People Like Ourselves (Scottish Historical Novels). Anna Buchan
become her. She was dressed in pale shades of mauve, and had a finely finished look. The Indian climate and curries had affected Mr. Jowett's liver, and made his temper fiery, but his heart remained the sound, childlike thing it had always been. He quarrelled with everybody (though never for long), but people in trouble gravitated to him naturally, and no one had ever asked him anything in reason and been refused; children loved him.
Mr. Jackson, the Episcopalian clergyman, followed hard behind the Jowetts, and was immediately engaged in an argument with Mr. Jowett as to whether or not choral communion, which had recently been started and which Mr. Jowett resented, as he resented all new things, should be continued.
"Ridiculous!" he shouted—"utterly ridiculous! You will drive the people from the church, sir."
Then Mr. Elliot arrived. Mrs. Duff-Whalley greeted him impressively, and dinner was announced.
Lewis Elliot was a man of forty-five, tall and thin and inclined to stoop. He had shortsighted blue eyes and a shy, kind smile. He was not a sociable man, and resented being dragged from his books to attend a dinner-party. Like most people he was quite incapable of saying No to Mrs. Duff-Whalley when that lady desired an answer in the affirmative, but he had condemned himself roundly to himself as a fool as he drove down the glen from Laverlaw.
Mrs. Duff-Whalley always gave a long and pretentious meal, and expected everyone to pay for their invitation by being excessively bright and chatty. It was not in the power of the present guests to be either the one thing or the other. Mrs. Jowett was pensive and sweet, and inclined to be silent; her husband gave loud barks of disagreement at intervals; Mr. Jackson enjoyed his dinner and answered when spoken to, while Lewis Elliot was rendered almost speechless by the flood of talk his hostess poured over him.
"I'm very sorry, Mr. Elliot," she remarked in a pause, "that the people I wanted to meet you couldn't come. I asked Sir John and Lady Tweedie, but they were engaged—so unfortunate, for they are such an acquisition. Then I asked the Olivers, and they couldn't come. You would really wonder where the engagements come from in this quiet neighbourhood." She gave a little unbelieving laugh. "I had evidently chosen an unfortunate evening for the County."
It was trying for everyone: for Mr. Elliot, who was left with the impression that people were apt to be engaged when asked to meet him; for the Jowetts, who now knew that they had received a "fiddler's bidding," and for Mr. Jackson, who felt that he was only there because nobody else could be got.
There was a blank silence, which Lewis Elliot broke by laughing cheerfully. "That absurd rhyme came into my head," he explained. "You know:
"'Miss Smarty gave a party,
No one came.
Her brother gave another,
Just the same.'"
Then, feeling suddenly that he had not improved matters, he fell silent.
"Oh," said Mrs. Duff-Whalley, rearing her head like an affronted hen, "the difficulty, I assure you, is not to find guests but to decide which to select."
"Quite so, quite so, naturally," murmured Mr. Jackson soothingly; he had laughed at the rhyme and felt apologetic. Then, losing his head completely under the cold glance his hostess turned on him, he added, "Go ye into the highways and hedges and compel them to come in."
Mrs. Jowett took a bit of toast and broke it nervously. She was never quite at ease in Mrs. Duff-Whalley's company. Incapable of an unkind thought or a bitter word, so refined as to be almost inaudible, she felt jarred and bumped in her mind after a talk with that lady, even as her body would have felt after bathing in a rough sea among rocks. Realising that the conversation had taken an unfortunate turn, she tried to divert it into more pleasing channels.
Turning to Mr. Jackson, she said: "Such a sad thing happened to-day. Our dear old dog, Rover, had to be put away. He was sixteen, very deaf and rather cross, and the Vet. said it wasn't kind to keep him; and of course after that we felt there was nothing to be said. The Vet. said he would come this morning at ten o'clock, and it quite spoilt my breakfast, for dear Rover sat beside me and begged, and I felt like an executioner; and then he went out for a walk by himself—a thing he hadn't done since he had become frail—and when the Vet. came there was no Rover."
"Dear, dear!" said Mr. Jackson, helping himself to an entrée.
"The really dreadful thing about it," continued Mrs. Jowett, refusing the entrée, "was that Johnston—the gardener, you know—had dug the grave where I had chosen he should lie, dear Rover, and—you have heard the expression, Mr. Jackson—a yawning grave? Well, the grave yawned. It was too heartrending. I simply went to my room and cried, and Tim went in one direction and Johnston in another, and the maids looked too, and they found the dear doggie, and the Vet.—a most obliging man called Davidson—came back … and dear Rover is at rest."
Mrs. Jowett looked sadly round and found that the whole table had been listening to the recital.
Few people have not loved a dog and known the small tragedy of parting with it when its all too short day was over, and even the "lamentable comedy" of Mrs. Jowett's telling of the tale made no one smile.
Muriel leant forward, genuinely distressed. "I'm so frightfully sorry, Mrs. Jowett; you'll miss dear old Rover dreadfully."
"It's a beastly business putting away a dog," said Lewis Elliot. "I always wish they had the same lease of life as we have. 'Threescore and ten years do sum up' … and it's none too long for such faithful friends."
"You must get another, Mrs. Jowett," her hostess told her bracingly. "Get a dear little toy Pekinese or one of those Japanese what-do-you-call-'ems that you can carry in your arms: they are so smart."
"If you do, Janetta," her husband warned her, "you must choose between the brute and me. I refuse to live in the same house with one of those pampered, trifling little beasts. If we decide to fill old Rover's place I suggest that we get a rough-haired Irish terrier." He rolled the "r's" round his tongue. "Something robust that can bark and chase cats, and not lie all day on a cushion, like one of those dashed Chinese …" His voice died away in muttered thunder.
Again Mrs. Duff-Whalley reared her head, but Muriel interposed, laughing. "You mustn't really be so severe, Mr. Jowett. I happen to possess two of the 'trifling beasts,' and you must come and apologise to them after dinner. You can't imagine more perfect darlings, and of course they are called Bing and Toutou. You won't be able to resist their little sweet faces—too utterly darling!"
"Shan't I?" said Mr. Jowett doubtfully. "Well, I apologise. Nobody likes to hear their dog miscalled…. By the way, Jackson, that's an abominable brute of yours. Bit three milk-girls and devastated the Scotts' hen-house last week, I hear."
"Yes," said Mr. Jackson. "Four murdered fowls they brought to me, and I had to pay for them; and they didn't give me the corpses, which I felt was too bad."
"What?" said Mrs. Duff-Whalley, deeply interested. "Did you actually pay for the damage done and let them keep the fowls?"
"I did," Mr. Jackson owned gloomily, and the topic lasted until the fruit was handed round.
"I wonder," said Mrs. Jowett to her hostess, as she peeled a pear, "if you have met a newcomer in Priorsford—Miss Reston? She has taken Miss Bathgate's rooms."
"You mean the Honourable Pamela Reston? She is a daughter of the late Lord Bidborough of Bidborough Manor, Surrey, and Mintern Abbas, Oxfordshire, and sister of the present peer: I looked her up in Debrett. I called on her, feeling it my duty to be civil to a stranger, but it seems to me a very odd thing that a peer's daughter would care to live in such a humble way. Mark my words, there's something shady about it. As likely as not, she's an absconding lady's-maid—but a call commits one to nothing. She was out anyway, so I didn't see her."
"Oh, indeed," said Mrs. Jowett, blushing pink, "Miss Reston is no impostor. When you have seen her you will realise that. I met her yesterday at the Jardines'. She is the most delightful creature, so charming to look at, so wonderfully graceful——"
"I think," said Lewis Elliot, "that that must be the Pamela Reston