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."

"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 assiduous 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 petition 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 petition, 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 petition, 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 pronunciation 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 ass, 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