qualities being entirely Scottish, it is only logical to a.s.sume that if Mr. Macorquodale were not Scottish, he would be non-existent.

Palestrina came out on to the little terrace where we were sitting, and I explained to her that the minister was a cousin of the Jamiesons.

"How interesting!" said Palestrina in her usual kind way.

"Why?" said the minister. He has sandy hair and very round gray eyes, and looks like a football player.

"Oh, I don't know," said my sister; "it's always interesting, isn't it, to find that people are related?"

"Every one must have some relations," said Mr. Macorquodale; "and if my choice had been given me, I do not think I should have chosen those five gurrls."

"We like them so much," Palestrina said, smiling.

"Is that the truth?" said Mr. Macorquodale; and she replied firmly that it was.

"Um umph!" he said, as though considering a perfectly new problem, and then added: "Well, each man to his taste. How many of them have got husbands?"

I replied that Kate was married and Gracie engaged.

"Gracie?" said the minister simply. "Was that the one with a nose like a scone?"

We considered Grade's nose silently for a moment, and then admitted that perhaps the simile was not unjust.

"How did she get him?" said the minister presently.

The minister has a curious way of eating, which fascinates one to look at, while all the time there is a distinct feeling that an accident may happen at any moment. When tea was brought out he accepted some, and filled his mouth very full of cookie, stowing into it nearly a whole one at a time, and then raised his tea-cup to his lips. He persists in keeping his spoon in his cup as he drinks, and he prevents it from tumbling out by holding it with his thumb. A long draught of tea is then partaken of with a gurgling sound, and the minister swallows audibly. It is almost impossible to prevent one's self watching this process of eating and drinking during the whole of tea-time. For it seems so uncertain whether the spoon will remain in its place, and the cookie and the tea.

The minister is a very young man, with the pugnacity of an Edinburgh High School boy, and with the awful truthfulness which distinguishes his nation, but which is accentuated in such an alarming degree in a minister of the Kirk.

"I sent Kate a scent-bottle when she married," he remarked. "I won it at a bazaar for sixpence, so it was not expensive. I don't disapprove of raffles," he added, although he had not been asked for this piece of information--"that is, if ladies do not cheat over it, as they often do." Palestrina bristled at the insinuation, and the minister consoled her by saying: "Women sin in such wee ways--that's what I can't understand about them. However," he said, "I have never known a woman steal a thing yet that a man has not reaped some benefit by it. I can quote authority for my views from Adam and Eve downwards, to the newspapers of yesterday. I am engaged to be married myself, and I find the subject of feminine ethics absorbing. Good-bye," he said presently; "I hope you will not be disappointed with the clothes I hear you've ordered."

Alas! the tweed coat and skirt in which my sister hoped to rival the Miss Finlaysons proved an utter misfit, and she drove round the loch on the following day to take the garments back. Palestrina had prepared a severe reprimand for the tailor, but the old man took the wind out of her sails by stopping in amazement at the first word of annoyance which she uttered, and standing in the middle of the little fitting-room, with a yellow tape measure round his neck, and a piece of chalk in his hand, he shook his gray beard at us with something of apostolic fervour, and thus addressed us:--

"I'm amazed at ye! Do ye ever consider the system of planets, and that this world is one of the lesser points of light in s.p.a.ce, and that even here there are countless millions of human beings, full of great resolves and high purposes. Get outside yourselves, ladies and gentlemen, and realize in the magnitude of the universe, and the immeasurable majesty of the planetary system, how small a thing is the ill-fit of a jacket."

We felt much humbled, Palestrina and I. And it was only when we were driving home afterwards that it even dimly suggested itself to us that we had right on our side at all. "After all," Palestrina said, "the coats did not fit; I really do not think he need have lectured us so severely."

At the time, however, I confess that our feelings were distinctly apologetic.

One wonders how a tailor who advanced the planetary system as a reproof to complaining customers would get on in London, and one realizes that English people have a great deal still to learn.

CHAPTER XVIII.

When Mrs. Fielden came to stay at the Melfords we saw a good deal of her. Their yacht used to steam up in the early morning, and they would take us off for a day's cruise on the loch or for a trip round to Oban.

Mrs. Fielden used to sit on deck with a big red umbrella over her head and a white yachting gown on, and seemed serenely unconscious that she was looking very pretty and very smart. My sister tells me she never feels badly dressed till she meets Mrs. Fielden.

The Melfords have very pleasant people stopping with them always, and there are very jolly little parties on board their yacht. Mrs.

Fielden, however, is in her most provoking and wilful mood. Every day it is the same thing--laughter and smiles for every one. But she has absolutely no heart. All the beautiful, kindly things she does are only the whim of the moment. They bespeak a generous nature, as easily moved to tears as to laughter; but she loves every one a little, and probably has no depth of affection or constancy in her. Lately, she has added another provoking habit to the many she already possesses.

She exaggerates her pretence of having no memory, and indeed it may be she has not any.

When I left home, rather a wreck as regards health, and drove to the station in Mrs. Fielden's luxurious carriage, it was her hand that piled the cushions, as no one else can, behind me. And the last thing I saw was her smile as she waved her hand to me from my own door.

Last week, when we met again at the Melfords', she nodded to me in a little indifferent sort of way. She sat under a big cedar-tree on one of the lawns, and laughed, and talked a sort of brilliant nonsense the whole afternoon.

By-and-by I said to her--probably clumsily, certainly at the wrong time--"I never half thanked you for being so good to me when I was ill;" for she had come in like some radiant vision, day after day, in her beautiful summer gowns and rose-garlanded hats, and had sat by my couch, reading to me sometimes, talking to me at others in a voice as gentle as a dove's. Why will she not allow one to admire her? One only wants to do so humbly and at a distance. It was so pleasant up here in the Highlands, with the dear memory of those long days to look back upon. But Mrs. Fielden ruthlessly robbed me and sent me away empty the very first day of our meeting.

"Was I kind to you? I don't believe I was, really. If I was, I'm sure I forget all about it. Let me see, how long were you ill? It can't have been a bit amusing for you," and so on, laughing at my dull face and serious ways.

And this has gone on for a whole week. At the Melfords' parties she selects, quite indiscriminately, and in a royal way which she has, this man or that to be her escort or her companion. Now it is a mere boy whom she bewilders with a few of her radiant smiles, and now one of her elderly colonels whom she reduces to a state of abject admiration in a few hours. One man goes fishing with her, and another rows her on the loch. A third, hearing that Mrs. Fielden's life will be a blank if she does not possess a certain rare fern which may be found sometimes on the hillsides of Scotland, spends a whole day scrambling about looking for it, and returns triumphant in the evening. Mrs. Fielden has forgotten that she ever wanted it. When we sulk she does not notice it. When her colonels offer her their fatuous admiration she goes to sleep, and then, waking up, is so very, very sorry. "But you can't have amused me properly," she says, "or I should have stayed awake."

When any one tries by avoiding her to show displeasure, Mrs. Fielden is oblivious of the fact. And when the penitence and boredom which immediately ensue when one has deprived Mrs. Fielden of one's company have led to ending the one-sided quarrel with an apology, it is only to find that Mrs. Fielden has been blissfully unconscious of one's absence. Summer and the air of the Highlands seem to be in her veins.

Her happiness, like the quality of mercy, is twice blessed, making her, through her talent for enjoyment, diffuse something beautiful and gay about her.

After all, why should she care? Life was evidently made to give her pleasure. Why should a woman always be blamed for being loved? Mrs.

Fielden's charm is of the irresponsible sort. To live and to be lovely are all one ought to demand of her, and at least she is without vanity.

She seems to be entirely unconscious of the admiration she receives, or perhaps she is simply indifferent to it.

The Melfords adore her, and allow her to see it. They say no one knows her as they do. Probably we all feel that. This is one of Mrs.

Fielden's most maddening charms. We have all found something in her that seems to belong to ourselves alone.

Lately I have discovered that she loves to wander up the hillside by herself, and listen to the plover's solitary cry, and sit in the sunshine with no companion near her. And one wonders why so frivolous a woman should care for this, and why when she comes back amongst us again her eyes should wear the wistful look which covers them like a veil sometimes.

When she left the Melfords' Palestrina asked her to come and stay with us; and rather to my surprise, Mrs. Fielden came. It seems to me she must find us a very dull lot after the Melfords' cheery house-parties.

She arrived late one afternoon in the yacht, and the whole party came up to dine with us before returning to the castle. The little house was taxed to its utmost capacity, even to provide teacups for our guests. But the Melfords have a happy knack of seeming to find pleasure in everything. Mrs. Fielden's gaiety was infectious, and her lightheartedness knocked all one's serious world to pieces, while her beauty seemed almost extravagant in the plain setting of the little house.

She began to give us some of her experiences in Scotland. "Do you know," she said, putting on a charming gravity and lifting her eyebrows in a provoking, childish way, "that every single person in Scotland gets up at five o'clock in the morning? and all the coaches and excursions start at daybreak, and when you want to hit off what they call a 'connection' anywhere, you have to get up in the middle of the night?"

"I am afraid you had a horribly early start to join the yacht the other day," said Lord Melford, "but it was the only way we could manage to get to the Oban Gathering in time."