CHAPTER XVI.
After the operation on my leg, I was laid up for a long time, and whenI got about again, Palestrina and Thomas were married. Thomas haslately come into his kingdom in the shape of a lordly castle inScotland, and for the life of me I can't say whether or not Palestrinahastened her wedding because the doctor ordered me to the North. If itwas so, my sister's plans were frustrated by the fact that Thomas'sancient Scottish seat was pronounced uninhabitable by a sanitarysurveyor, just as we proposed entering it under garlanded archways andmottoes on red cotton. Our old friend Mrs. Macdonald, hearing of ourdilemma, very kindly invited us to stay with her while Palestrina andThomas looked about for some little house that would take us in tilltheir own place should be ready. The finding of the little houseoccupied some days, owing to the powers of imagination displayed bypeople when describing their property. One lady, to whom Palestrinawrote to ask if her house were to be let, replied, "Yes, madam; thisdear, delightful, pretty house is to let;" and she pointed out in aletter, some four pages long, all the advantages that would accrue tous if we took it, ending up with the suggestion, subtly conveyed, thatby taking the house we should be turning her into the street, but thatshe would bear this indignity in consideration of receiving ten guineasa week.
Palestrina went to see it, and returned in the evening, almost intears, to say that the house was a semi-detached villa, and that shehad found the week's washing spread out on the front lawn.
Thomas said that the railway companies ought to pay a percentage on allmisleading advertisements which induce people to make these uselessjourneys.
The following day they returned from another fruitless expedition,having been to see a very small house owned by the widow of asea-captain, with a strong Scottish accent. I have often noticed thatthe seafaring man's one idea of well-invested capital is houseproperty--perhaps he alone knows how precarious is the life of the sea.And I shall like to meet the sailor who has invested his money in ashipping concern. The widow's house was so very small that it wasalmost impossible to believe that it contained the ten bedrooms asadvertised in my sister's well-worn house-list. So small indeed werethe rooms, that Palestrina said she felt sure that they must have beenoriginally intended for cupboards. Nevertheless, the rent of the housewas very high, and my sister ventured gently to hint this to the ladyof the house--the sea-captain's widow with the strong Scottish accent.
"Of course, it is a very nice house," she said politely; "but the rentis a little more than we thought of paying for a house of this size."
"I ken it's mair than the hoose is worth," said the old dame; "but, yesee, I'm that fond o' money--aye, I'm fearfu' fond o' money."
Palestrina and Thomas spent most of their days in their search for asuitable house, and Mrs. Macdonald spends the greater part of her lifehouse-keeping, so I was rather bored. What it actually is thatoccupies my hostess during the hours she spends in the back regions ofher house I have never been able to discover. But the fact remainsthat we have to get up unusually early in the morning to allow time forMrs. Macdonald's absorbing occupation. An old-fashioned Scotswoman ofmy acquaintance used to refuse all invitations to leave the house onThursdays, because, as she explained, "I keep Thursdays for my creestaland my napery." The rest of her week, however, was comparatively free.At Mrs. Macdonald's, housekeeping is never over. And so systematic arethe rules and regulations of the house, so many and so various are thelady's keys, that one finds one's self wondering if the rules of aprison or a workhouse can be more strict. The _Times_ newspaperarrives every evening after dinner; by lunch-time next day it is lockedaway in a cabinet, so that if one has not read the news by two o'clock,one must ask Mrs. Macdonald for the keys; this she does quitegood-naturedly, but I have never discovered why old newspapers shouldbe kept with so much care. On Saturdays an old man from the villagecomes in to do a little extra tidying-up in the garden. At nineo'clock precisely, Mrs. Macdonald is on the doorstep of her house, witha cup of tea in her hand, and a brisk, kindly greeting for John, andshe stands over the old man while he drinks his tea, and then returnswith the empty cup to the house.
Tuesday is the day on which her drawing-room is cleaned. At half-pastnine precisely on Monday evenings Mrs. Macdonald says, "Monday, youknow, is our early-closing night;" and she fetches you a candle anddispatches you to bed. Mrs. Macdonald and her housemaid--there seem tobe plenty of servants to do the work of the house--walk the whole ofthe drawing-room furniture into the hall, Mrs. Macdonald loops up thecurtains herself, and covers some appalling pictures and themantelpiece ornaments with dust-sheets. At ten o'clock she removes apair of housemaid's gloves, and an apron which she has donned for theoccasion, and says, "There! that's all ready for Tuesday's cleaning;"and she briskly bids her housemaid good-night.
On Tuesdays we are not allowed to enter the drawing-room all day, andon Wednesdays the same restrictions are placed upon the dining-room.Indeed, on no day in the week is the whole of the house available, andupon no morning of the week has Mrs. Macdonald a spare moment toherself. After breakfast, when Palestrina and Thomas have gone, sheconducts me to the morning-room, and placing the _Scotsman_ (the_Scotsman_ is used for lighting the fires, and is formally handed tothe housemaid at six o'clock in the evening) by my chair, she says, "Ihope you will be all right," and shuts the door upon me. During themorning she pops her head in from time to time, like an attentive guardwho has been told to look after a lady on a journey, and noddingbriskly from the door, she asks, "Are you all right? Sure you wouldnot like milk or anything?" and then disappears again. With a littlestretch of imagination one can almost believe that the green flag hasbeen raised to the engine-driver, and that the train is moving off. Atlunch-time she is so busy giving directions to her servants that shehardly ever hears what one says, and the most interesting piece of newsis met with the somewhat irrelevant reply, "The bread-sauce, please,Jane, and then the cauliflower." Turning to one, she explains, "Ialways train my servants myself.... What were you saying just now?"
"I saw in the newspaper this morning," I repeat, "that H.M.S. ---- hasfoundered with all hands."
"In the middle of the table, if you please," says Mrs. Macdonald; "andthen the coffee with the crystallized sugar--not the brown--and openthe drawing-room windows when you have finished tidying there.... Whatwere you saying? How sad these things are!"
The house is charmingly situated, with a most beautiful view over riverand hills; but I really think my preoccupied friend hardly ever hastime to look out of the window, and that to her the interior of astore-cupboard with neatly-filled shelves is more beautiful thananything which the realms of Nature can offer.
When Palestrina is present Mrs. Macdonald gives her recipes for makingpuddings and for taking stains out of carpets, and she advises herabout spring-cleanings and the proper sifting of ashes at the backdoor. Mrs. Macdonald was brought up in the old days, when a younglady's training and education were frankly admitted to be a trainingfor her as a wife. She belonged to the period when a girl with a tastefor music was encouraged to practise "so that some day you may be ableto play to your husband in the evenings, my dear," and was advised tobe an early riser so that the house might be comfortable and in orderwhen her husband should descend to breakfast. And now that thathusband, having been duly administered to, is dead, Mrs. Macdonald'shomely talents, once the means to an end, have resolved themselves intoan end, a finality of effort. Mrs. Macdonald was brought up to be ahousekeeper, and she remains a housekeeper, and jam-pots andpreserving-pans form the boundary line of her life and the limit of herhorizon.
Eliza Jamieson would probably tell us that even though Mrs. Macdonald'ssoups and preserves are excellent, these culinary efforts should not bethe highest things required of a wife by her husband, and thattherefore they are not a wife's highest duty, even during the time thather husband remains with her. And she would probably point out thatservants and weekly bills, and an endeavour to render this creaturecomplacent, have ruined many a woman's life.
And I laugh as I think ofPalestrina's rejoinder, "But then it is so much pleasanter when theyare complacent."
One certainly imagined that the late Mr. Macdonald must have been welllooked after during his life, and it was something of a shock to me tohear the account of his death, from the lodgekeeper's wife, oneafternoon when she had come in to help with the cleaning, and wasarranging my dressing-table for me. The rest of my bedroom furniturewas then standing in the passage, and I had found my cap in one of thespare bedrooms, and all the boots of the house in the hall.
"He was a rale decent gentleman," said Mrs. Gemmil, "and awfy patientwith the cleaning. But I am sure whiles I was sorry for him. He wasshuftit and shuftit, and never knew in the morn whichna bed in thehoose he would be sleeping in at nicht. And we a' ken that it was thespring-cleaning, when he was pit to sleep ower the stables, that was,under Providence, the death o' him. He had aye to cross ower in thewat at nicht-time, and he juist took a pair o' cauld feet, and theysettled on his lungs."
The day following my chat with Mrs. Gemmil was the day Palestrina founda house such as she had been looking for all along. The day wasSaturday. Overnight she had announced her intention of being away allday, and Mrs. Macdonald had said delightedly that that would suit heradmirably. "I do like the servants to have the entire day for thepassages on Saturday," she remarked.
Even when the day dawned wet and cloudy, Palestrina had not the courageto suggest that she should stay at home, and thereby interfere with thecleaning of the passages.
The house she had found seemed to be everything that was desirable, andPalestrina returned in an elated frame of mind. "It is far away fromeverything," she said, "except the village people and the minister, andthe 'big hoose,' as they call it, which some English bodies have rentedfor the autumn."
"It can't be far from the Melfords," said Thomas, pulling out a map."Yes, I thought so; they are just the other side of the loch."
"We 'mussed the connaketion' on our way back," said Palestrina; "and Ido believe there's nothing a Scottish porter enjoys telling one so muchas this."
"I hope I am not unduly disparaging the railway system of my nativeland," said Thomas, "when I say that if you go by steamer and by trainit is the remark that usually greets one, and it is always made in atone of humorous satisfaction." And Thomas, with an exaggeratedScottish accent, which he does uncommonly well, began to tell me oftheir adventures. "We had a rush for the train," he said, "and I toldan elderly Scot, who couldn't have hurried if he had had a mad bullbehind him, to run and get us two first-class tickets. He walkedslowly down the platform, muttering, 'Furrst, furrst,' and then heopened the door of a third-class carriage and shoved us in, saying,'Ye've no occasion to travel furrst when there's plenty of room in thethurrds.'"
A Lame Dog's Diary Page 16