A Lame Dog's Diary Part 21

"I was there before you," said Mrs. Fielden; "and I had to rouse up the people at the inn to take me in and give me breakfast. Even they were not up at that hour! But after ringing twice, such a nice boots came and opened the door to me, and brought me some breakfast."

"The gathering was very good this year," said Lord Melford. "Why didn't some of you come? By-the-bye, your friend Mrs. Macdonald was there. Indeed, it was she who insisted on taking Mrs. Fielden to the Gaelic concert."

"Gaelic is rather an alarming language," said Mrs. Fielden. "I always feel as if I were being sworn at when I hear it."

One of Mrs. Fielden's admirers who had reached the savage and sarcastic stage here interposed, and said: "Poor Mrs. Fielden! I saw you at the concert. How did you manage to sit throughout a whole evening between Mrs. Macdonald and a wall?"

"Mrs. Macdonald is quite a dear!" said Mrs. Fielden. (Whom, in the name of Fortune, would Mrs. Fielden not find charming?)

"I don't know what you and Mrs. Macdonald can have found to talk about," said Palestrina, laughing.

"We discussed the training of servants most of the time," said Mrs.

Fielden simply.

Every one laughed; and my sister, with a recollection of our visit to Mrs. Macdonald, said at once, "Did she give you any useful household recipes?"

"It is very odd that you should have asked me that," said Mrs. Fielden.

"Do you know, that the whole of to-day I have been puzzling over a letter which I received this morning? I did not know the handwriting, and it was merely headed, 'Two recipes for boiling a ham, as requested.' Now, I cannot really have asked Mrs. Macdonald for recipes for boiling a ham, can I?"

We thought it highly probable that she had done so, and had done it, too, with an air of profound interest; and I think we said this, which Mrs. Fielden did not mind in the least.

"There is something rather horrible, don't you think so," she said, "in knowing how a thing is cooked?"

The minister, who is a.s.siduous in calling, walked up after tea with his friend Evan Sinclair; and as we were already far too large a party for dinner, we asked them to stay too.

Mr. Macorquodale has frequently described himself to us as a grand preacher. He and Evan Sinclair live quite close to each other, and they are friends whose affection is rooted and maintained in warfare.

For the minister and Sinclair to meet is one strenuous contest as to who shall have the last word. Politeness is not a strong motive with either of them--indeed, one would imagine that from the first it has been ruled out of place. The friendship and the warfare began at the Edinburgh High School years ago, and both the friendship and the warfare have lasted without intermission ever since. They meet every day, and often twice a day; they fish together, and in the winter they spend every evening with each other. Scottish people seem to have a sneaking liking for those who dislike them, and a certain pity mingled with contempt for those who show them favour and affection. The friendship of Evan and the minister is based upon feelings of the most respectful admiration for their mutual antipathy.

To keep alive this laudable and self-respecting warfare is the highest effort of genius of both Mr. Sinclair and the Reverend Alexander. To foster it they apply themselves to what they call "plain speaking"

whenever they meet, and they conceal as much as possible from each other every single good quality that they possess.

The minister, who is a big man, always talks of Evan as "Wee Sinkler,"

and sneers at "heritors;" and Evan invariably addresses Macorquodale as "Taurbarrels," a name which he considers appropriate to the minister's black clothes and portly figure.

"The minister," said Evan, when he had walked up the hill to see us, "has been reading Josephus. We shall have some erudite learning from the pulpit for the next Sunday or two."

The minister was announced a moment later, and, before taking the trouble to shake hands with us, he looked Evan Sinclair over from top to toe, and remarked, "Ye're very attentive in calling upon ladies."

"I was just talking about your fine preaching," said Evan.

"I admit my gift," said the minister; "but I fear that I very often preach to a deaf adder which stops its ears." He nodded triumphantly at us, and it then occurred to him to shake hands.

Evan said at once that he got a better sleep in kirk on Sundays than he got during the whole of the week.

"Evan Sinclair," said the minister, "if I find you sleeping under me I'll denounce you from my pulpit, as a minister has the right to do."

"And we'll settle it in the graveyard afterwards," said Evan dryly.

"And ye're not in very good training, my man."

Palestrina broke in gently to discuss a theological point which had puzzled us for several Sundays. On each Lord's Day as it came round we had prayed that we might become "a little beatle to the Lord."

Doubtless the simile is a beautiful one, but its immediate bearing upon our needs was not too grossly evident. And it seemed almost dangerous to those who believe in the efficacy of prayer to put up this pet.i.tion in its literal sense. We had decided for some time past that we should ask Mr. Macorquodale what it was exactly for which we made pet.i.tion, when we prayed that we might become "a little beatle to the Lord."

"Similes," said Palestrina in her serious way, "are beautiful sometimes, but we can't quite understand one of the references that you make in your prayers on Sundays."

"We have prayed so fervently," said Mrs. Fielden, "without perhaps entirely understanding the portent of the pet.i.tion, that we might become 'a little beatle to the Lord.'"

The thing was out now, and our curiosity, we hoped, would be gratified.

There was a pause which suggested that our hearers were puzzled, and then Mr. Sinclair put a large pocket-handkerchief into his mouth and roared with laughter, and Mr. Macorquodale turned to my sister, who was trembling now, and remarked in an awful voice that he wondered that we didn't understand plain English.

Of course she apologized, and an explanation came afterwards from Evan Sinclair, who told us that the minister's prayer was that we--the church--might become a little Bethel, and that Beethel was his Doric p.r.o.nunciation of the word.

It began to rain on Sunday, as it often does in Scotland--Nature itself seems to put on a more serious expression on the Sabbath--and it continued raining for four whole days. The rain came down steadily and mercilessly, shutting out the view of the hills, and turning the whole landscape into a big damp gray blanket. "I suppose," said Mrs.

Fielden, who is never affected by bad weather, "that we shall all get very cross and quarrel with each other if the rain continues much longer."

"I think I shall write a number of unnecessary letters to absent friends," said Palestrina. "And Mr. Ellicomb and Sir Anthony Crawshay will arrive to-morrow, and we must tell them to amuse us."

It was a disappointment to find that Mr. Ellicomb's nerves and temper were seriously affected by the weather, and in moments of extreme depression his low spirits vented themselves in a rabid abuse of the Presbyterian Kirk. I cannot understand why Ellicomb should elect to wear a brown velvet shooting-jacket, and a pale-green tie, and neat boots laced half-way up his legs, in Scotland. He went to the village church in the rain on Sunday, and he has not been the same man since.

"Don't call it a church!" he cried as we went homewards up the hill, where the road was a watercourse and each tree poured down moisture.

He seemed to think that he had done his soul an irreparable injury by entering a Presbyterian kirk.

Anthony said, "Oh! don't be an a.s.s, Ellicomb." But even on Monday morning poor Ellicomb was still suffering from the weather and the effects of his churchgoing.

"Can he be in love?" said Palestrina; "and if so, as the Jamiesons would say, which is it?"

Palestrina is prettier than ever since her marriage. She still says, "Oh, that will be delightful!" to whatever Thomas and I suggest, and she never seems to have any occupation except to be with us when we want her, and to accede to everything we say, which of course, from a man's point of view, is a very delightful trait in a woman.

"I rather wonder," said Palestrina, "that I have not heard from any of the Jamiesons lately. They are usually such good writers."

"Depend upon it, there is a great bit of news coming," said Thomas.

"The Jamiesons always maintain a dramatic silence just before announcing some tremendous piece of intelligence."

Thomas had hardly spoken the words before a telegram was handed to Palestrina, containing the following enigmatical words:---

"Engaged Cuthbertson. Greatly surprised. Deeply thankful.--ELIZA."

This rather mysterious message was followed, later in the day, by a letter four pages in length, and marked on the outside, for some reason best known to Eliza, "Immediate." The letter explained more fully the cause of Eliza's thankfulness, and who it was that was greatly surprised.

"If you had told me," wrote Eliza, "six weeks ago that I should now be engaged to Mr. Cuthbertson, I should hardly have believed it. I really had not a notion that he cared for me until he actually said the words.

Is it not too strange to think that perhaps, after all, Maud may be one of the last of us to get married?"

Here followed the usual descriptive catalogue, so characteristic of the Jamiesons' letters. "Mr. Cuthbertson looks like a widower, though he is not one." Strangely enough, I could never think of any other words, when I came to know Mr. Cuthbertson, that described him so well as these, and I can only account for it by saying that the man's deep melancholy and the c.r.a.pe band that he habitually wore round his hat must have given one the feeling that at some time Mr. Cuthbertson had suffered a heavy bereavement. "I have only known him," Eliza's letter went on, "for six weeks, but even that time has shown me his worth. He has a very straight nose and a black beard, and his forehead is distinctly intellectual. I met him first at Mrs. Darcey-Jacobs', where, as you know, I had gone to stay to catalogue their library, and to do a little typewriting for her. You know, of course, that she has become a member of the S.R.S., and their library is a _mine of information_.

"At first I was afraid to say, or even to allow myself to think, he showed me any preference, but Maud thought from the first that he was struck, and I asked her not to appear at all until everything was settled, for you know how attractive she is. But I really don't think that even then I thought that there was anything serious in it." (For an intelligent woman Eliza's letter strikes one as being strangely lacking in concentration.) "I have just been to the meeting of the Browning Society--our first appearance in public together--and I read my paper on "The Real Strafford," but I could hardly keep my voice steady all the time. I wear his own signet-ring for the present, but we are going up to London next week, when he will buy me a hoop of pearls. I am sure that you will be glad to hear that he is comfortably off. When the right man comes preconceived objections to matrimony vanish, _but it must be the right man_."

Palestrina said that she was "thrilled" to hear of Eliza's engagement, because an engagement was always thrilling, and she instantly went to tell the news to Mr. Ellicomb. She told me afterwards that when she had said that one of the Jamiesons was engaged Mr. Ellicomb became suddenly very pale in his complexion, and exclaimed, in a most anxious tone of voice, "Which?"