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Title: The Real Charlotte
Author: Ross, Martin, Somerville, E. Oe. (Edith Oenone)
Language: English
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THE REAL CHARLOTTE
STORIES AND SKETCHES OF IRISH LIFE.
By E. Œ. SOMERVILLE and MARTIN ROSS.
SOME EXPERIENCES OF AN IRISH R.M.
With 31 Illustrations by E. Œ. SOMERVILLE.
=Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d.=
FURTHER EXPERIENCES OF AN IRISH R.M.
With 35 Illustrations by E. Œ. SOMERVILLE.
=Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d.=
IN MR. KNOX’S COUNTRY.
With 8 Illustrations in Colour by E. Œ. SOMERVILLE.
=Crown 8vo, 6s.=
ALL ON THE IRISH SHORE.
With 10 Illustrations by E. Œ. SOMERVILLE.
=Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d.=
SOME IRISH YESTERDAYS.
With 51 Illustrations by E. Œ. SOMERVILLE.
=Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d.=
AN IRISH COUSIN.
=Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d.=
THE REAL CHARLOTTE.
=Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d.=
THE SILVER FOX.
=Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d.=
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
NEW YORK, BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS
THE
REAL CHARLOTTE
BY
E. Œ. SOMERVILLE & MARTIN ROSS
_NEW IMPRESSION_
LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO.
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
FOURTH AVENUE & 30TH STREET, NEW YORK
BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS
1915
[Illustration: colophon]
_First published by Ward & Downey, in 3 volumes in 1894, and in one
volume in 1895. Transferred to Longmans, Green & Co. and reprinted by
them in November, 1900, December, 1901, and November, 1903. Reissued in
uniform edition October, 1910; reprinted May, 1911, June, 1915._
THE REAL CHARLOTTE.
CHAPTER I.
An August Sunday afternoon in the north side of Dublin. Epitome of all
that is hot, arid, and empty. Tall brick houses, browbeating each other
in gloomy respectability across the white streets; broad pavements,
promenaded mainly by the nomadic cat; stifling squares, wherein the
infant of unfashionable parentage is taken for the daily baking that is
its substitute for the breezes and the press of perambulators on the
Bray Esplanade or the Kingston pier. Few towns are duller out of the
season than Dublin, but the dullness of its north side neither waxes nor
wanes; it is immutable, unchangeable, fixed as the stars. So at least it
appears to the observer whose impressions are only eye-deep, and are
derived from the emptiness of the streets, the unvarying dirt of the
window panes, and the almost forgotten type of ugliness of the window
curtains.
But even an August Sunday in the north side has its distractions for
those who know where to seek them, and there are some of a sufficiently
ingenuous disposition to find in Sunday-school a social excitement that
is independent of fashion, except so far as its slow eddies may have
touched the teacher’s bonnet. Perhaps it is peculiar to Dublin that
Sunday-school, as an institution, is by no means reserved for children
of the poorer sort only, but permeates all ranks, and has as many
recruits from the upper and middle as from the lower classes. Certainly
the excellent Mrs. Fitzpatrick, of Number 0, Mountjoy Square, as she lay
in mountainous repose on the sofa in her dining-room, had no thought
that it was derogatory to the dignity of her daughters and her niece to
sit, as they were now sitting, between the children of her grocer, Mr.
Mulvany, and her chemist, Mr. Nolan. Sunday-school was, in her mind, an
admirable institution that at one and the same time cleared her house of
her offspring, and spared her the complications of their religious
training, and her broad, black satin-clad bosom rose and fell in
rhythmic accord with the snores that were the last expression of Sabbath
peace and repose.
It was nearly four o’clock, and the heat and dull clamour in the
schoolhouse were beginning to tell equally upon teachers and scholars.
Francie Fitzpatrick had yawned twice, though she had a sufficient sense
of politeness to conceal the action behind her Bible; the pleasure of
thrusting out in front of her, for the envious regard of her fellows, a
new pair of side spring boots, with mock buttons and stitching, had
palled upon her; the spider that had for a few quivering moments hung
uncertainly above the gorgeous bonnet of Miss Bewley, the teacher, had
drawn itself up again, staggered, no doubt, by the unknown tropic
growths it found beneath; and the silver ring that Tommy Whitty had
crammed upon her gloved finger before school, as a mark of devotion, had
become perfectly immovable and was a source of at least as much anxiety
as satisfaction. Even Miss Bewley’s powers of exposition had melted away
in the heat; she had called out her catechetical reserves, and was
reduced to a dropping fire of questions as to the meaning of Scriptural
names, when at length the superintendent mounted the rostrum and tapped
thrice upon it. The closing hymn was sung, and then, class by class, the
hot, tired children clattered out into the road.
On Francie rested the responsibility of bringing home her four small
cousins, of ages varying from six to eleven, but this duty did not seem
to weigh very heavily on her. She had many acquaintances in the
Sunday-school, and with Susie Brennan’s and Fanny Hemphill’s arms round
her waist, and Tommy Whitty in close attendance, she was in no hurry to
go home. Children are, if unconsciously, as much influenced by good
looks as their elders, and even the raw angularities of fourteen, and
Mrs. Fitzpatrick’s taste in hats, could not prevent Francie from looking
extremely pretty and piquante, as she held forth to an attentive
audience on the charms of a young man who had on that day partaken of an
early dinner at her Uncle Fitzpatrick’s house.
Francie’s accent and mode of expressing herself were alike deplorable;
Dublin had done its worst for her in that respect, but unless the reader
has some slight previous notion of how dreadful a thing is a pure-bred
Dublin accent, it would be impossible for him to realise in any degree
the tone in which she said:
“But oh! Tommy Whitty! wait till I tell you what he said about the
excursion! He said he’d come to it if I’d promise to stay with him the
whole day; so now, see how grand I’ll be! And he has a long black
mustash!” she concluded, as a side thrust at Tommy’s smooth, apple
cheeks.
“Oh, indeed, I’m sure he’s a bewty without paint,” returned the slighted
Tommy, with such sarcasm as he could muster; “but unless you come in the
van with me, the way you said you would, I’ll take me ring back from you
and give it to Lizzie Jemmison! So now!”
“Much I care!” said Francie, tossing her long golden plait of hair, and
giving a defiant skip as she walked; “and what’s more, I can’t get it
off, and nobody will till I die! and so now yourself!”
Her left hand was dangling over Fanny Hemphill’s shoulder, and she
thrust it forward, starfish-wise, in front of Tommy Whitty’s face. The
silver ring glittered sumptuously on its background of crimson silk
glove, and the sudden snatch that her swain made at it was as much
impelled by an unworthy desire to repossess the treasure as by the pangs
of wounded affection.
“G’long, ye dirty fella’!” screamed Francie, in high good-humour, at the
same moment eluding the snatch and whirling herself free from the
winding embrace of the Misses Hemphill and Brennan; “I dare ye to take
it from me!”
She was off like a lapwing down the deserted street, pursued by the more
cumbrous Tommy, and by the encouraging yells of the children, who were
trooping along the pavement after them. Francie was lithe and swift
beyond her fellows, and on ordinary occasions Tommy Whitty, with all
his masculine advantage of costume and his two years of seniority, would
have found it as much as he could do to catch her. But on this untoward
day the traitorous new side spring boots played her false. That
decorative band of white stitching across the toes began to press upon
her like a vice, and, do what she would, she knew that she could not
keep her lead much longer. Strategy was her only resource. Swinging
herself round a friendly lamp-post, she stopped short with a suddenness
that compelled her pursuer to shoot past her, and with an inspiration
whose very daring made it the more delirious, she darted across the
street, and sprang into a milk-cart that was waiting at a door. The meek
white horse went on at once, and, with a breathless, goading hiss to
hasten him, she tried to gather up the reins. Unfortunately, however, it
happened that these were under his tail, and the more she tugged at them
the tighter he clasped them to him, and the more lively became his trot.
In spite of an irrepressible alarm as to the end of the adventure,
Francie still retained sufficient presence of mind to put out her tongue
at her baffled enemy, as, seated in front of the milk-cans, she clanked
past him and the other children. There was a chorus, in tones varying
from admiration to horror, of, “Oh! _look_ at Francie Fitzpatrick!” and
then Tommy Whitty’s robuster accents, “Ye’d better look out! the
milkman’s after ye!”
Francie looked round, and with terror beheld that functionary in enraged
pursuit. It was vain to try blandishments with the horse, now making for
his stable at a good round trot; vainer still to pull at the reins. They
were nearing the end of the long street, and Francie and the milkman,
from their different points of view, were feeling equally helpless and
despairing, when a young man came round the corner, and apparently
taking in the situation at a glance, ran out into the road, and caught
the horse by the bridle.
“Well, upon my word, Miss Francie,” he said, as Miss Fitzpatrick
hurriedly descended from the cart. “You’re a nice young lady! What on
earth are you up to now?”
“Oh, Mr. Lambert--” began Francie; but having got thus far in her
statement, she perceived the justly incensed milkman close upon her, and
once more taking to her heels, she left her rescuer to return the
stolen property with what explanations he could. Round the corner she
fled, and down the next street, till a convenient archway offered a
hiding-place, and sheltering there, she laughed, now that the stress of
terror was off her, till her blue eyes streamed with tears.
Presently she heard footsteps approaching, and peering cautiously out,
saw Lambert striding along with the four Fitzpatrick children dancing
round him, in their anxiety to present each a separate version of the
escapade. The milkman was not to be seen, and Francie sallied forth to
meet the party, secretly somewhat abashed, but resolved to bear an
undaunted front before her cousins.
The “long black mustash,” so adroitly utilised by Francie for the
chastening of Tommy Whitty, was stretched in a wide smile as she looked
tentatively at its owner. “Will he tell Aunt Tish?” was the question
that possessed her as she entered upon her explanation. The children
might be trusted. Their round, white-lashed eyes had witnessed many of
her exploits, and their allegiance had never faltered; but this
magnificent grown-up man, who talked to Aunt Tish and Uncle Robert on
terms of equality, what trouble might he not get her into in his stupid
desire to make a good story of it? “Botheration to him!” she thought,
“why couldn’t he have been somebody else?”
Mr. Roderick Lambert marched blandly along beside her, with no wish to
change places with anyone agitating his bosom. His handsome brown eyes
rested approvingly on Francie’s flushed face, and the thought that
mainly occupied his mind was surprise that Nosey Fitzpatrick should have
had such a pretty daughter. He was aware of Francie’s diffident glances,
but thought they were due to his good looks and his new suit of clothes,
and he became even more patronising than before. At last, quite
unconsciously, he hit the dreaded point.
“Well, and what do you think your aunt will say when she hears how I
found you running away in the milk-cart?”
“I don’t know,” replied Francie, getting very red.
“Well, what will you say to me if I don’t tell her?”
“Oh, Mr. Lambert, sure you won’t tell mamma!” entreated the Fitzpatrick
children, faithful to their leader. “Francie’d be killed if mamma
thought she was playing with Tommy Whitty!”
They were nearing the Fitzpatrick mansion by this time, and Lambert
stood still at the foot of the steps and looked down at the small group
of petitioners with indulgent self-satisfaction.
“Well, Francie, what’ll you do for me if I don’t tell?”
Francie walked stiffly up the steps.
“I don’t know.” Then with a defiance that she was far from feeling, “You
may tell her if you like!”
Lambert laughed easily as he followed her up the steps.
“You’re very angry with me now, aren’t you? Well, never mind, we’ll be
friends, and I won’t tell on you this time.”
CHAPTER II.
The east wind was crying round a small house in the outskirts of an
Irish country town. At nightfall it had stolen across the grey expanse
of Lough Moyle, and given its first shudder among the hollies and
laurestinas that hid the lower windows of Tally Ho Lodge from the too
curious passer-by, and at about two o’clock of the November night it was
howling so inconsolably in the great tunnel of the kitchen chimney, that
Norry the Boat, sitting on a heap of turf by the kitchen fire, drew her
shawl closer about her shoulders, and thought gruesomely of the Banshee.
The long trails of the monthly roses tapped and scratched against the
window panes, so loudly sometimes that two cats, dozing on the rusty
slab of a disused hothearth, opened their eyes and stared, with the
expressionless yet wholly alert scrutiny of their race. The objects in
the kitchen were scarcely more than visible in the dirty light of a
hanging lamp, and the smell of paraffin filled the air. High presses and
a dresser lined the walls, and on the top of the dresser, close under
the blackened ceiling, it was just possible to make out the ghostly
sleeping form of a cockatoo. A door at the end of the kitchen opened
into a scullery of the usual prosaic, not to say odorous kind, which was
now a cavern of darkness, traversed by twin green stars that moved to
and fro as the lights move on a river at night, and looked like
anything but what they were, the eyes of cats prowling round a scullery
sink.
The tall, yellow-faced clock gave the gurgle with which it was
accustomed to mark the half-hour, and the old woman, as if reminded of
her weariness, stretched out her arms and yawned loudly and dismally.
She put back the locks of greyish-red hair that hung over her forehead,
and, crouching over the fireplace, she took out of the embers a
broken-nosed tea-pot, and proceeded to pour from it a mug of tea, black
with long stewing. She had taken a few sips of it when a bell rang
startlingly in the passage outside, jarring the silence of the house
with its sharp outcry. Norry the Boat hastily put down her mug, and
scrambled to her feet to answer its summons. She groped her way up two
cramped flights of stairs that creaked under her as she went, and
advanced noiselessly in her stockinged feet across a landing to where a
chink of light came from under a door.
The door was opened as she came to it, and a woman’s short thick figure
appeared in the doorway.
“The mistress wants to see Susan,” this person said in a rough whisper;
“is he in the house?”
“I think he’s below in the scullery,” returned Norry; “but, my Law! Miss
Charlotte, what does she want of him? Is it light in her head she is?”
“What’s that to you? Go fetch him at once,” replied Miss Charlotte, with
a sudden fierceness. She shut the door, and Norry crept downstairs
again, making a kind of groaning and lamenting as she went.
Miss Charlotte walked with a heavy step to the fireplace. A lamp was
burning dully on a table at the foot of an old-fashioned bed, and the
high foot-board threw a shadow that made it difficult to see the
occupant of the bed. It was an ordinary little shabby bedroom; the
ceiling, seamed with cracks, bulged down till it nearly touched the
canopy of the bed. The wall paper had a pattern of blue flowers on a
yellowish background; over the chimney-shelf a filmy antique mirror
looked strangely refined in the company of the Christmas cards and
discoloured photographs that leaned against it. There was no sign of
poverty, but everything was dingy, everything was tasteless, from the
worn Kidderminster carpet to the illuminated text that was pinned to
the wall facing the bed.
Miss Charlotte gave the fire a frugal poke, and lit a candle in the
flame provoked from the sulky coals. In doing so some ashes became
embedded in the grease, and taking a hair-pin from the ponderous mass of
brown hair that was piled on the back of her head, she began to scrape
the candle clean. Probably at no moment of her forty years of life had
Miss Charlotte Mullen looked more startlingly plain than now, as she
stood, her squat figure draped in a magenta flannel dressing-gown, and
the candle light shining upon her face. The night of watching had left
its traces upon even her opaque skin. The lines about her prominent
mouth and chin were deeper than usual; her broad cheeks had a flabby
pallor; only her eyes were bright and untired, and the thick
yellow-white hand that manipulated the hair-pin was as deft as it was
wont to be.
When the flame burned clearly she took the candle to the bedside, and,
bending down, held it close to the face of the old woman who was lying
there. The eyes opened and turned towards the overhanging face: small,
dim, blue eyes, full of the stupor of illness, looking out of the
pathetically commonplace little old face with a far-away perplexity.
“Was that Francie that was at the door?” she said in a drowsy voice that
had in it the lagging drawl of intense weakness.
Charlotte took the tiny wrist in her hand, and felt the pulse with
professional attention. Her broad, perceptive finger-tips gauged the
forces of the little thread that was jerking in the thin network of
tendons, and as she laid the hand down she said to herself, “She’ll not
last out the turn of the night.”
“Why doesn’t Francie come in?” murmured the old woman again in the
fragmentary, uninflected voice that seems hardly spared from the unseen
battle with death.
“It wasn’t her you asked me for at all,” answered Charlotte. “You said
you wanted to say good-bye to Susan. Here, you’d better have a sip of
this.”
The old woman swallowed some brandy and water, and the stimulant
presently revived unexpected strength in her.
“Charlotte,” she said, “it isn’t cats we should be thinking of now. God
knows the cats are safe with you. But little Francie, Charlotte; we
ought to have done more for her. You promised me that if you got the
money you’d look after her. Didn’t you now, Charlotte? I wish I’d done
more for her. She’s a good little thing--a good little thing--” she
repeated dreamily.
Few people would think it worth their while to dispute the wandering
futilities of an old dying woman, but even at this eleventh hour
Charlotte could not brook the revolt of a slave.
“Good little thing!” she exclaimed, pushing the brandy bottle noisily in
among a crowd of glasses and medicine bottles, “a strapping big woman of
nineteen! You didn’t think her so good the time you had her here, and
she put Susan’s father and mother in the well!”
The old lady did not seem to understand what she had said.
“Susan, Susan!” she called quaveringly, and feebly patted the crochet
quilt.
As if in answer, a hand fumbled at the door and opened it softly. Norry
was standing there, tall and gaunt, holding in her apron, with both
hands, something that looked like an enormous football.
“Miss Charlotte!” she whispered hoarsely, “here’s Susan for ye. He was
out in the ashpit, an’ I was hard set to get him, he was that wild.”
Even as she spoke there was a furious struggle in the blue apron.
“God in Heaven! ye fool!” ejaculated Charlotte. “Don’t let him go!” She
shut the door behind Norry. “Now, give him to me.”
Norry opened her apron cautiously, and Miss Charlotte lifted out of it a
large grey tom-cat.
“Be quiet, my heart’s love,” she said, “be quiet.”
The cat stopped kicking and writhing, and, sprawling up on to the
shoulder of the magenta dressing-gown, turned a fierce grey face upon
his late captor. Norry crept over to the bed, and put back the dirty
chintz curtain that had been drawn forward to keep out the draught of
the door. Mrs. Mullen was lying very still; she had drawn her knees up
in front of her, and the bedclothes hung sharply from the small point
that they made. The big living old woman took the hand of the other old
woman who was so nearly dead, and pressed her lips to it.
“Ma’am, d’ye know me?”
Her mistress opened her eyes.
“Norry,” she whispered, “give Miss Francie some jam for her tea
to-night, but don’t tell Miss Charlotte.”
“What’s that she’s saying?” said Charlotte, going to the other side of
the bed. “Is she asking for me?”
“No, but for Miss Francie,” Norry answered.
“She knows as well as I do that Miss Francie’s in Dublin,” said
Charlotte roughly; “’twas Susan she was asking for last. Here, a’nt,
here’s Susan for you.”
She pulled the cat down from her shoulder, and put him on the bed, where
he crouched with a twitching tail, prepared for flight at a moment’s
notice.
He was within reach of the old lady’s hand, but she did not seem to know
that he was there. She opened her eyes and looked vacantly round.
“Where’s little Francie? You mustn’t send her away, Charlotte; you
promised you’d take care of her; didn’t you, Charlotte?”
“Yes, yes,” said Charlotte quickly, pushing the cat towards the old
lady; “never fear, I’ll see after her.”
Old Mrs. Mullen’s eyes, that had rested with a filmy stare on her
niece’s face, closed again, and her head began to move a little from one
side to the other, a low monotonous moan coming from her lips with each
turn. Charlotte took her right hand and laid it on the cat’s brindled
back. It rested there, unconscious, for some seconds, while the two
women looked on in silence, and then the fingers drooped and contracted
like a bird’s claw, and the moaning ceased. There was at the same time a
spasmodic movement of the gathered-up knees, and a sudden rigidity fell
upon the small insignificant face.
Norry the Boat threw herself upon her knees with a howl, and began to
pray loudly. At the sound the cat leaped to the floor, and the hand that
had been placed upon him in the only farewell his mistress was to take,
dropped stiffly on the bed. Miss Charlotte snatched up the candle, and
held it close to her aunt’s face. There was no mistaking what she saw
there, and, putting down the candle again, she plucked a large silk
handkerchief from her pocket, and, with some hideous preliminary
heavings of her shoulders, burst into transports of noisy grief.
CHAPTER III.
A damp winter and a chilly spring had passed in their usual mildly
disagreeable manner over that small Irish country town which was alluded
to in the beginning of the last chapter. The shop windows had exhibited
their usual zodiacal succession, and had progressed through red
comforters and woollen gloves, to straw hats, tennis shoes, and coloured
Summer Numbers. The residents of Lismoyle were already congratulating
each other on having “set” their lodgings to the summer visitors; the
steamer was plying on the lake, the militia was under canvas, and on
this very fifteenth of June, Lady Dysart of Bruff was giving her first
lawn-tennis party.
Miss Charlotte Mullen had taken advantage of the occasion to emerge from
the mourning attire that since her aunt’s death had so misbecome her
sallow face, and was driving herself to Bruff in the phæton that had
been Mrs. Mullen’s, and a gown chosen with rather more view to effect
than was customary with her. She was under no delusion as to her
appearance, and, early recognising its hopeless character, she had
abandoned all superfluities of decoration. A habit of costume so
defiantly simple as to border on eccentricity had at least two
advantages; it freed her from the absurdity of seeming to admire
herself, and it was cheap. During the late Mrs. Mullen’s lifetime
Charlotte had studied economy. The most reliable old persons had, she
was wont to reflect, a slippery turn in them where their wills were
concerned, and it was well to be ready for any contingency of fortune.
Things had turned out very well after all; there had been one
inconvenient legacy--that “Little Francie” to whom the old lady’s
thoughts had turned, happily too late for her to give any practical
emphasis to them--but that bequest was of the kind that may be
repudiated if desirable. The rest of the disposition had been admirably
convenient, and, in skilled hands, something might even be made of that
legacy. Miss Mullen thought a great deal about her legacy and the steps
she had taken with regard to it as she drove to Bruff. The horse that
drew her ancient phæton moved with a dignity befitting his eight and
twenty years; the three miles of level lake-side road between Lismoyle
and Bruff were to him a serious undertaking, and by the time he had
arrived at his destination, his mistress’s active mind had pursued many
pleasant mental paths to their utmost limit.
This was the first of the two catholic and comprehensive entertainments
that Lady Dysart’s sense of her duty towards her neighbours yearly
impelled her to give, and when Charlotte, wearing her company smile,
came down the steps of the terrace to meet her hostess, the difficult
revelry was at its height. Lady Dysart had cast her nets over a wide
expanse, and the result was not encouraging. She stood, tall, dark and
majestic, on the terrace, surveying the impracticable row of women that
stretched, forlorn of men, along one side of the tennis grounds, much as
Cassandra might have scanned the beleaguering hosts from the ramparts of
Troy; and as she advanced to meet her latest guest, her strong,
clear-eyed face was perplexed and almost tragic.
“How do you do, Miss Mullen?” she said in tones of unconcealed gloom.
“Have you ever seen so few men in your life? and there are five and
forty women! I cannot imagine where they have all come from, but I know
where I wish they would take themselves to, and that is to the bottom of
the lake!”
The large intensity of Lady Dysart’s manner gave unintended weight to
her most trivial utterance, and had she reflected very deeply before she
spoke, it might have occurred to her that this was not a specially
fortunate manner of greeting a female guest. But Charlotte understood
that nothing personal was intended; she knew that the freedom of Bruff
had been given to her, and that she could afford to listen to abuse of
the outer world with the composure of one of the inner circle.
“Well, your ladyship,” she said, in the bluff, hearty voice which she
felt accorded best with the theory of herself that she had built up in
Lady Dysart’s mind, “I’ll head a forlorn hope to the bottom of the lake
for you, and welcome; but for the honour of the house, you might give
me a cup o’ tay first!”
Charlotte had many tones of voice, according with the many facets of her
character, and when she wished to be playful she affected a vigorous
brogue, not perhaps being aware that her own accent scarcely admitted of
being strengthened.
This refinement of humour was probably wasted on Lady Dysart. She was an
Englishwoman, and, as such, was constitutionally unable to discern
perfectly the subtle grades of Irish vulgarity. She was aware that many
of the ladies on her visiting list were vulgar, but it was their
subjects of conversation and their opinions that chiefly brought the
fact home to her. Miss Mullen, _au fond_, was probably no less vulgar
than they, but she was never dull, and Lady Dysart would suffer anything
rather than dulness. It was less than nothing to her that Charlotte’s
mother was reported to have been in her youth a national schoolmistress,
and her grandmother a bare-footed country girl. These facts of Miss
Mullen’s pedigree were valued topics in Lismoyle, but Lady Dysart’s
serene radicalism ignored the inequalities of a lower class, and she
welcomed a woman who could talk to her on spiritualism, or books, or
indeed on any current topic, with a point and agreeability that made her
accent, to English ears, merely the expression of a vigorous
individuality. She now laughed in response to her visitor’s jest, but
her eye did not cease from roving over the gathering, and her broad brow
was still contracted in calculation.
“I never knew the country so bereft of men or so peopled with girls!
Even the little Barrington boys are off with the militia, and everyone
about has conspired to fill their houses with women, and not only women
but dummies!” Her glance lighted on the long bench where sat the more
honourable women in midge-bitten dulness. “And there is Kate Gascogne in
one of her reveries, not hearing a word that Mrs. Waller is saying to
her--”
With Lady Dysart intention was accomplishment as nearly as might be. She
had scarcely finished speaking before she began a headlong advance upon
the objects of her diatribe, making a short cut across the corner of a
lawn-tennis court, and scarcely observing the havoc that her transit
wrought in the game. Charlotte was less rash. She steered her course
clear of the tennis grounds, and of the bench of matrons, passed the six
Miss Beatties with a comprehensive “How are ye, girls?” and took up her
position under one of the tall elm trees.
Under the next tree a few men were assembled, herding together for
mutual protection after the manner of men, and laying down the law to
each other about road sessions, the grand jury, and Irish politics
generally. They were a fairly representative trio; a country gentleman
with a grey moustache and a loud voice in which he was announcing that
nothing would give him greater pleasure than to pull the rope at the
execution of a certain English statesman; a slight, dejected-looking
clergyman, who vied with Major Waller in his denunciations, but
chastenedly, like an echo in a cathedral aisle; and a smartly dressed
man of about thirty-five, of whom a more detailed description need not
be given, as he has been met with in the first chapter, and the six
years after nine-and-twenty do little more than mellow a man’s taste in
checks, and sprinkle a grey hair or two on his temples.
Miss Mullen listened for a few minutes to the melancholy pessimisms of
the archdeacon, and then, interrupting Major Waller in a fine outburst
on the advisability of martial law, she thrust herself and her attendant
cloud of midges into the charmed circle of the smoke of Mr. Lambert’s
cigarette.
“Ho! do I hear me old friend the Major at politics?” she said, shaking
hands effusively with the three men. “I declare I’m a better politician
than any one of you! D’ye know how I served Tom Casey, the land-leaguing
plumber, yesterday? I had him mending my tank, and when I got him into
it I whipped the ladder away, and told him not a step should he budge
till he sang ‘God save the Queen!’ I was arguing there half an hour with
him in water up to his middle before I converted him, and then it wasn’t
so much the warmth of his convictions as the cold of his legs made him
tune up. I call that practical politics!”
The speed and vigour with which this story was told would have astounded
anyone who did not know Miss Mullen’s powers of narration, but Mr.
Lambert, to whom it seemed specially addressed, merely took his
cigarette out of his mouth, and said, with a familiar laugh:
“Practical politics, by Jove! I call it a cold water cure. Kill or cure
like the rest of your doctoring, eh! Charlotte?”
Miss Mullen joined with entire good-humour in the laugh that followed.
“Oh, th’ ingratitude of man!” she exclaimed. “Archdeacon, you’ve seen
his bald scalp from the pulpit, and I ask you, now, isn’t that a fresh
crop he has on it? I leave it to his conscience, if he has one, to say
if it wasn’t my doctoring gave him that fine black thatch he has now!”
The archdeacon fixed his eyes seriously upon her; Charlotte’s
playfulness always alarmed and confused him.
“Do not appeal to me, Miss Mullen,” he answered, in his refined,
desponding voice; “my unfortunate sight makes my evidence in such a
matter worth nothing; and, by the way, I meant to ask you if your niece
would be good enough to help us in the choir? I understand she sings.”
Charlotte interrupted him.
“There’s another of you at it!” she exclaimed. “I think I’ll have to
ad_ver_tiss in the _Irish Times_ that, whereas my first cousin, Isabella
Mullen, married Johnny Fitzpatrick, who was no relation of mine, good,
bad, or indifferent, their child is my first cousin once removed, and
_not_ my niece!”
Mr. Lambert blew a cloud of smoke through his nose.
“You’re a nailer at pedigrees, Charlotte,” he said with a patronage that
he knew was provoking; “but as far as I can make out the position, it
comes to mighty near the same thing; you’re what they call her Welsh
aunt, anyhow.”
Charlotte’s face reddened, and she opened her wide mouth for a retort,
but before she had time for more than the champings as of a horse with a
heavy bit, which preceded her more incisive repartees, another person
joined the group.
“Mr. Lambert,” said Pamela Dysart, in her pleasant, anxious voice, “I am
going to ask you if you will play in the next set, or if you would
rather help the Miss Beatties to get up a round of golf? How do you do,
Miss Mullen? I have not seen you before; why did you not bring your
niece with you?”
Charlotte showed all her teeth in a forced smile as she replied, “I
suppose you mean my cousin, Miss Dysart; she won’t be with me till the
day after to-morrow.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” replied Pamela, with the sympathetic politeness that
made strangers think her manner too good to be true; “and Mr. Lambert
tells me she plays tennis so well.”
“Why, what does he know about her tennis playing?” said Charlotte,
turning sharply towards Lambert.
The set on the nearer court was over, and the two young men who had
played in it strolled up to the group as she spoke. Mr. Lambert expanded
his broad chest, gave his hat an extra tilt over his nose, and looked
rather more self-complacent than usual as he replied:
“Well, I ought to know something about it, seeing I took her in hand
when she was in short petticoats--taught her her paces myself, in fact.”
Mr. Hawkins, the shorter of the two players who had just come up, ceased
from mopping his scarlet face, and glanced from Mr. Lambert to Pamela
with a countenance devoid of expression, save that conferred by the
elevation of one eyebrow almost to the roots of his yellow hair.
Pamela’s eyes remained unresponsive, but the precipitancy with which she
again addressed herself to Mr. Lambert showed that a disposition to
laugh had been near.
Charlotte turned away with an expression that was the reverse of
attractive. When her servants saw that look they abandoned excuse or
discussion; when the Lismoyle beggars saw it they checked the flow of
benediction and fled. Even the archdeacon, through the religious halo
that habitually intervened between him and society, became aware that
the moment was not propitious for speaking to Miss Mullen about his
proposed changes in the choir, and he drifted away to think of diocesan
matters, and to forget as far as possible that he was at a lawn-tennis
party.
Outside the group stood the young man who had been playing in the set
with Mr. Hawkins. He was watching through an eyeglass the limp progress
of the game in the other court, and was even making praiseworthy
attempts to applaud the very feeble efforts of the players. He was tall
and slight, with a near-sighted stoop, and something of an
old-fashioned, eighteenth century look about him that was accentuated by
his not wearing a moustache, and was out of keeping with the flannels
and brilliant blazer that are the revolutionary protest of this age
against its orthodox clothing. It did not seem to occur to him that he
was doing anything unusual in occupying himself, as he was now doing, in
picking up balls for the Lismoyle curate and his partner; he would have
thought it much more remarkable had he found in himself a preference for
doing anything else. This was an occupation that demanded neither
interest nor conversation, and of a number of disagreeable duties he did
not think that he had chosen the worst.
Charlotte walked up to him as he stood leaning against a tree, and held
out her hand.
“How d’ye do, Mr. Dysart?” she said with marked politeness. All trace of
combat had left her manner, and the smile with which she greeted him was
sweet and capacious. “We haven’t seen you in Lismoyle since you came
back from the West Indies.”
Christopher Dysart let his eyeglass fall, and looked apologetic as he
enclosed her well-filled glove in his long hand, and made what excuses
he could for not having called upon Miss Mullen.
“Since Captain Thesiger has got this new steam-launch I can’t call my
soul my own; I’m out on the lake with him half the day, and the other
half I spend with a nail-brush trying to get the blacks off.”
He spoke with a hesitation that could hardly be called a stammer, but
was rather a delaying before his sentences, a mental rather than a
physical uncertainty.
“Oh, that’s a very poor excuse,” said Charlotte with loud affability,
“deserting your old friends for the blacks a second time! I thought you
had enough of them in the last two years! And you know you promised--or
your good mother did for you--that you’d come and photograph poor old
Mrs. Tommy before she died. The poor thing’s so sick now we have to feed
her with a baby’s bottle.”
Christopher wondered if Mrs. Tommy were the cook, and was on the point
of asking for further particulars, when Miss Mullen continued:
“She’s the great-great-grandmother of all me cats, and I want you to
immortalise her; but don’t come till after Monday, as I’d like to
introduce you to my cousin, Miss Fitzpatrick; did you hear she was
coming?”
“Yes, Mr. Lambert told us she was to be here next week,” said
Christopher, with an indescribable expression that was not quite
amusement, but was something more than intelligence.
“What did he say of her?”
Christopher hesitated; somehow what he remembered of Mr. Lambert’s
conversation was of too free and easy a nature for repetition to Miss
Fitzpatrick’s cousin.
“He--er--seemed to think her very--er--charming in all ways,” he said
rather lamely.
“So it’s talking of charming young ladies you and Roddy Lambert are when
he comes to see you on estate business!” said Charlotte archly, but with
a rasp in her voice. “When my poor father was your father’s agent, and I
used to be helping him in the office, it was charming young cattle we
talked about, and not young ladies.”
Christopher laughed in a helpless way.
“I wish you were at the office still, Miss Mullen; if anyone could
understand the Land Act I believe it would be you.”
At this moment there was an upheaval among the matrons; the long line
rose and broke, and made for the grey stone house whose windows were
flashing back the sunlight through the trees at the end of the
lawn-tennis grounds. The tedious skirmish with midges, and the strain of
inactivity, were alike over for the present, and the conscience of the
son of the house reminded him that he ought to take Miss Mullen in to
tea.
CHAPTER IV.
There was consternation among the cats at Tally Ho Lodge; a
consternation mingled with righteous resentment. Even the patriarchal
Susan could scarcely remember the time that the spare bedroom had been
anything else than an hospital, a nursery, and a secure parliament house
for him and his descendants; yet now, in his old age, and when he had,
after vast consideration of alternatives, allocated to himself the
lowest shelf of the wardrobe as a sleeping place, he was evicted at a
moment’s notice, and the folded-away bed curtains that had formed his
couch were even now perfuming the ambient air as they hung out of the
window over the hall door. Susan was too dignified to give utterance to
his wounded feelings; he went away by himself, and sitting on the roof
of the fowl-house, thought unutterable things. But his great-niece, Mrs.
Bruff, could not emulate his stoicism. Followed by her five latest
kittens, she strode through the house, uttering harsh cries of rage and
despair, and did not cease from her lamentations until Charlotte brought
the whole party into the drawing-room, and established them in the
waste-paper basket.
The worst part about the upheaval, as even the youngest and least
experienced of the cats could see, was that it was irrevocable. It was
early morning when the first dull blow of Norry’s broom against the
wainscot had startled them with new and strange apprehension, and
incredulity had grown to certainty, till the final moment when the sight
of a brimming pail of water urged them to panic-struck flight. It may be
admitted that Norry the Boat, who had not, as a rule, any special taste
for cleanliness, had seldom enjoyed anything more than this day of
turmoil, this routing of her ancient enemies. Miss Charlotte, to whom on
ordinary occasions the offended cat never appealed in vain, was now
bound by her own word. She had given orders that the spare room was to
be “cleaned down,” and cleaned down it surely should be. It was not,
strictly speaking, Norry’s work. Louisa was house and parlour-maid;
Louisa, a small and sullen Protestant orphan of unequalled sluggishness
and stupidity, for whose capacity for dealing with any emergency Norry
had a scorn too deep for any words that might conveniently be repeated
here. It was not likely that Louisa would be permitted to join in the
ardours of the campaign, when even Bid Sal, Norry’s own special
kitchen-slut and co-religionist, was not allowed to assist.
Norry the Boat, daughter of Shaunapickeen, the ferryman (whence her
title), and of Carroty Peg, his wife, was a person with whom few would
have cared to co-operate against her will. On this morning she wore a
more ferocious aspect than usual. Her roughly-waving hair, which had
never known the dignity of a cap, was bound up in a blue duster, leaving
her bony forehead bare; dust and turf-ashes hung in her grizzled
eyebrows, her arms were smeared with black-lead, and the skirt of her
dress was girt about her waist, displaying a petticoat of heavy Galway
flannel, long thin legs, and enormous feet cased in countrymen’s laced
boots. It was fifteen years now, Norry reflected, while she scrubbed the
floor and scraped the candle drippings off it with her nails, since Miss
Charlotte and the cats had come into the house, and since then the spare
room had never had a visitor in it. Nobody had stayed in the house in
all those years except little Miss Francie, and for her the cot had been
made up in her great-aunt’s room; the old high-sided cot in which her
grandmother had slept when she was a child. The cot had long since
migrated into the spare room, and from it Norry had just ejected the
household effects of Mrs. Bruff and her family, with a pleasure that was
mitigated only by the thought that Miss Francie was a young woman now,
and would be likely to give a good deal more trouble in the house than
even in the days when she stole the cockatoo’s sopped toast for her
private consumption, and christened the tom-cat Susan against everyone’s
wishes except her great-aunt’s.
Norry and the cockatoo were now the only survivors of the old _régime_
at Tally Ho Lodge, in fact the cockatoo was regarded in Lismoyle as an
almost prehistoric relic, dating, at the lowest computation, from the
days when old Mrs. Mullen’s fox-hunting father had lived there, and
given the place the name that was so remarkably unsuited to its
subsequent career. The cockatoo was a sprightly creature of some twenty
shrieking summers on the day that the two Miss Butlers, clad in
high-waisted, low-necked gowns, were armed past his perch in the hall by
their father, and before, as it seemed to the cockatoo, he had more than
half-finished his morning doze, they were back again, this time on the
arms of the two young men who, during the previous five months, had done
so much to spoil his digestion by propitiatory dainties at improper
hours. The cockatoo had no very clear recollection of the subsequent
departure of Dr. Mullen and his brother, the attorney, with their
brides, on their respective honeymoons, owing to the fact that Mr.
Mullen, the agent, brother of the two bridegrooms, had prised open his
beak, and compelled him to drink the healths of the happy couples in the
strongest and sweetest whisky punch.
The cockatoo’s memory after this climax was filled with vague comings
and goings, extending over unknown tracts of time. He remembered two
days of disturbance, on each of which a long box had been carried out of
the house by several men, and a crowd of people, dressed in black, had
eaten a long and clattering meal in the dining-room. He had always
remembered the second of these occasions with just annoyance, because,
in manœuvring the long box through the narrow hall, he had been knocked
off his perch, and never after that day had the person whom he had been
taught to call “Doctor” come to give him his daily lump of sugar.
But the day that enunciated itself most stridently from the cockatoo’s
past life was that on which the doctor’s niece had, after many short
visits, finally arrived with several trunks, and a wooden case from
which, when opened, sprang four of the noisome creatures whom Miss
Charlotte, their owner, had taught him to call “pussies.” A long era of
persecution then began for him, of robbery of his food, and even attacks
upon his person. He had retaliated by untiring mimicry, by delusive
invitations to food in the manner of Miss Charlotte, and lastly, by the
strangling of a too-confiding kitten, whom he had lured, with maternal
mewings, within reach of his claws. That very day Miss Charlotte’s hand
avenged the murder, and afterwards conveyed him, a stiff guilty lump of
white feathers, to the top of the kitchen press, from thenceforth never
to descend, except when long and patient picking had opened a link of
his chain, or when, on fine days, Norry fastened him to a branch of the
tall laurel that overhung the pig-stye. Norry was his only friend, a
friendship slowly cemented by a common hatred of the cats and Louisa;
indeed, it is probable that but for occasional conversation with Norry
he would have choked from his own misanthropic fury, helpless, lonely
spectator as he was of the secret gluttonies of Louisa, and the
maddening domestic felicity of the cats.
But on this last day of turbulence and rout he had been forgotten. The
kitchen was sunny and stuffy, the blue-bottles were buzzing their
loudest in the cobwebby window, one colony of evicted kittens was
already beginning to make the best of things in the turf heap, and the
leaves of the laurel outside were gleaming tropically against the
brilliant sky, with no one to appreciate them except the pigs. When it
came to half-past twelve o’clock the cockatoo could no longer refrain,
and fell to loud and prolonged screamings. The only result at first was
a brief stupefaction on the part of the kittens, and an answering outcry
from the fowl in the yard; then, after some minutes, the green baize
cross-door opened, and a voice bellowed down the passage:
“Biddy! Bid Sal!” (_fortissimo_), “can’t ye stop that bird’s infernal
screeching?” There was dead silence, and Miss Mullen advanced into the
kitchen and called again.
“Biddy’s claning herself, Miss Mullen,” said a small voice from the
pantry door.
“That’s no reason you shouldn’t answer!” thundered Charlotte; “come out
here yourself and put the cockatoo out in the yard.”
Louisa the orphan, a short, fat, white-faced girl of fourteen, shuffled
out of the pantry with her chin buried in her chest, and her round
terrified eyes turned upwards to Miss Charlotte’s face.
“I’d be in dhread to ketch him,” she faltered.
Those ladies who considered Miss Mullen “eccentric, but so kind-hearted,
and so clever and agreeable,” would have been considerably surprised if
they had heard the terms in which she informed Louisa that she was
wanting in courage and intelligence; but Louisa’s face expressed no
surprise, only a vacancy that in some degree justified her mistress’s
language. Still denouncing her retainers, Miss Charlotte mounted nimbly
upon a chair, and seizing the now speechless cockatoo by the wings,
carried him herself out to the yard and fastened him to his accustomed
laurel bough.
She did not go back to the kitchen, but, after a searching glance at
the contents of the pigs’ trough, went out of the yard by the gate that
led to the front of the house. Rhododendrons and laurels made a dark
green tunnel about her, and, though it was June, the beech leaves of
last November lay rotting on each side of the walk. Opposite the hall
door the ground rose in a slight slope, thickly covered with evergreens,
and topped by a lime-tree, on whose lower limbs a flock of black turkeys
had ranged themselves in sepulchral meditation. The house itself was
half stifled with ivy, monthly roses, and virginian creeper; everywhere
was the same unkempt profusion of green things, that sucked the sunshine
into themselves, and left the air damp and shadowed. Charlotte had the
air of thinking very deeply as she walked slowly along with her hands in
the pockets of her black alpaca apron. The wrinkles on her forehead
almost touched the hair that grew so low down upon it as to seem like a
wig that had been pulled too far over the turn of the brow, and she kept
chewing at her heavy underlip as was her habit during the processes of
unobserved thought. Then she went into the house, and, sitting down at
the davenport in the dining-room, got out a sheet of her best notepaper,
and wrote a note to Pamela Dysart in her strong, commercially clear
hand.
Afternoon tea had never flourished as an institution at Tally Ho Lodge.
Occasionally, and of necessity, a laboured repast had been served at
five o’clock by the trembling Louisa; occasions on which the afternoon
caller had not only to suffer the spectacle of a household being shaken
to its foundations on her behalf, but had subsequently to eat of the
untempting fruit of these struggles. On the afternoon, however, of the
day following that of the cleansing of the spare room, timely
preparations had been made. Half the round table in the centre of the
drawing-room had been covered with a cloth, and on it Louisa, in the
plenitude of her zeal, had prepared a miniature breakfast; loaf,
butter-cooler, and knives and forks, a truly realistic touch being
conferred by two egg-cups standing in the slop-basin. A vase of
marigolds and pink sweet-pea stood behind these, a fresh heap of
shavings adorned the grate, the piano had been opened and dusted, and a
copy of the “Indiana Waltzes” frisked on the desk in the breeze from the
open window.
Charlotte sat in a low armchair and surveyed her drawing-room with a
good deal of satisfaction. Her fingers moved gently through the long fur
at the back of Mrs. Bruff’s head, administering, almost unconsciously,
the most delicately satisfactory scratching about the base of the wide,
sensitive ears, while her eyes wandered back to the pages of the novel
that lay open on her lap. She was a great and insatiable reader,
surprisingly well acquainted with the classics of literature, and
unexpectedly lavish in the purchase of books. Her neighbours never
forgot to mention, in describing her, the awe-inspiring fact that she
“took in the _English Times_ and the _Saturday Review_, and read every
word of them,” but it was hinted that the bookshelves that her own
capable hands had put up in her bedroom held a large proportion of works
of fiction of a startlingly advanced kind, “and,” it was generally added
in tones of mystery, “many of them French.”
It was half-past five o’clock, and the sharpest of several showers that
had fallen that day had caused Miss Mullen to get up and shut the
window, when the grinding of the gate upon the gravel at the end of the
short drive warned her that the expected guest was arriving. As she got
to the hall door one of those black leather band-boxes on wheels, known
in the south and west of Ireland as “jingles” or inside cars, came
brushing under the arch of wet evergreens, and she ran out on to the
steps.
“Well, my dear child, welcome to Tally Ho!” she began in tones of
effusive welcome, as the car turned and backed towards the doorstep in
the accustomed way, then seeing through the half-closed curtains that
there was nothing inside it except a trunk and a bonnet box, “Where in
the name of goodness is the young lady, Jerry? Didn’t you meet her at
the train?”
“I did to be sure,” replied Jerry; “sure she’s afther me on the road
now. Mr. Lambert came down on the thrain with her, and he’s dhrivin’ her
here in his own thrap.”
While he was speaking there was the sound of quick trotting on the road,
and Miss Mullen saw a white straw hat and a brown billycock moving
swiftly along over the tops of the evergreens. A dog-cart with a
white-faced chestnut swung in at the gate, and Miss Fitzpatrick’s hat
was immediately swept off her head by a bough of laburnum. Its owner
gave a shrill cry and made a snatch at the reins, with an idea
apparently of stopping the horse.
“No, you don’t,” said Mr. Lambert, intercepting the snatch with his whip
hand; “you’re going to be handed over to your aunt just as you are.”
Half a dozen steps brought them to the door, and the chestnut pulled up
with his pink nose almost between the curtains of the inside car. It was
hard to say whether Miss Mullen had heard Lambert’s remark, which had
certainly been loud enough to enable her to do so, but her only reply
was an attack upon the carman.
“Take your car out o’ that, ye great oaf!” she vociferated “can’t ye
make way for your betters?” Then with a complete change of voice, “Well,
me dear Francie, you’re welcome, you’re welcome.”
The greeting was perceptibly less hearty than that which had been
squandered on the trunk and bonnet-box; but an emotion _réchauffé_
necessarily loses flavour. Francie had jumped to the ground with a
reckless disregard of the caution demanded by the steps of a dog-cart,
and stooping her hatless head, kissed the hard cheek that Charlotte
tendered for her embrace.
“Thank you very much, I’m very glad to come,” she said, in a voice whose
Dublin accent had been but little modified by the six years that had
lightly gone over her since the August Sunday when she had fled from
Tommy Whitty in the milkman’s cart. “And look at me the show I am
without my hat! And it’s all his fault!” with a lift of her blue eyes to
Lambert, “he wouldn’t let me stop and pick it up.”
Charlotte looked up at her with the wide smile of welcome still stiff
upon her face. The rough golden heap of curls on the top of Francie’s
head was spangled with raindrops and her coat was grey with wet.
“Well, if Mr. Lambert had had any sense,” said Miss Mullen, “he’d have
let you come in the covered car. Here, Louisa, go fetch Miss
Fitzpatrick’s hat.”
“Ah, no, sure she’ll get all wet,” said Francie, starting herself before
the less agile Louisa could emerge from behind her mistress, and running
down the drive.
“Did you come down from Dublin to-day, Roddy?” said Charlotte.
“Yes, I did,” answered Mr. Lambert, turning his horse as he spoke; “I
had business that took me up to town yesterday, so it just happened that
I hit off Francie. Well, good evening. I expect Lucy will be calling
round to see you to-morrow or next day.”
He walked his horse down the drive, and as he passed Francie returning
with her hat he leaned over the wheel and said something to her that
made her shake her head and laugh. Miss Charlotte was too far off to
hear what it was.
CHAPTER V.
It was generally felt in Lismoyle that Mr. Roderick Lambert held an
unassailable position in society. The Dysart agency had always been
considered to confer brevet rank as a country gentleman upon its owner,
apart even from the intimacy with the Dysarts which it implied; and as,
in addition to these advantages, Mr. Lambert possessed good looks, a
wife with money, and a new house at least a mile from the town, built
under his own directions and at his employer’s expense, Lismoyle placed
him unhesitatingly at the head of its visiting list. Of course his wife
was placed there too, but somehow or other Mrs. Lambert was a person of
far less consequence than her husband. She had had the money certainly,
but that quality was a good deal overlooked by the Lismoyle people in
their admiration for the manner in which her husband spent it. It was
natural that they should respect the captor rather than the captive,
and, in any case, Mr. Roderick Lambert’s horses and traps were more
impressive facts than the Maltese terrier and the shelf of patent
medicines that were Mrs. Lambert’s only extravagances.
Possibly, also, the fact that she had no children placed her at a
disadvantage with the matrons of Lismoyle, all of whom could have spoken
fearlessly with their enemies in the gate; it deprived conversation with
her of the antiphonal quality, when mother answers unto mother of
vaccination and teething-rash and the sins of the nursery-maids are
visited upon the company generally.
“Ah, she’s a poor peenie-weenie thing!” said Mrs. Baker, who was usually
the mouthpiece of Lismoyle opinion, “and it’s no wonder that Lambert’s
for ever flourishing about the country in his dog-trap, and she never
seeing a sight of him from morning till night. I’d like to see Mr. Baker
getting up on a horse and galloping around the roads after bank hours,
instead of coming in for his cup of tea with me and the girls!”
Altogether the feeling was that Mrs. Lambert was a failure, and in spite
of her undoubted amiability, and the creditable fact that Mr. Lambert
was the second husband that the eight thousand pounds ground out by her
late father’s mills had procured for her, her spouse was regarded with a
certain regretful pity as the victim of circumstance.
In spite of his claims upon the sympathy of Lismoyle, Mr. Lambert looked
remarkably well able to compete with his lot in life, as he sat smoking
his pipe in his dinner costume of carpet slippers and oldest shooting
coat, a couple of evenings after Francie’s arrival. As a rule the
Lamberts preferred to sit in their dining-room. The hard magnificence of
the blue rep chairs in the drawing-room appealed to them from different
points of view; Mrs. Lambert holding that they were too good to be used
except by “company,” while Mr. Lambert truly felt that no one who was
not debarred by politeness from the power of complaint would voluntarily
sit upon them. An unshaded lamp was on the table, its ugly glare
conflicting with the soft remnants of June twilight that stole in
between the half-drawn curtains; a tumbler of whisky and water stood on
the corner of the table beside the comfortable leather-covered armchair
in which the master of the house was reading his paper, while opposite
to him, in a basket chair, his wife was conscientiously doing her fancy
work. She was a short woman with confused brown eyes and distressingly
sloping shoulders; a woman of the turkey hen type, dejected and timorous
in voice, and an habitual wearer of porous plasters. Her toilet for the
evening consisted in replacing by a white cashmere shawl the red knitted
one which she habitually wore, and a languid untidiness in the pale
brown hair that hung over her eyes intimated that she had tried to curl
her fringe for dinner.
Neither were speaking; it seemed as if Mr Lambert were placidly awaiting
the arrival of his usual after-dinner sleep; the Maltese terrier was
already snoring plethorically on his mistress’s lap, in a manner quite
disproportioned to his size, and Mrs. Lambert’s crochet needles were
moving more and more slowly through the mazes of the “bosom friend” that
she was making for herself, the knowledge that the minute hand of the
black marble clock was approaching the hour at which she took her
postprandial pill alone keeping her from also yielding to the soft
influences of a substantial meal. At length she took the box from the
little table beside her, where it stood between a bottle of
smelling-salts and a lump of camphor, and having sat with it in her hand
till the half hour was solemnly boomed from the chimneypiece, swallowed
her pill with practised ease. At the slight noise of replacing the box,
her husband opened his eyes.
“By the way, Lucy,” he said in a voice that had no trace of drowsiness
in it, “did Charlotte Mullen say what she was going to do to-morrow?”
“Oh, yes, Roderick,” replied Mrs. Lambert a little anxiously, “indeed, I
was wanting to tell you--Charlotte asked me if I could drive her over to
Mrs. Waller’s to-morrow afternoon. I forgot to ask you before if you
wanted the horses.”
Mr. Lambert’s fine complexion deepened by one or two shades.
“Upon my soul, Charlotte Mullen has a good cheek! She gets as much work
out of my horses as I do myself. I suppose you told her you’d do it?”
“Well, what else could I do?” replied Mrs. Lambert with tremulous
crossness; “I’m sure it’s not once in the month I get outside the place,
and, as for Charlotte, she has not been to the Waller’s since before
Christmas, and you know very well old Captain couldn’t draw her eight
miles there and eight miles back any more than the cat.”
“Cat be hanged! Why the devil can’t she put her hand in her pocket and
take a car for herself?” said Lambert, uncrossing his legs and sitting
up straight; “I suppose I’ll hear next that I’m not to order out my own
horses till I’ve sent round to Miss Mullen to know if she wants them
first! If you weren’t so infernally under her thumb you’d remember there
were others to be consulted besides her.”
“I’m not under her thumb, Roderick; I beg you’ll not say such a thing,”
replied Mrs. Lambert huffily, her eyes blinking with resentment.
“Charlotte Mullen’s an old friend of mine, and yours too, and it’s a
hard thing I can’t take her out driving without remarks being passed,
and I never thought you’d want the horses. I thought you said you’d be
in the office all to-morrow,” ended the poor turkey hen, whose feathers
were constitutionally incapable of remaining erect for any length of
time.
Lambert did not answer immediately. His eyes rested on her flushed face
with just enough expression in them to convey to her that her protest
was beside the point. Mrs. Lambert was apparently used to this silent
comment on what she said, for she went on still more apologetically:
“If you like, Roderick, I’ll send Michael over early with a note to
Charlotte to tell her we’ll go some other day.”
Mr. Lambert leaned back as if to consider the question, and began to
fill his pipe for the second time.
“Well,” he said slowly, “if it makes no difference to you, Lucy, I’d be
rather glad if you did. As a matter of fact I have to ride out to
Gurthnamuckla to-morrow, on business, and I thought I’d take Francie
Fitzpatrick with me there on the black mare. She’s no great shakes of a
rider, and the black mare is the only thing I’d like to put her on. But,
of course, if it was for your own sake and not Charlotte’s that you
wanted to go to the Waller’s, I’d try and manage to take Francie some
other day. For the matter of that I might put her on Paddy; I daresay
he’d carry a lady.”
Mr. Lambert’s concession had precisely the expected effect. Mrs. Lambert
gave a cry of consternation:
“Roderick! you wouldn’t! Is it put that girl up on that mad little
savage of a pony! Why, it’s only yesterday, when Michael was driving me
into town, and Mr. Corkran passed on his tricycle, he tore up on to his
hind heels and tried to run into Ryan’s public-house! Indeed, if that
was the way, not all the Charlottes in the world would make me go
driving to-morrow.”
“Oh, all right,” said Lambert graciously; “if you’d rather have it that
way, we’ll send a note over to Charlotte.”
“Would you mind--” said Mrs. Lambert hesitatingly. “I mean, don’t you
think it would be better if--supposing you wrote the note? She always
minds what you say, and, I declare, I don’t know how in the world I’d
make up the excuse, when she’d settled the whole thing, and even got me
to leave word with the sweep to do her drawing-room chimney that’s thick
with jackdaws’ nests, because the family’d be from home all the
afternoon.”
“Why, what was to happen to Francie?” asked Lambert quickly.
“I think Charlotte said she was to come with us,” yawned Mrs. Lambert,
whose memory for conversation was as feeble as the part she played in
it; “they had some talk about it, at all events. I wouldn’t be sure but
Francie Fitzpatrick said first she’d go for a walk to see the town--yes,
so she did, and Charlotte told her what she was going for was to try and
see the officers, and Francie said maybe it was, or maybe she’d come and
have afternoon tea with you. They had great joking about it, but I’m
sure, after all, it was settled she was to come with us. Indeed,”
continued Mrs. Lambert meditatively, “I think Charlotte’s quite right
not to have her going through the town that way by herself; for, I
declare, Roderick, that’s a lovely girl.”
“Oh, she’s well able to take care of herself,” said Lambert, with the
gruff deprecation that is with some people the method of showing
pleasure at a compliment. “She’s not such a fool as she looks, I can
tell you,” he went on, feeling suddenly quite companionable; “the
Fitzpatricks didn’t take such wonderful care of her that Charlotte need
be bothering herself to put her in cotton wool at this time of day.”
Mrs. Lambert crocheted on in silence for a few moments, inwardly
counting her stitches till she came to the end of the row, then she
withdrew the needle and scratched her head ruminatingly with it.
“Isn’t it a strange thing, Roderick, what makes Charlotte have anyone
staying in the house with her? I never remember such a thing to happen
before.”
“She has to have her, and no thanks to her. Old Fitzpatrick’s been
doing bad business lately, and the little house he’s had to take at Bray
is a tight fit for themselves and the children; so, as he said to me, he
thought it was time for Charlotte to do something for her own cousin’s
child and no such great thanks to her either, seeing she got every
halfpenny the old woman had.”
Mrs. Lambert realised that she was actually carrying on a conversation
with her husband, and nervously cast about in her mind for some response
that should be both striking and stimulating.
“Well, now, if you want my opinion,” she said, shutting both her eyes
and shaking her head with the peculiar arch sagacity of a dull woman, “I
wouldn’t be surprised if Charlotte wasn’t so sorry to have her here
after all. Maybe she thinks she might snap up one of the officers--or
there’s young Charley Flood--or, Roderick!” Mrs. Lambert almost giggled
with delight and excitement--“I wouldn’t put it past Charlotte to be
trying to ketch Mr. Dysart.”
Roderick laughed in a disagreeable way.
“I’d wish her joy of him if she got him! A fellow that’d rather stick at
home there at Bruff having tea with his sister than go down like any
other fellow and play a game of pool at the hotel! A sort of chap that
says, if you offer him a whisky and soda in a friendly way,
‘Th--thanks--I don’t c--care about anything at this t--t--time of day.’
I think Francie’d make him sit up!” Mr. Lambert felt his imitation of
Christopher Dysart’s voice to be a success, and the shrill burst of
laughter with which Mrs. Lambert greeted it gave him for the moment an
unusual tinge of respect for her intelligence. “That’s about the size of
it, Lucy--what?”
“Oh, Roderick, how comical you are!” responded the dutiful turkey hen,
wiping her watery eyes; “it reminds me of the days when you used to be
talking of old Mr. Mullen and Charlotte fighting in the office till I’d
think I was listening to themselves.”
“God help the man that’s got to fight with Charlotte, anyhow!” said
Lambert, finishing his whisky and water as if toasting the sentiment;
“and talking of Charlotte, Lucy, you needn’t mind about writing that
note to her; I’ll go over myself and speak to her in the morning.”
“Oh, yes, Roderick, ’twill be all right if you see herself, and you
might say to her that I’ll be expecting her to come in to tea.”
Mr. Lambert, who had already taken up his newspaper again, merely
grunted an assent. Mrs. Lambert patiently folded her small bony hands
upon her dog’s back, and closing her eyes and opening her mouth, fell
asleep in half a dozen breaths.
Her husband read his paper for a short time, while the subdued duet of
snoring came continuously from the chair opposite. The clock struck nine
in its sonorous, gentlemanlike voice, and at the sound Lambert threw
down his paper as if an idea had occurred to him. He got up and went
over to the window, and putting aside the curtains, looked out into the
twilight of the June evening. The world outside was still awake, and the
air was tender with the remembrance of the long day of sunshine and
heat; a thrush was singing loudly down by the seringa bush at the end of
the garden; the cattle were browsing and breathing audibly in the field
beyond, and some children were laughing and shouting on the road. It
seemed to Lambert much earlier than he had thought, and as he stood
there, the invitation of the summer evening began to appeal to him with
seductive force; the quiet fields lay grey and mysterious under the pale
western glow, and his eye travelled several times across them to a
distant dark blot--the clump of trees and evergreens in which Tally Ho
Lodge lay buried.
He turned from the window at last, and coming back into the lamplit
room, surveyed it and its unconscious occupants with a feeling of
intolerance for their unlovely slumber. His next step was the almost
unprecedented one of changing his slippers for boots, and in a few
minutes he had left the house.
CHAPTER VI.
Norry the Boat toiled up the back stairs with wrath in her heart. She
had been listening for some minutes with grim enjoyment to cries from
the landing upstairs; unavailing calls for Louisa, interspersed with the
dumb galvanic quiver of a bell-less bellwire, and at last Francie’s
voice at the angle half-way down the kitchen stairs had entreated her to
find and despatch to her the missing Protestant orphan. Then Norry had
said to herself, while she lifted the pot of potatoes off the fire,
“Throuble-the-house! God knows I’m heart-scalded with the whole o’
yees!” And then aloud, “She’s afther goin’ out to the dhryin’ ground to
throw out a few aper’rns to blaych.”
“Well, I _must_ have somebody; I can’t get my habit on,” the voice had
wailed in reply. “Couldn’t you come, Norry?”
As we have said, Norry ascended the stairs with wrath in her heart, as
gruesome a lady’s-maid as could well be imagined, with an apron mottled
with grease spots, and a stale smell of raw onions pervading her
generally. Francie was standing in front of the dim looking-glass with
which Charlotte chastened the vanity of her guests, trying with stiff
and tired fingers to drag the buttons of a brand new habit through the
unyielding buttonholes that tailors alone have the gift of making, and
Norry’s anger was forgotten in prayerful horror, as her eyes wandered
from the hard felt hat to the trousered ankle that appeared beneath the
skimpy and angular skirt.
“The Lord look down in pity on thim that cut that petticoat!” she said.
“Sure, it’s not out in the sthreets ye’re goin’ in the like o’ that! God
knows it’d be as good for ye to be dhressed like a man altogether!”
“I wouldn’t care what I was dressed like if I could only make the
beastly thing meet,” said Francie, her face flushed with heat and
effort; “wasn’t I the fool to tell him to make it tight in the waist!”
The subsequent proceedings were strenuous, but in the end successful,
and finally Miss Fitzpatrick walked stiffly downstairs, looking very
slender and tall, with the tail of the dark green habit--she had felt
green to be the colour consecrated to sport--drawn tightly round her,
and a silver horse-shoe brooch at her throat.
Charlotte was standing at the open hall door talking to Mr. Lambert.
“Come along, child,” she said genially, “you’ve been so long adorning
yourself that nothing but his natural respect for the presence of a
lady kept this gentleman from indulging in abusive language.”
Charlotte, in her lighter moods, was addicted to a ponderous persiflage,
the aristocratic foster-sister of her broader peasant jestings in the
manner of those whom she was fond of describing as “the _bar purple_.”
Mr. Lambert did not trouble himself to reply to this sally. He was
looking at the figure in the olive-green habit that was advancing along
the path of sunlight to the doorway, and thinking that he had done well
to write that letter on the subject of the riding that Francie might
expect to have at Lismoyle. Charlotte turned her head also to look at
the radiant, sunlit figure.
“Why, child, were you calling Norry just now to melt you down and pour
you into that garment? I never saw such a waist! Take care and don’t let
her fall off, Roddy, or she’ll snap in two!” She laughed loudly and
discordantly, looking to Mr. Lambert’s groom for the appreciation that
was lacking in the face of his master; and during the arduous process of
getting Miss Fitzpatrick into her saddle she remained on the steps,
offering facetious suggestions and warnings, with her short arms akimbo,
and a smile that was meant to be jovial accentuating the hard lines of
her face.
At last the green habit was adjusted, the reins placed properly between
Francie’s awkward fingers, and Mr. Lambert had mounted his long-legged
young chestnut and was ready to start.
“Don’t forget Lucy expects you to tea, Charlotte,” he said as he settled
himself in his saddle.
“And don’t you forget what I told you,” replied Charlotte, sinking her
voice confidentially; “don’t mind her if she opens her mouth wide; it’ll
take less to shut it than ye’d think.”
Lambert nodded and rode after Francie, who, in compliance with the
wishes of the black mare, had hurried on towards the gate. The black
mare was a lady of character, well-mannered but firm, and the mere sit
of the saddle on her back told her that this was a case when it would be
well to take matters into her own control; she accordingly dragged as
much of the reins as she required from Francie’s helpless hands, and by
the time she had got on to the high road, had given her rider to
understand that her position was that of tenant at will.
They turned their backs on the town, and rode along the dazzling, dusty
road, that radiated all the heat of a blazing afternoon.
“I think he did you pretty well with that habit,” remarked Lambert
presently. “What’s the damage to be?”
“What do you think?” replied Francie gaily, answering one question with
another after the manner of her country.
“Ten?”
“Ah, go on! Where’d I get ten pounds? He said he’d only charge me six
because you recommended me, but I can tell him he’ll have to wait for
his money.”
“Why, are you hard up again?”
Francie looked up at him and laughed with unconcern that was not in the
least affected.
“Of course I am! Did you ever know me that I wasn’t?”
Lambert was silent for a moment or two, and half unconsciously his
thoughts ran back over the time, six years ago now, when he had first
met Francie. There had always been something exasperating to him in her
brilliant indifference to the serious things of life. Her high spirits
were as impenetrable as a coat of mail; her ignorance of the world was
at once sublime and enraging. She had not seemed in the least impressed
by the fact that he, whom up to this time she had known as merely a
visitor at her uncle’s house, a feature of the Lawn-Tennis tournament
week, and a person with whom to promenade Merrion Square while the band
was playing, was in reality a country gentleman, a J.P., and a man of
standing, who owned as good horses as anyone in the county. She even
seemed as impervious as ever to the pathos of his position in having
thrown himself and his good looks away upon a plain woman six or seven
years older than himself. All these things passed quickly through his
mind, as if they found an accustomed groove there, and mingled acidly
with the disturbing subconsciousness that the mare would inevitably come
home with a sore back if her rider did not sit straighter than she was
doing at present.
“Look here, Francie,” he said at last, with something of asperity, “it’s
all very fine to humbug now, but if you don’t take care you’ll find
yourself in the county court some fine day. It’s easier to get there
than you’d think,” he added gloomily, “and then there’ll be the devil to
pay, and nothing to pay him with; and what’ll you do then?”
“I’ll send for you to come and bail me out!” replied Francie without
hesitation, giving an unconsidered whack behind the saddle as she spoke.
The black mare at once showed her sense of the liberty by kicking up her
heels in a manner that lifted Francie a hand’s-breadth from her seat,
and shook her foot out of the stirrup. “Gracious!” she gasped, when she
had sufficiently recovered herself to speak; “what did he do? Did he
buck-jump? Oh, Mr. Lambert--” as the mare, satisfied with her protest,
broke into a sharp trot, “do stop him; I can’t get my foot into the
stirrup!”
Lambert, trotting serenely beside her on his tall chestnut, watched her
precarious bumpings for a minute or two with a grin, then he stretched
out a capable hand, and pulled the mare into a walk.
“Now, where would you be without me?” he inquired.
“Sitting on the road,” replied Francie. “I never felt such a horrid
rough thing--and look at Mrs. Lambert looking at me over the wall!
Weren’t you a cad that you wouldn’t stop him before?”
In the matter of exercise, Mrs. Lambert was one of those people who want
but little here below, nor want that little long. The tour of the two
acres that formed the demesne of Rosemount was generally her limit, and
any spare energy that remained to her after that perambulation was spent
in taking weeds out of the garden path with a lady-like cane-handled
spud. This implement was now in her gauntletted hand, and she waved it
feebly to the riders as they passed, while Muffy stood in front of her
and barked with asthmatic fury.
“Make Miss Fitzpatrick come in to tea on her way home, Roderick,” she
called, looking admiringly at the girl with kind eyes that held no spark
of jealousy of her beauty and youth. Mrs. Lambert was one of the women
who sink prematurely and unresistingly into the sloughs of middle-age.
For her there had been no intermediary period of anxious tracking of
grey hairs, of fevered energy in the playing of lawn-tennis and
rounders; she had seen, with a feeling too sluggish to be respected as
resignation, her complexion ascend the scale of colour from possible
pink to the full sunset flush that now burned in her cheeks and spanned
the sharp ridge of her nose; and she still, as she had always done,
bought her expensive Sunday bonnet as she would have bought a piece of
furniture, because it was handsome, not because it was becoming. The
garden hat which she now wore could not pretend to either of these
qualifications, and, as Francie looked at her, the contrast between her
and her husband was as conspicuous as even he could have wished.
Francie’s first remark, however, after they had passed by, seemed to
show that her point of view was not the same as his.
“Won’t she be very lonely there all the afternoon by herself?” she
asked, with a backward glance at the figure in the garden hat.
“Oh, not she!” said Lambert carelessly, “she has the dog, and she’ll
potter about there as happy as possible. She’s all right.” Then after a
pause in which the drift of Francie’s question probably presented itself
to him for the first time, “I wish everyone was as satisfied with their
life as she is.”
“How bad you are!” returned Francie, quite unmoved by the gloomy
sentimental roll of Mr. Lambert’s eyes. “I never heard a man talk such
nonsense in my life!”
“My dear child,” said Lambert, with paternal melancholy, “when you’re my
age--”
“Which I sha’n’t be for the next fifteen years--” interrupted Francie.
Mr. Lambert checked himself abruptly, and looked cross.
“Oh, all right! If you’re going to sit on me every time I open my mouth,
I’d better shut up.”
Francie with some difficulty brought the black mare beside the chestnut,
and put her hand for an instant on Lambert’s arm.
“Ah now, don’t be angry with me!” she said with a glance whose efficacy
she had often proved in similar cases; “you know I was only funning.”
“I am not in the least angry with you,” replied Lambert coldly, though
his eyes turned in spite of himself to her face.
“Oh, I know very well you’re angry with me,” rejoined Francie, with
unfeigned enjoyment of the situation; “your mustash always gets as black
as a coal when you’re angry.”
The adornment referred to twitched, but its owner said nothing.
“There now, you’re laughing!” continued Francie, “but it’s quite true; I
remember the first time I noticed that, was the time you brought Mrs.
Lambert up to town about her teeth, and you took places at the Gaiety
for the three of us--and oh! do you remember--” leaning back and
laughing whole-heartedly, “she couldn’t get her teeth in in time, and
you wanted her to go without any, and she wouldn’t, for fear she might
laugh at the pantomime, and I had promised to go to the Dalkey Band that
night with the Whittles, and then when you got up to our house and found
you’d got the three tickets for nothing, you were so mad that when I
came down into the parlour I declare I thought you’d been dyeing your
mustash! Aunt Tish said afterwards it was because your face got so
white, but _I_ knew it was because you were in such a passion.”
“Well, I didn’t like chucking away fifteen shillings a bit more than
anyone else would,” said Lambert.
“Ah, well, we made it up, d’ye remember?” said Francie, regarding him
with a laughing eye, in which there was a suspicion of sentiment; “and
after all, you were able to change the tickets to another night, and it
was ‘Pinafore,’ and you laughed at me so awfully, because I cried at the
part where the two lovers are saying good-bye to each other, and poor
Mrs. Lambert got her teeth in in a hurry to go with us, and she couldn’t
utter the whole night for fear they’d fall out.”
Perhaps the allusions to his wife’s false teeth had a subtly soothing
effect on Mr. Lambert. He never was averse to anything that showed that
other people were as conscious as he was of the disparity between his
own admirable personal equipment and that of Mrs. Lambert; it was
another admission of the great fact that he had thrown himself away. His
eyebrows and moustache became less truculent, he let himself down with
a complacent sarcasm on Francie’s method of holding her whip, and, as
they rode on, he permitted to himself the semi-proprietary enjoyment of
an agent in pointing out boundaries, and landmarks, and improvements.
They had ridden at first under a pale green arch of roadside trees, with
fields on either side full of buttercups and dog-daisies, a land of
pasture and sleek cattle, and neat stone walls. But in the second or
third mile the face of the country changed. The blue lake that had lain
in the distance like a long slab of _lapis lazuli_, was within two
fields of them now, moving drowsily in and out of the rocks, and over
the coarse gravel of its shore. The trees had dwindled to ragged hazel
and thorn bushes; the fat cows of the comfortable farms round Lismoyle
were replaced by lean, dishevelled goats, and shelves and flags of grey
limestone began to contest the right of the soil with the thin grass and
the wiry brushwood. We have said grey limestone, but that hard-worked
adjective cannot at all express the cold, pure blueness that these
boulders take, under the sky of summer. Some word must yet be coined in
which neither blue nor lilac shall have the supremacy, and in which the
steely purple of a pigeon’s breast shall not be forgotten.
The rock was everywhere. Even the hazels were at last squeezed out of
existence, and inland, over the slowly swelling hills, it lay like the
pavement of some giant city, that had been jarred from its symmetry by
an earthquake. A mile away, on the further side of this iron belt, a
clump of trees rose conspicuously by the lake side, round a two-storied
white house, and towards these trees the road wound its sinuous way. The
grass began to show in larger and larger patches between the rocks, and
the indomitable hazels crept again out of the crannies, and raised their
low canopies over the heads of the browsing sheep and goats. A stream,
brown with turf-mould, and fierce with battles with the boulders, made a
boundary between the stony wilderness and the dark green pastures of
Gurthnamuckla. It dashed under a high-backed little bridge with such
excitement that the black mare, for all her intelligence, curved her
neck, and sidled away from the parapet towards Lambert’s horse.
Just beyond the bridge, a repulsive-looking old man was sitting on a
heap of stones, turning over the contents of a dirty linen pouch. Beside
him were an empty milk-can, and a black-and-white dog which had begun by
trying to be a collie, and had relapsed into an indifferent attempt at a
grey-hound. It greeted the riders with the usual volley of barking, and
its owner let fall some of the coppers that he was counting over, in his
haste to strike at it with the long stick that was lying beside him.
“Have done! Sailor! Blasht yer sowl! Have done!” then, with honeyed
obsequiousness, “yer honour’s welcome, Mr. Lambert.”
“Is Miss Duffy in the house?” asked Lambert.
“She is, she is, yer honour,” he answered, in the nasal mumble peculiar
to his class, getting up and beginning to shuffle after the horses; “but
what young lady is this at all? Isn’t she very grand, God bless her!”
“She’s Miss Fitzpatrick, Miss Mullen’s cousin, Billy,” answered Lambert
graciously; approbation could not come from a source too low for him to
be susceptible to it.
The old man came up beside Francie, and, clutching the skirt of her
habit, blinked at her with sly and swimming eyes.
“Fitzpatrick is it? Begob I knew her grannema well; she was a fine
hearty woman, the Lord have mercy on her! And she never seen me without
she’d give me a shixpence or maybe a shillin’.”
Francie was skilled in the repulse of the Dublin beggar, but this
ancestral precedent was something for which she was not prepared. The
clutch tightened on her habit and the disgusting old face almost touched
it, as Billy pressed close to her, mouthing out incomprehensible
blessings and entreaties. She felt afraid of his red eyes and clawing
fingers, and she turned helplessly to Lambert.
“Here, be off now, Billy, you old fool!” he said; “we’ve had enough of
you. Run and open the gate.”
The farm-house, with its clump of trees, was close to them, and its
drooping iron entrance-gate shrieked resentfully as the old man dragged
it open.
CHAPTER VII.
Miss Julia Duffy, the tenant of Gurthnamuckla, was a woman of few
friends. The cart track that led to her house was covered with grass,
except for two brown ruts and a narrow footpath in the centre, and the
boughs of the sycamores that grew on either side of it drooped low as if
ignoring the possibility of a visitor. The house door remained shut from
year’s end to year’s end, contrary to the usual kindly Irish custom; in
fact, its rotten timbers were at once supported and barricaded by a
diagonal beam that held them together, and was itself beginning to rot
under its shroud of cobwebs. The footpath skirted the duckpond in front
of the door, and led round the corner of the house to what had been in
the palmy days of Gurthnamuckla the stableyard, and wound through its
weedy heaps of dirt to the kitchen door.
Julia Duffy, looking back through the squalors of some sixty years,
could remember the days when the hall door used to stand open from
morning till night, and her father’s guests were many and thirsty,
almost as thirsty as he, though perhaps less persistently so. He had
been a hard-drinking Protestant farmer, who had married his own
dairy-woman, a Roman Catholic, dirty, thriftless, and a cousin of Norry
the Boat; and he had so disintegrated himself with whisky that his body
and soul fell asunder at what was considered by his friends to be the
premature age of seventy-two. Julia had always been wont to go to
Lismoyle church with her father, not so much as a matter of religious as
of social conviction. All the best bonnets in the town went to the
parish church, and to a woman of Julia’s stamp, whose poor relations
wear hoods and shawls over their heads and go to chapel, there is no
salvation out of a bonnet. After old John Duffy’s death, however,
bonnets and the aristocratic way of salvation seemed together to rise
out of his daughter’s scope. Chapel she despised with all the fervour of
an Irish Protestant, but if the farm was to be kept and the rent paid,
there was no money to spare for bonnets. Therefore Julia, in defiance of
the entreaties of her mother’s priest and her own parson, would have
nothing of either chapel or church, and stayed sombrely at home.
Marriage had never come near her; in her father’s time the necessary
dowry had not been forthcoming, and even her ownership of the farm was
not enough to counter-balance her ill-looks and her pagan habits.
As in a higher grade of society science sometimes steps in when religion
fails, so, in her moral isolation, Julia Duffy turned her attention to
the mysteries of medicine and the culture of herbs. By the time her
mother died she had established a position as doctor and wise woman,
which was immensely abetted by her independence of the ministrations of
any church. She was believed in by the people, but there was no liking
in the belief; when they spoke to her they called her Miss Duffy, in
deference to a now impalpable difference in rank as well as in
recognition of her occult powers, and they kept as clear of her as they
conveniently could. The payment of her professional services was a
matter entirely in the hands of the people themselves, and ranged,
according to the circumstances of the case, from a score of eggs or a
can of buttermilk, to a crib of turf or “the makings” of a homespun
flannel petticoat. Where there was the possibility of a fee it never
failed; where there was not, Julia Duffy gave her “yerreb tay” (_i.e._,
herb tea) and Holloway’s pills without question or hesitation.
No one except herself knew how vital these offerings were to her. The
farm was still hers, and, perhaps, in all her jealous unsunned nature,
the only note of passion was her feeling for the twenty acres that, with
the house, remained to her of her father’s possessions. She had owned
the farm for twenty years now, and had been the abhorrence and the
despair of each successive Bruff agent. The land went from bad to worse;
ignorance, neglect and poverty, are a formidable conjunction even
without the moral support that the Land League for a few years had
afforded her, and Miss Duffy tranquilly defied Mr. Lambert, offering him
at intervals such rent as she thought fitting, while she sub-let her
mossy, deteriorated fields to a Lismoyle grazier. Perhaps her nearest
approach to pleasure was the time at the beginning of each year when she
received and dealt with the offers for the grazing; then she tasted the
sweets of ownership, and then she condescended to dole out to Mr.
Lambert such payment “on account” as she deemed advisable, confronting
his remonstrances with her indisputable poverty, and baffling his
threats with the recital of a promise that she should never be disturbed
in her father’s farm, made to her, she alleged, by Sir Benjamin Dysart,
when she entered upon her inheritance.
There had been a time when a barefooted serving-girl had suffered under
Miss Duffy’s rule; but for the last few years the times had been bad,
the price of grazing had fallen, and the mistress’s temper and the diet
having fallen in a corresponding ratio, the bondwoman had returned to
her own people and her father’s house, and no successor had been found
to take her place. That is to say, no recognised successor. But, as fate
would have it, on the very day that “Moireen Rhu” had wrapped her shawl
about her head, and stumped, with cursings, out of the house of bondage,
the vague stirrings that regulate the perambulations of beggars had
caused Billy Grainy to resolve upon Gurthnamuckla as the place where he
would, after the manner of his kind, ask for a walletful of potatoes and
a night’s shelter. A week afterwards he was still there, drawing water,
bringing in turf, feeding the cow, and receiving, in return for these
offices, his board and lodging and the daily dressing of a sore shin
which had often coerced the most uncharitable to hasty and nauseated
alms-giving. The arrangement glided into permanency, and Billy fell into
a life of lazy routine that was preserved from stagnation by a daily
expedition to Lismoyle to sell milk for Miss Duffy, and to do a little
begging on his own account.
Gurthnamuckla had still about it some air of the older days when Julia
Duffy’s grandfather was all but a gentleman, and her drunken father and
dairymaid mother were in their cradles. The tall sycamores that bordered
the cart track were witnesses to the time when it had been an avenue,
and the lawn-like field was yellow in spring with the daffodils of a
former civilisation. The tops of the trees were thick with nests, and
the grave cawing of rooks made a background of mellow, serious
respectability that had its effect even upon Francie. She said something
to this intent as she and Lambert jogged along the grass by the track.
“Nice!” returned her companion with enthusiasm, “I should think it was!
I’d make that one of the sweetest little places in the country if I had
it. There’s no better grass for young horses anywhere, and there’s
first-class stabling. I can tell you you’re not the only one that thinks
it’s a nice place,” he continued, “but this old devil that has it won’t
give it up; she’d rather let the house rot to pieces over her head than
go out of it.”
They rode past the barricaded hall door, and round the corner of the
house into the yard, and Lambert called for Miss Duffy for some time in
vain. Nothing responded except the turkey cock, who answered each call
with an infuriated gobble, and a donkey, who, in the dark recesses of a
cow-house, lifted up his voice in heartrending rejoinder. At last a
window fell down with a bang in the upper story, and the mistress of the
house put out her head. Francie had only time to catch a glimpse of a
thin dirty face, a hooked nose, and unkempt black hair, before the
vision was withdrawn, and a slipshod step was heard coming downstairs.
When Miss Duffy appeared at her kitchen door, she had flung a shawl
round her head, possibly to conceal the fact that her crinkled mat of
hair held thick in it, like powder, the turf ashes of many sluttish
days. Her stained and torn black skirt had evidently just been unpinned
from about her waist, and was hitched up at one side, showing a frayed
red Galway petticoat, and that her feet had recently been thrust into
her boots was attested by the fact that their laces trailed on the
ground beside her. In spite of these disadvantages, however, it was with
a manner of the utmost patronage that she greeted Mr. Lambert.
“I would ask you and the young leedy to dismount,” she continued, in the
carefully genteel voice that she clung to in the wreck of her fortunes,
“but I am, as you will see,” she made a gesture with a dingy hand,
“quite ‘in dishabilly,’ as they say; I’ve been a little indisposed,
and--”
“Oh, no matter, Miss Duffy,” interrupted Lambert, “I only wanted to say
a few words to you on business, and Miss Fitzpatrick will ride about the
place till we’re done.”
Miss Duffy’s small black eyes turned quickly to Francie.
“Oh, indeed, is that Miss Fitzpatrick? My fawther knew her
grandfawther. I am much pleased to make her acquaintance.”
She inclined her head as she spoke, and Francie, with much disposition
to laugh, bowed hers in return; each instant Miss Duffy’s resemblance,
both in feature and costume, to a beggar woman who frequented the corner
of Sackville Street, was becoming harder to bear with fortitude, and she
was delighted to leave Lambert to his _tête-à-tête_ and ride out into
the lawn, among the sycamores and hawthorns, where the black mare
immediately fell to devouring grass with a resolve that was quite beyond
Francie’s power to combat.
She broke a little branch off a low-growing ash tree, to keep away the
flies that were doing their best to spoil the pleasure of a perfect
afternoon, and sat there, fanning herself lazily, while the mare, with
occasional impatient tugs at the reins and stampings at the flies,
cropped her way onwards from one luscious tuft to another. The Lismoyle
grazier’s cattle had collected themselves under the trees at the farther
end of the lawn, where a swampy pool still remained of the winter
encroachments of the lake. In the sunshine at the other side of the
wall, a chain of such pools stretched to the broad blue water, and grey
limestone rocks showed above the tangle of hemlock and tall spikes of
magenta foxgloves. A white sail stood dazzlingly out in the turquoise
blue of a band of calm, and the mountains on the farther side of the
lake were palely clothed in thinnest lavender and most ethereal green.
It might have been the unexpected likeness that she had found in Julia
Duffy to her old friend the beggar woman that took Francie’s thoughts
away from this idyll of perfected summer to the dry, grey Dublin streets
that had been her uttermost horizon a week ago. The milkman generally
called at the Fitzpatricks’ house at about this hour; the clank of his
pint measure against the area railings, even his pleasantries with
Maggie the cook, relative to his bestowing an extra “sup for the cat,”
were suddenly and sharply present with her. The younger Fitzpatrick
children would be home from school, and would be raging through the
kitchen seeking what they might devour in the interval before the six
o’clock dinner, and she herself would probably have been engaged in a
baking game of tennis in the square outside her uncle’s house. She felt
very sorry for Aunt Tish when she thought of that hungry gang of sons
and daughters and of the evil days that had come upon the excellent and
respectable Uncle Robert, and the still more evil days that would come
in another fortnight or so, when the whole bursting party had squeezed
themselves into a little house at Bray, there to exist for an indefinite
period on Irish stew, strong tea, and a diminished income. There was a
kind of understanding that when they were “settled” she was to go back
to them, and blend once more her five and twenty pounds a year with the
Fitzpatrick funds; but this afternoon, with the rich summer stillness
and the blaze of buttercups all about her, and the unfamiliar feeling of
the mare’s restless shoulder under her knee, she was exceedingly glad
that the settling process would take some months at least. She was not
given to introspection, and could not have said anything in the least
interesting about her mental or moral atmosphere; she was too uneducated
and too practical for any self-communings of this kind; but she was
quite certain of two things, that in spite of her affection for the
Fitzpatricks she was very glad she was not going to spend the summer in
Dublin or Bray, and also, that in spite of certain bewildering aspects
of her cousin Charlotte, she was beginning to have what she defined to
herself as “a high old time.”
It was somewhere about this period in her meditations that she became
aware of a slight swishing and puffing sound from the direction of the
lake, and a steam-launch came swiftly along close under the shore. She
was a smart-looking boat, spick and span as white paint and a white
funnel with a brass band could make her, and in her were seated two men;
one, radiant in a red and white blazer, was steering, while the other,
in clothes to which even distance failed to lend enchantment, was
menially engaged in breaking coals with a hammer. The boughs of the
trees intervened exasperatingly between Francie and this glittering
vision, and the resolve to see it fully lent her the power to drag the
black mare from her repast, and urge her forward to an opening where she
could see and be seen, two equally important objects.
She had instantly realised that these were those heroes of romance, “the
Lismoyle officers,” the probabilities of her alliance with one of whom
had been the subject of some elegant farewell badinage on the part of
her bosom friend, Miss Fanny Hemphill. Francie’s acquaintance with the
British army had hitherto been limited to one occasion when, at a
Sandymount evening band performance, “one of the officers from Beggars’
Bush Barracks”--so she had confided to Miss Hemphill--had taken off his
hat to her, and been very polite until Aunt Tish had severely told him
that no true gentleman would converse with a lady without she was
presented to him, and had incontinently swept her home. She could see
them quite plainly now, and from the fact that the man who had been
rooting among the coals was now sitting up, evidently at the behest of
the steersman, and looking at her, it was clear that she had attracted
attention too. Even the black mare pricked her ears, and stared at this
new kind of dragon-fly creature that went noisily by, leaving a feathery
smear on the air behind it, and just then Mr. Lambert rode out of the
stableyard, and looked about him for his charge.
“Francie!” he called with perceptible impatience; “what are you at down
there?”
The steam-launch had by this time passed the opening, and Francie turned
and rode towards him. Her hat was a good deal on the back of her head,
and her brilliant hair caught the sunshine; the charm of her supple
figure atoned for the crookedness of her seat, and her eyes shone with
an excitement born of the delightful sight of soldiery.
“Oh, Mr. Lambert, weren’t those the officers?” she cried, as he rode up
to her; “which was which? Haven’t they a grand little steamer?”
Lambert’s temper had apparently not been improved by his conversation
with Julia Duffy; instead of answering Miss Fitzpatrick he looked at her
with a clouded brow, and in his heart he said, “Damn the officers!”
“I wonder which of them is the captain?” continued Francie; “I suppose
it is the little fair one; he was much the best dressed, and he was
making the other one do all the work?”
Lambert gave a scornful laugh.
“I’ll leave you to find that out for yourself. I’ll engage it won’t be
long before you know all about them. You’ve made a good start already.”
“Oh, very well,” replied Francie, letting fall both the reins in order
to settle her hat; “some day you’ll be asking me something, and I won’t
tell you, and then you’ll be sorry.”
“Some day you’ll be breaking your neck, and then _you’ll_ be sorry,”
retorted Lambert, taking up the fallen reins.
They rode out of the gate of Gurthnamuckla in silence, and after a mile
of trotting, which was to Francie a period of mingled pain and anxiety,
the horses slackened of their own accord, and began to pick their way
gingerly over the smooth sheets of rock that marked the entry of the
road into the stony tract mentioned in the last chapter. Francie took
the opportunity for a propitiatory question.
“What were you and the old woman talking about all that time? I thought
you were never coming.”
“Business,” said Lambert shortly; then viciously, “if any conversation
with a woman can ever be called business.”
“Oho! then you couldn’t get her to do what you wanted!” laughed Francie;
“very good for you too! I think you always get your own way.”
“Is that your opinion?” said Lambert, turning his dark eyes upon her;
“I’m sorry I can’t agree with you.”
The fierce heat had gone out of the afternoon as they passed along the
lonely road, through the country of rocks and hazel bushes; the sun was
sending low flashes into their eyes from the bright mirror of the lake;
the goats that hopped uncomfortably about in the enforced and detested
_tête-à-tête_ caused by a wooden yoke across their necks, cast blue
shadows of many-legged absurdity on the warm slabs of stone; a carrion
crow, swaying on the thin topmost bough of a thorn-bush, a blot in the
mellow afternoon sky, was looking about him if haply he could see a
wandering kid whose eyes would serve him for his supper; and a couple of
miles away, at Rosemount, Mrs. Lambert was sending down to be kept hot
what she and Charlotte had left of the Sally Lunn.
Francie was not sorry when she found herself again under the trees of
the Lismoyle highroad, and in spite of the injuries which the pommels of
the saddle were inflicting upon her, and the growing stiffness of all
her muscles, she held gallantly on at a sharp trot, till her hair-pins
and her hat were loosed from their foundations, and her green habit rose
in ungainly folds. They were nearing Rosemount when they heard wheels
behind them. Lambert took the left side of the road, and the black mare
followed his example with such suddenness, that Francie, when she had
recovered her equilibrium, could only be thankful that nothing more than
her hat had come off. With the first instinct of woman she snatched at
the coils of hair that fell down her back and hung enragingly over her
eyes, and tried to wind them on to her head again. She became horribly
aware that a waggonette with several people in it had pulled up beside
her, and, finally, that a young man with a clean-shaved face and an
eyeglass was handing her her hat and taking off his own.
Holding in her teeth the few hair-pins that she had been able to save
from the wreck, she stammered a gratitude that she was far from feeling;
and when she heard Lambert say, “Oh, thank you, Dysart, you just saved
me getting off,” she felt that her discomfiture was complete.
CHAPTER VIII.
Christopher Dysart was a person about whom Lismoyle and its
neighbourhood had not been able to come to a satisfactory conclusion,
unless, indeed, that conclusion can be called satisfactory which
admitted him to be a disappointment. From the time that, as a shy, plain
little boy he first went to school, and, after the habit of boys, ceased
to exist except in theory and holidays, a steady undercurrent of
interest had always set about him. His mother was so charming, and his
father so delicate, and he himself so conveniently contemporary with so
many daughters, that although the occasional glimpses vouchsafed of him
during his Winchester and Oxford career were as discouraging as they
were brief, it was confidently expected that he would emerge from his
boyish shyness when he came to take his proper place in the county and
settle down at Bruff. Thus Lady Eyrefield, and Mrs. Waller, and their
like, the careful mothers of those contemporaneous daughters, and thus
also, after their kind, the lesser ladies of Lismoyle.
But though Christopher was now seven and twenty he seemed as far from
“taking his place in the county” as he had ever been. His mother’s
friends had no particular fault to find with him; that was a prominent
feature in their dissatisfaction. He was quite good-looking enough for
an eldest son, and his politeness to their daughters left them nothing
to complain of except the discouraging fact that it was exceeded by his
politeness to themselves. His readiness to talk when occasion demanded
was undisputed, but his real or pretended dulness in those matters of
local interest, which no one except an outsider calls gossip, made
conversation with him a hollow and heartless affair. One of his most
exasperating points was that he could not be referred to any known type.
He was “between the sizes,” as shopmen say of gloves. He was not smart
and aggressive enough for the soldiering type, nor sporting enough for
the country gentleman, but neither had he the docility and attentiveness
of the ideal curate; he could not even be lightly disposed of as an
eccentricity, which would have been some sort of consolation.
“If I ever could have imagined that Isabel Dysart’s son would have
turned out like this,” said the Dowager Lady Eyrefield, in a moment of
bitterness, “I should not have given myself the trouble of writing to
Castlemore about taking him out as his secretary. I thought all those
functions and dinner parties would have done something for him, but
though they polished up his manners, and improved that most painful and
unfortunate stutter, he’s at heart just as much a stick as ever.”
Lismoyle was, according to its lights, equally nonplussed. Mrs. Baker
had, indeed, suggested that it was sending him to these grand English
universities, instead of to Trinity College, Dublin, that had taken the
fun out of him in the first going off, and what finished him was going
out to those Barbadoes, with all the blacks bowing down to him, and his
liver growing the size of I don’t know what with the heat. Mrs. Corkran,
the widow of the late rector of Lismoyle, had, however, rejoined that
she had always found Mr. Dysart a most humble-minded young man on the
occasions when she had met him at his cousin Mrs. Gascogne’s, and by no
means puffed up with his rank or learning. This proposition Mrs. Baker
had not attempted to dispute, but none the less she had felt it to be
beside the point. She had not found that Christopher’s learning had
disposed him to come to her tennis parties, and she did not feel
humility to be a virtue that graced a young man of property. Certainly,
in spite of his humility, she could not venture to take him to task for
his neglect of her entertainments as she could Mr. Hawkins; but then it
is still more certain that Christopher would not, as Mr. Hawkins had
often done, sit down before her, as before a walled town, and so
skilfully entreat her that in five minutes all would have been forgiven
and forgotten.
It was, perhaps, an additional point of aggravation that, dull and
unprofitable though he was considered to be, Christopher had amusements
of his own in which the neighbourhood had no part. Since he had returned
from the West Indies, his three-ton cutter with the big Una sail had
become one of the features of the lake, but though a red parasol was
often picturesquely visible above the gunwale, the knowledge that it
sheltered his sister deprived it of the almost painful interest that it
might otherwise have had, and at the same time gave point to a snub that
was unintentionally effective and comprehensive. There were many sunny
mornings on which Mr. Dysart’s camera occupied commanding positions in
the town, or its outskirts, while its owner photographed groups of old
women and donkeys, regardless of the fact that Miss Kathleen Baker, in
her most becoming hat, had taken her younger sister from the schoolroom
to play a showy game of lawn-tennis in the garden in front of her
father’s villa, or was, with Arcadian industry, cutting buds off the
roses that dropped their pink petals over the low wall on to the road.
It was quite inexplicable that the photographer should pack up his
camera and walk home without taking advantage of this artistic
opportunity beyond a civil lift of his cap; and at such times Miss Baker
would re-enter the villa with a feeling of contempt for Mr. Dysart that
was almost too deep for words.
She might have been partially consoled had she known that on a June
morning not long after the latest of these repulses, her feelings were
fully shared by the person whom, for the last two Sundays, she had
looked at in the Dysart pew with a respectful dislike that implied the
highest compliment in her power. Miss Evelyn Hope-Drummond stood at the
bow-window of the Bruff drawing-room and looked out over the gravelled
terrace, across the flower-garden and the sunk fence, to the clump of
horse chestnuts by the lake-side. Beyond these the cattle were standing
knee-deep in the water, and on the flat margin a pair of legs in white
flannel trousers was all that the guest, whom his mother delighted to
honour, could see of Christopher Dysart. The remainder of him wrestled
beneath a black velvet pall with the helplessly wilful legs of his
camera, and all his mind, as Miss Hope-Drummond well knew, was
concentrated upon cows. Her first visit to Ireland was proving less
amusing than she had expected, she thought, and as she watched
Christopher she wished fervently that she had not offered to carry any
of his horrid things across the park for him. In the flower-garden below
the terrace she could see Lady Dysart and Pamela in deep consultation
over an infirm rose-tree; a wheelbarrow full of pans of seedlings
sufficiently indicated what their occupation would be for the rest of
the morning, and she felt it was of a piece with the absurdities of
Irish life that the ladies of the house should enjoy doing the
gardener’s work for him. The strong scent of heated Gloire de Dijon
roses came through the window, and suggested to her how well one of them
would suit with her fawn-coloured Redfern gown, and she leaned out to
pick a beautiful bud that was swaying in the sun just within reach.
“Ha--a--ah! I see ye, missy! Stop picking my flowers! Push, James
Canavan, you devil, you! Push!”
A bath-chair, occupied by an old man in a tall hat, and pushed by a man
also in a tall hat, had suddenly turned the corner of the house, and
Miss Hope-Drummond drew back precipitately to avoid the uplifted
walking-stick of Sir Benjamin Dysart.
“Oh, fie, for shame, Sir Benjamin!” exclaimed the man who had been
addressed as James Canavan. “Pray, cull the rose, miss,” he continued,
with a flourish of his hand; “sweets to the sweet!”
Sir Benjamin aimed a backward stroke with his oak stick at his
attendant, a stroke in which long practice had failed to make him
perfect, and in the exchange of further amenities the party passed out
of sight. This was not Miss Hope-Drummond’s first meeting with her host.
His bath-chair had daily, as it seemed to her, lain in wait in the
shrubberies, to cause terror to the solitary, and discomfiture to
_tête-à-têtes_; and on one morning he had stealthily protruded the crook
of his stick from the door of his room as she went by, and all but
hooked her round the ankle with it.
“Really, it is disgraceful that he is not locked up,” she said to
herself crossly, as she gathered the contested bud, and sat down to
write letters; “but in Ireland no one seems to think anything of
anything!”
It was very hot down in the garden where Lady Dysart and Pamela were at
work; Lady Dysart kneeling in the inadequate shade of a parasol, whose
handle she had propped among the pans in the wheelbarrow, and Pamela
weeding a flower-bed a few yards away. It was altogether a scene worthy
in its domestic simplicity of the Fairchild Family, only that instead of
Mr. Fairchild, “stretched on the grass at a little distance with his
book,” a bronze-coloured dachshund lay roasting his long side in the
sun; and also that Lady Dysart, having mistaken the young chickweed in a
seedling pan for the asters that should have been there, was filling her
bed symmetrically with the former, an imbecility that Mrs. Sherwood
would never have permitted in a parent. The mother and daughter lifted
their heads at the sound of the conflict on the terrace.
“Papa will frighten Evelyn into a fit,” observed Pamela, rubbing a midge
off her nose with an earthy gardening glove; “I wish James Canavan could
be induced to keep him away from the house.”
“It’s all right, dear,” said Lady Dysart, panting a little as she
straightened her back and surveyed her rows of chickweed; “Christopher
is with her, and you know he never notices anyone else when Christopher
is there.”
Lady Dysart had in her youth married, with a little judicious coercion,
a man thirty years older than herself, and after a long and, on the
whole, extremely unpleasant period of matrimony, she was now enjoying a
species of Indian summer, dating from six years back, when Christopher’s
coming of age and the tenants’ rejoicings thereat, had caused such a
paroxysm of apoplectic jealousy on the part of Christopher’s father as,
combining with the heat of the day, had brought on a “stroke.” Since
then the bath-chair and James Canavan had mercifully intervened between
him and the rest of the world, and his offspring were now able to fly
before him with a frankness and success impossible in the old days.
Pamela did not answer her mother at once.
“Do you know I’m afraid Christopher isn’t with her,” she said, looking
both guilty and perturbed.
Lady Dysart groaned aloud.
“Why, where is he?” she demanded. “I left Evelyn helping him to paste in
photographs after breakfast; I thought that would have been nice
occupation for them for at least two hours; but as for Christopher--”
she continued, her voice deepening to declamation, “it is quite hopeless
to expect anything from him. I should rather trust Garry to entertain
anyone. The day _he_ took her out in the boat they weren’t in till six
o’clock!”
“That was because Garry ran the punt on the shallow, and they had to
wade ashore and walk all the way round.”
“That has nothing to say to it; at all events they had something to talk
about when they came back, which is more than Christopher has when he
has been out sailing. It is _most_ disheartening; I ask nice girls to
the house, but I might just as well ask nice boys--Oh, of course, yes--”
in answer to a protest from her daughter; “he _talks_ to them; but you
know quite well what I mean.”
This complaint was not the first indication of Lady Dysart’s sentiments
about this curious son whom she had produced. She was a clever woman, a
renowned solver of the acrostics in her society paper, and a holder of
strong opinions as to the prophetic meaning of the Pyramids; but
Christopher was an acrostic in a strange language, an enigma beyond her
sphere. She had a vague but rooted feeling that young men were normally
in love with somebody, or at least pretending to be so; it was, of
course, an excellent thing that Christopher did not lose his heart to
the wrong people, but she would probably have preferred the agitation of
watching his progress through the most alarming flirtations to the
security that deprived conversation with other mothers of much of its
legitimate charm.
“Well, there was Miss Fetherstone,” began Pamela after a moment of
obvious consideration.
“Miss Fetherstone!” echoed Lady Dysart in her richest contralto, fixing
eyes of solemn reproach upon her daughter, “do you suppose that for one
instant I thought there was anything in that? No baby, no _idiot_ baby,
could have believed in it!”
“Well, I don’t know,” said Pamela; “I think you and Mrs. Waller believed
in it, at least I remember you both settling what your wedding presents
were to be!”
“_I_ never said a word about wedding presents, it was Mrs. Waller! Of
course she was anxious about her own niece, just as _anybody_ would have
been under the circumstances.” Lady Dysart here became aware of
something in Pamela’s expression that made her add hurriedly, “Not that
_I_ ever had the faintest shadow of belief in it. Too well do I know
Christopher’s platonic philanderings; and you see the affair turned out
just as I said it would.”
Pamela refrained from pursuing her advantage.
“If you like I’ll make him come with Evelyn and me to the choir practice
this afternoon,” she said after a pause. “Of course he’ll hate it, poor
boy, especially as Miss Mullen wrote to me the other day and asked us to
come to tea after it was over.”
“Oh, yes!” said Lady Dysart with sudden interest and forgetfulness of
her recent contention, “and you will see the new importation whom we met
with Mr. Lambert the other day. What a charming young creature she
looked! ‘The fair one with the golden locks’ was the only description
for her! And yet that miserable Christopher will only say that she is
‘chocolate-boxey!’ Oh! I have no patience with Christopher’s
affectation!” she ended, rising from her knees and brushing the earth
from her extensive lap with a gesture of annoyance. She began to realise
that the sun was hot and luncheon late, and it was at this unpropitious
moment that Pamela, having finished the flower-bed she had been
weeding, approached the scene of her mother’s labours.
“Mamma,” she said faintly, “you have planted the whole bed with
chickweed!”
CHAPTER IX.
It had been hard work pulling the punt across from Bruff to Lismoyle
with two well-grown young women sitting in the stern; it had been a hot
walk up from the landing-place to the church, but worse than these,
transcendently worse, in that it involved the suffering of the mind as
well as the body, was the choir practice. Christopher’s long nose
drooped despondingly over his Irish church hymnal, and his long back had
a disconsolate hoop in it as he leaned it against the wall in his place
in the backmost row of the choir benches. The chants had been long and
wearisome, and the hymns were proving themselves equally enduring.
Christopher was not eminently musical or conspicuously religious, and he
regarded with a kind of dismal respect and surprise the fervour in
Pamela’s pure profile as she turned to Mrs. Gascogne and suggested that
the hymn they had just gone through twice should be sung over again. He
supposed it was because she had High Church tendencies that she was able
to stand this sort of thing, and his mind drifted into abstract
speculations as to how people could be as good as Pamela was and live.
In the interval before the last hymn he derived a temporary solace from
finding his own name inscribed in dull red characters in the leaf of his
hymn-book, with, underneath in the same colour, the fateful inscription,
“Written in blood by Garrett Dysart.” The thought of his younger brother
utilising pleasantly a cut finger and the long minutes of the
archdeacon’s sermon, had for the moment inspired Christopher with a
sympathetic amusement, but he had relapsed into his pristine gloom. He
knew the hymn perfectly well by this time, and his inoffensive tenor
joined mechanically with the other voices, while his eyes roamed idly
over the two rows of people in front of him. There was nothing
suggestive of ethereal devotion about Pamela’s neighbours. Miss
Mullen’s heaving shoulders and extended jaw spoke of nothing but her
determination to out-scream everyone else; Miss Hope-Drummond and the
curate, on the bench in front of him, were singing primly out of the
same hymn-book, the curate obviously frightened, Miss Hope-Drummond as
obviously disgusted. The Misses Beattie were furtively eyeing Miss
Hope-Drummond’s costume; Miss Kathleen Baker was openly eyeing the
curate, whose hymn-book she had been wont to share at happier choir
practices, and Miss Fitzpatrick, seated at the end of the row, was
watching from the gallery window with unaffected interest the progress
of the usual weekly hostilities between Pamela’s dachshund and the
sexton’s cat, and was not even pretending to occupy herself with the
business in hand. Christopher’s eyes rested on her appraisingly, with
the minute observation of short sight, fortified by an eyeglass, and was
aware of a small head with a fluffy halo of conventionally golden hair,
a straight and slender neck, and an appleblossom curve of cheek; he
found himself wishing that she would turn a little further round.
The hymn had seven verses, and Pamela and Mrs. Gascogne were going
inexorably through them all; the school-master and schoolmistress, an
estimable couple, sole prop of the choir on wet Sundays, were braying
brazenly beside him, and this was only the second hymn. Christopher’s D
sharp melted into a yawn, and before he could screen it with his
hymn-book, Miss Fitzpatrick looked round and caught him in the act. A
suppressed giggle and a quick lift of the eyebrows instantly conveyed to
him that his sentiments were comprehended and sympathised with, and he
as instantly was conscious that Miss Mullen was following the direction
of her niece’s eye. Lady Dysart’s children did not share her taste for
Miss Mullen; Christopher vaguely felt some offensive flavour in the
sharp smiling glance in which she included him and Francie, and an
unexplainable sequence of thought made him suddenly decide that her
niece was as second-rate as might have been expected.
Never had the choir dragged so hopelessly; never had Mrs. Gascogne and
Pamela compelled their victims to deal with so many and difficult tunes,
and never at any previous choir practice had Christopher registered so
serious a vow that under no pretext whatever should Pamela entice him
there again. They were all sitting down now, while the leaders consulted
together about the Kyrie, and the gallery cushions slowly turned to
stone in their well-remembered manner. Christopher’s ideas of
church-going were inseparably bound up with those old gallery cushions.
He had sat upon them ever since, as a small boy, he had chirped a treble
beside his governess, and he knew every knob in their anatomy. There is
something blighting to the devotional tendencies in the atmosphere of a
gallery. He had often formulated this theory for his own exculpation,
lying flat on his back in a punt in some shady backwater, with the
Oxford church bells reminding him reproachfully of Lismoyle Sundays, and
of Pamela,--the faithful, conscientious Pamela,--whipping up the pony to
get to church before the bell stopped. Now, after a couple of months’
renewed acquaintance with the choir, the theory had hardened into a
tedious truism, and when at last Christopher’s long legs were free to
carry him down the steep stairs, the malign influence of the gallery had
brought their owner to the verge of free thought.
He did not know how it had happened or by whose disposition of the
forces it had been brought about, but when Miss Mullen’s tea-party
detached itself from the other members of the choir at the churchyard
gate, Pamela and Miss Hope-Drummond were walking on either side of their
hostess, and he was behind with Miss Fitzpatrick.
“You don’t appear very fond of hymns, Mr. Dysart,” began Francie at
once, in the pert Dublin accent that, rightly or wrongly, gives the idea
of familiarity.
“People aren’t supposed to look about them in church,” replied
Christopher with the peculiar suavity which, combined with his
disconcerting infirmity of pausing before he spoke, had often baffled
the young ladies of Barbadoes, and had acquired for him the reputation,
perhaps not wholly undeserved, of being a prig.
“Oh, I daresay!” said Francie, “I suppose that’s why you sit in the back
seat, that no one’ll see you doing it!”
There was a directness about this that Lismoyle would not have ventured
on, and Christopher looked down at his companion with an increase of
interest.
“No; I sit there because I can go to sleep.”
“Well, and do you? and who do you get to wake you?”--her quick voice
treading sharply on the heels of his quiet one. “I used always to have
to sit beside Uncle Robert in church to pinch him at the end of the
sermon.”
“_I_ find it very hard to wake at the end of the sermon too,” remarked
Christopher, with an experimental curiosity to see what Miss Mullen’s
unexpected cousin would say next.
“Do y’ indeed?” said Francie, flashing a look at him of instant
comprehension and complete _sang froid_. “I’ll lend the schoolmistress a
hat-pin if you like! What on earth makes men so sleepy in church I don’t
know,” she continued; “at our church in Dublin I used to be looking at
them. All the gentlemen sit in the corner seat next the aisle, because
they’re the most comfortable, y’ know, and from the minute the clergyman
gives out the text--” she made a little gesture with her hand, showing
thereby that half the buttons were off her glove--“they’re snoring!”
How young she was, and how pretty, and how inexpressibly vulgar!
Christopher thought all these things in turn, while he did what in him
lay to continue the conversation in the manner expected of him. The
effort was perhaps not very successful, as, after a few minutes, it was
evident that Francie was losing her first freedom of discourse, and was
casting about for topics more appropriate to what she had heard of Mr.
Dysart’s mental and literary standard.
“I hear you’re a great photographer, Mr. Dysart,” she began. “Miss
Mullen says you promised to take a picture of her and her cats, and she
was telling me to remind you of it. Isn’t it awfully clever of you to be
able to do it?”
To this form of question reply is difficult, especially when it is put
with all the good faith of complete ignorance. Christopher evaded the
imbecilities of direct response.
“I shall think myself awfully clever if I photograph the cats,” he said.
“Clever!” she caught him up with a little shriek of laughter. “I can
tell you you’ll want to be clever! Are you able to photograph up the
chimney or under Norry’s bed? for that’s where they always run when a
man comes into the house, and if you try to stop them they’d claw the
face off you! Oh, they’re terrors!”
“It’s very good of you to tell me all this in time,” Christopher said,
with a rather absent laugh. He was listening to Miss Mullen’s voice, and
realising, for the first time, what it would be to live under the same
roof with her and her cats; and yet this girl seemed quite light-hearted
and happy. “Perhaps, on the whole, I’d better stay away?” he said,
looking at her, and feeling in the sudden causeless way in which often
the soundest conclusions are arrived at, how vast was the chasm between
her ideal of life and his own, and linking with the feeling a pity that
would have been self-sufficient if it had not also been perfectly
simple.
“Ah! don’t say you won’t come and take the cats!” Francie exclaimed.
They reached the Tally Ho gate as she spoke, and the others were only a
step or two in front of them. Charlotte looked over her shoulder with a
benign smile.
“What’s this I hear about taking my cats?” she said jovially. “You’re
welcome to everything in my house, Mr. Dysart, but I’ll set the police
on you if you take my poor cats!”
“Oh, but I assure you--”
“He’s only going to photo them,” said Christopher and Francie together.
“Do you hear them, Miss Dysart?” continued Charlotte, fumbling for her
latch key, “conspiring together to rob a poor lone woman of her only
live stock!”
She opened the door, and as her visitors entered the hall they caught a
glance of Susan’s large, stern countenance regarding them with
concentrated suspicion through the rails of the staircase.
“My beauty-boy!” shouted his mistress, as he vanished upstairs. “Steal
him if you can, Mr. Dysart!”
Miss Hope-Drummond looked rather more uninterested than is usual in
polite society. When she had left the hammock, slung in the shade beside
the tennis-ground at Bruff, it had not been to share Mr. Corkran’s
hymn-book; still less had it been to walk from the church to Tally Ho
between Pamela and a woman whom, from having regarded as merely
_outrée_ and incomprehensible, she had now come to look upon as rather
impertinent. Irish society was intolerably mixed, she decided, as she
sniffed the various odours of the Tally Ho hall, and, with some
sub-connection of ideas, made up her mind that photography was a
detestable and silly pursuit for men. While these thoughts were passing
beneath her accurately curled fringe, Miss Mullen opened the
drawing-room door, and, as they walked in, a short young man in light
grey clothes arose from the most comfortable chair to greet them.
There was surprise and disfavour in Miss Mullen’s eye as she extended
her hand to him.
“This is an unexpected pleasure, Mr. Hawkins,” she said.
“Yes,” answered Mr. Hawkins cheerfully, taking the hand and doing his
best to shake it at the height prescribed by existing fashion, “I
thought it would be; Miss Fitzpatrick asked me to come in this
afternoon; didn’t you?” addressing himself to Francie. “I got rather a
nasty jar when I heard you were all out, but I thought I’d wait for a
bit. I knew Miss Dysart always gives ’em fits at the choir practice. All
the same, you know, I should have begun to eat the cake if you hadn’t
come in.”
The round table in the middle of the room was spread, in Louisa’s
accustomed fashion, as if for breakfast, and in the centre was placed a
cake, coldly decked in the silver paper trappings that it had long worn
in the grocer’s window.
“’Twas well for you you didn’t!” said Francie, with, as it seemed to
Christopher, a most familiar and challenging laugh.
“Why?” inquired Hawkins, looking at her with a responsive eye. “What
would you have done?”
“Plenty,” returned Francie unhesitatingly; “enough to make you sorry
anyway!”
Mr. Hawkins looked delighted, and was opening his mouth for a suitable
rejoinder, when Miss Mullen struck in sharply:
“Francie, go tell Louisa that I suppose she expects us to stir our tea
with our fingers, for there’s not a spoon on the table.”
“Oh, let me go,” said Hawkins, springing to open the door; “I know
Louisa; she was very kind to me just now. She hunted all the cats out of
the room.” Francie was already in the hall, and he followed her.
The search for Louisa was lengthy, involving much calling for her by
Francie, with falsetto imitations by Mr. Hawkins, and finally a pause,
during which it might be presumed that the pantry was being explored.
Pamela brought her chair nearer to Miss Mullen, who had begun wrathfully
to stir her tea with the sugar-tongs, and entered upon a soothing line
of questions as to the health and number of the cats; and Christopher,
having cut the grocer’s cake, and found that it was the usual
conglomerate of tallow, saw-dust, bad eggs, and gravel, devoted himself
to thick bread and butter, and to conversation with Miss Hope-Drummond.
The period of second cups was approaching, when laughter, and a jingle
of falling silver in the hall, told that the search for Louisa was
concluded, and Francie and Mr. Hawkins re-entered the drawing-room, the
latter endeavouring, not unsuccessfully, to play the bones with four of
Charlotte’s best electro-plated teaspoons, while his brown boots moved
in the furtive rhythm of an imaginary break-down. Miss Mullen did not
even raise her eyes, and Christopher and Miss Hope-Drummond continued
their conversation unmoved; only Pamela acknowledged the histrionic
intention with a sympathetic but nervous smile. Pamela’s finger was
always instinctively on the pulse of the person to whom she was talking,
and she knew better than either Francie or Hawkins that they were in
disgrace.
“I’d be obliged to you for those teaspoons, Mr. Hawkins, when you’ve
quite done with them,” said Charlotte, with an ugly look at the chief
offender’s self-satisfied countenance; “it’s a good thing no one except
myself takes sugar in their tea.”
“We couldn’t help it,” replied Mr. Hawkins, unabashed; “Louisa was out
for a walk with her young man, and Miss Fitzpatrick and I had to polish
up the teaspoons ourselves.”
Charlotte received this explanation and the teaspoons in silence as she
poured out the delinquents’ tea; there were moments when she permitted
herself the satisfaction of showing disapproval if she felt it. Francie
accepted her cousin’s displeasure philosophically, only betraying her
sense of the situation by the expressive eye which she turned towards
her companion in disgrace over the rim of her tea-cup. But Mr. Hawkins
rose to the occasion. He gulped his tepid and bitter cup of tea with
every appearance of enjoyment, and having arranged his small moustache
with a silk handkerchief, addressed himself undauntedly to Miss Mullen.
“Do you know, I don’t believe you have ever been out in our tea-kettle,
Miss Mullen. Captain Cursiter and I are feeling very hurt about it.”
“If you mean by ‘tea-kettle’ that steamboat thing that I’ve seen going
about the lake,” replied Charlotte, making an effort to resume her first
attitude of suave and unruffled hospitality, and at the same time to
administer needed correction to Mr. Hawkins, “I certainly have not. I
have always been taught that it was manners to wait till you’re asked.”
“I quite agree with you, Miss Mullen,” struck in Pamela; “we also
thought that for a long time, but we had to give it up in the end and
ask ourselves! You are much more honoured than we were.”
“Oh, I say, Miss Dysart, you know it was only our grovelling humility,”
expostulated Hawkins, “and you always said it dirtied your frock and
spoiled the poetry of the lake. You quite put us off taking anybody out.
But we’ve pulled ourselves together now, Miss Mullen, and if you and
Miss Fitzpatrick will fix an afternoon to go down the lake, perhaps if
Miss Dysart says she’s sorry we’ll let her come too, and even, if she’s
very good, bring whoever she likes with her.”
Mr. Hawkins’ manner towards ladies had precisely that tone of
self-complacent gallantry that Lady Dysart felt to be so signally
lacking in her own son, and it was not without its effect even upon
Charlotte. It is possible had she been aware that this special
compliment to her had been arranged during the polishing of the
teaspoons, it might have lost some of its value; but the thought of
steaming forth with the Bruff party and “th’ officers,” under the very
noses of the Lismoyle matrons, was the only point of view that presented
itself to her.
“Well, I’ll give you no answer till I get Mr. Dysart’s opinion. He’s the
only one of you that knows the lake,” she said more graciously. “If
_you_ say the steamboat is safe, Mr. Dysart, and you’ll come and see
we’re not drowned by these harum-scarum soldiers, I’ve no objection to
going.”
Further discussion was interrupted by a rush and a scurry on the gravel
of the garden path, and a flying ball of fur dashed up the outside of
the window, the upper half of which was open, and suddenly realising its
safety, poised itself on the sash, and crooned and spat with a collected
fury at Mr. Hawkins’ bull terrier, who leaped unavailingly below.
“Oh! me poor darling Bruffy!” screamed Miss Mullen, springing up and
upsetting her cup of tea; “she’ll be killed! Call off your dog, Mr.
Hawkins!”
As if in answer to her call, a tall figure darkened the window, and Mr.
Lambert pushed Mrs. Bruff into the room with the handle of his
walking-stick.
“Hullo, Charlotte! Isn’t that Hawkins’ dog?” he began, putting his head
in at the window; then, with a sudden change of manner as he caught
sight of Miss Mullen’s guests, “oh--I had no idea you had anyone here,”
he said, taking off his hat to as much of Pamela and Miss Hope-Drummond
as was not hidden by Charlotte’s bulky person, “I only thought I’d call
round and see if Francie would like to come out for a row before
dinner.”
CHAPTER X.
Washerwomen do not, as a rule, assimilate the principles of their trade.
In Lismoyle, the row of cottages most affected by ladies of that
profession was, indeed, planted by the side of the lake, but except in
winter, when the floods sent a muddy wash in at the kitchen doors of
Ferry Row, the customers’ linen alone had any experience of its waters.
The clouds of steam from the cauldrons of boiling clothes ascended from
morning till night, and hung in beads upon the sooty cobwebs that draped
the rafters; the food and wearing apparel of the laundresses and their
vast families mingled horribly with their professional apparatus, and,
outside in the road, the filthy children played among puddles that
stagnated under an iridescent scum of soap-suds. A narrow strip of
goose-nibbled grass divided the road from the lake shore, and at almost
any hour of the day there might be seen a slatternly woman or two
kneeling by the water’s edge, pounding the wet linen on a rock with a
flat wooden weapon, according to the immemorial custom of their savage
class.
The Row ended at the ferry pier, and perhaps one reason for the absence
of self-respect in the appearance of its inhabitants lay in the fact
that the only passers-by were the country people on their way to the
ferry, which here, where the lake narrowed to something less than a
mile, was the route to the Lismoyle market generally used by the
dwellers on the opposite side. The coming of a donkey-cart down the Row
was an event to be celebrated with hooting and stone-throwing by the
children, and, therefore, it can be understood that when, on a certain
still, sleepy afternoon Miss Mullen drove slowly in her phaeton along
the line of houses, she created nearly as great a sensation as she would
have made in Piccadilly.
Miss Mullen had one or two sources of income which few people knew of,
and about which, with all her loud candour, she did not enlighten even
her most intimate friends. Even Mr. Lambert might have been surprised to
know that two or three householders in Ferry Row paid rent to her, and
that others of them had money dealings with her of a complicated kind,
not easy to describe, but simple enough to the strong financial
intellect of his predecessor’s daughter. No account books were taken
with her on these occasions. She and her clients were equally equipped
with the absolutely accurate business memory of the Irish peasant, a
memory that in few cases survives education, but, where it exists, may
be relied upon more than all the generations of ledgers and account
books.
Charlotte’s visits to Ferry Row were usually made on foot, and were of
long duration, but her business on this afternoon was of a trivial
character, consisting merely in leaving a parcel at the house of Dinny
Lydon, the tailor, and of convincing her washerwoman of iniquity in a
manner that brought every other washerwoman to her door, and made each
offer up thanks to her most favoured saint that she was not employed by
Miss Mullen.
The long phaeton was at last turned, with draggings at the horse’s mouth
and grindings of the fore-carriage; the children took their last stare,
and one or two ladies whose payments were in arrear emerged from their
back gardens and returned to their washing-tubs. If they flattered
themselves that they had been forgotten, they were mistaken; Charlotte
had given a glance of grim amusement at the deserted washing-tubs, and
as her old phaeton rumbled slowly out of Ferry Row, she was computing
the number of customers, and the consequent approximate income of each
defaulter.
To the deep and plainly expressed chagrin of the black horse, he was not
allowed to turn in at the gate of Tally Ho, but was urged along the road
which led to Rosemount. There again he made a protest, but, yielding to
the weighty arguments of Charlotte’s whip, he fell into his usual
melancholy jog, and took the turn to Gurthnamuckla with dull
resignation. Once steered into that lonely road, Charlotte let him go at
his own pace, and sat passive, her mouth tightly closed, and her eyes
blinking quickly as she looked straight ahead of her with a slight
furrow of concentration on her low forehead. She had the unusual gift of
thinking out in advance her line of conversation in an interview, and,
which is even less usual, she had the power of keeping to it. By sheer
strength of will she could force her plan of action upon other people,
as a conjurer forces a card, till they came to believe it was of their
own choosing; she had done it so often that she was now confident of her
skill, and she quite understood the inevitable advantage that a fixed
scheme of any sort has over indefinite opposition. When the clump of
trees round Gurthnamuckla rose into view, Charlotte had determined her
order of battle, and was free to give her attention to outward
circumstances. It was a long time since she had been out to Miss Duffy’s
farm, and as the stony country began to open its arms to the rich, sweet
pastures, an often repressed desire asserted itself, and Charlotte
heaved a sigh that was as romantic in its way as if she had been sweet
and twenty, instead of tough and forty.
Julia Duffy did not come out to meet her visitor, and when Charlotte
walked into the kitchen, she found that the mistress of the house was
absent, and that three old women were squatted on the floor in front of
the fire, smoking short clay pipes, and holding converse in Irish that
was punctuated with loud sniffs and coughs. At sight of the visitor the
pipes vanished in the twinkling of an eye, and one of the women
scrambled to her feet.
“Why, Mary Holloran, what brings you here?” said Charlotte, recognising
the woman who lived in the Rosemount gate lodge.
“It was a sore leg I have, yer honour, miss,” whined Mary Holloran;
“it’s running with me now these three weeks, and I come to thry would
Miss Duffy give me a bit o’ a plashther.”
“Take care it doesn’t run away with you altogether,” replied Charlotte
facetiously; “and where’s Miss Duffy herself?”
“She’s sick, the craythure,” said one of the other women, who, having
found and dusted a chair, now offered it to Miss Mullen; “she have a
wakeness like in her head, and an impression on her heart, and Billy
Grainy came afther Peggy Roche here, the way she’d mind her.”
Peggy Roche groaned slightly, and stirred a pot of smutty gruel with an
air of authority.
“Could I see her, d’ye think?” asked Charlotte, sitting down and looking
about her with sharp appreciation of the substantial excellence of the
smoke-blackened walls and grimy woodwork. “There wouldn’t be a better
kitchen in the country,” she thought, “if it was properly done up.”
“Ye can, asthore, ye can go up,” replied Peggy Roche, “but wait a while
till I have the sup o’ grool hated, and maybe yerself’ll take it up to
herself.”
“Is she eating nothing but that?” asked Charlotte, viewing the pasty
compound with disgust.
“Faith, ’tis hardly she’ll ate that itself.” Peggy Roche; rose as she
spoke, and, going to the dresser, returned with a black bottle. “As for
a bit o’ bread, or a pratie, or the like o’ that, she couldn’t use it,
nor let it past her shest; with respects to ye, as soon as she’d have it
shwallied it’d come up as simple and as pleashant as it wint down.” She
lifted the little three-legged pot off its heap of hot embers, and then
took the cork out of the black bottle with nimble, dirty fingers.
“What in the name of goodness is that ye have there?” demanded Charlotte
hastily.
Mrs. Roche looked somewhat confused, and murmured something about “a
weeshy suppeen o’ shperits to wet the grool.”
Charlotte snatched the bottle from her, and smelt it.
“Faugh!” she said, with a guttural at the end of the word that no Saxon
gullet could hope to produce; “it’s potheen! that’s what it is, and
mighty bad potheen too. D’ye want to poison the woman?”
A loud chorus of repudiation arose from the sick-nurse and her friends.
“As for you, Peggy Roche, you’re not fit to tend a pig, let alone a
Christian. You’d murder this poor woman with your filthy fresh potheen,
and when your own son was dying, you begrudged him the drop of spirits
that’d have kept the life in him.”
Peggy flung up her arms with a protesting howl.
“May God forgive ye that word, Miss Charlotte! If ’twas the blood of me
arrm, I didn’t begridge it to him; the Lord have mercy on him--”
“Amen! amen! You would not, asthore,” groaned the other women.
“--but doesn’t the world know its mortial sin for a poor craythur to go
into th’ other world with the smell of dhrink on his breath!”
“It’s mortal sin to be a fool,” replied Miss Mullen, whose medical skill
had often been baffled by such winds of doctrine; “here, give me the
gruel. I’ll go give it to the woman before you have her murdered.” She
deftly emptied the pot of gruel into a bowl, and, taking the spoon out
of the old woman’s hand, she started on her errand of mercy.
The stairs were just outside the door, and making their dark and
perilous ascent in safety, she stood still in a low passage into which
two or three other doors opened. She knocked at the first of these, and,
receiving no answer, turned the handle quietly and looked in. There was
no furniture in it except a broken wooden bedstead; innumerable flies
buzzed on the closed window, and in the slant of sunlight that fell
through the dim panes was a box from which a turkey reared its red
throat, and regarded her with a suspicion born, like her chickens, of
long hatching. Charlotte closed the door and noiselessly opened the
next. There was nothing in the room, which was of the ordinary
low-ceiled cottage type, and after a calculating look at the broken
flooring and the tattered wall-paper, she went quietly out into the
passage again. “Good servants’ room,” she said to herself, “but if she’s
here much longer it’ll be past praying for.”
If she had been in any doubt as to Miss Duffy’s whereabouts, a voice
from the room at the end of the little passage now settled the matter.
“Is that Peggy?” it called.
Charlotte pushed boldly into the room with the bowl of gruel.
“No, Miss Duffy, me poor old friend, it’s me, Charlotte Mullen,” she
said in her most cordial voice; “they told me below you were ill, but I
thought you’d see me, and I brought your gruel up in my hand. I hope
you’ll like it none the less for that!”
The invalid turned her night-capped head round from the wall and looked
at her visitor with astonished, bloodshot eyes. Her hatchety face was
very yellow, her long nose was rather red, and her black hair thrust
itself out round the soiled frill of her night-cap in dingy wisps.
“You’re welcome, Miss Mullen,” she said with a pitiable attempt at
dignity; “won’t you take a cheer?”
“Not till I’ve seen you take this,” replied Charlotte, handing her the
bowl of gruel with even broader _bonhomie_ than before.
Julia Duffy reluctantly sat up among her blankets, conscious almost to
agony of the squalor of all her surroundings, conscious even that the
blankets were of the homespun, madder-dyed flannel such as the poor
people use, and taking the gruel, she began to eat it in silence. She
tried to prop herself in this emergency with the recollection that
Charlotte Mullen’s grandfather drank her grandfather’s port wine under
this very roof, and that it was by no fault of hers that she had sunk
while Charlotte had risen; but the wornout boots that lay on the floor
where she had thrown them off, and the rags stuffed into the broken
panes in the window, were facts that crowded out all consolation from
bygone glories.
“Well, Miss Duffy,” said Charlotte, drawing up a chair to the bedside,
and looking at her hostess with a critical eye, “I’m sorry to see you so
sick; when Billy Grainy left the milk last night he told Norry you were
laid up in bed, and I thought I’d come over and see if there was
anything I could do for you.”
“Thank ye, Miss Mullen,” replied Julia stiffly, sipping the nauseous
gruel with ladylike decorum, “I have all I require here.”
“Well, ye know, Miss Duffy, I wanted to see how you are,” said
Charlotte, slightly varying her attack; “I’m a bit of a doctor, like
yourself. Peggy Roche below told me you had what she called ‘an
impression on the heart,’ but it looks to me more like a touch of
liver.”
The invalid does not exist who can resist a discussion of symptoms, and
Miss Duffy’s hauteur slowly thawed before Charlotte’s intelligent and
intimate questions. In a very short time Miss Mullen had felt her pulse,
inspected her tongue, promised to send her a bottle of unfailing
efficacy, and delivered an exordium on the nature and treatment of her
complaint.
“But in deed and in truth,” she wound up, “if you want my opinion, I’ll
tell you frankly that what ails you is you’re just rotting away with the
damp and loneliness of this place. I declare that sometimes when I’m
lying awake in my bed at nights, I’ve thought of you out here by
yourself, without an earthly creature near you if you got sick, and
wondered at you. Why, my heavenly powers! ye might die a hundred deaths
before anyone would know it!”
Miss Duffy picked up a corner of the sheet and wiped the gruel from her
thin lips.
“If it comes to that, Miss Mullen,” she said with some resumption of her
earlier manner, “if I’m for dying I’d as soon die by myself as in
company; and as for damp, I thank God this house was built by them that
didn’t spare money on it, and it’s as dry this minyute as what it was
forty years ago.”
“What! Do you tell me the roof’s sound?” exclaimed Charlotte with
genuine interest.
“I have never examined it, Miss Mullen,” replied Julia coldly, “but it
keeps the rain out, and I consider that suffeecient.”
“Oh, I’m sure there’s not a word to be said against the house,”
Charlotte made hasty reparation; “but, indeed, Miss Duffy, I say--and
I’ve heard more than myself say the same thing--that a delicate woman
like you has no business to live alone so far from help. The poor
Archdeacon frets about it, I can tell ye. I believe he thinks Father
Heffernan’ll be raking ye into his fold! And I can tell ye,” concluded
Charlotte, with what she felt to be a certain rough pathos, “there’s
plenty in Lismoyle would be sorry to see your father’s daughter die with
the wafer in her mouth!”
“I had no idea the people in Lismoyle were so anxious about me and my
affairs,” said Miss Duffy. “They’re very kind, but I’m able to look
afther my soul without their help.”
“Well, of course, everyone’s soul is their own affair; but, ye know,
when no one ever sees ye in your own parish church--well, right or
wrong, there are plenty of fools to gab about it.”
The dark bags of skin under Julia Duffy’s eyes became slowly red, a
signal that this thrust had gone home. She did not answer, and her
visitor rose, and moving towards the hermetically sealed window, looked
out across the lawn over Julia’s domain. Her roundest and weightiest
stone was still in her sling, while her eye ran over the grazing cattle
in the fields.
“Is it true what I hear, that Peter Joyce has your grazing this year?”
she said casually.
“It is quite true,” answered Miss Duffy, a little defiantly. A liver
attack does not pre-dispose its victims to answer in a Christian spirit
questions that are felt to be impertinent.
“Well,” returned Charlotte, still looking out of the window, with her
hands deep in the pockets of her black alpaca coat, “I’m sorry for it.”
“Why so?”
Julia’s voice had a sharpness that was pleasant to Miss Mullen’s ear.
“I can’t well explain the matter to ye now,” Charlotte said, turning
round and looking portentously upon the sick woman, “but I have it from
a sure hand that Peter Joyce is bankrupt, and will be in the courts
before the year is out.”
When, a short time afterwards, Julia Duffy lay back among her madder
blankets and heard the last sound of Miss Mullen’s phaeton wheels die
away along the lake road, she felt that the visit had at least provided
her with subject for meditation.
CHAPTER XI.
Mr. Roderick Lambert’s study window gave upon the flower garden, and
consequently the high road also came within the sphere of his
observations. He had been sitting at his writing-table, since
luncheon-time, dealing with a variety of business, and seldom lifting
his glossy black head except when some sound in the road attracted his
attention. It was not his custom to work after a solid luncheon on a
close afternoon, nor was it by any means becoming to his complexion when
he did so; but the second post had brought letters of an unpleasant
character that required immediate attention, and the flush on his face
was not wholly due to hot beef-steak pie and sherry. It was not only
that several of Sir Benjamin’s tenants had attended a Land League
meeting the Sunday before, and that their religious director had written
to inform him that they had there pledged themselves to the Plan of
Campaign. That was annoying, but as the May rents were in he had no
objection to their amusing themselves as they pleased during the summer;
in fact, from a point of view on which Mr. Lambert dwelt as little as
possible even in his own mind, a certain amount of nominal disturbance
among the tenants might not come amiss. The thing that was really vexing
was the crass obstinacy of his wife’s trustees, who had acquainted him
with the fact that they were unable to comply with her wish that some of
her capital should be sold out.
It is probably hardly necessary to say that the worthy turkey hen had
expressed no such desire. A feeble, “to be sure, Roderick dear; I
daresay it’d be the best thing to do; but you know I don’t understand
such things,” had been her share of the transaction, and Mr. Lambert
knew that the refusal of her trustees to make the desired concession
would not ruffle so much as a feather; but he wished he could be as sure
of the equanimity of his coachbuilder, one of whose numerous demands for
payment was lying upon the table in front of him; while others, dating
back five years to the period of his marriage, lurked in the
pigeon-holes of his writing-table.
Mr. Lambert, like other young gentlemen of fashion, but not of fortune,
had thought that when he married a well-to-do widow, he ought to prove
his power of adjusting himself to circumstances by expending her ready
money in as distinguished a manner as possible. The end of the ready
money had come in an absurdly short time, and, paradoxical as it may
seem, it had during its brief life raised a flourishing following of
bills which had in the past spring given Mr. Lambert far more trouble
than he felt them to be worth, and though he had stopped the mouths of
some of the more rapacious of his creditors, he had done so with extreme
difficulty and at a cost that made him tremble. It was especially
provoking that the coachbuilder should have threatened legal proceedings
about that bill just now, when, in addition to other complications, he
happened to have lost more money at the Galway races than he cared to
think about, certainly more than he wished his wife and her relations to
know of.
Early in the afternoon he had, with an unregarding eye, seen Charlotte
drive by on her way to Gurthnamuckla; but after a couple of hours of
gloomy calculation and letter-writing, the realisation that Miss Mullen
was not at her house awoke in him, coupled with the idea that a little
fresh air would do him good. He went out of the house, some unconfessed
purpose quickening his step. He hesitated at the gate while it expanded
into determination, and then he hailed his wife, whose poppy-decked
garden-hat was painfully visible above the magenta blossoms of a
rhododendron bush.
“Lucy! I wouldn’t be surprised if I fetched Francie Fitzpatrick over for
tea. She’s by herself at Tally Ho. I saw Charlotte drive by without her
a little while ago.”
When he reached Tally Ho he found the gate open, an offence always
visited with extremest penalties by Miss Mullen, and as he walked up the
drive he noticed that, besides the broad wheel-tracks of the phaeton,
there were several thin and devious ones, at some places interrupted by
footmarks and a general appearance of a scuffle; at another heading into
a lilac bush with apparent precipitancy, and at the hall-door circling
endlessly and crookedly with several excursions on to the newly-mown
plot of grass.
“I wonder what perambulator has been running amuck in here? Charlotte
will make it hot for them, whoever they were,” thought Lambert, as he
stood waiting for the door to be opened, and watched through the glass
of the porch-door two sleek tortoise-shell cats lapping a saucer of
yellow cream in a corner of the hall. “By Jove! how snug she is in this
little place. She must have a pot of money put by; more than she’d ever
own up to, I’ll engage!”
At this juncture the door opened, and he was confronted by Norry the
Boat, with sleeves rolled above her brown elbows, and stockinged feet
untrammelled by boots.
“There’s noan of them within,” she announced before he had time to
speak. “Miss Charlotte’s gone dhriving to Gurthnamuckla, and Miss
Francie went out a while ago.”
“Which way did she go, d’ye know?”
“Musha, faith! I do _not_ know what way did she go,” replied Norry, her
usual asperity heightened by a recent chase of Susan, who had fled to
the roof of the turf-house with a mackerel snatched from the
kitchen-table. “I have plinty to do besides running afther her. I heard
her spakin’ to one outside in the avenue, and with that she clapped the
hall-doore afther her and she didn’t come in since.”
Lambert thought it wiser not to venture on the suggestion that Louisa
might be better informed, and walked away down the avenue trying hard
not to admit to himself his disappointment.
He turned towards home again in an objectless way, thoroughly thwarted,
and dismally conscious that the afternoon contained for him only the
prospect of having tea with his wife and finishing his letters
afterwards. His step became slower and slower as he approached his own
entrance gates, and he looked at his watch.
“Confound it! it’s only half-past four. I can’t go in yet;” then, a new
idea striking him, “perhaps she went out to meet Charlotte. I declare I
might as well go a bit down the road and see if they’re coming back
yet.”
He walked for at least half a mile under the trees, whose young June
leaves had already a dissipated powdering of white limestone dust,
without meeting anything except a donkey with a pair of creaking
panniers on its back, walking alone and discreetly at its own side of
the road, as well aware as Mr. Lambert that its owner was dallying with
a quart of porter at a roadside public house a mile away. The turn to
Gurthnamuckla was not far off when the distant rumble of wheels became
at last audible; Lambert had only time to remember angrily that, as the
Tally Ho phaeton had but two seats, he had had his walk for nothing,
when the bowed head and long melancholy face of the black horse came in
sight, and he became aware that Charlotte was without a companion.
Her face had more colour in it than usual as she pulled up beside him,
perhaps from the heat of the afternoon and the no small exertion of
flogging her steed, and her manner when she spoke was neither bluff nor
hearty, but approximated more nearly to that of ordinary womankind than
was its wont. Mr. Lambert noticed none of these things; and, being a
person whose breeding was not always equal to annoying emergencies, he
did not trouble himself to take off his hat or smile appropriately as
Charlotte said--
“Well, Roddy, I’d as soon expect to see your two horses sitting in the
dog-cart driving you as to see you as far from home as this on your own
legs. Where are you off to?”
“I was taking a stroll out to meet you, and ask you to come back and
have tea with Lucy,” replied Mr. Lambert, recognising the decree of fate
with a singularly bad grace. “I went down to Tally Ho to ask you, and
Norry told me you had gone to Gurthnamuckla.”
“Did you see Francie there?” said Charlotte quickly.
“No; I believe she was out somewhere.”
“Well, you were a very good man to take so much trouble about us,” she
replied, looking at him with an expression that softened the lines of
her face in a surprising way. “Are you too proud to have a lift home
now?”
“Thank you, I’d sooner walk--and--” casting about for an excuse--“you
mightn’t like the smell of my cigar under your nose.”
“Come, now, Roddy,” exclaimed Charlotte, “you ought to know me better
than that! Don’t you remember how you used to sit smoking beside me in
the office when I was helping you to do your work? In fact, I wouldn’t
say that there hadn’t been an occasion when I was guilty of a cigarette
in your company myself!”
She turned her eyes towards him, and the provocative look in them came
as instinctively and as straight as ever it did from Francie’s, or as
ever it has been projected from the curbed heart of woman. But, unfair
as it may be, it is certain that if Lambert had seen it, he would not
have been attracted by it. He, however, did not look up.
“Well, if you don’t mind going slow, I’ll walk beside you,” he said,
ignoring the reminiscence. “I want to know whether you did better
business with Julia Duffy than I did last week.”
The soft look was gone in a moment from Charlotte’s face.
“I couldn’t get much satisfaction out of her,” she replied; “but I think
I left a thorn in her pillow when I told her Peter Joyce was bankrupt.”
“I’ll take my oath you did,” said Lambert, with a short laugh. “I
declare I’d be sorry for the poor old devil if she wasn’t such a bad
tenant, letting the whole place go to the mischief, house and all.”
“I tell you the house isn’t in such a bad way as you think; it’s dirt
ails it more than anything else.” Charlotte had recovered her wonted
energy of utterance. “Believe me, if I had a few workmen in that house
for a month you wouldn’t know it.”
“Well, I believe you will, sooner or later. All the same, I can’t see
what the deuce you want with it. Now, if _I_ had the place, I’d make a
pot of money out of it, keeping young horses there, as I’ve often told
you. I’d do a bit of coping, and making hunters to sell. There’s no work
on earth I’d like as well.”
He took a long pull at his cigar, and expelled a sigh and a puff of
smoke.
“Well, Roddy,” said Charlotte, after a moment’s pause, speaking with an
unusual slowness and almost hesitancy, “you know I wouldn’t like to come
between you and your fancy. If you want the farm, in God’s name take it
yourself!”
“Take it myself! I haven’t the money to pay the fine, much less to stock
it. I tell you what, Charlotte,” he went on, turning round and putting
his hand on the splash-board of the phaeton as he walked, “you and I are
old pals, and I don’t mind telling you it’s the most I can do to keep
going the way I am now. I never was so driven for money in my life,” he
ended, some vague purpose, added to the habit of an earlier part of his
life, pushing him on to be confidential.
“Who’s driving you, Roddy?” said Charlotte, in a voice in which a less
preoccupied person than her companion might have noticed a curiously
gentle inflection.
It is perhaps noteworthy that while Mr. Lambert’s lips replied with
heartfelt irritation, “Oh, they’re all at me, Langford the coachbuilder,
and everyone of them,” one section of his brain was asking the other how
much ready money old Mrs. Mullen had had to leave, and was receiving a
satisfactory answer.
There was a pause in the conversation. It was so long now since the
black horse had felt the whip, that, acting on the presumption that his
mistress had fallen asleep, he fell into an even more slumbrous crawl
without any notice being taken.
“Roddy,” said Charlotte at last, and Lambert now observed how low and
rough her voice was, “do you remember in old times once or twice, when
you were put to it for a five-pound note, you made no bones about asking
a friend to help you? Well, you know I’m a poor woman”--even at this
moment Charlotte’s caution asserted itself--“but I daresay I could put
my hand on a couple of hundred, and if they’d be any use to you--”
Lambert became very red. The possibility of some such a climax as this
had floated in a sub-current of thought just below the level of formed
ideas, but now that it had come, it startled him. It was an unheard-of
thing that Charlotte should make such an offer as this. It gave him
suddenly a tingling sense of power, and at the same time a strange
instinct of disgust and shame.
“Oh, my dear Charlotte,” he began awkwardly, “upon my soul you’re a
great deal too good. I never thought of such a thing--I--I--” he
stammered, wishing he could refuse, but casting about for words in which
to accept.
“Ah, nonsense. Now, Roddy, me dear boy,” interrupted Charlotte,
regaining her usual manner as she saw his embarrassment, “say no more
about it. We’ll consider it a settled thing, and we’ll go through the
base business details after tea.”
Lambert said to himself that there was really no way out of it. If she
was so determined the only thing was to let her do as she liked; no one
could say that the affair was of his seeking.
“And, you know,” continued Charlotte in her most jocular voice, before
he could frame a sentence of the right sort, “who knows, if I get the
farm, that we mightn’t make a joint-stock business out of it, and have
young horses there, and all the rest of it!”
“You’re awfully good, Charlotte,” said Lambert, with an emotion in his
voice that she did not guess to be purely the result of inward relief
and exultation; “I’m awfully obliged to you--you always were a--a true
friend--some day, perhaps, I’ll be able to show you what I think about
it,” he stammered, unable to think of anything else to say, and, lifting
his hand from the splash-board, he put it on hers, that lay in her lap
with the reins in it, and pressed it for a moment. Into both their minds
shot simultaneously the remembrance of a somewhat similar scene, when,
long ago, Charlotte had come to the help of her father’s pupil, and he
had expressed his gratitude in a more ardent manner--a manner that had
seemed cheap enough to him at the time, but that had been more costly to
Charlotte than any other thing that had ever befallen her.
“You haven’t forgotten old times any more than I have,” he went on,
knowing very well that he was taking now much the same simple and
tempting method of getting rid of his obligation that he had once found
so efficacious, and to a certain extent enjoying the thought that he
could still make a fool of her. “Ah, well!” he sighed, “there’s no use
trying to get those times back, any more than there is in trying to
forget them.” He hesitated. “But, after all, there’s many a new tune
played on an old fiddle! Isn’t that so?” He was almost frightened at his
own daring as he saw Charlotte’s cheek burn with a furious red, and her
lips quiver in the attempt to answer.
Upon their silence there broke from the distance a loud scream, then
another, and then a burst of laughter in a duet of soprano and bass,
coming apparently from a lane that led into the road a little further
on--a smooth and secluded little lane, bordered thickly with hazel
bushes--a private road, in fact, to a model farm that Mr. Lambert had
established on his employer’s property. From the mouth of this there
broke suddenly a whirling vision of whiteness and wheels, and Miss
Fitzpatrick, mounted on a tricycle and shrieking loudly, dashed across
the high road and collapsed in a heap in the ditch. Lambert started
forward, but long before he could reach her the Rev. Joseph Corkran
emerged at full speed from the lane, hatless, with long flying
coat-tails, and, with a skill born of experience, extricated Francie
from her difficulties.
“Oh, I’m dead!” she panted. “Oh, the horrible thing! What good were you
that you let it go?” unworthily attacking the equally exhausted Corkran.
Then, in tones of consternation, “Goodness! Look at Mr. Lambert and
Charlotte! Oh, Mr. Lambert,” as Lambert came up to her, “did you see the
toss I got? The dirty thing ran away with me down the hill, and Mr.
Corkran was so tired running he had to let go, and I declare I thought I
was killed--and you don’t look a bit sorry for me!”
“Well, what business had you to get up on a thing like that?” answered
Lambert, looking angrily at the curate. “I wonder, Corkran, you hadn’t
more sense than to let a lady ride that machine.”
“Well, indeed, Mr. Lambert, I told Miss Fitzpatrick it wasn’t as easy as
she thought,” replied the guilty Corkran, a callow youth from Trinity
College, Dublin, who had been as wax in Francie’s hands, and who now
saw, with unfeigned terror, the approach of Charlotte. “I begged of her
not to go outside Tally Ho, but--but--I think I’d better go back and
look for my hat”--he ended abruptly, retreating into the lane just as
Charlotte drew up the black horse and opened her mouth to deliver
herself of her indignation.
CHAPTER XII.
The broad limestone steps at Bruff looked across the lawn to the lake,
and to the south. They were flanked on either hand by stone balustrades
which began and ended in a pot of blazing scarlet geraniums, and on
their topmost plateau on this brilliant 1st of July, the four Bruff dogs
sat on their haunches and gazed with anxious despondency in at the open
hall-door. For the last half-hour Max and Dinah, the indoor dogs, had
known that an expedition was toward. They had seen Pamela put on a hat
that certainly was not her garden one, and as certainly lacked the veil
that betokened the abhorred ceremony of church-going. They knew this hat
well, and at the worst it usually meant a choir practice; but taken in
connection with a blue serge skirt and the packing of a luncheon basket,
they almost ventured to hope it portended a picnic on the lake. They
adored picnics. In the first place, the outdoor dogs were always left at
home, which alone would have imparted a delicious flavour to any
entertainment, and in the second, all dietary rules were remitted for
the occasion, and they were permitted to raven unchecked upon chicken
bones, fat slices of ham, and luscious leavings of cream when the
packing-up time came. There was, however, mingled with this enchanting
prospect, the fear that they might be left behind, and from the sounding
of the first note of preparation they had never let Pamela out of their
sight. Whenever her step was heard through the long passages, there had
gone with it the scurrying gallop of the two little waiters on
providence, and when her arrangements had culminated in the luncheon
basket, their agitation had become so poignant that a growling game of
play under the table, got up merely to pass the time, turned into an
acrimonious squabble, and caused their ejection to the hall-door steps
by Lady Dysart. Now, sitting outside the door, they listened with
trembling to the discussion that was going on in the hall, and with the
self-consciousness of dogs, were convinced that it was all about
themselves.
“No, I cannot allow Garry to go,” exclaimed Lady Dysart, her eyes raised
to the ceiling as if to show her remoteness from all human entreaty; “he
is _not_ over the whooping-cough; I heard him whooping this morning in
his bedroom.”
The person mentioned ceased from a game of fives with a tennis-ball that
threatened momentarily to break the windows, and said indignantly, “Oh,
I say, mother, that was only the men in the yard pumping. That old pump
makes a row just like whooping-cough.”
Lady Dysart faltered for a moment before this ingenious falsehood, but
soon recovered herself.
“I don’t care whether it was you or the pump that whooped, it does not
alter the fact of your superfluity at a picnic.”
“I think Captain Cursiter and Mr. Hawkins wanted him to stoke,” said
Pamela from the luncheon basket.
“I have no doubt they do, but they shall not have him,” said Lady Dysart
with the blandness of entire decision, though her eyes wavered from her
daughter’s face to her son’s; “they’re very glad indeed to save their
own clothes and spoil his.”
“Well, then, I’ll go with Lambert,” said Garry rebelliously.
“You will do nothing of the sort!” exclaimed Lady Dysart, “whatever I
may do about allowing you to go with Captain Cursiter, nothing shall
induce me to sanction any plan that involves your going in that most
dangerous yacht. Christopher himself says she is over-sparred.” Lady
Dysart had no idea of the meaning of the accusation, but she felt the
term to be good and telling. “Now, Pamela, will you promise me to stay
with Captain Cursiter all the time?”
“Oh, yes, I will,” said Pamela, laughing; “but you know in your heart
that he would much rather have Garry.”
“I don’t care what my heart knows,” replied Lady Dysart magnificently,
“I know what my mouth says, and that is that you must neither of you
stir out of the steam-launch.”
At this descent of his mother into the pit so artfully dug for her,
Garry withdrew to attire himself for the position of stoker, and Pamela
discreetly changed the conversation.
It seemed a long time to Max and Dinah before their fate was decided,
but after some last moments of anguish on the pier they found
themselves, the one coiled determinedly on Pamela’s lap, and the other
smirking in the bow in Garry’s arms, as Mr. Hawkins sculled the second
relay of the Bruff party out to the launch. The first relay, consisting
of Christopher and Miss Hope-Drummond, was already on its way down the
lake in Mr. Lambert’s 5-ton boat, with every inch of canvas set to catch
the light and shifty breeze that blew petulantly down from the
mountains, and ruffled the glitter of the lake with dark blue smears.
The air quivered hotly over the great stones on the shore, drawing out
the strong aromatic smell of the damp weeds and the bog-myrtle, and Lady
Dysart stood on the end of the pier, and wrung her hands as she thought
of Pamela’s complexion.
Captain Cursiter was one of the anomalous soldiers whose happiness it is
to spend as much time as possible in a boat, dressed in disreputable
clothes, with hands begrimed and blistered with oil or ropes as the case
may be, and steaming or sailing to nowhere and back again with undying
enthusiasm. He was a thin, brown man, with a moustache rather lighter in
colour than the tan of his face, and his beaky nose, combined with his
disposition to flee from the haunts of men, had inspired his friends to
bestow on him the pet name of “Snipey.” The festivity on which he was at
present embarked was none of his seeking, and it had been only by
strenuous argument, fortified by the artful suggestion that no one else
was really competent to work the boat, that Mr. Hawkins had got him into
clean flannels and the conduct of the expedition. He knew neither Miss
Mullen nor Francie, and his acquaintance with the Dysarts, as with other
dwellers in the neighbourhood, was of a slight and unprogressive
character, and in strong contrast to the manner in which Mr, Hawkins had
become at Bruff and elsewhere what that young gentleman was pleased to
term “the gated infant.” During the run from Lismoyle to Bruff he had
been able to occupy himself with the affairs of the steam-launch; but
when Hawkins, his prop and stay, had rowed ashore for the Dysart party,
the iron had entered into his soul.
As the punt neared the launch, Mr. Hawkins looked round to take his
distance in bringing her alongside, and recognised with one delighted
glance the set smile of suffering politeness that denoted that Captain
Cursiter was making himself agreeable to the ladies. Charlotte was
sitting in the stern with a depressing air of Sunday-outness about her,
and a stout umbrella over her head. It was not in her nature to feel
shy; the grain of it was too coarse and strong to harbour such a thing
as diffidence, but she knew well enough when she was socially
unsuccessful, and she was already aware that she was going to be out of
her element on this expedition. Lambert, who would have been a kind of
connecting link, was already far in the offing. Captain Cursiter she
mentally characterised as a poor stick. Hawkins, whom she had begun by
liking, was daily--almost hourly--gaining in her disfavour, and from
neither Pamela, Francie, or Garry did she expect much entertainment.
Charlotte had a vigorous taste in conversation, and her idea of a
pleasure party was not to talk to Pamela Dysart about the choir and the
machinery of a school feast for an hour and a half, and from time to
time to repulse with ill-assumed politeness the bird-like flights of
Dinah on to her lap. Francie and Mr. Hawkins sat forward on the roof of
the little cabin, and apparently entertained one another vastly, judging
by their appearance and the fragments of conversation that from time to
time made their way aft in the environment of a cloud of smuts. Captain
Cursiter, revelling in the well-known restrictions that encompass the
man at the wheel, stood serenely aloof, steering among the hump-backed
green islands and treacherous shallows, and thinking to himself that
Hawkins was going ahead pretty fast with that Dublin girl.
Mr. Hawkins had been for some time a source of anxiety to his brother
officers, who disapproved of matrimony for the young of their regiment.
Things had looked so serious when he was quartered at Limerick that he
had been hurriedly sent on detachment to Lismoyle before he had time to
“make an example of himself,” as one of the most unmarried of the majors
observed, and into Captain Cursiter’s trusted hands he had been
committed, with urgent instructions to keep an eye on him. Cursiter’s
eye was renowned for its blighting qualities on occasions such as these,
and his jibes at matrimony were looked on by his brother officers as the
most finished and scathing expressions of proper feeling on the subject
that could be desired; but it was agreed that he would have his hands
full.
The launch slid smoothly along with a low clicking of the machinery,
cutting her way across the reflections of the mountains in pursuit of
the tall, white sail of the _Daphne_, that seemed each moment to grow
taller, as the yacht was steadily overhauled by her more practical
comrade. The lake was narrower here, where it neared the end of its
twenty-mile span, and so calm that the sheep and cattle grazing on the
brown mountains were reflected in its depths, and the yacht seemed as
incongruous in the midst of them as the ark on Mount Ararat. The last
bend of the lake was before them; the _Daphne_ crept round it, moved
mysteriously by a wind that was imperceptible to the baking company on
the steam-launch, and by the time the latter had churned her way round
the fir-clad point, the yacht was letting go her anchor near the
landing-place of a large wooded island.
At a picnic nothing is of much account before luncheon, and the gloom of
hunger hung like a pall over the party that took ashore luncheon
baskets, unpacked knives and forks, and gathered stones to put on the
corners of the table-cloth. But such a hunger is Nature’s salve for the
inadequacy of human beings to amuse themselves; the body comes to the
relief of the mind with the compassionate superiority of a good servant,
and confers inward festivity upon many a dull dinner party. Max and
Dinah were quite of this opinion. They had behaved with commendable
fortitude during the voyage, though in the earlier part of it a
shuddering dejection on Max’s part had seemed to Pamela’s trained eye to
forebode sea-sickness, but at the lifting of the luncheon basket into
the punt their self-control deserted them. The succulent trail left upon
the air, palpable to the dog-nose as the smoke of the steam-launch to
the human eye, beguiled them into efforts to follow, which were only
suppressed by their being secretly immured in the cabin by Garry. No one
but he saw the two wan faces that yearned at the tiny cabin windows, as
the last punt load left for the land, and when at last the wails of the
captives streamed across the water, anyone but Garry would have repented
of the cruelty. The dogs will never forget it to Captain Cursiter that
it was he who rowed out to the launch and brought them ashore to enjoy
their fair share of the picnic, and their gratitude will never be
tempered by the knowledge that he had caught at the excuse to escape
from the conversation which Miss Hope-Drummond, notwithstanding even the
pangs of hunger, was proffering to him.
There is something unavoidably vulgar in the aspect of a picnic party
when engaged in the culminating rite of eating on the grass. They may
feel themselves to be picturesque, gipsy-like, even romantic, but to the
unparticipating looker-on, not even the gilded dignity of champagne can
redeem them from being a mere group of greedy, huddled backs, with ugly
trimmings of paper, dirty plates, and empty bottles. But at Innishochery
the only passers-by were straight-flying wild-duck or wood-pigeons, or
an occasional sea-gull lounging up from the distant Atlantic, all
observant enough in their way, but not critical. It is probable they did
not notice even the singular ungracefulness of Miss Mullen’s attitude,
as she sat with her short legs uncomfortably tucked away, and her large
jaws moving steadily as she indemnified herself for the stupidity of the
recent trip. The champagne at length had its usual beneficent effect
upon the conversation. Charlotte began to tell stories about her cats
and her servants to Christopher and Pamela, with admirable dramatic
effect and a sense of humour that made her almost attractive. Miss
Hope-Drummond had discovered that Cursiter was one of the Lincolnshire
Cursiters, and, with mutual friends as stepping-stones, was working her
way on with much ability; and Francie was sitting on a mossy rock, a
little away from the table-cloth, with a plate of cherry-pie on her lap,
Mr. Hawkins at her feet, and unlimited opportunities for practical
jestings with the cherry-stones. Garry and the dogs were engaged in
scraping out dishes and polishing plates in a silence more eloquent than
words; Lambert alone, of all the party, remained impervious to the
influences of luncheon, and lay on his side with his eyes moodily fixed
upon his plate, only responding to Miss Mullen’s frequent references to
him by a sarcastic grunt.
“Now I assure you, Miss Dysart, it’s perfectly true,” said Charlotte,
after one of these polite rejoinders. “He’s too lazy to say so, but he
knows right well that when I complained of my kitchen-maid to her
mother, all the good I got from her was that she said, ‘Would ye be agin
havin’ a switch and to be switchin’ her!’ That was a pretty way for me
to spend my valuable time.” Her audience laughed; and inspired by
another half glass of champagne, Miss Mullen continued, “But big a fool
as Bid Sal is, she’s a Solon beside Donovan. He came to me th’ other day
and said he wanted ‘little Johanna for the garden.’ ‘Little _who?_’ says
I; ‘Little Johanna,’ says he. ‘Ye great, lazy fool,’ says I, ‘aren’t ye
big enough and ugly enough to do that little pick of work by yerself
without wanting a girl to help ye?’ And after all,” said Charlotte,
dropping from the tones of fury in which she had rendered her own part
in the interview, “all he wanted was some guano for my early potatoes!”
Lambert got up without a smile, and sauntering down to the lake, sat
down on a rock and began to smoke a cigar. He could not laugh as
Christopher and even Captain Cursiter did, at Charlotte’s dramatisation
of her scene with her gardener. At an earlier period of his career he
had found her conversation amusing, and he had not thought her vulgar.
Since then he had raised himself just high enough from the sloughs of
Irish middle-class society to see its vulgarity, but he did not stand
sufficiently apart from it to be able to appreciate the humorous side,
and in any case he was at present little disposed to laugh at anything.
He sat and smoked morosely for some time, feeling that he was making his
dissatisfaction with the entertainment imposingly conspicuous; but his
cigar was a failure, the rock was far from comfortable, and his bereaved
friends seemed to be enjoying themselves rather more than when he left
them. He threw the cigar into the water in front of him, to the
consternation of a number of minnows, who had hung in the warm shallow
as if listening, and now vanished in a twinkling to spread among the
dark resorts of the elder fishes the tale of the thunderbolt that fell
in their midst, while Lambert stalked back to the party under the
trees.
Its component parts were little altered, saving that Miss Hope-Drummond
had, by the ingenious erection of a parasol, isolated herself and
Christopher from the others, and that Garry had joined himself to
Francie and Hawkins, and was, in company with the latter, engaged in
weaving stalks of grass across the insteps of Miss Fitzpatrick’s
open-worked stockings.
“Just look at them, Mr. Lambert,” Francie called out in cheerful
complaint. “They’re having a race to see which of them will finish their
bit of grass first, and they won’t let me stir, though I’m nearly mad
with the flies!”
She had a waving branch of mountain-ash in her hand; the big straw hat
that she had trimmed for herself with dog-roses the night before was on
the back of her head; her hair clustered about her white temples, and
the colour that fighting the flies had brought to her face lent a lovely
depth to eyes that had the gaiety and the soullessness of a child.
Lambert had forgotten most of his classics since he had left school, and
it is probable that even had he remembered them it would not have
occurred to him to regard anything in them as applicable to modern
times. At all events Francie’s dryad-like fitness to her surroundings
did not strike him, as it struck another more dispassionate onlooker,
when an occasional lift of the Hope-Drummond parasol revealed the
white-clad figure, with its woody background, to Christopher.
“It seems to me you’re well able to take care of yourself,” was
Lambert’s reply to Miss Fitzpatrick’s appeal. He turned his back upon
her, and interrupted Charlotte in the middle of a story by asking her if
she would walk with him across the island and have a look at the ruins
of Ochery Chapel.
One habit at least of Mr. Lambert’s school life remained with him. He
was still a proficient at telling tales.
CHAPTER XIII.
Innishochery Island lay on the water like a great green bouquet, with a
narrow grey lace edging of stony beach. From the lake it seemed that the
foliage stood in a solid impenetrable mass, and that nothing but the
innumerable wood-pigeons could hope to gain its inner recesses; even the
space of grass which, at the side of the landing-place, drove a slender
wedge up among the trees, had still the moss-grown stumps upon it that
told it had been recovered by force from the possession of the tall
pines and thick hazel and birch scrub. The end of the wedge narrowed
into a thread of a path which wound its briary way among the trees with
such sinuous vagueness, and such indifference to branches overhead and
rocks underfoot, that to follow it was both an act of faith and a
penance. Near the middle of the island it was interrupted by a brook
that slipped along whispering to itself through the silence of the wood,
and though the path made a poor shift to maintain its continuity with
stepping-stones, it expired a few paces farther on in the bracken of a
little glade.
It was a glade that had in some elfish way acquired an expression of
extremest old age. The moss grew deep in the grass, lay deep on the
rocks; stunted birch-trees encircled it with pale twisted arms hoary
with lichen, and, at the farther end of it, a grey ruined chapel,
standing over the pool that was the birthplace of the stream, fulfilled
the last requirement of romance. On this hot summer afternoon the glade
had more than ever its air of tranced meditation upon other days and
superiority to the outer world, lulled in its sovereignty of the island
by the monotone of humming insects, while on the topmost stone of the
chapel a magpie gabbled and cackled like a court jester. Christopher
thought, as he sat by the pool smoking a cigarette, that he had done
well in staying behind under the pretence of photographing the yacht
from the landing-place, and thus eluding the rest of the party. He was
only intermittently unsociable, but he had always had a taste for his
own society, and, as he said to himself, he had been going strong all
the morning, and the time had come for solitude and tobacco.
He was a young man of a reflective turn, and had artistic aspirations
which, had he been of a hardier nature, would probably have taken him
further than photography. But Christopher’s temperament held one or two
things unusual in the amateur. He had the saving, or perhaps fatal power
of seeing his own handiwork with as unflattering an eye as he saw other
people’s. He had no confidence in anything about himself except his
critical ability, and as he did not satisfy that, his tentative essays
in painting died an early death. It was the same with everything else.
His fastidious dislike of doing a thing indifferently was probably a
form of conceit, and though it was a higher form than the common vanity
whose geese are all swans, it brought about in him a kind of deadlock.
His relations thought him extremely clever, on the strength of his
university career and his intellectual fastidiousness, and he himself
was aware that he was clever, and cared very little for the knowledge.
Half the people in the world were clever nowadays, he said to himself
with indolent irritability, but genius was another affair; and, having
torn up his latest efforts in water-colour and verse, he bought a
camera, and betook himself to the more attainable perfection of
photography.
It was delightful to lie here with the delicate cigarette smoke keeping
the flies at bay, and the grasshoppers whirring away in the grass, like
fairy sewing-machines, and with the soothing knowledge that the others
had been through the glade, had presumably done the ruin thoroughly, and
were now cutting their boots to pieces on the water-fretted limestone
rocks as they scrambled round from the shore to the landing-place. This
small venerable wood, and the boulders that had lain about the glade
through sleepy centuries till the moss had smothered their outlines,
brought to Christopher’s mind the enchanted country through which King
Arthur’s knights rode; and he lay there mouthing to himself fragments of
half-remembered verse, and wondering at the chance that had reserved for
him this backwater in a day of otherwise dubious enjoyment. He even
found himself piecing together a rhyme or two on his own account; but,
as is often the case, inspiration was paralysed by the overwhelming
fulness of the reality; the fifth line refused to express his idea, and
the interruption of lyric emotion caused by the making and lighting of
a fresh cigarette proved fatal to the prospects of the sonnet. He felt
disgusted with himself and his own futility. When he had been at Oxford
not thus had the springs of inspiration ceased to flow. He had begun to
pass the period of water-colours then, but not the period when ideas are
as plenty and as full of novelty as leaves in spring, and the knowledge
has not yet come that they, like the leaves, are old as the world
itself.
For the past three or four years the social exigencies of Government
House life had not proved conducive to fervour of any kind, and now,
while he was dawdling away his time at Bruff, in the uninterested
expectation of another appointment, he found that he not only could not
write, but that he seemed to have lost the wish to try.
“I suppose I am sinking into the usual bucolic stupor,” he said to
himself, as he abandoned the search for the vagrant rhyme. “If I only
could read the _Field_, and had a more spontaneous habit of cursing, I
should be an ideal country gentleman.”
He crumpled into his pocket again the envelope on the back of which he
had been scribbling, and told himself that it was more philosophic and
more simple to enjoy things in the homely, pre-historic manner, without
trying to express them elaborately for the benefit of others. He was
intellectually effete, and what made his effeteness more hopeless was
that he recognised it himself. “I am perfectly happy if I let myself
alone,” was the sum of his reflections. “They gave me a little more
culture than I could hold, and it ran over the edge at first. Now I
think I’m just about sufficiently up in the bottle for Lismoyle form.”
He tilted his straw hat over his nose, shut his eyes, and, leaning back,
soon felt the delicious fusion into his brain of the surrounding hum and
soft movement that tells of the coming of out-of-door summer sleep.
It is deplorable to think of the figure Christopher must cut in the eyes
of those whose robuster taste demands in a young man some more potent
and heroic qualities, a gentlemanly hardihood in language and liquor, an
interesting suggestion of moral obliquity, or, at least, some hereditary
vice on which the character may make shipwreck with magnificent
helplessness. Christopher, with his preference for his sister’s
society, and his lack of interest in the majority of manly occupations,
from hunting to music halls, has small claim to respect or admiration.
The invertebrateness of his character seemed to be expressed in his
attitude, as he lay, supine, under the birch trees, with the grass
making a luxurious couch for his lazy limbs, and the faint breeze just
stirring about him. His sleep was not deep enough to still the breath of
summer in his ears, but it had quieted the jabber of the magpie to a
distant purring, and he was fast falling into the abyss of
unconsciousness, when a gentle, regular sound made itself felt, the fall
of a footstep and the brushing of a skirt through the grass. He lay very
still, and cherished an ungenial hope that the white-stemmed birches
might mercifully screen him from the invader. The step came nearer, and
something in its solidity and determination gave Christopher a guess as
to whose it was, that was speedily made certainty by a call that jarred
all the sleepy enchantment of the glade.
“Fran-cie!”
Christopher shrank lower behind a mossy stone, and wildly hoped that his
unconcealable white flannels might be mistaken for the stem of a fallen
birch.
“Fran-cie!”
It had come nearer, and Christopher anticipated the inevitable discovery
by getting up and speaking.
“I’m afraid she’s not here, Miss Mullen. She has not been here for half
an hour at least.” He did not feel bound to add that when he first sat
down by the pool, he had heard Miss Fitzpatrick’s and Mr. Hawkins’
voices in high and agreeable altercation on the opposite side of the
island to that taken by the rest of the party.
The asperity that had been discernible in Miss Mullen’s summons to her
cousin vanished at once.
“My goodness me! Mr. Dysart! To think of your being here all the time,
‘Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife!’ Here I am hunting for
that naughty girl to tell her to come and help to make tea, instead of
letting your poor sister have all the trouble by herself.”
Charlotte was rather out of breath, and looked hot and annoyed, in spite
of the smile with which she lubricated her remark.
“Oh, my sister is used to that sort of thing,” said Christopher, “and
Miss Hope-Drummond is there to help, isn’t she?”
Charlotte had seated herself on a rock, and was fanning herself with her
pocket-handkerchief; evidently going to make herself agreeable,
Christopher thought, with an irritability that lost no detail of her
hand’s ungainly action.
“I don’t think Miss Hope-Drummond is much in the utilitarian line,” she
said, with a laugh that was as slighting as she dared to make it. “Hers
is the purely ornamental, I should imagine. Now, I will say for poor
Francie, if she was there, no one would work harder than she would, and,
though I say it that shouldn’t, I think she’s ornamental too.”
“Oh, highly ornamental,” said Christopher politely. “I don’t think there
can be any doubt about that.”
“You’re very good to say so,” replied Charlotte effusively; “but I can
tell you, Mr. Dysart, that poor child has had to make herself useful as
well as ornamental before now. From what she tells me I suspect there
were few things she didn’t have to put her hand to before she came down
to me here.”
“Really!” said Christopher, as politely as before, “that was very hard
luck.”
“You may say that it was!” returned Charlotte, planting a hand on each
knee with elbows squared outwards, as was her wont in moments of
excitement, and taking up her parable against the Fitzpatricks with all
the enthusiasm of a near relation. “Her uncle and aunt are very good
people in their way, I suppose, but beyond feeding her and putting
clothes on her back, I don’t know what they did for her.”
Charlotte had begun her sentence with comparative calm, but she had
gathered heat and velocity as she proceeded. She paused with a snort,
and Christopher, who had never before been privileged to behold her in
her intenser moments, said, without a very distinct idea of what was
expected of him:
“Oh, really, and who are these amiable people?”
“Fitzpatricks!” spluttered Miss Mullen, “and no better than the dirt
under my poor cousin Isabella Mullen’s feet. It’s through _her_
Francie’s related to me, and not through the Fitzpatricks at all. _I’m_
no relation of the Fitzpatricks, thank God! My father’s brother married
a Butler, and Francie’s grandmother was a Butler too--”
“It’s very intricate,” murmured Christopher; “it sounds as if she ought
to have been a parlour-maid.”
“And that’s the only connection I am of the Fitzpatricks,” continued
Miss Mullen at lightning speed, oblivious of interruption; “but Francie
takes after her mother’s family and her grandmother’s family, and your
poor father would tell you if he was able, that the Butlers of Tally Ho
were as well known in their time as the Dysarts of Bruff!”
“I’m sure he would,” said Christopher feebly, thinking as he spoke that
his conversations with his father had been wont to treat of more
stirring and personal topics than the bygone glories of the Butlers.
“Yes, indeed, as good a family as any in the county. People laugh at me,
and say I’m mad about family and pedigree; but I declare to goodness,
Mr. Dysart, I think the French are right when they say, ‘_bong song ne
poo mongtir_,’ and there’s nothing like good blood after all.”
Charlotte possessed the happy quality of believing in the purity of her
own French accent, and she felt a great satisfaction in rounding her
peroration with a quotation in that tongue. She had, moreover, worked
off some of the irritation which had, from various causes, been seething
within her when she met Christopher; and when she resumed her discourse
it was in the voice of the orator, who, having ranted out one branch of
his subject, enters upon the next with almost awful quietness.
“I don’t know why I should bore you about a purely family matter, Mr.
Dysart, but the truth is, it cuts me to the heart when I see your
sister--your charming sister--yes, and Miss Hope-Drummond too--not that
I’d mention her in the same breath with Miss Dysart--with every
advantage that education can give them, and then to think of that poor
girl, brought up from hand to mouth, and her little fortune that should
have been spent on herself going, as I may say, to fill the stomachs of
the Fitzpatricks’ brood!”
Christopher raised himself from the position of leaning against a tree,
in which he had listened, not without interest, to the recital of
Francie’s wrongs.
“I don’t think you need apologise for Miss Fitzpatrick,” he said, rather
more coldly than he had yet spoken. He had ceased to be amused by Miss
Mullen; eccentricity was one thing, but vulgar want of reserve was
another; he wondered if she discussed her cousin’s affairs thus openly
with all her friends.
“It’s very kind of you to say so,” rejoined Miss Mullen eagerly, “but I
know very well you’re not blind, any more than I am, and all my
affection for the girl can’t make me shut my eyes to what’s unlady-like
or bad style, though I know it’s not her fault.”
Christopher looked at his watch surreptitiously.
“Now I’m delaying you in a most unwarrantable way,” said Charlotte,
noting and interpreting the action at once, “but I got so hot and tired
running about the woods that I had to take a rest. I was trying to get a
chance to say a word to your sister about Francie to ask her to be kind
to her, but I daresay it’ll come to the same thing now that I’ve had a
chat with you,” she concluded, rising from her seat and smiling with
luscious affability.
A little below the pond two great rocks leaned towards each other, and
between them a hawthorn bush had pressed itself up to the light.
Something like a path was trodden round the rocks, and a few rags
impaled on the spikes of the thorn bush denoted that it marked the place
of a holy well. Conspicuous among these votive offerings were two white
rags, new and spotless, and altogether out of keeping with the scraps of
red flannel and dirty frieze that had been left by the faithful in lieu
of visiting cards for the patron saint of the shrine. Christopher and
Charlotte’s way led them within a few yards of the spot; the latter’s
curiosity induced her, as she passed, to examine the last contributions
to the thorn bush.
“I wonder who has been tearing up their best pocket-handkerchiefs for a
wish?” said Christopher, putting up his eye-glass and peering at the
rags.
“Two bigger fools than the rest of them, I suppose,” said Miss Mullen
shortly; “we’d better hurry on now, Mr. Dysart, or we’ll get no tea.”
She swept Christopher in front of her along the narrow path before he
had time to see that the last two pilgrims had determined that the
saint should make no mistake about their identity, and had struck upon
the thorn bush the corners of their handkerchiefs, one of them, a silken
triangle, having on it the initials G. H., while on the other was a
large and evidently home-embroidered F.
CHAPTER XIV.
Late that afternoon, when the sun was beginning to stoop to the west, a
wind came creeping down from somewhere back of the mountains, and began
to stretch tentative cats’ paws over the lake. It had pushed before it
across the Atlantic a soft mass of orange-coloured cloud, that caught
the sun’s lowered rays, and spread them in a mellow glare over
everything. The lake turned to a coarse and furious blue; all the rocks
and tree stems became like red gold, and the polished brass top of the
funnel of the steam-launch looked as if it were on fire as Captain
Cursiter turned the _Serpolette’s_ sharp snout to the wind, and steamed
at full speed round Ochery Point. The yacht had started half an hour
before on her tedious zig-zag journey home, and was already far down to
the right, her sails all aglow as she leaned aslant like a skater,
swooping and bending under the freshening breeze.
It was evident that Lambert wished to make the most of his time, for
almost immediately after the _Daphne_ had gone about with smooth
precision, and had sprung away on the other tack, the party on the
launch saw a flutter of white, and a top-sail was run up.
“By Jove! Lambert didn’t make much on that tack,” remarked Captain
Cursiter to his brother-in-arms, as with an imperceptible pressure of
the wheel he serenely headed the launch straight for her destination. “I
don’t believe he’s done himself much good with that top-sail either.”
Mr. Hawkins turned a sour eye upon the _Daphne_, and said laconically,
“Silly ass; he’ll smother her.”
“Upon my word, I don’t think he’ll get in much before nine o’clock
to-night,” continued Cursiter; “it’s pretty nearly dead in his teeth,
and he doesn’t make a hundred yards on each tack.”
Mr. Hawkins slammed the lid of the coal bunker, and stepped past his
chief into the after-part of the launch.
“I say, Miss Mullen,” he began with scarcely suppressed malignity,
“Captain Cursiter says you won’t see your niece before to-morrow
morning. You’ll be sorry you wouldn’t let her come home in the launch
after all.”
“If she hadn’t been so late for her tea,” retorted Miss Mullen, “Mr.
Lambert could have started half an hour before he did.”
“Half an hour will be neither here nor there in this game. What Lambert
ought to have done was to have started after luncheon, but I think I may
remind you, Miss Mullen, that you took him off to the holy well then.”
“Well, and if I did, I didn’t leave my best pocket handkerchief hanging
in rags on the thorn bush, like some other people I know of!” Miss
Mullen felt that she had scored, and looked for sympathy to Pamela, who,
having as was usual with her, borne the heat and burden of the day in
the matter of packings and washings-up, was now sitting, pale and tired,
in the stern, with Dinah solidly implanted in her lap, and Max huddled
miserably on the seat beside her. Miss Hope-Drummond, shrouded in
silence and a long plaid cloak, paid no attention to anyone or anything.
There are few who can drink the dregs of the cup of pleasuring with any
appearance of enjoyment, and Miss Hope-Drummond was not one of them. The
alteration in the respective crews of the yacht and the steam-launch had
been made by no wish of hers, and it is probable that but for the
unexpected support that Cursiter had received from Miss Mullen, his
schemes for Mr. Hawkins’ welfare would not have prospered. The idea had
indeed occurred to Miss Hope-Drummond that the proprietor of the launch
had perhaps a personal motive in suggesting the exchange, but when she
found that Captain Cursiter was going to stand with his back to her, and
steer, she wished that she had not yielded her place in the _Daphne_ to
a young person whom she already thought of as “_that_ Miss Fitzpatrick,”
applying in its full force the demonstrative pronoun that denotes
feminine animosity more subtly and expressively than is in the power of
any adjective. Hawkins she felt was out of her jurisdiction and unworthy
of attention, and she politely ignored Pamela’s attempts to involve her
in conversation with him. Her neat brown fringe was out of curl; long
strands of hair blew unbecomingly over her ears; her feet were very
cold, and she finally buried herself to the nose in a fur boa that gave
her the effect of a moustached and bearded Russian noble, and began, as
was her custom during sermons and other periods of tedium, to elaborate
the construction of a new tea-gown.
To do Mr. Hawkins justice, he, though equally ill-treated by fate, rose
superior to his disappointment. After his encounter with Miss Mullen he
settled confidentially down in the corner beside Pamela, and amused
himself by pulling Dinah’s short, fat tail, and puffing cigarette smoke
in her face, while he regaled her mistress with an assortment of the
innermost gossip of Lismoyle.
On board the _Daphne_ the aspect of things was less comfortable.
Although the wind was too much in her teeth for her to make much advance
for home, there was enough to drive her through the water at a pace that
made the long tacks from side to side of the lake seem as nothing, and
to give Francie as much as she could do to keep her big hat on her head.
She was sitting up on the weather side with Lambert, who was steering;
and Christopher, in the bows, was working the head sails, and acting as
movable ballast when they went about. At first, while they were beating
out of the narrow channel of Ochery, Francie had found it advisable to
lie in a heap beneath a tarpaulin, to avoid the onslaught of the boom at
each frequent tack, but now that they were out on the open lake, with
the top-sail hoisted, she had risen to her present position, and, in
spite of her screams as the sharp squalls came down from the mountains
and lifted her hat till it stood on end like a rearing horse, was
enjoying herself amazingly. Unlike Miss Hope-Drummond, she was
pre-eminently one of those who come home unflagging from the most
prolonged outing, and to-day’s entertainment, so far from being
exhausting, had verified to the utmost her belief in the charms of the
British officer, as well as Miss Fanny Hemphill’s prophecies of her
success in such quarters. Nevertheless she was quite content to return
in the yacht; it was salutary for Mr. Hawkins to see that she could do
without him very well, it took her from Charlotte’s dangerous
proximity, and it also gave her an opportunity of appeasing Mr. Lambert,
who, as she was quite aware, was not in the best of tempers. So far her
nimble tongue had of necessity been idle. Christopher’s position in the
bows isolated him from all conversation of the ordinary pitch, and
Lambert had been at first too much occupied with the affairs of his boat
to speak to her, but now, as a sharper gust nearly snatched her hat from
her restraining hand, he turned to her.
“If it wasn’t that you seem to enjoy having that hat blown inside out
every second minute,” he said chillingly, “I’d offer to lend you a cap.”
“What sort is it?” demanded Francie. “If it’s anything like that old
deerstalker thing you have on your head now, I wouldn’t touch it with
the tongs!”
Lambert’s only reply was to grope under the seat with one hand, and to
bring out a red knitted cap of the conventional sailoring type, which he
handed to Francie without so much as looking at her. Miss Fitzpatrick
recognised its merits with half a glance, and, promptly putting it on
her head, stuffed the _chef-d’œuvre_ of the night before under the seat
among the deck-swabs and ends of rope that lurked there. Christopher,
looking aft at the moment, saw the change of head-gear, and it was,
perhaps, characteristic of him that even while he acknowledged the
appropriateness of the red cap of liberty to the impertinence of the
brilliant face beneath it, he found himself reminded of the extra
supplement, in colours, of any Christmas number--indubitably pretty, but
a trifle vulgar.
In the meantime the object of this patronising criticism, feeling
herself now able to give her undivided attention to conversation,
regarded Mr. Lambert’s sulky face with open amusement, and said:
“Well, now, tell me what made you so cross all day. Was it because Mrs.
Lambert wasn’t out?”
Lambert looked at her for an instant without speaking. “Ready about,” he
called out. “Mind your head! Lee helm!”
The little yacht hung and staggered for a moment, and then, with a
diving plunge, started forward, with every sail full and straining.
Francie scrambled with some difficulty to the other side of the tiny
cockpit, and climbed up on to the seat by Mr. Lambert, just in time to
see a very fair imitation of a wave break on the weather bow and splash
a sparkling shower into Christopher’s face.
“Oh, Mr. Dysart! are you drowned?” she screamed ecstatically.
“Not quite,” he called back, his hair hanging in dripping points on his
forehead as he took off his cap and shook the water out of it. “I say,
Lambert, it’s beginning to blow pretty stiff; I’d take that top-sail off
her, if I were you.”
“She’s often carried it in worse weather than this,” returned Lambert;
“a drop of water will do no one any harm.”
Mr. Lambert in private, and as much as possible in public, affected to
treat his employer’s son as a milksop, and few things annoyed him more
than the accepted opinion on the lake that there was no better man in a
boat than Christopher Dysart. His secret fear that it was true made it
now all the more intolerable that Christopher should lay down the law to
him on a point of seamanship, especially with Francie by, ready in that
exasperating way of hers to laugh at him on the smallest provocation.
“It’ll do him no harm if he does get a drop of water over him,” he said
to her in a low voice, forgetting for the moment his attitude of
disapproval. “Take some of the starch out of him for once!” He took a
pull on the main sheet, and, with a satisfied upward look at the
top-sail in question, applied himself to conversation. The episode had
done him good, and it was with almost fatherly seriousness that he
began:
“Now, Francie, you were telling me a while ago that I was cross all day.
I’m a very old friend of yours, and I don’t mind saying that I was
greatly put out by the way”--he lowered his voice--“by the way you were
going on with that fellow Hawkins.”
“I don’t know what you mean by ‘going on,’” interrupted Francie, with a
slight blush. “What’s the harm in talking to him if he likes to talk to
me?”
“Plenty of harm,” returned Lambert quickly, “when he makes a fool of you
the way he did to-day. If you don’t care that Miss Dysart and the rest
of them think you know no better than to behave like that, _I_ do!”
“Behave like what?”
“Well, for one thing, to let him and Garry Dysart go sticking grass in
your stockings that way after luncheon; and for another to keep Miss
Dysart waiting tea for you for half an hour, and your only excuse to be
to tell her that he was ‘teaching you to make ducks and drakes’ the
other side of the island.” The fatherly quality had died out of his
voice, and the knuckles of the hand that held the tiller grew white from
a harder grip.
Francie instinctively tucked away her feet under her petticoats. She was
conscious that the green pattern still adorned her insteps, and that
tell-tale spikes of grass still projected on either side of her shoes.
“How could I help it? It was just a silly game that he and Garry Dysart
made up between them; and as for Miss Dysart being angry with me, she
never said a word to me. She was awfully good; and she and her brother
had kept the teapot hot for me, and everything.” She looked furtively at
Christopher, who was looking out at the launch, now crossing their path
some distance ahead. “It was more than _you’d_ have done for me!”
“Yes, very likely it was; but I wouldn’t have been laughing at you in my
sleeve all the time as they were, or at least as he was, anyhow!”
“I believe that’s a great lie,” said Francie unhesitatingly; “and I
don’t care a jack-rat what he thought, or what you think either! Mr.
Hawkins is a very nice young man, and I’ll talk to him just as much as I
like! And he’s coming to tea at Tally Ho to-morrow; and what’s more, I
asked him! So now!”
“Oh, all right!” said Lambert, in such a constrained voice of anger,
that even Francie felt a little afraid of him. “Have him to tea by all
means; and if I were you I should send down to Limerick and have Miss
M‘Carthy up to meet him!”
“What are you saying? Who’s Miss M‘Carthy?” asked Francie, with a
disappointing sparkle of enjoyment in her eyes.
“She’s the daughter of a George’s Street tobacconist that your friend
Mr. Hawkins was so sweet about a couple of months ago that they packed
him off here to be out of harm’s way. Look out, Dysart, I’m going about
now,” he continued without giving Francie time to reply. “Lee-helm!”
“Oh, I’m sick of you and your old ‘lee-helm’!” cried Francie, as she
grovelled again in the cockpit to avoid the swing of the boom. “Why
can’t you go straight like Captain Cursiter’s steamer, instead of
bothering backwards and forwards, side-ways, like this? And you always
do it just when I want to ask you something.”
This complaint, which was mainly addressed to Mr. Lambert’s canvas
yachting shoes, received no attention. When Francie came to the surface
she found that the yacht was at a more uncomfortable angle than ever,
and with some difficulty she established herself on the narrow strip of
deck, outside the coaming, with her feet hanging into the cockpit.
“Now, Mr. Lambert,” she began at once, “you’d better tell me Miss
M‘Carthy’s address, and all about her, and perhaps if you’re good I’ll
ask you to meet her too.”
As she spoke, a smart squall struck the yacht, and Lambert luffed her
hard up to meet it. A wave with a ragged white edge flopped over her
bows, wetting Christopher again, and came washing aft along the deck
behind the coaming.
“Look out aft there!” he shouted. “She’s putting her nose into it! I
tell you that top-sail’s burying her, Lambert.”
Lambert made no answer to either Francie or Christopher. He had as much
as he could do to hold the yacht, which was snatching at the tiller like
a horse at its bit, and ripping her way deep through the waves in a
manner too vigorous to be pleasant. It was about seven o’clock, and
though the sun was still some height above the dark jagged wall of the
mountains, the clouds had risen in a tawny fleece across his path, and
it was evident that he would be seen no more that day. The lake had
turned to indigo. The beds of reeds near the shore were pallid by
contrast as they stooped under the wind; the waves that raced towards
the yacht had each an angry foam-crest, having, after the manner of lake
waves, lashed themselves into a high state of indignation on very short
notice, and hissed and effervesced like soda-water all along the
lee-gunwale of the flying yacht. A few seagulls that were trying to
fight their way back down to the sea, looked like fluttering scraps of
torn white paper against the angry bronze of the clouds, and the pine
trees on the point, under the lee of which they were scudding, were
tossing like the black plumes of a hearse.
Lambert put the yacht about, and headed back across the lake.
“We did pretty well on that tack, Dysart,” he shouted. “We ought to get
outside Screeb Point with the next one, and then we’ll get the wind a
point fairer, and make better weather of it the rest of the way home.”
He could see the launch, half a mile or so beyond the point, ploughing
steadily along on her way to Lismoyle, and in his heart he wished that
Francie was on board of her. He also wished that Christopher had held
his confounded tongue about the top-sail. If he hadn’t shoved in his oar
where he wasn’t wanted, he’d have had that top-sail off her twenty
minutes ago; but he wasn’t going to stand another man ordering him about
in his own boat.
“Look here, Francie,” he said, “you must look out for yourself when I’m
going about next time. It’s always a bit squally round this point, so
you’d better keep down in the cockpit till we’re well on the next tack.”
“But I’ll get all wet down there,” objected Francie, “and I’d much
rather stay up here and see the fun.”
“You talk as if it was the top of a tram in Sackville Street,” said
Lambert, snatching a glance of provoked amusement at her unconcerned
face. “I can tell you it will take a good deal more holding on to than
that does. Promise me now, like a good child,” he went on, with a sudden
thrill of anxiety at her helplessness and ignorance, “that you’ll do as
I tell you. You _used_ to mind what I said to you.”
He leaned towards her as he spoke, and Francie raised her eyes to his
with a laugh in them that made him for the moment forgetful of
everything else. They were in the open water in the centre of the lake
by this time. And in that second a squall came roaring down upon them.
“Luff!” shouted Christopher, letting go the head sheets. “Luff, or we’re
over!”
Lambert let go the main sheet and put the tiller hard down with all the
strength he was master of, but he was just too late. In that moment,
when he had allowed his thoughts to leave his steering, the yacht had
dragged herself a thought beyond his control. The rough hand of the wind
struck her, and, as she quivered and reeled under the blow, another and
fiercer gust caught hold of her, and flung her flat on her side on the
water.
Before Christopher had well realised what had happened, he had gone deep
under water, come to the surface again, and was swimming, with a vision
before him of a white figure with a red cap falling headlong from its
perch. He raised himself and shook the water out of his eyes, and
swimming a stroke or two to get clear of the mast, with its sails
heaving prone on the water like the pinions of a great wounded bird, he
saw over the shoulders of the hurrying waves the red cap and the white
dress drifting away to leeward. Through the noise of the water in his
ears, and the confusion of his startled brain, he heard Lambert’s voice
shouting frantically he did not know what; the whole force of his nature
was set and centred on overtaking the red cap, to which each stroke was
bringing him nearer and nearer as it appeared and reappeared ahead of
him between the steely backs of the waves. She lay horribly still, with
the water washing over her face; and as Christopher caught her dress,
and turned, breathless, to try to fight his way back with her to the
wrecked yacht, he seemed to hear a hundred voices ringing in his ears
and telling him that she was dead. He was a good and practised swimmer,
but not a powerful one. His clothes hung heavily about him, and with one
arm necessarily given to his burden, and the waves and wind beating him
back, he began to think that his task was more than he would be able to
accomplish. He had up to this, in the intensity of the shock and
struggle, forgotten Lambert’s existence, but now the agonised shouts
that he had heard came back to him, and he raised himself high in the
water and stared about with a new anxiety. To his intense relief he saw
that the yacht was still afloat, was, in fact, drifting slowly down
towards him, and in the water not ten yards from him was her owner,
labouring towards him with quick splashing strokes, and evidently in a
very exhausted state. His face was purple-red, his eyes half starting
out of his head, and Christopher could hear his hard breathing as he
slowly bore down upon him.
“She’s all right, Lambert!” Christopher cried out, though his heart
belied the words. “I’ve got her! Hold hard; the yacht will be down on us
in a minute.”
Whether Lambert heard the words or no was not apparent. He came
struggling on, and as soon as he got within reach, made a snatch at
Francie’s dress. Christopher had contrived to get his left arm round her
waist, and to prop her chin on his shoulder, so that her face should be
above the water, and, as Lambert’s weight swung on him, it was all he
could do to keep her in this position.
“You’ll drown us all if you don’t let go!” Uttermost exertion and want
of breath made Christopher’s voice wild and spasmodic. “Can’t you tread
water till the boat gets to us?”
Lambert still speechlessly and convulsively dragged at her, his breath
breaking from him in loud gasps, and his face working.
“Good God, he’s gone mad!” thought Christopher; “we’re all done for if
he won’t let go.” In desperation he clenched his fist, with the
intention of hitting Lambert on the head, but just as he gathered his
forces for this extreme measure something struck him softly in the back.
Lambert’s weight had twisted him round so that he was no longer facing
the yacht, and he did not know how near help was. It was the boom of the
_Daphne_ that had touched him like a friendly hand, and he turned and
caught at it with a feeling of more intense thankfulness than he had
known in all his life.
The yacht was lying over on her side, half full of water, but kept
afloat by the air-tight compartments that Mrs. Lambert’s terrors had
insisted on, and that her money had paid for, when her husband had first
taken to sailing on the lake. Christopher was able with a desperate
effort to get one knee on to the submerged coaming of the cockpit, and
catching at its upper side with his right hand, he recovered himself and
prepared to draw Francie up after him.
“Come, Lambert, let go!” he said threateningly, “and help me to get her
out of the water. You need not be afraid, you can hold on to the boat.”
Lambert had not hitherto tried to speak, but now with the support that
the yacht gave him, his breath came back to him a little.
“Damn you!” he spluttered, the loud sobbing breaths almost choking him,
“I’m not afraid! Let her go! Take your arm from round her, I can hold
her better than you can. Ah!” he shrieked, suddenly seeing Francie’s
face, as Christopher, without regarding what he said, drew her steadily
up from his exhausted grasp, “she’s dead! you’ve let her drown!”
His head fell forward, and Christopher thought with the calm of despair,
“He’s going under, and I can’t help him if he does. Here, Lambert! man
alive, don’t let go! There! do you hear the launch whistling? They’re
coming to us?”
Lambert’s hand, with its shining gold signet-ring, was gripping the
coaming under water with a grasp that was already mechanical. It seemed
to Christopher that it had a yellow, drowned look about it. He put out
his foot, and, getting it under Lambert’s chin, lifted his mouth out of
the water. The steam-launch was whistling incessantly, in long notes, in
short ones, in jerks, and he lifted up his voice against the forces of
the wind and the hissing and dashing of the water to answer her. Perhaps
it was the dull weight on his arm and the stricken stillness of the face
that lay in utter unconsciousness on his shoulder, but he scarcely
recognised his own voice, it was broken with such a tone of stress and
horror. He had never before heard such music as Hawkins’ shout hailing
him in answer, nor seen a sight so heavenly fair as the bow of the
_Serpolette_ cutting its way through the thronging waves to their
rescue. White faces staring over her gunwale broke into a loud cry when
they saw him hanging, half-spent, against the tilted deck of the
_Daphne_. It was well, he thought, that they had not waited any longer.
The only question was whether they were not even now too late. His head
swam from excitement and fatigue, his arms and knees trembled, and when
at last Francie, Lambert, and finally he himself, were lifted on board
the launch, it seemed the culminating point of a long and awful
nightmare that Charlotte Mullen should fling herself on her knees beside
the bodies of her cousin and her friend, and utter yell after yell of
hysterical lamentation.
CHAPTER XV.
“Sausages and bacon, Lady Dysart! Yes, indeed, that was his breakfast,
and that for a man who--if you’ll excuse the expression, Lady Dysart,
but, indeed, I know you’re such a good doctor that I’d like you to tell
me if it was quite safe--who was vomiting lake water for half an hour
after he was brought into the house the night before.”
“Do you really mean that he came down to breakfast?” asked Lady Dysart,
with the flattering sincerity of interest that she bestowed on all
topics of conversation, but especially on those that related to the art
and practice of medicine. “He ought to have stayed in bed all day to let
the system recover from the shock.”
“Those were the very words I used to him, Lady Dysart,” returned Mrs.
Lambert dismally; “but indeed all the answer he made was,
‘Fiddle-de-dee!’ He wouldn’t have so much as a cup of tea in his bed,
and you may think what I suffered, Lady Dysart, when I was down in the
parlour making the breakfast and getting his tray ready, when I heard
him in his bath overhead--just as if he hadn’t been half-drowned the
night before. I didn’t tell you that, Mrs. Gascogne,” she went on,
turning her watery gaze upon the thin refined face of her spiritual
directress. “Now if it was me such a thing happened to, I’d have that
nervous dread of water that I couldn’t look at it for a week.”
“No, I am sure you would not,” answered Mrs. Gascogne with the
over-earnestness which so often shipwrecks the absent-minded; “of course
you couldn’t expect him to take it if it wasn’t made with really boiling
water.”
Mrs. Lambert stared in stupefaction, and Lady Dysart, far from trying to
cloak her cousin’s confusion, burst into a delighted laugh.
“Kate! I don’t believe you heard a single word that Mrs. Lambert said!
You were calculating how many gallons of tea will be wanted for your
school feast.”
“Nonsense, Isabel!” said Mrs. Gascogne hotly, with an indignant and
repressive glance at Lady Dysart, “and how was it--” turning to Mrs.
Lambert, “that he--a--swallowed so much lake water?”
“He was cot under the sail, Mrs. Gascogne. He made a sort of a dash at
Miss Fitzpatrick to save her when she was falling, and he slipped
someway, and got in under the sail and he was half-choked before he
could get out!” A tear of sensibility trickled down the good
turkey-hen’s red beak. “Indeed, I don’t know when I’ve been so upset,
Lady Dysart,” she quavered.
“Upset!” echoed Lady Dysart, raising her large eyes dramatically to the
cut glass chandelier, “I can well believe it! When it came to ten
o’clock and there was no sign of them, I was simply _raging_ up and down
between the house and the pier like a mad bull robbed of its whelps!”
She turned to Mrs. Gascogne, feeling that there was a biblical ring in
the peroration that demanded a higher appreciation than Mrs. Lambert
could give, and was much chagrined to see that lady concealing her
laughter behind a handkerchief.
Mrs. Lambert looked bewilderedly from one to the other, and, feeling
that the ways of the aristocracy were beyond her comprehension, went on
with the recital of her own woes.
“He actually went down to Limerick by train in the afternoon--he that
was half-drowned the day before, and a paragraph in the paper about his
narrow escape. I haven’t had a wink of sleep those two nights, what with
palpitations and bad dreams. I don’t believe, Lady Dysart, I’ll ever be
the better of it.”
“Oh, you’ll get over it soon, Mrs. Lambert,” said Lady Dysart
cheerfully; “why, I had no less than three children--”
“Calves,” murmured Mrs. Gascogne, with still streaming eyes.
“Children,” repeated Lady Dysart emphatically, “and I thought they were
every one of them drowned!”
“Oh, but a _husband_, Lady Dysart,” cried Mrs. Lambert with orthodox
unction; “what are children compared to the husband?”
“Oh--er--of course not,” said Lady Dysart, with something less than her
usual conviction of utterance, her thoughts flying to Sir Benjamin and
his bath chair.
“By the way,” struck in Mrs. Gascogne, “my husband desired me to say
that he hopes to come over to-morrow afternoon to see Mr. Lambert, and
to hear all about the accident.”
Mrs. Lambert looked more perturbed than gratified. “It’s very kind of
the Archdeacon, I’m sure,” she said nervously; “but Mr. Lambert--” (Mrs.
Lambert belonged to the large class of women who are always particular
to speak of their husbands by their full style and title) “Mr. Lambert
is most averse to talking about it, and perhaps--if the Archdeacon
didn’t mind--”
“That’s just what I complain of in Christopher,” exclaimed Lady Dysart,
breaking with renewed vigour into the conversation. “He was _most_
unsatisfactory about it all. Of course, when he came home that night, he
was so exhausted that I spared him. I said, ‘Not one word will I allow
you to say to-night, and I _command_ you to stay in bed for breakfast
to-morrow morning!’ I even went down at one o’clock, and pinned a paper
on William’s door, so that he shouldn’t call him. Well--” Lady Dysart,
at this turning-point of her story, found herself betrayed into saying
“My dear,” but had presence of mind enough to direct the expression at
Mrs. Gascogne. “Well, my dear, when I went up in the morning, craving
for news, he was most confused and unsatisfactory. He pretended he knew
nothing of how it had happened, and that after the upset they all went
drifting about in a sort of a knot till the yacht came down on top of
them. But, of course, something more must have happened to them than
_that!_ It really was the greatest pity that Miss Fitzpatrick got
stunned by that blow on the head just at the beginning of the whole
business. _She_ would have told us all about it. But men never can
describe anything.”
“Oh, well, I assure you, Lady Dysart,” piped the turkey hen, “Mr.
Lambert described to me all that he possibly could, and he said Mr.
Dysart gave every assistance in his power, and was the greatest help to
him in supporting that poor girl in the water; but the townspeople were
so very inquisitive, and really annoyed him so much with their
questions, that he said to me this morning he hoped he’d hear no more
about it, which is why I took the liberty of asking Mrs. Gascogne, that
the Archdeacon wouldn’t mention it to him.”
“Oh, yes, yes,” said Mrs. Gascogne very politely, recalling herself with
difficulty from the mental excursion on which she had started when Lady
Dysart’s unrelenting eye had been removed. “I am sure he will--a--be
delighted. I think, you know, Isabel, we ought--”
Lady Dysart was on her feet in a moment. “Yes, indeed, we ought!” she
responded briskly. “I have to pick up Pamela. Good-bye, Mrs. Lambert; I
hope I shall find you looking better the next time I see you, and
remember, if you cannot sleep, that there is no opiate like an open
window!”
Mrs. Lambert’s exclamation of horror followed her visitors out of the
room. Open windows were regarded by her as a necessary housekeeping
evil, akin to twigging carpets and whitewashing the kitchen, something
to be got over before anyone came downstairs. Not even her reverence for
Lady Dysart would induce her to tolerate such a thing in any room in
which she was, and she returned to her woolwork, well satisfied to let
the July sunshine come to her through the well-fitting plate-glass
windows of her hideous drawing-room.
“The person I do pity in the whole matter,” remarked Lady Dysart, as the
landau rolled out of the Rosemount gates and towards Lismoyle, “is
Charlotte Mullen. Of course, that poor excellent little Mrs. Lambert got
a great shock, but that was nothing compared with seeing the sail go
flat down on the water, as the people in the launch did. In the middle
of all poor Pamela’s own fright, when she was tearing open one of the
luncheon baskets to get some whisky out, Charlotte went into raging
hysterics, and _roared_, my dear! And then she all but fainted on to the
top of Mr. Hawkins. Who would ever have thought of her breaking down in
that kind of way?”
“Faugh!” said Mrs. Gascogne, “disgusting creature!”
“Now, Kate, you are always saying censorious things about that poor
woman. People can’t help showing their feelings sometimes, no matter how
ugly they are! All that I can tell you is,” said Lady Dysart, warming to
fervour as was her wont, “if you had seen her this afternoon as I did,
with the tears in her eyes as she described the whole thing to me, and
the agonies she was in about that girl, you would have felt sorry for
her.”
Mrs. Gascogne shot a glance, bright with intelligence and amusement, at
her cousin’s flushed handsome face, and held her peace. With Mrs.
Gascogne, to hold her peace was to glide into the sanctuary of her own
thoughts, and remain there oblivious of all besides; but the retribution
that would surely have overtaken her at the next pause in Lady Dysart’s
harangue was averted by the stopping of the carriage at Miss Mullen’s
gate.
Francie lay back on her sofa after Pamela Dysart had left her. She saw
the landau drive away towards Bruff, with the sun twinkling on the
silver of the harness, and thought with an ungrudging envy how awfully
nice Miss Dysart was, and how lovely it would be to have a carriage like
that to drive about in. People in Dublin, who were not half as grand as
the Dysarts, would have been a great deal too grand to come and see her
up in her room like this, but here everyone was as friendly as they
could be, and not a bit stuck-up. It was certainly a good day for her
when she came down to Lismoyle, and in spite of all that Uncle Robert
had said about old Aunt Mullen’s money, and how Charlotte had feathered
her own nest, there was no denying that Charlotte was not a bad old
thing after all. Her only regret was that she had not seen the dress
that Miss Dysart had on this afternoon before she had got herself that
horrid ready-made pink thing, and the shirt with the big pink
horse-shoes on it. Fanny Hemphill’s hitherto unquestioned opinion in the
matter of costume suddenly tottered in her estimation, and, with the
loosening of that buttress of her former life, all her primitive
convictions were shaken.
The latch of the gate clicked again, and she leaned forward to see who
was coming. “What nonsense it is keeping me up here this way!” she said
to herself; “there’s Roddy Lambert coming in, and won’t he be cross when
he finds that there’s only Charlotte for him to talk to! I _will_ go
down to-morrow, no matter what they say, but I suppose it will be ages
before the officers call again now.” Miss Fitzpatrick became somewhat
moody at this reflection, and tried to remember what it was that Mr.
Hawkins had said about “taking shooting leave for the 12th”; she wished
she hadn’t been such a fool as not to ask him what he had meant by the
12th. If it meant the 12th of July, she mightn’t see him again till he
came back, and goodness knows when that would be. Roddy Lambert was all
very well, but what was he but an old married man. “Gracious!” she
interrupted herself aloud with a little giggle, “how mad he’d be if he
thought I called him that!” and Hawkins was really a very jolly fellow.
The hall-door opened again; she heard Charlotte’s voice raised in
leave-taking, and then Mr. Lambert walked slowly down the drive and the
hall-door slammed. “He didn’t stay long,” thought Francie; “I wonder if
he’s cross because I wasn’t downstairs? He’s a very cross man. Oh, look
at him kicking Mrs. Bruff into the bushes! It’s well for him Charlotte’s
coming upstairs and can’t see him!”
Charlotte was not looking any the worse for what she had gone through on
the day of the accident; in fact, as she came into the room, there was
an air of youthfulness and good spirits about her that altered her
surprisingly, and her manner towards her cousin was geniality itself.
“Well, me child!” she began, “I hadn’t a minute since dinner to come and
see you. The doorstep’s worn out with the world and his wife coming to
ask how you are; and Louisa doesn’t know whether she’s on her head or
her heels with all the clean cups she’s had to bring in!”
“Well, I wish to goodness I’d been downstairs to help her,” said
Francie, whirling her feet off the sofa and sitting upright; “there’s
nothing ails me to keep me stuck up here.”
“Well, you shall come down to-morrow,” replied Charlotte soothingly;
“I’m going to lunch with the Bakers, so you’ll have to come down to do
your manners to Christopher Dysart. His mother said he was coming to
inquire for you to-morrow. And remember that only for him the pike would
be eating you at the bottom of the lake this minute! Mind that! You’ll
have to thank him for saving your life.”
“Mercy on us,” cried Francie; “what on earth will I say to him?”
“Oh, you’ll find plenty to say to him! They’re as easy as me old shoe,
all those Dysarts; I’d pity no one that had one of them to talk to, from
the mother down. Did you notice at the picnic how Pamela and her brother
took all the trouble on themselves? That’s what I call breeding, and not
sitting about to be waited on like that great lazy hunks, Miss
Hope-Drummond! I declare I loathe the sight of these English fine
ladies, and my private belief is that Christopher Dysart thinks the same
of her, though he’s too well-bred to show it. Yes, my poor Susan,”
fondling with a large and motherly hand the cat that was sprawling on
her shoulder; “he’s a real gentleman, like yourself, and not a drop of
dirty Saxon blood in him. _He_ doesn’t bring his great vulgar bull-dog
here to worry my poor son--”
“What did Mr. Lambert say, Charlotte?” asked Francie, who began to be a
little bored by this rhapsody. “Was he talking about the accident?”
“Very little,” said Charlotte, with a change of manner; “he only said
that poor Lucy, who wasn’t there at all, was far worse than any of us.
As I told him, you, that we thought was dead, would be down to-morrow,
and not worth asking after. Indeed we were talking about business most
of the time--” She pressed her face down on the cat’s grey back to hide
an irrepressible smile of recollection. “But that’s only interesting to
the parties concerned.”
CHAPTER XVI.
Francie felt an unexpected weakness in her knees when she walked
downstairs next day. She found herself clutching the stair-rail with an
absurdly tight grasp, and putting her feet down with trembling caution
on the oil-cloth stair covering, and when she reached the drawing-room
she was thankful to subside into Charlotte’s arm-chair, and allow her
dizzy head to recover its equilibrium. She thought very little about her
nerves; in fact, was too ignorant to know whether she possessed such
things, and she gave a feeble laugh of surprise at the way her heart
jumped and fluttered when the door slammed unexpectedly behind her. The
old green sofa had been pulled out from the wall and placed near the
open window, with the Dublin _Express_ laid upon it; Francie noticed and
appreciated the attention, and noted, too, that an arm-chair, sacred to
the use of visitors had been planted in convenient relation to the sofa.
“For Mr. Dysart, I suppose,” she thought, with a curl of her pretty lip;
“he’ll be as much obliged to her as I am.” She pushed the chair away,
and debated with herself as to whether she should dislodge the two cats
who, with faces of frowning withdrawal from all things earthly, were
heaped in simulated slumber in the corner of the sofa. She chose the
arm-chair, and, taking up the paper, languidly read the list of places
where bands would play in the coming week, and the advertisement of the
anthem at St. Patrick’s for the next day.
How remote she felt from it all! How stale appeared these cherished
amusements! Most people would think the Lismoyle choir a poor substitute
for the ranks of white surplices in the chancel of St. Patrick’s, with
the banners of the knights hanging above them, but Francie thought it
much better fun to look down over the edge of the Lismoyle gallery at
the red coats of Captain Cursiter’s detachment, than to stand crushed in
the nave of the cathedral, even though the most popular treble was to
sing a solo, and though Mr. Thomas Whitty might be waiting on the steps
to disentangle her from the crowd that would slowly surge up them into
the street. A heavy booted foot came along the passage, and the door was
opened by Norry, holding in her grimy hand a tumbler containing a
nauseous-looking yellow mixture.
“Miss Charlotte bid me give ye a bate egg with a half glass of whisky in
it whenever ye’d come downstairs.” She stirred it with a black kitchen
fork, and proffered the sticky tumbler to Francie, who took it, and
swallowed the thin, flat liquid which it contained with a shudder of
loathing. “How bad y’are! Dhrink every dhrop of it now! An empty sack
won’t stand, and ye’re as white as a masheroon this minute. God knows
it’s in yer bed ye should be, and not shtuck out in a chair in the
middle of the flure readin’ the paper!” Her eye fell on the apparently
unconscious Mrs. and Miss Bruff. “Ha, ha! thin! how cosy the two of yez
is on yer sofa! Walk out, me Lady Ann!”
This courtesy-title, the expression of Norry’s supremest contempt and
triumph, was accompanied by a sudden onslaught with the hearth-brush,
but long before it could reach them, the ladies referred to had left the
room by the open window.
The room was very quiet after Norry had gone away. Francie took the
evicted holding of the cats, and fell speedily into a doze induced by
the unwonted half glass of whisky. Her early dinner, an unappetising
meal of boiled mutton and rice pudding, was but a short interlude in the
dulness of the morning; and after it was eaten, a burning tract of
afternoon extended itself between her and Mr. Dysart’s promised visit.
She looked out of the window at the sailing shreds of white cloud high
up in the deep blue of the sky, at the fat bees swinging and droning in
the purple blossoms of the columbine border, at two kittens playing
furiously in the depths of the mignonette bed; and regardless of
Charlotte’s injunctions about the heat of the sun, she said to herself
that she would go out into the garden for a little. It was three
o’clock, and her room was as hot as an oven when she went up to get her
hat; her head ached as she stood before the glass and arranged the wide
brim to her satisfaction, and stuck her best paste pin into the sailor’s
knot of her tie. Suddenly the door burst unceremoniously open, and
Norry’s grey head and filthy face were thrust round the edge of it.
“Come down, Miss Francie!” she said in a fierce whisper; “give over
making shnouts at yerself in the glass and hurry on down! Louisa isn’t
in, and sure I can’t open the doore the figure I am.”
“Who’s there?” asked Francie, with flushing cheeks.
“How would I know? I’d say ’twas Misther Lambert’s knock whatever. Sich
galloppin’ in and out of the house as there is these two days! Ye may
let in this one yerself!”
When Francie opened the hall-door she was both relieved and disappointed
to find that Norry had been right in the matter of the knock. Mr.
Lambert was apparently more taken by surprise than she was. He did not
speak at once, but, taking her hand, pressed it very hard, and when
Francie, finding the silence slightly embarrassing, looked up at him
with a laugh that was intended to simplify the situation, she was both
amazed and frightened to see a moisture suspiciously like tears in his
eyes.
“You--you look rather washed out,” he stammered.
“You’re very polite! Is that all you have to say to me?” she said,
slipping her hand out of his, and gaily ignoring his tragic tone. “You
and your old yacht nearly washed me out altogether! At all events, you
washed the colour out of me pretty well.” She put up her hands and
rubbed her cheeks. “Are you coming in or going out? Charlotte’s lunching
at the Bakers’, and I’m going into the garden till tea-time, so now you
can do as you like.”
“I’ll come into the garden with you,” he said, stepping aside to let her
pass out. “But are you sure your head is well enough for you to go out
in this sun?”
“Sun your granny!” responded Francie, walking gingerly across the gravel
in her high-heeled house shoes; “I’m as well as ever I was.”
“Well, you don’t look it,” he said with a concerned glance at the faint
colour in her cheeks and the violet shadows under her eyes. “Come and
sit down in the shade; it’s about all you’re good for.”
A path skirted the flower-beds and bent round the evergreen-covered
slope that rose between the house and the road, and at the bend a
lime-tree spread its flat, green boughs lavishly over the path, shading
a seat made of half-rotten larch poles that extended its dilapidated
arms to the passer-by.
“Well now, tell me all about it,” began Lambert as soon as they had sat
down. “What did you feel like when you began to remember it all? Were
you very angry with me?”
“Yes, of course, I was angry with you, and I am now this minute, and
haven’t I a good right, with my new hat at the bottom of the lake?”
“I can tell you we were both pretty nearly at the bottom of the lake
along with it,” said Lambert, who disapproved of this frivolous way of
treating the affair. “I don’t suppose I ever was nearer death than I
was when the sail was on top of me.”
Francie looked at him for one instant with awe-struck eyes, and Lambert
was congratulating himself on having made her realise the seriousness of
the situation, when she suddenly burst out laughing.
“Oh!” she apologised, “the thought just came into my head of the look of
Mrs. Lambert in a widow’s cap, and how she’d adore to wear one! You know
she would, now don’t you?”
“And I suppose you’d adore to see her in one?”
“Of course I would!” She gave him a look that was equivalent to the wag
of the tail with which a dog assures the obtuse human being that its
worrying and growling are only play. “You might know that without being
told. And now perhaps you’ll tell me how poor Mrs. Lambert is? I hear
she was greatly upset by the fright she got about you, and indeed you’re
not worthy of it.”
“She’s much better, thank you.”
He looked at Francie under his lowered lids, and tried to find it in his
heart to wish that she could sometimes be a little more grown up and
serious. She was leaning back with her hat crushed against a trunk of
the tree, so that its brim made a halo round her face, and the golden
green light that filtered through the leaves of the lime moved like
water over her white dress. If he had ever heard the story of “Undine”
it might have afforded him the comforting hypothesis that this delicate,
cool, youthful creature, with her provoking charm, could not possibly be
weighted with the responsibility of a soul; but an unfortunate lack of
early culture denied to Mr. Lambert this excuse for the levity with
which she always treated him--a man fifteen years older than she was,
her oldest friend, as he might say, who had always been kind to her ever
since she was a scut of a child. Her eyes were closed; but an occasional
quiver of the long lashes told him that she had no intention of
sleeping; she was only pretending to be tired, “out of tricks,” he
thought angrily. He waited for a moment or two, and then he spoke her
name. The corners of her mouth curved a little, but the eyelashes were
not raised.
“Are you tired, or are you shamming?”
“Shamming,” was the answer, still with closed eyes.
“Don’t you think you could open your eyes?”
“No.”
Another short period of silence ensued, and the sound of summer in the
air round them strengthened and deepened, as the colour strengthens and
deepens in a blush. A wasp strayed in under the canopy of the lime and
idled inquisitively about Francie’s hat and the bunch of mignonette in
her belt, but she lay so still under this supreme test that Lambert
thought she must be really asleep, and taking out his handkerchief
prepared to route the invader. At the same moment there came a sound of
wheels and a fast-trotting horse on the road; it neared them rapidly,
and Miss Fitzpatrick leaped to her feet and put aside the leaves of the
lime just in time to see the back of Mr. Hawkins’ head as his polo-cart
spun past the Tally Ho gate.
“I declare I thought it was Mr. Dysart,” she said, looking a little
ashamed of herself; “I wonder where in the name of fortune is Mr.
Hawkins going?”
“I thought you were so dead asleep you couldn’t hear anything,” said
Lambert, with a black look; “he’s not coming here, anyhow.”
She dropped back into the corner of the seat again as if the start
forward had tired her.
“Oh! I was so frightened at the wasp, and I wouldn’t let on!”
“I wonder why you’re always so unfriendly with me now,” began Lambert
suddenly, fixing his eyes upon her; “there was once on a time when we
were great friends, and you used to write to me, and you’d say you were
glad to see me when I went up to town, but now you’re so set up with
your Dysarts and your officers that you don’t think your old friends
worth talking to.”
“Oh!” Francie sat up and faced her accuser valiantly, but with an
inwardly-stricken conscience. “You know that’s a dirty, black lie!”
“I came over here this afternoon,” pursued Lambert, “very anxious about
you, and wanting to tell you how sorry I was, and how I accused myself
for what had happened--and how am I treated? You won’t so much as take
the trouble to speak to me. I suppose if I was one of your swell new
friends--Christopher Dysart, for instance, who you are looking out for
so hard--it would be a very different story.”
By the time this indictment was delivered, Francie’s face had more
colour in it than it had known for some days; she kept her eyes on the
ground and said nothing.
“I knew it was the way of the world to kick a fellow out of the way when
you had got as much as you wanted out of him, and I suppose as I am an
old married man I have no right to expect anything better, but I did
think you’d have treated _me_ better than this!”
“Don’t,” she said brokenly, looking up at him with her eyes full of
tears; “I’m too tired to fight you.”
Lambert took her hand quickly. “My child,” he said, in a voice rough
with contrition and pity, “I didn’t mean to hurt you; I didn’t know what
I was saying.” He tenderly stroked the hand that lay limply in his.
“Tell me you’re not vexed with me.”
“No,” said Francie, with a childish sob; “but you said horrid things to
me--”
“Well, I never will again,” he said soothingly. “We’ll always be
friends, won’t we?” with an interrogatory pressure of the hand. He had
never seen her in such a mood as this; he forgot the inevitable effect
on her nerves of what she had gone through, and his egotism made him
believe that this collapse of her usual supple hardihood was due to the
power of his reproaches.
“Yes,” she answered, with the dawn of a smile.
“Till the next time, anyhow,” continued Lambert, still holding her hand
in one of his, and fumbling in his breast pocket with the other. “And
now, look here what I brought you to try and make up to you for nearly
drowning you.” He gently pulled her hand down from her eyes, and held up
a small gold bangle, with a horse-shoe in pearls on it. “Isn’t that a
pretty thing?”
Francie looked at it incredulously, with the tears still shining on her
eyelashes.
“Oh, Mr. Lambert, you don’t mean you got that for me? I _couldn’t_ take
it. Why, it’s real gold!”
“Well, you’ve got to take it. Look what’s written on it.”
She took it from him, and saw engraved inside the narrow band of gold
her own name and the date of the accident.
“Now, you see it’s yours already,” he said. “No, you mustn’t refuse it,”
as she tried to put it back into his hand again. “There,” snapping it
quickly on to her wrist, “you must keep it as a sign you’re not angry
with me.”
“It’s like a policeman putting on a handcuff,” said Francie, with a
quivering laugh. “I’ve often seen them putting them on the drunken men
at Dublin.”
“And you’ll promise not to chuck over your old friends?” said Lambert
urgently.
“No, I won’t chuck them over,” she replied, looking confidingly at him.
“Not for anybody?” He weighted the question with all the expression he
was capable of.
“No, not for anybody,” she repeated, rather more readily than he could
have wished.
“And you’re sure you’re not angry with me?” he persisted, “and you like
the bangle?”
She had taken it off to re-examine it, and she held it up to him.
“Here, put it on me again, and don’t be silly,” she said, the old spirit
beginning to wake in her eyes.
“Do you remember when you were a child the way you used to thank me when
I gave you anything?” he asked, pressing her hand hard.
“But I’m not a child now!”
Lambert, looking in her face, saw the provoking smile spread like
sunshine from her eyes to her lips, and, intoxicated by it, he stooped
his head and kissed her.
Steps came running along the walk towards them, and the fat face and red
head of the Protestant orphan appeared under the boughs of the
lime-tree.
“A messenger from Bruff’s afther bringing this here, Miss Francie,” she
panted, tendering a letter in her fingers, “an’ Miss Charlotte lef’ me
word I should get tea when ye’d want it, an’ will I wet it now?”
Christopher had shirked the expression of Miss Fitzpatrick’s gratitude.
CHAPTER XVII.
“TALLY HO LODGE.
“MY DEAREST FANNY,
“Although I’m nearly dead after the bazaar I must write you a line
or two to tell you what it was like. It was scrumshous. I wore my
white dress with the embroidery the first day and the pink dress
that you and I bought together the second day and everybody liked
me best in the white one. It was fearful hot and it was great luck
it was at the flower stall Mrs. Gascogne asked me to sell. Kathleen
Baker and the Beatties had the refreshments and if you saw the
colour of their faces with the heat at tea-time I declare you’d
have to laugh. The Dysarts brought in a lovely lot of flowers and
Mr. Dysart was very nice helping me to tie them up. You needn’t get
on with any of your nonsense about him, he’d never think of
flirting with me or anyone though he’s fearfully polite and you’d
be in fits if you saw the way Miss Hopedrummond the girl I told you
about was running after him and anyone could see he’d sooner talk
to his sister or his mother and I don’t wonder for their both very
nice which is more than she is. Roddy Lambert was there of course
and poor Mrs. L. in a puce dress and everybody from the whole
country round. Mr. Hawkins was grand fun. Nothing would do him but
to come behind the counter with me and Mrs. Gascogne and go on with
the greatest nonsense selling buttonholes to the old ladies and
making them buy a lot of old rotten jeranium cuttings that was all
Charlotte would give to the stall. The second day it was only just
the townspeople that were there and I couldn’t be bothered selling
to them all day and little thanks you get from them. The half of
them came thinking they’d get every thing for nothing because it
was the last day and you’d hear them fighting Mrs. Gascogne as if
she was a shopwoman. I sat up in the gallery with Hawkins most of
the evening and he brought up tea there and strawberries and
Charlotte was shouting and roaring round the place looking for me
and nobody knew where we were. ’Twas lovely--”
At this point Miss Fitzpatrick became absorbed in meditation, and the
portrayal on the blotting-paper of a profile of a conventionally classic
type, which, by virtue of a moustache and a cigarette, might be supposed
to represent Mr. Hawkins. She did not feel inclined to give further
details of her evening, even to Fanny Hemphill. As a matter of fact she
had in her own mind pressed the possibilities of her acquaintance with
Mr. Hawkins to their utmost limit, and it seemed to her not impossible
that soon she might have a good deal more to say on the subject; but,
nevertheless, she could not stifle a certain anxiety as to whether,
after all, there would ever be anything definite to tell. Hawkins was
more or less an unknown quantity; his mere idioms and slang were the
language of another world. It was easy to diagnose Tommy Whitty or Jimmy
Jemmison and their fellows, but this was a totally new experience, and
the light of previous flirtations had no illuminating power. She had, at
all events, the satisfaction of being sure that on Fanny Hemphill not
even the remotest shadow of an allusion would be lost, and that,
whatever the future might bring forth, she would be eternally credited
with the subjugation of an English officer.
The profile with the moustache and the cigarette was repeated several
times on the blotting-paper during this interval, but not to her
satisfaction; her new bangle pressed its pearly horse-shoes into the
whiteness of her wrist and hurt her, and she took it off and laid it on
the table. It also, and the circumstances of its bestowal, were among
the things that she had not seen fit to mention to the friend of her
bosom. It was nothing of course; of no more significance than the kiss
that had accompanied it, except that she had been glad to have the
bangle, and had cared nothing for the kiss; but that was just what she
would never be able to get Fanny Hemphill to believe.
The soft, clinging tread of bare feet became audible in the hall, and a
crack of the dining-room door was opened.
“Miss Francie,” said a voice through the crack, “th’ oven’s hot.”
“Have you the eggs and everything ready, Bid?” asked Francie, who was
adding a blotted smoke-wreath to the cigarette of the twentieth profile.
“I have, miss,” replied the invisible Bid Sal, “an’ Norry says to be
hurrying, for ’tis short till Miss Charlotte ’ll be comin’ in.”
Francie closed the blotter on her half-finished letter, and pursued the
vanishing figure to the kitchen. Norry was not to be seen, but on the
table were bowls with flour, eggs, and sugar, and beside them was laid a
bunch of twigs, tied together like a miniature birch-rod. The making of
a sponge-cake was one of Francie’s few accomplishments, and putting on
an apron of dubious cleanliness, lent by Louisa, she began operations by
breaking the eggs, separating the yolks from the whites, and throwing
the shells into the fire with professional accuracy of aim.
“Where’s the egg-whisk, Bid?” she demanded.
“’Tis thim that she bates the eggs with, Miss,” answered Bid Sal in the
small, bashful voice by which she indicated her extreme humility towards
those in authority over her, handing the birch-rod to Francie as she
spoke.
“Mercy on us! What a thing! I’d be all night beating them with that!”
“Musha, how grand ye are!” broke in Norry’s voice from the scullery, in
tones of high disdain; “if ye can’t bate eggs with that ye’d better lave
it to thim that can!” Following her words came Norry herself, bearing an
immense saucepanful of potatoes, and having hoisted it on to the fire,
she addressed herself to Bid Sal. “Get out from undher me feet out o’
this! I suppose it’s to make cakes ye’d go, in place of feedin’ the
pigs! God knows I have as much talked since breakfast as’d sicken an
ass, but, indeed, I might as well be playin’ the pianna as tellin’ yer
business to the likes o’ ye.”
A harsh yell at this point announced that a cat’s tail had been trodden
on, but, far from expressing compunction, Norry turned with fury upon
the latest offender, and seizing from a corner beside the dresser an
ancient carriage whip, evidently secreted for the purpose, she flogged
the whole assemblage of cats out of the kitchen. Bid Sal melted away
like snow in a thaw, and Norry, snatching the bowl of eggs from Francie,
began to thrash them with the birch rod, scolding and grumbling all the
time.
“That ye may be happy!” (This pious wish was with Norry always
ironical.) “God knows ye should be ashamed, filling yer shtummucks with
what’ll sicken thim, and dhraggin’ the people from their work to be
runnin’ afther ye!”
“I don’t want you to be running after me,” began Francie humbly.
“Faith thin that’s the truth!” returned the inexorable Norry; “if ye
have thim off’cers running afther ye ye’re satisfied. Here, give me the
bowl till I butther it. I’d sooner butther it meself than to be lookin’
at ye doin’ it!”
A loud cough, coming from the scullery, of the peculiarly doleful type
affected by beggars, momentarily interrupted this tirade.
“_Sha’se mick_, Nance! Look at that, now, how ye have poor Nance the
Fool waitin’ on me till I give her the empty bottle for Julia Duffy.”
Francie moved towards the scullery door, urged by a natural curiosity to
see what manner of person Nance the Fool might be, and saw, squatted on
the damp flags, an object which could only be described as a bundle of
rags with a cough in it. The last characteristic was exhibited in such
detail at the sight of Francie that she retired into the kitchen again,
and ventured to suggest to Norry that the bottle should be given as soon
as possible, and the scullery relieved of Nance the Fool’s dreadful
presence.
“There it is for her on the dhresser,” replied Norry, still furiously
whipping the eggs; “ye can give it yerself.”
From the bundle of rags, as Francie approached it, there issued a claw,
which snatched the bottle and secreted it, and Francie just caught a
glimpse, under the swathing of rags, of eyes so inflamed with crimson
that they seemed to her like pools of blood, and heard mouthings and
mumblings of Irish which might have been benedictions, but, if so, were
certainly blessings in disguise.
“That poor craythur walked three miles to bring me the bottle I have
there on the dhresser. It’s yerr’b tay that Julia Duffy makes for thim
that has the colic.” Norry was softening a little as the whites of the
eggs rose in stiff and silvery froth. “Julia’s a cousin of me own,
through the mother’s family, and she’s able to docthor as good as e’er a
docthor there’s in it.”
“I don’t think I’d care to have her doctoring me,” said Francie,
mindful of the touzled head and dirty face that had looked down upon her
from the window at Gurthnamuckla.
“And little shance ye’d have to get her!” retorted Norry; “’tis little
she regards the likes o’ you towards thim that hasn’t a Christhian to
look to but herself.” Norry defiantly shook the foam from the birch rod,
and proceeded with her eulogy of Julia Duffy. “She’s as wise a woman and
as good a scholar as what’s in the country, and many’s the poor
craythure that’s prayin’ hard for her night and morning for all she done
for thim. B’leeve you me, there’s plinty would come to her funeral
that’d be follyin’ their own only for her and her doctherin’.”
“She has a very pretty place,” remarked Francie, who wished to be
agreeable, but could not conscientiously extol Miss Duffy; “it’s a pity
she isn’t able to keep the house nicer.”
“Nice! What way have she to keep it nice that hasn’t one but herself to
look to! And if it was clane itself, it’s all the good it’d do her that
they’d throw her out of it quicker.”
“Who’d throw her out?”
“I know that meself.” Norry turned away and banged open the door of the
oven. “There’s plinty that’s ready to pull the bed from undher a lone
woman if they’re lookin’ for it for theirselves.”
The mixture had by this time been poured into its tin shape, and, having
placed it in the oven, Francie seated herself on the kitchen table to
superintend its baking. The voice of conscience told her to go back to
the dining-room and finish her letter, but she repressed it, and,
picking up a kitten that had lurked, unsuspected, between a frying-pan
and the wall during the rout of its relatives, she proceeded to while
away the time by tormenting it, and insulting the cockatoo with
frivolous questions.
Miss Mullen’s weekly haggle with the butcher did not last quite as long
as usual this Friday morning. She had, in fact, concluded it by herself
taking the butcher’s knife, and, with jocose determination, had
proceeded to cut off the special portion of the “rack” which she wished
for, in spite of Mr. Driscoll’s protestations that it had been bespoke
by Mrs. Gascogne. Exhilarated by this success, she walked home at a
brisk pace, regardless of the heat, and of the weight of the rusty black
tourists’ bag which she always wore, slung across her shoulders by a
strap, on her expeditions into the town. There was no one to be seen in
the house when she came into it, except the exiled cats, who were
sleeping moodily in a patch of sunshine on the hall-mat, and after some
passing endearments, their mistress went on into the dining-room, in
which, by preference, as well as for economy, she sat in the mornings.
It had, at all events, one advantage over the drawing-room, in
possessing a sunny French window, opening on to the little
grass-garden--a few untidy flower-beds, with a high, unclipped hedge
surrounding them, the resort of cats and their breakfast dishes, but for
all that a pleasant outlook on a hot day. Francie had been writing at
the dinner-table, and Charlotte sat down in the chair that her cousin
had vacated, and began to add up the expenses of the morning. When she
had finished, she opened the blotter to dry her figures, and saw, lying
in it, the letter that Francie had begun.
In the matter of reading a letter not intended for her eye, Miss Mullen
recognised only her own inclinations, and the facilities afforded to her
by fate, and in this instance one played into the hands of the other.
She read the letter through quickly, her mouth set at its grimmest
expression of attention, and replaced it carefully in the blotting-case
where she found it. She sat still, her two fists clenched on the table
before her, and her face rather redder than even the hot walk from
Lismoyle had made it.
There had been a good deal of information in the letter that was new to
her, and it seemed important enough to demand much consideration. The
reflection on her own contribution to the bazaar did not hurt her in the
least, in fact it slightly raised her opinion of Francie that she should
have noticed it; but that ingenuous confidence about the evening spent
in the gallery was another affair. At this point in her reflections, she
became aware that her eye was attracted by something glittering on the
green baize of the dinner-table, half-hidden under two or three loose
sheets of paper. It was the bangle that she remembered having seen on
Francie’s wrist, and she took it up and looked curiously at the double
horse-shoes as she appraised its value. She never thought of it as being
real--Francie was not at all above an effective imitation--and she
glanced inside to see what the mark might be. There was the
eighteen-carat mark sure enough, and there also was Francie’s name and
the date, July 1st, 189--. A moment’s reflection enabled Charlotte to
identify this as the day of the yacht accident, and another moment
sufficed for her to determine that the giver of the bangle had been Mr.
Hawkins. She was only too sure that it had not been Christopher, and
certainly no glimmer of suspicion crossed her mind that the first
spendings from her loan to Mr. Lambert were represented by the bangle.
She opened the blotter, and read again that part of the letter that
treated of Christopher Dysart. “P’yah!” she said to herself, “the little
fool! what does she know about him?” At this juncture, the wheezing of
the spring of the passage-door gave kindly signal of danger, and
Charlotte deftly slipped the letter back into the blotter, replaced the
bangle under the sheets of paper, and was standing outside the French
window when Francie came into the room, with flushed cheeks, a dirty
white apron, and in her hands a plate bearing a sponge-cake of the most
approved shade of golden-brown. At sight of Charlotte she stopped
guiltily, and, as the latter stepped in at the window, she became even
redder than the fire had made her.
“Oh--I’ve just made this, Charlotte--” she faltered; “I bought the eggs
and the butter myself; I sent Bid for them, and Norry said--she thought
you wouldn’t mind--”
On an ordinary occasion Charlotte might have minded considerably even so
small a thing as the heating of the oven and the amount of flour and
sugar needed for the construction of the cake; but a slight, a very
slight sense of wrong-doing, conspired with a little confusion,
consequent on the narrowness of her escape, to dispose her to
compliance.
“Why, me dear child, why would I mind anything so agreeable to me and
all concerned as that splendour of a cake that I see there? I declare I
never gave you credit for being able to do anything half as useful! ’Pon
me honour, I’ll give a tea-party on the strength of it.” Even as she
spoke she had elaborated the details of a scheme of which the motor
should be the cake that Francie’s own hand had constructed.
The choir practice was poorly attended that afternoon. A long and heavy
shower, coming at the critical moment, had combined with a still longer
and heavier luncheon-party given by Mrs. Lynch, the solicitor’s wife, to
keep away several members. Francie had evaded her duties by announcing
that her only pair of thick boots had gone to be soled, and only the
most ardent mustered round Mrs. Gascogne’s organ bench. Of these was
Pamela Dysart, faithful, as was her wont, in the doing of what she had
undertaken; and as Charlotte kicked off her goloshes at the gallery
door, and saw Pamela’s figure in its accustomed place, she said to
herself that consistency was an admirable quality. Her approbation was
still warm when she joined Pamela at the church door after the practice
was over, and she permitted herself the expression of it.
“Miss Dysart, you’re the only young woman of the rising generation in
whom I place one ha’porth of reliance; I can tell you, not one step
would I have stirred out on the chance of meeting any other member of
the choir on a day of this kind, but I knew I might reckon on meeting
_you_ here.”
“Oh, I like coming to the practices,” said Pamela, wondering why Miss
Mullen should specially want to see her. They were standing in the
church porch waiting for Pamela’s pony-cart, while the rain streamed off
the roof in a white veil in front of them. “You must let me drive you
home,” she went on; “but I don’t think the trap will come till this
downpour is over.”
Under the gallery stairs stood a bench, usually appropriated to the
umbrellas and cloaks of the congregation; and after the rest of the
choir had launched themselves forth upon the yellow torrent that took
the place of the path through the churchyard, Pamela and Miss Mullen sat
themselves down upon it to wait. Mrs. Gascogne was practising her Sunday
voluntary, and the stairs were trembling with the vibrations of the
organ; it was a Largo of Bach’s, and Pamela would infinitely have
preferred to listen to it than to lend a polite ear to Charlotte’s less
tuneful but equally reverberating voice.
“I think I mentioned to you, Miss Dysart, that I have to go to Dublin
next week for three or four days; teeth, you know, teeth--not that I
suppose you have any experience of such miseries yet!”
Pamela did not remember, nor, beyond a sympathetic smile, did she at
first respond. Her attention had been attracted by the dripping,
deplorable countenance of Max, which was pleading to her round the
corner of the church door for that sanctuary which he well knew to be
eternally denied to him. There had been a time in Max’s youth when he
had gone regularly with Pamela to afternoon service, lying in a corner
of the gallery in discreet slumber. But as he emerged from puppydom he
had developed habits of snoring and scratching which had betrayed his
presence to Mrs. Gascogne, and the climax had come one Sunday morning
when, in defiance of every regulation, he had flung himself from the
drawing-room window at Bruff, and followed the carriage to the church,
at such speed as his crooked legs could compass. Finding the gallery
door shut, he had made his way nervously up the aisle until, when
nearing the chancel steps, he was so overcome with terror at the sight
of the surpliced figure of the Archdeacon sternly fulminating the
Commandments, that he had burst out into a loud fit of hysterical
barking. Pamela and the culprit had made an abject visit to the Rectory
next day, but the sentence of excommunication went forth, and Max’s
religious exercises were thenceforth limited to the churchyard. But on
this unfriendly afternoon the sight of his long melancholy nose, and
ears dripping with rain, was too much for even Pamela’s rectitude.
“Oh, yes, teeth are horrible things,” she murmured, stealthily patting
her waterproof in the manner known to all dogs as a signal of
encouragement.
“Horrible things! Upon my word they are! Beaks, that’s what we ought to
have instead of them! I declare I don’t know which is the worst, cutting
your first set of teeth, or your last! But that’s not what’s distressing
me most about going to Dublin.”
“Really,” said Pamela, who, conscious that Max was now securely hidden
behind her petticoats, was able to give her whole attention to Miss
Mullen; “I hope it’s nothing serious.”
“Well, Miss Dysart,” said Charlotte, with a sudden burst of candour,
“I’ll tell you frankly what it is. I’m not easy in my mind about leaving
that girl by herself--Francie y’know--she’s very young, and I suppose I
may as well tell the truth, and say she’s very pretty.” She paused for
the confirmation that Pamela readily gave. “So you’ll understand now,
Miss Dysart, that I feel anxious about leaving her in a house by
herself, and the reason I wanted to see you so specially to-day was to
ask if you’d do me a small favour, which, being your mother’s daughter,
I’m sure you’ll not refuse.” She looked up at Pamela, showing all her
teeth. “I want you to be the good angel that you always are, and come in
and look her up sometimes if you happen to be in town.”
The lengthened prelude to this modest request might have indicated to a
more subtle soul than Pamela’s that something weightier lay behind it;
but her grey eyes met Miss Mullen’s restless brown ones with nothing in
them except kindly surprise that it was such a little thing that she had
been asked to do.
“Of course I will,” she answered; “mamma and I will have to come in
about clearing away the rest of that awful bazaar rubbish, and I shall
be only too glad to come and see her, and I hope she will come and lunch
at Bruff some day while you are away.”
This was not quite what Charlotte was aiming at, but still it was
something.
“You’re a true friend, Miss Dysart,” she said gushingly, “I knew you
would be; it’ll only be for a few days, at all events, that I’ll bother
you with me poor relation! I’m sure she’ll be able to amuse herself in
the evenings and mornings quite well, though indeed, poor child, I’m
afraid she’ll be lonely enough!”
Mrs. Gascogne, putting on her gloves at the top of the stairs, thought
to herself that Charlotte Mullen might be able to impose upon Pamela,
but other people were not so easily imposed on. She leaned over the
staircase railing, and said, “Are you aware, Pamela, that your trap is
waiting at the gate?” Pamela got up, and Max, deprived of the
comfortable shelter of her skirts, crawled forth from under the bench
and sneaked out of the church door. “I wouldn’t have that dog’s
conscience for a good deal,” went on Mrs. Gascogne as she came
downstairs. “In fact, I am beginning to think that the only people who
get everything they want are the people who have no consciences at all.”
“There’s a pretty sentiment for a clergyman’s wife!” exclaimed
Charlotte. “Wait till I see the Archdeacon and ask him what sort of
theology that is! Now wasn’t that the very image of Mrs. Gascogne?” she
continued as Pamela and she drove away; “the best and the most religious
woman in the parish, but no one’s able to say a sharper thing when she
likes, and you never know what heterodoxy she’ll let fly at you next!”
The rain was over, and the birds were singing loudly in the thick shrubs
at Tally Ho as Pamela turned the roan pony in at the gate; the sun was
already drawing a steamy warmth from the be-puddled road, and the blue
of the afternoon sky was glowing freshly and purely behind a widening
proscenium of clouds.
“Now you might just as well come in and have a cup of tea; it’s going to
be a lovely evening after all, and I happen to know there’s a grand
sponge-cake in the house.” Thus spoke Charlotte, with hospitable warmth,
and Pamela permitted herself to be persuaded. “It was Francie made it
herself; she’ll be as proud as Punch at having you to--” Charlotte
stopped short with her hand on the drawing-room door, and then opened it
abruptly.
There was no one to be seen, but on the table were two half-empty cups
of tea, and the new sponge-cake, reduced by one-third, graced the centre
of the board. Miss Mullen glared round the room. A stifled giggle broke
from the corner behind the piano, and Francie’s head appeared over the
top, instantly followed by that of Mr. Hawkins.
“We thought ’twas visitors when we heard the wheels,” said Miss
Fitzpatrick, still laughing, but looking very much ashamed of herself,
“and we went to hide when they passed the window for fear we’d be seen.”
She paused, not knowing what to say, and looked entreatingly at Pamela.
“I never thought it’d be you--”
It was borne in on her suddenly that this was not the manner in which
Miss Dysart would have acted under similar circumstances, and for the
first time a doubt as to the fitness of her social methods crossed her
mind.
Pamela, as she drove home after tea, thought she understood why it was
that Miss Mullen did not wish her cousin to be left to her own devices
in Lismoyle.
CHAPTER XVIII.
There was no sound in the red gloom, except the steady trickle of
running water, and the anxious breathing of the photographer.
Christopher’s long hands moved mysteriously in the crimson light, among
phials, baths, and cases of negatives, while uncanny smells of various
acids and compounds thickened the atmosphere. Piles of old trunks
towered dimly in the corners, a superannuated sofa stood on its head by
the wall, with its broken hind-legs in the air, three old ball skirts
hung like ghosts of Bluebeard’s wives upon the door, from which, to
Christopher’s developing tap, a narrow passage forced its angular way.
There was presently a step on the uncarpeted flight of attic stairs,
accompanied by a pattering of broad paws, and Pamela, closely attended
by the inevitable Max, slid with due caution into the room.
“Well, Christopher,” she began, sitting gingerly down in the darkness on
an old imperial, a relic of the period when Sir Benjamin posted to
Dublin in his own carriage, “Mamma says she _is_ to come!”
“Lawks!” said Christopher succinctly, after a pause occupied by the
emptying of one photographic bath into another.
“Mamma said she ‘felt Charlotte Mullen’s position so keenly in having to
leave that girl by herself,’” pursued Pamela, “‘that it was only common
charity to take her in here while she was away.’”
“Well, my dear, and what are you going to do with her?” said Christopher
cheerfully.
“Oh, I can’t think,” replied Pamela despairingly; “and I know that
Evelyn does not care about her; only last night she said she dressed
like a doll at a bazaar.”
Christopher busied himself with his chemicals and said nothing.
“The fact is, Christopher,” went on his sister decisively, “_you_ will
have to undertake her. Of course, I’ll help you, but I really cannot
face the idea of entertaining both her and Evelyn at the same time. Just
imagine how they would hate it.”
“Let them hate it,” said Christopher, with the crossness of a
good-natured person who feels that his good nature is going to make him
do a disagreeable thing.
“Ah, Christopher, be good; it will only be for three days, and she’s
very easy to talk to; in fact,” ended Pamela apologetically, “I think I
rather like her!”
“Well, do you know,” said Christopher, “the curious thing is, that
though I can’t talk to her and she can’t talk to me, I rather like her,
too--when I’m at the other end of the room.”
“That’s all very fine,” returned Pamela dejectedly; “it may amuse you to
study her through a telescope, but it won’t do anyone else much good;
after all, you are the person who is really responsible for her being
here. You saved her life.”
“I know I did,” replied her brother irritably, staring at the stumpy
candle behind the red glass of the lantern, unaware of the portentous
effect of its light upon his eyeglass, which shone like a ball of fire;
“that’s much the worst feature of the case. It creates a dreadful bond
of union. At that infernal bazaar, whenever I happened to come within
hail of her, Miss Mullen collected a crowd and made a speech at us. I
will say for her that she hid with Hawkins as much as she could, and did
her best to keep out of my way. As I said before, I have no personal
objection to her, but I have no gift for competing with young women. Why
not have Hawkins to dinner every night and to luncheon every day? It’s
much the simplest way of amusing her, and it will save me a great deal
of wear and tear that I don’t feel equal to.”
Pamela got up from the imperial.
“I hate you when you begin your nonsense of theorising about yourself as
if you were a mixture of Methuselah and Diogenes; I have seen you making
yourself just as agreeable to young women as Mr. Hawkins or anyone;”
she paused at the door. “She’ll be here the day after to-morrow,” with a
sudden collapse into pathos. “Oh, Christopher, you _must_ help me to
amuse her.”
Two days afterwards Miss Mullen left for Dublin by the early train, and
in the course of the morning her cousin got upon an outside car in
company with her trunk, and embarked upon the preliminary stage of her
visit to Bruff. She was dressed in the attire which in her own mind she
specified as her “Sunday clothes,” and as the car rattled through
Lismoyle, she put on a pair of new yellow silk gloves with a confidence
in their adequacy to the situation that was almost touching. She felt a
great need of their support. Never since she was grown up had she gone
on a visit, except for a night or two to the Hemphills’ summer lodgings
at Kingstown, when such “things” as she required were conveyed under her
arm in a brown paper parcel, and she and the three Miss Hemphills had
sociably slept in the back drawing-room. She had been once at Bruff, a
visit of ceremony, when Lady Dysart only had been at home, and she had
sat and drunk her tea in unwonted silence, wishing that there were sugar
in it, but afraid to ask for it, and respecting Charlotte for the ease
with which she accepted her surroundings, and discoursed of high and
difficult matters with her hostess. It was only the thought of writing
to her Dublin friends to tell them of how she had stayed at Sir Benjamin
Dysart’s place that really upheld her during the drive; no matter how
terrible her experiences might be, the fact would remain to her, sacred
and unalterable.
Nevertheless, its consolations seemed very remote at the moment when the
car pulled up at the broad steps of Bruff, and Gorman the butler came
down them, and solemnly assisted her to alight, while the setter and
spaniel, who had greeted her arrival with the usual official chorus of
barking, smelt round her politely but with extreme firmness. She stood
forlornly in the big cool hall, waiting till Gorman should be pleased to
conduct her to the drawing-room, uncertain as to whether she ought to
take off her coat, uncertain what to do with her umbrella, uncertain of
all things except of her own ignorance. A white stone double staircase
rose overawingly at the end of the hall; the floor under her feet was
dark and slippery, and when she did at length prepare to follow the
butler, she felt that visiting at grand houses was not as pleasant as it
sounded.
A door into the hall suddenly opened, and there issued from it the
hobbling figure of an old man wearing a rusty tall hat down over his
ears, and followed by a cadaverous attendant, who was holding an
umbrella over the head of his master, like a Siamese courtier.
“D--n your eyes, James Canavan!” said Sir Benjamin Dysart, “can’t you
keep the rain off my new hat, you blackguard!” Then spying Francie, who
was crossing the hall, “Ho-ho! That’s a fine girl, begad! What’s she
doing in my hall?”
“Oh, hush, hush, Sir Benjamin!” said James Canavan, in tones of shocked
propriety. “That is a young lady visitor.”
“Then she’s _my_ visitor,” retorted Sir Benjamin, striking his ponderous
stick on the ground, “and a devilish pretty visitor, too! I’ll drive her
out in my carriage to-morrow.”
“You will, Sir Benjamin, you will,” answered his henchman, hurrying the
master of the house along towards the hall door; while Francie, with a
new and wholly unexpected terror added to those she had brought with
her, followed the butler to the drawing-room.
It was a large room. Francie felt it to be the largest she had ever been
in, as she advanced round a screen, and saw Lady Dysart at an
immeasurable distance working at a heap of dingy serge, and behind her,
still further off, the well-curled head of Miss Hope-Drummond just
topping the cushion of a low arm-chair.
“Oh, how do you do,” said Lady Dysart, getting up briskly, and dropping
as she did so a large pair of scissors and the child’s frock at which
she had been working. “You are very good to have come over so early.”
The geniality of Lady Dysart’s manner might have assured anyone less
alarmed than her visitor that there was no ill intention in this remark;
but such discernment was beyond Francie.
“Miss Mullen told me to be over here by twelve, Lady Dysart,” she said
abjectly, “and as she had the car ordered for me I didn’t like--”
Lady Dysart began to laugh, with the large and yet refined _bonhommie_
that was with her the substitute for tact.
“Why shouldn’t you come early, my dear child?” she said, looking
approvingly at Francie’s embarrassed countenance. “I’ll tell Pamela you
are here. Evelyn, don’t you know Miss Fitzpatrick?”
Miss Hope-Drummond, thus adjured, raised herself languidly from her
chair, and shook hands with the new-comer, as Lady Dysart strode from
the room with her customary business-like rapidity. Silence reigned for
nearly a minute after the door closed; but at length Miss Hope-Drummond
braced herself to the exertion of being agreeable.
“Very hot day, isn’t it?” looking at Francie’s flushed cheeks.
“It is indeed, roasting! I was nearly melting with the heat on the
jaunting-car coming over,” replied Francie, with a desire to be as
responsive as possible, “but it’s lovely and cool in here.”
She looked at Miss Hope-Drummond’s spotless white gown, and wished she
had not put on her Sunday terra-cotta.
“Oh, is it?”
Silence; during which Francie heard the wheels of her car grinding away
down the avenue, and wished that she were on it.
“Have you been out on the lake much lately, Miss Hope-Drummond?”
Francie’s wish was merely the laudable one of trying to keep the heavy
ball of conversation rolling, but the question awoke a slumbering worm
of discontent in her companion’s well-ordered breast. Christopher was
even now loosing from his moorings at the end of the park, without
having so much as mentioned that he was going out; and Captain Cursiter,
her own compatriot, attached--almost linked--to her by the bonds of
mutual acquaintances, and her thorough knowledge of the Lincolnshire
Cursiters, had not risen to the fly that she had only yesterday thrown
over him on the subject of the steam-launch.
“No; I had rather more than I cared for the last time we were out, the
day of the picnic. I’ve had neuralgia in my face ever since that
evening, we were all kept out so late.”
“Oh, my! That neuralgia’s a horrid thing,” said Francie sympathetically.
“I didn’t get any harm out of it with all the wetting and the knock on
my head and everything. I thought it was lovely fun! But”--forgetting
her shyness in the interest of the moment--“Mr. Hawkins told me that
Cursiter said to him the world wouldn’t get him to take out ladies in
his boat again!”
Miss Hope-Drummond raised her dark eyebrows.
“Really? That is very crushing of Captain Cursiter.”
Francie felt in a moment an emphasis on the word Captain; but tried to
ignore her own confusion.
“It doesn’t crush _me_, I can tell you! I wouldn’t give a pin to go in
his old boat. I’d twice sooner go in a yacht, upsets and all!”
“Oh!”
Miss Hope-Drummond said no more than this, but her tone was sufficient.
Her eyes strayed towards the book that lay in her lap, and the finger
inserted in its pages showed, as if unconsciously, a tendency to open it
again.
There was another silence, during which Francie studied the dark and
unintelligible oil-paintings on the expanses of wall, the flowers,
arranged with such easy and careless lavishness in strange and
innumerable jars and vases; and lastly, Dinah, in a distant window,
catching and eating flies with disgusting avidity. She felt as if her
petticoats showed her boots more than was desirable, that her gloves
were of too brilliant a tint, and that she ought to have left her
umbrella in the hall. At this painful stage of her reflections she heard
Lady Dysart’s incautious voice outside:
“It’s always the way with Christopher; he digs a hole and buries himself
in it whenever he’s wanted. Take her out and let her eat strawberries
now; and then in the afternoon--” the voice suddenly sank as if in
response to an admonition, and Francie’s already faint heart sank along
with it. Oh, to be at the Hemphills, making toffee on the parlour fire,
remote from the glories and sufferings of aristocratic houses! The next
moment she was shaking hands with Pamela, and becoming gradually aware
that she was in an atmosphere of ease and friendliness, much as the
slow pleasure of a perfume makes itself slowly felt. The fact that
Pamela had on a grass hat of sunburnt maturity, and a skirt which bore
the imprint of dogs’ paws was in itself reassuring, and as they went
together down a shrubbery walk, and finally settled upon the strawberry
beds in the wide, fragrant kitchen-garden, the first terrors began to
subside in Francie’s trembling soul, and she found herself breathing
more naturally in this strange, rarefied condition of things. Even
luncheon was less formidable than she had expected. Christopher was not
there, the dreaded Sir Benjamin was not there, and Lady Dysart consulted
her about the cutting-out of poor clothes, and accepted with an almost
alarming enthusiasm the suggestions that Francie diffidently brought up
from the depths of past experience of the Fitzpatrick wardrobe.
The long, unusual leisure of the afternoon passed by her like a pleasant
dream, in which, as she sat in a basket-chair under the verandah outside
the drawing-room windows, illustrated papers, American magazines, the
snoring lethargy of the dogs, and the warm life and stillness of the air
were about equally blended. Miss Hope-Drummond lay aloof in a hammock
under a horse-chestnut tree at the end of the flower-garden, working at
the strip of Russian embroidery that some day was to languish neglected
on the stall of an English bazaar; Francie had seen her trail forth with
her arms full of cushions, and dimly divined that her fellow-guest was
hardly tolerating the hours that were to her like fragments collected
from all the holidays she had ever known. No wonder, she thought, that
Pamela wore a brow of such serenity, when days like this were her
ordinary portion. Five o’clock came, and with it, with the majestic
punctuality of a heavenly body, came Gorman and the tea equipage,
attended by his satellite, William, bearing the tea-table. Francie had
never heard the word idyllic, but the feeling that it generally conveys
came to her as she lay back in her chair, and saw the roses swaying
about the pillars of the verandah, and watched the clots of cream
sliding into her cup over the broad lip of the cream jug, and thought
how incredibly brilliant the silver was, and that Miss Dysart’s hands
looked awfully pretty while she was pouring out tea, and weren’t a bit
spoiled by being rather brown. It was consolatory that Miss
Hope-Drummond had elected to have her tea conveyed to her in the
hammock; it was too much trouble to get out of it, she called, in her
shrill, languid voice, and no one had argued the matter with her. Lady
Dysart, who had occupied herself during the afternoon in visiting the
garden-beds and giving a species of clinical lecture on each to the
wholly unimpressed gardener, had subsided into a chair beside Francie,
and began to discuss with her the evangelical preachers of Dublin, a
mark of confidence and esteem which Pamela noticed with astonishment.
Francie had got to her second cup of tea, and had evinced an edifying
familiarity with Lady Dysart’s most chosen divines, when the dogs, who
had been seated opposite Pamela, following with lambent eyes the passage
of each morsel to her lips, rushed from the verandah, and charged with
furious barkings across the garden and down the lawn towards two
figures, whom in their hearts they knew to be the sons of the house, but
whom, for histrionic purposes, they affected to regard as dangerous
strangers.
Miss Hope-Drummond sat up in her hammock and pinned her hat on straight.
“Mr. Dysart,” she called, as Christopher and Garry neared her chestnut
tree, “you’ve just come in time to get me another cup of tea.”
Christopher dived under the chestnut branches, and presently, with what
Miss Hope-Drummond felt to be unexampled stupidity, returned with it,
but without his own. He had even the gaucherie to commend her choice of
the hammock, and having done so, to turn and walk back to the verandah,
and Miss Hope-Drummond asked herself for the hundredth time how the
Castlemores _could_ have put up with him.
“I met the soldiers out on the lake to-day,” Christopher remarked as he
sat down; “I told them to come and dine to-morrow.” He looked at Pamela
with an eye that challenged her gratitude, but before she could reply,
Garry interposed in tones muffled by cake.
“He did, the beast; and he might have remembered it was my birthday, and
the charades and everything.”
“Oh, Garry, _must_ we have charades?” said Pamela lamentably.
“Well, of course we must, you fool,” returned Garry with Scriptural
directness; “I’ve told all the men about the place, and Kitty Gascogne’s
coming to act, and James Canavan’s going to put papa to bed early and
help us--’ Garry’s voice sank to the fluent complaining undertone that
distinguishes a small boy with a grievance, and Christopher turned to
his mother’s guest.
“I suppose you’ve acted in charades, Miss Fitzpatrick?”
“Is it me act? Oh goodness, no, Mr. Dysart! I never did such a thing but
once, when I had to read Lady Macbeth’s part at school, and I thought
I’d died laughing the whole time.”
Pamela and Lady Dysart exchanged glances as they laughed at this
reminiscence. Would Christopher ever talk to a girl with a voice like
this? was the interpretation of Pamela’s glance, while Lady Dysart’s was
a mere note of admiration for the way that the sunlight caught the curls
on Francie’s forehead as she sat up to speak to Christopher, and for the
colour that had risen in her cheeks since his arrival, more especially
since his announcement that Captain Cursiter and Mr. Hawkins were coming
to dinner. There are few women who can avoid some slight change of
manner and even of appearance, when a man is added to the company, and
it may at once be said that Francie was far from trying to repress her
increased interest on such an occasion.
“What made you think I could act, Mr. Dysart?” she said, looking at him
a little self-consciously; “do you think I look like an actress?”
The question was interrupted by a cry from the chestnut tree, and Miss
Hope-Drummond’s voice was heard appealing to someone to come and help
her out of the hammock.
“She can get out jolly well by herself,” remarked Garry, but Christopher
got up and lounged across the grass in response to the summons, and
Francie’s question remained unanswered. Lady Dysart rose too, and
watched her son helping Miss Hope-Drummond on to her feet, and strolling
away with her in the direction of the shrubbery. Then she turned to
Francie.
“Now, Miss Fitzpatrick, you shall come and explain that Dorcas Society
sleeve to me, and I should not be surprised if you could help me with
the acrostic.”
Lady Dysart considered herself to be, before all things, a diplomatist.
CHAPTER XIX.
Dinner was over. Gorman was regaling his fellows in the servants’ hall
with an account of how Miss Fitzpatrick had eaten her curry with a knife
and fork, and her Scotch woodcock with a spoon, and how she had accepted
every variety of wine that he had offered her, and taken only a mouthful
of each, an eccentricity of which William was even now reaping the
benefit in the pantry. Mrs. Brady, the cook, dared say that by all
accounts it was the first time the poor child had seen a bit served the
way it would be fit to put into a Christian’s mouth, and, indeed, it was
little she’d learn of behaviour or dinners from Miss Mullen, except to
make up messes for them dirty cats--a remark which obtained great
acceptance from her audience. Mr. Gorman then gave it as his opinion
that Miss Fitzpatrick was as fine a girl as you’d meet between this and
Dublin, and if he was Mr. Christopher, he’d prefer her to Miss
Hope-Drummond, even though the latter might be hung down with diamonds.
The object of this criticism was meantime congratulating herself that
she had accomplished the last and most dreaded of the day’s ceremonies,
and, so far as she knew, had gone through it without disaster. She
certainly felt as if she never had eaten so much in her life, and she
thought to herself that, taking into consideration the mental anxiety
and the loss of time involved in the consumption of one of these grand
dinners, she infinitely preferred the tea and poached eggs which formed
her ordinary repast. Pamela was at the piano, looking a long way off in
the dim pink light of the shaded room, and was playing such strange
music as Francie had never heard before, and secretly hoped never to
hear again. She had always believed herself to be extremely fond of
music, and was wont to feel very sentimental when she and one of that
tribe whom it is to be feared she spoke of as her “fellows,” sat on the
rocks at the back of Kingstown pier and listened to the band playing
“Dorothy,” or “The Lost Chord,” in the dark of the summer evening; but
these minor murmurings, that seemed to pass by steep and painful
chromatic paths from one woe to another, were to her merely exercises of
varying difficulty and ugliness, in which Miss Dysart never seemed to
get the chords quite right. She was too shy to get up and search for
amusement among the books and papers upon a remote table, and
accordingly she lay back in her chair and regarded Lady Dysart and Miss
Hope-Drummond, both comfortably absorbed in conversation, and wondered
whether she should ever have money enough to buy herself a tea-gown.
The door opened, and Christopher sauntered in; he looked round the room
through his eye-glass, and then wandered towards the piano, where he sat
down beside Pamela. Francie viewed this proceeding with less resentment
than if he had been any other man in the world; she did not so much mind
a neglect in which Miss Hope-Drummond was equally involved, and she was
rather frightened than otherwise, when soon afterwards she saw him, in
evident obedience to a hint from his sister, get up and come towards her
with a large photograph-book under his arm. He sat down beside her, and,
with what Pamela, watching from the distant piano, felt to be touching
docility, began to expound its contents to her. He had done this thing
so often before, and he knew, or thought he knew so well what people
were going to say, that nothing but the unfailing proprietary interest
in his own handiwork supported him on these occasions. He had not,
however, turned many pages before he found that Francie’s comments were
by no means of the ordinary tepid and perfunctory sort. The Oxford
chapels were, it is true, surveyed by her in anxious silence; but a
crowd of undergraduates leaning over a bridge to look at an eight--an
instantaneous photograph of a bump-race, with its running accompaniment
of maniacs on the bank--Christopher’s room, with Dinah sitting in his
armchair with a pipe in her mouth--were all examined and discussed with
fervid interest, and a cry of unfeigned excitement greeted the page on
which his own photography made its _début_ with a deep-brown portrait of
Pamela.
“Mercy on us! That’s not Miss Dysart! What has she her face blackened
for?”
“Oh, I did that when I didn’t know much about it last winter, and it’s
rather over-exposed,” answered Christopher, regarding his work of art
with a lenient parental eye.
“The poor thing! And was it the cold turned her black that way?”
Christopher glanced at his companion’s face to see whether this
ignorance was genuine, but before he had time to offer the scientific
explanation, she had pounced on a group below.
“Why, isn’t that the butler? Goodness! he’s the dead image of the Roman
Emperors in Mangnall’s questions! And who are all the other people? I
declare, one of them’s that queer man I saw in the hall with the old
gentleman--” She stopped and stammered as she realised that she had
touched on what must necessarily be a difficult subject.
“Yes, this is a photograph of the servants,” said Christopher, filling
the pause with compassionate speed, “and that’s James Canavan. You’ll
see him to-morrow night taking a leading part in Garry’s theatricals.”
“Why, d’ye tell me that man can act?”
“Act? I should think so!” he laughed, as if at some recollection or
other. “He can do anything he tries, or thinks he can. He began by being
a sort of hedge-schoolmaster, but he was too mad to stick to it. Anyhow,
my father took him up, and put him into the agency office, and now he’s
his valet, and teaches Garry arithmetic when he’s at home, and writes
poems and plays. I envy you your first sight of James Canavan on the
boards,” he ended, laughing again.
“The boards!” Francie thought to herself, “I wonder is it like a
circus?”
The photographs progressed serenely after this. Francie began to learn
something of the discreetness that must be observed in inspecting
amateur portrait photography, and Christopher, on his side, found he was
being better entertained by Miss Mullen’s cousin than he could have
believed possible. They turned page after page steadily and
conversationally, until Christopher made a pause of unconscious pride
and affection at a group of photographs of yachts in different
positions.
“These are some of the best I have,” he said; “that’s my boat, and that
is Mr. Lambert’s.”
“Oh, the nasty thing! I’m sure I don’t want to see _her_ again! and I
shouldn’t think you did either!” with an uncertain glance at him. It had
seemed to her when, once or twice before, she had spoken of the accident
to him, that it was a subject he did not care about. “Mr. Lambert says
that the upsetting wasn’t her fault a bit, and he likes going out in her
just the same. I think he’s a very brave man, don’t you?”
“Oh, very,” replied Christopher perfunctorily; “but he rather overdoes
it, I think, sometimes, and you know you got the worst of that
business.”
“I think _you_ must have had the worst of it,” she said timidly. “I
never was able to half thank you--” Even the equalising glow from the
pink lampshades could not conceal the deepening of the colour in her
cheeks.
“Oh, please don’t try,” interrupted Christopher, surprised into a
fellow-feeling of shyness, and hastily turning over the yachting page;
“it was nothing at all.”
“Indeed, I wanted to say it to you before,” persevered Francie, “that
time at the bazaar, but there always were people there. Charlotte told
me that only for you the pike would be eating me at the bottom of the
lake!” she ended with a nervous laugh.
“What a very unpleasant thing to say, and not strictly true,” said
Christopher lightly. “Do you recognise Miss Mullen in this?” he went on,
hurrying from the subject.
“Oh, how pretty!” cried Francie, peering into a small and dark picture;
“but I don’t see Charlotte. It’s the waterfall in the grounds, isn’t
it?”
Pamela looked over from the piano again, amazed to hear her brother’s
voice raised in loud laughter. There was no denying that the picture was
like a waterfall, and Francie at first rejected with scorn the
explanation that it represented a Sunday-school feast.
“Ah, go on, Mr. Dysart! Why, I see the white water and the black rocks,
and all!”
“That’s the table-cloth, and the black rocks are the children’s faces,
and that’s Miss Mullen.”
“Well, I’m very glad you never took any Sunday-school feast ever _I_ was
at, if that’s what you make them look like.”
“You don’t mean to say you go to Sunday-school feasts?”
“Yes, why wouldn’t I? I never missed one till this year; they’re the
grandest fun out!”
Christopher stared at her. He was not prepared for a religious aspect in
Miss Mullen’s remarkable young cousin.
“Do you teach in Sunday-schools?” He tried to keep the incredulity out
of his voice, but Francie caught the tone.
“You’re very polite! I suppose you think I know nothing at all, but I
can tell you I could say down all the judges of Israel, or the
journeyings of St. Paul this minute, and that’s more than you could do!”
“By Jove, it is!” answered Christopher, with another laugh. “And is that
what you talk about at school feasts?”
Francie laid her head back on the cushion of her chair, and looked at
him from under her lowered eyelashes. “Wouldn’t you like to know?” she
said. She suddenly found that this evening she was not in the least
afraid of Mr. Dysart. There were some, notably Roddy Lambert, who called
him a prig, but she said to herself that she’d tell him as soon as she
saw him that Mr. Dysart was a very nice young man, and not a bit
stuck-up.
“Very much,” Christopher replied, sticking his eye-glass into his eye,
“that was why I asked.” He really felt curious to know more of this
unwonted young creature, with her ingenuous impudence and her lovely
face. If anyone else had said the things that she had said, he would
have been either bored or revolted, and it is possibly worth noting
that, concurrently with a nascent interest in Francie, he was
consciously surprised that he was neither bored nor revolted. Perhaps it
was the influence of the half-civilised northern music that Pamela was
playing, with its blood-stirring freshness, like the whistling wind of
dawn, and its strange snatches of winding sweetness, that woke some
slumbering part of him to a sense of her charm and youth. But Pamela
guessed nothing of what Grieg’s “Peer Gynt” was doing for her brother,
and only thought how gallantly he was fulfilling her behest.
Before he said good-night to Francie, Christopher had learned a good
deal that he did not know before. He had heard how she and Mr. Whitty,
paraphrased as “a friend of mine,” had got left behind on Bray Head,
while the rest of the Sunday-school excursion was being bundled into the
train, and how she and the friend had missed three trains, from causes
not thoroughly explained, and how Mr. Lambert, who had gone there with
her, just for the fun of the thing, had come back to look for them, and
had found them having tea in the station refreshment room, and had been
mad. He had heard also of her stay at Kingstown, and of how a certain
Miss Carrie Jemmison--sister, as was explained, of another “friend”--was
wont to wake her up early to go out bathing, by the simple expedient of
pulling a string which hung out of the bedroom window over the hall
door, and led thence to Miss Fitzpatrick’s couch, where it was fastened
to her foot; in fact, by half-past ten o’clock, he had gathered a
surprisingly accurate idea of Miss Fitzpatrick’s manner of life, and had
secretly been a good deal taken aback by it.
He said to himself, as he smoked a final cigarette, that she must be a
nice girl somehow not to have been more vulgar than she was, and she
really must have a soul to be saved. There was something about her--some
limpid quality--that kept her transparent and fresh like a running
stream, and cool, too, he thought, with a grin and with a great deal of
reflective stroking of Dinah’s apathetic head, as she lay on his
uncomfortable lap trying to make the best of a bad business. He had not
failed to notice the recurrence of Mr. Lambert’s name in these recitals,
and was faintly surprised that he could not call to mind having heard
Miss Fitzpatrick mentioned by that gentleman until just before her
arrival in Lismoyle. Lambert was not usually reticent about the young
ladies of his acquaintance, and from Francie’s own showing he must have
known her very well indeed. He wondered how she came to be such a friend
of his; Lambert was a first-rate man of business and all that, but there
was nothing else first-rate about him that he could see. It showed the
social poverty of the land that she should speak of him with confidence
and even admiration; it was almost pathetic that she should know no
better than to think Roddy Lambert a fine fellow. His thoughts wandered
to the upset of the _Daphne_; what an ass Lambert had made of himself
then. If she could know how remarkably near her friend, Mr. Lambert, had
come to drowning her on that occasion, she would not, perhaps, have
quoted him so largely as a final opinion upon all matters. No one blamed
a man for not being able to swim, but the fact that he was a bad swimmer
was no excuse for his losing his head and coming cursing and swearing
and doing his best to drown everyone else.
Christopher let Dinah slip on to the floor, and threw the end of his
cigarette out of the open window of his room. He listened to the sleepy
quacking of a wild-duck, and the far-away barking of the gate-house dog.
The trees loomed darkly at the end of the garden; between them glimmered
the pale ghost of the lake, streaked here and there with the long
quivering reflections of the stars, and in and through the warm summer
night, the darting flight of the bats wove a phantom net before his
eyes. The Grieg music still throbbed an untiring measure in his head,
and the thought of Lambert gave way to more accustomed meditations. He
had leaned his elbows on the sill, and did not move till some time
afterwards, when a bat brushed his face with her wings in an attempt to
get into the lighted room. Then he got up and yawned a rather dreary
yawn.
“Well, the world’s a very pretty place,” he said to himself; “it’s a
pity it doesn’t seem to meet all the requirements of the situation.”
He was still young enough to forget at times the conventionality of
cynicism.
CHAPTER XX.
Lieutenant Gerald Hawkins surveyed his pink and newly shaven face above
his white tie and glistening shirt-front with a smile of commendation.
His moustache was looking its best, and showing most conspicuously.
There was, at least, that advantage in a complexion that burned red, he
thought to himself, that it made a fair moustache tell. In his
button-hole was a yellow rose, given him by Mrs. Gascogne on condition,
as she said (metaphorically it is to be presumed), that he “rubbed it
well into Lady Dysart” that she had no blossom to equal it in shape and
beauty. A gorgeous red silk sachet with his initials embroidered in gold
upon it lay on the table, and as he took a handkerchief out of it his
eye fell on an open letter that had lain partially hidden beneath one
side of the sachet. His face fell perceptibly; taking it up he looked
through it quickly, a petulant wrinkle appearing between his light
eyebrows.
“Hang it! She ought to know I can’t get any leave now before the
Twelfth, and then I’m booked to Glencairn. It’s all rot going on like
this--” He took the letter in both hands as if to tear it up, but
changing his mind, stuffed it in among the pocket handkerchiefs, and
hurried downstairs in response to a shout from below. His polo-cart was
at the door, and in it sat Captain Cursiter, wearing an expression of
dismal patience that scarcely warranted Mr. Hawkins’ first remark.
“Well, you seem to be in a good deal of a hurry, old chap. Is it your
dinner or is it Hope-Drummond?”
“When I’m asked to dinner at eight, I like to get there before
half-past,” replied Cursiter sourly; “and when you’re old enough to have
sense you will too.”
Mr. Hawkins drove at full pace out of the barrack gates before he
replied, “It’s all very fine for you to talk as if you were a thousand,
Snipey, but, by George! we’re all getting on a bit.” His ingenuous brow
clouded under the peak of his cap, and his thoughts reverted to the
letter that he had thrust into the sachet. “I’ve been pretty young at
times, I admit, but that’s the sort of thing that makes you a lot older
afterwards.”
“Good thing, too,” put in Cursiter unsympathetically.
“Yes, by Jove!” continued Mr. Hawkins; “I’ve often said I’d take a pull,
and somehow it never came off, but I’m dashed if I’m not going to do it
this time.”
Captain Cursiter held his peace, and waited for the confidence that
experience had told him would inevitably follow. It did not come quite
in the shape in which he had expected it.
“I suppose there isn’t the remotest chance of my getting any leave now,
is there?”
“No, not the faintest; especially as you want to go away for the
Twelfth.”
“Yes, I’m bound to go then,” acknowledged Mr. Hawkins with a sigh not
unmixed with relief; “I suppose I’ve just got to stay here.”
Cursiter turned round and looked up at his young friend. “What are you
up to now?”
“Don’t be such an owl, Cursiter,” responded Mr. Hawkins testily; “why
should there be anything up because I want all the leave I can get? It’s
a very common complaint.”
“Yes, it’s a very common complaint,” replied Cursiter, with a certain
acidity in his voice that was not lost upon Hawkins; “but what gave it
to you this time?”
“Oh, hang it all, Cursiter! I know what you’re driving at well enough;
but you’re wrong. You always think you’re the only man in the world who
has any sense about women.”
“I didn’t think I had said anything about women,” returned the
imperturbable Cursiter, secretly much amused at the sensitiveness of Mr.
Hawkins’ conscience.
“Perhaps you didn’t; but you’re always thinking about them and imagining
other people are doing the same,” retorted Hawkins; “and may I ask what
my wanting leave has to say to the question?”
“You’re in a funk,” said Cursiter; “though mind you,” he added, “I don’t
blame you for that.”
Mr. Hawkins debated with himself for an instant, and a confession as to
the perturbed condition of that overworked organ, his heart, trembled on
his lips. He even turned round to speak, but found something so
discouraging to confidence in the spare, brown face, with its
uncompromisingly bitten moustache and observant eyes, that the impulse
was checked.
“Since you seem to know so much about me and the reasons why I want
leave, and all the rest of it, I need say no more.”
Captain Cursiter laughed. “Oh! don’t on my account.”
Hawkins subsided into a dignified silence, which Cursiter, as was his
wont, did not attempt to break. He fell into meditation on the drift of
what had been said to him, and thought that he would write to Greer
(Greer was the adjutant), and see about getting Hawkins away from
Lismoyle; and he was doing so well here, he grumbled mentally, and
getting so handy in the launch. If only this infernal Fitzpatrick girl
would have stayed with her cads in Dublin everything would have been as
right as rain. There was no other woman here that signified except Miss
Dysart, and it didn’t seem likely she’d look at him, though you never
could tell what a woman would or would not do.
Captain Cursiter was “getting on,” as captains go, and he was the less
disposed to regard his junior’s love affairs with an indulgent eye, in
that he had himself served a long and difficult apprenticeship in such
matters, and did not feel that he had profited much by his experiences.
It had happened to him at an early age to enter ecstatically into the
house of bondage, and in it he had remained with eyes gradually opening
to its drawbacks, until, a few years before, the death of the only
apparent obstacle to his happiness had brought him face to face with its
realisation. Strange to say, when this supreme moment arrived, Captain
Cursiter was disposed for further delay; but it shows the contrariety of
human nature, that when he found himself superseded by his own
subaltern, an habitually inebriated viscount, instead of feeling
grateful to his preserver, he committed the imbecility of horse-whipping
him; and finding it subsequently advisable to leave his regiment, he
exchanged into the infantry with a settled conviction that all women
were liars.
The coach-house at Bruff, though not apparently adapted for theatrical
purposes, had been for many years compelled to that use by Garry Dysart,
and when, at half-past nine o’clock that night, Lady Dysart and her
guests proceeded thither, they found that it had been arranged to the
best possible advantage. The seats were few, and the carriages, ranging
from an ancestral yellow chariot to Pamela’s pony-trap, were drawn up
for the use of the rest of the audience. A dozen or so of the workmen
and farm labourers lined the walls in respectful silence; and the
servants of the household were divided between the outside car and the
chariot. In front of a door leading to the harness-room, two
clothes-horses, draped with tablecloths, a long ottoman, once part of
the furniture of a pre-historic yacht of Sir Benjamin’s, two chairs, and
a ladder, indicated the stage, and four stable-lanterns on the floor
served as footlights. Lady Dysart, the Archdeacon, and Mrs. Gascogne sat
in three chairs of honour; the landau was occupied by the rest of the
party, with the exception of Francie and Hawkins, who had followed the
others from the drawing-room at a little distance. When they appeared,
the coach-box of the landau seemed their obvious destination; but at the
same instant the wrangling voices of the actors in the harness-room
ceased, the play began, and when Pamela next looked round neither
Francie nor Mr. Hawkins was visible, and from the open window of an
invalided brougham that had been pushed into the background, came sounds
of laughter that sufficiently indicated their whereabouts.
The most able and accustomed of dramatic critics would falter in the
attempt to master the leading idea of one of Garry’s entertainments; so
far as this performance made itself intelligible, it consisted of
nightmare snatches of “Kenilworth,” subordinated to the exigencies of
stage properties, chiefest among these being Sir Benjamin’s
deputy-lieutenant’s uniform. The sword and cocked hat found their
obvious wearer in the Earl of Leicester, and the white plume had been
yielded to Kitty Gascogne, whose small crimson face grinned consciously
beneath the limp feathers. Lady Dysart’s white bernouse was felt to
confer an air of simplicity appropriate to the part of Amy Robsart, and
its owner could not repress a groan as she realised that the heroine
would inevitably be consigned to the grimy depths of the yacht ottoman,
a receptacle long consecrated to the office of stage tomb. At present,
however, it was employed as a sofa, on which sat Leicester and Amy,
engaged in an exhausting conversation on State matters, the onus of
which fell entirely upon the former, his companion’s part in it
consisting mainly of a sustained giggle. It presently became evident
that even Garry was flagging, and glances towards the door of the
harness-room told that expected relief delayed its coming.
“He’s getting a bit blown,” remarked Mr. Hawkins from the window of the
brougham. “Go it, Leicester!”
Garry’s only reply was to rise and stalk towards the door with a dignity
somewhat impaired by the bagginess of the silver-laced trousers. The
deserted countess remained facing the audience in an agony of
embarrassment that might have softened the heart of anyone except her
lord, whose direction, “Talk about Queen Elizabeth, you ass!” was
audible to everyone in the coach-house. Fortunately for Kitty Gascogne,
her powers of soliloquy were not long tested. The door burst open, Garry
hurried back to the ottoman, and had only time to seize Amy Robsart’s
hand and kneel at her feet when a tall figure took the stage with a
mincing amble. James Canavan had from time immemorial been the leading
lady in Garry’s theatricals, and his appearance as Queen Elizabeth was
such as to satisfy his oldest admirers. He wore a skirt which was
instantly recognised by the household as belonging to Mrs. Brady the
cook, a crown made of gold paper inadequately restrained his iron-grey
locks, a ham-frill ruff concealed his whiskers, and the
deputy-lieutenant’s red coat, with the old-fashioned long tails and
silver epaulettes, completed his equipment.
His entrance brought down the house; even Lady Dysart forgot her anxiety
to find out where Mr. Hawkins’ voice had come from, and collapsed into a
state afterwards described by the under-housemaid as “her ladyship in
splits.”
“Oh fie, fie, fie!” said Queen Elizabeth in a piping falsetto, paying no
heed to the demonstrations in her favour; “Amy Robsart and Leicester!
Oh, dear, dear, this will never do!”
Leicester still stooped over Amy’s hand, but even the occupants of the
brougham heard the whisper in which he said, “You’re not half angry
enough! Go on again!”
Thus charged, Queen Elizabeth swept to the back of the stage, and,
turning there, advanced again upon the lovers, stamping her feet and
gesticulating with clenched fists. “What! Amy Robsart and Leicester!
Shocking! disgraceful!” she vociferated; then with a final burst, “D--n
it! I can’t stand this!”
A roar of delight broke from the house; the delight always provoked in
rural audiences by the expletive that age has been powerless to wither
or custom to stale. Hawkins’ amusement found vent in such a stentorian
“Bravo!” that Lady Dysart turned quickly at the sound, and saw his head
and Francie’s at the window of the brougham. Even in the indifferent
light of the lamps, Francie discerned disapproval in her look. She sat
back precipitately.
“Oh, Mr. Hawkins!” she exclaimed, rashly admitting that she felt the
position to be equivocal; “I think I’d better get out.”
Now, if ever, was the time for Mr. Hawkins to take that pull of which he
had spoken so stoutly to Captain Cursiter, but in addition to other
extenuating circumstances, it must be admitted that Sir Benjamin’s
burgundy had to some slight extent made summer in his veins, and caused
him to forget most things except the fact that the prettiest girl he had
ever seen was sitting beside him.
“No, you sha’n’t,” he replied, leaning back out of the light, and taking
her hand as if to prevent her from moving; “you won’t go, will you?”
He suddenly felt that he was very much in love, and threw such entreaty
into the foregoing unremarkable words that Francie’s heart beat
foolishly, and her efforts to take away her hand were very feeble.
“You don’t want to go away, do you? You like sitting here with me?”
The powers of repartee that Tommy Whitty had often found so baffling
failed Francie unaccountably on this occasion. She murmured something
that Hawkins chose to take for assent, and in a moment he had passed his
arm round her waist, and possessed himself of the other hand.
“Now, you see, you can’t get away,” he whispered, taking a wary look out
of the window of the brougham. All the attention of the audience was
engrossed upon the stage, where, at this moment, Queen Elizabeth having
chased Amy and Leicester round the ottoman, was now doing her best not
to catch them as they together scaled the clothes-horse. The brougham
was behind everyone; no one was even thinking of them, and Hawkins
leaned towards Francie till his lips almost touched her cheek. She drew
back from him, but the kiss came and went in a moment, and was followed
by more, that she did not try to escape. The loud clapping of the
audience on the exit of Queen Elizabeth brought Hawkins back to his
senses; he heard the quick drawing of Francie’s breath and felt her
tremble as he pressed her to him, and he realised that so far from
“taking a pull,” he had let himself get out of hand without a struggle.
For this rash, enchanting evening, at all events, it was too late to try
to recover lost ground. What could he do now but hold her hand more
tightly than before, and ask her unrepentingly whether she forgave him.
The reply met with an unlooked-for interruption.
The drama on the stage had proceeded to its climax. Amy Robsart was
understood to have suffered a violent death in the harness-room, and her
entombment in the ottoman had followed as a matter of course. The
process had been difficult; in fact, but for surreptitious aid from the
corpse, the burial could scarcely have been accomplished; but the lid
was at length closed, and the bereaved earl flung himself on his knees
by the grave in an abandonment of grief. Suddenly from the harness-room
came sounds of discordant triumph, and Queen Elizabeth bounded upon the
stage, singing a war-song, of which the refrain,
“With me long sword, saddle, bridle,
Whack, fol de rol!”
was alone intelligible. Amy Robsart’s white plume was stuck in the
queen’s crown in token of victory, and its feathers rose on end as, with
a flourish of the drawing-room poker which she carried as her sceptre,
she leaped upon the grave, and continued her dance and song there.
Clouds of dust and feathers rose from the cushions, and encouraged by
the shouts of her audience, the queen’s dance waxed more furious. There
was a stagger, a crash, and a shrill scream rose from the corpse, as the
lid gave way, and Queen Elizabeth stood knee-deep in Amy Robsart’s tomb.
An answering scream came from Mrs. Gascogne and Lady Dysart, both of
whom rushed from their places on to the stage, and dragged forth the
unhappy Kitty, smothered in dust, redder in the face than ever, but
unhurt, and still giggling.
Francie and Hawkins emerged from the brougham, and mingled quietly with
the crowd in the general break-up that followed. The point at issue
between them had not been settled, but arrangements had been made for
the following day that ensured a renewal of the argument.
CHAPTER XXI.
The crash of the prayer gong was the first thing that Francie heard next
morning. She had not gone to sleep easily the night before. It had been
so much pleasanter to lie awake, that she had done so till she had got
past the stage when the process of going to sleep is voluntary, and she
had nearly exhausted the pleasant aspect of things and got to their
wrong side when the dawn stood at her window, a pallid reminder of the
day that was before her, and she dropped into prosaic slumber. She came
downstairs in a state of some anxiety as to whether the chill that she
had perceived last night in Lady Dysart’s demeanour would be still
apparent. Breakfast was nearly over when she got into the room, and when
she said good morning to Lady Dysart, she felt, though she was not
eminently perceptive of the shades in a well-bred manner, that she had
not been restored to favour.
She sat down at the table, with the feeling that was very familiar to
her of being in disgrace, combating with the excitement and hurry of her
nerves in a way that made her feel almost hysterical; and the fear that
the strong revealing light of the long windows opposite to which she was
sitting would show the dew of tears in her eyes, made her bend her head
over her plate and scarcely raise it to respond to Pamela’s good-natured
efforts to put her at her ease. Miss Hope-Drummond presently looked up
from her letters and took a quiet stare at the discomposed face opposite
to her. She had no particular dislike for Francie beyond the ordinary
rooted distrust which she felt as a matter of course for those whom she
regarded as fellow-competitors, but on general principles she was
pleased that discomfiture had come to Miss Fitzpatrick. It occurred to
her that a deepening of the discomfiture would suit well with Lady
Dysart’s present mood, and might also be to her own personal advantage.
“I hope your dress did not suffer last night, Miss Fitzpatrick? Mine was
ruined, but that was because Mr. Dysart _would_ make me climb on to the
box for the last scene.”
“No, thank you, Miss Hope-Drummond--at least, it only got a little sign
of dust.”
“Really? How nice! How lucky you were, weren’t you!”
“She may have been lucky about her dress,” interrupted Garry, “but I’m
blowed if she could have seen much of the acting! Why on earth did you
let Hawkins jam you into that old brougham, Miss Fitzpatrick?”
“Garry,” said Lady Dysart with unusual asperity, “how often am I to tell
you not to speak of grown-up gentlemen as if they were little boys like
yourself? Run off to your lessons. If you have finished, Miss
Fitzpatrick,” she continued, her voice chilling again, “I think we will
go into the drawing-room.”
It is scarcely to be wondered at that Francie found the atmosphere of
the drawing-room rather oppressive. She was exceedingly afraid of her
hostess; her sense of her misdoings was, like a dog’s, entirely shaped
upon other people’s opinions, and depended in no way upon her own
conscience; and she had now awakened to a belief that she had
transgressed very badly indeed. “And if she” (“she” was Lady Dysart, and
for the moment Francie’s standard of morality) “was so angry about me
sitting in the brougham with him,” she thought to herself, as, having
escaped from the house, she wandered alone under the oaks of the shady
back avenue, “what would she think if she knew the whole story?”
In Francie’s society “the whole story” would have been listened to with
extreme leniency, if not admiration; in fact, some episodes of a similar
kind had before now been confided by our young lady to Miss Fanny
Hemphill, and had even given her a certain standing in the eyes of that
arbiter of manners and morals. But on this, as on a previous occasion,
she did not feel disposed to take Miss Hemphill into her confidence. For
one thing, she was less distinct in her recollection of what had
happened than was usual. It had seemed to her that she had lost her
wonted clear and mocking remembrance of events from the moment when he
had taken her hand, and what followed was blurred in her memory as a
landscape is blurred by the quiver of heat in the air. For another, she
felt it all to be so improbable, so uncertain, that she could not quite
believe in it herself. Hawkins was so radically different from any other
man she had ever known; so much more splendid in all ways, the very
texture of his clothes, the scent on his handkerchief, breathed to her
his high estate. That she should have any part in this greatness was
still a little beyond belief, and as she walked softly in the deep grass
under the trees, she kept saying to herself that he could not really
care for her, that it was too good to be true.
It was almost pathetic that this girl, with her wild-rose freshness and
vivid spring-like youth, should be humble enough to think that she was
not worthy of Mr. Hawkins, and sophisticated enough to take his
love-making as a matter of common occurrence, that in no way involved
anything more serious. Whatever he might think about it, however, she
was certain that he would come here to-day, and being wholly without the
power of self-analysis, she passed easily from such speculations to the
simpler mental exercise of counting how many hours would have to crawl
by before she could see him again. She had left the avenue, and she
strolled aimlessly across a wide marshy place between the woods and the
lake, that had once been covered by the water, but was now so far
reclaimed that sedgy grass and bog-myrtle grew all over it, and creamy
meadow-sweet and magenta loose-strife glorified the swampy patches and
the edges of the drains. The pale azure of the lake lay on her right
hand, with, in the distance, two or three white sails just tilted enough
by the breeze to make them look like acute accents, gaily emphasising
the purpose of the lake and giving it its final expression. In front of
her spread a long, low wood, temptingly cool and green, with a gate
pillared by tall fir-trees, from which, as she lifted the latch, a bevy
of wood-pigeons dashed out startling her with the sudden frantic
clapping of their wings. It was a curious wood--very old, judging by
its scattered knots of hoary, weather-twisted pine-trees; very young,
judging by the growth of ash saplings and slender larches that made
dense every inch of space except where rides had been cut through them
for the woodcock shooting. Francie walked along the quiet path, thinking
little of the beauty that surrounded her, but unconsciously absorbing
its rich harmonious stillness. The little grey rabbits did not hear her
coming, and hopped languidly across the path, “for all the world like
toys from Robinson’s,” thought Francie; the honeysuckle hung in
delicious tangle from tree to tree; the wood-pigeons crooned shrilly in
the fir-trees, and every now and then a bumble-bee started from a clover
blossom in the grass with a deep resentful note, as when one plucks the
lowest string of a violoncello. She had noticed a triple wheel-track
over the moss and primrose leaves of the path, and vaguely wondered what
had brought it there; but at a turn where the path took a long bend to
the lake she was no longer left in doubt. Drawn up under a solemn
pine-tree near the water’s edge was Sir Benjamin’s bath-chair, and in it
the dreaded Sir Benjamin himself, vociferating at the top of his cracked
old voice, and shaking his oaken staff at some person or persons not
apparent.
Francie’s first instinct was flight, but before she had time to turn,
her host had seen her, and changing his tone of fury to one of hideous
affability he called to her to come and speak to him. Francie was too
uncertain as to the exact extent of his intellect to risk disobedience,
and she advanced tremblingly.
“Come here, Miss,” said Sir Benjamin, goggling at her through his gold
spectacles. “You’re the pretty little visitor, and I promised I’d take
you out driving in my carriage and pair. Come here and shake hands with
me Miss. Where’s your manners?”
This invitation was emphasised by a thump of his stick on the floor of
the chair, and Francie, with an almost prayerful glance round for James
Canavan, was reluctantly preparing to comply with it, when she heard
Garry’s voice calling her.
“Miss Fitzpatrick! Hi! Come here!”
Miss Fitzpatrick took one look at the tremulous, irritable old claw
outstretched for her acceptance, and plunged incontinently down a ride
in the direction of the voice. In front of her stood a sombre ring of
immense pine-trees, and in their shadow stood Garry and James Canavan,
apparently in committee upon some small object that lay on the thick mat
of moss and pine-needles.
“I heard the governor talking to you,” said Garry with a grin of
intelligence, “and I thought you’d sooner come and look at the rat
that’s just come out of this hole. Stinking Jemima’s been in there for
the last half hour after rabbits. She’s my ferret, you know, a regular
ripper,” he went on in excited narration, “and I expect she’s got the
muzzle off and is having a high old time. She’s just bolted this brute.”
The brute in question was a young rat that lay panting on its side,
unable to move, with blood streaming from its face.
“Oh! the creature!” exclaimed Francie with compassionate disgust;
“what’ll you do with it?”
“I’ll take it home and try and tame it,” replied Garry; “it’s quite
young enough. Isn’t it, Canavan?”
James Canavan, funereal in his black coat and rusty tall hat, was
regarding the rat meditatively, and at the question he picked up Garry’s
stick and balanced it in his hand.
“Voracious animals that we hate,
Cats, rats, and bats deserve their fate,”
he said pompously, and immediately brought the stick down on the rat’s
head with a determination that effectually disposed of all plans for its
future, educational or otherwise.
Garry and Francie cried out together, but James Canavan turned his back
unregardingly upon them and his victim, and stalked back to Sir
Benjamin, whose imprecations, since Francie’s escape, had been
pleasantly audible.
“The old beast!” said Garry, looking resentfully after his late ally;
“you never know what he’ll do next. I believe if mother hadn’t been
there last night, he’d have gone on jumping on Kitty Gascogne till he
killed her. By the bye, Miss Fitzpatrick, Hawkins passed up the lake
just now, and he shouted out to me to say that he’d be at the turf-boat
pier at four o’clock, and he hoped none of you were going out.”
Then he had not forgotten her; he was going to keep his word, thought
Francie, with a leap of the heart, but further thoughts were cut short
by the sudden appearance of Pamela, Christopher, and Miss Hope-Drummond
at the end of the ride. The treacherous slaughter of the rat was
immediately recounted to Pamela at full length by Garry, and Miss
Fitzpatrick addressed herself to Christopher.
“How sweet your woods are, Mr. Dysart,” she began, feeling that some
speech of the kind was suitable to the occasion. “I declare, I’d never
be tired walking in them!”
Christopher was standing a little behind the others, looking cool and
lank in his flannels, and feeling a good deal less interested in things
in general than he appeared. He had an agreeably craven habit of
simulating enjoyment in the society of whoever fate threw him in contact
with, not so much from a wish to please as from a politeness that had in
it an unworthy fear of exciting displeasure; and so ably had he played
the part expected of him that Miss Hope-Drummond had felt, as she
strolled with him and his sister through the sunshiny wood, that he
really was far more interested in her than she had given him credit for,
and that if that goose Pamela were not so officious in always pursuing
them about everywhere, they would have got on better still. She did not
trouble her brothers in this way, and the idea that Mr. Dysart would not
have come at all without his sister did not occur to her. She was,
therefore, by no means pleased when she heard him suggest to Miss
Fitzpatrick that she should come and see the view from the point, and
saw them walk away in that direction without any reference to the rest
of the party.
Christopher himself could hardly have explained why he did it. It is
possible that he felt Francie’s ingenuous, unaffected vulgarity to be
refreshing after the conversation in which Miss Hope-Drummond’s own
especial tastes and opinions had shed their philosophy upon a
_rechauffé_ of the society papers, and recollections of Ascot and
Hurlingham. Perhaps also, after his discovery that Francie had a soul to
be saved, he resented the absolute possession that Hawkins had taken of
her the night before. Hawkins was a good little chap, but not the sort
of person to develop a nascent intellectuality, thought this sage of
seven-and-twenty.
“Why did you come out here by yourself?” he said to her, some little
time after they had left the others.
“And why shouldn’t I?” answered Francie, with the pertness that seldom
failed her, even when, as on this morning, she felt a little
uninterested in every subject except one.
“Because it gave us the trouble of coming out to look for you.”
“To see I didn’t get into mischief, I suppose!”
“That hadn’t occurred to me. Do you always get into mischief when you go
out by yourself?”
“I would if I thought you were coming out to stop me!”
“But why should I want to stop you?” asked Christopher, aware that this
class of conversation was of a very undeveloping character, but feeling
unable to better it.
“Oh, I don’t know; I think everyone’s always wanting to stop me,”
replied Francie with a cheerful laugh; “I declare I think it’s
impossible for me to do anything right.”
“Well, you don’t seem to mind it very much,” said Christopher, the
thought of how like she was to a typical “June” in a Christmas Number
striking him for the second time; “but perhaps that’s because you’re
used to it.”
“Oh, then, I can tell you I _am_ used to it, but, indeed, I don’t like
it any better for that.”
There was a pause after this. They scrambled over the sharp loose rocks,
and between the stunted fir-trees of the lake shore, until they gained a
comparatively level tongue of sandy gravel, on which the sinuous line of
dead rushes showed how high the fretful waves had thrust themselves in
winter. A glistening bay intervened between this point and the
promontory of Bruff, a bay dotted with the humped backs of the rocks in
the summer shallows, and striped with dark green beds of rushes, among
which the bald coots dodged in and out with shrill metallic chirpings.
Outside Bruff Point the lake spread broad and mild, turned to a
translucent lavender grey by an idly-drifting cloud; the slow curve of
the shore was followed by the woods, till the hay fields of Lismoyle
showed faintly beyond them, and, further on, the rival towers of church
and chapel gave a finish to the landscape that not even conventionality
could deprive of charm. Christopher knew every detail of it by heart.
He had often solaced himself with it when, as now, he had led forth
visitors to see the view, and had discerned their boredom with a
keenness that was the next thing to sympathy; he had lain there on quiet
Autumn evenings, and tried to put into fitting words the rapture and the
despair of the sunset, and had gone home wondering if his emotions were
not mere self-conscious platitudes, rather more futile and contemptible
than the unambitious adjectives, or even the honest want of interest, of
the average sight-seer. He waited rather curiously to see whether Miss
Fitzpatrick’s problematic soul would here utter itself. From his
position a little behind her he could observe her without seeming to do
so; she was looking down the lake with a more serious expression than he
had yet seen on her face, and when she turned suddenly towards him,
there was a wistfulness in her eyes that startled him.
“Mr. Dysart,” she began, rather more shyly than usual; “d’ye know whose
is that boat with the little sail, going away down the lake now?”
Christopher’s mood received an unpleasant jar.
“That’s Mr. Hawkins’ punt,” he replied shortly.
“Yes, I thought it was,” said Francie, too much preoccupied to notice
the flatness of her companion’s tone.
There was another pause, and then she spoke again.
“Mr. Dysart, d’ye think--would you mind telling me, was Lady Dysart mad
with me last night?” She blushed as she looked at him, and Christopher
was much provoked to feel that he also became red.
“Last night?” he echoed in a tone of as lively perplexity as he could
manage; “what do you mean? Why should my mother be angry with you?” In
his heart he knew well that Lady Dysart had been, as Francie expressed
it, “mad.”
“I know she was angry,” pursued Francie. “I saw the look she gave me
when I was getting out of the brougham, and then this morning she was
angry too. I didn’t think it was any harm to sit in the brougham.”
“No more it is. I’ve often seen her do it herself.”
“Ah! Mr. Dysart, I didn’t think you’d make fun of me,” she said with an
accent on the “you” that was flattering, but did not altogether please
Christopher. “You know,” she went on, “I’ve never stayed in a house like
this before. I mean--you’re all so different--”
“I think you must explain that remarkable statement,” said Christopher,
becoming Johnsonian as was his wont when he found himself in a
difficulty. “It seems to me we’re even depressingly like ordinary human
beings.”
“You’re different to me,” said Francie in a low voice, “and you know it
well.”
The tears came to her eyes, and Christopher, who could not know that
this generality covered an aching thought of Hawkins, was smitten with
horrified self-questioning as to whether anything he had said or done
could have wounded this girl, who was so much more observant and
sensitive than he could have believed.
“I can’t let you say things like that,” he said clumsily. “If we are
different from you, it is so much the worse for us.”
“You’re trying to pay me a compliment now to get out of it,” said
Francie, recovering herself; “isn’t that just like a man?”
She felt, however, that she had given him pain, and the knowledge seemed
to bring him more within her comprehension.
CHAPTER XXII.
There are few things that so stimulate life, both social and vegetable,
in a country neighbourhood, as the rivalry that exists, sometimes
unconfessed, sometimes bursting into an open flame, among the garden
owners of the district. The Bruff garden was a little exalted and
removed from such competition, but the superiority had its depressing
aspect for Lady Dysart in that it was counted no credit to her to excel
her neighbours, although those neighbours took to themselves the highest
credit when they succeeded in excelling her. Of all these Mr. Lambert
was the one she most feared and respected. He knew as well, if not
better than she, the joints in the harness of Doolan the gardener, the
weak battalions in his army of bedding-out plants, the failures in the
ranks of his roses. Doolan himself, the despotic and self-confident,
felt an inward qualm when he saw Mr. Lambert strolling slowly through
the garden with her ladyship, as he was doing this very afternoon, his
observant eye taking in everything that Doolan would have preferred that
it should not take in, while he paid a fitting attention to Lady
Dysart’s conversation.
“I cannot understand why these Victor Verdiers have not better hearts,”
she was saying, with the dejection of a clergyman disappointed in his
flock. “Mrs. Waller told me they were very greedy feeders, and so I gave
them the cleanings of the scullery drain, but they don’t seem to care
for it. Doolan, of course, said Mrs. Waller was wrong, but I should like
to know what you thought about it.”
Mr. Lambert delivered a diplomatic opinion, which sufficiently coincided
with Lady Dysart’s views, and yet kept her from feeling that she had
been entirely in the right. He prided himself as much on his knowledge
of women as of roses, and there were ultra feminine qualities in Lady
Dysart, which made her act up to his calculations on almost every point.
Pamela did not lend herself equally well to his theories; “she hasn’t
half the go of her mother. She’d as soon talk to an old woman as to the
smartest chap in Ireland,” was how he expressed the fine impalpable
barrier that he always felt between himself and Miss Dysart. She was now
exactly fulfilling this opinion by devoting herself to the entertainment
of his wife, while the others were amusing themselves down at the
launch; and being one of those few who can go through unpleasant social
duties with “all grace, and not with half disdain hid under grace,” not
even Lambert could guess that she desired anything more agreeable.
“Isn’t it disastrous that young Hynes is determined upon going to
America?” remarked Lady Dysart presently, as they left the garden; “just
when he had learned Doolan’s ways, and Doolan _is_ so hard to please.”
“America is the curse of this country,” responded Mr. Lambert gloomily;
“the people are never easy till they get there and make a bit of money,
and then they come swaggering back, saying Ireland’s not fit to live in,
and end by setting up a public-house and drinking themselves to death.
They’re sharp enough to know the only way of making money in Ireland is
by selling drink.” Lambert spoke with the conviction of one who is sure,
not only of his facts, but of his hearer’s sympathy. Then seeing his way
to a discussion of the matter that had brought him to Bruff, he went on,
“I assure you, Lady Dysart, the amount of money that’s spent in drink in
Lismoyle would frighten you. It’s easy to know where the rent goes, and
those that aren’t drunken are thriftless, and there isn’t one of them
has the common honesty to give up their land when they’ve ruined it and
themselves. Now, there’s that nice farm, Gurthnamuckla, down by the
lake-side, all going to moss from being grazed year after year, and the
house falling to pieces for the want of looking after; and as for paying
her rent--” he broke off with a contemptuous laugh.
“Oh, but what can you expect from that wretched old Julia Duffy?” said
Lady Dysart good-naturedly; “she’s too poor to keep the place in order.”
“I can expect one thing of her,” said Lambert, with possibly a little
more indignation than he felt; “that she’d pay up some of her arrears,
or if she can’t, that she’d go out of the farm. I could get a tenant for
it to-morrow that would give me a good fine for it and put the house to
rights into the bargain.”
“Of course, that would be an excellent thing, and I can quite see that
she ought to go,” replied Lady Dysart, falling away from her first
position; “but what would happen to the poor old creature if she left
Gurthnamuckla?”
“That’s just what your son says,” replied Lambert with an almost
irrepressible impatience; “he thinks she oughtn’t to be disturbed
because of some promise that she says Sir Benjamin made her, though
there isn’t a square inch of paper to prove it. But I think there can be
no doubt that she’d be better and healthier out of that house; she keeps
it like a pig-stye. Of course, as you say, the trouble is to find some
place to put her.”
Lady Dysart turned upon him a face shining with the light of
inspiration.
“The back-lodge!” she said, with Delphic finality. “Let her go into the
back-lodge when Hynes goes out of it!”
Mr. Lambert received this suggestion with as much admiration as if he
had not thought of it before.
“By Jove! Lady Dysart, I always say that you have a better head on your
shoulders than any one of us! That’s a regular happy thought.”
Any new scheme, no matter how revolutionary, was sure to be viewed with
interest, if not with favour, by Lady Dysart, and if she happened to be
its inventor, it was endowed with virtues that only flourished more
strongly in the face of opposition. In a few minutes she had established
Miss Duffy in the back-lodge, with, for occupation, the care of the
incubator recently imported to Bruff, and hitherto a failure except as a
cooking-stove; and for support, the milk of a goat that should be
chained to a laurel at the back of the lodge, and fed by hand. While
these details were still being expanded, there broke upon the air a
series of shrill, discordant whistles, coming from the direction of the
lake.
“Good heavens!” ejaculated Lady Dysart. “What can that be? Something
must be happening to the steam-launch; it sounds as if it were in
danger!”
“It’s more likely to be Hawkins playing the fool,” replied Lambert
ill-temperedly. “I saw him on the launch with Miss Fitzpatrick just
after we left the pier.”
Lady Dysart said nothing, but her expression changed with such dramatic
swiftness from vivid alarm to disapproval, that her mental attitude was
as evident as if she had spoken.
“Hawkins is very popular in Lismoyle,” observed Lambert, trepidly.
“That I can very well understand,” said Lady Dysart, opening her parasol
with an abruptness that showed annoyance, “since he takes so much
trouble to make himself agreeable to the Lismoyle young ladies.”
Another outburst of jerky, amateur whistles from the steam launch gave
emphasis to the remark.
“Oh, the trouble’s a pleasure,” said Lambert acidly. “I hope the
pleasure won’t be a trouble to the young ladies one of these days.”
“Why, what do you mean?” cried Lady Dysart, much interested.
“Oh, nothing,” said Lambert, with a laugh, “except that he’s been known
to love and ride away before now.”
He had no particular object in lowering Hawkins in Lady Dysart’s eyes,
beyond the fact that it was an outlet for his indignation at Francie’s
behaviour in leaving him, her oldest friend, to go and make a common
laughing-stock of herself with that young puppy, which was the form in
which the position shaped itself in his angry mind. He almost decided to
tell Lady Dysart the episode of the Limerick tobacconist’s daughter,
when they saw Miss Hope-Drummond and Captain Cursiter coming up the
shrubbery path towards them, and he was obliged to defer it to a better
occasion.
“What was all that whistling about, Captain Cursiter?” asked Lady
Dysart, with a certain vicarious severity.
Captain Cursiter seemed indisposed for discussion. “Mr. Hawkins was
trying the whistle, I think,” he replied with equal severity.
“Oh, yes, Lady Dysart!” broke in Miss Hope-Drummond, apparently much
amused; “Mr. Hawkins has nearly deafened us with that ridiculous
whistle; they _would_ go off down the lake, and when we called after
them to ask where they were going, and told them they would be late for
tea, they did nothing but whistle back at us in that absurd way.”
“Why? What? Who have gone? Whom do you mean by they?” Lady Dysart’s
handsome eyes shone like stars as they roved in wide consternation from
one speaker to another.
“Miss Fitzpatrick and Mr. Hawkins!” responded Miss Hope-Drummond with
childlike gaiety; “we were all talking on the pier, and we suddenly
heard them calling out ‘good-bye!’ And Mr. Hawkins said he couldn’t stop
the boat, and off they went down the lake! I don’t know when we shall
see them again.”
Lady Dysart’s feelings found vent in a long-drawn groan. “Not able to
stop the boat! Oh, Captain Cursiter, is there any danger? Shall I send a
boat after them? Oh, how I wish this house was in the Desert of Sahara,
or that that intolerable lake was at the bottom of the sea!”
This was not the first time that Captain Cursiter had been called upon
to calm Lady Dysart’s anxieties in connection with the lake, and he now
unwillingly felt himself bound to assure her that Hawkins thoroughly
understood the management of the _Serpolette_, that he would certainly
be back in a few minutes, and that in any case, the lake was as calm as
the conventional mill-pond. Inwardly he was cursing himself for having
yielded to Hawkins in putting in to Bruff; he was furious with Francie
for the vulgar liberties taken by her with the steam-whistle, an
instrument employed by all true steam-launchers in the most abstemious
way; and lastly, he was indignant with Hawkins for taking his boat
without his permission, and leaving him here, as isolated from all means
of escape, and as unprotected, as if his clothes had been stolen while
he was bathing.
The party proceeded moodily into the house, and, as moodily, proceeded
to partake of tea. It was just about the time that Mrs. Lambert was
asking that nice, kind Miss Dysart for another cup of _very_ weak
tea--“Hog-wash, indeed, as Mr. Lambert calls it”--that the launch was
sighted by her proprietor crossing the open space of water beyond Bruff
Point, and heading for Lismoyle. Almost immediately afterwards Mrs.
Lambert received the look from her husband which intimated that the time
had arrived for her to take her departure, and some instinct told her
that it would be advisable to relinquish the prospect of the second cup
and to go at once.
If Mr. Lambert’s motive in hurrying back to Lismoyle was the hope of
finding the steam-launch there, his sending along our friend the black
mare, till her sleek sides were in a lather of foam, was unavailing. As
he drove on to the quay the _Serpolette_ was already steaming back to
Bruff round the first of the miniature headlands that jagged the shore,
and the good turkey-hen’s twitterings on the situation received even
less attention than usual, as her lord pulled the mare’s head round and
drove home to Rosemount.
The afternoon dragged wearily on at Bruff; Lady Dysart’s mood
alternating between anger and fright as dinner-time came nearer and
nearer and there was still no sign of the launch.
“What will Charlotte Mullen say to me?” she wailed, as she went for the
twentieth time to the window and saw no sign of the runaways upon the
lake vista that was visible from it. She found small consolation in the
other two occupants of the drawing-room. Christopher, reading the
newspaper with every appearance of absorbed interest, treated the
alternative theories of drowning or elopement with optimistic
indifference; and Miss Hope-Drummond, while disclaiming any idea of
either danger, dwelt on the social aspect of the affair so ably as
almost to reduce her hostess to despair. Cursiter was down at the pier,
seriously debating with himself as to the advisability of rowing the
long four miles back to Lismoyle, and giving his opinion to Mr. Hawkins
in language that would, he hoped, surprise even that bland and
self-satisfied young gentleman. There Pamela found him standing, as
desolate as Sir Bedivere when the Three Queens had carried away King
Arthur in their barge, and from thence she led him, acquiescing with
sombre politeness in the prospect of dining out for the second time in
one week, and wondering whether Providence would again condemn him to
sit next Miss Hope-Drummond, and prattle to her about the Lincolnshire
Cursiters. He felt as if talking to Pamela would make the situation more
endurable. She knew how to let a man alone, and when she did talk she
had something to say, and did not scream twaddle at you like a peacock.
These unamiable reflections will serve to show the irritation of Captain
Cursiter’s mind, and as he stalked into dinner with Lady Dysart, and
found that for her sake he had better make the best of his subaltern’s
iniquity, he was a man much to be pitied.
CHAPTER XXIII
At about this very time it so happened that Mr. Hawkins was also
beginning to be sorry for himself. The run to Lismoyle had been capital
fun, and though the steering and the management of the machinery took up
more of his attention than he could have wished, he had found Francie’s
society more delightful than ever. The posting of a letter, which he had
fortunately found in his pocket, had been the pretext for the
expedition, and both he and Francie confidently believed that they would
get back to Bruff at about six o’clock. It is true that Mr. Hawkins
received rather a shock when, on arriving at Lismoyle, he found that it
was already six o’clock, but he kept this to himself, and lost no time
in starting again for Bruff.
The excitement and hurry of the escapade had conspired, with the
practical business of steering and attending to the various brass taps,
to throw sentiment for a space into the background, and that question as
to whether forgiveness should or should not be extended to him, hung
enchantingly on the horizon, as delightful and as seductive as the blue
islands that floated far away in the yellow haze of the lowered sun.
There was not a breath of wind, and the launch slit her way through
tranquil, oily spaces of sky that lay reflected deep in the water, and
shaved the long rocky points so close that they could see the stones at
the bottom looking like enormous cairngorms in the golden shallows.
“That was a near thing,” remarked Mr. Hawkins complacently, as a slight
grating sound told that they had grazed one of these smooth-backed
monsters. “Good business old Snipey wasn’t on board!”
“Well, I’ll tell old Snipey on you the very minute I get back!”
“Oh, you little horror!” said Mr. Hawkins.
Both laughed at this brilliant retort, and Hawkins looked down at her,
where she sat near him, with an expression of fondness that he did not
take the least pains to conceal.
“Hang it! you know,” he said presently, “I’m sick of holding this
blooming wheel dead amidships; I’ll just make it fast, and let her rip
for a bit by herself.” He suited the action to the word, and came and
sat down beside her.
“Now you’re going to drown me again, I suppose, the way Mr. Lambert
did,” Francie said. She felt a sudden trembling that was in no way
caused by the danger of which she had spoken; she knew quite well why he
had left the wheel, and her heart stood still with the expectation of
that explanation that she knew was to come.
“So you think I want to drown you, do you?” said Hawkins, getting very
close to her, and trying to look under the wide brim of her hat. “Turn
round and look me in the face and say you’re ashamed of yourself for
thinking of such a thing.”
“Go on to your steering,” responded Francie, still looking down and
wondering if he saw how her hands were trembling.
“But I’m not wanted to steer, and you do want me here, don’t you?”
replied Hawkins, his face flushing through the sunburn as he leaned
nearer to her, “and you know you never told me last night if you were
angry with me or not.”
“Well, I was.”
“Ah, not very--” A rather hot and nervous hand, burned to an unromantic
scarlet, turned her face upwards against her will. “Not very?” he said
again, looking into her eyes, in which love lay helpless like a
prisoner.
“Don’t,” said Francie, yielding the position, powerless, indeed, to do
otherwise.
Her delicate defeated face was drawn to his; her young soul rushed with
it, and with passionate, innocent sincerity, thought it had found heaven
itself. Hawkins could not tell how long it was before he heard again, as
if in a dream, the click-clicking of the machinery, and wondered, in the
dazed way of a person who is “coming to” after an anæsthetic, how the
boat was getting on.
“I must go back to the wheel, darling,” he whispered in the small ear
that lay so close to his lips; “I’m afraid we’re a little bit off the
course.”
As he spoke, his conscience reminded him that he himself had got a good
deal off his course, but he put the thought aside. The launch was duly
making for the headland that separated them from Bruff, but Hawkins had
not reflected that in rounding the last point he had gone rather nearer
to it than was usual, and that he was consequently inside the proper
course. This, however, was an easy matter to rectify, and he turned the
_Serpolette’s_ head out towards the ordinary channel. A band of rushes
lay between him and it, and he steered wide of them to avoid their
parent shallow. Suddenly there was a dull shock, a quiver ran through
the launch, and Hawkins found himself sitting abruptly on the
india-rubber matting at Francie’s feet. The launch had run at full speed
upon the soft, muddy shallow that extended unconscionably far beyond the
bed of rushes, and her sharp nose was now digging itself deeper and
deeper into the mud. Hawkins lost no time in reversing the engine, but
by the time they had gone full speed astern for five minutes, and had
succeeded only in lashing the water into a thick, pea-soupy foam all
round them, he began to feel exceedingly anxious as to their prospects
of getting off again.
“Well, we’ve been and gone and done it this time,” he said, with a laugh
that had considerably more discomfiture than mirth in it; “I expect
we’ve got to stay here till we’re taken off.”
Francie looked all round the lake; not a boat was in sight, not even a
cottage on the shore from which they might hope for help. She was
standing up, pale, now that the tide of excitement had ebbed a little,
and shaken by a giddy remembrance of that moment when the yacht heeled
over and flung her into blackness.
“I told you you were going to drown me,” she said, shivering and
laughing together; “and oh--! what in the name of goodness will I say to
Lady Dysart?”
“Oh, we’ll tell her it was an accident, and she won’t say a word,” said
Hawkins with more confidence than he felt. “If the worst comes to the
worst I’ll swim ashore and get a boat.”
“Oh don’t, don’t! you mustn’t do that!” she cried, catching at his arm
as if she already saw him jumping overboard; “I’d be frightened--I
couldn’t bear to see you--don’t go away from me!”
Her voice failed pathetically, and, bared of all their wiles, her eyes
besought him through the tears of a woman’s terror and tenderness.
Hawkins looked at her with a kind of ecstacy.
“Do you care so much as all that,” he said, “you silly little thing!”
After this there was nothing to be done except sit down again, and with
her head on his shoulder, allow that fatal anæsthetic to rob him of all
considerations beyond Francie’s kisses.
CHAPTER XXIV.
Dinner at Bruff was over. It had been delayed as long as possible in the
belief that each moment would bring back the culprits, and it had
dragged painfully through its eight courses, in spite of Lady Dysart’s
efforts to hasten Gorman and his satellite in their inexorable orbit.
Everyone except Garry and Miss Hope-Drummond had been possessed by an
anxiety which Lady Dysart alone had courage to express. She indeed,
being a person who habitually said what other people were half afraid to
think, had dilated on all possible calamities till Cursiter, whose
temper was momently becoming worse, many times wished himself on the
lake, rowing dinnerless and vengeful on the track of the fugitives.
The whole party was now out of doors, and on its way down to the
landing-place, in the dark twilight; Lady Dysart coming last of all, and
driving before her the much incensed Gorman, whom she had armed with the
gong, in the idea that its warlike roar would be at once a guide and a
menace to the wanderers. So far it had only had the effect of drawing
together in horrified questioning all the cattle in the lower part of
the park, and causing them to rush, bellowing, along by the railings
that separated them from the siren who cried to them with a voice so
commanding and so mysterious. Gorman was fully alive to the indignity of
his position, and to the fact that Master Garry, his ancient enemy, was
mocking at his humiliation; but any attempt to moderate his attack upon
the gong was detected by his mistress.
“Go on, Gorman! Beat it louder! The more they bellow the better; it will
guide them into the landing-place.”
Christopher’s affected misapprehension of his mother’s pronouns created
a diversion for some time, as it was perhaps intended to do. He had set
himself to treat the whole affair with unsympathetic levity, but, in
spite of himself, an insistent thorn of anxiety made it difficult for
him to make little of his mother’s vigorous panic. It was absurd, but
her lamentations about the dangers of the lake and of steam-launches
found a hollow echo in his heart. He remembered, with a shudder that he
had not felt at the time, the white face rising and dipping in the
trough of the grey lake waves; and though his sense of humour, and of
the supreme inadequacy and staleness of swearing, usually deprived him
of that safety valve, he was conscious that in the background of his
mind the traditional adjective was monotonously coupling itself with
the name of Mr. Hawkins. He was walking behind the others down the path
to the pier. Here and there great trees that looked tired from their
weight of foliage stood patiently spreading their arms to the dew, and
in the intervals between Gorman’s fantasias on the gong, he could hear
how the diffident airs from the lake whispered confidentially to the
sleeping leaves. There was no moon; the sky was thickened with a light
cloudiness, and in the mystical twilight the pale broad blossoms of an
elder-bush looked like constellated stars in a nearer and darker
firmament. Christopher walked on, that cold memory of danger and
disquiet jarring the fragrance and peace of the rich summer night.
The searchers ranged themselves on the pier; the gong was stilled, and
except for the occasional stamping of a hoof, or low booming complaint
from the cattle, there was perfect silence. All were listening for some
sound from the lake before Christopher and Cursiter carried out their
intention of starting in a boat to look for the launch. Suddenly in the
misty darkness into which all were staring, a vivid spark of light
sprang out. It burned for a few seconds only, a sharp distinct star, and
then disappeared.
“There they are!” cried Lady Dysart. “The gong, Gorman! The gong!”
Gorman sounded with a will, and the harsh, brazen blare spread and
rolled over the lake, but there was no response.
“They _must_ hear that,” said Cursiter to Christopher; “why the devil
don’t he whistle?”
“How should I know?” answered Christopher, with a crossness which was in
some irrational way the outcome of extreme relief; “I suppose he fooled
with it till it broke.”
“Perhaps they are not there after all,” suggested Miss Hope-Drummond
cheerfully.
“How can you say such a thing, Evelyn!” exclaimed Lady Dysart
indignantly; “I know it was they, and the light was a signal of
distress!”
“More likely to have been Hawkins lighting a cigarette,” said
Christopher; “if everyone would stop talking at the same time we might
be able to hear something.”
A question ran like a ripple through Pamela’s mind, “What makes
Christopher cross to-night?” but the next instant she forgot it. A
distant shout, unmistakably uttered by Hawkins, came thinly to them
across the water, and in another second or two the noise of oars could
be distinctly heard. The sound advanced steadily.
“Show a light there on the pier!” called out a voice that was not
Hawkins’.
Cursiter struck a match, a feeble illuminant that made everything around
invisible except the faces of the group on the pier, and by the time it
had been tossed, like a falling star, into the tarry blackness of the
water, the boat was within conversational distance.
“Is Miss Fitzpatrick there?” demanded Lady Dysart.
“She is,” said Lambert’s voice.
“What have you done with the launch?” shouted Cursiter, in a tone that
made his subaltern quake.
“She’s all right,” he made haste to reply. “She’s on that mud-shallow
off Curragh Point, and Lambert’s man is on board her now. Lambert saw us
aground there from his window, and we were at her for an hour trying to
get her off, and then it got so dark, we thought we’d better leave her
and come on. She’s all right, you know.”
“Oh,” said Captain Cursiter, in, as Hawkins thought to himself, a deuced
disagreeable voice.
The boat came up alongside of the pier, and in the hubbub of inquiry
that arose, Francie was conscious of a great sense of protection in
Lambert’s presence, angry though she knew he was. As he helped her out
of the boat, she whispered tremulously:
“It was awfully good of you to come.”
He did not answer, and stepped at once into the boat again. In another
minute the necessary farewells had been made, and he, Cursiter, and
Hawkins, were rowing back to the launch, leaving Francie to face her
tribunal alone.
CHAPTER XXV.
It was noon on the following day--a soaking, windy noon. Francie felt
its fitness without being aware that she did so, as she knelt in front
of her trunk, stuffing her few fineries into it with unscientific
recklessness, and thinking with terror that it still remained for her
to fee the elderly English upper housemaid with the half-crown that
Charlotte had diplomatically given her for the purpose.
Everything had changed since yesterday, and changed for the worse. The
broad window, out of which yesterday afternoon she had leaned in the
burning sunshine to see the steam-launch puffing her way up the lake,
was now closed against the rain; the dirty flounces of her best white
frock, that had been clean yesterday, now thrust themselves out from
under the lid of her trunk in disreputable reminder of last night’s
escapade; and Lady Dysart, who had been at all events moderately
friendly yesterday, now evidently considered that Francie had
transgressed beyond forgiveness, and had acquiesced so readily in
Francie’s suggestion of going home for luncheon, that her guest felt
sorry that she had not said breakfast. Even the padlock of her
bonnet-box refused to lock--was “going bandy with her,” as she put it in
a phrase learnt from the Fitzpatrick cook--and she was still battling
with it when the sound of wheels on the gravel warned her that the
ordeal of farewell was at hand. The _blasé_ calm with which Sarah helped
her through the presentation of Charlotte’s half-crown made her feel her
social inferiority as keenly as the coldness of Lady Dysart’s _adieux_
made her realise that she was going away in disgrace, when she sought
her hostess and tried to stammer out the few words of orthodox gratitude
that Charlotte had enjoined her not to forget.
Pamela, whose sympathies were always with the sinner, was kinder than
ever, even anxiously kind, as Francie dimly perceived, and in some
unexpected way her kindness brought a lump into the throat of the
departing guest. Francie hurried mutely out on to the steps, where, in
spite of the rain, the dogs and Christopher were waiting to bid her
good-bye.
“You are very punctual,” he said. “I don’t know why you are in such a
hurry to go away.”
“Oh, I think you’ve had quite enough of me,” Francie replied with a
desperate attempt at gaiety. “I’m sure you’re all very glad to be shut
of me.”
“That isn’t a kind thing to say, and I think you ought to know that it
is not true either.”
“Indeed then I know it _is_ true,” answered Francie, preparing in her
agitation to plunge into the recesses of the landau without any further
ceremonies of farewell.
“Well, won’t you even shake hands with me?”
She was already in the carriage; but at this reproach she thrust an
impulsive hand out of the window. “Oh, gracious--! I mean--I beg your
pardon, Mr. Dysart,” she cried incoherently, “I--I’m awfully grateful
for all your kindness, and to Miss Dysart--”
She hardly noticed how tightly he held her hand in his; but, as she was
driven away, and, looking back, saw him and Pamela standing on the
steps, the latter holding Max in her arms, and waving one of his crooked
paws in token of farewell, she thought to herself that it must be only
out of good nature they were so friendly to her; but anyhow they were
fearfully nice.
“Thank goodness!” said Lady Dysart fervently, as she moved away from the
open hall-door--“thank goodness that responsibility is off my hands. I
began by liking the creature, but never, no, never, have I seen a girl
so abominably brought up.”
“Not much notion of the _convenances_, has she?” observed Miss
Hope-Drummond, who had descended from her morning task of writing many
letters in a tall, square hand, just in time to enjoy the sight of
Francie’s departure, without having the trouble of saying good-bye to
her.
“_Convenances!_” echoed Lady Dysart, lifting her dark eyes till nothing
but the whites were visible; “I don’t suppose she could tell you the
meaning of the word. ‘One master passion in the breast, like Aaron’s
serpent, swallows up the rest,’ and of all the man-eaters I have ever
seen, she is the most cannibalistic!”
Miss Hope-Drummond laughed in polite appreciation, and rustled crisply
away towards the drawing-room. Lady Dysart looked approvingly after the
tall, admirably neat figure, and thought, with inevitable comparison, of
Francie’s untidy hair, and uncertainly draped skirts. She turned to
Christopher and Pamela, and continued, with a lowered voice:
“Do you know, even the servants are all talking about her. Of course,
they can’t help noticing what goes on.”
Christopher looked at his mother with a singularly expressionless face.
“Gorman hasn’t mentioned it to me yet, or William either.”
“If you had not interrupted me, Christopher,” said poor Lady Dysart,
resentful of this irreproachably filial rebuke, “I would have told you
that none of the servants breathed a word on the subject to me. Evelyn
was told it by her maid.”
“How Evelyn can discuss such things with her maid, I cannot imagine,”
said Pamela, with unwonted heat; “and Davis is such a particularly
detestable woman.”
“I do not care in the least what sort of woman she is, she does hair
beautifully, which is more than I can say for you,” replied Lady Dysart,
with an Uhlan-like dash into the enemy’s country.
“I suppose it was by Davis’ advice that Evelyn made a point of ignoring
Miss Fitzpatrick this whole morning,” continued Pamela, with the
righteous wrath of a just person.
“It was quite unnecessary for her to trouble herself,” broke in Lady
Dysart witheringly; “Christopher atoned for all her deficiencies--taking
advantage of Mr. Hawkins’ absence, I suppose.”
“If Hawkins had been there,” said Christopher, with the slowness that
indicated that he was trying not to stammer, “it would have saved me the
trouble of making c--conversation for a person who did not care about
it.”
“You may make your mind easy on that point, my dear!” Lady Dysart shot
this parting shaft after her son as he turned away towards the
smoking-room. “To do her justice, I don’t think she is in the least
particular, so long as she has a man to talk to!”
It is not to be wondered at, that, as Francie drove through Lismoyle,
she felt that the atmosphere was laden with reprobation of her and her
conduct.
Her instinct told her that the accident to Captain Cursiter’s launch,
and her connection with it, would be a luscious topic of discourse for
everyone, from Mrs. Lambert downwards; and the thought kept her from
deriving full satisfaction from the Bruff carriage and pair. Even when
she saw Annie Beattie standing at her window with a duster in her hand,
the triumph of her position was blighted by the reflection that if
Charlotte did not know everything before the afternoon was out, full
details would be supplied to her at the party to which on this very
evening they had been bidden by Mrs. Beattie.
The prospect of the cross-examination which she would have to undergo
grew in portentousness during the hour and a half of waiting at Tally Ho
for her cousin’s return, while, through and with her fears, the dirt and
vulgarity of the house and the furniture, the sickly familiarities of
Louisa, and the all-pervading smell of cats and cooking, impressed
themselves on her mind with a new and repellent vigour. But Charlotte,
when she arrived, was evidently still in happy ignorance of the events
that would have interested her so profoundly. Her Dublin dentist had
done his spiriting gently, her friends had been so hospitable that her
lodging-house breakfasts had been her only expense in the way of meals,
and the traditional battle with the Lismoyle car-driver and his equally
inevitable defeat had raised her spirits so much that she accepted
Francie’s expurgated account of her sojourn at Bruff with almost
boisterous approval. She even extended a jovial feeler in the direction
of Christopher.
“Well, now, after all the chances you’ve had, Francie, I’ll not give
tuppence for you if you haven’t Mr. Dysart at your feet!”
It was not usually Francie’s way to object to jests of this kind, but
now she shrank from Charlotte’s heavy hand.
“Oh, he was awfully kind,” she said hurriedly; “but I don’t think he’ll
ever want to marry anyone, not even Miss Hope-Drummond, for all as hard
as she’s trying!”
“Paugh! Let her try! _She_’ll not get him, not if she was to put her
eyes on sticks! But believe you me, child, there never was a man yet
that pretended he didn’t want to marry that wasn’t dying for a wife!”
This statement demanded no reply, and Miss Mullen departed to the
kitchen to see the new kittens and to hold high inquisition into the
doings of the servants during her absence.
Mrs. Beattie gave but two parties in the year--one at Christmas, on
account of the mistletoe; and one in July, on account of the
raspberries, for which her garden was justly famous. This, it need
scarcely be said, was the raspberry party, and accordingly when the
afternoon had brought a cessation of the drizzling rain, Miss Ada and
Miss Flossie Beattie might have been seen standing among the wet
over-arching raspberry canes, devoured by midges, scarlet from the
steamy heat, and pestered by that most maddening of all created things,
the common fly, but, nevertheless, filling basket after basket with
fruit. Miss May and Miss Carrie spent a long and arduous day in the
kitchen making tartlets, brewing syrupy lemonade, and decorating cakes
with pink and white sugar devices and mottos archly stimulative of
conversation. Upon Mrs. Beattie and her two remaining daughters devolved
the task of arranging the drawing-room chairs in a Christy minstrel
circle, and borrowing extra tea-cups from their obliging neighbour, Mrs.
Lynch; while Mr. Beattie absented himself judiciously until his normal
five o’clock dinner hour, when he returned to snatch a perfunctory meal
at a side table in the hall, his womenkind, after their wont, declining
anything more substantial than nomadic cups of tea, brewed in the
kitchen tea-pot, and drunk standing, like the Queen’s health.
But by eight o’clock all preparations were completed, and the young
ladies were in the drawing-room, attired alike in white muslin and
rose-coloured sashes, with faces pink and glossy from soap and water. In
Lismoyle, punctuality was observed at all entertainments, not as a
virtue but as a pleasure, and at half-past eight the little glaring
drawing-room had rather more people in it than it could conveniently
hold. Mrs. Beattie had trawled Lismoyle and its environs with the purest
impartiality; no one was invidiously omitted, not even young Mr. Redmond
the solicitor’s clerk, who came in thick boots and a suit of dress
clothes so much too big for him as to make his trousers look like twin
concertinas, and also to suggest the more massive proportions of his
employer, Mr. Lynch. In this assemblage, Mrs. Baker, in her celebrated
maroon velvet, was a star of the first magnitude, only excelled by Miss
Mullen, whose arrival with her cousin was, in a way, the event of the
evening. Everyone knew that Miss Fitzpatrick had returned from Bruff
that day, and trailing clouds of glory followed her in the mind’s eye of
the party as she came into the room. Most people, too, knew of the
steam-launch adventure, so that when, later in the proceedings, Mr.
Hawkins made his appearance, poor Mrs. Beattie was given small credit
for having secured this prize.
“Are they engaged, do you think?” whispered Miss Corkran, the curate’s
sister, to Miss Baker.
“Engaged indeed!” echoed Miss Baker, “no more than you are! If you knew
him as well as I do you’d know that flirting’s all he cares for!”
Miss Corkran, who had not the pleasure of Mr. Hawkins’ acquaintance,
regarded him coldly through her spectacles, and said that for her own
part she disapproved of flirting, but liked making gentlemen-friends.
“Well, I suppose I might as well confess,” said Miss Baker with a
frivolous laugh, “that there’s nothing I care for like flirting, but
p’pa’s awful particular! Wasn’t he for turning Dr. M‘Call out of the
house last summer because he cot me curling his moustache with my
curling-tongs! ‘I don’t care what you do with officers,’ says p’pa, ‘but
I’ll not have you going on with that Rathgar bounder of a fellow!’ Ah,
but that was when the poor ‘Foragers’ were quartered here; they were the
jolliest lot we ever had!”
Miss Corkran paid scant attention to these memories, being wholly
occupied with observing the demeanour of Mr. Hawkins, who was holding
Miss Mullen in conversation. Charlotte’s big, pale face had an
intellectuality and power about it that would have made her conspicuous
in a gathering more distinguished than the present, and even Mr. Hawkins
felt something like awe of her, and said to himself that she would know
how to make it hot for him if she chose to cut up rough about the launch
business.
As he reflected on that escapade he felt that he would have given a good
round sum of money that it had not taken place. He had played the fool
in his usual way, and now it didn’t seem fair to back out of it. That,
at all events, was the reason he gave to himself for coming to this
blooming menagerie, as he inwardly termed Mrs. Beattie’s highest social
effort; it wouldn’t do to chuck the whole thing up all of a sudden, even
though, of course, the little girl knew as well as he did that it was
all nothing but a lark. This was pretty much the substance of the
excuses that he had offered to Captain Cursiter; and they had seemed so
successful at the time that he now soothed his guilty conscience with a
_rechauffé_ of them, while he slowly and conversationally made his way
round the room towards the green rep sofa in the corner, whereon sat
Miss Fitzpatrick, looking charming things at Mr. Corkran, judging, at
least, by the smile that displayed the reverend gentleman’s prominent
teeth to such advantage. Hawkins kept on looking at her over the
shoulder of the Miss Beattie to whom he was talking, and with each
glance he thought her looking more and more lovely. Prudence melted in a
feverish longing to be near her again, and the direction of his
wandering eye became at length so apparent that Miss Carrie afterwards
told her sister that “Mr. Hawkins was _fear_fully gone about Francie
Fitzpatrick--oh, the tender looks he cast at her!”
Mrs. Beattie’s entertainments always began with music, and the
recognised musicians of Lismoyle were now contributing his or her share
in accustomed succession. Hawkins waited until the time came for Mr.
Corkran to exhibit his wiry bass, and then definitely took up his
position on the green sofa. When he had first come into the room their
eyes had met with a thrilling sense of understanding, and since then
Francie had felt rather than seen his steady and diplomatic advance in
her direction. But somehow, now that he was beside her, they seemed to
find little to say to each other.
“I suppose they’re all talking about our running aground yesterday,” he
said at last in a low voice. “Does she know anything about it yet?”
indicating Miss Mullen with a scarcely perceptible turn of his eye.
“No,” replied Francie in the same lowered voice; “but she will before
the evening’s out. Everyone’s quizzing me about it.” She looked at him
anxiously as she spoke, and his light eyebrows met in a frown.
“Confound their cheek!” he said angrily; “why don’t you shut them up?”
“I don’t know what to say to them. They only roar laughing at me, and
say I’m not born to be drowned anyway.”
“Look here,” said Hawkins impatiently, “what do they do at these shows?
Have we got to sit here all the evening?”
“Hush! Look at Charlotte looking at you, and that’s Carrie Beattie just
in front of us.”
“I didn’t come here to be wedged into a corner of this little beastly
hole all the evening,” he answered rebelliously; “can’t we get out to
the stairs or the garden or something?”
“Mercy on us!” exclaimed Francie, half-frightened and half-delighted at
his temerity. “Of course we can’t! Why, they’ll be going down to tea now
in a minute--after that perhaps--”
“There won’t be any perhaps about it,” said Hawkins, looking at her with
an expression that made her blush and tremble, “will there?”
“I don’t know--not if you go away now,” she murmured, “I’m so afraid of
Charlotte.”
“I’ve nowhere to go; I only came here to see you.”
Captain Cursiter, at this moment refilling his second pipe, would not
have studied the fascinating pages of the _Engineer_ with such a
careless rapture had he at all realised how Mr. Hawkins was fulfilling
his promises of amendment.
At this juncture, however, the ringing of a bell in the hall notified
that tea was ready, and before Hawkins had time for individual action,
he found himself swept forward by his hostess, and charged with the task
of taking Mrs. Rattray, the doctor’s bride, down to the dining-room. The
supply of men did little more than yield a sufficiency for the matrons,
and after these had gone forth with due state, Francie found herself in
the midst of a throng of young ladies following in the wake of their
seniors. As she came down the stairs she was aware of a tall man taking
off his coat in a corner of the hall, and before she reached the
dining-room door Mr. Lambert’s hand was laid upon her arm.
CHAPTER XXVI.
Tea at Mrs. Beattie’s parties was a serious meal, and, as a considerable
time had elapsed since any of the company, except Mr. Hawkins, had
dined, they did full justice to her hospitality. That young gentleman
toyed with a plate of raspberries and cream and a cup of coffee, and
spasmodically devoted himself to Mrs. Rattray in a way that quite repaid
her for occasional lapses of attention. Francie was sitting opposite to
him, not at the table, where, indeed, there was no room for her, but on
a window-sill, where she was sharing a small table with Mr. Lambert.
They were partly screened by the window curtains, but it seemed to
Hawkins that Lambert was talking a great deal and that she was eating
nothing. Whatever was the subject of their conversation they were
looking very serious over it, and, as it progressed, Francie seemed to
get more and more behind her window curtain. The general clamour made it
impossible for him to hear what they were talking about, and Mrs.
Rattray’s demands upon his attention became more intolerable every
moment, as he looked at Francie and saw how wholly another man was
monopolising her.
“And do you like being stationed here, Mr. Hawkins?” said Mrs. Rattray
after a pause.
“Eh? what? Oh yes, of course I do--awfully! you’re all such delightful
people, y’know!”
Mrs. Rattray bridled with pleasure at this audacity.
“Oh, Mr. Hawkins, I’m afraid you’re a terrible flatterer! Do you know
that one of the officers of the Foragers said he thought it was a
beastly spawt!”
“Beastly what? Oh yes, I see. I don’t agree with him at all; I think
it’s a capital good spot.” (Why did that old ass, Mrs. Corkran, stick
her great widow’s cap just between him and the curtain? Francie had
leaned forward and looked at him that very second, and that infernal
white towrow had got in his way.)
Mrs. Rattray thought it was time to play her trump card.
“I suppose you read a great deal, Mr. Hawkins? Dr. Rattray takes
the--a--the _Pink One_ I think he calls it--I know, of course, it’s only
a paper for gentlemen,” she added hurriedly, “but I believe it’s very
comical, and the doctor would be most happy to lend it to you.”
Mr. Hawkins, whose Sunday mornings would have been a blank without the
solace of the _Sporting Times_, explained that the loan was unnecessary,
but Mrs. Rattray felt that she had nevertheless made her point, and
resolved that she would next Sunday study the _Pink One’s_ inscrutable
pages, so that she and Mr. Hawkins might have, at least, one subject in
common.
By this time the younger members of the company had finished their tea,
and those nearest the door began to make a move. The first to leave the
room were Francie and Lambert, and poor Hawkins, who had hoped that his
time of release had at length come, found it difficult to behave as
becomes a gentleman and a soldier, when Mrs. Rattray, with the air of
one who makes a concession, said she thought she could try another
saucer of raspberries. Before they left the table the piano had begun
again upstairs, and a muffled thumping, that shook flakes from the
ceiling down on to the tea-table, told that the realities of the evening
had begun at last.
“I knew the young people would be at that before the evening was out,”
said Mrs. Beattie with an indulgent laugh, “though the girls let on to
me it was only a musical party they wanted.”
“Ah well, they’ll never do it younger!” said Mrs. Baker, leaning back
with her third cup of tea in her hand. “Girls will be girls, as I’ve
just been saying to Miss Mullen.”
“Girls will be tom-fools!” said Miss Mullen with a brow of storm,
thrusting her hands into her gloves, while her eyes followed Hawkins,
who had at length detached Mrs. Rattray from the pleasures of the table,
and was hurrying her out of the room.
“Oh now, Miss Mullen, you mustn’t be so cynical,” said Mrs. Beattie from
behind the tea-urn; “we have six girls, and I declare now Mr. Beattie
and I wouldn’t wish to have one less.”
“Well, they’re a great responsibility,” said Mrs. Corkran with a slow
wag of her obtrusively widowed head, “and no one knows that better than
a mother. I shall never forget the anxiety I went through--it was just
before we came to this parish--when my Bessy had an offer. Poor Mr.
Corkran and I disapproved of the young man, and we were both quite
distracted about it. Indeed we had to make it a subject of prayer, and a
fortnight afterwards the young man died. Oh, doesn’t it show the
wonderful force of prayer?”
“Well now, I think it’s a pity you didn’t let it alone,” said Mr. Lynch,
with something resembling a wink at Miss Mullen.
“I daresay Bessy’s very much of your opinion,” said Charlotte, unable to
refrain from a jibe at Miss Corkran, pre-occupied though she was with
her own wrath. She pushed her chair brusquely back from the table. “I
think, with your kind permission, Mrs. Beattie, I’ll go upstairs and see
what’s going on. Don’t stir, Mr. Lynch, I’m able to get that far by
myself.”
When Miss Mullen arrived at the top of the steep flight of stairs, she
paused on the landing amongst the exiled drawing-room chairs and tables,
and looked in at seven or eight couples revolving in a space so limited
as to make movement a difficulty, if not a danger, and in an atmosphere
already thickened with dust from the carpet. She saw to her surprise
that her cousin was dancing with Lambert, and, after a careful survey of
the room, espied Mr. Hawkins standing partnerless in one of the windows.
“I wonder what she’s at now,” thought Charlotte to herself; “is she
trying to play Roddy off against him? The little cat, I wouldn’t put it
past her!”
As she looked at them wheeling slowly round in the cramped circle she
could see that neither he or Francie spoke to each other, and when, the
dance being over, they sat down together in the corner of the room, they
seemed scarcely more disposed to talk than they had been when dancing.
“Aha! Roddy’s a good fellow,” she thought, “he’s doing his best to help
me by keeping her away from that young scamp.”
At this point the young scamp in question crossed the room and asked
Miss Fitzpatrick for the next dance in a manner that indicated just
displeasure. The heat of the room and the exertion of dancing on a
carpet had endued most of the dancers with the complexions of ripe
plums, but Francie seemed to have been robbed of all colour. She did not
look up at him as he proffered his request.
“I’m engaged for the next dance.”
Hawkins became very red. “Well, the next after that,” he persisted,
trying to catch her eye.
“There isn’t any next,” said Francie, looking suddenly at him with
defiant eyes; “after the next we’re going home.”
Hawkins stared for a brief instant at her with a sparkle of anger in his
eyes. “Oh, very well,” he said with exaggerated politeness of manner, “I
thought I was engaged to you for the first dance after supper, that was
all.”
He turned away at once and walked out of the room, brushing past
Charlotte at the door, and elbowed his way through the uproarious throng
that crowded the staircase. Mrs. Beattie, coming up from the tea-table
with her fellow-matrons, had no idea of permitting her prize guest to
escape so early. Hawkins was captured, his excuses were disregarded, and
he was driven up the stairs again.
“Very well,” he said to himself, “if she chooses to throw me over, I’ll
let her see that I can get on without her.” It did not occur to him that
Francie was only acting in accordance with the theory of the affair that
he had himself presented to Captain Cursiter. His mind was now wholly
given to revenging the snub he had received, and, spurred by this
desire, he advanced to Miss Lynch, who was reposing in an armchair in a
corner of the landing, while her partner played upon her heated face
with the drawing-room bellows, and secured her for the next dance.
When Mr. Hawkins gave his mind to rollicking, there were few who could
do it more thoroughly, and the ensuing polka was stamped through by him
and Miss Lynch with a vigour that scattered all opposing couples like
ninepins. Even his strapping partner appealed for mercy.
“Oh, Mr. Hawkins,” she panted, “wouldn’t you chassy now please? if you
twirl me any more, I think I’ll die!”
But Mr. Hawkins was deaf to entreaty; far from moderating his exertions,
he even snatched the eldest Miss Beattie from her position as on-looker,
and, compelling her to avail herself of the dubious protection of his
other arm, whirled her and Miss Lynch round the room with him in a
many-elbowed triangle. The progress of the other dancers was necessarily
checked by this performance, but it was viewed with the highest favour
by all the matrons, especially those whose daughters had been selected
to take part in it. Francie looked on from the doorway, whither she and
her partner, the Reverend Corkran, had been driven for safety, with a
tearing pain at her heart. Her lips were set in a fixed smile--a smile
that barely kept their quivering in check--and her beautiful eyes shone
upon the dazzled curate through a moisture that was the next thing to
tears.
“I want to find Miss Mullen,” she said at last, dragging Mr. Corkran
towards the stairs, when a fresh burst of applause from the dancing-room
made them both look back. Hawkins’ two partners had, at a critical turn,
perfidiously let him go with such suddenness that he had fallen flat on
the floor, and having pursued them as they polkaed round the room, he
was now encircling both with one arm, and affecting to box their ears
with his other hand, encouraged thereto by cries of “Box them, Mr.
Hawkins!” from Mrs. Beattie. “Box them well!”
Charlotte was in the dining-room, partaking of a gentlemanly glass of
Marsala with Mr. Beattie, and other heads of families.
“Great high jinks they’re having upstairs!” she remarked, as the windows
and tea-cups rattled from the stamping overhead, and Mr. Beattie cast
many an anxious eye towards the ceiling. “I suppose my young lady’s in
the thick of it, whatever it is!” She always assumed the attitude of the
benevolently resigned chaperon when she talked about Francie, and Mr.
Lynch was on the point of replying in an appropriate tone of humorous
condolence, when the young lady herself appeared on Mr. Corkran’s arm,
with an expression that at once struck Charlotte as being very unlike
high jinks.
“Why, child, what do you want down here?” she said. “Are you tired
dancing?”
“I am; awfully tired; would you mind going home, Charlotte?”
“What a question to ask before our good host here! Of course I mind
going home!” eyeing Francie narrowly as she spoke; “but I’ll come if you
like.”
“Why, what people you all are for going home!” protested Mr. Beattie
hospitably; “there was Hawkins that we only stopped by main strength,
and Lambert slipped away ten minutes ago, saying Mrs. Lambert wasn’t
well, and he had to go and look after her! What’s your reverence about
letting her go away now, when they’re having the fun of Cork upstairs?”
Francie smiled a pale smile, but held to her point, and a few minutes
afterwards she and Charlotte had made their way through the knot of
loafers at the garden gate, and were walking through the empty moon-lit
streets of Lismoyle towards Tally Ho. Charlotte did not speak till the
last clanging of the _Bric-à-brac_ polka had been left behind, and then
she turned to Francie with a manner from which the affability had fallen
like a garment.
“And now I’ll thank you to tell me what’s the truth of this I hear from
everyone in the town about you and that young Hawkins being out till all
hours of the night in the steam-launch by yourselves?”
“It wasn’t our fault. We were in by half-past nine.” Francie had hardly
spirit enough to defend herself, and the languor in her voice infuriated
Charlotte.
“Don’t give me any of your fine-lady airs,” she said brutally; “I can
tell ye this, that if ye can’t learn how to behave yourself decently
I’ll pack ye back to Dublin!”
The words passed over Francie like an angry wind, disturbing, but
without much power to injure.
“All right, I’ll go away when you like.”
Charlotte hardly heard her. “I’ll be ashamed to look me old friend, Lady
Dysart, in the face!” She stormed on. “Disgracing her house by such
goings on with an unprincipled blackguard that has no more idea of
marrying you than I have--not that that’s anything to be regretted! An
impudent little upstart without a halfpenny in his pocket, and as for
family--” her contempt stemmed her volubility for a mouthing moment.
“God only knows what gutter he sprang from; I don’t suppose he has a
drop of blood in his whole body!”
“I’m not thinking of marrying him no more than he is of marrying me,”
answered Francie in the same lifeless voice, but this time faltering a
little. “You needn’t bother me about him, Charlotte; he’s engaged.”
“Engaged!” yelled Charlotte, squaring round at her cousin, and standing
stock still in her amazement. “Why didn’t you tell me so before? When
did you hear it?”
“I heard it some time ago from a person whose name I won’t give you,”
said Francie, walking on. “They’re to be married before Christmas.” The
lump rose at last in her throat, and she trod hard on the ground as she
walked, in the effort to keep the tears back.
Charlotte girded her velveteen skirt still higher, and hurried clumsily
after the light, graceful figure.
“Wait, child! Can’t ye wait for me? Are ye sure it’s true?”
Francie nodded.
“The young reprobate! To be making you so remarkable, and to have the
other one up his sleeve all the time! Didn’t I say he had no notion of
marrying ye?”
Francie made no reply, and Charlotte with some difficulty disengaged her
hand from her wrappings and patted her on the back.
“Well, never mind, me child,” she said with noisy cheerfulness; “you’re
not trusting to the likes of that fellow! wait till ye’re me Lady Dysart
of Bruff, and it’s little ye’ll think of him then!”
They had reached the Tally Ho gate by this time; Francie opened it, and
plunged into the pitch-dark tunnel of evergreens without a word.
CHAPTER XXVII.
The pre-eminently domestic smell of black currant jam pervaded Tally Ho
next day. The morning had been spent by Charlotte and her retainers in
stripping the straggling old bushes of the berries that resembled
nothing so much as boot-buttons in size, colour and general consistency;
the preserving pan had been borrowed, according to immemorial custom,
from Miss Egan of the hotel, and at three o’clock of the afternoon the
first relay was sluggishly seething and bubbling on the kitchen fire,
and Charlotte, Norry, and Bid Sal were seated at the kitchen table
snipping the brown tips of the shining fruit that still awaited its
fate.
It was a bright, steamy day, when the hot sun and the wet earth turned
the atmosphere into a Turkish bath, and the cats sat out of doors, but
avoided the grass like the plague. Francie had docilely picked currants
with the others. She was accustomed to making herself useful, and it
did not occur to her to shut herself up in her room, or go for a walk,
or, in fact, isolate herself with her troubles in any way. She had too
little self-consciousness for these deliberate methods, and she moved
among the currant bushes in her blue gown, and was merely
uncomplainingly thankful that she was able to pull the broad leaf of her
hat down so as to hide the eyes that were heavy from a sleepless night
and red from the sting of tears. She went over again what Lambert had
told her, as she mechanically dropped the currants into her tin can; the
soldier-servant had read the letters, and had told Michael, the
Rosemount groom, and Michael had told Mr. Lambert. She wouldn’t have
cared a pin about his being engaged if he had only told her so at first.
She had flirted with engaged men plenty of times, and it hadn’t done
anybody any harm, but this was quite different. She couldn’t believe,
after the way he went on, that he cared about another girl all the time,
and yet Michael had said that the soldier had said that they were to be
married at Christmas. Well, thank goodness, she thought, with a half
sob, she knew about it now; he’d find it hard to make a fool of her
again.
After the early dinner the practical part of the jam-making began, and
for an hour Francie snipped at the currant-tops as industriously as
Charlotte herself. But by the time that the first brew was ready for the
preserving pan, the heat of the kitchen, and the wearisomeness of
Charlotte’s endless discussions with Norry, made intolerable the
headache that had all day hovered about her forehead, and she fetched
her hat and a book and went out into the garden to look for coolness and
distraction. She wandered up to the seat where she had sat on the day
that Lambert gave her the bangle, and, sitting down, opened her book, a
railway novel, bought by Charlotte on her journey from Dublin. She read
its stodgily sensational pages with hot tired eyes, and tried hard to
forget her own unhappiness in the infinitely more terrific woes of its
heroine; but now and then some chance expression, or one of those terms
of endearment that were lavished throughout its pages, would leap up
into borrowed life and sincerity, and she would shut her eyes and drift
back into the golden haze on Lough Moyle, when his hand had pressed her
head down on his shoulder, and his kisses had touched her soul. At such
moments all the heated stillness of the lake was round her, with no
creature nearer than the white cottages on the far hillsides; and when
the inevitable present swam back to her, with carts rattling past on the
road, and insects buzzing and blundering against her face, and Bid Sal’s
shrill summoning of the hens to their food, she would fling herself
again into the book to hide from the pursuing pain and the undying,
insane voice of hope.
Hope mastered pain, and reality mastered both, when, with the
conventionality of situation to which life sometimes condescends, there
came steps on the gravel, and looking up she saw that Hawkins was coming
towards her. Her heart stopped and rushed on again like a startled
horse, but all the rest of her remained still and almost impassive, and
she leaned her head over her book to keep up the affectation of not
having seen him.
“I saw your dress through the trees as I was coming up the drive,” he
said after a moment of suffocating silence, “and so--” he held out his
hand, “aren’t you going to shake hands with me?”
“How d’ye do, Mr. Hawkins?” she gave him a limp hand and withdrew it
instantly.
Hawkins sat down beside her, and looked hard at her half-averted face.
He had solved the problem of her treatment of him last night in a way
quite satisfactory to himself, and he thought that now that he had been
sharp enough to have found her here, away from Miss Mullen’s eye, things
would be very different. He had quite forgiven her her share in the
transgression; in fact, if the truth were known he had enjoyed himself
considerably after she had left Mrs. Beattie’s party, and had gone back
to Captain Cursiter and disingenuously given him to understand that he
had hardly spoken a word to Miss Fitzpatrick the whole evening.
“So you wouldn’t dance with me last night,” he said, as if he were
speaking to a child; “wasn’t that very unkind of you?”
“No it was not,” she replied, without looking at him.
“Well, _I_ think it was,” he said, lightly touching the hand that held
the novel.
Francie took her hand sharply away.
“I think you are being very unkind now,” he continued; “aren’t you even
going to look at me?”
“Oh yes, I’ll look at you if you like,” she said, turning upon him in a
kind of desperation; “it doesn’t do me much harm, and I don’t suppose it
does you much good.”
The cool, indifferent manner that she had intended to assume was already
too difficult for her, and she sought a momentary refuge in rudeness. He
showed all the white teeth, that were his best point, in a smile that
was patronisingly free from resentment.
“Why, what’s the matter with her?” he said caressingly. “I believe I
know what it’s all about. She’s been catching it about that day in the
launch! Isn’t that it?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr. Hawkins,” said Francie,
with an indifferent attempt at hauteur; “but since you’re so clever at
guessing things I suppose there’s no need of me telling you.”
Hawkins came closer to her, and forcibly took possession of her hands.
“What’s the matter with you?” he said in a low voice; “why are you angry
with me? Don’t you know I love you?” The unexpected element of
uncertainty sharpened the edge of his feelings and gave his voice an
earnestness that was foreign to it.
Francie started visibly; “No, I know you don’t,” she said, facing him
suddenly, like some trapped creature; “I know you’re in love with
somebody else!”
His eyes flinched as though a light had been flashed in them. “What do
you mean?” he said quickly, while a rush of blood darkened his face to
the roots of his yellow hair, and made the veins stand out on his
forehead; “who told you that?”
“It doesn’t matter who told me,” she said with a miserable satisfaction
that her bolt had sped home; “but I know it’s true.”
“I give you my honour it’s not!” he said passionately; “you might have
known better than to believe it.”
“Oh yes, I might,” she said with all the scorn she was master of; “but I
think ’twas as good for me I didn’t.” Her voice collapsed at the end of
the sentence, and the dry sob that rose in her throat almost choked her.
She stood up and turned her face away to hide the angry tears that in
spite of herself had sprung to her eyes.
Hawkins caught her hand again and held it tightly. “I know what it is. I
suppose they’ve been telling you of that time I was in Limerick; and
that was all rot from beginning to end; anyone could tell you that.”
“It’s not that; I heard all about that--”
Hawkins jumped up. “I don’t care what you heard,” he said violently.
“Don’t turn your head away from me like that, I won’t have it. I know
that you care about me, and I know that I shouldn’t care if everyone in
the world was dead, so long as you were here.” His arm was round her,
but she shook herself free.
“What about Miss Coppard?” she said; “what about being married before
Christmas?”
For a moment Hawkins could find no words to say. “So you’ve got hold of
that, have you,” he said, after some seconds of silence that seemed
endless to Francie. “And do you think that will come between us?”
“Of course it must come between us,” she said in a stifled voice; “and
you knew that all through.”
Mr. Hawkins’ engagement was a painful necessity about which he affaired
himself as little as possible. He recognised it as a certain and not
disagreeable road to paying his debts, which might with good luck be
prolonged till he got his company, and, latterly, it had fallen more
than ever into the background. That it should interfere with his
amusements in any way made it an impertinence of a wholly intolerable
kind.
“It shall _not_ come between us!” he burst out; “I don’t care what
happens, I won’t give you up! I give you my honour I never cared
twopence about her--I’ve never thought of her since I first saw
you--I’ve thought of no one but you.”
His hot, stammering words were like music to her, but that staunchness
of soul that was her redeeming quality still urged her to opposition.
“It’s no good your going on like this. You know you’re going to marry
her. Let me go.”
But Mr. Hawkins was not in the habit of being baulked of anything on
which he had set his heart.
“No, I will not let you go,” he said, drawing her towards him with
bullying tenderness. “In the first place, you’re not able to stand, and
in the second place, I’m not going to marry anybody but you.”
He spoke with a certainty that convinced himself; the certainty of a
character that does not count the cost either for itself or for others;
and, in the space of a kiss, her distrust was left far behind her as a
despicable thing.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
Nearly three weeks had gone by since Mrs. Beattie’s party, and as
Charlotte Mullen walked slowly along the road towards Rosemount one
afternoon, her eyes fixed on the square toes of her boots, and her
hands, as was her custom, in the pockets of her black jacket, she
meditated agreeably upon recent events. Of these perhaps the pleasantest
was Mr. Hawkins’ departure to Hythe, for a musketry course, which had
taken place somewhat unexpectedly a fortnight ago. He was a
good-for-nothing young limb, and engagement or no engagement it was a
good job he was out of the place; and, after all, Francie had not seemed
to mind. Almost equally satisfactory was the recollection of that
facetious letter to Christopher Dysart, in which she had so playfully
reminded him of the ancient promise to photograph the Tally Ho cats, and
hoped that she and her cousin would not come under that category. Its
success had even been surprising, for not only had Christopher come and
spent a long afternoon in that difficult enterprise, but had come again
more than once, on pretexts that had appeared to Charlotte
satisfactorily flimsy, and had apparently set aside what she knew to be
his repugnance to herself. That he should lend Francie “John Inglesant”
and Rossetti’s Poems, made Charlotte laugh in her sleeve. She had her
own very sound opinion of her cousin’s literary capacity, and had no
sympathy for the scientific interest felt by a philosopher in the
evolution of a nascent soul. Christopher’s manner did not, it is true,
coincide with her theory of a lover, which was crude, and founded on
taste rather than experience, but she had imagination enough to
recognise that Christopher, in love-making, as in most other things,
would pursue methods unknown to her.
At this point in her reflections, congratulation began to wane. She
thought she knew every twist and turn in Roddy Lambert, but lately she
had not been able to explain him at all to her satisfaction. He was
always coming to Tally Ho, and he always seemed in a bad temper when he
was there; in fact she had never known him as ill-mannered as he was
last week, one day when he and Christopher were there together, and she
had tried, for various excellent reasons, to get him off into the
dining-room to talk business. She couldn’t honestly say that Francie was
running after him, though of course she had that nasty flirty way with
every man, old or young, married or single; but all the same, there was
something in it she didn’t like. The girl was more trouble than she was
worth; and if it wasn’t for Christopher Dysart she’d have sent her
packing back to Letitia Fitzpatrick, and told her that whether she could
manage it or not she must keep her. But of course to have Sir
Christopher Dysart of Bruff--she rolled the title on her tongue--as a
cousin was worthy of patience.
As she walked up the trim Rosemount avenue she spied the owner of the
house lying in a basket-chair in the shade, with a pipe in his mouth,
and in his hand that journal politely described by Mrs. Rattray as the
“the _Pink One_.”
“Hallo, Charlotte!” he said lazily, glancing up at her from under the
peak of his cap, “you look warm.”
“And you look what you are, and that’s cool, in manners and body,”
retorted Miss Mullen, coming and standing beside him, “and if you had
tramped on your four bones through the dust, maybe you’d be as hot as I
am.”
“What do you wear that thick coat for?” he said, looking at it with a
disfavour that he took no trouble to hide.
Charlotte became rather red. She had the Irish peasant-woman’s love of
heavy clothing and dislike of abating any item of it in summer.
“If you had my tendency to bronchitis, me fine fellow,” she said,
seating herself on the uncomfortable garden bench beside which his chair
had been placed, “you’d think more of your health than your
appearance.”
“Very likely,” said Mr. Lambert, yawning and relapsing into silence.
“Well, Roddy,” resumed Charlotte more amicably, “I didn’t walk all the
way here to discuss the fashions with you. Have y’any more news from the
seat of war?”
“No; confound her, she won’t stir, and I don’t see what’s going to make
her unless I evict her.”
“Why don’t ye writ her for the money?” said Charlotte, the spirit of her
attorney grandfather gleaming in her eyes; “that’d frighten her!”
“I don’t want to do that if I can help it. I spoke to her about the
lodge that Lady Dysart said she could have, and the old devil was fit to
be tied; but we might get her to it before we’ve done with her.”
“If it was me I’d writ her now,” repeated Charlotte venomously; “you’ll
find you’ll have to come to it in the end.”
“It’s a sin to see that lovely pasture going to waste,” said Lambert,
leaning back and puffing at his pipe. “Peter Joyce hasn’t six head of
cattle on it this minute.”
“If you and I had it, Roddy,” said Charlotte, eyeing him with a curious,
guarded tenderness, “it wouldn’t be that way.”
Some vibration of the strong, incongruous tremor that passed through her
as she spoke, reached Lambert’s indolent perception and startled it. It
reminded him of the nebulous understanding that taking her money seemed
to have involved him in; he believed he knew why she had given it to
him, and though he knew also that he held his advantage upon precarious
terms, even his coarse-fibred nature found something repellent in the
thought of having to diplomatise with such affections as Charlotte’s.
“I was up at Murphy’s yesterday,” he said, as if his train of ideas had
not been interrupted. “He has a grand filly there that I’d buy to-morrow
if I had the money, or any place to put her. There’s a pot of money in
her.”
“Well, if you’ll get me Gurthnamuckla,” said Charlotte with a laugh, in
which nervousness was strangely apparent, “you may buy up every young
horse in the country and stable them in the parlour, so long as you’ll
leave the attics for me and the cats.”
Lambert turned his head upon its cushion, and looked at her.
“I think I’ll leave you a little more space than that, Charlotte, if
ever we stable our horses together.”
She glanced at him, as aware of the _double entendre_, and as stirred by
it as he had intended her to be. Perhaps a little more than he had
intended; at all events, he jerked himself into a sitting position, and,
getting on to his feet, stretched himself with almost ostentatious ease.
“Where’s Francie?” he asked, yawning.
“At home, dressmaking,” replied Miss Mullen. She was a little paler than
usual. “I think I’ll go in now and have a cup of tea with Lucy,” she
said, rising from the garden bench with something like an effort.
“Well, I daresay I’ll take the mare down to Tally Ho, and make Francie
go for a ride,” said Lambert; “it’s a pity for anyone to be stewing in
the house on a day like this.”
“I wanted her to come here with me, but she wouldn’t,” Charlotte called
after him as he turned towards the path that led to the stables. “Maybe
she thought there might be metal more attractive for her at home!”
She grinned to herself as she went up the steps. “Me gentleman may put
that in his pipe and smoke it,” she thought; “that little hussy would
let him think it was for him she was sitting at home!”
Ever since Mrs. Lambert’s first entrance into Lismoyle society, she had
found in Charlotte her most intimate and reliable ally. If Mr. Lambert
had been at all uneasy as to his bride’s reception by Miss Mullen, he
must have been agreeably surprised to find that after a month or so
Charlotte had become as useful and pleasant to Mrs. Lambert as in older
days she had been to him. That Charlotte should have recognised the
paramount necessity of his marrying money, had been to Lambert a proof
of her eminent common sense. He had always been careful to impress his
obvious destiny upon her, and he had always been grateful to that
destiny for having harmlessly fulfilled itself, while yet old Mrs.
Mullen’s money was in her own keeping, and her niece was, beyond all
question, ineligible. That was Mr. Lambert’s view of the situation;
whatever Charlotte’s opinion was, she kept it to herself.
Mrs. Lambert was more than usually delighted to see her
ever-sympathising friend on this hot afternoon. One of her chiefest
merits in the turkey-hen’s eyes was that she “was as good as any doctor,
and twice better than Dr. Rattray, who would never believe the half she
went through with palpitations, and buzzings in her ears and roarings in
her head,” and the first half hour or so of her visit was consumed in
minute detail of her more recent symptoms. The fact that large numbers
of women entertain their visitors with biographies, mainly abusive, of
their servants, has been dwelt on to weariness by many writers; but,
nevertheless, in no history of Mrs. Lambert could this characteristic be
conscientiously omitted.
“Oh, my dear,” she said, as her second cup of sweet weak tea was entered
upon, “you know that Eliza Hackett, that I got with the highest
recommendations from the Honourable Miss Carrick, and thinking she’d be
so steady, being a Protestant? Well, last Sunday she went to mass!” She
paused, and Charlotte, one of whose most genuine feelings was a
detestation of Roman Catholics, exclaimed:
“Goodness alive! what did you let her do that for?”
“How could I stop her?” answered Mrs. Lambert plaintively, “she never
told one in the house she was going, and this morning, when I was
looking at the meat with her in the larder, I took the opportunity to
speak to her about it. ‘Oh,’ says she, turning round as cool as you
please, ‘I consider the Irish Church hasn’t the Apostolic succession!’”
“You don’t tell me that fat-faced Eliza Hackett said that?” ejaculated
Charlotte.
“She did, indeed,” replied Mrs. Lambert deplorably; “I was quite upset.
‘Eliza,’ says I, ‘I wonder you have the impudence to talk to me like
that. You that was taught better by the Honourable Miss Carrick.’
‘Ma’am,’ says she, up to my face, ‘Moses and Aaron was two holy Roman
Catholic priests, and that’s more than you can say of the archdeacon!’
‘Indeed, no,’ says I, ‘thank God he’s not!’ but I ask you, Charlotte,
what could I say to a woman like that, that would wrest the Scriptures
to her own purposes?”
Even Charlotte’s strong brain reeled in the attempt to follow the
arguments of Eliza the cook and Mrs. Lambert.
“Well, upon my word, Lucy, it’s little I’d have argued with her. I’d
have just said to her, ‘Out of my house you march, if you don’t go to
your church!’ I think that would have composed her religious scruples.”
“Oh! but, Charlotte,” pleaded the turkey-hen, “I _couldn’t_ part with
her; she knows just what gentlemen like, and Roderick’s so particular
about savouries. When I told him about her, he said he wouldn’t care if
she was a Mormon and had a dozen husbands, so long as she made good
soup.”
Charlotte laughed out loud. Mr. Lambert’s turn of humour had a
robustness about it that always roused a sympathetic chord in her.
“Well, that’s a man all over! His stomach before anyone else’s soul!”
“Oh, Charlotte, you shouldn’t say such things! Indeed, Roderick will
often take only the one cut of meat at his dinner these times, and if it
isn’t to his liking he’ll take nothing; he’s a great epicure. I don’t
know what’s over him those last few weeks,” continued Mrs. Lambert
gloomily, “unless it’s the hot weather, and all the exercise he’s
taking, that’s making him cross.”
“Well, from all I’ve ever seen of men,” said Charlotte, with a laugh,
“the hotter they get the better pleased they are. Take my word for it,
there’s no time a man’s so proud of himself as when he’s ‘larding the
lean earth’!”
Mrs. Lambert looked bewildered, but was too much affaired with her own
thoughts to ask for an explanation of what seemed to her a strange term
in cookery.
“Did he know Francie Fitzpatrick much in Dublin?” she said after a
pause, in which she had given a saucerful of cream and sopped cake to
her dog.
Charlotte looked at her hostess suddenly and searchingly as she stooped
with difficulty to take up the saucer.
“He’s known her since she was a child,” she replied, and waited for
further developments.
“I thought it must be that way,” said Mrs. Lambert with a dissatisfied
sound in her voice; “they’re so very familiar-like talking to each
other.”
Charlotte’s heart paused for an instant in its strong, regular course.
Was it possible, she thought, that wisdom was being perfected in the
mouth of Lucy Lambert?
“I never noticed anything so wonderfully familiar,” she said, in a tone
meant to provoke further confidence; “I never knew Roddy yet that he
wasn’t civil to a pretty girl; and as for Francie, any man comes handy
to her! Upon my word, she’d dote on a tongs, as they say!”
Mrs. Lambert fidgeted nervously with her long gold watchchain. “Well,
Charlotte,” she said, a little defiantly, “I’ve been married to him five
years now, and I’ve never known him particular with any girl.”
“Then, my dear woman, what’s this nonsense you’re talking about him and
Francie?” said Charlotte, with Mephistophelian gaiety.
“Oh, Charlotte!” said Mrs. Lambert, suddenly getting very red, and
beginning to whimper, “I never thought to speak of it--” she broke off
and began to look for her handkerchief, while her respectable
middle-aged face began to wrinkle up like a child’s, “and, indeed, I
don’t want to say anything against the girl, for she’s a nice girl, and
so I’ve always found her, but I can’t help noticing--” she broke off
again.
“What can’t ye help noticing?” demanded Charlotte roughly.
Mrs. Lambert drew a long breath that was half-suffocated by a sob. “Oh,
I don’t know,” she cried helplessly; “he’s always going down to Tally
Ho, by the way he’ll take her out riding or boating or something, and
though he doesn’t say much, a little thing’ll slip out now and again,
and you can’t say a word to him but he’ll get cross.”
“Maybe he’s in trouble about money unknown to you,” suggested Charlotte,
who, for some reason or other, was not displaying her usual capacity for
indictment, “or maybe he finds ‘life not worth living because of the
liver’!” she ended, with a mirthless laugh.
“Oh, no, no, Charlotte; indeed, it’s no laughing joke at all--” Mrs.
Lambert hesitated, then, with a little hysterical burst of sobs, “he
talks about her in his sleep!” she quavered out, and began to cry
miserably.
Charlotte sat perfectly still, looking at Mrs. Lambert with eyes that
saw, but held no pity for, her abundant tears. How far more serious was
this thing, if true, to her, than to that contemptible whining creature,
whose snuffling gasps were exasperating her almost beyond the bounds of
endurance. She waited till there was a lull.
“What did he say about her?” she asked in a hard, jeering voice.
“Oh, Charlotte, how can I tell you? all sorts of things he says,
nonsense like, and springing up and saying she’ll be drowned.”
“Well, if it’s any comfort to you,” said Charlotte, “she cares no more
for him than the man in the moon! She has other fish to fry, I can tell
you!”
“But what signifies that, Charlotte,” sighed Mrs. Lambert, “so long as
he thinks about her?”
“Tell him he’s a fool to waste his time over her,” suggested Charlotte
scoffingly.
“Is it _me_ tell him such a thing!” The turkey-hen lifted her wet red
eyes from her saturated pocket handkerchief and began to laugh
hysterically. “Much regard he has for what _I_ say to him! Oh, don’t
make me laugh, Charlotte--” a frightened look came over her face, as if
she had been struck, and she fell back in her chair. “It’s the
palpitations,” she said faintly, with her hand on her heart. “Oh, I’m
going--I’m going--”
Charlotte ran to the chimney-piece, and took from it a bottle of
smelling salts. She put it to Mrs. Lambert’s nose with one hand, and
with the other unfastened the neck of her dress without any excitement
or fuss. Her eyes were keen and quiet as she bent over the pale blotched
face that lay on the antimacassar; and when Mrs. Lambert began to
realise again what was going on round her, she was conscious of a hand
chafing her own, a hand that was both gentle and skilful.
CHAPTER XXIX.
“Metal more attractive!” Lambert thought there could not be a more
offensive phrase in the English language than this, that had rung in his
ears ever since Charlotte had flung it at him when he parted from her on
his own avenue. He led the black mare straight to the dilapidated
loose-box at Tally Ho Lodge, in which she had before now waited so
often and so dismally, with nothing to do except nose about the broken
manger for a stray oat or two, or make spiteful faces through the rails
at her comrade, the chestnut, in the next stall. Lambert swung open the
stable door, and was confronted by the pricked ears and interested
countenance of a tall bay horse, whom he instantly recognised as being
one of the Bruff carriage horses, looking out of the loose-box. Mr.
Lambert’s irritation culminated at this point in appropriate profanity;
he felt that all these things were against him, and the thought that he
would go straight back to Rosemount made him stand still on the
doorstep. But the next moment he had a vision of himself and the two
horses turning in at the Rosemount gate, with the certain prospect of
being laughed at by Charlotte and condoled with by his wife, and without
so much as a sight of that maddening face that was every day thrusting
itself more and more between him and his peace. It would be a confession
of defeat at the hands of Christopher Dysart, which alone would be
intolerable; besides, there wasn’t a doubt but that, if Francie were
given her choice, she would rather go out riding with him than anything.
Buoyed up by this reflection, he put the chestnut into the stable, and
the mare into the cow-shed, and betook himself to the house. The hall
door was open, and stepping over the cats on the door-mat, he knocked
lightly at the drawing-room door, and walked in without waiting for an
answer. Christopher was sitting with his back to him, holding one end of
a folded piece of pink cambric, while Francie, standing up in front of
him, was cutting along the fold towards him, with a formidable pair of
scissors.
“Must I hold on to the end?” he was saying, as the scissors advanced in
leaps towards his fingers.
“I’ll kill you if you let go!” answered Francie, rather thickly, by
reason of a pin between her front teeth. “Goodness, Mr. Lambert! you
frightened the heels off me! I thought you were Louisa with the tea.”
“Good evening, Francie; good evening, Dysart,” said Lambert with solemn
frigidity.
Christopher reddened a little as he looked round. “I’m afraid I can’t
shake hands with you, Lambert,” he said with an unavoidably foolish
laugh, “I’m dressmaking.”
“So I see,” replied Mr. Lambert, with something as near a sneer as he
dared. He always felt it a special unkindness of Providence to have
placed this young man to reign over him, and the practical sentiment
that it is well not to quarrel with your bread and butter, had not
unfrequently held him back from a much-desired jibe. “I came, Francie,”
he went on with the same portentous politeness, “to see if you’d care to
come for a ride with me.”
“When? Now?” said Francie, without much enthusiasm.
“Oh, not unless you like,” he replied in a palpably offended tone.
“Well, how d’ye know I wouldn’t like? Keep quiet now, Mr. Dysart, I’ve
another one for you to hold!”
“I’m afraid I must be going--” began Christopher, looking helplessly at
the billows of pink cambric which surrounded him on the floor. Lambert’s
arrival had suddenly made the situation seem vulgar.
“Ah, can’t you sit still now?” said Francie, thrusting another length of
material into his hand, and beginning to cut swiftly towards him. “I
declare you’re very idle!”
Lambert stood silent while this went on, and then, with an angry look at
Francie, he said, “I understand, then, that you’re not coming out riding
to-day?”
“Do you?” asked Francie, pinning the seam together with marvellous
rapidity; “take care your understanding isn’t wrong! Have you the horse
down here?”
“Of course I have.”
“Well, I’ll tell you what we’ll do; we’ll have tea first, and then we’ll
ride back with Mr. Dysart; will that do you?”
“I wanted to ride in the opposite direction,” said Lambert; “I had some
business--”
“Oh, bother your old business!” interrupted Francie; “anyway, I hear her
bringing in the tea.”
“Oh, I hope you’ll ride home with me,” said Christopher; “I hate riding
by myself.”
“Much I pity you!” said Francie, flashing a side-long look at him as she
went over to the tea-table; “I suppose you’d be frightened!”
“Quite so. Frightened and bored. That is what I feel like when I ride by
myself,” said Christopher, trying to eliminate from his manner the
constraint that Lambert’s arrival had imparted to it, “and my horse is
just as bored; I feel apologetic all the time and wishing I could do
something to amuse him that wouldn’t be dangerous. Do come; I’m sure
he’d like it.”
“Oh, how anxious you are about him!” said Francie, cutting bread and
butter with a dexterous hand from the loaf that Louisa had placed on the
table in frank confession of incapacity. “I don’t know what I’ll do till
I’ve had my tea. Here now, here’s yours poured out for both of you; I
suppose you’d like me to come and hand it to you!” with a propitiatory
look at Lambert.
Thus adjured, the two men seated themselves at the table, on which
Francie had prepared their tea and bread and butter with a propriety
that reminded Christopher of his nursery days. It was a very agreeable
feeling, he thought; and as he docilely drank his tea and laughed at
Francie for the amount of sugar that she put into hers, the idealising
process to which he was unconsciously subjecting her advanced a stage.
He was beginning to lose sight of her vulgarity, even to wonder at
himself for ever having applied that crudely inappropriate word to her.
She had some reflected vulgarities of course, thought the usually
hypercritical Mr. Christopher Dysart, and her literary progress along
the lines he had laid down for her was slow; but, lately, since his
missionary resolve to let the light of culture illuminate her darkness,
he had found out subtle depths of sweetness and sympathy that were, in
their responsiveness, equivalent to intellect.
When Francie went up a few minutes later to put on her habit,
Christopher did not seem disposed to continue the small talk in which
his proficiency had been more surprising than pleasing to Mr. Lambert.
He strolled over to the window, and looked meditatively out at Mrs.
Bruff and a great-grandchild or two embowered in a tangle of
nasturtiums, and putting his hands in his pockets began to whistle
_sotto voce_. Lambert looked him up and down, from his long thin legs to
his small head, on which the light brown hair grew rather long, with a
wave in it that was to Lambert the height of effeminacy. He began to
drum with his fingers on the table to show that he too was quite
undisturbed and at his ease.
“By the bye, Dysart,” he observed presently, “have you heard anything of
Hawkins since he left?”
Christopher turned round. “No, I don’t know anything about him except
that he’s gone to Hythe.”
“Gone to _hide_, d’ye say?” Lambert laughed noisily in support of his
own joke.
“No, Hythe.”
“It seems to me its more likely it’s a case of hide,” Lambert went on
with a wink; he paused, fiddled with his teaspoon, and smiled at his own
hand as he did so. “P’raps he thought it was time for him to get out of
this.”
“Really?” said Christopher, with a lack of interest that was quite
genuine.
Lambert’s pulse bounded with the sudden desire to wake this supercilious
young hound up for once, by telling him a few things that would surprise
him.
“Well, you see it’s a pretty strong order for a fellow to carry on as
Hawkins did, when he happens to be engaged.”
The fact of Mr. Hawkins’ engagement had, it need scarcely be said, made
its way through every highway and byway of Lismoyle; inscrutable as to
its starting-point, impossible of verification, but all the more
fascinating for its mystery. Lambert had no wish to claim its
authorship; he had lived among gentlemen long enough to be aware that
the second-hand confidences of a servant could not creditably be quoted
by him. What he did not know, however, was whether the story had reached
Bruff, or been believed there, and it was extremely provoking to him now
that instead of being able to observe its effect on Christopher, whose
back was to the light, his discoveries should be limited to the fact
that his own face had become very red as he spoke.
“I suppose he knows his own affairs best,” said Christopher, after a
silence that might have meant anything, or nothing.
“Well,” leaning back and putting his hands in his pockets, “I don’t
pretend to be strait-laced, but d--n it, you know, I think Hawkins went
a bit too far.”
“I don’t think I have heard who it is that he is engaged to,” said
Christopher, who seemed remarkably unaffected by Mr. Hawkins’
misdemeanours.
“Oh, to a Yorkshire girl, a Miss--what’s this her name is?--Coppard.
Pots of money, but mighty plain about the head, I believe. He kept it
pretty dark, didn’t he?”
“Apparently it got out, for all that.”
Lambert thought he detected a tinge of ridicule in the voice, whether of
him or of Hawkins he did not know; it gave just the necessary spur to
that desire to open Christopher’s eyes for him a bit.
“Oh, yes, it got out,” he said, putting his elbow on the table, and
balancing his teaspoon on his forefinger, “but I think there are very
few that know for certain it’s a fact,--fortunately for our friend.”
“Why fortunately? I shouldn’t think it made much difference to anyone.”
“Well, as a rule, girls don’t care to flirt with an engaged man.”
“No, I suppose not,” said Christopher, yawning with a frankness that was
a singular episode in his demeanour towards his agent.
Lambert felt his temper rising every instant. He was a man whose
jealousy took the form of reviling the object of his affections, if, by
so doing, he could detach his rivals.
“Well, Francie Fitzpatrick knows it for one; but perhaps she’s not one
of the girls who object to flirting with an engaged man.”
Lambert got up and walked to the window; he felt that he could no longer
endure seeing nothing of Christopher except a lank silhouette with an
offensive repose of attitude. He propped his back against one of the
shutters, and obviously waited for a comment.
“I should think it was an inexpensive amusement,” said Christopher, in
his most impersonal and academic manner, “but likely to pall.”
“Pall! Deuce a bit of it!” Lambert put a toothpick in his mouth, and
began to chew it, to convey the effect of ease. “I can tell you I’ve
known that girl since she was the length of my stick, and I never saw
her that she wasn’t up to some game or other; and she wasn’t over
particular about engagements or anything else!”
Christopher slightly shifted his position, but did not speak, and
Lambert went on:
“I’m very fond of the girl, and she’s a good-hearted little thing; but,
by Jove! I was sorry to see the way she went on with that fellow
Hawkins. Here he was, morning, noon, and night, walking with her, and
steam-launching, and spooning, and setting all the old women in the
place prating. I spoke to her about it, and much thanks I got, though
there was a time she was ready enough to mind what I said to her.”
During this recital Mr. Lambert’s voice had been deficient in the accent
of gentlemanlike self importance that in calmer moments he was careful
to impart to it, and the raw Limerick brogue was on top as he said,
“Yes, by George! I remember the time when she wasn’t above fancying your
humble servant!”
He had almost forgotten his original idea; his own position, long
brooded over, rose up out of all proportion, and confused his mental
perspective, till Christopher Dysart’s opinions were lost sight of. He
was recalled to himself by a startling expression on the face of his
confidant, an expression of almost unconcealed disgust, that checked
effectively any further outpourings. Christopher did not look at him
again, but turned from the window, and, taking up Miss Mullen’s
photograph-book, proceeded to a minute inspection of its contents.
Neither he nor Lambert quite knew what would happen next, each in his
own way being angry enough for any emergency, and both felt an extreme
relief when Francie’s abrupt entrance closed the situation.
“Well, I wasn’t long now, was I?” she said breathlessly; “but what’ll I
do? I can’t find my gloves!” She swept out of the corner of the sofa a
cat that had been slumbering unseen behind a cushion. “Here they are!
and full of fleas, I’ll be bound, after Clementina sleeping on them! Oh,
goodness! Are both of you too angry to speak to me? I didn’t think I was
so long. Come on out to the yard; you can’t say I’m keeping you now.”
She whirled out of the room, and by the time Lambert and Christopher got
into the yard, she had somehow dragged the black mare out of the
cow-shed and was clambering on to her back with the aid of a
wheel-barrow.
Riding has many charms, but none of its eulogists have properly dwelt on
the advantages it offers to the unconversational. To ride in silence is
the least marked form of unsociability, for something of the same
reason that talking on horseback is one of the pleasantest modes of
converse. The power of silence cuts both ways, and simplifies either
confidence or its reverse amazingly. It so happened, however, that had
Lambert had the inclination to make himself agreeable to his companions
he could not have done so. Christopher’s carriage-horse trotted with the
machine-like steadiness of its profession, and the black mare, roused to
emulation, flew along beside him, ignoring the feebly expressed desire
of her rider that she should moderate her pace. Christopher, indeed,
seldom knew or cared at what pace his horse was going, and was now by no
means sorry to find that the question of riding along with Lambert had
been settled for him. The rough, young chestnut was filled with a
vain-glory that scorned to trot, and after a great deal of brilliant
ramping and curveting he fell into a kind of heraldic action,
half-canter, half-walk, that left him more and more hopelessly in the
rear, and raised Lambert’s temper to boiling point.
“We’re going very fast, aren’t we?” panted Francie, trying to push down
her rebellious habit-skirt with her whip, as they sped along the flat
road between Lismoyle and Bruff. “I’m afraid Mr. Lambert can’t keep up.
That’s a dreadfully wild horse he’s riding.”
“Are we?” said Christopher vaguely. “Shall we pull up? Here, woa, you
brute!” He pulled the carriage-horse into a walk, and looked at Francie
with a laugh. “I’m beginning to hope you’re as bad a rider as I am,” he
said sympathetically. “Let me hold your reins, while you’re pinning up
that plait.”
“Oh, botheration take it! Is my hair down again? It always comes down if
I trot fast,” bewailed Francie, putting up her hands to her dishevelled
hair, that sparkled like gold in the sun.
“Do you know, the first time I ever saw you, your hair had come down out
riding,” said Christopher, looking at her as he held her rein, and not
giving a thought to the intimate appearance they presented to the third
member of the party; “if I were you I should start with it down my
back.”
“Ah, nonsense, Mr. Dysart; why would you have me make a Judy of myself
that way?”
“Because it’s the loveliest hair I’ve ever seen,” answered Christopher,
the words coming to his lips almost without his volition, and in their
utterance causing his heart to give one or two unexpected throbs.
“Oh!” There was as much astonishment as pleasure in the exclamation, and
she became as red as fire. She turned her head away, and looked back to
see where Lambert was.
She had heard from Hawkins only this morning, asking her for a piece of
the hair that Christopher had called lovely. She had cut off a little
curl from the place he had specified, near her temple, and had posted it
to him this very afternoon after Charlotte went out; but all the things
that Hawkins had said of her hair did not seem to her so wonderful as
that Mr. Dysart should pay her a compliment.
Lambert was quite silent after he joined them. In his heart he was
cursing everything and everyone, the chestnut, Christopher, Francie, and
most of all himself, for having said the things that he had said. All
the good he had done was to leave no doubt in Christopher’s mind that
Hawkins was out of the running, and as for telling him that Francie was
a flirt, an ass like that didn’t so much as know the meaning of the word
flirting. He knew now that he had made a fool of himself, and the
remembrance of that disgusted expression on Christopher’s face made his
better judgment return as burningly as the blood into veins numbed with
cold. At the cross-roads next before Bruff, he broke in upon the
exchange of experiences of the Dublin theatres that was going on very
enjoyably beside him.
“I’m afraid we must part company here, Dysart,” he said in as civil a
voice as he could muster; “I want to speak to a farmer who lives down
this way.”
Christopher made his farewells, and rode slowly down the hill towards
Bruff. It was a hill that had been cut down in the Famine, so that the
fields on either side rose high above its level, and the red poppies and
yellowing corn nodded into the sky over his head. The bay horse was
collecting himself for a final trot to the avenue gates, when he found
himself stopped, and, after a moment of hesitation on the part of his
rider, was sent up the hill again a good deal faster than he had come
down. Christopher pulled up again on the top of the hill. He was higher
now than the corn, and, looking across its multitudinous, rustling
surface, he saw the figure that some errant impulse had made him come
back to see. Francie’s head was turned towards Lambert, and she was
evidently talking to him. Christopher’s eyes followed the pair till they
were out of sight, and then he again turned his horse, and went home to
Bruff.
CHAPTER XXX.
One fine morning towards the end of August, Julia Duffy was sitting on a
broken chair in her kitchen, with her hands in her lap, and her
bloodshot eyes fixed on vacancy. She was so quiet that a party of ducks,
which had hung uncertainly about the open door for some time, filed
slowly in, and began to explore an empty pot or two with their long,
dirty bills. The ducks knew well that Miss Duffy, though satisfied to
accord the freedom of the kitchen to the hens and turkeys, had drawn the
line at them and their cousins the geese, and they adventured themselves
within the forbidden limits with the utmost caution, and with many side
glances from their blinking, beady eyes at the motionless figure in the
chair. They had made their way to a plate of potato skins and greasy
cabbage on the floor by the table, and, forgetful of prudence, were
clattering their bills on the delf as they gobbled, when an arm was
stretched out above their heads, and they fled in cumbrous
consternation.
The arm, however, was not stretched out in menace; Julia Duffy had
merely extended it to take a paper from the table, and having done so,
she looked at its contents in entire obliviousness of the ducks and
their maraudings. Her misfortunes were converging. It was not a week
since she had heard of the proclaimed insolvency of the man who had
taken the grazing of Gurthnamuckla, and it was not half an hour since
she had been struck by this last arrow of outrageous fortune, the letter
threatening to process her for the long arrears of rent that she had
felt lengthening hopelessly with every sunrise and sunset. She looked
round the dreary kitchen that had about it all the added desolation of
past respectability, at the rusty hooks from which she could remember
the portly hams and flitches of bacon hanging; at the big fire-place
where her grandfather’s Sunday sirloin used to be roasted. Now cobwebs
dangled from the hooks, and the old grate had fallen to pieces, so that
the few sods of turf smouldered on the hearthstone. Everything spoke of
bygone plenty and present wretchedness.
Julia put the letter into its envelope again and groaned a long
miserable groan. She got up and stood for a minute, staring out of the
open door with her hands on her hips, and then went slowly and heavily
up the stairs, groaning again to herself from the exertion and from the
blinding headache that made her feel as though her brain were on fire.
She went into her room and changed her filthy gown for the stained and
faded black rep that hung on the door. From a band-box of tanned
antiquity she took a black bonnet that had first seen the light at her
mother’s funeral, and tied its clammy satin strings with shaking hands.
Flashes of light came and went before her eyes, and her pallid face was
flushed painfully as she went downstairs again, and finding, after long
search, the remains of the bottle of blacking, laboriously cleaned her
only pair of boots. She was going out of the house when her eye fell
upon the plate from which the ducks had been eating; she came back for
it, and, taking it out with her, scattered its contents to the turkeys,
mechanically holding her dress up out of the dirt as she did so. She
left the plate on the kitchen window-sill, and set slowly forth down the
avenue.
Under the tree by the gate, Billy Grainy was sitting, engaged, as was
his custom in moments of leisure, in counting the coppers in the bag
that hung round his neck. He looked in amazement at the unexpected
appearance of his patroness, and as she approached him he pushed the bag
under his shirt.
“Where are ye goin’?” he asked.
Julia did not answer; she fumbled blindly with the bit of stick that
fastened the gate, and, having opened it, went on without attempting to
shut it.
“Where are ye goin’ at all?” said Billy again, his bleared eyes
following the unfamiliar outline of bonnet and gown.
Without turning, she said, “Lismoyle,” and as she walked on along the
sunny road, she put up her hand and tried to wipe away the tears that
were running down her face. Perhaps it was the excitement with which
every nerve was trembling that made the three miles to Rosemount seem as
nothing to this woman, who, for the last six months, had been too ill to
go beyond her own gate; and probably it was the same unnatural strength
that prevented her from breaking down, when, with her mind full of
ready-framed sentences that were to touch Mr. Lambert’s heart and appeal
to his sense of justice, she heard from Mary Holloran at the gate that
he was away for a couple of days to Limerick. Without replying to Mary
Holloran’s exclamations of pious horror at the distance she had walked,
and declining all offers of rest or food, she turned and walked on
towards Lismoyle.
She had suddenly determined to herself that she would walk to Bruff and
see her landlord, and this new idea took such possession of her that she
did not realise at first the magnitude of the attempt. But by the time
she had reached the gate of Tally Ho the physical power that her impulse
gave her began to be conscious of its own limits. The flashes were
darting like lightning before her eyes, and the nausea that was her
constant companion robbed her of her energy. After a moment of
hesitation she decided that she would go in and see her kinswoman, Norry
the Boat, and get a glass of water from her before going further. It
wounded her pride somewhat to go round to the kitchen--she, whose
grandfather had been on nearly the same social level as Miss Mullen’s;
but Charlotte was the last person she wished to meet just then. Norry
opened the kitchen door, beginning, as she did so, her usual snarling
maledictions on the supposed beggar, which, however, were lost in a loud
invocation of her patron saint as she recognised her first cousin, Miss
Duffy.
“And is it to leg it in from Gurthnamuckla ye done?” said Norry, when
the first greetings had been exchanged, and Julia was seated in the
kitchen, “and you looking as white as the dhrivelling snow this minnit.”
“I did,” said Julia feebly, “and I’d be thankful to you for a drink of
water. The day’s very close.”
“Faith ye’ll get no wather in this house,” returned Norry in grim
hospitality; “I’ll give you a sup of milk, or would it be too much
delay on ye to wait till I bile the kittle for a cup o’ tay? Bad cess to
Bid Sal! There isn’t as much hot wather in the house this minute as’d
write yer name!”
“I’m obliged to ye, Norry,” said Julia stiffly, her sick pride evolving
a supposition that she could be in want of food; “but I’m only after my
breakfast myself. Indeed,” she added, assuming from old habit her usual
attitude of medical adviser, “you’d be the better yourself for taking
less tea.”
“Is it me?” replied Norry indignantly. “I take me cup o’ tay morning and
evening, and if ’twas throwing afther me I wouldn’t take more.”
“Give me the cold wather, anyway,” said Julia wearily; “I must go on out
of this. It’s to Bruff I’m going.”
“In the name o’ God what’s taking ye into Bruff, you that should be in
yer bed, in place of sthreelin’ through the counthry this way?”
“I got a letter from Lambert to-day,” said Julia, putting her hand to
her aching head, as if to collect herself, “and I want to speak to Sir
Benjamin about it.”
“Ah, God help yer foolish head!” said Norry impatiently; “sure ye might
as well be talking to the bird above there,” pointing to the cockatoo,
who was looking down at them with ghostly solemnity. “The owld fellow’s
light in his head this long while.”
“Then I’ll see some of the family,” said Julia; “they remember my
fawther well, and the promise I had about the farm, and they’ll not see
me wronged.”
“Throth, then, that’s thrue,” said Norry, with an unwonted burst of
admiration; “they was always and ever a fine family, and thim that they
takes in their hands has the luck o’ God! But what did Lambert say
t’ye?” with a keen glance at her visitor from under her heavy eyebrows.
Julia hesitated for a moment.
“Norry Kelly,” she said, her voice shaking a little; “if it wasn’t that
you’re me own mother’s sister’s child, I would not reveal to you the
disgrace that man is trying to put upon me. I got a letter from him this
morning saying he’d process me if I didn’t pay him at once the half of
what’s due. And Joyce that has the grazing is bankrupt, and owes me what
I’ll never get from him.”
“Blast his sowl!” interjected Norry, who was peeling onions with furious
speed.
“I know there’s manny would be thankful to take the grazing,” continued
Julia, passing a dingy pocket handkerchief over her forehead; “but who
knows when I’d be paid for it, and Lambert will have me out on the road
before that if I don’t give him the rent.”
Norry looked to see whether both the kitchen doors were shut, and then,
putting both her hands on the table, leaned across towards her cousin.
“Herself wants it,” she said in a whisper.
“Wants what? What are you saying?”
“Wants the farm, I tell ye, and it’s her that’s driving Lambert.”
“Is it Charlotte Mullen?” asked Julia, in a scarcely audible voice.
“Now ye have it,” said Norry, returning to her onions, and shutting her
mouth tightly.
The cockatoo gave a sudden piercing screech, like a note of admiration.
Julia half got up, and then sank back into her chair.
“Are ye sure of that?”
“As sure as I have two feet,” replied Norry, “and I’ll tell ye what
she’s afther it for. It’s to go live in it, and to let on she’s as grand
as the other ladies in the counthry.”
Julia clenched the bony, discoloured hand that lay on the table.
“Before I saw her in it I’d burn it over my head!”
“Not a word out o’ ye about what I tell ye,” went on Norry in the same
ominous whisper. “Shure she have it all mapped this minnit, the same as
a pairson’d be makin’ a watch. She’s sthriving to make a match with
young Misther Dysart and Miss Francie, and b’leeve you me, ’twill be a
quare thing if she’ll let him go from her. Sure he’s the gentlest
crayture ever came into a house, and he’s that innocent he wouldn’t
think how cute she was. If ye’d seen her, ere yestherday, follying him
down to the gate, and she smilin’ up at him as sweet as honey! The way
it’ll be, she’ll sell Tally Ho house for a fortune for Miss Francie,
though, indeed, it’s little fortune himself’ll ax!”
The words drove heavily through the pain of Julia’s head, and their
meaning followed at an interval.
“Why would she give a fortune to the likes of her?” she asked; “isn’t it
what the people say, it’s only for a charity she has her here?”
Norry gave her own peculiar laugh of derision, a laugh with a snort in
it.
“Sharity! It’s little sharity ye’ll get from that one! Didn’t I hear the
old misthress tellin’ her, and she sthretched for death--and Miss
Charlotte knows well I heard her say it--‘Charlotte,’ says she, and her
knees, dhrawn up in the bed, ‘Francie must have her share.’ And that was
the lasht word she spoke.” Norry’s large wild eyes roved skywards out of
the window as the scene rose before her. “God rest her soul, ’tis she
got the death aisy!”
“That Charlotte Mullen may get it hard!” said Julia savagely. She got
up, feeling new strength in her tired limbs, though her head was reeling
strangely, and she had to grasp at the kitchen table to keep herself
steady. “I’ll go on now. If I die for it I’ll go to Bruff this day.”
Norry dropped the onion she was peeling, and placed herself between
Julia and the door.
“The divil a toe will ye put out of this kitchen,” she said, flourishing
her knife; “is it _you_ walk to Bruff?”
“I must go to Bruff,” said Julia again, almost mechanically; “but if you
could give me a taste of sperrits, I think I’d be better able for the
road.”
Norry pulled open a drawer, and took from the back of it a bottle
containing a colourless liquid.
“Drink this to your health!” she said in Irish, giving some in a mug to
Julia; “it’s potheen I got from friends of me own, back in Curraghduff.”
She put her hand into the drawer again, and after a little search
produced from the centre of a bundle of amorphous rags a cardboard box
covered with shells. Julia heard, without heeding it, the clink of
money, and then three shillings were slapped down on the table beside
her. “Ye’ll go to Conolly’s now, and get a car to dhrive ye,” said Norry
defiantly; “or howld on till I send Bid Sal to get it for ye. Not a word
out o’ ye now! Sure, don’t I know well a pairson wouldn’t think to put
his money in his pocket whin he’d be hasting that way lavin’ his house.”
She did not wait for an answer, but shuffled to the scullery door, and
began to scream for Bid Sal in her usual tones of acrid ill-temper. As
she returned to the kitchen, Julia met her at the door. Her yellow face,
that Norry had likened by courtesy to the driven snow, was now very red,
and her eyes had a hot stare in them.
“I’m obliged to you, Norry Kelly,” she said, “but when I’m in need of
charity I’ll ask for it. Let me out, if you please.”
The blast of fury with which Norry was preparing to reply was checked by
a rattle of wheels in the yard, and Bid Sal appeared with the
intelligence that Jimmy Daly was come over with the Bruff cart, and
Norry was to go out to speak to him. When she came back she had a basket
of grapes in one hand and a brace of grouse in the other, and as she put
them down on the table, she informed her cousin, with distant
politeness, that Jimmy Daly would drive her to Bruff.
CHAPTER XXXI.
The drive in the spring-cart was the first moment of comparative ease
from suffering that Julia had known that day. Her tormented brain was
cooled by the soft steady rush of air in her face, and the mouthful of
“potheen” that she had drunk had at first the effect of dulling all her
perceptions. The cart drove up the back avenue, and at the yard gate
Julia asked the man to put her down. She clambered out of the cart with
great difficulty, and going round to the hall door, went toilfully up
the steps and rang the bell. Sir Benjamin was out, Lady Dysart was out,
Mr. Dysart was out; so Gorman told her, with a doubtful look at the
black Sunday gown that seemed to him indicative of the bearer of a
begging petition, and he did not know when they would be in. He shut the
door, and Julia went slowly down the steps again.
She had begun to walk mechanically away from the house, when she saw Sir
Benjamin in his chair coming up a side walk. His face, with its white
hair, gold spectacles, and tall hat, looked so sane and dignified,
that, in spite of what Norry had said, she determined to carry out her
first intention of speaking to him. She shivered, though the sun blazed
hotly down upon her, as she walked towards the chair, not from
nervousness, but from the creeping sense of illness, and the ground rose
up in front of her as if she were going up-hill. She made a low bow to
her landlord, and James Canavan, who knew her by sight, stopped the
onward course of the chair.
“I wish to speak to you on an important matter, Sir Benjamin,” began
Julia in her best voice; “I was unable to see your agent, so I
determined to come to yourself.”
The gold spectacles were turned upon her fixedly, and the expression of
the eyes behind them was more intelligent than usual.
“Begad, that’s one of the tenants, James,” said Sir Benjamin, looking up
at his attendant.
“Certainly, Sir Benjamin, certainly; this lady is Miss Duffy, from
Gurthnamuckla,” replied the courtly James Canavan. “An old tenant, I
might almost say an old friend of your honour’s.”
“And what the devil brings her here?” inquired Sir Benjamin, glowering
at her under the wide brim of his hat.
“Sir Benjamin,” began Julia again, “I know your memory’s failing you,
but you might remember that after the death of my father, Hubert
Duffy--” Julia felt all the Protestant and aristocratic associations of
the name as she said it--“you made a promise to me in your office that I
should never be disturbed in my holding of the land.”
“Devil so ugly a man as Hubert Duffy ever I saw,” said Sir Benjamin,
with a startling flight of memory; “and you’re his daughter, are you?
Begad, the dairymaid didn’t distinguish herself!”
“Yes, I am his daughter, Sir Benjamin,” replied Julia, catching at this
flattering recognition. “I and my family have always lived on your
estate, and my grandfather has often had the honour of entertaining you
and the rest of the gentry, when they came fox-hunting through
Gurthnamuckla. I am certain that it is by no wish of yours, or of your
kind and honourable son, Mr. Christopher, that your agent is
pairsecuting me to make me leave the farm--” Her voice failed her,
partly from the suffocating anger that rose in her at her own words, and
partly from a dizziness that made the bath-chair, Sir Benjamin, and
James Canavan, float up and down in the air before her.
Sir Benjamin suddenly began to brandish his stick. “What the devil is
she saying about Christopher? What has Christopher to say to my tenants.
D--n his insolence! He ought to be at school!”
The remarkable grimaces which James Canavan made at Julia from the back
of the bath-chair informed her that she had lighted upon the worst
possible method of ingratiating herself with her landlord, but the
information came too late.
“Send that woman away, James Canavan!” he screamed, making sweeps at her
with his oak stick. “She shall never put her d--d splay foot upon my
avenue again. I’ll thrash her and Christopher out of the place! Turn her
out, I tell you, James Canavan!”
Julia stood motionless and aghast beyond the reach of the stick, until
James Canavan motioned to her to move aside; she staggered back among
the long arms of a _lignum vitæ_, and the bath-chair, with its still
cursing, gesticulating occupant, went by her at a round pace. Then she
came slowly and uncertainly out on to the path again, and looked after
the chariot wheels of the Cæsar to whom she had appealed.
James Canavan’s coat-tails were standing out behind him as he drove the
bath-chair round the corner of the path, and Sir Benjamin’s imprecations
came faintly back to her as she stood waiting till the throbbing
giddiness should cease sufficiently for her to begin the homeward
journey that stretched, horrible and impossible, before her. Her head
ached wildly, and as she walked down the avenue she found herself
stumbling against the edge of the grass, now on one side and now on the
other. She said to herself that the people would say she was drunk, but
she didn’t care now what they said. It would be shortly till they saw
her a disgraced woman, with the sheriff coming to put her out of her
father’s house on to the road. She gave a hard, short sob as this
occurred to her, and she wondered if she would have the good luck to
die, supposing she let herself fall down on the grass, and lay there in
the burning sun and took no more trouble about anything. Her thoughts
came to her slowly and with great difficulty, but, once come, they
whirled and hammered in her brain with the reiteration of chiming bells.
She walked on, out of the gate, and along the road to Lismoyle,
mechanically going in the shade where there was any, and avoiding the
patches of broken stones, as possibly a man might who was walking out to
be shot, but apathetically unconscious of what was happening.
At about this time the person whose name Julia Duffy had so
unfortunately selected to conjure with was sitting under a tree on the
slope opposite the hall door at Tally Ho, reading aloud a poem of
Rossetti’s.
“Her eyes were like the wave within,
Like water reeds the poise
Of her soft body, dainty thin;
And like the water’s noise
Her plaintive voice.
“For him the stream had never welled
In desert tracts malign
So sweet; nor had he ever felt
So faint in the sunshine
Of Palestine.”
Francie’s attention, which had revived at the description of the Queen,
began to wander again. The sound in Christopher’s voice told that the
words were touching something deeper than his literary perception, and
her sympathy answered to the tone, though the drift of the poem was dark
to her. The music of the lines had just power enough upon her ear to
predispose her to sentiment, and at present, sentiment with Francie
meant the tender repose of her soul upon the thought of Mr. Gerald
Hawkins.
A pause at turning over a leaf recalled her again to the fact of
Christopher, with a transition not altogether unpleasant; she looked
down at him as he lay on the grass, and began to wonder, as she had
several times wondered before, if he really were in love with her.
Nothing seemed more unlikely. Francie admitted it to herself as she
watched his eyes following the lines in complete absorption, and knew
that she had neither part nor lot in the things that touched him most
nearly.
But the facts were surprising, there was no denying that. Even without
Charlotte to tell her so she was aware that Christopher detested the
practice of paying visits even more sincerely than most men, and was
certainly not in the habit of visiting in Lismoyle. Except to see her,
there was no reason that could bring him to Tally Ho. Surer than all
fact, however, and rising superior to mere logic, was her instinctive
comprehension of men and their ways, and sometimes she was almost sure
that he came, not from kindness, or from that desire to improve her mind
which she had discerned and compassionated, but because he could not
help himself. She had arrived at one of these thrilling moments of
certainty when Christopher’s voice ceased upon the words, “Thy jealous
God,” and she knew that the time had come for her to say something
appropriate.
“Oh thank you, Mr. Dysart--that’s--that’s awfully pretty. It’s a sort of
religious thing, isn’t it?”
“Yes, I suppose so,” answered Christopher, looking at her with a
wavering smile, and feeling as if he had stepped suddenly to the ground
out of a dream of flying; “the hero’s a pilgrim, and that’s always
something.”
“I know a lovely song called ‘The Pilgrim of Love,’” said Francie
timidly; “of course it wasn’t the same thing as what you were reading,
but it was awfully nice too.”
Christopher looked up at her, and was almost convinced that she must
have absorbed something of the sentiment if not the sense of what he had
read, her face was so sympathetic and responsive. With that expression
in her limpid eyes it gave him a peculiar sensation to hear her say the
name of Love; it was even a delight, and fired his imagination with the
picturing of what it would be like to hear her say it with all her
awakened soul. He might have said something that would have suggested
his feeling, in the fragmentary, inferential manner that Francie never
knew what to make of, but that her eyes strayed away at a click of the
latch of the avenue gate, and lost their unworldliness in the sharp and
easy glance that is the unvalued privilege of the keen-sighted.
“Who in the name of goodness is this?” she said, sitting up and gazing
at a black figure in the avenue; “it’s some woman or other, but she
looks very queer.”
“I can’t see that it matters much who it is,” said Christopher
irritably, “so long as she doesn’t come up here, and she probably will
if you let her see you.”
“Mercy on us! she looks awful!” exclaimed Francie incautiously; “why,
it’s Miss Duffy, and her face as red as I don’t know what--oh, she’s
seen us!”
The voice had evidently reached Julia Duffy’s ears; she came stumbling
on, with her eyes fixed on the light blue dress under the beech tree,
and when Christopher had turned, and got his eye-glass up, she was
standing at the foot of the slope, looking at him with a blurred
recognition.
“Mr. Dysart,” she said in a hoarse voice, that, combined with her
flushed face and staring eyes, made Christopher think she was drunk,
“Sir Benjamin has driven me out of his place like a beggar; me, whose
family is as long on his estate as himself; and his agent wants to drive
me out of my farm that was promised to me by your father I should never
be disturbed in it.”
“You’re Miss Duffy from Gurthnamuckla, are you not?” interrupted
Christopher, eyeing her with natural disfavour, as he got up and came
down the slope towards her.
“I am, Mr. Dysart, I am,” she said defiantly, “and you and your family
have a right to know me, and I ask you to do me justice, that I shall
not be turned out into the ditch for the sake of a lying double-faced
schemer--” Her voice failed, as it had failed before when she spoke to
Sir Benjamin, and the action of her hand that carried on her meaning had
a rage in it that hid its despair.
“I think if you have anything to say you had better write it,” said
Christopher, beginning to think that Lambert had some excuse for his
opinion of Miss Duffy, but beginning also to pity what he thought was a
spectacle of miserable middle-aged drunkenness; “you may be sure that no
injustice will be done to you--”
“Is it injustice?” broke in Julia, while the fever cloud seemed to roll
its weight back for a moment from her brain; “maybe you’d say there was
injustice if you knew all I know. Where’s Charlotte Mullen, till I tell
her to her face that I know her plots and her thricks? ’Tis to say that
to her I came here, and to tell her ’twas she lent money to Peter Joyce
that was grazing my farm, and refused it to him secondly, the way he’d
go bankrupt on me, and she’s to have my farm and my house that my
grandfather built, thinking to even herself with the rest of the
gentry--”
Her voice had become wilder and louder, and Christopher, uncomfortably
aware that Francie could hear this indictment of Miss Mullen as
distinctly as he did, intervened again.
“Look here, Miss Duffy,” he said in a lower voice, “it’s no use talking
like this. If I can help you I will, but it would be a good deal better
if you went home now. You--you seem ill, and it’s a great mistake to
stay here exciting yourself and making a noise. Write to me, and I’ll
see that you get fair play.”
Julia threw back her head and laughed, with a venom that seemed too
concentrated for drunkenness.
“Ye’d better see ye get fair play yerself before you talk so grand about
it!” She pointed up at Francie. “Mrs. Dysart indeed!”--she bowed with a
sarcastic exaggeration, that in saner moments she would not have been
capable of--“Lady Dysart of Bruff, one of these days I suppose!”--she
bowed again. “That’s what Miss Charlotte Mullen has laid out for ye,”
addressing herself to Christopher, “and ye’ll not get away from that one
till ye’re under her foot!”
She laughed again; her face became vacant and yet full of pain, and she
staggered away down the avenue, talking violently and gesticulating with
her hands.
CHAPTER XXXII.
Mrs. Lambert gathered up her purse, her list, her bag, and her parasol
from the table in Miss Greely’s wareroom, and turned to give her final
directions.
“Now, Miss Greely, before Sunday for certain; and you’ll be careful
about the set of the skirt, that it doesn’t firk up at the side, the way
the black one did--”
“_We_ understand the set of a skirt, Mrs. Lambert,” interposed the elder
Miss Greely in her most aristocratic voice; “I think you may leave that
to us.”
Mrs. Lambert retreated, feeling as snubbed as it was intended that she
should feel, and with a last injunction to the girl in the shop to be
sure not to let the Rosemount messenger leave town on Saturday night
without the parcel that he’d get from upstairs, she addressed herself to
the task of walking home. She was in very good spirits, and the thought
of a new dress for church next Sunday was exhilarating; it was a
pleasant fact also that Charlotte Mullen was coming to tea, and she and
Muffy, the Maltese terrier, turned into Barrett’s to buy a tea-cake in
honour of the event. Mrs. Beattie was also there, and the two ladies and
Mrs. Barrett had a most enjoyable discussion on tea; Mrs. Beattie
advocating “the one and threepenny from the Stores,” while Mrs. Barrett
and her other patroness agreed in upholding the Lismoyle
three-and-sixpenny against all others. Mrs. Lambert set forth again with
her tea-cake in her hand, and with such a prosperous expression of
countenance that Nance the Fool pursued her down the street with a
confidence that was not unrewarded.
“That the hob of heaven may be your scratching post!” she screamed, in
the midst of one of her most effective fits of coughing, as Mrs.
Lambert’s round little dolmaned figure passed complacently onward, “that
Pether and Paul may wait on ye, and that the saints may be surprised at
yer success! She’s sharitable, the craythur,” she ended in a lower
voice, as she rejoined the rival and confederate who had yielded to her
the right of plundering the last passer-by, “and sign’s on it, it
thrives with her; she’s got very gross!”
“Faith it wasn’t crackin’ blind nuts made her that fat,” said the
confidante unamiably, “and with all her riches she didn’t give ye the
price of a dhrink itself!”
Mrs. Lambert entered her house by the kitchen, so as to give directions
to Eliza Hackett about the tea-cake, and when she got upstairs she found
Charlotte already awaiting her in the dining-room, occupied in reading a
pamphlet on stall feeding, with apparently as complete a zest as if it
had been one of those yellow paper-covered volumes whose appearance
aroused such a respectful horror in Lismoyle.
“Well, Lucy, is this the way you receive your visitors?” she began
jocularly, as she rose and kissed her hostess’s florid cheek; “I needn’t
ask how you are, as you’re looking blooming.”
“I declare I think this hot summer suits me. I feel stronger than I’ve
done this good while back, thank God. Roddy was saying this morning he’d
have to put me and Muffy on banting, we’d both put up so much flesh.”
The turkey-hen looked so pleased as she recalled this conjugal
endearment that Charlotte could not resist the pleasure of taking her
down a peg or two.
“I think he’s quite right,” she said with a laugh; “nothing ages ye like
fat, and no man likes to see his wife turning into an old woman.”
Poor Mrs. Lambert took the snub meekly, as was her wont. “Well, anyway,
it’s a comfort to feel a little stronger, Charlotte; isn’t it what they
say, ‘laugh and grow fat.’” She took off her dolman and rang the bell
for tea. “Tell me, Charlotte,” she went on, “did you hear anything about
that poor Miss Duffy?”
“I was up at the infirmary this morning asking the Sister about her. It
was Rattray himself found her lying on the road, and brought her in; he
says it’s inflammation of the brain, and if she pulls through she’ll not
be good for anything afterwards.”
“Oh, my, my!” said Mrs. Lambert sympathetically. “And to think of her
being at our gate lodge that very day! Mary Holloran said she had that
dying look in her face you couldn’t mistake.”
“And no wonder, when you think of the way she lived,” said Charlotte
angrily; “starving there in Gurthnamuckla like a rat that’d rather die
in his hole than come out of it.”
“Well, she’s out of it now, poor thing,” ventured Mrs. Lambert.
“She is! and I think she’ll stay out of it. She’ll never be right in her
head again, and her things’ll have to be sold to support her and pay
some one to look after her, and if they don’t fetch that much she’ll
have to go into the county asylum. I wanted to talk to Roddy about that
very thing,” went on Charlotte, irritation showing itself in her voice;
“but I suppose he’s going riding or boating or amusing himself somehow,
as usual.”
“No, he’s not!” replied Mrs. Lambert, with just a shade of triumph.
“He’s taken a long walk by himself. He thought perhaps he’d better look
after his figure as well as me and Muffy, and he wanted to see a horse
he’s thinking of buying. He says he’d like to be able to leave me the
mare to draw me in the phaeton.”
“Where will he get the money to buy it?” asked Charlotte sharply.
“Oh! I leave all the money matters to him,” said Mrs. Lambert, with that
expression of serene satisfaction in her husband that had already had a
malign effect on Miss Mullen’s temper. “I know I can trust him.”
“You’ve a very different story to-day to what you had the last time I
was here,” said Charlotte with a sneer. “Are all your doubts of him
composed?”
The entrance of the tea-tray precluded all possibility of answer; but
Charlotte knew that her javelin was quivering in the wound. The moment
the door closed behind the servant, Mrs. Lambert turned upon her
assailant with the whimper in her voice that Charlotte knew so well.
“I greatly regretted, Charlotte,” she said, with as much dignity as she
could muster, “speaking to you the way I did, for I believe now I was
totally mistaken.”
It might be imagined that Charlotte would have taken pleasure in Mrs.
Lambert’s security, inasmuch as it implied her own; but, so far from
this being the case, it was intolerable to her that her friend should be
blind to the fact that tortured her night and day.
“And what’s changed your mind, might I ask?”
“His conduct has changed my mind, Charlotte,” replied Mrs. Lambert
severely; “and that’s enough for me.”
“Well, I’m glad you’re pleased with his conduct, Lucy; but if he was
_my_ husband I’d find out what he was doing at Tally Ho every day in the
week before I was so rejoiced about him.”
Charlotte’s face had flushed in the heat of argument, and Mrs. Lambert
felt secretly a little frightened.
“Begging your pardon, Charlotte,” she said, still striving after
dignity, “he’s not there every day, and when he does go it’s to talk
business with you he goes, about Gurthnamuckla and money and things like
that.”
Charlotte sat up with a dangerous look about her jaw. She could hardly
believe that Lambert could have babbled her secrets to this despised
creature in order to save himself. “He appears to tell you a good deal
about his business affairs,” she said, her eyes quelling the feeble
resistance in Mrs. Lambert’s; “but he doesn’t seem to tell you the truth
about other matters. He’s telling ye lies about what takes him to Tally
Ho; it isn’t to talk business--” the colour deepened in her face. “I
tell ye once for all, that as sure as God’s in heaven he’s fascinated
with that girl! This isn’t the beginning of it--ye needn’t think it! She
flirted with him in Dublin, and though she doesn’t care two snaps of her
fingers for him she’s flirting with him now!”
The real Charlotte had seldom been nearer the surface than at this
moment; and Mrs. Lambert cowered before the manifestation.
“You’re very unkind to me, Charlotte,” she said in a voice that was
tremulous with fright and anger; “I wonder at you, that you would say
such things to me about my own husband.”
“Well, perhaps you’d rather I said it to you now in confidence than that
every soul in Lismoyle should be prating and talking about it, as they
will be if ye don’t put down yer foot, and tell Roddy he’s making a fool
of himself!”
Mrs. Lambert remained stunned for a few seconds at the bare idea of
putting down her foot where Roderick was concerned, or of even
insinuating that that supreme being could make a fool of himself, and
then her eyes filled with tears of mortification.
“He is _not_ making a fool of himself, Charlotte,” she said,
endeavouring to pluck up spirit, “and you’ve no right to say anything of
the kind. You might have more respect for your family than to be trying
to raise scandal this way and upsetting me, and I not able for it!”
Charlotte looked at her, and kept back with an effort the torrent of
bullying fury that was seething in her. She had no objection to
upsetting Mrs. Lambert, but she preferred that hysterics should be
deferred until she had established her point. Why she wished to
establish it she did not explain to herself, but her restless jealousy,
combined with her intolerance of the Fool’s Paradise in which Mrs.
Lambert had entrenched herself, made it impossible for her to leave the
subject alone.
“I think ye know it’s not my habit to raise scandal, Lucy, and I’m not
one to make an assertion without adequate grounds for it,” she said in
her strong, acrid voice; “as I said before, this flirtation is an old
story. I have my own reasons for knowing that there was more going on
than anyone suspected, from the time she was in short frocks till she
came down here, and now, if she hadn’t another affair on hand, she’d
have the whole country in a blaze about it. Why, d’ye know that habit
she wears? It was your husband paid for that!”
She emphasised each word between her closed teeth, and her large face
was so close to Mrs. Lambert’s, by the time she had finished speaking,
that the latter shrank back.
“I don’t believe you, Charlotte,” she said with trembling lips; “how do
you know it?”
Charlotte had no intention of telling that her source of information had
been the contents of a writing-case of Francie’s, an absurd receptacle
for photographs and letters that bore the word “Papeterie” on its greasy
covers, and had a lock bearing a family resemblance to the lock of Miss
Mullen’s work-box. But a cross-examination by the turkey-hen was easily
evaded.
“Never you mind how I know it. It’s true.” Then, with a connection of
ideas that she would have taken more pains to conceal in dealing with
anyone else, “Did ye ever see any of the letters she wrote to him when
she was in Dublin?”
“No, Charlotte; I’m not in the habit of looking at my husband’s letters.
I think the tea is drawn,” she continued, making a last struggle to
maintain her position, “and I’d be glad to hear no more on the subject.”
She took the cosy off the tea-pot, and began to pour out the tea, but
her hands were shaking, and Charlotte’s eye made her nervous. “Oh, I’m
very tired--I’m too long without my tea. Oh, Charlotte, why do you annoy
me this way when you know it’s so bad for me?” She put down the tea-pot,
and covered her face with her hands. “Is it me own dear husband that you
say such things of? Oh, it couldn’t be true, and he always so kind to
me; indeed, it isn’t true, Charlotte,” she protested piteously between
her sobs.
“Me dear Lucy,” said Charlotte, laying her broad hand on Mrs. Lambert’s
knee, “I wish I could say it wasn’t, though of course the wisest of us
is liable to error. Come now!” she said, as if struck by a new idea.
“I’ll tell ye how we could settle the matter! It’s a way you won’t like,
and it’s a way I don’t like either, but I solemnly think you owe it to
yourself, and to your position as a wife. Will you let me say it to
you?”
“Oh, you may, Charlotte, you may,” said Mrs. Lambert tearfully.
“Well, my advice to you is this, to see what old letters of hers he has,
and ye’ll be able to judge for yourself what the truth of the case is.
If there’s no harm in them I’ll be only too ready to congratulate ye on
proving me in the wrong, and if there is, why, ye’ll know what course to
pursue.”
“Is it look at Roddy’s letters?” cried Mrs. Lambert, emerging from her
handkerchief with a stare of horror; “he’d kill me if he thought I
looked at them!”
“Ah, nonsense, woman, he’ll never know you looked at them,” said
Charlotte, scanning the room quickly; “is it in his study he keeps his
private letters?”
“No, I think it’s in his old despatch-box up on the shelf there,”
answered Mrs. Lambert, a little taken with the idea, in spite of her
scruples.
“Then ye’re done,” said Charlotte, looking up at the despatch-box in its
absolute security of Bramah lock; “of course he has his keys with him
always.”
“Well then, d’ye know,” said Mrs. Lambert hesitatingly, “I think I heard
his keys jingling in the pocket of the coat he took off before he went
out, and I didn’t notice him taking them out of it--but, oh, my dear, I
wouldn’t dare to open any of his things. I might as well quit the house
if he found it out.”
“I tell you it’s your privilege as a wife, and your plain duty besides,
to see those letters,” urged Charlotte. “I’d recommend you to go up and
get those keys now, this minute; it’s like the hand of Providence that
he should leave them behind him.”
The force of her will had its effect. Mrs. Lambert got up, and, after
another declaration that Roderick would kill her, went out of the room
and up the stairs at a pace that Charlotte did not think her capable of.
She heard her step hurrying into the room overhead, and in a
surprisingly short time she was back again, uttering pants of
exhaustion and alarm, but holding the keys in her hand.
“Oh,” she said, “I thought every minute I heard him coming to the door!
Here they are for you, Charlotte, take them! I’ll not have anything more
to say to them.”
She flung the keys into Miss Mullen’s lap, and prepared to sink into her
chair again. Charlotte jumped up, and the keys rattled on to the floor.
“And d’ye think I’d lay a finger on them?” she said, in such a voice
that Mrs. Lambert checked herself in the action of sitting down, and
Muffy fled under his mistress’s chair and barked in angry alarm. “Pick
them up yourself! It’s no affair of mine!” She pointed with a fateful
finger at the keys, and Mrs. Lambert obediently stooped for them. “Now,
there’s the desk, ye’d better not lose any more time, but get it down.”
The shelf on which the desk stood was the highest one of a small
book-case, and was just above the level of Mrs. Lambert’s head, so that
when, after many a frightened look out of the window, she stretched up
her short arms to take it down, she found the task almost beyond her.
“Come and help me, Charlotte,” she cried; “I’m afraid it’ll fall on me!”
“I’ll not put a hand to it,” said Charlotte, without moving, while her
ugly, mobile face twitched with excitement; “it’s you have the right and
no one else, and I’d recommend ye to hurry!”
The word hurry acted electrically on Mrs. Lambert; she put forth all her
feeble strength, and lifting the heavy despatch-box from the shelf, she
staggered with it to the dinner-table.
“Oh, it’s the weight of the house!” she gasped, collapsing on to a chair
beside it.
“Here, open it now quickly, and we’ll talk about the weight of it
afterwards,” said Charlotte so imperiously that Mrs. Lambert, moved by a
power that was scarcely her own, fumbled through the bunch for the key.
“There it is! Don’t you see the Bramah key?” exclaimed Charlotte, hardly
repressing the inclination to call her friend a fool and to snatch the
bunch from her; “press it in hard now, or ye’ll not get it to turn.”
If the lock had not been an easy one, it is probable that Mrs. Lambert’s
helpless fingers would never have turned the key, but it yielded to the
first touch, and she lifted the lid. Charlotte craned over her shoulder
with eyes that ravened on the contents of the box.
“No, there’s nothing there,” she said, taking in with one look the
papers that lay in the tray; “lift up the tray!”
Mrs. Lambert, now past remonstrance, did as she was bid, and some
bundles of letters and a few photographs were brought to light.
“Show the photographs!” said Charlotte in one fierce breath.
But here Mrs. Lambert’s courage failed. “Oh, I can’t, don’t ask me!” she
wailed, clasping her hands on her bosom, with a terror of some
irrevocable truth that might await her adding itself to the fear of
discovery.
Charlotte caught one of her hands, and, with a guttural sound of
contempt, forced it down on to the photograph.
“Show it to me!”
Her victim took up the photographs, and turning them round, revealed two
old pictures of Lambert in riding clothes, with Francie beside him in a
very badly made habit, with her hair down her back.
“What d’ye think of that?” said Charlotte. She was gripping Mrs.
Lambert’s sloping shoulder, and her breath was coming hard and short.
“Now, get out her letters. There they are in the corner!”
“Ah, she’s only a child in that picture,” said Mrs. Lambert in a tone of
relief, as she hurriedly put the photographs back.
“Open the letters and ye’ll see what sort of a child she was.”
Mrs. Lambert made no further demur. She took out the bundle that
Charlotte pointed to, and drew the top one from its retaining
india-rubber strap. Even in affairs of the heart Mr. Lambert was a tidy
man.
“My dear Mr. Lambert,” she read aloud, in a deprecating, tearful voice
that was more than ever like the quivering chirrup of a turkey-hen, “the
cake was scrumptious, all the girls were after me for a bit of it, and
asking where I got it, but I wouldn’t tell. I put it under my pillow
three nights, but all I dreamt of was Uncle Robert walking round and
round Stephen’s Green in his night-cap. You must have had a grand
wedding. Why didn’t you ask me there to dance at it? So now no more from
your affectionate friend, F. Fitzpatrick.”
Mrs. Lambert leaned back, and her hands fell into her lap.
“Well, thank God there’s no harm in that, Charlotte,” she said, closing
her eyes with a sigh that might have been relief, though her voice
sounded a little dreamy and bewildered.
“Ah, you began at the wrong end,” said Charlotte, little attentive to
either sigh or tone, “that was written five years ago. Here, what’s in
this?” She indicated the one lowest in the packet.
Mrs. Lambert opened her eyes.
“The drops!” she said with sudden energy, “on the sideboard--oh, save
me--!”
Her voice fainted away, her eyes closed, and her head fell limply on to
her shoulder. Charlotte sprang instinctively towards the sideboard, but
suddenly stopped and looked from Mrs. Lambert to the bundle of letters.
She caught it up, and plucking out a couple of the most recent, read
them through with astonishing speed. She was going to take out another
when a slight movement from her companion made her throw them down.
Mrs. Lambert was slipping off the high dining-room chair on which she
was sitting, and there was a look about her mouth that Charlotte had
never seen there before. Charlotte had her arm under her in a moment,
and, letting her slip quietly down, laid her flat on the floor. Through
the keen and crowding contingencies of the moment came a sound from
outside, a well-known voice calling and whistling to a dog, and in the
same instant Charlotte had left Mrs. Lambert and was deftly and swiftly
replacing letters and photographs in the despatch-box. She closed the
lid noiselessly, put it back on its shelf with scarcely an effort, and
after a moment of uncertainty, slipped the keys into Mrs. Lambert’s
pocket. She knew that Lambert would never guess at his wife’s one breach
of faith. Then, with a quickness almost incredible in a woman of her
build, she got the drops from the sideboard, poured them out, and, on
her way back to the inert figure on the floor, rang the bell violently.
Muffy had crept from under the table to snuff with uncanny curiosity at
his mistress’s livid face, and as Charlotte approached, he put his tail
between his legs and yapped shrilly at her.
“Get out, ye damned cur!” she exclaimed, the coarse, superstitious side
of her nature coming uppermost now that the absorbing stress of those
acts of self-preservation was over. Her big foot lifted the dog and sent
him flying across the room, and she dropped on her knees beside the
motionless, tumbled figure on the floor. “She’s dead! she’s dead!” she
cried out, and as if in protest against her own words she flung water
upon the unresisting face, and tried to force the drops between the
closed teeth. But the face never altered; it only acquired momentarily
the immovable preoccupation of death, that asserted itself in silence,
and gave the feeble features a supreme dignity, in spite of the thin
dabbled fringe and the gold ear-rings and brooch, that were instinct
with the vulgarities of life.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
Few possessed of any degree of imagination can turn their backs on a
churchyard, after having witnessed there the shovelling upon and
stamping down of the last poor refuge of that which all feel to be
superfluous, a mere fragment of the inevitable _débris_ of life, without
a clinging hope that in some way or other the process may be avoided for
themselves. In spite of philosophy, the body will not picture its
surrender to the sordid thraldom of the undertaker and the mastery of
the spade, and preferably sees itself falling through cold miles of
water to some vague resting-place below the tides, or wedged beyond
search in the grip of an ice crack, or swept as grey ash into a cinerary
urn; anything rather than the prisoning coffin and blind weight of
earth. So Christopher thought impatiently, as he drove back to Bruff
from Mrs. Lambert’s funeral, in the dismal solemnity of black clothes
and a brougham, while the distant rattle of a reaping-machine was like a
voice full of the health and energy of life, that talked on of harvest,
and would not hear of graves.
That the commonplace gloom of a funeral should have plunged his general
ideas into despondency is, however, too much to believe of even such a
supersensitive mind as Christopher’s. It gave a darker wash of colour to
what was already clouded, and probably it was its trite, terrific sneer
at human desire and human convention that deadened his heart from time
to time with fatalistic suggestion; but it was with lesser facts than
these that he strove. Miss Mullen depositing hysterically a wreath upon
her friend’s coffin, in the acute moment of lowering it into the grave;
Miss Mullen sitting hysterically beside him in the carriage as he drove
her back to Tally Ho in the eyes of all men; Miss Mullen lying, still
hysterical, on her drawing-room sofa, holding in her black-gloved hand a
tumbler of sal volatile and water, and eventually commanding her emotion
sufficiently to ask him to bring her, that afternoon, a few books and
papers, to quiet her nerves, and to rob of its weariness the bad night
that would inevitably be her portion.
It was opposite these views, which, as far as tears went, might well be
called dissolving, that his mind chiefly took its stand, in unutterable
repugnance, and faint endeavour to be blind to his own convictions. He
was being chased. Now that he knew it he wondered how he could ever have
been unaware of it; it was palpable to anyone, and he felt in advance
what it would be like to hear the exultant winding of the huntsman’s
horn, if the quarry were overtaken. The position was intolerable from
every rational point of view; Christopher with his lethargic scorn of
social tyrannies and stale maxims of class, could hardly have believed
that he was sensible of so many of these points, and despised himself
accordingly. Julia Duffy’s hoarse voice still tormented his ear in
involuntary spasms of recollection, keeping constantly before him the
thought of the afternoon of four days ago, when he and Francie had been
informed of the destiny allotted to them. The formless and unquestioned
dream through which he had glided had then been broken up, like some
sleeping stretch of river when the jaws of the dredger are dashed into
it, and the mud is dragged to light, and the soiled waves carry the
outrage onward in ceaseless escape. Nothing now could place him where
he had been before, nor could he wish to regain that purposeless
content. It was better to look things in the face at last, and see where
they were going to end. It was better to know himself to be Charlotte’s
prize than to give up Francie.
This was what it meant, he said to himself, while he changed his funeral
garb, and tried to get into step with the interrupted march of the
morning. The alternative had been with him for four days, and now, while
he wrote his letters, and sat at luncheon, and collected the books that
were to interpose between Miss Mullen and her grief, the choice became
more despotic than ever, in spite of the antagonism that met it in every
surrounding. All the chivalry that smouldered under the modern malady of
exhausted enthusiasm ranged itself on Francie’s side; all the poetry in
which he had steeped his mind, all his own poetic fancy, combined to
blind him to many things that he would otherwise have seen. He acquitted
her of any share in her cousin’s coarse scheming with a passionateness
that in itself testified to the terror lest it might be true. He had
idealised her to the pitch that might have been expected, and clothed
her with his own refinement, as with a garment, so that it was her
position that hurt him most, her embarrassment that shamed him beyond
his own.
Christopher’s character is easier to feel than to describe; so conscious
of its own weakness as to be almost incapable of confident effort, and
with a soul so humble and straightforward that it did not know its own
strength and simplicity. Some dim understanding of him must have reached
Francie, with her ignorant sentimentalities and her Dublin brogue; and
as a sea-weed stretches vague arms up towards the light through the
conflict of the tides, her pliant soul rose through its inherited
vulgarities, and gained some vision of higher things. Christopher could
not know how unparalleled a person he was in her existence, of how
wholly unknown a type. Hawkins and he had been stars of unimagined
magnitude; but though she had attained to the former’s sphere with
scarcely an effort, Christopher remained infinitely remote. She could
scarcely have believed that as he drove from Bruff in the quiet sunshine
of the afternoon, and surmounted the hill near its gate, the magic that
she herself had newly learned about was working its will with him.
The corn that had stood high between him and Francie that day when he
had ridden back to look after her, was bound in sheaves on the yellow
upland, and the foolish omen set his pulses going. If she were now
passing along that other road there would be nothing between him and
her. He had got past the stage of reason, even his power of mocking at
himself was dead, or perhaps it was that there seemed no longer anything
that could be mocked at. In spite of his knowledge of the world the
position had an aspect that was so serious and beautiful as to overpower
the others, and to become one of the mysteries of life into which he had
thought himself too cheap and shallow to enter. A few weeks ago a visit
to Tally Ho would have been a penance and a weariness of the flesh, a
thing to be groaned over with Pamela, and endured only for the sake of
collecting some new pearl of rhetoric from Miss Mullen. Now each thought
of it brought again the enervating thrill, the almost sickening feeling
of subdued excitement and expectation.
It was the Lismoyle market-day, and Christopher made his way slowly
along the street, squeezing between carts and barrels, separating groups
locked together in the extremity of bargaining, and doing what in him
lay to avoid running over the old women, who, blinded by their
overhanging hoods and deaf by nature, paraded the centre of the
thoroughfare with a fine obliviousness of dog-carts and their drivers.
Most of the better class of shops had their shutters up in recognition
of the fact that Mrs. Lambert, a customer whom neither co-operative
stores or eighteen-penny teas had been able to turn from her allegiance,
had this morning passed their doors for the last time, in slow,
incongruous pomp, her silver-mounted coffin commanding all eyes as the
glass-sided hearse moved along with its quivering bunches of black
plumes. The funeral was still a succulent topic in the gabble of the
market; Christopher heard here and there such snatches of it as:
“Rest her sowl, the crayture! ’Tis she was the good wife and more than
all, she was the beautiful housekeeper!”
“Is it _he_ lonesome afther her? No, nor if he berrid ten like her.”
“She was a spent little woman always, and ’tis she that doted down on
him.”
“And ne’er a child left afther her! Well, she must be exshcused.”
“Musha, I’d love her bones!” shouted Nance the Fool, well aware of the
auditor in the dog-cart, “there wasn’t one like her in the nation, nor
in the world, no, nor in the town o’ Galway!”
Towards the end of the street, at the corner of a lane leading to the
quay, something like a fight was going on, and, as he approached,
Christopher saw, over the heads of an admiring audience, the infuriated
countenance of a Lismoyle beggar-woman, one of the many who occasionally
legalised their existence by selling fish, between long bouts of
mendicancy and drunkenness. Mary Norris was apparently giving what she
would call the length and breadth of her tongue to some customer who had
cast doubts upon the character of her fish, a customer who was for the
moment quiescent, and hidden behind the tall figure of her adversary.
“Whoever says thim throuts isn’t leppin’ fresh out o’ the lake he’s a
dom liar, and it’s little I think of tellin’ it t’ye up to yer nose!
There’s not one in the counthry but knows yer thricks and yer chat, and
ye may go home out o’ that, with yer bag sthrapped round ye, and ye can
take the tay-leaves and the dhrippin’ from the servants, and huxther
thim to feed yer cats, but thanks be to God ye’ll take nothing out o’ my
basket this day!”
There was a titter of horrified delight from the crowd.
“Ye never spoke a truer word than that, Mary Norris,” replied a voice
that sent a chill down Christopher’s back; “when I come into Lismoyle,
it’s not to buy rotten fish from a drunken fish-fag, that’ll be begging
for crusts at my hall-door to-morrow. If I hear another word out of yer
mouth I’ll give you and your fish to the police, and the streets’ll be
rid of you and yer infernal tongue for a week, at all events, and the
prison’ll have a treat that it’s pretty well used to!”
Another titter rewarded this sally, and Charlotte, well pleased, turned
to walk away. As she did so, she caught sight of Christopher, looking
at her with an expression from which he had not time to remove his
emotions, and for a moment she wished that the earth would open and
swallow her up. She reddened visibly, but recovered herself, and at once
made her way out into the street towards him.
“How are you again, Mr. Dysart? You just came in time to get a specimen
of the _res angusta domi_,” she said, in a voice that contrasted almost
ludicrously with her last utterances. “People like David, who talk about
the advantages of poverty, have probably never tried buying fish in
Lismoyle. It’s always the way with these drunken old hags. They repay
your charity by impudence and bad language, and one has to speak pretty
strongly to them to make one’s meaning penetrate to their minds.”
Her eyes were still red and swollen from her violent crying at the
funeral. But for them, Christopher could hardly have believed that this
was the same being whom he had last seen on the sofa at Tally Ho, with
the black gloves and the sal volatile.
“Oh yes, of course,” he said vaguely; “everyone has to undergo Mary
Norris some time or other. If you are going back to Tally Ho now, I can
drive you there.”
The invitation was lukewarm as it well could be, but had it been the
most fervent in the world Charlotte had no intention of accepting it.
“No thank you, Mr. Dysart. I’m not done my marketing yet, but Francie’s
at home and she’ll give you tea. Don’t wait for me. I’ve no appetite for
anything to-day. I only came out to get a mouthful of fresh air, in
hopes it might give me a better night, though, indeed, I’ve small chance
of it after what I’ve gone through.”
Christopher drove on, and tried not to think of Miss Mullen or of his
mother or Pamela, while his too palpably discreet hostess elbowed her
way through the crowd in the opposite direction.
Francie was sitting in the drawing-room awaiting her visitor. She had
been up very early making the wreath of white asters that Charlotte had
laid on Mrs. Lambert’s coffin, and had shed some tears over the making
of it, for the sake of the kindly little woman who had never been
anything but good to her. She had spent a trying morning in ministering
to Charlotte; after her early dinner she had dusted the drawing-room,
and refilled the vases in a manner copied as nearly as possible from
Pamela’s arrangement of flowers; and she was now feeling as tired as
might reasonably have been expected. About Christopher she felt
thoroughly disconcerted and out of conceit with herself. It was strange
that she, like him, should least consider her own position when she
thought about the things that Julia Duffy had said to them; her motive
was very different, but it touched the same point. It was the effect
upon Christopher that she ceaselessly pictured, that she longed to
understand: whether or not he believed what he had heard, and whether,
if he believed, he would ever be the same to her. His desertion would
have been much less surprising than his allegiance, but she would have
felt it very keenly, with the same aching resignation with which we bear
one of nature’s acts of violence. When she met him this morning her
embarrassment had taken the simple form of distance and avoidance, and a
feeling that she could never show him plainly enough that she, at least,
had no designs upon him; yet, through it all, she clung to the belief
that he would not change towards her. It was burning humiliation to see
Charlotte spread her nets in the sight of the bird, but it did not
prevent her from dressing herself as becomingly as she could when the
afternoon came, nor, so ample are the domains of sentiment, did some
nervous expectancy in the spare minutes before Christopher arrived deter
her from taking out of her pocket a letter worn by long sojourn there,
and reading it with delaying and softened eyes.
Her correspondence with Hawkins had been fraught with difficulties; in
fact, it had been only by the aid of a judicious shilling and an old
pair of boots bestowed on Louisa, that she had ensured to herself a
first sight of the contents of the post-bag, before it was conveyed,
according to custom, to Miss Mullen’s bedroom. Somehow since Mr. Hawkins
had left Hythe and gone to Yorkshire the quantity and quality of his
letters had dwindled surprisingly. The three thick weekly budgets of
sanguine anticipation and profuse endearments had languished into a
sheet or two every ten days of affectionate retrospect in which less and
less reference was made to breaking off his engagement with Miss
Coppard, that trifling and summary act which was his ostensible mission
in going to his _fiancée’s_ house; and this, the last letter from him,
had been merely a few lines of excuse for not having written before,
ending with regret that his leave would be up in a fortnight, as he had
had a ripping time on old Coppard’s moor, and the cubbing was just
beginning, a remark which puzzled Francie a good deal, though its
application was possibly clearer to her than the writer had meant it to
be. Inside the letter was a photograph of himself, that had been done at
Hythe, and was transferred by Francie from letter to letter, in order
that it might never leave her personal keeping; and, turning from the
barren trivialities over which she had been poring, Francie fell to
studying the cheerful, unintellectual face therein portrayed above the
trim glories of a mess jacket.
She was still looking at it when she heard the expected wheels; she
stuffed the letter back into her pocket, then remembering the
photograph, pulled the letter out again and put it into it. She was
putting the letter away for the second time when Christopher came in,
and in her guilty self-consciousness she felt that he must have noticed
the action.
“How did you get in so quickly?” she said, with a confusion that
heightened the general effect of discovery.
“Donovan was there and took the trap,” said Christopher, “and the hall
door was open, so I came in.”
He sat down, and neither seemed certain for a moment as to what to say
next.
“I didn’t really expect you to come, Mr. Dysart,” began Francie, the
colour that the difficulty with the photograph had given her ebbing
slowly away; “you have a right to be tired as well as us, and Charlotte
being upset that way and all, made it awfully late before you got home,
I’m afraid.”
“I met her a few minutes ago, and was glad to see that she was all right
again,” said Christopher perfunctorily; “but certainly if I had been
she, and had had any option in the matter, I should have stayed at home
this morning.”
Both felt the awkwardness of discussing Miss Mullen, but it seemed a
shade less than the awkwardness of ignoring her.
“She was such a friend of poor Mrs. Lambert’s,” said Francie; “and I
declare,” she added, glad of even this trivial chance of showing herself
antagonistic to Charlotte, “I think she delights in funerals.”
“She has a peculiar way of showing her delight,” replied Christopher,
with just enough ill-nature to make Francie feel that her antagonism was
understood and sympathised with.
Francie gave an irrepressible laugh. “I don’t think she minds crying
before people. I wish everyone minded crying as little as she does.”
Christopher looked at her, and thought he saw something about her eyes
that told of tears.
“Do you mind crying?” he said, lowering his voice while more feeling
escaped into his glance than he had intended; “it doesn’t seem natural
that you should ever cry.”
“You’re very inquisitive!” said Francie, the sparkle coming back to her
eye in a moment; “why shouldn’t I cry if I choose?”
“I should not like to think that you had anything to make you cry.”
She looked quickly at him to see if his face were as sincere as his
voice; her perceptions were fine enough to suggest that it would be
typical of Christopher to show her by a special deference and
friendliness that he was sorry for her, but now, as ever, she was unable
to classify those delicate shades of manner and meaning that might have
told her where his liking melted into love. She had been accustomed to
see men as trees walking, beings about whose individuality of character
she did not trouble herself; generally they made love to her, and, if
they did not, she presumed that they did not care about her, and gave
them no further attention. But this test did not seem satisfactory in
Christopher’s case.
“I know what everyone thinks of me,” she said, a heart truth welling to
the surface as she felt herself pitied and comprehended; “no one
believes I ever have any trouble about anything.”
Christopher’s heart throbbed at the bitterness in a voice that he had
always known so wholly careless and undisturbed; it increased his pity
for her a thousandfold, but it stirred him with a strange and selfish
pleasure to think that she had suffered. Whatever it was that was in her
mind, it had given him a glimpse of that deeper part of her nature, so
passionately guessed at, so long unfindable. He did not for an instant
think of Hawkins, having explained away that episode to himself some
time before in the light of his new reading of Francie’s character; it
was Charlotte’s face as she confronted Mary Norris in the market that
came to him, and the thought of what it must be to be under her roof and
dependent on her. He saw now the full pain that Francie bore in hearing
herself proclaimed as the lure by which he was to be captured, and that
he should have brought her thus low roused a tenderness in him that
would not be gainsaid.
“_I_ don’t think it,” he said, stammering; “you might believe that I
think more about you than other people do. I know you feel things more
than you let anyone see, and that makes it all the worse for anyone
who--who is sorry for you, and wants to tell you so--”
This halting statement, so remarkably different in diction from the
leisurely sentences in which Christopher usually expressed himself, did
not tend to put Francie more at her ease. She reddened slowly and
painfully as his shortsighted, grey eyes rested upon her. Hawkins filled
so prominent a place in her mind that Christopher’s ambiguous allusions
seemed to be directed absolutely at him, and her hand instinctively
slipped into her pocket and clasped the letter that was there, as if in
that way she could hold her secret fast.
“Ah, well,”--she tried to say it lightly--“I don’t want so very much
pity yet awhile; when I do, I’ll ask you for it!”
She disarmed the words of her flippancy by the look with which she
lifted her dark-lashed eyes to him, and Christopher’s last shred of
common sense sank in their tender depths and was lost there.
“Is that true?” he said, without taking his eyes from her face. “Do you
really trust me? would you promise always to trust me?”
“Yes, I’m sure I’d always trust you,” answered Francie, beginning in
some inexplicable way to feel frightened; “I think you’re awfully kind.”
“No, I am not kind,” he said, turning suddenly very white, and feeling
his blood beating down to his finger-tips; “you must not say that when
you know it’s--” Something seemed to catch in his throat and take his
voice away. “It gives me the greatest pleasure to do anything for you,”
he ended lamely.
The clear crimson deepened in Francie’s cheeks. She knew in one
startling instant what Christopher meant, and her fingers twined and
untwined themselves in the crochet sofa-cover as she sat, not daring to
look at him, and not knowing in the least what to say.
“How can I be kind to you?” went on Christopher, his vacillation swept
away by the look in her downcast face that told him she understood him;
“it’s just the other way, it’s you who are kind to me. If you only knew
what happiness it is to me--to--to be with you--to do anything on earth
for you--you know what I mean--I see you know what I mean.”
A vision rose up before Francie of her past self, loitering about the
Dublin streets, and another of an incredible and yet possible future
self, dwelling at Bruff in purple and fine linen, and then she looked up
and met Christopher’s eyes. She saw the look of tortured uncertainty and
avowed purpose that there was no mistaking; Bruff and its glories melted
away before it, and in their stead came Hawkins’ laughing face, his
voice, his touch, his kiss, in overpowering contrast to the face
opposite to her, with its uncomprehended intellect and refinement, and
its pale anxiety.
“Don’t say things like that to me, Mr. Dysart,” she said tremulously; “I
know how good you are to me, twice, twice too good, and if I was in
trouble, you’d be the first I’d come to. But I’m all right,” with an
attempted gaiety and unconcern that went near bringing the tears to her
eye; “I can paddle my own canoe for a while yet!”
Her instinct told her that Christopher would be quicker than most men to
understand that she was putting up a line of defence, and to respect it;
and with the unfailing recoil of her mind upon Hawkins, she thought how
little such a method would have prevailed with him.
“Then you don’t want me?” said Christopher, almost in a whisper.
“Why should I want you or anybody?” she answered, determined to
misunderstand him, and to be like her usual self in spite of the
distress and excitement that she felt; “I’m well able to look after
myself, though you mightn’t think it, and I don’t want anything this
minute, only my tea, and Norry’s as cross as the cats, and I know she
won’t have the cake made!” She tried to laugh, but the laugh faltered
away into tears. She turned her head aside, and putting one hand to her
eyes, felt with the other in her pocket for her handkerchief. It was
underneath Hawkins’ letter, and as she snatched it out, it carried the
letter along with it.
Christopher had started up, unable to bear the sight of her tears, and
as he stood there, hesitating on the verge of catching her in his arms,
he saw the envelope slip down on to the floor. As it fell the photograph
slid out of its worn covering, and lay face uppermost at his feet. He
picked it up, and having placed it with the letter on the sofa beside
Francie, he walked to the window and looked sightlessly out into the
garden. A heavily-laden tray bumped against the door, the handle turned,
and Louisa, having pushed the door open with her knee, staggered in with
the tea-tray. She had placed it on the table and was back again in the
kitchen, talking over the situation with Bid Sal, before Christopher
spoke.
“I’m afraid I can’t stay any longer,” he said, in a voice that was at
once quieter and rougher than its wont; “you must forgive me if anything
that I said has--has hurt you--I didn’t mean it to hurt you.” He stopped
short and walked towards the door. As he opened it, he looked back at
her for an instant, but he did not speak again.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
The kitchen at Tally Ho generally looked its best at ten o’clock in the
morning. Its best is, in this case, a relative term, implying the
temporary concealment of the plates, loaves of bread, dirty rubbers, and
jam-pots full of congealed dripping that usually adorned the tables,
and the sweeping of out-lying potato-skins and cinders into a chasm
beneath the disused hothearth. When these things had been done, and Bid
Sal and her bare feet had been effaced into some outer purlieu, Norry
felt that she was ready to receive the Queen of England if necessary,
and awaited the ordering of dinner with her dress let down to its full
length, a passably clean apron, and an expression of severe and exalted
resignation. On the morning now in question Charlotte was standing in
her usual position, with her back to the fire and her hands spread
behind her to the warmth, scanning with a general’s eye the routed
remnants of yesterday’s dinner, and debating with herself as to the
banner under which they should next be rallied.
“A curry, I think, Norry,” she called out; “plenty of onions and apples
in it, and that’s all ye want.”
“Oh, musha! God knows ye have her sickened with yer curries,” replied
Norry’s voice from the larder, “’twas ere yestherday ye had the remains
of th’ Irish stew in curry, an’ she didn’t ate what’d blind your eye of
it. Wasn’t Louisa tellin’ me!”
“And so I’m to order me dinners to please Miss Francie!” said Charlotte,
in tones of surprising toleration; “well, ye can make a haricot of it if
ye like. Perhaps her ladyship will eat that.”
“Faith ’tis aiqual to me what she ates--” here came a clatter of
crockery, and a cat shot like a comet from the larder door, followed by
Norry’s foot and Norry’s blasphemy--“or if she never ate another bit.
And where’s the carrots to make a haricot? Bid Sal’s afther tellin’ me
there’s ne’er a one in the garden; but sure, if ye sent Bid Sal to look
for salt wather in the say she wouldn’t find it!”
Miss Mullen laughed approvingly. “There’s carrots in plenty; and see
here, Norry, you might give her a jam dumpling--use the gooseberry jam
that’s going bad. I’ve noticed meself that the child isn’t eating, and
it won’t do to have the people saying we’re starving her.”
“Whoever’ll say that, he wasn’t looking at me yestherday, and I makin’
the cake for herself and Misther Dysart! Eight eggs, an’ a cupful of
sugar and a cupful of butther, and God knows what more went in it, an’
the half of me day gone bating it, and afther all they left it afther
thim!”
“And whose fault was that but your own for not sending it up in time?”
rejoined Charlotte, her voice sharpening at once to vociferative
argument; “Miss Francie told me that Mr. Dysart was forced to go without
his tea.”
“Late or early I’m thinkin’ thim didn’t ax it nor want it,” replied
Norry, issuing from the larder with a basketful of crumpled linen in her
arms, and a visage of the utmost sourness; “there’s your clothes for ye
now, that was waitin’ on me yestherday to iron them, in place of makin’
cakes.”
She got a bowl of water and began to sprinkle the clothes and roll them
up tightly, preparatory to ironing them, her ill-temper imparting to the
process the air of whipping a legion of children and putting them to
bed. Charlotte came over to the table, and, resting her hands on it,
watched Norry for a few seconds in silence.
“What makes you say they didn’t want anything to eat?” she asked; “was
Miss Francie ill, or was anything the matter with her?”
“How do I know what ailed her?” replied Norry, pounding a pillow-case
with her fist before putting it away; “I have somethin’ to do besides
followin’ her or mindin’ her.”
“Then what are ye talking about?”
“Ye’d betther ax thim that knows. ’Twas Louisa seen her within in the
dhrawn’-room, an’ whatever was on her she was cryin’; but, sure, Louisa
tells lies as fast as a pig’d gallop.”
“What did she say?” Charlotte darted the question at Norry as a dog
snaps at a piece of meat.
“Then she said plinty, an’ ’tis she that’s able. If ye told that one a
thing and locked the doore on her the way she couldn’t tell it agin,
she’d bawl it up the chimbley.”
“Where’s Louisa?” interrupted Charlotte impatiently.
“Meself can tell ye as good as Louisa,” said Norry instantly taking
offence; “she landed into the dhrawn’-room with the tay, and there was
Miss Francie sittin’ on the sofa and her handkerchief in her eyes, and
Misther Dysart beyond in the windy and not a word nor a stir out of him,
only with his eyes shtuck out in the garden, an’ she cryin’ always.”
“Psha! Louisa’s a fool! How does she know Miss Francie was crying? I’ll
bet a shilling ’twas only blowing her nose she was.”
Norry had by this time spread a ragged blanket on the table, and,
snatching up the tongs, she picked out of the heart of the fire a
red-hot heater and thrust it into a box-iron with unnecessary violence.
“An’ why wouldn’t she cry? Wasn’t I listenin’ to her cryin’ in her room
lasht night an’ I goin’ up to bed?” She banged the iron down on the
table and began to rub it to and fro on the blanket. “But what use is it
to cry, even if ye dhragged the hair out of yer head? Ye might as well
be singin’ and dancin’.”
She flung up her head, and stared across the kitchen under the wisps of
hair that hung over her unseeing eyes with such an expression as Deborah
the Prophetess might have worn. Charlotte gave a grunt of contempt, and
picking Susan up from the bar of the table, she put him on her shoulder
and walked out of the kitchen.
Francie had been since breakfast sitting by the window of the
dining-room, engaged in the cheerless task of darning a stocking on a
soda-water bottle. Mending stockings was not an art that she excelled
in; she could trim a hat or cut out a dress, but the dark,
unremunerative toil of mending stockings was as distasteful to her as
stone-breaking to a tramp, and the simile might easily be carried out by
comparing the results of the process to macadamising. It was a still,
foggy morning; the boughs of the scarlet-blossomed fuchsia were greyed
with moisture, and shining drops studded the sash of the open window
like sea-anemones. It was a day that was both close and chilly, and
intolerable as the atmosphere of the Tally Ho dining-room would have
been with the window shut, the breakfast things still on the table, and
the all-pervading aroma of cats, the damp, lifeless air seemed only a
shade better to Francie as she raised her tired eyes from time to time
and looked out upon the discouraging prospect. Everything stood in the
same trance of stillness in which it had been when she had got up at
five o’clock and looked out at the sluggish dawn broadening in blank
silence upon the fields. She had leaned out of her window till she had
become cold through and through, and after that had unlocked her trunk,
taken out Hawkins’ letters, and going back to bed had read and re-read
them there. The old glamour was about them; the convincing sincerity and
assurance that was as certain of her devotion as of his own, and the
unfettered lavishness of expression that made her turn hot and cold as
she read them. She had time to go through many phases of feeling before
the chapel-bell began to ring for eight o’clock Mass, and she stole down
to the kitchen to see if the post had come in. The letters were lying on
the table; three or four for Charlotte, the local paper, a circular
about peat litter addressed to the Stud-groom, Tally Ho, and, underneath
all, the thick, rough envelope with the ugly boyish writing that had
hardly changed since Mr. Hawkins had written his first letters home from
Cheltenham College. Francie caught it up, and was back in her own room
in the twinkling of an eye. It contained only a few words.
“Dearest Francie, only time for a line to-day to say that I am staying
on here for another week, but I hope ten days will see me back at the
old mill. I want you like a good girl to keep things as dark as
possible. I don’t see my way out of this game yet. No more to-day. Just
off to play golf; the girls here are nailers at it. Thine ever, Gerald.”
This was the ration that had been served out to her hungry heart, the
word that she had wearied for for a week; that once more he had
contrived to postpone his return, and that the promise he had made to
her under the tree in the garden was as far from being fulfilled as
ever. Christopher Dysart would not have treated her this way, she
thought to herself, as she stooped over her darning and bit her lip to
keep it from quivering, but then she would not have minded much whether
he wrote to her or not--that was the worst of it. Francie had always
confidently announced to her Dublin circle of friends her intention of
marrying a rich man, good-looking, and a lord if possible, but certainly
rich. But here she was, on the morning after what had been a proposal,
or what had amounted to one, from a rich young man who was also
nice-looking, and almost the next thing to a lord, and instead of
sitting down triumphantly to write the letter that should thrill the
North Side down to its very grocers’ shops, she was darning stockings,
red-eyed and dejected, and pondering over how best to keep from her
cousin any glimmering of what had happened. All her old self posed and
struck attitudes before the well-imagined mirror of her friends’ minds,
and the vanity that was flattered by success cried out petulantly
against the newer soul that enforced silence upon it. She felt quite
impartially how unfortunate it was that she should have given her heart
to Gerald in this irrecoverable way, and then with a headlong change of
ideas she said to herself that there was no one like him, and she would
always, _always_ care for him, and nobody else.
This point having been emphasised by a tug at her needle that snapped
the darning cotton, Miss Fitzpatrick was embarking upon a more
pleasurable train of possibilities when she heard Charlotte’s foot in
the hall, and fell all of a sudden down to the level of the present.
Charlotte came in and shut the door with her usual decisive slam; she
went over to the sideboard and locked up the sugar and jam with a sharp
glance to see if Louisa had tampered with either, and then sat down at
her davenport near Francie and began to look over her account books.
“Well, I declare,” she said after a minute or two, “it’s a funny thing
that I have to buy eggs, with my yard full of hens! This is a state of
things unheard of till you came into the house, my young lady!”
Francie looked up and saw that this was meant as a pleasantry.
“Is it me? I wouldn’t touch an egg to save my life!”
“Maybe you wouldn’t,” replied Charlotte with the same excessive
jocularity, “but you can give tea-parties, and treat your friends to
sponge-cakes that are made with nothing but eggs!”
Francie scented danger in the air, and having laughed nervously to show
appreciation of the jest, tried to change the conversation.
“How do you feel to-day, Charlotte?” she asked, working away at her
stocking with righteous industry; “is your headache gone? I forgot to
ask after it at breakfast.”
“Headache? I’d forgotten I’d ever had one. Three tabloids of antipyrin
and a good night’s rest; that was all _I_ wanted to put me on my pegs
again. But if it comes to that, me dear child, I’d trouble you to tell
me what makes you the colour of blay calico last night and this morning?
It certainly wasn’t all the cake you had at afternoon tea. I declare I
was quite vexed when I saw that lovely cake in the larder, and not a bit
gone from it.”
Francie coloured. “I was up very early yesterday making that cross, and
I daresay that tired me. Tell me, did Mr. Lambert say anything about it?
Did he like it?”
Charlotte looked at her, but could discern no special expression in the
piquant profile that was silhouetted against the light.
“He had other things to think of besides your wreath,” she said
coarsely; “when a man’s wife isn’t cold in her coffin, he has something
to think of besides young ladies’ wreaths!”
There was silence after this, and Francie wondered what had made
Charlotte suddenly get so cross for nothing; she had been so
good-natured for the last week. The thought passed through her mind that
possibly Mr. Lambert had taken as little notice of Charlotte as of the
wreath; she was just sufficiently aware of the state of affairs to know
that such a cause might have such an effect, and she wished she had
tried any other topic of conversation. Darning is, however, an
occupation that does not tend to unloose the strings of the tongue, and
even when carried out according to the unexacting methods of Macadam, it
demands a certain degree of concentration, and Francie left to Charlotte
the task of finding a more congenial subject. It was chosen with
unexpected directness.
“What was the matter with you yesterday afternoon when Louisa brought in
the tea?”
Francie felt as though a pistol had been let off at her ear; the blood
surged in a great wave from her heart to her head, her heart gave a
shattering thump against her side, and then went on beating again in a
way that made her hands shake.
“Yesterday afternoon, Charlotte?” she said, while her brain sought madly
for a means of escape and found none; “there--there was nothing the
matter with me.”
“Look here now, Francie;” Charlotte turned away from her davenport, and
faced her cousin with her fists clenched on her knees; “I’m in _loco
parentis_ to you for the time being--your guardian, if you understand
that better--and there’s no good in your beating about the bush with me.
What happened between you and Christopher Dysart yesterday afternoon?”
“Nothing happened at all,” said Francie in a low voice that gave the lie
to her words.
“You’re telling me a falsehood! How have you the face to tell me there
was nothing happened when even that fool Louisa could see that something
had been going on to make you cry, and to send him packing out of the
house not a quarter of an hour after he came into it!”
“I told you before he couldn’t wait,” said Francie, trying to keep the
tremble out of her voice. She held the conventional belief that
Charlotte was queer, but very kind and jolly, but she had a fear of her
that she could hardly have given a reason for. It must have been by that
measuring and crossing of weapons that takes place unwittingly and yet
surely in the consciousness of everyone who lives in intimate connection
with another, that she had learned, like her great-aunt before her, the
weight of the real Charlotte’s will, and the terror of her personality.
“Stuff and nonsense!” broke out Miss Mullen, her eyes beginning to
sparkle ominously; “thank God I’m not such an ass as the people you’ve
taken in before now; ye’ll not find it so easy to make a fool of me as
ye think! Did he make ye an offer or did he not?” She leaned forward
with her mouth half open, and Francie felt her breath strike on her
face, and shrank back.
“He--he did not.”
Charlotte dragged her chair a pace nearer so that her knees touched
Francie.
“Ye needn’t tell me any lies, Miss; if he didn’t propose, he said
something that was equivalent to a proposal. Isn’t that the case?”
Francie had withdrawn herself as far into the corner of the window as
was possible, and the dark folds of the maroon rep curtain made a not
unworthy background for her fairness. Her head was turned childishly
over her shoulder in the attempt to get as far as she could from her
tormentor, and her eyes travelled desperately and yet unconsciously
over the dingy lines of the curtain.
“I told you already, Charlotte, that he didn’t propose to me,” she
answered; “he just paid a visit here like anyone else, and then he had
to go away early.”
“Don’t talk such baldherdash to me! I know what he comes here for as
well as you do, and as well as every soul in Lismoyle knows it, and I’ll
trouble ye to answer one question--do ye mean to marry him?” She paused
and gave the slight and shapely arm a compelling squeeze.
Francie wrenched her arm away. “No, I don’t!” she said, sitting up and
facing Charlotte with eyes that had a dawning light of battle in them.
Charlotte pushed back her chair, and with the same action was on her
feet.
“Oh, my God!” she bawled, flinging up both her arms with the fists
clenched; “d’ye hear that? She dares to tell me that to me face after
all I’ve done for her!” Her hands dropped down, and she stared at
Francie with her thick lips working in a dumb transport of rage. “And
who are ye waiting for? Will ye tell me that! You, that aren’t fit to
lick the dirt off Christopher Dysart’s boots!” she went on, with the
uncontrolled sound in her voice that told that rage was bringing her to
the verge of tears; “for the Prince of Wales’ son, I suppose? Or are ye
cherishing hopes that your friend Mr. Hawkins would condescend to take a
fancy to you again?” She laughed repulsively, waiting with a heaving
chest for the reply, and Francie felt as if the knife had been turned in
the wound.
“Leave me alone! What is it to you who I marry?” she cried passionately;
“I’ll marry who I like, and no thanks to you!”
“Oh, indeed,” said Charlotte, breathing hard and loud between the words;
“it’s nothing to me, I suppose, that I’ve kept the roof over your head
and put the bit into your mouth, while ye’re carrying on with every man
that ye can get to look at ye!”
“I’m not asking you to keep me,” said Francie, starting up in her turn
and standing in the window facing her cousin; “I’m able to keep myself,
and to wait as long as I choose till I get married; _I_’m not afraid of
being an old maid!”
They glared at each other, the fire of anger smiting on both their
faces, lighting Francie’s cheek with a malign brilliance, and burning in
ugly purple-red on Charlotte’s leathery skin. The girl’s aggressive
beauty was to Charlotte a keener taunt than the rudimentary insult of
her words; it brought with it a swarm of thoughts that buzzed and stung
in her soul like poisonous flies.
“And might one be permitted to ask how long you’re going to wait?” she
said, with quivering lips drawn back; “will six months be enough for
you, or do you consider the orthodox widower’s year too long to wait? I
daresay you’ll have found out what spending there is in twenty-five
pounds before that, and ye’ll go whimpering to Roddy Lambert, and asking
him to make ye Number Two, and to pay your debts and patch up your
character!”
“Roddy Lambert!” cried Francie, bursting out into shrill unpleasant
laughter; “I think I’ll try and do better than that, thank ye, though
you’re so kind in making him a present to me!” Then, firing a random
shot, “I’ll not deprive you of him, Charlotte; you may keep him all to
yourself!”
It is quite within the bounds of possibility that Charlotte might at
this juncture have struck Francie, and thereby have put herself for ever
into a false position, but her guardian angel, in the shape of Susan,
the grey tom-cat, intervened. He had jumped in at the window during the
discussion, and having rubbed himself unnoticed against Charlotte’s legs
with stiff, twitching tail, and cold eyes fixed on her face, he, at this
critical instant, sprang upwards at her, and clawed on to the bosom of
her dress, hanging there in expectation of the hand that should help him
to the accustomed perch on his mistress’s shoulder. The blow that was so
near being Francie’s descended upon the cat’s broad confident face and
hurled him to the ground. He bolted out of the window again, and when he
was safely on the gravel walk, turned and looked back with an expression
of human anger and astonishment.
When Charlotte spoke her voice was caught away from her as Christopher
Dysart’s had been the day before. All the passions have but one
instrument to play on when they wish to make themselves heard, and it
will yield but a broken sound when it is too hardly pressed.
“Dare to open your mouth to me again, and I’ll throw you out of the
window after the cat!” was what she said in that choking whisper. “Ye
can go out of this house to-morrow and see which of your lovers will
keep ye the longest, and by the time that they’re tired of ye, maybe
ye’ll regret that your impudence got ye turned out of a respectable
house!” She turned at the last word, and, like a madman who is just sane
enough to fear his own madness, flung out of the room without another
glance at her cousin.
Susan sat on the gravel path, and in the intervals of licking his paws
in every crevice and cranny, surveyed his mistress’s guest with a stony
watchfulness as she leaned her head against the window-sash and shook in
a paroxysm of sobs.
CHAPTER XXXV.
More than the half of September had gone by. A gale or two had browned
the woods, and the sky was beginning to show through the trees a good
deal. Miss Greely removed the sun-burned straw hats from her window, and
people lighted their fires at afternoon tea-time, and daily said to each
other with sapient gloom, that the evenings were closing in very much.
The summer visitors had gone, and the proprietors of lodgings had moved
down from the attics to the front parlours, and were restoring to them
their usual odour of old clothes, sour bread, and apples. All the
Dysarts, with the exception of Sir Benjamin, were away; the Bakers had
gone to drink the waters at Lisdoonvarna; the Beatties were having their
yearly outing at the Sea Road in Galway; the Archdeacon had exchanged
duties with an English cleric, who was married, middle-aged, and
altogether unadvantageous, and Miss Mullen played the organ, and
screamed the highest and most ornate tunes in company with the
attenuated choir.
The barracks kept up an outward seeming of life and cheerfulness,
imparted by the adventitious aid of red coats and bugle-blowing, but
their gaiety was superficial, and even upon Cursiter, steam-launching
to nowhere in particular and back again, had begun to pall. He looked
forward to his subaltern’s return with an eagerness quite out of
proportion to Mr. Hawkins’ gifts of conversation or companionship;
solitude and steam-launching were all very well in moderation, but he
could not get the steam-launch in after dinner to smoke a pipe, and
solitude tended to unsettling reflections on the vanity of his present
walk of life. Hawkins, when he came, was certainly a variant in the
monotony, but Cursiter presently discovered that he would have to add to
the task of amusing himself the still more arduous one of amusing his
companion. Hawkins dawdled, moped, and grumbled, and either spent the
evenings in moody silence, or in endless harangues on the stone-broken
nature of his finances, and the contrariness of things in general. He
admitted his engagement to Miss Coppard with about as ill a grace as was
possible, and when rallied about it, became sulky and snappish, but of
Francie he never spoke, and Cursiter augured no good from these
indications. Captain Cursiter knew as little as the rest of Lismoyle as
to the reasons of Miss Fitzpatrick’s abrupt disappearance from Tally Ho,
but, unlike the generality of Francie’s acquaintances, had accepted the
fact unquestioningly, and with a simple gratitude to Providence for its
interposition in the matter. If only partridge-shooting did not begin in
Ireland three weeks later than in any civilised country, thought this
much harassed child’s guide, it would give them both something better to
do than loafing about the lake in the _Serpolette_. Well, anyhow, the
20th was only three days off now, and Dysart had given them leave to
shoot as much as they liked over Bruff, and, thank the Lord, Hawkins was
fond of shooting, and there would be no more of this talk of running up
to Dublin for two or three days to have his teeth overhauled, or to get
a new saddle, or some nonsense of that kind. Neither Captain Cursiter
nor Mr. Hawkins paid visits to anyone at this time; in fact, were never
seen except when, attired in all his glory, one or the other took the
soldiers to church, and marched them back again with as little delay as
possible; so that the remnant of Lismoyle society pronounced them very
stuck-up and unsociable, and mourned for the days of the Tipperary
Foragers.
It was on the first day of the partridge shooting that Mr. Lambert came
back to Rosemount. The far-away banging of the guns down on the farms by
the lake was the first thing he heard as he drove up from the station;
and the thought that occurred to him as he turned in at his own gate was
that public opinion would scarcely allow him to shoot this season. He
had gone away as soon after his wife’s funeral as was practicable, and
having honeymooned with his grief in the approved fashion (combining
with this observance the settling of business matters with his wife’s
trustees in Limerick), the stress of his new position might be supposed
to be relaxed. He was perfectly aware that the neighbourhood would
demand no extravagance of sorrow from him; no one could expect him to be
more than decently regretful for poor Lucy. He had always been a kind
husband to her, he reflected, with excusable satisfaction; that is to
say, he had praised her housekeeping, and generally bought her whatever
she asked for, out of her own money. He was glad now that he had had the
good sense to marry her; it had made her very happy, poor thing, and he
was certainly now in a better position than he could ever have hoped to
be if he had not done so. All these soothing and comfortable facts,
however, did not prevent his finding the dining-room very dreary and
silent when he came downstairs next morning in his new black clothes.
His tea tasted as if the water had not been boiled, and the urn got in
his way when he tried to prop up the newspaper in his accustomed manner;
the bacon dish had been so much more convenient, and the knowledge that
his wife was there, ready to receive gratefully any crumb of news that
he might feel disposed to let fall, had given a zest to the reading of
his paper that was absent now. Even Muffy’s basket was empty, for Muffy,
since his mistress’s death, had relinquished all pretence at gentility,
and after a day of miserable wandering about the house, had entered into
a league with the cook and residence in the kitchen.
Lambert surveyed all his surroundings with a loneliness that surprised
himself: the egg-cosy that his wife had crocheted for him, the
half-empty medicine bottle on the chimney-piece, the chair in which she
used to sit, and felt that he did not look forward to the task before
him of sorting her papers and going through her affairs generally. He
got to work at eleven o’clock, taking first the letters and papers that
were locked up in a work-table, a walnut-topped and silken-fluted piece
of furniture that had been given to Mrs. Lambert by a Limerick friend,
and, having been considered too handsome for everyday use, had been
consecrated by her to the conservation of letters and of certain valued
designs for Berlin wool work and receipts for crochet stitches. Lambert
lighted a fire in the drawing-room, and worked his way down through the
contents of the green silk pouch, finding there every letter, every note
even, that he had ever written to his wife, and committing them to the
flames with a curious sentimental regret. He had not remembered that he
had written her so many letters, and he said to himself that he wished
those old devils of women in Lismoyle, who, he knew, had always been so
keen to pity Lucy, could know what a good husband he had been to her.
Inside the envelope of one of his own letters was one from Francie
Fitzpatrick, evidently accidentally thrust there; a few crooked lines to
say that she had got the lodgings for Mrs. Lambert in Charles Street,
but the landlady wouldn’t be satisfied without she got two and sixpence
extra for the kitchen fire. Lambert put the note into his pocket, where
there was already another document in the same handwriting, bearing the
Bray postmark with the date of September 18, and when all was finished,
and the grate full of flaky spectral black heaps, he went upstairs and
unlocked the door of what had been his wife’s room. The shutters were
shut, and the air of the room had a fortnight’s closeness in it. When he
opened the shutters there was a furious buzzing of flies, and although
he had the indifference about fresh air common to his class, he flung up
the window, and drew a long breath of the brilliant morning before he
went back to his dismal work of sorting and destroying. What was he to
do with such things as the old photographs of her father and mother, her
work-basket, her salts-bottle, the handbag that she used to carry into
Lismoyle with her? He was not an imaginative man, but he was touched by
the smallness, the familiarity of these only relics of a trivial life,
and he stood and regarded the sheeted furniture, and the hundred odds
and ends that lay about the room, with an acute awakening to her
absence that, for the time, almost obliterated his own figure, posing to
the world as an interesting young man, who, while anxious to observe the
decencies of bereavement, could not be expected to be inconsolable for a
woman so obviously beneath his level.
A voice downstairs called his name, a woman’s voice, saying, “Roderick!”
and for a moment a superstitious thrill ran through him. Then he heard a
footstep in the passage, and the voice called him again, “Are you there,
Roderick?”
This time he recognised Charlotte Mullen’s voice, and went out on to the
landing to meet her. The first thing that he noticed was that she was
dressed in new clothes, black and glossy and well made. He took them in
with the glance that had to be responsive as well as observant, as
Charlotte advanced upon him, and, taking his hand in both hers, shook it
long and silently.
“Well, Roderick,” she said at length, “I’m glad to see you back again,
though it’s a sad home-coming for you and for us all.”
Lambert pressed her large well-known hand, while his eyes rested
solemnly upon her face. “Thank you, Charlotte, I’m very much obliged to
you for coming over to see me this way, but it’s no more than what I’d
have expected of you.”
He had an ancient confidence in Charlotte and an ease in her
society--after all, there are very few men who will not find some saving
grace in a woman whose affections they believe to be given to them--and
he was truly glad to see her at this juncture. She was exactly the
person that he wanted to help him in the direful task that he had yet to
perform; her capable hands should undertake all the necessary ransacking
of boxes and wardrobes, while he sat and looked on at what was really
much more a woman’s work than a man’s. These thoughts passed through his
mind while he and Charlotte exchanged conventionalities suitable to the
occasion, and spoke of Mrs. Lambert as “she,” without mentioning her
name.
“Would you like to come downstairs, Charlotte, and sit in the
drawing-room?” he said, presently; “if it wasn’t that I’m afraid you
might be tired after your walk, I’d ask you to help me with a very
painful bit of work that I was just at when you came.”
They had been standing in the passage, and Charlotte’s eyes darted
towards the half-open door of Mrs. Lambert’s room.
“You’re settling her things, I suppose?” she said, her voice treading
eagerly upon the heels of his; “is it _that_ you want me to help you
with?”
He led the way into the room without answering, and indicated its
contents with a comprehensive sweep of his hand.
“I turned the key in this door myself when I came back from the funeral,
and not a thing in it has been touched since. Now I must set to work to
try and get the things sorted, to see what I should give away, and what
I should keep, and what should be destroyed,” he said, his voice
resuming its usual business tone, tinged with just enough gloom to mark
his sense of the situation.
Charlotte peeled off her black gloves and stuffed them into her pocket.
“Sit down, my poor fellow, sit down, and I’ll do it all,” she said,
stripping an arm-chair of its sheet and dragging it to the window; “this
is no fit work for you.”
There was no need to press this view upon Lambert; he dropped easily
into the chair provided for him, and in a couple of minutes the work was
under weigh.
“Light your pipe now and be comfortable,” said Charlotte, issuing from
the wardrobe with an armful of clothes and laying them on the bed;
“there’s work here for the rest of the morning.” She took up a black
satin skirt and held it out in front of her; it had been Mrs. Lambert’s
“Sunday best,” and it seemed to Lambert as though he could hear his
wife’s voice asking anxiously if he thought the day was fine enough for
her to wear it. “Now what would you wish done with this?” said
Charlotte, looking at it fondly, and holding the band against her own
waist to see the length. “It’s too good to give to a servant.”
Lambert turned his head away. There was a crudeness about this way of
dealing that was a little jarring at first.
“I don’t know what’s to be done with it,” he said, with all a man’s
helpless dislike of such details.
“Well, there’s this, and her sealskin, and a lot of other things that
are too good to be given to servants,” went on Charlotte, rapidly
bringing forth more of the treasures of the poor turkey-hen’s wardrobe,
and proceeding to sort them into two heaps on the floor. “What would you
think of making up the best of the things and sending them up to one of
those dealers in Dublin? It’s a sin to let them go to loss.”
“Oh, damn it, Charlotte! I can’t sell her clothes!” said Lambert
hastily. He pretended to no sentiment about his wife, but some masculine
instinct of chivalry gave him a shock at the thought of making money out
of the conventional sanctities of a woman’s apparel.
“Well, what else do you propose to do with them?” said Charlotte, who
had already got out a pencil and paper and was making a list.
“Upon my soul, I don’t know,” said Lambert, beginning to realise that
there was but one way out of the difficulty, and perceiving with
irritated amusement that Charlotte had driven him towards it like a
sheep, “unless you’d like them yourself?”
“And do you think I’d accept them from you?” demanded Charlotte, with an
indignation so vivid that even the friend of her youth was momentarily
deceived and almost frightened by it; “I, that was poor Lucy’s oldest
friend! Do you think I could bear--”
Lambert saw the opportunity that had been made for him.
“It’s only because you were her oldest friend that I’d offer them to
you,” he struck in; “and if you won’t have them yourself, I thought you
might know of someone that would.”
Charlotte swallowed her wrath with a magnanimous effort. “Well, Roddy,
if you put it in that way, I don’t like to refuse,” she said, wiping a
ready tear away with a black-edged pocket handkerchief; “it’s quite
true, I know plenty would be glad of a help. There’s that unfortunate
Letitia Fitzpatrick, that I’ll be bound hasn’t more than two gowns to
her back; I might send her a bundle.”
“Send them to whom you like,” said Lambert, ignoring the topic of the
Fitzpatricks as intentionally as it had been introduced; “but I’d be
glad if you could find some things for Julia Duffy; I suppose she’ll be
coming out of the infirmary soon. What we’re to do about that business I
don’t know,” he continued, filling another pipe. “Dysart said he
wouldn’t have her put out if she could hold on anyway at all--”
“Heavenly powers!” exclaimed Charlotte, letting fall a collection of
rolled-up kid gloves, “d’ye mean to say you didn’t hear she’s in the
Ballinasloe Asylum? She was sent there three days ago.”
“Great Scot! Is she gone mad? I was thinking all this time what I was to
do with her!”
“Well, you needn’t trouble your head about her any more. Her wits went
as her body mended, and a board of J.P.’s and M.D.’s sat upon her, and
as one of them was old Fatty Ffolliott, you won’t be surprised to hear
that that was the end of Julia Duffy.”
Both laughed, and both felt suddenly the incongruity of laughter in that
room. Charlotte went back to the chest of drawers whose contents she was
ransacking, and continued:
“They say she sits all day counting her fingers and toes and calling
them chickens and turkeys, and saying that she has the key of
Gurthnamuckla in her pocket, and not a one can get into it without her
leave.”
“And are you still on for it?” said Lambert, half reluctantly, as it
seemed to Charlotte’s acute ear, “for if you are, now’s your time. I
might have put her out of it two years ago for non-payment of rent, and
I’ll just take possession and sell off what she has left behind her
towards the arrears.”
“On for it? Of course I am. You might know I’m not one to change my mind
about a thing I’m set upon. But you’ll have to let me down easy with the
fine, Roddy. There isn’t much left in the stocking these times, and one
or two of my poor little dabblings in the money-market have rather ‘gone
agin me.’”
Lambert thought in a moment of those hundreds that had been lent to him,
and stirred uneasily in his chair. “By the way, Charlotte,” he said,
trying to speak like a man to whom such things were trifles, “about that
money you lent me--I’m afraid I can’t let you have it back for a couple
of months or so. Of course, I needn’t tell you, poor Lucy’s money was
only settled on me for my life, and now there’s some infernal delay
before they can hand even the interest over to me; but, if you don’t
mind waiting a bit, I can make it all square for you about the farm, I
know.”
He inwardly used a stronger word than infernal as he reflected that if
Charlotte had not got that promise about the farm out of him when he was
in a hole about money, he might have been able, somehow, to get it
himself now.
“Don’t mention that--don’t mention that,” said Charlotte, absolutely
blushing a little, “it was a pleasure to me to lend it to you, Roddy; if
I never saw it again I’d rather that than that you should put yourself
out to pay me before it was convenient to you.” She caught up a dress
and shook its folds out with unnecessary vehemence. “I won’t be done all
night if I delay this way. Ah! how well I remember this dress! Poor dear
Lucy got it for Fanny Waller’s wedding. Who’d ever think she’d have kept
it for all those years! Roddy, what stock would you put on
Gurthnamuckla?”
“Dry stock,” answered Lambert briefly.
“And how about the young horses? You don’t forget the plan we had about
them? You don’t mean to give it up, I hope?”
“Oh, that’s as you please,” replied Lambert. He was very much interested
in the project, but he had no intention of letting Charlotte think so.
She looked at him, reading his thoughts more clearly than he would have
liked, and they made her the more resolved upon her own line of action.
She saw herself settled at Gurthnamuckla, with Roddy riding over three
or four times a week to see his young horses, that should graze her
grass and fill her renovated stables, while she, the bland lady of the
manor, should show what a really intelligent woman could do at the head
of affairs; and the three hundred pound debt should never be spoken of,
but should remain, like a brake, in readiness to descend and grip at the
discretion of the driver. There was no fear of his paying it of his own
accord. He was not the man she took him for if he paid a debt without
due provocation; he had a fine crop of them to be settled as it was,
and that would take the edge off his punctilious scruples with regard to
keeping her out of her money.
The different heaps on the floor increased materially while these
reflections passed through Miss Mullen’s brain. It was characteristic of
her that a distinct section of it had never ceased from appraising and
apportioning dresses, dolmans and bonnets, with a nice regard to the
rival claims of herself, Eliza Hackett the cook, and the rest of the
establishment, and still deeper in its busy convolutions--though this
simile is probably unscientific--lurked and grew the consciousness that
Francie’s name had not yet been mentioned. The wardrobe was cleared at
last, a scarlet flannel dressing-gown topping the heap that was destined
for Tally Ho, and Charlotte had already settled the question as to
whether she should bestow her old one upon Norry or make it into a bed
for a cat. Lambert finished his second pipe, and stretching himself,
yawned drearily, as though, which was indeed the case, the solemnity of
the occasion had worn off and its tediousness had become pronounced. He
looked at his watch.
“Half-past twelve, by Jove! Look here, Charlotte, let’s come down and
have a glass of sherry.”
Charlotte got up from her knees with alacrity, though the tone in which
she accepted the invitation was fittingly lugubrious. She was just as
glad to leave something unfinished for the afternoon, and there was
something very intimate and confidential about a friendly glass of
sherry in the middle of a joint day’s work. It was not until Lambert had
helped himself a second time from the decanter of brown sherry that Miss
Mullen saw her opportunity to approach a subject that was becoming
conspicuous by its absence. She had seated herself, not without
consciousness, in what had been Mrs. Lambert’s chair; she was feeling
happier than she had been since the time when Lambert was a lanky young
clerk in her father’s office, with a precocious moustache and an
affectionately free and easy manner, before Rosemount had been built, or
Lucy Galvin thought of. She could think of Lucy now without resentment,
even with equanimity, and that last interview, when her friend had died
on the very spot where the sunlight was now resting at her feet,
recurred to her without any unpleasantness. She had fought a losing
battle against fate all her life, and she could not be expected to
regret having accepted its first overture of friendship, any more than
she need be expected to refuse another half glass of that excellent
brown sherry that Lambert had just poured out for her. “Charlotte could
take her whack,” he was wont to say to their mutual friends in that tone
of humorous appreciation that is used in connection with a gentlemanlike
capacity for liquor.
“Well, how are you all getting on at Tally Ho?” he said presently, and
not all the self-confidence induced by the sherry could make his voice
as easy as he wished it to be; “I hear you’ve lost your young lady?”
Charlotte was provoked to feel the blood mount slowly to her face and
remain like a hot straddle across her cheeks and nose.
“Oh yes,” she said carelessly, inwardly cursing the strength of
Lambert’s liquor, “she took herself off in a huff, and I only hope she’s
not repenting of it now.”
“What was the row about? Did you smack her for pulling the cats’ tails?”
Lambert had risen from the table and was trimming his nails with a
pocket-knife, but out of the tail of his eye he was observing his
visitor very closely.
“I gave her some good advice, and I got the usual amount of gratitude
for it,” said Charlotte, in the voice of a person who has been deeply
wounded, but is not going to make a fuss about it. She had no idea how
much Lambert knew, but she had, at all events, one line of defence that
was obvious and secure.
Lambert, as it happened, knew nothing except that there had been what
the letter in his pocket described as “a real awful row,” and his
mordant curiosity forced him to the question that he knew Charlotte was
longing for him to ask.
“What did you give her advice about?”
“I may have been wrong,” replied Miss Mullen, with the liberality that
implies the certainty of having been right, “but when I found that she
was carrying on with that good-for-nothing Hawkins, I thought it my duty
to give her my opinion, and upon me word, as long as he’s here she’s
well out of the place.”
“How did you find out she was carrying on with Hawkins?” asked Lambert,
with a hoarseness in his voice that belied its indifference.
“I knew that they were corresponding, and when I taxed her with carrying
on with him she didn’t attempt to deny it, and told me up to my face
that she could mind her own affairs without my interference. ‘Very well,
Miss,’ says I, ‘you’ll march out of my house!’ and off she took herself
next morning, and has never had the decency to send me a line since.”
“Is she in Dublin now?” asked Lambert with the carelessness that was so
much more remarkable than an avowed interest.
“No; she’s with those starving rats of Fitzpatricks; they were glad
enough to get hold of her to squeeze what they could out of her
twenty-five pounds a year, and I wish them joy of their bargain!”
Charlotte pushed back her chair violently, and her hot face looked its
ugliest as some of the hidden hatred showed itself. But Lambert felt
that she did well to be angry. In the greater affairs of life he
believed in Charlotte, and he admitted to himself that she had done
especially well in sending Francie to Bray.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
The house that the Fitzpatricks had taken in Bray for the winter was not
situated in what is known as the fashionable part of the town. It
commanded no view either of the Esplanade or of Bray Head; it had, in
fact, little view of any kind except the backs of other people’s houses,
and an oblique glimpse of a railway bridge at the end of the road. It
was just saved from the artisan level by a tiny bow window on either
side of the hall door, and the name, Albatross Villa, painted on the
gate posts; and its crowning claim to distinction was the fact that by
standing just outside the gate it was possible to descry, under the
railway bridge, a small square of esplanade and sea that was Mrs.
Fitzpatrick’s justification when she said gallantly to her Dublin
friends that she’d never have come to Bray for the winter only for
being able to look out at the waves all day long.
Poor Mrs. Fitzpatrick did not tell her friends that she had, nowadays,
things to occupy herself with that scarcely left her time for taking
full advantage of this privilege. From the hour of the awakening of her
brood to that midnight moment when, with fingers roughened and face
flushed from the darning of stockings, she toiled up to bed, she was
scarcely conscious that the sea existed, except when Dottie came in with
her boots worn into holes by the pebbles of the beach, or Georgie’s
Sunday trousers were found to be smeared with tar from riding astride
the upturned boats. There were no longer for her the afternoon naps that
were so pleasantly composing after four o’clock dinner; it was now her
part to clear away and wash the dishes and plates, so as to leave
Bridget, the “general,” free to affair herself with the clothes-lines in
the back garden, whereon the family linen streamed and ballooned in the
east wind that is the winter prerogative of Bray. She had grown
perceptibly thinner under this discipline, and her eyes had dark
swellings beneath them that seemed pathetically unbecoming to anyone
who, like Francie, had last seen her when the rubicund prosperity of
Mountjoy Square had not yet worn away. Probably an Englishwoman of her
class would have kept her household in comparative comfort with less
effort and more success, but Aunt Tish was very far from being an
Englishwoman; her eyes were not formed to perceive dirt, nor her nose to
apprehend smells, and her idea of domestic economy was to indulge in no
extras of soap or scrubbing brushes, and to feed her family on strong
tea and indifferent bread and butter, in order that Ida’s and Mabel’s
hats might be no whit less ornate than those of their neighbours.
Francie had plunged into the heart of this squalor with characteristic
recklessness; and the effusion of welcome with which she had been
received, and the comprehensive abuse lavished by Aunt Tish upon
Charlotte, were at first sufficient to make her forget the frouziness of
the dining-room, and the fact that she had to share a bedroom with her
cousins, the two Misses Fitzpatrick. Francie had kept the particulars of
her fight with Charlotte to herself. Perhaps she felt that it would not
be easy to make the position clear to Aunt Tish’s comprehension which
was of a rudimentary sort in such matters, and apt to jump to crude
conclusions. Perhaps she had become aware that even the ordinary
atmosphere of her three months at Lismoyle was as far beyond Aunt Tish’s
imagination as the air of Paradise, but she certainly was not inclined
to enlarge on her sentimental experiences to her aunt and cousins; all
that they knew was, that she had “moved in high society,” and that she
had fought with Charlotte Mullen on general and laudable grounds. It was
difficult at times to parry the direct questions of Ida, who, at
sixteen, had already, with the horrible precocity prevalent in her grade
of society, passed through several flirtations of an out-door and
illicit kind; but if Ida’s curiosity could not be parried it could be
easily misled, and the family belief in Francie’s power of breaking,
impartially, the hearts of all the young men whom she met, was a shield
to her when she was pressed too nearly about “young Mr. Dysart,” or “th’
officers.” Loud, of course, and facetious were the lamentations that
Francie had not returned “promised” to one or other of these heroes of
romance, but not even Ida’s cultured capacity could determine which had
been the more probable victim. The family said to each other in private
that Francie had “got very close”; even the boys were conscious of a
certain strangeness about her, and did not feel inclined to show her, as
of yore, the newest subtlety in catapults, or the latest holes in their
coats.
She herself was far more conscious of strangeness and remoteness;
though, when she had first arrived at Albatross Villa, the crowded,
carpetless house, and the hourly conflict of living were reviving and
almost amusing after the thunderous gloom of her exit from Tally Ho.
Almost the first thing she had done had been to write to Hawkins to tell
him of what had happened; a letter that her tears had dropped on, and
that her pen had flown in the writing of, telling how she had been
turned out because she had refused--or as good as refused--Mr. Dysart
for his--Gerald’s--sake, and how she hoped he hadn’t written to Tally
Ho, “for it’s little chance there’d be Charlotte would send on the
letter.” Francie had intended to break off at this point, and leave to
Gerald’s own conscience the application of the hint; but an unused half
sheet at the end of her letter tempted her on, and before she well knew
what she was saying, all the jealousy and hurt tenderness and helpless
craving of the past month were uttered without a thought of diplomacy or
pride. Then a long time had gone by, and there had been no answer from
Hawkins. The outflung emotion that had left her spent and humbled, came
back in bitterness to her, as the tide gives back in a salt flood the
fresh waters of a river, and her heart closed upon it, and bore the pain
as best it might.
It was not till the middle of October that Hawkins answered her letter.
She knew before she opened the envelope that she was going to be
disappointed; how could anyone explain away a silence of two months on
one sheet of small note-paper, one side of which, as she well knew, was
mainly occupied by the regimental crest, much less reply in the smallest
degree to that letter that had cost so much in the writing, and so much
more in the repenting of its length and abandonment? Mr. Hawkins had
wisely steered clear of both difficulties by saying no more than that he
had been awfully glad to hear from her, and he would have written before
if he could, but somehow he never could find a minute to do so. He would
have given a good deal to have seen that row with Miss Mullen, and as
far as Dysart was concerned, he thought Miss Mullen had the rights of
it; he was going away on first leave now, and wouldn’t be back at
Lismoyle till the end of the year, when he hoped he would find her and
old Charlotte as good friends as ever. He, Mr. Hawkins, was really not
worth fighting about; he was stonier broke than he had ever been, and,
in conclusion, he was hers (with an illegible hieroglyphic to express
the exact amount), Gerald Hawkins.
Like the last letter she had had from him, this had come early in the
morning, but on this occasion she could not go up to her room to read it
in peace. The apartment that she shared with Ida and Mabel offered few
facilities for repose, and none for seclusion, and, besides, there was
too much to be done in the way of helping to lay the table and get the
breakfast. She hurried about the kitchen in her shabby gown, putting the
kettle on to a hotter corner of the range, pouring treacle into a
jampot, and filling the sugar-basin from a paper bag with quick,
trembling fingers; her breath came pantingly, and the letter that she
had hidden inside the front of her dress crackled with the angry rise
and fall of her breast. That he should advise her to go and make friends
with Charlotte, and tell her she had made a mistake in refusing Mr.
Dysart, and never say a word about all that she had said to him in her
letter--!
“Francie’s got a letter from her sweetheart!” said Mabel, skipping round
the kitchen, and singing the words in a kind of chant. “Ask her for the
lovely crest for your album, Bobby!”
Evidently the ubiquitous Mabel had studied the contents of the
letter-box.
“Ah, it’s well to be her,” said Bridget, joining in the conversation
with her accustomed ease; “it’s long before _my_ fella would write me a
letter!”
“And it’s little you want letters from him,” remarked Bobby, in his
slow, hideous, Dublin brogue, “when you’re out in the lane talking to
another fella every night.”
“Ye lie!” said Bridget, with a flattered giggle, while Bobby ran up the
kitchen stairs after Francie, and took advantage of her having the
teapot in one hand and the milk-jug in the other to thrust his treacly
fingers into her pocket in search of the letter.
“Ah, have done!” said Francie angrily; “look, your after making me spill
the milk!”
But Bobby who had been joined by Mabel, continued his persecutions, till
his cousin, freeing herself of her burdens, turned upon him and boxed
his ears with a vigour that sent him howling upstairs to complain to his
mother.
After this incident, Francie’s life at Albatross Villa went on, as it
seemed to her, in a squalid monotony of hopelessness. The days became
darker and colder, and the food and firing more perceptibly
insufficient, and strong tea a more prominent feature of each meal, and
even Aunt Tish lifted her head from the round of unending, dingy cares,
and saw some change in Francie. She said to Uncle Robert, with an
excusable thought of Francie’s ungrudging help in the household, and her
contribution to it of five shillings a week, that it would be a pity if
the sea air didn’t suit the girl; and Uncle Robert, arranging a greasy
satin tie under his beard at the looking-glass, preparatory to catching
the 8.30 train for Dublin, had replied that it wasn’t his fault if it
didn’t, and if she chose to be fool enough to fight with Charlotte
Mullen she’d have to put up with it. Uncle Robert was a saturnine little
man of small abilities, whose reverses had not improved his temper, and
he felt that things were coming to a pretty pass if his wife was going
to make him responsible for the sea air, as well as the smoky kitchen
chimney, and the scullery sink that Bobby had choked with a dead jelly
fish, and everything else.
The only events that Francie felt to be at all noteworthy were her
letters from Mr. Lambert. He was not a brilliant letter writer, having
neither originality, nor the gift which is sometimes bestowed on
unoriginal people, of conveying news in a simple and satisfying manner;
but his awkward and sterile sentences were as cold waters to the thirsty
soul that was always straining back towards its time of abundance. She
could scarcely say the word Lismoyle now without a hesitation, it was so
shrined in dear and miserable remembrance, with all the fragrance of the
summer embalming it in her mind, that, unselfconscious as she was, the
word seemed sometimes too difficult to pronounce. Lambert himself had
become a personage of a greater world, and had acquired an importance
that he would have resented had he known how wholly impersonal it was.
In some ways she did not like him quite as much as in the Dublin days,
when he had had the advantage of being the nearest thing to a gentleman
that she had met with; perhaps her glimpses of his home life and the
fact of his friendship with Charlotte had been disillusioning, or
perhaps the comparison of him with other and newer figures upon her
horizon had not been to his advantage; certainly it was more by virtue
of his position in that other world that he was great.
It was strange that in these comparisons it was to Christopher that she
turned for a standard. For her there was no flaw in Hawkins; her angry
heart could name no fault in him except that he had wounded it; but she
illogically felt Christopher’s superiority without being aware of
deficiency in the other. She did not understand Christopher; she had
hardly understood him at that moment to which she now looked back with a
gratified vanity that was tempered by uncertainty and not unmingled
with awe; but she knew him just well enough, and had just enough
perception to respect him. Fanny Hemphill and Delia Whitty would have
regarded him with a terror that would have kept them dumb in his
presence, but for which they would have compensated themselves at other
times by explosive gigglings at his lack of all that they admired most
in young men. Some errant streak of finer sense made her feel his
difference from the men she knew, without wanting to laugh at it; as has
already been said, she respected him, an emotion not hitherto awakened
by a varied experience of “gentlemen friends.”
There were times when the domestic affairs of Albatross Villa touched
their highest possibility of discomfort, when Bridget had gone to the
christening of a friend’s child at Enniskerry, and returned next day
only partially recovered from the potations that had celebrated the
event; or when Dottie, unfailing purveyor of diseases to the family, had
imported German measles from her school. At these times Francie, as she
made fires, or beds, or hot drinks, would think of Bruff and its
servants with a regret that was none the less burning for its
ignobleness. Several times when she lay awake at night, staring at the
blank of her own future, while the stabs of misery were sharp and
unescapable, she had thought that she would write to Christopher, and
tell him what had happened, and where she was. In those hours when
nothing is impossible and nothing is unnatural, his face and his words,
when she saw him last, took on their fullest meaning, and she felt as if
she had only to put her hand out to open that which she had closed. The
diplomatic letter, about nothing in particular, that should make
Christopher understand that she would like to see him again, was often
half composed, had indeed often lulled her sore heart and hot eyes to
sleep with visions of the divers luxuries and glories that this single
stepping-stone should lead to. But in the morning, when the children had
gone to school, and she had come in from marketing, it was not such an
easy thing to sit down and write a letter about nothing in particular to
Mr. Dysart. Her defeat at the hands of Hawkins had taken away her belief
in herself. She could not even hint to Christopher the true version of
her fight with Charlotte, sure though she was that an untrue one had
already found its way to Bruff; she could not tell him that Bridget had
got drunk, and that butter was so dear they had to do without it; such
emergencies did not somehow come within the scope of her promise to
trust him, and, besides, there was the serious possibility of his
volunteering to see her. She would have given a good deal to see him,
but not at Albatross Villa. She pictured him to herself, seated in the
midst of the Fitzpatrick family, with Ida making eyes at him from under
her fringe, and Bridget scuffling audibly with Bobby outside the door.
Tally Ho was a palace compared with this, and yet she remembered what
she had felt when she came back to Tally Ho from Bruff. When she thought
of it all, she wondered whether she could bring herself to write to
Charlotte, and try to make friends with her again. It would be dreadful
to do, but her life at Albatross Villa was dreadful, and the dream of
another visit to Lismoyle, when she could revenge herself on Hawkins by
showing him his unimportance to her, was almost too strong for her
pride. How much of it was due to her thirst to see him again at any
price, and how much to a pitiful hankering after the flesh-pots of
Egypt, it is hard to say; but November and December dragged by, and she
did not write to Christopher or Charlotte, and Lambert remained her only
correspondent at Lismoyle.
It was a damp, dark December, with rain and wind nearly every day. Bray
Head was rarely without a cap of grey cloud, and a restless pack of
waves mouthing and leaping at its foot. The Esplanade was a mile-long
vista of soaked grass and glistening asphalte, whereon the foot of man
apparently never trod; once or twice a storm had charged in from the
south-east, and had hurled sheets of spray and big stones on to it, and
pounded holes in the concrete of its sea-wall. There had been such a
storm the week before Christmas. The breakers had rushed upon the long
beach with “a broad-flung, shipwrecking roar,” and the windows of the
houses along the Esplanade were dimmed with salt and sand. The rain had
come in under the hall door at Albatross Villa, the cowl was blown off
the kitchen chimney, causing the smoke to make its exit through the
house by various routes, and, worst of all, Dottie and the boys had not
been out of the house for two days. Christmas morning was signalised by
the heaviest downpour of the week. It was hopeless to think of going to
church, least of all for a person whose most presentable boots were
relics of the past summer, and bore the cuts of lake rocks on their
dulled patent leather. The post came late, after its wont, but it did
not bring the letter that Francie had not been able to help expecting.
There had been a few Christmas cards, and one letter which did indeed
bear the Lismoyle postmark, but was only a bill from the Misses Greely,
forwarded by Charlotte, for the hat that she had bought to replace the
one that was lost on the day of the capsize of the _Daphne_.
The Christmas mid-day feast of tough roast-beef and pallid plum-pudding
was eaten, and then, unexpectedly, the day brightened, a thin sunlight
began to fall on the wet roads and the dirty, tossing sea, and Francie
and her younger cousins went forth to take the air on the Esplanade.
They were the only human beings upon it when they first got there; in
any other weather Francie might have expected to meet a friend or two
from Dublin there, as had occurred on previous Sundays, when the still
enamoured Tommy Whitty had ridden down on his bicycle, or Fanny Hemphill
and her two medical student brothers had asked her to join them in a
walk round Bray Head. The society of the Hemphills and Mr. Whitty had
lost, for her, much of its pristine charm, but it was better than
nothing at all; in fact, those who saw the glances that Miss
Fitzpatrick, from mere force of habit, levelled at Mr. Whitty, or were
witnesses of a pebble-throwing encounter with the Messrs. Hemphill,
would not have guessed that she desired anything better than these
amusements.
“Such a Christmas Day!” she thought to herself, “without a soul to see
or to talk to! I declare, I think I’ll turn nurse in a hospital, the way
Susie Brennan did. They say those nurses have grand fun, and ’twould be
better than this awful old place anyhow!” She had walked almost to the
squat Martello tower, and while she looked discontentedly up at Bray
Head, the last ray of sun struck on its dark shoulder as if to challenge
her with the magnificence of its outline and the untruthfulness of her
indictment. “Oh, you may shine away!” she exclaimed, turning her back
upon both sunlight and mountain and beginning to walk back to where
Bobby and Dottie were searching for jelly-fish among the sea-weed cast
up by the storm, “the day’s done for now, it’s as good for me to go up
to the four o’clock service as be streeling about in the cold here.”
Almost at the same moment the chimes from the church on the hill behind
the town struck out upon the wind with beautiful severity, and obeying
them listlessly, she left the children and turned up the steep suburban
road that was her shortest way to Christ Church.
It was a long and stiffish pull; the wind blew her hair about till it
looked like a mist of golden threads, the colour glowed dazzlingly in
her cheeks, and the few men whom she passed bestowed upon her a stare of
whose purport she was well aware. This was a class of compliment which
she neither resented nor was surprised at, and it is quite possible that
some months before she might have allowed her sense of it to be
expressed in her face. But she felt now as if the approval of the man in
the street was not worth what it used to be. It was, of course,
agreeable in its way, but on this Christmas afternoon, with all its
inevitable reminders of the past and the future, it brought with it the
thought of how soon her face had been forgotten by the men who had
praised it most.
The gas was lighted in the church, and the service was just beginning as
she passed the decorated font and went uncertainly up a side-aisle till
she was beckoned into a pew by a benevolent old lady. She knelt down in
a corner, beside a pillar that was wreathed with a thick serpent of
evergreens, and the old lady looked up from her admission of sin to
wonder that such a pretty girl was allowed to walk through the streets
by herself. The heat of the church had brought out the aromatic smell of
all the green things, the yellow gas flared from its glittering
standards, and the glimmering colours of the east window were dying into
darkness with the dying daylight. When she stood up for the psalms she
looked round the church to see if there were anyone there whom she knew;
there were several familiar faces, but no one with whom she had ever
exchanged a word, and turning round again she devoted herself to the
hopeless task of finding out the special psalms that the choir were
singing. Having failed in this, she felt her religious duties to be for
the time suspended, and her thoughts strayed afield over things in
general, settling down finally on a subject that had become more
pressing than was pleasant.
It is a truism of ancient standing that money brings no cure for
heartache, but it is also true that if the money were not there the
heartache would be harder to bear. Probably if Francie had returned from
Lismoyle to a smart house in Merrion Square, with a carriage to drive
in, and a rich relative ready to pay for new winter dresses, she would
have been less miserable over Mr. Hawkins’ desertion than she was at
Albatross Villa; she certainly would not have felt as unhappy as she did
now, standing up with the shrill singing clamouring in her ears, while
she tried in different ways to answer the question of how she was to pay
for the dresses that she had bought to take to Lismoyle. Twenty-five
pounds a year does not go far when more than half of it is expended upon
board and lodging, and a whole quarter has been anticipated to pay for a
summer visit, and Lambert’s prophecy that she would find herself in the
county court some day, seemed not unlikely to come true. In her pocket
was a letter from a Dublin shop, containing more than a hint of legal
proceedings; and even if she were able to pay them a temporising two
pounds in a month, there still would remain five pounds due, and she
would not have a farthing left to go on with. Everything was at its
darkest for her. Her hardy, supple nature was dispirited beyond its
power of reaction, and now and then the remembrance of the Sundays of
last summer caught her, till the pain came in her throat, and the
gaslight spread into shaking stars.
The service went on, and Francie rose and knelt mechanically with the
rest of the congregation. She was not irreligious, and even the name of
scepticism was scarcely understood by her, but she did not consider that
religion was applicable to love affairs and bills; her mind was too
young and shapeless for anything but a healthy, negligent belief in what
she had been taught, and it did not enter into her head to utilise
religion as a last resource, when everything else had turned out a
failure. She regarded it with respect, and believed that most people
grew good when they grew old, and the service passed over her head with
a vaguely pleasing effect of music and light. As she came out into the
dark lofty porch, a man stepped forward to meet her. Francie started
violently.
“Oh, goodness gracious!” she cried, “you frightened my life out!”
But for all that, she was glad to see Mr. Lambert.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
That evening when Mrs. Fitzpatrick was putting on her best cap and her
long cameo ear-rings she said to her husband:
“Well now, Robert, you mark my words, he’s after her.”
“Tchah!” replied Mr. Fitzpatrick, who was not in a humour to admit that
any woman could be attractive, owing to the postponement of his tea by
his wife so that cakes might be baked in Mr. Lambert’s honour; “you
can’t see a man without thinking he’s in love with someone or other.”
“I suppose you think it’s to see yourself he’s come all the way from
Lismoyle,” rejoined Mrs. Fitzpatrick with becoming spirit, “and says
he’s going to stop at Breslin’s Hotel for a week?”
“Oh, very well, have it your own way,” said Mr. Fitzpatrick
acrimoniously, “I suppose you have it all settled, and he’ll be married
to her by special license before the week’s out.”
“Well, I don’t care, Robert, you wouldn’t think to look at him that he’d
only buried his wife four months and a half ago--though I will say he’s
in deep mourning--but for all that no one’d blame him that he didn’t
think much of that poor creature, and ’twould be a fine match for
Francie if she’d take him.”
“Would she take him!” echoed Mr. Fitzpatrick scornfully; “would a duck
swim? I never saw the woman yet that wouldn’t half hang herself to get
married!”
“Ah, have done being so cross, Robert, Christmas day and all; I wonder
you married at all since you think so little of women.”
Finding this argument not easy to answer, Mr. Fitzpatrick said nothing,
and his wife, too much interested to linger over side issues, continued,
“The girls say they heard him asking her to drive to the Dargle with him
to-morrow, and he’s brought a grand box of sweets for the children as a
Christmas box, and six lovely pair of gloves for Francie! ’Pon me word,
I call her a very lucky girl!”
“Well, if I was a woman it isn’t that fellow I’d fancy,” said Mr.
Fitzpatrick, unexpectedly changing his ground, “but as, thank God, I’m
not, it’s no affair of mine.” Having delivered himself of this
sentiment, Mr. Fitzpatrick went downstairs. The smell of hot cakes rose
deliciously upon the air, and, as his niece emerged from the kitchen
with a plateful of them in her hand, and called to him to hurry before
they got cold, he thought to himself that Lambert would have the best of
the bargain if he married her.
Francie found the evening surprisingly pleasant. She was, as she had
always been, entirely at her ease with Mr. Lambert, and did not endure,
on his account, any vicarious suffering because the table-cloth was far
from clean, and the fact that Bridget put on the coal with her fingers
was recorded on the edges of the plates. If he chose to come and eat hot
cakes in the bosom of the Fitzpatrick family instead of dining at his
hotel, he was just as well able to do without a butter-knife as she was,
and, at all events, he need not have stayed unless he liked, she
thought, with a little flash of amusement and pride that her power over
him, at least, was not lost. There had been times during the last month
or two when she had believed that he, like everyone else, had forgotten
her, and it was agreeable to find that she had been mistaken.
The next day proved to be one of the softest and sunniest of the winter,
and, as they flew along the wet road towards the Dargle, on the smartest
of the Bray outside cars, a great revival took place in Francie’s
spirits. They left their car at the gate of the glen to which the Dargle
river has given its name, and strolled together along the private road
that runs from end to end of it. A few holiday-makers had been tempted
down from Dublin by the fine day, but there was nothing that even
suggested the noisy pleasure parties that vulgarise the winding beauty
of the ravine on summer bank holidays.
“Doesn’t it look fearful lonely to-day?” said Francie, who had made her
last visit there as a member of one of these same pleasure parties, and
had enjoyed herself highly. “You can’t hear a thing but the running of
the water.”
They were sitting on the low parapet of the road, looking down the brown
slope of the tree-tops to the river, that was running a foaming race
among the rocks at the bottom of the cleft.
“I don’t call it lonely,” said Lambert, casting a discontented side-long
glance at a couple walking past arm-in-arm, evidently in the silently
blissful stage of courtship; “how many more would you like?”
“Oh, lots,” replied Francie, “but I’m not going to tell you who they
are!”
“I know one, anyhow,” said Lambert, deliberately leading up to a topic
that up to this had been only slightly touched on.
When he had walked home from the church with Francie the evening before,
he had somehow not been able to talk to her consecutively; he had felt a
nervous awkwardness that he had not believed himself capable of, and the
fact that he was holding an umbrella over her head and that she had
taken his arm had seemed the only thing that he could give his mind to.
“Who do you know?”
Francie had plucked a ribbon of hart’s-tongue from the edge of the wall,
and was drawing its cold satiny length across her lips.
“Wouldn’t you like it now if you saw--” he paused and looked at
Francie--“who shall we say--Charlotte Mullen coming up the road?”
“I wouldn’t care.”
“Wouldn’t you though! You’d run for your life, the way you did before
out of Lismoyle,” said Lambert, looking hard at her and laughing not
quite genuinely.
The strip of hart’s-tongue could not conceal a rising glow in the face
behind it, but Francie’s voice was as undaunted as ever as she replied,
“Who told you I ran for my life?”
“You told me so yourself.”
“I didn’t. I only told you I’d had a row with her.”
“Well, that’s as good as saying you had to run. You don’t suppose I
thought you’d get the better of Charlotte?”
“I daresay you didn’t, because you’re afraid of her yourself!”
There was a degree of truth in this that made Mr. Lambert suddenly
realise Francie’s improper levity about serious things.
“I’ll tell you one thing I’m afraid of,” he said severely, “and that is
that you made a mistake in fighting with Charlotte. If you’d chosen
to--to do as she wished, she’s easy enough to get on with.”
Francie flung her fern over the parapet and made no answer.
“I suppose you know she’s moved into Gurthnamuckla?” he went on.
“I know nothing about anything,” interrupted Francie; “I don’t know how
long it isn’t since you wrote to me, and when you do you never tell me
anything. You might be all dead and buried down there for all I know or
care!”
The smallest possible glance under her eyelids tempered this statement
and confused Mr. Lambert’s grasp of his subject.
“Do you mean that, about not caring if I was dead or no? I daresay you
do. No one cares now what happens to me.”
He almost meant what he said, her elusiveness was so exasperating, and
his voice told his sincerity. Last summer she would have laughed
pitilessly at his pathos, and made it up with him afterwards. But she
was changed since last summer, and now as she looked at him she felt a
forlorn kinship with him.
“Ah, what nonsense!” she said caressingly. “I’d be awfully sorry if
anything happened you.” As if he could not help himself he took her
hand, but before he could speak she had drawn it away. “Indeed, you
might have been dead,” she went on hurriedly, “for all you told me in
your letters. Begin now and tell me the Lismoyle news. I think you said
the Dysarts were away from Bruff still, didn’t you?”
Lambert felt as if a hot and a cold spray of water had been turned on
him alternately. “The Dysarts? Oh, yes, they’ve been away for some
time,” he said, recovering himself; “they’ve been in London, I believe,
staying with her people, since you’re so anxious to know about them.”
“Why wouldn’t I want to know about them?” said Francie, getting off the
wall. “Come on and walk a bit; it’s cold sitting here.”
Lambert walked on by her side rather sulkily; he was angry with himself
for having let his feelings run away with him, and he was angry with
Francie for pulling him up so quickly.
“Christopher Dysart’s off again,” he said abruptly; “he’s got another of
these diplomatic billets.” He believed that Francie would find the
information unpleasant, and he was in some contradictory way
disappointed that she seemed quite unaffected by it. “He’s unpaid
_attaché_ to old Lord Castlemore at Copenhagen,” he went on; “he started
last week.”
So Christopher was gone from her too, and never wrote her a line before
he went. They’re all the same, she thought, all they want is to spoon a
girl for a bit, and if she lets them do it they get sick of her, and
whatever she does they forget her the next minute. And there was Roddy
Lambert trying to squeeze her hand just now, and poor Mrs. Lambert, that
was worth a dozen of him, not dead six months. She walked on, and forced
herself to talk to him, and to make inquiries about the Bakers, Dr.
Rattray, Mr. Corkran, and other lights of Lismoyle society. It was
absurd, but it was none the less true that the news that Mr. Corkran was
engaged to Carrie Beattie gave her an additional pang. The enamoured
glances of the curate were fresh in her memory, and the thought that
they were being now bestowed upon Carrie Beattie’s freckles and watering
eyes was, though ludicrous, not altogether pleasing. She burst out
laughing suddenly.
“I’m thinking of what all the Beatties will look like dressed as
bridesmaids,” she explained; “four of them, and every one of them
roaring, crying, and their noses bright red!”
The day was clouding over a little, and a damp wind began to stir among
the leaves that still hung red on the beech trees. Lambert insisted with
paternal determination that Francie should put on the extra coat that he
was carrying for her, and the couple who had recently passed them, and
whom they had now overtaken, looked at them sympathetically, and were
certain that they also were engaged. It took some time to reach the far
gate of the Dargle, sauntering as they did from bend to bend of the
road, and stopping occasionally to look down at the river, or up at the
wooded height opposite, with conventional expressions of admiration; and
by the time they had passed down between the high evergreens at the
lodge, to where the car was waiting for them, Francie had heard all that
Lambert could tell her of Lismoyle news. She had also been told what a
miserable life Mr. Lambert’s was, and how lonely he was at Rosemount
since poor Lucy’s death, and she knew how many young horses he had at
grass on Gurthnamuckla, but neither mentioned the name of Mr. Hawkins.
The day of the Dargle expedition was Tuesday, and during the remainder
of the week Mr. Lambert became so familiar a visitor at Albatross Villa,
that Bridget learned to know his knock, and did not trouble herself to
pull down her sleeves, or finish the mouthful of bread and tea with
which she had left the kitchen, before she opened the door. Aunt Tish
did not attempt to disguise her satisfaction when he was present, and
rallied Francie freely in his absence; the children were quite aware of
the state of affairs, having indeed discussed the matter daily with
Bridget; and Uncle Robert, going gloomily up to his office in Dublin,
had to admit to himself that Lambert was certainly paying her great
attention, and that after all, all things considered, it would be a good
thing for the girl to get a rich husband for herself when she had the
chance. It was rather soon after his wife’s death for a man to come
courting, but of course the wedding wouldn’t come off till the twelve
months were up, and at the back of these reflections was the remembrance
that he, Uncle Robert, was Francie’s trustee, and that the security in
which he had invested her five hundred pounds was becoming less sound
than he could have wished.
As is proverbially the case, the principal persons concerned were not as
aware as the lookers-on of the state of the game. Francie, to whom
flirtation was as ordinary and indispensable as the breath of her
nostrils, did not feel that anything much out of the common was going
on, though she knew quite well that Mr. Lambert was very fond of her;
and Mr. Lambert had so firmly resolved on allowing a proper interval to
elapse between his wife’s death and that election of her successor upon
which he was determined, that he looked upon the present episode as of
small importance, and merely a permissible relaxation to a man whose
hunting had been stopped, and who had, in a general way, been having the
devil of a dull time. He was to go back to Lismoyle on Monday, the first
of the year; and it was settled that he was to take Francie on Sunday
afternoon to walk on Kingstown pier. The social laws of Mrs
Fitzpatrick’s world were not rigorous, still less was her interpretation
of them; an unchaperoned expedition to Kingstown pier would not, under
any circumstances, have scandalised her, and considering that Lambert
was an old friend and had been married, the proceeding became almost
prudishly correct. As she stood at her window and saw them turn the
corner of the road on their way to the station, she observed to Mabel
that there wouldn’t be a handsomer couple going the pier than what they
were, Francie had that stylish way with her that she always gave a nice
set to a skirt, and it was wonderful the way she could trim up an old
hat the same as new.
It was a very bright clear afternoon, and a touch of frost in the air
gave the snap and brilliancy that are often lacking in an Irish winter
day. On such a Sunday Kingstown pier assumes a fair semblance of its
spring and summer gaiety; the Kingstown people walk there because there
is nothing else to be done at Kingstown, and the Dublin people come down
to snatch what they can of sea air before the short afternoon darkens,
and the hour arrives when they look out for members of the St. George’s
Yacht Club to take them in to tea. There was a fair sprinkling of people
on the long arm of granite that curves for a mile into Dublin Bay, and
as Mr. Lambert paced along it he was as agreeably conscious as his
companion of the glances that met and followed their progress. It
satisfied his highest ambition that the girl of his choice should be
thus openly admired by men whom, year after year, he had looked up at
with envious respect as they stood in the bow-window of Kildare Street
Club, with figures that time was slowly shaping to its circular form, on
the principle of correspondence with environment. He was a man who had
always valued his possessions according to other people’s estimation of
them, and this afternoon Francie gained a new distinction in his eyes.
Abstract admiration, however, was one thing, but the very concrete
attentions of Mr. Thomas Whitty were quite another affair. Before they
had been a quarter of an hour on the pier, Francie was hailed by her
Christian name, and this friend of her youth, looking more unmistakably
than ever a solicitor’s clerk, joined them, flushed with the effort of
overtaking them, and evidently determined not to leave them again.
“I spotted you by your hair, Francie,” Mr. Whitty was pleased to
observe, after the first greetings; “you must have been getting a new
dye for it; I could see it a mile off!”
“Oh, yes,” responded Francie, “I tried a new bottle the other day, the
same you use for your moustache, y’know! I thought I’d like people to be
able to see it without a spy-glass.”
As Mr. Whitty’s moustache was represented by three sickly hairs and a
pimple, the sarcasm was sufficiently biting to yield Lambert a
short-lived gratification.
“Mr. Lambert dyes his black,” continued Francie, without a change of
countenance. She had the Irish love of a scrimmage in her, and she
thought it would be great fun to make Mr. Lambert cross.
“D’ye find the colour comes off?” murmured Tommy Whitty, eager for
revenge, but too much afraid of Lambert to speak out loud.
Even Francie, though she favoured the repartee with a giggle, was glad
that Lambert had not heard.
“D’ye find you want your ears boxed?” she returned in the same tone of
voice; “I won’t walk with you if you don’t behave.” Inwardly, however,
she decided that Tommy Whitty was turning into an awful cad, and felt
that she would have given a good deal to have wiped out some lively
passages in her previous acquaintance with him.
At the end of half an hour Mr. Whitty was still with them, irrepressibly
intimate and full of reminiscence. Lambert, after determined efforts to
talk to Francie, as if unaware of the presence of a third person, had
sunk into dangerous silence, and Francie had ceased to see the amusing
side of the situation, and was beginning to be exhausted by much walking
to and fro. The sun set in smoky crimson behind the town, the sun-set
gun banged its official recognition of the fact, followed by the wild,
clear notes of a bugle, and a frosty after-glow lit up the sky, and
coloured the motionless water of the harbour. A big bell boomed a
monotonous summons to afternoon service, and people began to leave the
pier. Those who had secured the entrée of the St. George’s Yacht Club
proceeded comfortably thither for tea, and Lambert felt that he would
have given untold sums for the right to take Francie in under the
pillared portico, leaving Tommy Whitty and his seedy black coat in outer
darkness. The party was gloomily tending towards the station, when the
happy idea occurred to Mr. Lambert of having tea at the Marine Hotel; it
might not have the distinction of the club, but it would at all events
give him the power of shaking off that damned presuming counter-jumper,
as in his own mind he furiously designated Mr. Whitty.
“I’m going to take you up to the hotel for tea, Francie,” he said
decisively, and turned at once towards the gate of the Marine gardens.
“Good evening, Whitty.”
The look that accompanied this valedictory remark was so conclusive that
the discarded Tommy could do no more than accept the position. Francie
would not come to his help, being indeed thankful to get rid of him, and
he could only stand and look after the two figures, and detest Mr.
Lambert with every fibre of his little heart. The coffee-room at the
hotel was warm and quiet, and Francie sank thankfully into an armchair
by the fire.
“I declare this is the nicest thing I’ve done to-day,” she said, with a
sigh of tired ease; “I was dead sick of walking up and down that old
pier.”
This piece of truckling was almost too flagrant, and Lambert would not
even look at her as he answered,
“I thought you seemed to be enjoying yourself, or I’d have come away
sooner.”
Francie felt none of the amusement that she would once have derived from
seeing Mr. Lambert in a bad temper; he had stepped into the foreground
of her life and was becoming a large and serious object there, too
important and powerful to be teased with any degree of pertinacity.
“Enjoy myself!” she exclaimed, “I was thinking all the time that my
boots would be cut to pieces with the horrid gravel; and,” she
continued, laying her head on the plush-covered back of her chair, and
directing a laughing, propitiatory glance at her companion, “you know I
had to talk twice as much to poor Tommy because you wouldn’t say a word
to him. Besides, I knew him long before I knew you.”
“Oh, of course if you don’t mind being seen with a fellow that looks
like a tailor’s apprentice, I have nothing to say against it,” replied
Lambert, looking down on her, as he stood fingering his moustache, with
one elbow on the chimney-piece. His eyes could not remain implacable
when they dwelt on the face that was upturned to him, especially now,
when he felt both in face and manner something of pathos and gentleness
that was as new as it was intoxicating.
If he had known what it was that had changed her he might have been
differently affected by it; as it was, he put it down to the
wretchedness of life at Albatross Villa, and was glad of the adversity
that was making things so much easier for him. His sulkiness melted away
in spite of him; it was hard to be sulky, with Francie all to himself,
pouring out his tea and talking to him with an intimateness that was
just tipped with flirtation; in fact, as the moments slipped by, and the
thought gripped him that the next day would find him alone at Rosemount,
every instant of this last afternoon in her society became unspeakably
precious. The _tête-à-tête_ across the tea-table prolonged itself so
engrossingly that Lambert forgot his wonted punctuality, and their
attempt to catch the five o’clock train for Bray resulted in bringing
them breathless to the station as their train steamed out of it.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
The Irish mail-boat was well up to time on that frosty thirty-first of
December. She had crossed from Holyhead on an even keel, and when the
Bailey light on the end of Howth had been sighted, the passengers began
to think that they might risk congratulations on the clemency of the
weather, and some of the hardier had ordered tea in the saloon, and were
drinking it with incredulous enjoyment.
“I shall go mad, Pamela, perfectly mad, if you cannot think of any word
for that tenth light. C and H--can’t you think of _any_thing with C and
H? I found out all the others in the train, and the least you might do
is to think of this one for me. That dreadful woman snoring on the sofa
just outside my berth put everything else out of my head.”
This plaint, uttered in a deep and lamentable contralto, naturally drew
some attention towards Lady Dysart, as she swept down the saloon towards
the end of the table, and Pamela, becoming aware that the lady referred
to was among the audience, trod upon her mother’s dress and thus
temporarily turned the conversation.
“C and H,” she repeated, “I’m afraid I can’t think of anything; the only
word I can think of beginning with C is Christopher.”
“Christopher!” cried Lady Dysart, “why, Christopher ends with an R.”
As Lady Dysart for the second time pronounced her son’s name the young
man who had just come below, and was having a whisky and soda at the bar
at the end of the saloon, turned quickly round and put down his glass.
Lady Dysart and her daughter were sitting with their backs to him, but
Mr. Hawkins did not require a second glance, and made his way to them at
once.
“And so you’ve been seeing poor Christopher off to the North Pole,” he
said, after the first surprise and explanations had been got over. “I
can’t say I envy him. They make it quite cold enough in Yorkshire to
suit me.”
“Don’t they ever make it hot for you there?” asked Lady Dysart, unable
to resist the chance of poking fun at Mr. Hawkins, even though in so
doing she violated her own cherished regulations on the subject of
slang. All her old partiality for him had revived since Francie’s
departure from Lismoyle, and she found the idea of his engagement far
more amusing than he did.
“No, Lady Dysart, they never do,” said Hawkins, getting very red, and
feebly trying to rise to the occasion; “they’re always very nice and
kind to me.”
“Oh, I daresay they are!” replied Lady Dysart archly, with a glance at
Pamela like that of a naughty child who glories in its naughtiness. “And
is it fair to ask when the wedding is to come off? _We_ heard something
about the spring!”
“Who gave you that interesting piece of news?” said Hawkins, trying not
to look foolish.
“A bridesmaid,” said Lady Dysart, closing her lips tightly, and leaning
back with an irrepressible gleam in her eye.
“Well, she knows more than I do. All I know about it is, that I believe
the regiment goes to Aldershot in May, and I suppose it will be some
time after that.” Mr. Hawkins spoke with a singularly bad grace, and
before further comment could be made he turned to Pamela. “I saw a good
deal of Miss Hope-Drummond in the north,” he said, with an effort so
obvious and so futile at turning the conversation that Lady Dysart began
to laugh.
“Why, she was the bridesmaid--” she began incautiously, when the
slackening of the engines set her thoughts flying from the subject in
hand to settle in agony upon the certainty that Doyle would forget to
put her scent-bottle into her dressing-bag, and then the whole party
went up on deck.
It was dark, and the revolving light on the end of the east pier swung
its red eye upon the steamer as she passed within a few yards of it,
churning a curving road towards the double line of lamps that marked the
jetty. The lights of Kingstown mounted row upon row, like an embattled
army of stars, the great sweep of Dublin Bay was pricked out in
lessening yellow points, and a new moon that looked pale green by
contrast, sent an immature shaft along the sea in meek assertion of her
presence. The paddles dropped their blades more and more languidly into
the water, then they ceased, and the vessel slid silently alongside the
jetty, with the sentient ease of a living thing. The warps were flung
ashore, the gangways thrust on board, and in an instant the sailors were
running ashore with the mail bags on their backs, like a string of ants
with their eggs. The usual crowd of loafers and people who had come to
meet their friends formed round the passengers’ gangway, and the
passengers filed down it in the brief and uncoveted distinction that the
exit from a steamer affords.
Lady Dysart headed her party as they left the steamer, and her imposing
figure in her fur-lined cloak so filled the gangway that Pamela could
not, at first, see who it was that met her mother as she stepped on to
the platform. The next moment she found herself shaking hands with Mr.
Lambert, and then, to her unbounded astonishment, with Miss Fitzpatrick.
The lamps were throwing strong light and shadow upon Francie’s face, and
Pamela’s first thought was how much thinner she had become.
“Mr. Lambert and I missed our train back to Bray,” Francie began at once
in a hurried deprecating voice, “and we came down to see the boat come
in just to pass the time--” Her voice stopped as if she had suddenly
gasped for breath, and Pamela heard Hawkins’ voice say behind her:
“How de do, Miss Fitzpatrick? Who’d have thought of meetin’ you here?”
in a tone of cheerfully casual acquaintanceship.
Even Pamela, with all her imaginative sympathy, did not guess what
Francie felt in that sick and flinching moment, when everything rung and
tingled round her as if she had been struck; the red had deserted her
cheek like a cowardly defender, and the ground felt uneven under her
feet, but the instinct of self-control that is born of habit and
convention in the feeblest of us came mechanically to her help.
“And I never thought I’d see you either,” she answered, in the same
tone; “I suppose you’re all going to Lismoyle together, Miss Dysart?”
“No, we stay in Dublin to-night,” said Pamela, with sufficient
consciousness of the situation to wish to shorten it. “Oh, thank you,
Mr. Hawkins, I should be very glad if you would put these rugs in the
carriage.”
Hawkins disappeared with the rugs in the wake of Lady Dysart, and
Lambert and Pamela and Francie followed slowly together in the same
direction. Pamela was in the difficult position of a person who is full
of a sympathy that it is wholly out of the question to express.
“I am so glad that we chanced to meet you here,” she said, “we have not
heard anything of you for such a long time.”
The kindness in her voice had the effect of conveying to Francie how
much in need of kindness she was, and the creeping smart of tears
gathered under her eyelids.
“It’s awfully kind of you to say so, Miss Dysart,” she said, with
something in her voice that made even the Dublin brogue pathetic; “I
didn’t think anyone at Lismoyle remembered me now.”
“Oh, we don’t forget people quite so quickly as that,” said Pamela,
thinking that Mr. Hawkins must have behaved worse than she had believed;
“I see this is our carriage. Mamma, did you know that Miss Fitzpatrick
was here?”
Lady Dysart was already sitting in the carriage, her face fully
expressing the perturbation that she felt, as she counted the parcels
that Mr. Hawkins was bestowing in the netting.
“Oh yes,” she said, with a visible effort to be polite, “I saw her just
now; do get in, my dear, the thing may start at any moment.”
If her mind had room for anything beside the anxieties of travelling, it
was disapprobation of Francie and of the fact that she was going about
alone with Mr. Lambert, and the result was an absence of geniality that
added to Francie’s longing to get away as soon as possible. Lambert was
now talking to Pamela, blocking up the doorway of the carriage as he
stood on the step, and over his shoulder she could see Hawkins, still
with his back to her, and still apparently very busy with the disposal
of the dressing-bags and rugs. He was not going to speak to her again,
she thought, as she stood a little back from the open door with the
frosty air nipping her through her thin jacket; she was no more to him
than a stranger, she, who knew every turn of his head, and the feeling
of his yellow hair that the carriage lamp was shining upon. The very
look of the first-class carriage seemed to her, who had seldom, if ever,
been in one, to emphasise the distance that there was between them. The
romance that always clung to him even in her angriest thoughts, was
slaughtered by this glimpse of him, like some helpless atom of animal
life by the passing heel of a schoolboy. There was no scaffold, with its
final stupendous moment, and incentive to heroism; there was nothing but
an ignoble end in commonplace neglect.
The ticket-collector slammed the door of the next carriage, and Francie
stepped back still further to make way for Lambert as he got off the
step. She had turned her back on the train, and was looking vacantly at
the dark outlines of the steamer when she became aware that Hawkins was
beside her.
“Er--good-bye--” he said awkwardly, “the train’s just off.”
“Good-bye,” replied Francie, in a voice that sounded strangely to her,
it was so everyday and conventional.
“Look here,” he said, looking very uncomfortable, and speaking quickly,
“I know you’re angry with me. I couldn’t help it. I tried to get out of
it, but it--it couldn’t be done. I’m awfully sorry about it--”
If Francie had intended to reply to this address, it was placed beyond
her power to do so. The engine, which had been hissing furiously for
some minutes, now set up the continuous ear-piercing shriek that
precedes the departure of the boat train, and the guard, hurrying along
the platform, signified to Hawkins in dumb show that he was to take his
seat. The whistle continued unrelentingly; Hawkins put out his hand, and
Francie laid hers in it. She looked straight at him for a second, and
then, as she felt his fingers close hard round her hand in dastardly
assurance of friendship if not affection, she pulled it away, and turned
to Lambert, laughing and putting her hands up to her ears to show that
she could hear nothing in the din. Hawkins jumped into the carriage
again, Pamela waved her hand at the window, and Francie was left with
Lambert on the platform, looking at the red light on the back of the
guard’s van, as the train wound out of sight into the tunnel.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
It was a cold east-windy morning near the middle of March, when the
roads were white and dusty, and the clouds were grey, and Miss Mullen,
seated in her new dining-room at Gurthnamuckla, was finishing her
Saturday balancing of accounts. Now that she had become a landed
proprietor, the process was more complicated than it used to be. A
dairy, pigs, and poultry cannot be managed and made to pay without
thought and trouble, and, as Charlotte had every intention of making
Gurthnamuckla pay, she spared neither time nor account books, and was
beginning to be well satisfied with the result. She had laid out a good
deal of money on the house and farm, but she was going to get a good
return for it, or know the reason why; and as no tub of skim milk was
given to the pigs, or barrow of turnips to the cows, without her
knowledge, the chances of success seemed on her side.
She had just entered, on the page headed Receipts, the sale of two pigs
at the fair, and surveyed the growing amount, in its neat figures with
complacency; then, laying down her pen, she went to the window, and
directed a sharp eye at the two men who were spreading gravel on the
reclaimed avenue, and straightening the edges of the grass.
“’Pon my word, it’s beginning to look like a gentleman’s avenue,” she
said to herself, eyeing approvingly the arch of the elm tree branches,
and the clumps of yellow daffodils, the only spots of light in the
colourless landscape, while the cawing of the building rooks had a
pleasant manorial sound in her ears. A young horse came galloping across
the lawn, with floating mane and tail, and an intention to jump the new
wooden railings that only failed him at the last moment, and resulted in
two soapy slides in the grass, that Charlotte viewed from her window
with wonderful equanimity. “I’ll give Roddy a fine blowing up when he
comes over,” she thought, as she watched the colt cutting capers among
the daffodils; “I’ll ask him if he’d like me to have his four precious
colts in to tea. He’s as bad about them as I am about the cats!” Miss
Mullen’s expression denoted that the reproof would not be of the
character to which Louisa was accustomed, and Mrs. Bruff, who had
followed her mistress into the window, sprang on a chair, and arching
her back, leaned against the well-known black alpaca apron with a
feeling that the occasion was exceptionally propitious. The movements of
Charlotte’s character, for it cannot be said to possess the power of
development, were akin to those of some amphibious thing, whose strong,
darting course under the water is only marked by a bubble or two, and it
required almost an animal instinct to note them. Every bubble betrayed
the creature below, as well as the limitations of its power of hiding
itself, but people never thought of looking out for these indications in
Charlotte, or even suspected that she had anything to conceal. There was
an almost blatant simplicity about her, a humorous rough and readiness
which, joined with her literary culture, proved business capacity, and
her dreaded temper seemed to leave no room for any further aspect, least
of all of a romantic kind.
Having opened the window for a minute to scream abusive directions to
the men who were spreading gravel, she went back to the table, and,
gathering her account-books together, she locked them up in her
davenport. The room that, in Julia Duffy’s time, had been devoted to the
storage of potatoes, was now beginning life again, dressed in the faded
attire of the Tally Ho dining-room. Charlotte’s books lined one of its
newly-papered walls; the fox-hunting prints that dated from old Mr.
Butler’s reign at Tally Ho hung above the chimney-piece, and the maroon
rep curtains were those at which Francie had stared during her last and
most terrific encounter with their owner. The air of occupation was
completed by a basket on the rug in front of the fire with four
squeaking kittens in it, and by the Bible and the grey manual of
devotion out of which Charlotte read daily prayers to Louisa the orphan
and the cats. It was an ugly room, and nothing could ever make it
anything else, but with the aid of the brass-mounted grate, a few bits
of Mrs. Mullen’s silver on the sideboard, and the deep-set windows, it
had an air of respectability and even dignity that appealed very
strongly to Charlotte. She enjoyed every detail of her new possessions,
and unlike Norry and the cats, felt no regret for the urban charms and
old associations of Tally Ho. Indeed, since her aunt’s death, she had
never liked Tally Ho. There was a strain of superstition in her that,
like her love of land, showed how strongly the blood of the Irish
peasant ran in her veins; since she had turned Francie out of the house
she had not liked to think of the empty room facing her own, in which
Mrs. Mullen’s feeble voice had laid upon her the charge that she had not
kept; her dealings with table-turning and spirit-writing had expanded
for her the boundaries of the possible, and made her the more accessible
to terror of the supernatural. Here, at Gurthnamuckla, there was nothing
to harbour these suggestions; no brooding evergreens rustling outside
her bedroom window, no rooms alive with the little incidents of a past
life, no doors whose opening and shutting were like familiar voices
reminding her of the footsteps that they had once heralded. This new
house was peopled only by the pleasant phantoms of a future that she had
fashioned for herself out of the slightest and vulgarest materials, and
her wakeful nights were spent in schemings in which the romantic and the
practical were logically blended.
Norry the Boat did not, as has been hinted, share her mistress’s
satisfaction in Gurthnamuckla. For four months she had reigned in its
kitchen, and it found no more favour in her eyes than on the day when
she, with her roasting-jack in one hand and the cockatoo’s cage in the
other, had made her official entry into it. It was not so much the new
range, or the barren tidyness of the freshly-painted cupboards; these
things had doubtless been at first very distressing. But time had stored
the cupboards with the miscellanies that Norry loved to hoard, and Bid
Sal had imparted a home-like feeling to the range by wrenching the hinge
of the oven-door so that it had to be kept closed with the poker. Even
the unpleasantly dazzling whitewash was now turning a comfortable yellow
brown, and the cobwebs were growing about the hooks in the ceiling. But
none of these things thoroughly consoled Norry. Her complaints, it is
true, did not seem adequate to account for her general aspect of
discontent. Miss Mullen heard daily lamentations over the ravages
committed by Mr. Lambert’s young horses on the clothes bleaching on the
furze-bushes, the loss of “the clever little shcullery that we had in
Tally Ho,” and the fact that “if a pairson was on his dying bed for the
want of a grain o’ tay itself, he should thravel three miles before he’d
get it,” but the true grievance remained locked in Norry’s bosom. Not to
save her life would she have admitted that what was really lacking in
Gurthnamuckla was society. The messengers from the shops, the
pedlar-woman; above all, the beggars; of these she had been deprived at
a blow, and life had become a lean ill-nurtured thing without the news
with which they had daily provided her. Billy Grainy and Nance the Fool
were all that remained to her of this choice company, the former having
been retained in his offices of milk-seller, messenger, and post-boy,
and the latter, like Abdiel, faithful among the faithless, was
undeterred by the distance that had discouraged the others of her craft,
and limped once a week to Gurthnamuckla for the sake of old times and a
mug of dripping.
By these inadequate channels a tardy rill of news made its way to Miss
Mullen’s country seat, but it came poisoned by the feeling that every
one else in Lismoyle had known it for at least a week, and Norry felt
herself as much aggrieved as if she had been charged “pence apiece” for
stale eggs.
It was therefore the more agreeable that, on this same raw, grey
Saturday morning, when Norry’s temper had been unusually tried by a
search for the nest of an out-lying hen, Mary Holloran, the Rosemount
lodgewoman, should have walked into the kitchen.
“God save all here!” she said, sinking on to a chair, and wiping away
with her apron the tears that the east wind had brought to her eyes;
“I’m as tired as if I was afther walking from Galway with a bag o’
male!”
“Musha, then, _cead failthe_, Mary,” replied Norry with unusual
geniality; “is it from Judy Lee’s wake ye’re comin’?”
“I am, in throth; Lord ha’ mercy on her!” Mary Holloran raised her eyes
to the ceiling and crossed herself, and Norry and Bid Sal followed her
example. Norry was sitting by the fire singeing the yellow carcase of a
hen, and the brand of burning paper in her hand heightened the effect of
the gesture in an almost startling way. “Well now,” resumed Mary
Holloran, “she was as nice a woman as ever threw a tub of clothes on the
hill, and an honest poor craythure through all. She battled it out
well, as owld as she was.”
“Faith thin, an’ if she did die itself she was in the want of it,” said
Norry sardonically; “sure there isn’t a winther since her daughther wint
to America that she wasn’t anointed a couple of times. I’m thinking the
people th’ other side o’ death will be throuncin’ her for keepin’ them
waitin’ on her this way!”
Mary Holloran laughed a little and then wiped her face with the corner
of her apron, and sighed so as to restore a fitting tone to the
conversation.
“The neighbours was all gethered in it last night,” she observed; “they
had the two rooms full in it, an’ a half gallon of whisky, and porther
and all sorts. Indeed, her sisther’s two daughthers showed her every
respect; there wasn’t one comin’ in it, big nor little, but they’d fill
them out a glass o’ punch before they’d sit down. God bless ye, Bid
Sal,” she went on, as if made thirsty by the recollection; “have ye a
sup o’ tay in that taypot that’s on th’ oven? I’d drink the lough this
minute!”
“Is it the like o’ that ye’d give the woman?” vociferated Norry in
furious hospitality, as Bid Sal moved forward to obey this behest; “make
down the fire and bile a dhrop of wather the way she’ll get what’ll not
give her a sick shtummuck. Sure, what’s in that pot’s the lavin’s afther
Miss Charlotte’s breakfast for Billy Grainy when he comes with the post;
and good enough for the likes of him.”
“There was a good manny axing for ye last night,” began Mary Holloran
again, while Bid Sal broke up a box with the kitchen cleaver, and
revived the fire with its fragments and a little paraffin oil. “And you
a near cousin o’ the corp’. Was it herself wouldn’t let you in it?”
“Whether she’d let me in it or no I have plenty to do besides running to
every corp’-house in the counthry,” returned Norry with an acerbity that
showed how accurate Mary Holloran’s surmise had been; “if thim that was
in the wake seen me last night goin’ out to the cow that’s afther
calvin’ with the quilt off me bed to put over her, maybe they’d have
less chat about me.”
Mary Holloran was of a pacific turn, and she tried another topic. “Did
ye hear that John Kenealy was afther summonsing me mother before the
Binch?” she said, unfastening her heavy blue cloak and putting her feet
up on the fender of the range.
“Ah, God help ye, how would I hear annything?” grumbled Norry; “it’d be
as good for me to be in heaven as to be here, with ne’er a one but Nance
the Fool comin’ next or nigh me.”
“Oh, indeed, that’s the thruth,” said Mary Holloran with polite but
transient sympathy. “Well, whether or no, he summonsed her, and all the
raison he had for putting that scandal on her, was thim few little hins
and ducks she have, that he seen different times on his land, themselves
and an owld goat thravellin’ the fields, and not a bit nor a bite before
them in it that they’d stoop their heads to, only what sign of grass was
left afther the winther, and faith! that’s little. ’Twas last Tuesday,
Lady-Day an’ all, me mother was bringin’ in a goaleen o’ turf, an’ he
came thundherin’ round the house, and every big rock of English he had
he called it to her, and every soort of liar and blagyard--oh, indeed,
his conduck was not fit to tell to a jackass--an’ he summonsed her
secondly afther that. Ye’d think me mother’d lose her life when she seen
the summons, an’ away she legged it into Rosemount to meself, the way
I’d spake to the masther to lane heavy on Kenealy the day he’d bring her
into coort. ‘An’ indeed,’ says I to the masther, ‘is it to bring me
mother into coort!’ says I; ‘sure she’s hardly able to lave the bed,’
says I, ‘an owld little woman that’s not four stone weight! She’s not
that size,’ says I--” Mary Holloran measured accurately off the upper
joints of her first two fingers--“‘Sure ye’d blow her off yer hand! And
Kenealy sayin’ she pelted the pavement afther him, and left a backward
sthroke on him with the shovel!’ says I. But in any case the masther
gave no satisfaction to Kenealy, and he arbithrated him the way he
wouldn’t be let bring me mother into coort, an’ two shillin’ she paid
for threspass, and thank God she’s able to do that same, for as desolate
as Kenealy thinks her.”
“Lambert’s a fine arbithrator,” said Norry, dispassionately. “Here, Bid
Sal, run away out to the lardher and lave this within in it,” handing
over the singed hen, “and afther that, go on out and cut cabbages for
the pigs. Divil’s cure to ye! Can’t ye make haste! I suppose ye think
it’s to be standin’ lookin’ at the people that ye get four pounds a year
an’ yer dite! Thim gerrls is able to put annyone that’d be with them
into a decay,” she ended, as Bid Sal reluctantly withdrew, “and there’s
not a word ye’ll say but they’ll gallop through the counthry tellin’
it.” Then, dropping into a conversational tone, “Nance was sayin’
Lambert was gone to Dublin agin, but what signifies what the likes of
her’d say; it couldn’t be he’d be goin’ in it agin and he not home a
week from it.”
Mary Holloran pursed up her mouth portentously.
“Faith he _could_ go in it, and it’s in it he’s gone,” she said,
beginning upon a new cup of tea, as dark and sweet as treacle, that
Norry had prepared for her. “Ah, musha! Lord have mercy on thim that’s
gone; ’tis short till they’re forgotten!”
Norry contented herself with an acquiescing sound, devoid of
interrogation, but dreary enough to be encouraging. Mrs. Holloran’s
saucer had received half the contents of her cup, and was now delicately
poised aloft on the outspread fingers of her right hand, while her right
elbow rested on the table according to the etiquette of her class, and
Norry knew that the string of her friend’s tongue would loosen of its
own accord.
“Seven months last Monday,” began Mary Holloran in the voice of a
professional reciter; “seven months since he berrid her, an’ if he gives
three more in the widda ye may call me a liar.”
“Tell the truth!” exclaimed Norry, startled out of her self-repression
and stopping short in the act of poking the fire. “D’ye tell me it’s to
marry again he’d go, an’ the first wife’s clothes on his cook this
minit?”
Mary Holloran did not reveal by look or word the gratification that she
felt. “God forbid I’d rise talk or dhraw scandal,” she continued with
the same pregnant calm, “but the thruth it is an’ no slandher, for the
last month there’s not a week--arrah what week--no, but there’s hardly
the day, but a letther goes to the post for--for one you know well, an’
little boxeens and re_jes_tered envelopes an’ all sorts. An’ letthers
coming from that one to him to further ordhers! Sure I’d know the
writin’. Hav’n’t she her name written the size of I don’t know what on
her likeness that he have shtuck out on the table.”
Mary Holloran broke off like a number of a serial story, with a
carefully interrupted situation, and sipped her tea assiduously. Norry
advanced slowly from the fireplace with the poker still clutched in her
hand, and her glowing eyes fixed upon her friend, as if she were
stalking her.
“For the love o’ God, woman!” she whispered, “is it Miss Francie?”
“Now ye have it,” said Mary Holloran.
Norry clasped her hands, poker and all, and raised them in front of her
face, while her eyes apparently communed with a familiar spirit at the
other end of the kitchen. They puzzled Mary Holloran, who fancied she
discerned in them a wild and quite irrelevant amusement, but before
further opinions could be interchanged, a dragging step was heard at the
back door, a fumbling hand lifted the latch, and Billy Grainy came in
with the post-bag over his shoulder and an empty milk-can in his hand.
“Musha, more power to ye, Billy!” said Mary Holloran, concealing her
disgust at the interruption with laudable good breeding, and making a
grimace of lightning quickness at Norry, expressive of the secrecy that
was to be observed; “’tis you’re the grand post-boy!”
“Och thin I am,” mumbled Billy sarcastically, as he let the post-bag
slip from his shoulders to the table, “divil a boot nor a leg is left on
me with the thravelling!” He hobbled over to the fireplace, and, taking
the teapot off the range, looked into it suspiciously. “This is a quare
time o’ day for a man to be atin’ his breakfast! Divil dom the bit I’d
ate in this house agin’ if it wasn’t for the nathure I have for the
place--”
Norry banged open a cupboard, and took from it a mug with some milk in
it, and a yellow pie-dish, in which were several stale ends of loaves.
“Take it or lave it afther ye!” she said, putting them down on the
table. “If ye had nathure for risin’ airly out o’ yer bed the tay
wouldn’t be waitin’ on ye this way, an’ if ourselves can’t plaze ye, ye
can go look for thim that will. ‘Thim that’s onaisy let thim quit!’”
Norry cared little whether Billy Grainy was too deaf to take in this
retort or no. Mary Holloran and her own self-respect were alike
gratified, and taking up the post-bag she proceeded with it to the
dining-room.
“Well, Norry,” said Charlotte jocularly, looking round from the
bookshelf that she was tidying, “is it only now that old thief’s brought
the post? or have ye been flirting with him in the kitchen all this
time?”
Norry retired from the room with a snarl of indescribable scorn, and
Charlotte unlocked the bag and drew forth its contents. There were three
letters for her, and she laid one of them aside at once while she read
the other two. One was from a resident in Ferry Lane, an epistle that
began startlingly, “Honored Madman,” and slanted over two sides of the
note-paper in lamentable entreaties for a reduction of the rent and a
little more time to pay it in. The other was an invitation from Mrs.
Corkran to meet a missionary, and tossing both down with an equal
contempt, she addressed herself to the remaining one. She was in the act
of opening it when she caught sight of the printed name of a hotel upon
its flap, and she suddenly became motionless, her eyes staring at the
name, and her face slowly reddening all over.
“Bray!” she said between her teeth, “what takes him to Bray, when he
told me to write to him to the Shelbourne?”
She opened the letter, a long and very neatly written one, so neat, in
fact, as to give to a person who knew Mr. Lambert’s handwriting in all
its phases the idea of very unusual care and a rough copy.
“My dear Charlotte,” it began, “I know you will be surprised at the
news I have to tell you in this letter, and so will many others;
indeed I am almost surprised at it myself.” Charlotte’s left hand
groped backwards till it caught the back of a chair and held on to
it, but her eyes still flew along the lines. “You are my oldest and
best friend, and so you are the first I would like to tell about
it, and I would value your good wishes far beyond any others that
might be offered to me, especially as I hope you will soon be my
relation as well as my friend. I am engaged to Francie Fitzpatrick,
and we are to be married as soon as possible.”
The reader sat heavily down upon the chair behind her, her colour
fading from red to a dirty yellow as she read on. “I am aware that
many will say that I am not showing proper respect towards poor
dear Lucy in doing this, but you, or any one that knew her well,
will support me in saying that I never was wanting in that to her
when she was alive, and that she would be the last to wish I should
live a lonely and miserable life now that she is gone. It is a
great pleasure to me to think that she always had such a liking for
Francie, for her own sake as well as because she was your cousin.
It was my intention to have put off the marriage for a year, but I
heard a couple of days ago from Robert Fitzpatrick that the
investment that Francie’s little fortune had been put into was in a
very shaky state, and that there is no present chance of dividends
from it. He offered to let her live with them as usual, but they
have not enough to support themselves. Francie was half starved
there, and it is no place for her to be, and so we have arranged to
be married very quietly down here at Bray, on the twentieth--just a
week from to-day. I will take her to London, or perhaps a little
further for a week or so, and about the first or second week in
April I hope to be back in Rosemount. I know, my dear Charlotte, my
dear old friend, that this must appear a sudden and hasty step, but
I have considered it well and thoroughly. I know too that when
Francie left your house there was some trifling little quarrel
between you, but I trust you will forget all about that, and that
you will be the first to welcome her when she returns to her new
home. She begs me to say that she is sorry for anything she said to
annoy you, and would write to you if she thought you would like to
hear from her. I hope you will be as good a friend to her as you
have always been to me, and will be ready to help and advise her in
her new position. I would be greatly obliged to you if you would
let the Lismoyle people know of my marriage, and of the reasons
that I have told you for hurrying it on this way; you know yourself
how glad they always are to get hold of the wrong end of a story. I
am going to write to Lady Dysart myself. Now, my dear Charlotte, I
must close this letter. The above will be my address for a week,
and I will be very anxious to hear from you. With much love from
Francie and myself, I remain your attached friend,
RODERICK LAMBERT.”
A human soul, when it has broken away from its diviner part and is left
to the anarchy of the lower passions, is a poor and humiliating
spectacle, and it is unfortunate that in its animal want of self-control
it is seldom without a ludicrous aspect. The weak side of Charlotte’s
nature was her ready abandonment of herself to fury that was, as often
as not, wholly incompatible with its cause, and now that she had been
dealt the hardest blow that life could give her, there were a few
minutes in which rage, and hatred, and thwarted passion took her in
their fierce hands, and made her for the time a wild beast. When she
came to herself she was standing by the chimney-piece, panting and
trembling; the letter lay in pieces on the rug, torn by her teeth, and
stamped here and there with the semicircle of her heel; a chair was
lying on its side on the floor, and Mrs. Bruff was crouching aghast
under the sideboard, looking out at her mistress with terrified inquiry.
Charlotte raised her hand and drew it across her mouth with the
unsteadiness of a person in physical pain, then, grasping the edge of
the chimney-piece, she laid her forehead upon it and drew a few long
shuddering breaths. It is probable that if anyone had then come into the
room, the human presence, with its mysterious electric quality, would
have drawn the storm outwards in a burst of hysterics; but solitude
seems to be a non-conductor, and a parched sob, that was strangled in
its birth by an imprecation, was the only sound that escaped from her.
As she lifted her head again her eyes met those of a large cabinet
photograph of Lambert that stared brilliantly at her with the handsome
fatuity conferred by an over-touched negative. It was a recent one,
taken during one of those visits to Dublin whose object had been always
so plausibly explained to her, and, as she looked at it, the biting
thought of how she had been hoodwinked and fooled, by a man to whom she
had all her life laid down the law, drove her half mad again. She
plucked it out of its frame with her strong fingers, and thrust it hard
down into the smouldering fire.
“If it was hell I’d do the same for you!” she said, with a moan like
some furious feline creature, as she watched the picture writhe in the
heat, “and for her too!” She took up the poker, and with it drove and
battered the photograph into the heart of the fire, and then, flinging
down the poker with a crash that made Louisa jump as she crossed the
hall, she sat down at the dinner-table and made her first effort at
self-control.
“His old friend!” she said, gasping and choking over the words; “the
cur, the double-dyed cur! Lying and cringing to me, and borrowing my
money, and--and--” even to herself she could not now admit that he had
gulled her into believing that he would eventually marry her--“and
sneaking after her behind my back all the time! And now he sends me her
love--her love! Oh, my God Almighty--” she tried to laugh, but instead
of laughter came tears, as she saw herself helpless, and broken, and
aimless for the rest of her life--“I won’t break down--I won’t break
down--” she said, grinding her teeth together with the effort to repress
her sobs. She staggered blindly to the sideboard, and, unlocking it,
took out a bottle of brandy. She put the bottle to her mouth and took a
long gulp from it, while the tears ran down her face.
CHAPTER XL.
Sometimes there comes in Paris towards the beginning of April a week or
two of such weather as is rarely seen in England before the end of May.
The horse-chestnut buds break in vivid green against the sober blue of
the sky, there is a warmth about the pavements that suggests the coming
blaze of summer, the gutter rivulets and the fountains sparkle with an
equal gaiety, and people begin to have their coffee out of doors again.
The spring, that on the day Francie was married at Bray was still mainly
indicated by east wind and fresh mackerel, was burgeoning in the woods
at Versailles with a hundred delicate surprises of blossom and leaf and
thick white storm of buds, and tourists were being forced, like
asparagus, by the fine weather, and began to appear in occasional twos
and threes on the wide square in front of the palace. A remnant of the
winter quiet still hung over everything, and a score or two of human
beings, dispersed through the endless rooms and gardens, only made more
emphatic the greatness of the extent and of the solitude. They certainly
did not bring much custom to the little woman who had been beguiled by
the fine weather to set up her table of cakes and oranges in a sunny
angle of the palace wall, and sat by it all day, picturesque and patient
in her white cap, while her strip of embroidery lengthened apace in the
almost unbroken leisure. Even the first Sunday of April, from which she
had hoped great things, brought her, during many bland and dazzling
hours, nothing except the purchase of a few sous worth of sweets, and
the afternoon was well advanced before she effected a sale of any
importance. A tall gentleman, evidently a Monsieur Anglais, was
wandering about, and she called to him to tell him of the excellence of
her _brioches_ and the beauty of her oranges. Ordinarily she had not
found that English gentlemen were attracted by her wares, but there was
something helpless about this one that gave her confidence. He came up
to her table and inspected its dainties with bewildered disfavour, while
a comfortable clink of silver came from the pocket in which one hand was
fumbling.
“Pain d’épices! Des gâteaux! Ver’ goot, ver’ sveet!” she said
encouragingly, bringing forth her entire English vocabulary with her
most winning smile.
“I wish to goodness I knew what the beastly things are made of,” the
Englishman murmured to himself. “I can’t go wrong with oranges anyhow.
Er--cela, et cela s’ils vous plait,” producing in his turn his whole
stock of French, “combieng.” He had only indicated two oranges, but the
little woman had caught the anxious glance at her cakes, and without
more ado chose out six of the most highly-glazed _brioches_, and by
force of will and volubility made her customer not only take them but
pay her two francs for them and the oranges.
The tall Englishman strode away round the corner of the palace with
these provisions, and along the great terrace towards a solitary figure
sitting forlornly at the top of one of the flights of steps that drop in
noble succession down to the expanses of artificial water that seem to
stretch away into the heart of France.
“I couldn’t find anywhere to get tea,” he said as soon as he was within
speaking distance; “I couldn’t find anything but an old woman selling
oranges, and I got you some of those, and she made me get some cakes as
well--I don’t know if they’re fit to eat.”
Mr. Lambert spoke with a very unusual timorousness, as he placed his
sticky purchases in Francie’s lap, and sat down on the step beside her.
“Oh, thank you awfully, Roddy, I’m sure they’re lovely,” she answered,
looking at her husband with a smile that was less spontaneous than it
used to be, and looking away again immediately.
There was something ineffably wearying to her in the adoring,
proprietary gaze that she found so unfailingly fixed upon her whenever
she turned her eyes towards him; it seemed to isolate her from other
people and set her upon a ridiculous pedestal, with one foolish
worshipper declaiming his devotion with the fervour and fatuity of those
who for two hours shouted the praises of Diana of the Ephesians. The
supernatural mist that blurs the irksome and the ludicrous till it seems
like a glory was not before her eyes; every outline was clear to her,
with the painful distinctness of a caricature.
“I don’t think you could eat the oranges here,” he said, “they’d be down
on us for throwing the skins about. Are you too tired to come on down
into the gardens where they wouldn’t spot us?” He laid his hand on hers,
“You _are_ tired. What fools we were to go walking round all those
infernal rooms! Why didn’t you say you had enough of it?”
Francie was aching with fatigue from walking slowly over leagues of
polished floor, with her head thrown back in perpetual perfunctory
admiration of gilded ceilings and battle pictures, but she got up at
once, as much to escape from the heavy warmth of his hand as from the
mental languor that made discussion an effort. They went together down
the steps, too much jaded by uncomprehended sight-seeing to take heed of
the supreme expression of art in nature that stretched out before them
in mirrors of Triton and dolphin-guarded water and ordered masses of
woodland, and walked slowly along a terrace till they came to another
flight of steps that fell suddenly from the stately splendours of the
terraces down to the simplicities of a path leading into a grove of
trees.
The path wound temptingly on into the wood, with primroses and celandine
growing cool and fresh in the young grass on either side of it; the
shady greenness was like the music of stringed instruments after the
brazen heroics of a military band. They loitered along, and Francie
slipped her hand into Lambert’s arm, feeling, unconsciously, a little
more in sympathy with him, and more at ease with life. She had never
pretended either to him or to herself that she was in love with him; her
engagement had been the inevitable result of poverty, and aimlessness,
and bitterness of soul, but her instinctive leniency towards any man who
liked her, joined with her old friendliness for Mr. Lambert, made it as
easy a way out of her difficulties as any she could have chosen. There
was something flattering in the knowledge of her power over a man whom
she had been accustomed to look up to, and something, too, that appealed
incessantly to her good nature; besides which there is to nearly every
human being some comfort in being the first object of another creature’s
life. She was almost fond of him as she walked beside him, glad to rest
her weight on his arm, and to feel how big and reliable he was. There
was nothing in the least romantic about having married him, but it was
eminently creditable. Her friends in the north side of Dublin had been
immensely impressed by it, and she knew enough of Lismoyle society to be
aware that there also she would be regarded with gratifying envy. She
quite looked forward to meeting Hawkins again, that she might treat him
with the cool and assured patronage proper to the heights of her new
position; he had himself seared the wound that he had given her, and now
she felt that she was thankful to him.
“Hang this path! it has as many turns as a corkscrew,” remarked Mr.
Lambert, bending his head to avoid a down-stretched branch of hawthorn,
covered with baby leaves and giant thorns. “I thought we’d have come to
a seat long before this; if it was Stephen’s Green there’d have been
twenty by this time.”
“There would, and twenty old men sitting on each of them!” retorted
Francie. “Mercy! who’s that hiding behind the tree? Oh, I declare, it’s
only one of those everlasting old statues, and look at a lot more of
them! I wonder if it was that they hadn’t room enough for them up in the
house that they put them out here in the woods?”
They had come to an enclosed green space in the wood, a daisy-starred
oval of grass, holding the spring sunshine in serene remoteness from all
the outer world of terraces and gardens, and made mysterious and
poetical as a vale in Ida by the strange pale presences that peopled
every nook of an ivy-grown crag at its further side. A clear pool
reflected them, but waveringly, because of the ripples caused by a light
drip from the overhanging rock; the trees towered on the encircling high
ground and made a wall of silence round the intenser silences of the
statues as they leaned and postured in a trance of suspended activity;
the only sound was the monotone of the falling water, dropping with a
cloistered gravity in the melodious hollow of the cave.
“I’m not going to walk another foot,” said Francie, sitting down on the
grass by the water’s edge; “here, give me the oranges, Roddy, no one’ll
catch us eating them here, and we can peg the skins at that old thing
with its clothes dropping off and the harp in its hand.”
It was thus that Mrs. Lambert described an Apollo with a lyre who was
regarding them from the opposite rock with classic preoccupation.
Lambert lighted a cigar, and leaning back on his elbow in the grass,
watched Francie’s progress through her inelegant meal with the pride of
the provider. He looked at her half wonderingly, she was so lovely in
his eyes, and she was so incredibly his own; he felt a sudden insanity
of tenderness for her that made his heart throb and his cheek redden,
and would have ennobled him to the pitch of dying for her on the spot,
had such an extravagance been demanded of him. He longed to put his arms
round her, and tell her how dear, how adorable, how entirely delightful
she was, but he knew that she would probably only laugh at him in that
maddening way of hers, or at all events, make him feel that she was far
less interested in the declaration than he was. He gave a quick sigh,
and stretching out his hand laid it on her shoulder as if to assure
himself of his ownership of her.
“That dress fits you awfully well. I like you better in that than in
anything.”
“Then I’d better take care and not get the juice on it,” Francie
replied, with her mouth full of orange; “lend me a loan of your
handkerchief.”
Lambert removed a bundle of letters and a guide-book from his pocket,
and finally produced the handkerchief.
“Why, you’ve a letter there from Charlotte, haven’t you?” said Francie,
with more interest than she had yet shown, “I didn’t know you had heard
again from her.”
“Yes, I did,” said Lambert, putting the letters back in his pocket, “I
wish to goodness we hadn’t left our address at the Charing Cross Hotel.
People might let a man alone when he’s on his honeymoon.”
“What did she say?” inquired Francie lightly. “Is she cross? The other
one she wrote was as sweet as syrup, and ‘Love to dear Francie’ and
all.”
“Oh, no, not a bit,” said Mr. Lambert, who had been secretly surprised
and even slightly wounded by the fortitude with which Miss Mullen had
borne the intelligence of his second marriage, “but she’s complaining
that my colts have eaten her best white petticoat.”
“You may give her one of my new ones,” suggested Francie.
“Oh yes, she’d like that, wouldn’t she?” said Lambert with a chuckle;
“she’s so fond of you, y’know!”
“Oh, she’s quite friendly with me now, though I know you’re dying to
make out that she’ll not forgive me for marrying you,” said Francie,
flinging her last bit of orange-peel at the Apollo; “you’re as proud as
Punch about it. I believe you’d have married her, only she wouldn’t take
you!”
“Is that your opinion!” said Mr. Lambert with a smile that conveyed a
magnanimous reticence as to the facts of the case; “you’re beginning to
be jealous, are you? I think I’d better leave you at home the day I go
over to talk the old girl into good humour about her petticoat!”
In his heart Mr. Lambert was less comfortable than the tone of his voice
might have implied; there had been in the letter, in spite of its
friendliness and singular absence of feminine pique, an allusion to that
three hundred pounds that circumstances had forced him to accept from
her. His honeymoon, and those new clothes that Francie had bought in
London, had run away with no end of money, and it would be infernally
inconvenient if Charlotte was going, just at this time of all others, to
come down on him for money that he had never asked her for. He turned
these things over uncomfortably in his mind as he lay back on the grass,
looking up at Francie’s profile, dark against the soft blue of the sky;
and even while he took one of her hands and drew it down to his lips he
was saying to himself that he had never yet failed to come round
Charlotte when he tried, and it would not be for want of trying if he
failed now.
The shadows of the trees began to stretch long fingers across the grass
of the Bosquet d’Apollon, and Lambert looked at his watch and began to
think of _table d’hôte_ at the Louvre Hotel. Pleasant, paradisaically
pleasant as it was here in the sun, with Francie’s hand in his, and one
of his best cigars in his mouth, he had come to the age at which not
even Paradise would be enjoyable without a regular dinner hour.
Francie felt chilly and exhausted as they walked back and climbed the
innumerable flights of steps that lay between them and the Palace; she
privately thought that Versailles would be a horrible place to live in,
and not to be compared in any way to Bruff, but, at all events, it would
be a great thing to say she had been there, and she could read up all
the history part of it in the guide-book when she got back to the hotel.
They were to go up the Eiffel tower the next day; that would be some
fun, anyhow, and to the Hippodrome in the evening, and, though that
wouldn’t be as good as Hengler’s circus, the elephants and horses and
things wouldn’t be talking French and expecting her to answer them, like
the housemaids and shopmen. It was a rest to lean back in the narrow
carriage with the pair of starveling ponies, that rattled along with as
much whip-cracking and general pomp as if it were doing ten miles an
hour instead of four, and to watch the poplars and villas pass by in
placid succession, delightfully devoid of historical interest.
It was getting dark when they reached Paris, and the breeze had become
rough and cold. The lamps were shining among the trees on the
Boulevards, and the red and green eyes of the cabs and trams crossed and
recrossed each other like a tangle of fire-flies. The electric lights of
the Place du Louvre were at length in sight, lofty and pale, like globes
of imprisoned daylight above the mundane flare of the gas, and Francie’s
eyes turned towards them with a languid relief. Her old gift of living
every moment of her day seemed gone, and here, in this wonderful Paris,
that had so suddenly acquired a real instead of a merely geographical
existence for her, the stream of foreign life was passing by her, and
leaving her face as uninterested and wearied as it ever had been when
she looked out of the window at Albatross Villa at the messenger boys
and bakers’ carts. The street was crowded, and the carriage made slower
and slower way through it, till it became finally wedged in the centre
of a block. Lambert stood up, and entered upon a one-sided argument with
the driver as to how to get out, while Francie remained silent, and
indifferent to the situation. A piano-organ at a little distance from
them was playing the Boulanger March, with the brilliancy of its tribe,
its unfaltering vigour dominating all other sounds. It was a piece of
music in which Francie had herself a certain proficiency, and, shutting
her eyes with a pang of remembrance, she was back in the Tally Ho
drawing-room, strumming it on Charlotte’s piano, while Mr. Hawkins,
holding the indignant Mrs. Bruff on his lap, forced her unwilling paws
to thump a bass. Now the difficult part, in which she always broke down,
was being played; he had pretended there that he was her music teacher,
and had counted out loud, and rapped her over the knuckles with a
tea-spoon, and gone on with all kinds of nonsense. The carriage started
forward again with a jerk, and Lambert dropped back into his place
beside her.
“Of all the asses unhung these French fellows are the biggest,” he said
fervently, “and that infernal organ banging away the whole time till I
couldn’t hear my own voice, much less his jabber. Here we are at last,
anyhow, and you’ve got to get out before me.”
The tears had sprung overwhelmingly to her eyes, and she could not
answer a word. She turned her back on her husband, and stepping out of
the carriage she walked unsteadily across the courtyard in the white
glare of the electric light, leaving the hotel servant, who had offered
his arm at the carriage door, to draw what conclusions seemed good to
him from the spectacle of her wet cheeks and trembling lips. She made
for the broad flight of steps, and went blindly up them under the
drooping fans of the palms, into the reading-room on the first floor.
The piano-organ was still audible outside, reiterating to madness the
tune that had torn open her past, and she made a hard effort to forget
its associations and recover herself, catching up an illustrated paper
to hide her face from the people in the room. It was a minute or two
before Lambert followed her.
“Here’s a go!” he said, coming towards her with a green envelope in his
hand, “here’s a wire to say that Sir Benjamin’s dead, and they want me
back at once.”
CHAPTER XLI.
The morning after Lambert received the telegram announcing Sir
Benjamin’s death, he despatched one to Miss Charlotte Mullen at
Gurthnamuckla, in which he asked her to notify his immediate return to
his household at Rosemount. He had always been in the habit of relying
on her help in small as well as great occasions, and now that he had had
that unexpectedly civil letter from her, he had turned to her at once
without giving the matter much consideration. It was never safe to trust
to a servant’s interpretation of the cramped language of a telegram, and
moreover, in his self-sufficient belief in his own knowledge of women,
he thought that it would flatter her and keep her in good humour if he
asked her to give directions to his household. He would have been less
confident of his own sagacity had he seen the set of Miss Mullen’s jaw
as she read the message, and heard the laugh which she permitted to
herself as soon as Louisa had left the room.
“It’s a pity he didn’t hire me to be his major-domo as well as his
steward and stud-groom!” she said to herself, “and his financier into
the bargain! I declare I don’t know what he’d do without me!”
The higher and more subtle side of Miss Mullen’s nature had exacted of
the quivering savage that had been awakened by Lambert’s second marriage
that the answer to his letter should be of a conventional and
non-committing kind; and so, when her brain was still on fire with
hatred and invective, her facile pen glided pleasantly over the paper in
stale felicitations and stereotyped badinage. It is hard to ask pity for
Charlotte, whose many evil qualities have without pity been set down,
but the seal of ignoble tragedy had been set on her life; she had not
asked for love, but it had come to her, twisted to burlesque by the
malign hand of fate. There is pathos as well as humiliation in the
thought that such a thing as a soul can be stunted by the trivialities
of personal appearance, and it is a fact not beyond the reach of
sympathy that each time Charlotte stood before her glass her ugliness
spoke to her of failure, and goaded her to revenge.
It was a wet morning, but at half-past eleven o’clock the black horse
was put into the phaeton, and Miss Mullen, attired in a shabby
mackintosh, set out on her mission to Rosemount. A cold north wind drove
the rain in her face as she flogged the old horse along through the
shelterless desolation of rock and scrub, and in spite of her mackintosh
she felt wet and chilled by the time she reached Rosemount yard. She
went into the kitchen by the back door, and delivered her message to
Eliza Hackett, whom she found sitting in elegant leisure, retrimming a
bonnet that had belonged to the late Mrs. Lambert.
“And is it the day after to-morrow, Miss, please?” demanded Eliza
Hackett with cold resignation.
“It is, me poor woman, it is,” replied Charlotte, in the tone of
facetious intimacy that she reserved for other people’s servants.
“You’ll have to stir your stumps to get the house ready for them.”
“The house is cleaned down and ready for them as soon as they like to
walk into it,” replied Eliza Hackett with dignity, “and if the new lady
faults the drawing-room chimbley for not being swep, the master will
know it’s not me that’s to blame for it, but the sweep that’s gone
dhrilling with the Mileetia.”
“Oh, she’s not the one to find fault with a man for being a soldier any
more than yourself, Eliza!” said Charlotte, who had pulled off her wet
gloves and was warming her hands. “Ugh! How cold it is! Is there any
place upstairs where I could sit while you were drying my things for
me?”
The thought had occurred to her that it would not be uninteresting to
look round the house, and as it transpired that fires were burning in
the dining-room and in Mr. Lambert’s study she left her wet cloak and
hat in the kitchen and ascended to the upper regions. She glanced into
the drawing-room as she passed its open door, and saw the blue rep
chairs ranged in a solemn circle, gazing with all their button eyes at a
three-legged table in the centre of the room; the blinds were drawn
down, and the piano was covered with a sheet; it was altogether as
inexpressive of everything, except bad taste, as was possible. Charlotte
passed on to the dining-room and stationed herself in front of an
indifferent fire there, standing with her back to the chimney-piece and
her eyes roving about in search of entertainment. Nothing was changed,
except that the poor turkey-hen’s medicine bottles and pill boxes no
longer lurked behind the chimney-piece ornaments; the bare dinner-table
suggested only how soon Francie would be seated at its head, and
Charlotte presently prowled on to Mr. Lambert’s study at the end of the
passage, to look for a better fire, and a room less barren of incident.
The study grate did not fail of its reputation of being the best in the
house, and Mr. Lambert’s chair stood by the hearthrug in wide-armed
invitation to the visitor. Charlotte sat down in it and slowly warmed
one foot after the other, while the pain rose hot and unconquerable in
her heart. The whole room was so gallingly familiar, so inseparably
connected with the time when she had still a future, vague and
improbable as it was, and could live in sufficient content on its slight
sustenance. Another future had now to be constructed, she had already
traced out some lines of it, and in the perfecting of these she would
henceforward find the cure for what she was now suffering. She roused
herself, and glancing towards the table saw that on it lay a heap of
unopened newspapers and letters; she got up with alacrity, and
addressed herself to the congenial task of examining each letter in
succession.
“H’m! They’re of a very bilious complexion,” she said to herself.
“There’s one from Langford,” turning it over and looking at the name on
the back. “I wonder if he’s ordering a Victoria for her ladyship? I
wouldn’t put it past him. Perhaps he’d like me to tell her whose money
it was paid Langford’s bill last year!”
She fingered the letter longingly, then, taking a hairpin from the heavy
coils of her hair, she inserted it under the flap of the envelope. Under
her skilful manipulation it opened easily, and without tearing, and she
took out its contents. They consisted of a short but severe letter from
the head of the firm, asking for “a speedy settlement of this account,
now so long overdue,” and of the account in question. It was a bill of
formidable amount, from which Charlotte soon gathered the fact that
twenty pounds only of the money she had lent Lambert last May had found
its way into the pockets of the coachbuilder. She replaced the bill and
letter in the envelope, and, after a minute of consideration, took up
for the second time two large and heavy letters that she had thrown
aside when first looking through the heap. They had the stamp of the
Lismoyle bank upon them, and obviously contained bank-books. Charlotte
saw at a glance that the hairpin would be of no avail with these
envelopes, and after another pause for deliberation she replaced all the
letters in their original position, and went down the passage to the top
of the kitchen stairs.
“Eliza,” she called out, “have ye a kettle boiling down there? Ah,
that’s right--” as Eliza answered in the affirmative. “I never knew a
well kept kitchen yet without boiling water in it! I’m chilled to me
bones, Eliza,” she continued, “I wonder could you put your hand on a
drop of spirits anywhere, and I’d ask ye for a drop of hot grog to keep
the life in me, and”--as Eliza started with hospitable speed in search
of the materials,--“let me mix it meself, like a good woman; I know very
well I’d be in the lock-up before night if I drank what _you’d_ brew for
me!”
Retiring on this jest, Miss Mullen returned to the study, and was
sitting over the fire with a newspaper when the refreshment she had
asked for was brought in.
“I cut ye a sandwich to eat with it, Miss,” said Eliza Hackett, on whom
Charlotte’s generosity in the matter of Mrs. Lambert’s clothing had not
been thrown away; “I know meself that as much as the smell itself o’
sperrits would curdle under me nose, takin’ them on an empty stomach.
Though, indeed, if ye walked Lismoyle ye’d get no better brandy than
what’s in that little bottle. ’Tis out o’ the poor mistress’s medicine
chest I got it. Well, well, she’s where she won’t want brandy now!”
Eliza withdrew with a well-ordered sigh, that, as Charlotte knew, was
expressive of future as well as past regret, and Mr. Lambert’s “oldest
friend” was left in sole possession of his study. She first proceeded to
mix herself a tumbler of brandy and water, and then she lifted the lid
of the brass punch kettle, and taking one of the envelopes that
contained the bank-books, she held it in the steam till the gum of the
flap melted. The book in it was Lambert’s private banking account, and
Charlotte studied it for some time with greedy interest, comparing the
amounts of the drafts and cash payments with the dates against each.
Then she opened the other envelope, keeping a newspaper ready at hand to
throw over the books in case of interruption, and found, as she had
anticipated, that it was the bank-book of the Dysart estate. After this
she settled down to hard work for half an hour, comparing one book with
another, making lists of figures, sipping her brandy and water
meanwhile, and munching Eliza Hackett’s sandwiches. Having learned what
she could of the bank-books, she fastened them up in their envelopes,
and, again having recourse to the kettle that was simmering on the hob,
she made, with slow, unslaked avidity, an examination of some of the
other letters on the table. When everything was tidy again she leaned
back in the chair, and remained in deep meditation over her paper of
figures, until the dining-room clock sent a muffled reminder through the
wall that it was two o’clock.
Ferry Row had, since Charlotte’s change of residence, breathed a freer
air. Even her heavy washing was now done at home, and her visits to her
tenantry might be looked forward to only when rents were known to be
due. There was nothing that they expected less than that, on this wet
afternoon, so soon, too, after a satisfactory quarter-day, they should
hear the well-known rattle of the old phaeton, and see Miss Mullen, in
her equally well-known hat and waterproof, driving slowly past house
after house, until she arrived at the disreputable abode of Dinny Lydon
the tailor. Having turned the cushions of the phaeton upside down to
keep them dry, Miss Mullen knocked at the door, and was admitted by Mrs.
Lydon, a very dirty woman, with a half-finished waistcoat over her arm.
“Oh, ye’re welcome, Miss Mullen, ye’re welcome! Come in out o’ the rain,
asthore,” she said, with a manner as greasy as her face. “Himself have
the coat waitin’ on ye these three days to thry on.”
“Then I’m afraid the change for death must be on Dinny if he’s beginning
to keep his promises,” replied Charlotte, adventuring herself fearlessly
into the dark interior. “I’d be thrown out in all me calculations,
Dinny, if ye give up telling me lies.”
This was addressed through a reeking fog of tobacco smoke to a
half-deformed figure seated on a table by the window.
“Oh, with the help o’ God I’ll tell yer honour a few lies yet before I
die,” replied Dinny Lydon, removing his pipe and the hat which, for
reasons best known to himself, he wore while at work, and turning on
Charlotte a face that, no less than his name, told of Spanish, if not
Jewish blood.
“Well, that’s the truth, anyway,” said Charlotte, with a friendly laugh;
“but I won’t believe in the coat being ready till I see it. Didn’t ye
lose your apprentice since I saw ye?”
“Is it that young gobsther?” rejoined Mrs. Lydon acridly, as she
tendered her unsavoury assistance to Charlotte in the removal of her
waterproof; “if that one was in the house yer coat wouldn’t be finished
in a twelvemonth with all the time Dinny lost cursing him. Faith! it was
last week he hysted his sails and away with him. Mind ye, ’twas he was
the first-class puppy!”
“Was it the trade he didn’t like?” asked Charlotte; “or was it the
skelpings he got from Dinny?”
“Throth, it was not, but two plates in the sate of his breeches was what
he faulted, and the divil mend him!”
“Two plates!” exclaimed Charlotte, in not unnatural bewilderment; “what
in the name of fortune was he doing with them?”
“Well, indeed, Miss Mullen, with respex t’ye, when he came here he
hadn’t as much rags on him as’d wipe a candlestick,” replied Mrs. Lydon,
with fluent spitefulness; “yerself knows that ourselves has to be losing
with puttin’ clothes on thim apprentices, an’ feedin’ them as lavish and
as natty as ye’d feed a young bonnuf, an’ afther all they’d turn about
an’ say they never got so much as the wettin’ of their mouths of male
nor tay nor praties--” Mrs. Lydon replenished her lungs with a long
breath,--“and this lad the biggest dandy of them all, that wouldn’t be
contint without Dinny’d cut the brea’th of two fingers out of a lovely
throusers that was a little sign bulky on him and was gethered into nate
plates--”
“Oh, it’s well known beggars can’t bear heat,” said Charlotte,
interrupting for purposes of her own a story that threatened to expand
unprofitably, “and that was always the way with all the M‘Donaghs.
Didn’t I meet that lad’s cousin, Shamus Bawn, driving a new side-car
this morning, and his father only dead a week. I suppose now he’s got
the money he thinks he’ll never get to the end of it, though indeed it
isn’t so long since I heard he was looking for money, and found it hard
enough to get it.”
Mrs. Lydon gave a laugh of polite acquiescence, and wondered inwardly
whether Miss Mullen had as intimate a knowledge of everyone’s affairs as
she seemed to have of Shamus Bawn’s.
“Oh, they say a manny a thing--” she observed with well-simulated
inanity. “Arrah! _dheen dheffeth_, Dinny! _thurrum cussoge um’na_.”
“Yes, hurry on and give me the coat, Dinny,” said Charlotte, displaying
that knowledge of Irish that always came as a shock to those who were
uncertain as to its limitations.
The tailor untwisted his short legs and descended stiffly to the floor,
and having helped Charlotte into the coat, pushed her into the light of
the open door, and surveyed his handiwork with his large head on one
side, and the bitten ends of thread still hanging on his lower lip.
“It turrned well,” he said, passing his hand approvingly over Miss
Mullen’s thick shoulder; “afther all, the good stuff’s the best; that’s
fine honest stuff that’ll wear forty of thim other thrash. That’s the
soort that’ll shtand.”
“To the death!” interjected Mrs. Lydon fervently.
“How many wrinkles are there in the back?” said Charlotte; “tell me the
truth now, Dinny; remember ’twas only last week you were ‘making your
sowl’ at the mission.”
“Tchah!” said Dinny Lydon contemptuously, “it’s little I regard the
mission, but I wouldn’t be bothered tellin’ ye lies about the likes o’
this,” surreptitiously smoothing as he spoke a series of ridges above
the hips; “that’s a grand clane back as ever I see.”
“How independent he is about his missions!” said Charlotte jibingly.
“Ha! Dinny me man, if you were sick you’d be the first to be roaring for
the priest!”
“Faith, divil a roar,” returned the atheistical Dinny; “if I couldn’t
knock the stone out of the gap for meself, the priest couldn’t do it for
me.”
“Oh, Gaad! Dinny, have conduct before Miss Mullen!” cried Mrs. Lydon.
“He may say what he likes, if he wouldn’t drop candle grease on my
jacket,” said Charlotte, who had taken off the coat and was critically
examining every seam; “or, indeed, Mrs. Lydon, I believe it was yourself
did it!” she exclaimed, suddenly intercepting an indescribable glance of
admonition from Mrs. Dinny to her husband; “that’s wax candle grease! I
believe you wore it yourself at Michael M‘Donagh’s wake, and that’s why
it was finished four days ago.”
Mrs. Lydon uttered a shriek of merriment at the absurdity of the
suggestion, and then fell to disclaimers so voluble as at once to
convince Miss Mullen of her guilt. The accusation was not pressed home,
and Dinny’s undertaking to remove the grease with a hot iron was
accepted with surprising amiability. Charlotte sat down on a chair whose
shattered frame bore testimony to the renowned violence of Mrs. Lydon
when under the influence of liquor, and encouraging the singed and
half-starved cat on to her lap, she addressed herself to conversation.
“Wasn’t Michael M‘Donagh husband to your mother’s cousin?” she said to
the tailor; “I’m told he had a very large funeral.”
“He had that,” answered Dinny, pushing the black hair back from his high
forehead, and looking more than ever like a Jewish rabbi; “three
priests, an’ five an’ twenty cars, an’ fifteen pounds of althar money.”
“Well, the three priests have a right to pray their big best for him,
with five pounds apiece in their pockets,” remarked Charlotte; “I
suppose it was the M‘Donagh side gave the most of the altar. Those
brothers of old Michael’s are all stinking of money.”
“Oh, they’re middlin’ snug,” said Dinny, who had just enough family
feeling for the M‘Donaghs to make him chary of admitting their wealth;
“annyway, they’re able to slap down their five shillin’s or their ten
shillin’ bit upon the althar as well as another.”
“Who got the land?” asked Charlotte, stroking the cat’s filthy head, and
thereby perfuming her fingers with salt fish.
“Oh, how do I know what turning and twisting of keys there was in it
afther himself dyin’?” said the tailor, with the caution which his
hearers understood to be a fatiguing but inevitable convention; “they
say the daughter got the biggest half, an’ Shamus Bawn got the other.
There’s where the battle’ll be between them.” He laughed sardonically,
as he held up the hot iron and spat upon it to ascertain its heat.
“He’d better let his sister alone,” said Charlotte. “Shamus Bawn has
more land this minute than he has money enough to stock, with that farm
he got from Mr. Lambert the other day, without trying to get more.”
“Oh, Jim’s not so poor altogether that he couldn’t bring the law on her
if he’d like,” said Dinny, immediately resenting the slighting tone; “he
got a good lump of a fortune with the wife.”
“Ah, what’s fifty pounds!” said Charlotte scornfully. “I daresay he
wanted every penny of it to pay the fine on Knocklara.”
“Arrah, fifty pounds! God help ye!” exclaimed Dinny Lydon with superior
scorn. “No, but a hundhred an’ eighty was what he put down on the table
to Lambert for it, and it’s little but he had to give the two hundhred
itself.”
Mrs. Lydon looked up from the hearth where she was squatted, fanning the
fire with her red petticoat to heat another iron for her husband. “Sure
I know Dinny’s safe tellin’ it to a lady,” she said, rolling her
dissolute cunning eye from her husband to Miss Mullen; “but ye’ll not
spake of it asthore. Jimmy had some dhrink taken when he shown Dinny the
docket, because Lambert said he wouldn’t give the farm so chape to e’er
a one but Jimmy, an’ indeed Jimmy’d break every bone in our body if he
got the wind of a word that ’twas through us the neighbours had it to
say he had that much money with him. Jimmy’s very close in himself that
way.”
Charlotte laughed good-humouredly. “Oh, there’s no fear of me, Mrs.
Lydon. It’s no affair of mine either way,” she said reassuringly. “Here,
hurry with me jacket, Dinny; I’ll be glad enough to have it on me going
home.”
CHAPTER XLII.
Sir Benjamin Dysart’s funeral was an event of the past. It was a full
three weeks since the family vault in Lismoyle Churchyard had closed its
door upon that ornament of county society; Lady Dysart’s friends were
beginning to recover from the strain of writing letters of condolence to
her on her bereavement, and Christopher, after sacrificing to his
departed parent’s memory a week of perfect sailing weather, had had his
boat painted, and had relapsed into his normal habit of spending as much
of his time as was convenient on the lake.
There was still the mingled collapse and stir in the air that comes
between the end of an old regime and the beginning of a new. Christopher
had resigned his appointment at Copenhagen, feeling that his life would,
for the future, be vaguely filled with new duties and occupations, but
he had not yet discovered anything very novel to do beyond signing his
name a good many times, and trying to become accustomed to hearing
himself called Sir Christopher; occupations that seemed rather
elementary in the construction of a career. His want of initiative
energy in every-day matters kept him motionless and apathetic, waiting
for his new atmosphere to make itself palpable to him, and prepared to
resign himself to its conditions. He even, in his unquenchable
self-consciousness, knew that it would be wholesome for him if these
were such as he least liked; but in the meantime, he remained passively
unsettled, and a letter from Lord Castlemore, in which his tact and
conscientiousness as a secretary were fully set forth, roused no outside
ambition in him. He re-read it on a shimmering May morning, with one arm
hanging over the tiller of his boat, as she crept with scarcely
breathing sails through the pale streaks of calm that lay like dreams
upon the lake. He was close under the woods of Bruff, close enough to
feel how still and busy they were in the industry of spring. It seemed
to him that the sound of the insects was like the humming of her loom,
and almost mechanically he turned over the envelope of Lord Castlemore’s
letter, and began in the old familiar way to scrawl a line or two on the
back of it.
The well-known crest, however, disconcerted his fancy, and he fell again
to ruminating upon the letter itself. If this expressed the sum of his
abilities, diplomatic life was certainly not worth living. Tact and
conscientiousness were qualities that would grace the discharge of a
doctor’s butler, and might be expected from anyone of the most ordinary
intelligence. He could not think that his services to his country, as
concentrated in Lord Castlemore, were at all remarkable; they had given
him far less trouble than the most worthless of those efforts in prose
and verse, that, as he thought contemptuously, were like the skeletons
that mark the desert course of a caravan; he did not feel the
difficulty, and he, therefore, thought the achievement small. A toying
breeze fluttered the letter in his hand, and the boat tilted languidly
in recognition of it. The water began to murmur about the keel, and
Christopher presently found himself gliding smoothly towards the middle
of the lake.
He looked across at Lismoyle, spreading placidly along the margin of
the water, and as he felt the heat of the sun and the half-forgotten
largeness of summer in the air, he could have believed himself back in
the August of last year, and he turned his eyes to the trees of
Rosemount as if the sight of them would bring disillusionment. It was
some time now since he had first been made ashamed of the discovery that
disillusionment also meant relief. For some months he had clung to his
dream; at first helplessly, with a sore heart, afterwards with a more
conscious taking hold, as of something gained, that made life darker,
but for ever richer. It had been torture of the most simple, unbearable
kind, to drive away from Tally Ho, with the knowledge that Hawkins was
preferred to him; but sentiment had deftly usurped the place of his
blind suffering, and that stage came that is almost inevitable with
poetic natures, when the artistic sense can analyse sorrow, and sees the
beauty of defeat. Then he had heard that Francie was going to marry
Lambert, and the news had done more in one moment to disillusion him
than common sense could do in years. The thought stung him with a kind
of horror for her that she could tolerate such a fate as marrying Roddy
Lambert. He knew nothing of the tyrannies of circumstance. To prosperous
young men like Christopher, poverty, except barefooted and in rags, is a
name, and unpaid bills a joke. That Albatross Villa could have driven
her to the tremendous surrender of marriage was a thing incredible. All
that was left for him to believe was that he had been mistaken, and that
the lucent quality that he thought he had found in her soul had existed
only in his imagination. Now when he thought of her face it was with a
curious half regret that so beautiful a thing should no longer have any
power to move him. Some sense of loss remained, but it was charged with
self pity for the loss of an ideal. Another man in Christopher’s
position would not probably have troubled himself about ideals, but
Christopher, fortunately, or unfortunately for him, was not like other
men.
The fact must even be faced that he had probably never been in love with
her, according to the common acceptation of the term. His intellect
exhausted his emotions and killed them with solicitude, as a child digs
up a flower to see if it is growing, and his emotions themselves had a
feminine refinement, but lacked the feminine quality of unreasoning
pertinacity. From self-pity for the loss of an ideal to gratitude for an
escape is not far to go, and all that now remained to him of bitterness
was a gentle self-contempt for his own inadequacy in falling in love, as
in everything else.
It may be imagined that in Lismoyle Francie was a valued and almost
invariable topic of conversation. Each visitor to Rosemount went there
in the character of a scout, and a detailed account of her interview was
published on every possible occasion.
“Well, I took my time about calling on her,” observed Mrs. Baker; “I
thought I’d let her see I was in no hurry.”
Mrs. Corkran, with whom Mrs. Baker was having tea, felt guiltily
conscious of having called on Mrs. Lambert two days after her arrival,
and hastened to remind the company of the pastoral nature of the
attention.
“Oh, of course we know clergymen’s families can’t pick their company,”
went on Mrs. Baker, dismissing the interruption not without a secret
satisfaction that Carrie Beattie, who, in the absence of Miss Corkran,
was pouring out tea for her future mother-in-law, should see that other
people did not consider the Rev. Joseph such a catch as she did. “Only
that Lambert’s such a friend of Mr. Baker’s, and always banked with him,
I declare I don’t know that I’d have gone at all. I assure you it gave
me quite a turn to see her stuck up there in poor Lucy Lambert’s chair,
talking about the grand hotels that she was in, in London and Paris, as
if she never swept out a room or cleaned a saucepan in her life.”
“She had all the walls done round with those penny fans,” struck in Miss
Kathleen Baker, “and a box of French bongbongs out on the table; and oh,
mamma! did you notice the big photograph of him and her together on the
chimney-piece?”
“I could notice nothing, Kathleen, and I didn’t want to notice them,”
replied Mrs. Baker; “I could think of nothing but of what poor Lucy
Lambert would say to see her husband dancing attendance on that young
hussy without so much as a mourning ring on him, and her best
tea-service thrashed about as if it was kitchen delf.”
“Was he very devoted, Mrs. Baker?” asked Miss Beattie with a simper.
“Oh, I suppose he was,” answered Mrs. Baker, as if in contempt for any
sentiment inspired by Francie, “but I can’t say I observed anything very
particular.”
“Oh, then, _I_ did!” said Miss Baker with a nod of superior
intelligence; “I was watching them all the time; every word she uttered
he was listening to it, and when she asked for the tea-cosy he _flew_
for it!”
“Eliza Hackett told my Maria there was shocking waste going on in the
house now; fires in the drawing-room from eight o’clock in the morning,
and this the month of May!” said Mrs. Corkran with an approving eye at
the cascade of cut paper that decked her own grate, “and the cold meat
given to the boy that cleans the boots!”
“Roddy Lambert’ll be sorry for it some day when it’s too late,” said
Mrs. Baker darkly, “but men are all alike; it’s out of sight out of mind
with them!”
“Oh, Mrs. Baker,” wheezed Mrs. Corkran with asthmatic fervour, “I think
you’re altogether too cynical; I’m sure that’s not your opinion of Mr.
Baker.”
“I don’t know what he might do if I was dead,” replied Mrs. Baker, “but
I’ll answer for it he’ll not be carrying on with Number Two while _I’m_
alive, like other people I know!”
“Oh, don’t say such things before these young ladies,” said Mrs.
Corkran; “I wish them no greater blessing of Providence than a good
husband, and I think I may say that dear Carrie will find one in my
Joseph.”
The almost death-bed solemnity of this address paralysed the
conversation for a moment, and Miss Beattie concealed her blushes by
going to the window to see whose was the vehicle that had just driven
by.
“Oh, it’s Mr. Hawkins!” she exclaimed, feeling the importance of the
information.
Kathleen Baker sprang from her seat and ran to the window. “So it is!”
she cried, “and I bet you sixpence he’s going to Rosemount! My goodness,
I wish it was to-day we had gone there!”
CHAPTER XLIII.
Hawkins had, like Mrs. Baker, been in no hurry to call upon the bride.
He had seen her twice in church, he had once met her out driving with
her husband, and, lastly, he had come upon her face to face in the
principal street of Lismoyle, and had received a greeting of
aristocratic hauteur, as remarkable as the newly acquired English accent
in which it was delivered. After these things a visit to her was
unavoidable, and, in spite of a bad conscience, he felt, when he at last
set out for Rosemount, an excitement that was agreeable after the calm
of life at Lismoyle.
There was no one in the drawing-room when he was shown into it, and as
the maid closed the door behind him he heard a quick step run through
the hall and up the stairs. “Gone to put on her best bib and tucker,” he
said to himself with an increase of confidence; “I’ll bet she saw me
coming.” The large photograph alluded to by Miss Baker was on the
chimneypiece, and he walked over and examined it with great interest. It
obeyed the traditions of honeymoon portraits, and had the inevitable
vulgarity of such; Lambert, sitting down, turned the leaves of a book,
and Francie, standing behind him, rested one hand on his shoulder, while
the other held a basket of flowers. In spite of its fatuity as a
composition, both portraits were good, and they had moreover an air of
prosperity and new clothes that Mr. Hawkins found to be almost
repulsive. He studied the photograph with deepening distaste until he
was aware of a footstep at the door, and braced himself for the
encounter, with his heart beating uncomfortably and unexpectedly.
They shook hands with the politeness of slight acquaintance, and sat
down, Hawkins thinking he had never seen her look so pretty or so smart,
and wondering what he was going to talk to her about. It was evidently
going to be war to the knife, he thought, as he embarked haltingly upon
the weather, and found that he was far less at his ease than he had
expected to be.
“Yes, it’s warmer here than it was in England,” said Francie, looking
languidly at the rings on her left hand; “we were perished there after
Paris.”
She felt that the familiar mention of such names must of necessity place
her in a superior position, and she was so stimulated by their
associations with her present grandeur that she raised her eyes, and
looked at him. Their eyes met with as keen a sense of contact as if
their hands had suddenly touched, and each, with a perceptible jerk,
looked away.
“You say that Paris was hot, was it?” said Hawkins, with something of an
effort. “I haven’t been there since I went with some people the year
before last, and it was as hot then as they make it. I thought it rather
a hole.”
“Oh, indeed?” said Francie, chillingly; “Mr. Lambert and I enjoyed it
greatly. You’ve been here all the spring, I suppose?”
“Yes; I haven’t been out of this place, except for Punchestown, since I
came back from leave;” then with a reckless feeling that he would break
up this frozen sea of platitudes, “since that time that I met you on the
pier at Kingstown.”
“Oh yes,” said Francie, as if trying to recall some unimportant
incident; “you were there with the Dysarts, weren’t you?”
Hawkins became rather red. She was palpably overdoing it, but that did
not diminish the fact that he was being snubbed, and though he might, in
a general and guarded way, have admitted that he deserved it, he
realised that he bitterly resented being snubbed by Francie.
“Yes,” he said, with an indifference as deliberately exaggerated as her
own, “I travelled over with them. I remember how surprised we were to
see you and Mr. Lambert there.”
She felt the intention on his part to say something disagreeable, and it
stung her more than the words.
“Why were you surprised?” she asked coolly.
“Well--er--I don’t exactly know,” stammered Mr. Hawkins, a good deal
taken aback by the directness of the inquiry; “we didn’t exactly know
where you were--thought Lambert was at Lismoyle, you know.” He began to
wish he had brought Cursiter with him; no one could have guessed that
she would have turned into such a cat and given herself such airs; her
ultra-refinement, and her affected accent, and her exceeding
prettiness, exasperated him in a way that he could not have explained,
and though the visit did not fail of excitement, he could not flatter
himself that he was taking quite the part in it that he had expected.
Certainly Mrs. Lambert was not maintaining the rôle that he had allotted
her; huffiness was one thing, but infernal swagger was quite another. It
is painful for a young man of Mr. Hawkins’ type to realise that an
affection that he has inspired can wane and even die, and Francie’s
self-possession was fast robbing him of his own.
“I hear that your regiment is after being ordered to India?” she said
cheerfully, when it became apparent that Hawkins could find no more to
say.
“Yes, so they say; next trooping season will about see us, I expect, and
they’re safe to send us to Aldershot first, so we may be out of this at
any minute.” He glanced at her as he spoke, to see how she took it.
“Oh, that’ll be very nice for you,” answered Francie, still more
cheerfully. “I suppose,” she went on with her most aristocratic drawl,
“that you’ll be married before you go out?”
She had arranged the delivery of this thrust before she came downstairs,
and it glided from her tongue as easily as she could have wished.
“Yes, I daresay I shall,” he answered defiantly, though the provokingly
ready blush of a fair man leaped to his face. He looked at her, angry
with himself for reddening, and angrier with her for blazoning her
indifference, by means of a question that seemed to him the height of
bad taste and spitefulness. As he looked, the colour that burned in his
own face repeated itself in hers with slow relentlessness; at the sight
of it a sudden revulsion of feeling brought him dangerously near to
calling her by her name, with reproaches for her heartlessness, but
before the word took form she had risen quickly, and, saying something
incoherent about ordering tea, moved towards the bell, her head turned
from him with the helpless action of a shy child.
Hawkins, hardly knowing what he was doing, started forward, and as he
did so the door opened, and a well-known voice announced,
“Miss Charlotte Mullen!”
The owner of the voice advanced into the room, and saw, as anyone must
have seen, the flushed faces of its two occupants, and felt that
nameless quality in the air that tells of interruption.
“I took the liberty of announcing myself,” she said, with her most
affable smile; “I knew you were at home, as I saw Mr. Hawkins’ trap at
the door, and I just walked in.”
As she shook hands and sat down she expanded easily into a facetious
description of the difficulties of getting her old horse along the road
from Gurthnamuckla, and by the time she had finished her story Hawkins’
complexion had regained its ordinary tone, and Francie had resumed the
air of elegant nonchalance appropriate to the importance of the married
state. Nothing, in fact, could have been more admirable than Miss
Mullen’s manner. She praised Francie’s new chair covers and Indian tea;
she complimented Mr. Hawkins on his new pony; even going so far as to
reproach him for not having been out to Gurthnamuckla to see her, till
Francie felt some pricks of conscience about the sceptical way that she
and Lambert had laughed together over Charlotte’s amiability when she
paid her first visit to them. She found inexpressible ease in the
presence of a third person as capable as Charlotte of carrying on a
conversation with the smallest possible assistance; sheltered by it she
slowly recovered from her mental overthrow, and, furious as she was with
Hawkins for his part in it, she was beginning to be able to patronise
him again by the time that he got up to go away.
“Well, Francie, my dear child,” began Charlotte, as soon as the door had
closed behind him, “I’ve scarcely had a word with you since you came
home. You had such a reception the last day I was here that I had to
content myself with talking to Mrs. Beattie, and hearing all about the
price of underclothes. Indeed I had a good mind to tell her that only
for your magnanimity she wouldn’t be having so much to say about
Carrie’s trousseau!”
“Indeed she was welcome to him!” said Francie, putting her chin in the
air, “that little wretch, indeed!”
It was one of the moments when she touched the extreme of satisfaction
in being married, and in order to cover, for her own and Charlotte’s
sake, the remembrance of that idiotic blush, she assumed a little extra
bravado.
“Talking of your late admirers--” went on Charlotte, “for I hope for
poor Roddy’s sake they’re not present ones--I never saw a young fellow
so improved in his manners as Mr. Hawkins. There was a time I didn’t
fancy him--as you may remember, though we’ve agreed to say nothing more
about our old squabbles--but I think he’s chastened by adversity. That
engagement, you know--” she paused, and cast a side-long, unobtrusive
glance at Francie. “He’s not the first young man that’s been whipped in
before marriage as well as after it, and I think the more he looks at it
the less he likes it.”
“He’s been looking at it a long time now,” said Francie with a laugh
that was intended to be careless, but into which a sneer made its way.
“I wonder Roddy isn’t in,” she continued, changing the subject to one in
which no pitfalls lurked; “I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d gone to
Gurthnamuckla to see you, Charlotte; he’s been saying ever since we came
back he wanted to have a talk with you, but he’s been so busy he hadn’t
a minute.”
“If I’m not greatly mistaken,” said Charlotte, standing up so as to be
able to see out of the window, “here’s the man of the house himself.
What horse is that he’s on?” her eyes taking in with unwilling
admiration the swaggering ease of seat and squareness of shoulder that
had so often captivated her taste, as Lambert, not unaware of spectators
at the window, overcame much callow remonstrance on the part of the
young horse he was riding, at being asked to stand at the door till a
boy came round to take him.
“Oh, that’s the new four-year-old that Roddy had taken in off
Gurthnamuckla while we were away,” said Francie, leaning her elbow
against the shutter and looking out too. “He’s an awful wild young brat
of a thing! Look at the way he’s hoisting now! Roddy says he’ll have me
up on him before the summer’s out, but I tell him that if he does I
won’t be on him long.” Her eyes met her husband’s, and she laughed and
tapped on the glass, beckoning imperiously to him to come in.
Charlotte turned away from the window, and when, a few minutes
afterwards, Mr. Lambert came into the room, the visitor had put her
gloves on, and was making her farewells to her hostess.
“No, Roddy,” she said, “I must be off now. I’m like the beggars, ‘tay
and turn out’ is my motto. But supposing now that you bring this young
lady over to lunch with me to-morrow--no, not to-morrow, that’s
Sunday--come on Monday. How would that suit your book?”
Lambert assented with a good grace that struck Francie as being
wonderfully well assumed, and followed Miss Mullen out to put her in her
phaeton.
Francie closed the door behind them, and sat down. She was glad she had
met Hawkins and got it over, and as she reviewed the incidents of his
visit, she thought that on the whole she had come very near her own
ideal of behaviour. Cool, sarcastic, and dignified, even though she had,
for one moment, got a little red, he could not but feel that she had
acted as became a married lady, and shown him his place once for all. As
for him, he had been horrible, she thought bitterly; sitting up and
talking to her as if he had never seen her before, and going on as if he
had never--she got up hastily as if to escape from the hateful memories
of last year that thrust themselves suddenly into her thoughts. How
thankful she was that she had shown him she was not inconsolable; she
wished that Roddy had come in while he was there, and had stood over
him, and overshadowed him with his long legs and broad shoulders, and
his air of master of the house. Why on earth had Charlotte praised him?
Gurthnamuckla must have had the most extraordinarily sweetening effect
upon her, for she seemed to have a good word for everybody now, and
Roddy’s notion that she would want to be coaxed into a good temper was
all nonsense, and conceited nonsense too, and so she would tell him. It
was not in Francie’s light, wholesome nature to bear malice; the least
flutter of the olive branch, the faintest glimmer of the flag of truce,
was enough to make her forgive an injury and forget an insult.
When her husband came back she turned towards him with a sparkle in her
eye.
“Well, Roddy, I hope you squeezed her hand when you were saying
good-bye! I daresay now you’ll want me to believe that it’s all in
honour of you that she’s asked us over to lunch to-morrow, and I
suppose that’s what she was telling you out in the hall? Aren’t you
sorry you didn’t marry her instead of me?”
Lambert did not answer, but came over to where she was standing, and
putting his arm round her, drew her towards him and kissed her with a
passion that seemed too serious an answer to her question. She could not
know, as she laughed and hid her face from him, that he was saying to
himself, “Of course he was bound to come and call, he’d have had to do
that no matter who she was!”
CHAPTER XLIV.
Spring, that year, came delicately in among the Galway hills; in
primroses, in wild bursts of gorse, and in the later snow of hawthorn,
unbeaten by the rain or the wet west wind of rougher seasons. A cuckoo
had dropped out of space into the copse at the back of Gurthnamuckla,
and kept calling there with a lusty sweetness; a mist of green was
breathed upon the trees, and in the meadows by the lake a corncrake was
adding a diffident guttural or two to the chirruping chorus of coots and
moorhens. Mr. Lambert’s three-year-olds grew and flourished on the young
rich grass, and, in the turbulence of their _joie de vivre_, hunted the
lambs, and bit the calves, and jumped every barrier that the ingenuity
of Miss Mullen’s herdsman could devise. “Those brutes must be put into
the Stone Field,” the lady of the house had said, regarding their
gambols with a sour eye; “I don’t care whether the grass is good or bad,
they’ll have to do with it;” and when she and her guests went forth
after their lunch to inspect the farm in general and the young horses in
particular, it was to the Stone Field that they first bent their steps.
No one who has the idea of a green-embowered English lane can hope to
realise the fortified alley that wound through the heart of the pastures
of Gurthnamuckla, and was known as the Farm Lane. It was scarcely wide
enough for two people to walk abreast; loose stone walls, of four or
five feet in thickness, towered on either side of it as high as the head
of a tall man; to meet a cow in it involved either retreat or the
perilous ascent of one of the walls. It embodied the simple expedient of
bygone farmers for clearing their fields of stones, and contained raw
material enough to build a church. Charlotte, Mr. Lambert, and Francie
advanced in single file along its meaningless windings, until it
finished its career at the gate of the Stone Field, a long tongue of
pasture that had the lake for a boundary on three of its sides, and was
cut off from the mainland by a wall not inferior in height and solidity
to those of the lane.
“There, Roddy,” said Miss Mullen, as she opened the gate, “there’s where
I had to banish them, and I don’t think they’re too badly off.”
The young horses were feeding at the farthest point of the field,
fetlock deep in the flowery grass, with the sparkling blue of the lake
making a background to their slender shapes.
“They look like money, Charlotte, I think. That brown filly ought to
bring a hundred at least next Ballinasloe fair, when she knows how to
jump,” said Lambert, as he and Charlotte walked across the field,
leaving Francie, who saw no reason for pretending an interest that was
not expected of her, to amuse herself by picking cowslips near the gate.
“I’m glad to hear you say that, Roddy,” replied Charlotte. “It’s a
comfort to think anything looks like money these bad times; I’ve never
known prices so low.”
“They’re lower than I ever thought they’d go, by Jove,” Lambert answered
gloomily. “I’m going up to Mayo, collecting, next week, and if I don’t
do better there than I’ve done here, I daresay Dysart won’t think so
much of his father’s shoes after all.”
He was striding along, taking no trouble to suit his pace to
Charlotte’s, and perhaps the indifference to her companionship that it
showed, as well as the effort involved in keeping beside him, had the
effect of irritating her.
“Maybe he might think them good enough to kick people out with,” she
said with a disagreeable laugh; “I remember, in the good old times, when
my father and Sir Benjamin ruled the roast, we heard very little about
bad collections.”
It struck Lambert that though this was the obvious moment for that
business talk that he had come over for, it was not a propitious one. “I
wonder if the macaroni cheese disagreed with her?” he thought; “it was
beastly enough to do it, anyhow. You may remember,” he said aloud,
“that in the good old times the property was worth just about double
what it is now, and a matter of three or four hundred pounds either way
made no difference to signify.”
“D’ye think ye’ll be that much short this time?”
She darted the question at him with such keenness that Lambert inwardly
recoiled before it, though it was the point to which he had wished to
bring her.
“Oh, of course one can’t be sure,” he said, retreating from his
position; “but I’ve just got a sort of general idea that I’ll be a bit
under the mark this time.”
He was instinctively afraid of Charlotte, but in this moment he knew,
perhaps for the first time, how much afraid. In theory he believed in
his old power over her, and clung to the belief with the fatuity of a
vain man, but he had always been uncomfortably aware that she was
intellectually his master, and though he thought he could still sway her
heart with a caress, he knew he could never outwit her.
“Oh, no one knows better than I do what a thankless business it is,
these times,” said Charlotte with a reassuring carelessness; “it’s a
case of ‘pull devil, pull baker,’ though indeed I don’t know under which
head poor Christopher Dysart comes. And as we’ve got on to the sordid
topic of money, Roddy, I’m not going to ask yer honour for a reduction
of the rint, ye needn’t be afraid--but I’ve been rather pinched by the
expense I’ve been put to in doing up the house and stocking the farm,
and it would be mighty convaynient to _me_, if it would be convaynient
to _you_, to let me have a hundred pounds or so of that money I lent you
last year.”
“Well--Charlotte--” began Lambert, clearing his throat, and striking
with his stick at the heads of the buttercups, “that’s the very thing
I’ve been anxious to talk to you about. The fact is, I’ve had an awful
lot of expense myself this last twelve months, and, as I told you, I
can’t lay a finger on anything except the interest of what poor Lucy
left me--and--er--I’d give you any percentage you like, you know--?” He
broke off for an instant, and then began again. “You can see for
yourself what a sin it would be to sell those things now,” he pointed
at the three young horses, “when they’ll just bring three times the
money this time next year.”
“Oh yes,” said Charlotte, “but my creditors might say it was more of a
sin for me not to pay my debts.”
Lambert stood still, and dug his stick into the ground, and Charlotte,
watching him, knew that she had put in her sickle and reaped her first
sheaf.
“All right,” he said, biting his lip, “if your creditors can manage to
hold out till after the fair next week, I daresay by selling every horse
I’ve got I could let you have your money then.” As he made the offer, he
trusted that its quixotic heroism would make Charlotte ashamed of
herself; no woman could possibly expect such a sacrifice as that from a
man, and the event proved that he was right.
This was not the sacrifice that Miss Mullen wished for.
“Oh, pooh, pooh, Roddy! you needn’t take me up in such earnest as that,”
she said in her most friendly voice, and Lambert congratulated himself
upon his astuteness; “I only meant that if you could let me have a
hundred or so in the course of the next month, it would be a help to my
finances.”
Lambert could not bring himself to admit that he was as little able to
pay her one hundred as three; at all events, a month would give him time
to look about him, and if he made a good collection he could easily
borrow it from the estate account.
“Oh, if that’s all,” he answered, affecting more relief than he felt, “I
can let you have it in a fortnight or so.”
They were near the lake by this time, and the young horses feeding by
its margin flung up their heads and stared in statuesque surprise at
their visitors.
“They’ll not let you near them,” said Charlotte, as Lambert walked
slowly towards them; “they’re as wild as hawks. And, goodness me! that
girl’s gone out of the field and left the gate open! Wait a minute till
I go back and shut it.”
Lambert stood and looked after her as she hastened cumbrously back
towards the gate, and wondered how he had ever liked her, or brought
himself to have any dealings with her, and his eye left her quickly to
follow the red parasol that, moving slowly along above the grey wall,
marked Francie’s progress along the lane. Charlotte hurried on towards
the gate, well satisfied with the result of her conversation, and she
was within some fifty yards of it when a loud and excited shout from
Lambert, combined with the thud of galloping hoofs, made her start
round. The young horses had been frightened by Lambert’s approach, and
after one or two circling swoops, had seen the open gate, and, headed by
the brown filly, were careering towards it.
“The gate! Charlotte!” roared Lambert, rushing futilely after the
horses, “shut the gate!”
Charlotte was off in an instant, realising as quickly as Lambert what
might happen if Francie were charged in the narrow lane by this living
avalanche; even in the first instant of comprehension another idea had
presented itself. Should she stumble and so not reach the gate in time?
It was fascinatingly simple, but it was too simple, and it was by no
means certain.
Charlotte ran her hardest, and, at some slight personal risk, succeeded
in slamming the gate in the face of the brown filly, as she and her
attendant squires dashed up to it. There was a great deal of slipping
about and snorting, before the trio recovered themselves, and retired to
pass off their discomfiture in a series of dislocating bucks and
squealing snaps at each other, and then Charlotte, purple from her
exertions, advanced to meet Lambert with the smile of the benefactor
broad upon her face. His was blotched white and red with fright and
running; without a breath left to thank her, he took her hand, and wrung
it with a more genuine emotion than he had ever before felt for her.
Francie, meanwhile, strolled slowly up the lane towards the house, with
her red parasol on her shoulder and her bunch of cowslips in her hand.
She knew that the visit to the Stone Field was only the preliminary to a
crawling inspection of every cow, sheep, and potato ridge on the farm,
and she remembered that she had seen a novel of attractive aspect on the
table in the drawing-room. She felt singularly uninterested in
everything; Gurthnamuckla was nothing but Tally Ho over again on a
larger and rather cleaner scale; the same servants, the same cats, the
same cockatoo, the same leathery pastry and tough mutton. Last summer
these things had mingled themselves easily into her every-day enjoyment
of life, as amusing and not unpleasant elements; now she promised
herself that, no matter what Roddy said, this was the last time she
would come to lunch with Charlotte.
Roddy was very good to her and all that, but there was nothing new about
him either, and marriage was an awful humdrum thing after all. She
looked back with something of regret to the crowded drudging household
at Albatross Villa; she had at least had something to do there, and she
had not been lonely; she often found herself very lonely at Rosemount.
Before she reached the house she decided that she would ask Ida
Fitzpatrick down to stay with her next month, and give her her return
ticket, and a summer dress, and a new-- Her thoughts came to a startling
full stop, as round the corner of the house, she found herself face to
face with Mr. Hawkins.
She had quite made up her mind that when she next saw him she would
merely bow to him, but she had not reckoned on the necessities of such
an encounter as this, and before she had time to collect herself she was
shaking hands with him and listening to his explanation of what had
brought him there.
“I met Miss Mullen after church yesterday,” he said awkwardly, “and she
asked me to come over this afternoon. I was just going out to look for
her.”
“Oh, really,” said Francie, moving on towards the hall door; “she and
Mr. Lambert are off in those fields there.”
Hawkins stood looking irresolutely at her as she walked up to the open
door that in Miss Duffy’s time had been barricaded against all comers.
She went in as unswervingly as if she had already forgotten his
existence, and then yielding, according to his custom, to impulse, he
followed her.
She had already taken up a book, and was seated in a chair by the window
when he came in, and she did not even lift her eyes at his entrance. He
went over to the polished centre table, and, opening a photograph book,
turned over a few of the leaves noisily. There was a pause, tense on
both sides as silence and self-consciousness could make it, and broken
only by the happy, persistent call of the cuckoo and the infant caws of
the young rooks in the elms by the gate. The photograph book was shut
with a bang, and Hawkins, taking his resolution in both hands, came
across the room, and stood in front of Francie.
“Look here!” he said, with a strange mixture of anger and entreaty in
his voice; “how much longer is this sort of thing to go on? Are you
always going to treat me in this sort of way?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” answered Francie, looking up at him with
eyes of icy blue, and then down at her book again. Her heart was beating
in leaps, but of this Hawkins was naturally not aware.
“You can’t pretend not to know what I mean--this sort of rot of not
speaking to me, and looking as if you had never seen me before. I told
you I was sorry and all that. I don’t know what more you want!”
“I don’t want ever to speak to you again.” She turned over a page of her
book, and forced her eyes to follow its lines.
“You know that’s impossible; you know you’ve got to speak to me again,
unless you want to cut me and kick up a regular row. I don’t know why
you’re going on like this. It’s awfully unfair, and it’s awfully hard
lines.” Since his visit to Rosemount, the conviction had been growing on
him that in marrying another man she had treated him heartlessly, and he
spoke with the fervour of righteous resentment.
“Oh, that comes well from you!” exclaimed Francie, dropping the book,
and sitting up with all her pent-in wrath ablaze at last; “you that
behaved in a way anyone else would be ashamed to think of! Telling me
lies from first to last, and trying to make a fool of me--It was a good
thing I didn’t believe more than the half you said!”
“I told you no lie,” said Hawkins, trying to stand his ground. “All I
did was that I didn’t answer your letters because I couldn’t get out of
that accursed engagement, and I didn’t know what to say to you, and then
the next thing I knew was that you were engaged, without a word of
explanation to me or anything.”
“And will you tell me what call there was for me to explain anything to
you?” burst out Francie, looking, with the hot flash in her eyes, more
lovely than he had ever seen her; “for all I knew of you, you were
married already to your English heiress--Miss Coppers, or whatever her
name is--I wonder at your impudence in daring to say things like that to
me!” The lift of her head, and the splendid colour in her cheeks would
have befitted any angry goddess, and it is not surprising that Hawkins
did not take offence at the crudity of the expression, and thought less
of the brogue in which it was uttered than of the quiver of the young
voice that accused him.
“Look here,” he said, for the second time, but with a new and very
different inflection, “don’t let us abuse each other any more. I
couldn’t answer your letters. I didn’t know what to say, except to tell
you that I was a cad and a beast, and I didn’t see much good in doing
that. Evidently,” he added, with a bitterness that was at least half
genuine, “it didn’t make much difference to you whether I did or not.”
She did not reply, except by a glance that was intended to express more
than words could convey of her contempt for him, but somewhere in it, in
spite of her, he felt a touch of reproach, and it was it that he
answered as he said:
“Of course if you won’t believe me you won’t, and it don’t make much
odds now whether you do or no; but I think if you knew how--” he
stammered, and then went on with a rush--“how infernally I’ve suffered
over the whole thing, you’d be rather sorry for me.”
Francie shaped her lips to a thin and tremulous smile of disdain, but
her hands clutched each other under the book in her lap with the effort
necessary to answer him. “Oh, yes, I _am_ sorry for you; I’d be sorry
for anyone that would behave the way you did,” she said, with a laugh
that would have been more effective had it been steadier; “but I can’t
say you look as if you wanted my pity.”
Hawkins turned abruptly away and walked towards the door, and then, as
quickly, came back to her side.
“They’re coming across the lawn now,” he said; “before they come, don’t
you think you could forgive me--or just say you do, anyhow. I did behave
like a brute, but I never thought you’d have cared. You may say the
worst things about me you can think of, if you’ll only tell me you
forgive me.” His voice broke on the last words in a way that gave them
irresistible conviction.
Francie glanced out of the window, and saw her husband and Charlotte
slowly approaching the house. “Oh, very well,” she said proudly, without
turning her head; “after all there’s nothing to forgive.”
CHAPTER XLV
Lambert and Francie were both very silent as they drove away from
Gurthnamuckla. He was the first to speak.
“I’ve asked Charlotte to come over and stay with you while I’m away next
week. I find I can’t get through the work in less than a fortnight, and
I may be kept even longer than that, because I’ve got to go to Dublin.”
“Asked Charlotte!” said Francie, in a tone of equal surprise and horror.
“What on earth made you do that?”
“Because I didn’t wish you should be left by yourself all that time.”
“I think you might have spoken to me first,” said Francie, with
deepening resentment. “I’d twice sooner be left by myself than be
bothered with that old cat.”
Lambert looked quickly at her. He had come back to the house with his
nerves still strained from his fright about the open gate, and his
temper shaken by his financial difficulties, and the unexpected
discovery of Hawkins in the drawing-room with his wife had not been
soothing.
“I don’t choose that you should be left by yourself,” he said, in the
masterful voice that had always, since her childhood, roused Francie’s
opposition. “You’re a deal too young to be left alone, and--” with a
voluntary softening of his voice--“and a deal too pretty, confound you!”
He cut viciously with his whip at a long-legged greyhound of a pig that
was rooting by the side of the road.
“D’ye mean me or the pig?” said Francie, with a laugh that was still
edged with defiance.
“I mean that I’m not going to have the whole country prating about you,
and they would if I left you here by yourself.”
“Very well, then, if you make me have Charlotte to stay with me I’ll
give tea-parties every day, and dinners and balls every night. I’ll make
the country prate, I can tell you, and the money fly too!”
Her eyes were brighter than usual, and there was a fitfulness about her
that stirred and jarred him, though he could hardly tell why.
“I think I’ll take you with me,” he said, with the impotent wrath of a
lover who knows that the pain of farewell will be all on his side. “I
won’t trust you out of my sight.”
“All right! I’ll go with you,” she said, becoming half serious. “I’d
like to go.”
They were going slowly up hill, and the country lay bare and desolate in
the afternoon sun, without a human being in sight. Lambert took the
reins in his right hand, and put his arm round her.
“I don’t believe you. I know you wouldn’t care a hang if I never came
back--kiss me!” She lifted her face obediently, and as her eyes met his
she wondered at the unhappiness in them. “I can’t take you, my darling,”
he whispered; “I wish to God I could. I’m going to places you couldn’t
stay at, and--and it would cost too much.”
“Very well; never say I didn’t make you a good offer,” she answered, her
unconquerable eyes giving him a look that told she could still flirt
with her husband.
“Put my cloak on me, Roddy; the evening’s getting cold.”
They drove on quickly, and Lambert felt the gloom settling down upon him
again. He hated going away and leaving Francie; he hated his financial
difficulties, and their tortuous, uncertain issues; and above all, he
hated Hawkins. He would have given the whole world to know how things
had been between him and Francie last year; anything would be less
intolerable than suspicion.
The strip of grass by the roadside widened as they left the rocky
country, and the deep dints of galloping hoofs became apparent on it.
Lambert pointed to them with his whip, and laughed contemptuously.
“If I had a thick-winded pony like your friend Mr. Hawkins, I wouldn’t
bucket her up hill in that sort of way. She’d do well enough if he had
the sense to take her easy; but in all my knowledge of soldiers--and
I’ve seen a good few of them here now--I’ve never seen a more
self-sufficient jackass in the matter of horses than Hawkins. I wouldn’t
trust him with a donkey.”
“You’d better tell him so,” said Francie indifferently. Lambert chose to
suspect a sneer in the reply.
“Tell him so!” he said hotly. “I’d tell him so pretty smart, if I
thought there was a chance of his getting outside a horse of mine. But I
think it’ll be a long day before that happens!”
“Maybe he wouldn’t thank you for one of your horses.”
“No, I’ll bet he wouldn’t say thank you,” said Lambert, a thrill of
anger darting to his brain. “He’s a lad that’ll take all he can get, and
say nothing about it, and chuck it away to the devil when he’s done with
it.”
“I’m sure I don’t care what he does!” exclaimed Francie, with excusable
impatience. “I wonder if he’s able to get into a passion about nothing,
the way you’re doing now!”
“It didn’t look this afternoon as if you cared so little about what he
does!” said Lambert, his breath coming short. “May I ask if you knew he
was coming, that you were in such a hurry back to the house to meet him?
I suppose you settled it when he came to see you on Saturday.”
“Since you know all about it, there’s no need for me to contradict you!”
Francie flashed back.
One part of Lambert knew that he was making a fool of himself, but the
other part, which was unfortunately a hundred times the stronger, drove
him on.
“Oh, I daresay you found it very pleasant, talking over old times,” he
retorted, releasing the thought at last like a long caged beast; “or was
he explaining how it was he got tired of you?”
Francie sat still and dumb; the light surface anger startled out of her
in a moment, and its place taken by a suffocating sense of outrage and
cruelty. She did not know enough of love to recognise it in this hideous
disguise of jealousy; she only discerned the cowardly spitefulness, and
it cut down to that deep place in her soul, where, since childhood, had
lain her trust in him. She did not say a word, and Lambert went on:
“Oh, I see you are too grand to answer me; I suppose it’s because I’m
only your husband that you think I’m not worth talking to.” He gave the
horse a lash of the whip, and then chucked up its head as it sprang
forward, making the trap rock and jerk. The hateful satisfaction of
taunting her about Hawkins was beginning to die in him like drunkenness,
and he dimly saw what it was going to cost him. “You make me say these
sort of things to you,” he broke out, seeing that she would not speak.
“How can I help it, when you treat me like the dirt under your feet, and
fight with me if I say a word to you that you don’t like? I’d like to
see the man that would stand it!”
He looked down at her, and saw her head drooping forward, and her hand
up to her face. He could not say more, as at that moment Mary Holloran
was holding the gate open for him to drive in; and as he lifted his wife
out of the trap at the hall door, and saw the tears that she could no
longer hide from him, he knew that his punishment had begun, and the
iron entered into his soul.
CHAPTER XLVI.
A few days afterwards Lambert started on his rent-collecting tour. Peace
of a certain sort was restored, complete in outward seeming, but with a
hidden flaw that both knew and pretended to ignore. When Lambert sat by
himself in the smoking-carriage of the morning train from Lismoyle, with
the cold comfort of a farewell kiss still present with him, he was as
miserable and anxious a man as could easily have been found. Charlotte
had arrived the night before, and with all her agreeability had
contrived to remind him that she expected a couple of hundred pounds on
his return. He could never have believed that she would have dunned him
in this way, and the idea occurred to him for the first time that she
was perhaps taking this method of paying him out for what, in her
ridiculous vanity, she might have imagined to be his bad treatment of
her. But none the less, it was a comfort to him to think that she was at
his house. He did not say so to himself, but he knew that he could not
have found a better spy.
Dislike, as has been said, was a sentiment that Francie found great
difficulty in cultivating. She conducted a feud in the most slipshod
way, with intervals of illogical friendship, of which anyone with proper
self-respect would have been ashamed, and she consequently accepted,
without reservation, the fact that Charlotte was making herself pleasant
with a pleasantness that a more suspicious person would have felt to be
unwholesome.
Charlotte, upon whose birth so many bad fairies had shed their malign
influence, had had at all events one attraction bestowed upon her, the
gift of appreciation, and of being able to express her appreciation--a
faculty that has been denied to many good and Christian people. The evil
spirit may have torn her at sight of Francie enthroned at the head of
Roddy Lambert’s table, but it did not come out of her in any palpable
form, nor did it prevent her from enjoying to the utmost the change from
the grease and smoke of Norry’s cooking, and the slothful stupidity of
the Protestant orphan. Charlotte was one of the few women for whom a
good cook will exert herself to make a savoury; and Eliza Hackett felt
rewarded when the parlour-maid returned to the kitchen with the
intelligence that Miss Mullen had taken two helpings of cheese-soufflé,
and had sent her special compliments to its constructor. Another of the
undoubted advantages of Rosemount was the chance it afforded Charlotte
of paying off with dignity and ease the long arrears of visits that the
growing infirmities of the black horse were heaping up against her. It
was supremely bitter to hear Francie ordering out the waggonette as if
she had owned horses and carriages all her life, but she could gulp it
down for the sake of the compensating comfort and economy. In the long
_tête-à-têtes_ that these drives involved, Charlotte made herself
surprisingly pleasant to her hostess. She knew every scandal about every
family in the neighbourhood, and imparted them with a humour and an easy
acquaintance with the aristocracy that was both awe-inspiring and
encouraging to poor Francie, whose heart beat fast with shyness and
conscious inferiority, as, card-case in hand, she preceded Miss Mullen
to Mrs. Ffolliott’s or Mrs. Flood’s drawing-room. It modified the terror
of Mrs. Flood’s hooked nose to remember that her mother had been a
Hebrew barmaid, and it was some consolation to reflect that General
Ffolliott’s second son had had to leave his regiment for cheating at
cards, when she became aware that she alone, among a number of afternoon
callers at Castle Ffolliott, had kept on her gloves during tea.
In every conversation with Charlotte it seemed to Francie that she
discovered, as if by accident, some small but disagreeable fact about
her husband. He had been refused by such and such a girl; he had stuck
so and so with a spavined horse; he had taken a drop too much at the
hunt ball; and, in a general way he owed the agency and his present
position in society solely to the efforts of Miss Mullen and her father.
Francie accepted these things, adding them to her previous store of
disappointment in Roddy, with the philosophy that she had begun to learn
at Albatross Villa, and that life was daily teaching her more of. They
unconsciously made themselves into a background calculated to give the
greatest effect to a figure that now occupied a great deal of her
thoughts.
It was at Mrs. Waller’s house that she first met Hawkins after her
encounter with him at Gurthnamuckla. He came into the room when it was
almost time for her to face the dreadful ordeal of leave-taking, and she
presently found herself talking to him with considerably less agitation
than she had felt in talking about Paris to Miss Waller. The memory of
their last meeting kept her eyes from his, but it made the ground firm
under her feet, and in the five minutes before she went away she felt
that she had effectually shown him the place she intended him to occupy,
and that he thoroughly understood that conversation with her was a
grace, and not a right. The touch of deference and anxiety in his
self-assured manner were as sweet to her as the flowers strewed before a
conqueror, and laid themselves like balm on the wound of her husband’s
taunt. Some day Roddy would see for himself the sort of way things were
between her and Mr. Hawkins, she thought, as she drove down the avenue,
and unconsciously held her head so high and looked so brilliant, that
Charlotte, with that new-born amiability that Francie was becoming
accustomed to, complimented her upon her colour, and declared that,
after Major Waller’s attentions, she would have to write to Roderick
and decline further responsibility as a chaperone.
They drove to Bruff two or three days afterwards, to return the state
visit paid by Pamela on her mother’s behalf, and, during some
preliminary marketing in Lismoyle, they came upon Hawkins walking
through the town in the Rosemount direction, with an air of smartness
and purpose about him that bespoke an afternoon call.
“I was just going to see you,” he said, looking rather blank.
“We’re on our way to Bruff,” replied Francie, too resolved on upholding
her dignity to condescend to any conventional regrets.
Mr. Hawkins looked more cheerful, and observing that as he also owed a
visit at Bruff this would be a good day to pay it, was turning back to
the barracks for his trap, when Miss Mullen intervened with almost
childlike impulsiveness.
“I declare now, it vexes my righteous soul to think of your getting out
a horse and trap, with two seats going a-begging here. It’s not my
carriage, Mr. Hawkins, or I promise you you should have one of them.”
Hawkins looked gratefully at her, and then uncertainly at Francie.
“He’s welcome to come if he likes,” said Francie frigidly, thinking with
a mixture of alarm and satisfaction of what Roddy would say if he heard
of it.
Hawkins waited for no further invitation, and got into the waggonette. A
trait of character as old as humanity was at this time asserting itself,
with singular freshness and force, in the bosom of Mr. Gerald Hawkins.
He had lightly taken Francie’s heart in his hand, and as lightly thrown
it away, without plot or premeditation; but now that another man had
picked it up and kept it for his own, he began to see it as a thing of
surpassing value. He could have borne with a not uninteresting regret
the idea of Francie languishing somewhere in the suburbs of Dublin, and
would even, had the chance come in his way, have flirted with her in a
kind and consolatory manner. But to see her here, prosperous, prettier
than ever, and possessing the supreme attraction of having found favour
in someone else’s eyes, was a very different affair. The old glamour
took him again, but with tenfold force, and, while he sat in the
waggonette and talked to his ancient foe, Miss Mullen, with a novel
friendliness, he gnawed the ends of his moustache in the bitterness of
his soul because of the coldness of the eyes that were fascinating him.
It was a bright and blowy afternoon, with dazzling masses of white cloud
moving fast across the blue, and there was a shifting glimmer of young
leaves in the Bruff avenue, and a gusty warmth of fragrance from lilacs
and laurel blossoms on either side. As this strangely compounded party
of visitors drove up to the hall door they caught sight of Christopher
going down the lawn towards the boat-house, and in answer to a call from
Mr. Hawkins, he turned and came back to meet them. He was only on his
way to the boat-house to meet Cursiter, he explained, and he was the
only person at home, but he hoped that they would, none the less, come
in and see him. Hawkins helped Francie out of the carriage, giving her a
hand no less formal than that which she gave him. She recognised the
formality, and was not displeased to think that it was assumed in
obedience to her wish.
They all strolled slowly on towards the boat-house, Hawkins walking
behind with Miss Mullen, Francie in front with her host. It was not her
first meeting with him since her return to Lismoyle, and she found it
quite easy to talk with him of her travels, and of those small things
that make up the sum of ordinary afternoon conversation. She had come to
believe now that she must have been mistaken on that afternoon when he
had stood over her in the Tally Ho drawing-room and said those
unexpected things to her--things that, at the time, seemed neither
ambiguous nor Platonic. He was now telling her, in the quietly
hesitating voice that had always seemed to her the very height of good
breeding, that the weather was perfect, and that the lake was lower than
he had ever known it at that time of year, with other like commonplaces,
and though there was something wanting in his manner that she had been
accustomed to, she discerned none of the awkwardness that her experience
had made her find inseparable from the rejected state.
There was no sign of Captain Cursiter or his launch when they reached
the pier, and, after a fruitless five minutes of waiting, they went on,
at Christopher’s suggestion, to see the bluebells in the wood that
girdled the little bay of Bruff. Before they reached the gate of the
wood, Miss Mullen had attached herself to Christopher, having remarked,
with engaging frankness, that Mr. Hawkins could only talk to her about
Lismoyle, and she wanted Sir Christopher to tell her of the doings of
the great world; and Francie found herself following them with Hawkins
by her side. The walk turned inwards and upwards from the lake,
climbing, by means of a narrow flight of moss-grown stone steps, till it
gained the height of about fifty feet above the water. Walking there,
the glitter of the lake came up brokenly to the eye, through the
beech-tree branches, that lay like sprays of maidenhair beneath them;
and over the hill and down to the water’s edge and far away among the
grey beech stems, the bluebells ran like a blue mist through all the
wood. Their perfume rose like incense about Francie and her companion as
they walked slowly, and ever more slowly, along the path. The spirit of
the wood stole into their veins, and a pleasure that they could not have
explained held them in silence that they were afraid to break.
Hawkins was the first to make a diffident comment.
“They’re ripping, aren’t they? They’re a great deal better than they
were last year.”
“I didn’t see them last year.”
“No, I know you didn’t,” he said quickly; “you didn’t come to Lismoyle
till the second week in June.”
“You seem to remember more about it than I do,” said Francie, still
maintaining her attitude of superiority.
“I don’t think I’m likely to forget it,” he said, turning and looking at
her.
She looked down at the ground with a heightening colour and a curl of
the lip that did not come easily. If she found it hard to nurse her
anger against Charlotte, it was thrice more difficult to harden herself
to the voice to which one vibrating string in her heart answered in
spite of her.
“Oh, there’s nothing people can’t forget if they try!” she said, with a
laugh. “I always find it much harder to remember!”
“But people sometimes succeed in doing things they don’t like,” said
Hawkins pertinaciously.
“Not if they don’t want to,” replied Francie, holding her own, with
something of her habitual readiness.
Hawkins’ powers of repartee weakened a little before this retort. “No, I
suppose not,” he said, trying to make up by bitterness of tone for want
of argument.
Francie was silent, triumphantly silent, it seemed to him, as he walked
beside her and switched off the drooping heads of the bluebells with his
stick. He had experiences that might have taught him that this appetite
for combat, this determination to trample on him, was a more measurable
thing than the contempt that will not draw a sword; but he was able to
think of nothing except that she was unkind to him, and that she was
prettier now than he had ever seen her. He was so thoroughly put out
that he was not aware of any awkwardness in the silence that had
progressed, unbroken, for a minute or two. It was Francie to whom it was
apparently most trying, as, at length, with an obvious effort at small
talk, she said:
“I suppose that’s Captain Cursiter coming up the lake?” indicating,
through an opening in the branches, a glimpse of a white funnel and its
thong of thinly streaming vapour; “he seems as fond of boating as ever.”
“Yes, I daresay he is,” said Hawkins, without pretending any interest,
real or polite, in the topic. He was in the frame of mind that lies near
extravagance of some kind, whether of temper or sentiment, and, being of
a disposition not versed in self-repression, he did not attempt
diplomacy. He looked sulkily at the launch, and then, with a shock of
association, he thought of the afternoon that he and Francie had spent
on the lake, and the touch of unworthiness that there was in him made
him long to remind her of her subjugation.
“Are _you_ as fond of boating as--as you were when we ran aground last
year?” he said, and looked at her daringly.
He was rewarded by seeing her start perceptibly and turn her head away,
and he had the grace to feel a little ashamed of himself. Francie looked
down the bluebell slope till her eyes almost ached with the soft glow of
colour, conscious that every moment of delay in answering told against
her, but unable to find the answer. The freedom and impertinence of the
question did not strike her at all; she only felt that he was
heartlessly trying to humiliate her.
“I’d be obliged to you, Mr. Hawkins,” she said, her panting breath
making her speak with extreme difficulty, “if you’d leave me to walk by
myself.”
Before she spoke he knew that he had made a tremendous mistake, and, as
she moved on at a quickened pace, he felt he must make peace with her at
any price.
“Mrs. Lambert,” he said, with a gravity and deference which he had never
shown to her before, “is it any use to beg your pardon? I didn’t know
what I was saying--I hardly know now what I did say--but if it made you
angry or--or offended you, I can only say I’m awfully sorry.”
“Thank you, I don’t want you to say anything,” she answered, still
walking stiffly on.
“If it would give you any pleasure, I swear I’ll promise never to speak
to you again!” Hawkins continued; “shall I go away now?” His instinct
told him to risk the question.
“Please yourself. It’s nothing to me what you do.”
“Then I’ll stay--”
Following on what he said, like an eldritch note of exclamation, there
broke in the shrill whistle of the _Serpolette_ as she turned into the
bay of Bruff, and an answering hail from Christopher rose to them,
apparently from the lower path by the shore of the lake.
“That’s Cursiter,” said Hawkins irritably; “I suppose we shall have to
go back now.”
She turned, as if mechanically accepting the suggestion, and, in the
action, her eyes passed by him with a look that was intended to have as
little reference to him as the gaze of a planet in its orbit, but which,
even in that instant, was humanised by avoidance. In the space of that
glance, he knew that his pardon was attainable, if not attained, but he
had cleverness enough to retain his expression of gloomy compunction.
It was quite true that Francie’s anger, always pitiably short-lived, had
yielded to the flattery of his respect. Every inner, unformed impulse
was urging her to accept his apology, when three impatient notes from
the whistle of the steam-launch came up through the trees, and seemed
to open a way for her to outside matters from the narrow stress of the
moment.
“Captain Cursiter seems in a great hurry about something,” she said, her
voice and manner conveying sufficiently well that she intended to pass
on with dignity from the late dispute. “I wonder what he wants.”
“Perhaps we’ve got the route,” said Hawkins, not sorry to be able to
remind her of the impending calamity of his departure; “I shouldn’t be a
bit surprised.”
They walked down the flight of stone steps, and reached the gate of the
wood in silence. Hawkins paused with his hand on the latch.
“Look here, when am I going to see you again?” he said.
“I really don’t know,” said Francie, with recovered ease. She felt the
wind blowing in on her across the silver scales of the lake, and saw the
sunshine flashing on Captain Cursiter’s oars as he paddled himself
ashore from the launch, and her spirits leaped up in “the inescapable
joy of spring.” “I should think anyone that goes to church to-morrow
will see me there.”
Her glance veered towards his cloudy, downcast face, and an undignified
desire to laugh came suddenly upon her. He had always looked so babyish
when he was cross, and it had always made her feel inclined to laugh.
Now that she was palpably and entirely the conqueror, the wish for
further severity had died out, and the spark of amusement in her eye was
recklessly apparent when Hawkins looked at her.
His whole expression changed in a moment. “Then we’re friends?” he said
eagerly.
Before any answer could be given, Christopher and Charlotte came round a
bend in the lower path, and even in this moment Francie wondered what it
was that should cause Charlotte to drop her voice cautiously as she
neared them.
CHAPTER XLVII.
It was very still inside the shelter of the old turf quay at Bruff. The
stems of the lilies that curved up through its brown-golden depths were
visible almost down to the black mud out of which their mystery of
silver and gold was born; and, while the water outside moved piquantly
to the breeze, nothing stirred it within except the water spiders, who
were darting about, pushing a little ripple in front of them, and
finding themselves seriously inconvenienced by the pieces of broken rush
and the sodden fragments of turf that perpetually stopped their way. It
had rained and blown very hard all the day before, and the innermost
corners of the tiny harbour held a motionless curve of foam, yellowish
brown, and flecked with the feathers of a desolated moorhen’s nest.
Civilisation at Bruff had marched away from the turf quay. The ruts of
the cart-track were green from long disuse, and the willows had been
allowed to grow across it, as a last sign of superannuation. In old days
every fire at Bruff had been landed at the turf quay from the bogs at
the other side of the lake; but now, since the railway had come to
Lismoyle, coal had taken its place. It was in vain that Thady, the
turf-cutter, had urged that turf was a far handsomer thing about a
gentleman’s place than coal. The last voyage of the turf boat had been
made, and she now lay, grey from rottenness and want of paint, in the
corner of the miniature dock that had once been roofed over and formed a
boat-house. Tall, jointed reeds, with their spiky leaves and stiff
stems, stood out in the shallow water, leaning aslant over their own
reflections, and, further outside, green rushes grew thickly in long
beds, the homes of dabchicks, coots, and such like water people.
Standing on the brown rock that formed the end of the quay, the spacious
sky was so utterly reproduced in the lake, cloud for cloud, deep for
deep, that it only required a little imagination to believe oneself
floating high between two atmospheres. The young herons, in the fir
trees on Curragh Point, were giving utterance to their meditations on
things in general in raucous monosyllables, and Charlotte Mullen, her
feet planted firmly on two of the least rickety stones of the quay, was
continuing a conversation that had gone on one-sidedly for some time.
“Yes, Sir Christopher, my feeling for your estate is like the feeling of
a child for the place where he was reared; it is the affection of a
woman whose happiest days were passed with her father in your estate
office!”
The accurate balance of the sentence and its nasal cadence showed that
Charlotte was delivering herself of a well-studied peroration. Her voice
clashed with the stillness as dissonantly as the clamour of the young
herons. Her face was warm and shiny, and Christopher looked away from
it, and said to himself that she was intolerable.
“Of course--yes--I understand--” he answered stammeringly, her pause
compelling him to speak; “but these are very serious things to say--”
“Serious!” Charlotte dived her hand into her pocket to make sure that
her handkerchief was within hail. “D’ye think, Sir Christopher, I don’t
know that well! I that have lain awake crying every night since I heard
of it, not knowing how to decide between me affection for me friend and
my duty to the son of my dear father’s old employer!”
“I think anyone who makes charges of this kind,” interrupted Christopher
coldly, “is bound to bring forward something more definite than mere
suspicion.”
Charlotte took her hand out of her pocket without the handkerchief, and
laid it for a moment on Christopher’s arm.
“My dear Sir Christopher, I entirely agree with you,” she said in her
most temperate, ladylike manner, “and I am prepared to place certain
facts before you, on whose accuracy you may perfectly rely, although
circumstances prevent my telling you how I learned them.”
The whole situation was infinitely repugnant to Christopher. He would
himself have said that he had not nerve enough to deal with Miss Mullen;
and joined with this, and his innate and overstrained dislike of having
his affairs discussed, was the unendurable position of conniving with
her at a treachery. Little as he liked Lambert, he sided with him now
with something more than a man’s ordinary resentment against feminine
espionage upon another man. He was quite aware of the subdued eagerness
in Charlotte’s manner, and it mystified while it disgusted him; but he
was also aware that nothing short of absolute flight would check her
disclosures. He could do nothing now but permit himself the single
pleasure of staring over her head with a countenance barren of response
to her histrionic display of expression.
“You ask me for something more definite than mere suspicion,” continued
Charlotte, approaching one of the supremest gratifications of her life
with full and luxurious recognition. “I can give you two facts, and if,
on investigation, you find they are not correct, you may go to Roderick
Lambert, and tell him to take an action for libel against me! I daresay
you know that a tenant of yours, named James M‘Donagh--commonly called
Shamus Bawn--recently got the goodwill of Knocklara, and now holds it in
addition to his father’s farm, which he came in for last month.”
Christopher assented. “Jim M‘Donagh paid one hundred and eighty pounds
fine on getting Knocklara. I ask you to examine your estate account, and
you will see that the sum credited to you on that transaction is no more
than seventy.”
“May I ask how you know this?” Christopher turned his face towards her
for a moment as he asked the question, and encountered, with even more
aversion than he had expected, her triumphing eyes.
“I’m not at liberty to tell you. All I say is, go to Jim M‘Donagh, and
ask him the amount of his fine, and see if he won’t tell you just the
same sum that I’m telling you now.”
Captain Cursiter, at this moment steering the _Serpolette_ daintily
among the shadows of Bruff Bay, saw the two incongruous figures on the
turf quay, one short, black, and powerful, the other tall, white, and
passive, and wondered, through the preoccupation of crawling to his
anchorage, what it was that Miss Mullen was holding forth to Dysart
about, in a voice that came to him across the water like the gruff
barking of a dog. He thought, too, that there was an almost ship-wrecked
welcome in the shout with which Christopher answered his whistle, and
was therefore surprised to see him remain where he was, apparently
enthralled by Miss Mullen’s conversation, instead of walking round to
meet him at the boat-house pier.
Charlotte had, in fact, by this time, compelled Christopher to give her
his whole attention. As he turned towards her again, he admitted to
himself that the thing looked rather serious, though he determined, with
the assistance of a good deal of antagonistic irritability, to keep his
opinion to himself. This feeling was uppermost as he said: “I have
never had the least reason to feel a want of confidence in Mr. Lambert,
Miss Mullen, and I certainly could not discredit him by going privately
to M‘Donagh to ask him about the fine.”
“It’s a pity all unfaithful stewards haven’t as confiding a master as
you, Sir Christopher,” said Charlotte, with a laugh. She felt
Christopher’s attitude towards her, as a man in armour may have felt the
arrows strike him, and no more, and it came easily to her to laugh.
“However,” she went on, correcting her manner quickly, as she saw a very
slight increase of colour in Christopher’s face, “the burden of proof
does not lie with James M‘Donagh. Last November, as you may possibly
remember, my name made its first appearance on your rent-roll, as the
tenant of Gurthnamuckla, and in recognition of that honour,”--Charlotte
felt that there was an academic polish about her sentences that must
appeal to a University man--“I wrote your agent a cheque for one hundred
pounds, which was duly cashed some days afterwards.” She altered her
position, so that she could see his face better, and said deliberately:
“Not one penny of that has been credited to the estate! This I know for
a fact.”
“Yes,” said Christopher, after an uncomfortable pause, “that’s
very--very curious, but, of course--until I know a little more, I can’t
give any opinion on the matter. I think, perhaps, we had better go round
to meet Captain Cursiter--”
Charlotte interrupted him with more violence than she had as yet
permitted to escape.
“If you want to know more, I can tell you more, and plenty more! For the
last year and more, Roddy Lambert’s been lashing out large sums of ready
money beyond his income, and I know his income to the penny and the
farthing! Where did he get that money from? I ask you. What paid for his
young horses, and his new dog-cart, and his new carpets, yes! and his
honeymoon trip to Paris? I ask you what paid for all that? It wasn’t his
first wife’s money paid for it, I know that for a fact, and it certainly
wasn’t the second wife’s!”
She was losing hold of herself; her gestures were of the sort that she
usually reserved for her inferiors, and the corners of her mouth bubbled
like a snail. Christopher looked at her, and began to walk away.
Charlotte followed him, walking unsteadily on the loose stones, and
inwardly cursing his insolence as well as her own forgetfulness of the
method she had laid down for the interview. He turned and waited for her
when he reached the path, and had time to despise himself for not being
able to conceal his feelings from a woman so abhorrent and so
contemptible.
“I am--er--obliged for your information,” he said stiffly. In spite of
his scorn for his own prejudice, he would not gratify her by saying
more.
“You will forgive me, Sir Christopher,” replied Charlotte with an
astonishing resumption of dignity, “if I say that that is a point that
is quite immaterial to me. I require no thanks. I felt it to be my duty
to tell you these painful facts, and what I suffer in doing it concerns
only myself.”
They walked on in silence between the lake and the wood, with the
bluebells creeping outwards to their feet through the white beech stems,
and as the last turn of the path brought them in sight of Francie and
Hawkins, Charlotte spoke again:
“You’ll remember that all this is in strict confidence, Sir
Christopher.”
“I shall remember,” said Christopher curtly.
An hour later, Pamela, driving home with her mother, congratulated
herself, as even the best people are prone to do, when she saw on the
gravel-sweep the fresh double wheel tracks that indicated that visitors
had come and gone. She felt that she had talked enough for one afternoon
during the visit to old Lady Eyrecourt, whose deaf sister had fallen to
her share, and she did not echo her mother’s regret at missing Miss
Mullen and her cousin. She threw down the handful of cards on the hall
table again, and went with a tired step to look for Christopher in the
smoking-room, where she found him with Captain Cursiter, the latter in
the act of taking his departure. The manner of her greeting showed that
he was an accustomed sight there, and, as a matter of fact, since
Christopher’s return Captain Cursiter had found himself at Bruff very
often. He had discovered that it was, as he expressed it, the only house
in the country where the women let him alone. Lady Dysart had expressed
the position from another point of view, when she had deplored to Mrs.
Gascogne Pamela’s “hopeless friendliness” towards men, and Mrs. Gascogne
had admitted that there might be something discouraging to a man in
being treated as if he were a younger sister.
This unsuitable friendliness was candidly apparent in Pamela’s regret
when she heard that Cursiter had come to Bruff with the news that his
regiment was to leave Ireland for Aldershot in a fortnight.
“Here’s Captain Cursiter trying to stick me with the launch at an
alarming reduction, as the property of an officer going abroad,” said
Christopher. “He wants to take advantage of my grief, and he won’t stay
and dine here and let me haggle the thing out comfortably.”
“I’m afraid I haven’t time to stay,” said Cursiter rather cheerlessly.
“I’ve got to go up to Dublin to-morrow, and I’m very busy. I’ll come
over again--if I may--when I get back.” He felt all the awkwardness of a
self-conscious man in the prominence of making a farewell that he is
beginning to find more unpleasant than he had expected.
“Oh, yes! indeed, you must come over again,” said Pamela, in the soft
voice that was just Irish enough for Saxons of the more ignorant sort to
fail to distinguish, save in degree, between it and Mrs. Lambert’s
Dublin brogue.
It remained on Captain Cursiter’s ear as he stalked down through the
shrubberies to the boat-house, and, as he steamed round Curragh Point,
and caught the sweet, turfy whiff of the Irish air, he thought drearily
of the arid glare of Aldershot, and, without any apparent connection of
ideas, he wondered if the Dysarts were really coming to town next month.
Not long after his departure Lady Dysart rustled into the smoking-room
in her solemnly sumptuous widow’s dress.
“Is he gone?” she breathed in a stage whisper, pausing on the threshold
for a reply.
“No; he’s hiding behind the door,” answered Christopher; “he always does
when he hears you coming.” When Christopher was irritated, his method of
showing it was generally so subtle as only to satisfy himself; it
slipped through the wide and generous mesh of his mother’s understanding
without the smallest friction.
“Nonsense, Christopher!” she said, not without a furtive glance behind
the door. “What a visitation you must have had from the whole set! Had
they anything interesting to say for themselves? Charlotte Mullen
generally is a great alleviation.”
“Oh yes,” replied her son, examining the end of his cigarette with a
peculiar expression, “she--she alleviated about as much as usual; but it
was Cursiter who brought the news.”
“I can’t imagine Captain Cursiter so far forgetting himself as to tell
any news,” said Lady Dysart; “but perhaps he makes an exception in your
favour.”
“They’re to go to Aldershot in a fortnight,” said Christopher.
“You don’t say so!” exclaimed his mother, with an irrepressible look at
Pamela, who was sitting on the floor in the window, taking a thorn out
of Max’s spatulate paw. “In a fortnight? I wonder how Mr. Hawkins will
like that? Evelyn said that Miss Coppard told her the marriage was to
come off when the regiment went back to England.”
Christopher grunted unsympathetically, and Pamela continued her
researches for the thorn.
“Well,” resumed Lady Dysart, “I, for one, shall not regret them. Selfish
and second-rate!”
“Which is which?” asked Christopher, eliminating any tinge of interest
or encouragement from his voice. He was quite aware that his mother was
in this fashion avenging the slaughter of the hope that she had secretly
nourished about Captain Cursiter, and, being in a perturbed frame of
mind, it annoyed him.
“I think _your_ friend is the most self-centred, ungenial man I have
ever known,” replied Lady Dysart, in sonorous denunciation, “and if Mr.
Hawkins is not second-rate, his friends are, which comes to the same
thing! And, by the by, how was it that he went away before Captain
Cursiter? Did not they come together?”
“Miss Mullen and Mrs. Lambert gave him a lift,” said Christopher,
uncommunicatively; “I believe they overtook him on his way here.”
Lady Dysart meditated, with her dark eyebrows drawn into a frown.
“I think that girl will make a very great mistake if she begins a
flirtation with Mr. Hawkins again,” she said presently; “there has been
quite enough talk about her already in connection with her marriage.”
Lady Dysart untied her bonnet strings as if with a need of more air, and
flung them back over each shoulder. In the general contrariety of
things, it was satisfactory to find an object so undeniably deserving of
reprobation as the new Mrs. Lambert. “I call her a thorough
adventuress!” she continued. “She came down here, determined to marry
some one, and as Mr. Hawkins escaped from her, she just snatched at the
next man she could find!”
Pamela came over and sat down on the arm of her mother’s chair. “Now,
mamma,” she said putting her arm round Lady Dysart’s crape-clad
shoulder, “you can’t deny that she knew all about the Dublin clergy and
went to Sunday-school regularly for ten years, and she guessed two
lights of an acrostic for you.”
“Yes, two that happened to be slangy! No, my dear child, I admit that
she is very pretty, but, as I said before, she has proved herself to be
nothing but an adventuress. Everyone in the country has said the same
thing.”
“I can scarcely imagine anyone less like an adventuress,” said
Christopher, with the determined quietness by which he sometimes
mastered his stammer.
His mother looked at him with the most unaffected surprise. “And I can
scarcely imagine anyone who knows less about the matter than you!” she
retorted. “Oh, my dear boy, don’t smoke another of those horrid things,”
as Christopher got up abruptly and began to fumble rather aimlessly in a
cigarette-box on the chimney-piece, “I’m sure you’ve smoked more than is
good for you. You look quite white already.”
He made no reply, and his mother’s thoughts reverted to the subject
under discussion. Suddenly a little cloud of memory began to appear on
her mental horizon. Now that she came to think of it, had not Kate
Gascogne once mentioned Christopher’s name to her in preposterous
connection with that of the present Mrs. Lambert?
“Let me tell you!” she exclaimed, her deep-set eyes glowing with the
triumphant effort of memory, “that people said she did her utmost to
capture _you_! and I can very well believe it of her; a grievous waste
of ammunition on her part, wasn’t it, Pamela? Though it did not result
in an _engagement_!” she added, highly pleased at being able to press a
pun into her argument.
“Oh, I think she spared Christopher,” struck in Pamela with a
conciliatory laugh; “‘Poor is the conquest of the timid hare,’ you
know!” She was aware of something portentously rigid in her brother’s
attitude, and would have given much to have changed the conversation,
but the situation was beyond her control.
“I don’t think she would have thought it such a poor conquest,” said
Lady Dysart indignantly; “a girl like that, accustomed to attorneys’
clerks and commercial travellers--she’d have done anything short of
suicide for such a chance!”
Christopher had stood silent during this discussion. He was losing his
temper, but he was doing it after his fashion, slowly and almost
imperceptibly. The pity for Mr. Lambert’s wife, that had been a primary
result of Charlotte’s indictment, flamed up into quixotism, and every
word his mother said was making him more hotly faithful to the time when
his conquest had been complete.
“I daresay it will surprise you to hear that I gave her the chance, and
she didn’t take it,” he said suddenly.
Lady Dysart grasped the arms of her chair, and then fell back into it.
“_You_ did!”
“Yes, I did,” replied Christopher, beginning to walk towards the door.
He knew he had done a thing that was not only superfluous, but savoured
repulsively of the pseudoheroic, and the attitude in which he had placed
himself was torture to his reserve. “This great honour was offered to
her,” he went on, taking refuge in lame satire, “last August,
unstimulated by any attempts at suicide on her part, and she refused it.
I--I think it would be kinder if you put her down as a harmless lunatic,
than as an adventuress, as far as I am concerned.” He shut the door
behind him as he finished speaking, and Lady Dysart was left staring at
her daughter, complexity of emotions making speech an idle thing.
CHAPTER XLVIII.
The question, ten days afterwards, to anyone who had known all the
features of the case, would have been whether Francie was worth
Christopher’s act of championing.
At the back of the Rosemount kitchen-garden the ground rose steeply into
a knoll of respectable height, where grew a tangle of lilac bushes,
rhododendrons, seringas, and yellow broom. A gravel path wound
ingratiatingly up through these, in curves artfully devised by Mr.
Lambert to make the most of the extent and the least of the hill, and
near the top a garden-seat was sunk in the bank, with laurels shutting
it in on each side, and a laburnum “showering golden tears” above it.
Through the perfumed screen of the lilac bushes in front unromantic
glimpses of the roof of the house were obtainable--eyesores to Mr.
Lambert, who had concentrated all his energies on hiding everything
nearer than the semi-circle of lake and distant mountain held in an
opening cut through the rhododendrons at the corner of the little
plateau on which the seat stood. Without the disturbance of middle
distance the eye lay at ease on the far-off struggle of the Connemara
mountains, and on a serene vista of Lough Moyle; a view that enticed
forth, as to a playground, the wildest and most foolish imaginations,
and gave them elbow-room; a world so large and remote that it needed the
sound of wheels on the road to recall the existence of the petty
humanities of Lismoyle.
Francie and Hawkins were sitting there on the afternoon of the day on
which Lambert was expected to come home, and as the sun, that had stared
in at them through the opening in the rhododendrons when they first went
there, slid farther round, their voices sank in unconscious accord with
the fading splendours of the afternoon, and their silences seemed
momently more difficult to break. They were nearing the end of the phase
that had begun in the wood at Bruff, impelled to its verge by the
unspoken knowledge that the last of the unthinking, dangerous days was
dying with the sun, and that a final parting was looming up beyond.
Neither knew for certain the mind of the other, or how they had dropped
into this so-called friendship that in half a dozen afternoons had
robbed all other things of reality, and made the intervals between their
meetings like a feverish dream. Francie did not dare to think much about
it; she lived in a lime-light glow that surrounded her wherever she
went, and all the world outside was dark. He was going in a fortnight,
in ten days, in a week; that was the only fact that the future had held
for her since Captain Cursiter had met them with the telegram in his
hand on the lake shore at Bruff. She forgot her resolutions; she forgot
her pride; and before she reached home that afternoon the spell of the
new phase, that was the old, only intensified by forgiveness, was on
her. She shut her eyes, and blindly gave house-room in her heart to the
subtle passion that came in the garb of an old friend, with a cant about
compassion on its lips, and perfidious promises that its life was only
for a fortnight.
To connect this supreme crisis of a life with such a person as Mr.
Gerald Hawkins may seem incongruous; but Francie was not aware of either
crisis or incongruity. All she knew of was the enthralment that lay in
each prosaic afternoon visit, all she felt, the tired effort of
conscience against fascination. Her emotional Irish nature, with all its
frivolity and recklessness, had also, far down in it, an Irish girl’s
moral principle and purity; but each day she found it more difficult to
hide the truth from him; each day the under-currents of feeling drew
them helplessly nearer to each other. Everything was against her.
Lambert’s business had, as he expected, taken him to Dublin, and kept
him there; Cursiter, like most men, was chary of active interference in
another man’s affairs, whatever his private opinion might be; and
Charlotte, that guardian of youth, that trusty and vigilant spy, sat in
her own room writing interminable letters, or went on long and
complicated shopping expeditions whenever Hawkins came to the house.
On this golden, still afternoon, Francie strayed out soon after lunch,
half dazed with unhappiness and excitement. To-night her husband would
come home. In four days Hawkins would have gone, as eternally, so far as
she was concerned, as if he were dead; he would soon forget her, she
thought, as she walked to and fro among the blossoming apple trees in
the kitchen-garden. Men forgot very easily, and, thanks to the way she
had tried her best to make him think she didn’t care, there was not a
word of hers to bring him back to her. She hated herself for her
discretion; her soul thirsted for even one word of understanding, that
would be something to live upon in future days of abnegation, when it
would be nothing to her that she had gained his respect, and one tender
memory would be worth a dozen self-congratulations.
She turned at the end of the walk and came back again under the apple
trees; the ground under her feet was white with fallen blossoms; her
fair hair gleamed among the thick embroidery of the branches, and her
face was not shamed by their translucent pink and white. At a little
distance Eliza Hackett, in a starched lilac calico, was gathering
spinach, and meditating no doubt with comfortable assurance on the
legitimacy of Father Heffernan’s apostolic succession, but outwardly the
embodiment of solid household routine and respectability. As Francie
passed her she raised her decorous face from the spinach-bed with a
question as to whether the trout would be for dinner or for breakfast;
the master always fancied fish for his breakfast, she reminded Francie.
Eliza Hackett’s tone was distant, but admonitory, and it dispelled in a
moment the visions of another now impossible future that were holding
high carnival before Francie’s vexed eyes. The fetter made itself coldly
felt, and following came the quick pang of remorse at the thought of the
man who was wasting on her the best love he had to give. Her change of
mood was headlong, but its only possible expression was trivial to
absurdity, if indeed any incident in a soul’s struggle can be called
trivial. Some day, further on in eternity, human beings will know what
their standards of proportion and comparison are worth, and may perhaps
find the glory of some trifling actions almost insufferable.
She gave the necessary order, and hurrying into the house brought out
from it the piece of corduroy that she was stitching in lines of red
silk as a waistcoat for her husband, and with a childish excitement at
the thought of this expiation, took the path that led to the shrubbery
on the hill. As she reached its first turn she hesitated and stopped,
an idea of further and fuller renunciation occurring to her. Turning,
she called to the figure stooping among the glossy rows of spinach to
desire that the parlour-maid should say that this afternoon she was not
at home. Had Eliza Hackett then and there obeyed the order, it is
possible that many things would have happened differently. But fate is
seldom without a second string to her bow, and even if Francie’s message
had not been delayed by Eliza Hackett’s determination to gather a pint
of green gooseberries before she went in, it is possible that Hawkins
would, none the less have found his way to the top of the shrubbery,
where Francie was sewing with the assiduity of Penelope. It was about
four o’clock when she heard his step coming up the devious slants of the
path, and she knew as she heard it that, in spite of all her
precautions, she had expected him. His manner and even his look had
nothing now in them of the confident lover of last year; his flippancy
was gone, and when he began by reproaching her for having hidden from
him, his face was angry and wretched, and he spoke like a person who had
been seriously and unjustly hurt. He was more in love than he had ever
been before, and he was taking it badly, like a fever that the chills of
opposition were driving back into his system.
She made excuses as best she might, with her eyes bent upon her work.
“I might have been sitting in the drawing-room now,” he said petulantly;
“only that Miss Mullen had seen you going off here by yourself, and told
me I’d better go and find you.”
An unreasoning fear came over Francie, a fear as of something uncanny.
“Let us go back to the house,” she said; “Charlotte will be expecting
us.” She said it to contradict the thought that had become definite for
the first time. “Come; I’m going in.”
Hawkins did not move. “I suppose you forget that this is Wednesday, and
that I’m going on Saturday,” he replied dully. “In any case you’ll not
be much good to Charlotte. She’s gone up to pack her things. She told me
herself she was going to be very busy, as she had to start at six
o’clock.”
Francie leaned back, and realised that now she had no one to look to but
herself, and happiness and misery fought within her till her hands
trembled as she worked.
Each knew that this was, to all intents and purposes, their last
meeting, and their consciousness was charged to brimming with
unexpressed farewell. She talked of indifferent subjects; of what
Aldershot would be like, of what Lismoyle would think of the new
regiment, of the trouble that he would have in packing his pictures,
parrying, with a weakening hand, his efforts to make every subject
personal; and all the time the laburnum drooped in beautiful despair
above her, as if listening and grieving, and the cool-leaved lilac sent
its fragrance to mingle with her pain, and to stir her to rebellion with
the ecstasy of spring-time. The minutes passed barrenly by, and, as has
been said, the silences became longer and more clinging, and the
thoughts that filled them made each successive subject more bare and
artificial. At last Hawkins got up, and walking to the opening cut in
the shrubs, stood, with his hands in his pockets, looking out at the
lake and the mountains. Francie stitched on; it seemed to her that if
she stopped she would lose her last hold upon herself; she felt as if
her work were a talisman to remind her of all the things that she was in
peril of forgetting. When, that night, she took up the waistcoat again
to work at it, she thought that her heart’s blood had gone into the red
stitches.
It was several minutes before Hawkins spoke. “Francie,” he said, turning
round and speaking thickly, “are you going to let me leave you in
this--in this kind of way? Have you realised that when I go on Saturday
it’s most likely--it’s pretty certain, in fact--that we shall never see
each other again?”
“Yes, I have,” she said, after a pause of a second or two. She did not
say that for a fortnight her soul had beaten itself against the thought,
and that to hear it in words was as much as her self-command could bear.
“You seem to care a great deal!” he said violently; “you’re thinking of
nothing but that infernal piece of work, that I loathe the very sight
of. Don’t you think you could do without it for five minutes, at all
events?”
She let her hands drop into her lap, but made no other reply.
“You’re not a bit like what you used to be. You seem to take a delight
in snubbing me and shutting me up. I must say, I never thought you’d
have turned into a prig!” He felt this reproach to be so biting that he
paused upon it to give it its full effect. “Here I am going to England
in four days, and to India in four months, and it’s ten to one if I ever
come home again. I mean to volunteer for the very first row that turns
up. But it’s just the same to you, you won’t even take the trouble to
say you’re sorry.”
“If you had taken the trouble to answer my letters last autumn, you
wouldn’t be saying these things to me now,” she said, speaking low and
hurriedly.
“I don’t believe it! I believe if you had cared about me then you
wouldn’t treat me like this now.”
“I _did_ care for you,” she said, while the hard-held tears forced their
way to her eyes; “you made me do it, and then you threw me over, and now
you’re trying to put the blame on me!”
He saw the glisten on her eyelashes, and it almost took from him the
understanding of what she said.
“Francie,” he said, his voice shaking, and his usually confident eyes
owning the infection of her tears, “you might forget that. I’m
miserable. I can’t bear to leave you!” He sat down again beside her,
and, catching her hand, kissed it with a passion of repentance. He felt
it shrink from his lips, but the touch of it had intoxicated him, and
suddenly she was in his arms.
For a speechless instant they clung to each other; her head dropped to
his shoulder, as if the sharp release from the tension of the last
fortnight had killed her, and the familiar voice murmured in her ear:
“Say it to me--say you love me.”
“Yes I do--my dearest--” she said, with a moan that was tragically at
variance with the confession. “Ah, why do you make me so wicked!” She
snatched herself away from him, and stood up, trembling all over. “I
wish I had never seen you--I wish I was dead.”
“I don’t care what you say now,” said Hawkins, springing to his feet,
“you’ve said you loved me, and I know you mean it. Will you stand by
it?” he went on wildly. “If you’ll only say the word I’ll chuck
everything overboard--I can’t go away from you like this. Once I’m in
England I can’t get back here, and if I did, what good would it be to
me? He’d never give us a chance of seeing each other, and we’d both be
more miserable than we are, unless--unless there was a chance of meeting
you in Dublin or somewhere--?” He stopped for an instant. Francie mutely
shook her head. “Well, then, I shall never see you.”
There was silence, and the words settled down into both their hearts. He
cursed himself for being afraid of her, she, whom he had always felt to
be his inferior, yet when he spoke it was with an effort.
“Come away with me out of this--come away with me for good and all!
What’s the odds? We can’t be more than happy!”
Francie made an instinctive gesture with her hand while he spoke, as if
to stop him, but she said nothing, and almost immediately the distant
rush and rattle of a train came quietly into the stillness.
“That’s his train!” she exclaimed, looking as startled as if the sound
had been a sign from heaven. “Oh, go away! He mustn’t meet you coming
away from here.”
“I’ll go if you give me a kiss,” he answered drunkenly. His arms were
round her again, when they dropped to his side as if he had been shot.
There was a footstep on the path immediately below the lilac bushes, and
Charlotte’s voice called to Francie that she was just starting for home
and had come to make her adieux.
CHAPTER XLIX.
Christopher Dysart drove to Rosemount next morning to see Mr. Lambert on
business. He noticed Mrs. Lambert standing at the drawing-room window as
he drove up, but she left the window before he reached the hall door,
and he went straight to Mr. Lambert’s study without seeing her again.
Francie returned listlessly to the seat that she had sprung from with a
terrified throb of the heart at the thought that the wheels might be
those of Hawkins’ trap, and, putting her elbow on the arm of the chair,
rested her forehead on her hand; her other hand drooped over the side
of the chair, holding still in it the sprig of pink hawthorn that her
husband had given her in the garden an hour before. Her attitude was
full of languor, but her brain was working at its highest pressure, and
at this moment she was asking herself what Sir Christopher would say
when he heard that she had gone away with Gerald. She had seen him
vaguely as one of the crowd of contemptuous or horror-stricken faces
that had thronged about her pillow in the early morning, but his opinion
had carried no more restraining power than that of Aunt Tish, or Uncle
Robert, or Charlotte. Nothing had weighed with her then; the two
principal figures in her life contrasted as simply and convincingly as
night and day, and like night and day, too, were the alternative futures
that were in her hand to choose from. Her eyes were open to her
wrong-doing, but scarcely to her cruelty; it could not be as bad for
Roddy, she thought, to live without her as for her to stay with him and
think of Gerald in India, gone away from her for ever. Her reasoning
power was easily mastered, her conscience was a thing of habit, and not
fitted to grapple with this turbulent passion. She swept towards her
ruin like a little boat staggering under more sail than she can carry.
But the sight of Christopher, momentary as it was, had startled for an
instant the wildness of her thoughts; the saner breath of the outside
world had come with him, and a touch of the self-respect that she had
always gained from him made her press her hot forehead against her hand,
and realise that the way of transgressors would be hard.
She remained sitting there, almost motionless, for a long time. She had
no wish to occupy herself with anything; all the things about her had
already the air of belonging to a past existence; her short sovereignty
was over, and even the furniture that she had, a few weeks ago, pulled
about and rearranged in the first ardour of possession seemed to look at
her in a decorous, clannish way, as if she were already an alien. At
last she heard the study door open, and immediately afterwards,
Christopher’s dog-cart went down the drive. It occurred to her that now,
if ever, was the time to go to her husband and see whether, by
diplomacy, she could evade the ride that he had asked her to take with
him that afternoon. Hawkins had sent her a note saying that he would
come to pay a farewell visit, a cautiously formal note that anyone might
have seen, but that she was just as glad had not been seen by her
husband, and at all hazards she must stay in to meet him. She got up and
went to the study with a nervous colour in her cheeks, glancing out of
the hall window as she passed it, with the idea that the threatening
grey of the sky would be a good argument for staying at home. But if it
rained, Roddy might stay at home too, she thought, and that would be
worse than anything. That was her last thought as she went into the
study.
Lambert was standing with his hands in his pockets, looking down at the
pile of papers and books on the table, and Francie was instantly struck
by something unwonted in his attitude, something rigid and yet spent,
that was very different from his usual bearing. He looked at her with
heavy eyes, and going to his chair let himself drop into it; then, still
silently, he held out his hand to her. She thought he looked older, and
that his face was puffy and unattractive, and in the highly-strung state
of her nerves she felt a repugnance to him that almost horrified her. It
is an unfortunate trait of human nature that a call for sympathy from a
person with whom sympathy has been lost has a repellent instead of an
attractive power, and if a strong emotion does not appear pathetic, it
is terribly near the ludicrous. In justice to Francie it must be said
that her dominant feeling as she gave Lambert her hand and was drawn
down on to his knee was less repulsion than a sense of her own
hypocrisy.
“What’s the matter, Roddy?” she asked, after a second or two of silence,
during which she felt the labouring of his breath.
“I’m done for,” he said, “that’s what’s the matter.”
“Why! what do you mean?” she exclaimed, turning her startled face half
towards him, and trying not to shrink as his hot breath struck on her
cheek.
“I’ve lost the agency.”
“Lost the agency!” repeated Francie, feeling as though the world with
all the things she believed to be most solid were rocking under her
feet. “Do you mean he’s after dismissing you?”
Lambert moved involuntarily, from the twitch of pain that the word gave
him. It was this very term that Lismoyle would soon apply to him, as if
he were a thieving butler or a drunken coachman.
“That’s about what it will come to,” he said bitterly. “He was too
damned considerate to tell me so to-day, but he’s going to do it. He’s
always hated me just as I have hated him, and this is his chance, though
God knows what’s given it to him.”
“You’re raving!” cried Francie incredulously; “what on earth would make
him turn you away?” She felt that her voice was sharp and unnatural, but
she could not make it otherwise. The position was becoming momently more
horrible from the weight of unknown catastrophe, the sight of her
husband’s suffering and the struggle to sympathise with it, and the
hollow disconnection between herself and everything about her.
“I can’t tell you--all in a minute,” he said with difficulty. “Wouldn’t
you put your arm round my neck, Francie, as if you were sorry for me?
You might be sorry for me, and for yourself too. We’re ruined. Oh my
God!” he groaned, “we’re ruined!”
She put her arm round his neck, and pity, and a sense that it was
expected of her, made her kiss his forehead. At the touch of her lips
his sobs came suddenly and dreadfully, and his arms drew her
convulsively to him. She lay there helpless and dry-eyed, enduring a
wretchedness that in some ways was comparable to his own, but never
becoming merged in the situation, never quite losing her sense of
repulsion at his abasement.
“I never meant to touch a farthing of his--in the long run--” he went
on, recovering himself a little; “I’d have paid him back every
half-penny in the end--but, of course, he doesn’t believe that. What
does he care what I say!”
“Did you borrow money from him, or what was it?” asked Francie gently.
“Yes, I did,” replied Lambert, setting his teeth; “but I didn’t tell
him. I was eaten up with debts, and I had to--to borrow some of the
estate money.” It was anguish to lower himself from the pedestal of
riches and omnipotence on which he had always posed to her, and he spoke
stumblingly. “It’s very hard to explain these things to you--it’s--it’s
not so unusual as you’d think--and then, before I’d time to get things
square again, some infernal mischief-maker has set him on to ask to see
the books, and put him up to matters that he’d never have found out for
himself.”
“Was he angry?” she asked, with the quietness that was so unlike her.
“Oh, I don’t know--I don’t care--” moving again restlessly in his chair;
“he’s such a rotten, cold-blooded devil, you can’t tell what he’s at.”
Even at this juncture it gave him pleasure to make little of Christopher
to Francie. “He asked me the most beastly questions he could think of,
in that d--d stammering way of his. He’s to write to me in two or three
days, and I know well what he’ll say,” he went on with a stabbing sigh;
“I suppose he’ll have it all over the country in a week’s time. He’s
been to the bank and seen the estate account, and that’s what’s done me.
I asked him plump and plain if he hadn’t been put up to it, and he
didn’t deny it, but there’s no one could have known what was paid into
that account but Baker or one of the clerks, and they knew nothing about
the fines--I mean--they couldn’t understand enough to tell him anything.
But what does it matter who told him. The thing’s done now, and I may as
well give up.”
“What will you do?” said Francie faintly.
“If it wasn’t for you I think I’d put a bullet through my head,” he
answered, his innately vulgar soul prompting him to express the best
thought that was in him in conventional heroics, “but I couldn’t leave
you, Francie--I couldn’t leave you--” he broke down again--“it was for
our honeymoon I took the most of the money--” He could not go on, and
her whole frame was shaken by his sobs.
“Don’t, Roddy, don’t cry,” she murmured, feeling cold and sick.
“He knows I took the money,” Lambert went on incoherently; “I’ll have to
leave the country--I’ll sell everything--” he got up and began to walk
about the room--“I’ll pay him--damn him--I’ll pay him every farthing. He
sha’n’t have it to say he was kept waiting for his money! He shall have
it this week!”
“But how will you pay him if you haven’t the money?” said Francie, with
the same lifelessness of voice that had characterised her throughout.
“I’ll borrow the money--I’ll raise it on the furniture; I’ll send the
horses up to Sewell’s, though God knows what price I’ll get for them
this time of year, but I’ll manage it somehow. I’ll go out to
Gurthnamuckla this very afternoon about it. Charlotte’s got a head on
her shoulders--” He stood still, and the idea of borrowing from
Charlotte herself took hold of him. He felt that such trouble as this
must command her instant sympathy, and awaken all the warmth of their
old friendship, and his mind turned towards her stronger intelligence
with a reliance that was creditable to his ideas of the duties of a
friend. “I could give her a bill of sale on the horses and furniture,”
he said to himself.
His eyes rested for the first time on Francie, who had sunk into the
chair from which he had risen, and was looking at him as if she did not
see him. Her hair was ruffled from lying on his shoulder, and her eyes
were wild and fixed, like those of a person who is looking at a far-off
spectacle of disaster and grief.
CHAPTER L.
The expected rain had not come, though the air was heavy and damp with
the promise of it. It hung unshed, above the thirsty country, looking
down gloomily upon the dusty roads, and the soft and straight young
grass in the meadows; waiting for the night, when the wind would moan
and cry for it, and the newborn leaves would shudder in the dark at its
coming.
At three o’clock Francie was sure that the afternoon would be fine, and
soon afterwards she came downstairs in her habit, and went into the
drawing-room to wait for the black mare to be brought to the door. She
was going to ride towards Gurthnamuckla to meet Lambert, who had gone
there some time before; he had made Francie promise to meet him on his
way home, and she was going to keep her word. He had become quite a
different person to her since the morning, a person who no longer
appealed to her admiration or her confidence, but solely and
distressingly to her pity. She had always thought of him as invincible,
self-sufficing, and possessed of innumerable interests besides herself;
she knew him now as dishonest and disgraced, and miserable, stripped of
all his pretensions and vanities, but she cared for him to-day more than
yesterday. It was against her will that his weakness appealed to her;
she would have given worlds for a heart that did not smite her at its
claim, but her pride helped out her compassion. She told herself that
she could not let people have it to say that she ran away from Roddy
because he was in trouble.
She felt chilly, and she shivered as she stood by the fire, whose
unseasonable extravagance daily vexed the righteous soul of Eliza
Hackett. Hawkins’ note was in her hand, and she read it through twice
while she waited; then, as she heard the sound of wheels on the gravel,
she tore it in two and threw it into the fire, and, for the second time
that morning, ran to the window.
It was Christopher Dysart again. He saw her at the window and took off
his cap, and before he had time to ring the bell, she had opened the
hall door. She had, he saw at once, been crying, and her paleness, and
the tell-tale heaviness of her eyes, contrasted pathetically with the
smartness of her figure in her riding habit, and the boyish jauntiness
of her hard felt hat.
“Mr. Lambert isn’t in, Sir Christopher,” she began at once, as if she
had made up her mind whom he had come to see; “but won’t you come in?”
“Oh--thank you--I--I haven’t much time--I merely wanted to speak to your
husband,” stammered Christopher.
“Oh, please come in,” she repeated, “I want to speak to you.” Her eyes
suddenly filled with tears, and she turned quickly from him and walked
towards the drawing-room.
Christopher followed her with the mien of a criminal. He felt that he
would rather have been robbed twenty times over than see the eyes that,
in his memory, had always been brilliant and undefeated, avoiding his as
if they were afraid of him, and know that he was the autocrat before
whom she trembled. She remained standing near the middle of the room,
with one hand on the corner of the piano, whose gaudy draperies had,
even at this juncture, a painful subeffect upon Christopher; her other
hand fidgeted restlessly with a fold of the habit that she was holding
up, and it was evident that whatever her motive had been in bringing
him in, her courage was not equal to it. Christopher waited for her to
speak, until the silence became unendurable.
“I intended to have been here earlier,” he said, saying anything rather
than nothing, “but there was a great deal to be got through at the Bench
to-day, and I’ve only just got away. You know I’m a magistrate now, and
indifferently minister justice--”
“I’m glad I hadn’t gone out when you came,” she interrupted, as though,
having found a beginning, she could not lose a moment in using it. “I
wanted to say that if you--if you’ll only give Roddy a week’s time he’ll
pay you. He only meant to borrow the money, like, and he thought he
could pay you before; but, indeed, he says he’ll pay you in a week.” Her
voice was low and full of bitterest humiliation, and Christopher wished
that before he had arraigned his victim, and offered him up as an
oblation to his half-hearted sense of duty, he had known that his
infirmity of purpose would have brought him back three hours afterwards
to offer the culprit a way out of his difficulties. It would have saved
him from his present hateful position, and what it would have saved her
was so evident, that he turned his head away as he spoke, rather than
look at her.
“I came back to tell your husband that--that he could arrange things
in--in some such way,” he said, as guiltily and awkwardly as a boy. “I’m
sorry--more sorry than I can say--that he should have spoken to you
about it. Of course, that was my fault. I should have told him then what
I came to tell him now.”
“He’s gone out now to see about selling his horses and the furniture,”
went on Francie, scarcely realising all of Christopher’s leniency in her
desire to prove Lambert’s severe purity of action. Her mind was not
capable of more than one idea--one, that is, in addition to the question
that had monopolised it since yesterday afternoon, and Christopher’s
method of expressing himself had never been easily understood by her.
“Oh, he mustn’t think of doing that!” exclaimed Christopher, horrified
that she should think him a Shylock, demanding so extreme a measure of
restitution; “it wasn’t the actual money question that--that we
disagreed about; he can take as long as he likes about repaying me. In
fact--in fact you can tell him from me that--he said something this
morning about giving up the agency. Well, I--I should be glad if he
would keep it.”
He had stultified himself now effectually; he knew that he had acted
like a fool, and he felt quite sure that Mr. Lambert’s sense of
gratitude would not prevent his holding the same opinion. He even
foresaw Lambert’s complacent assumption that Francie had talked him
over, but he could not help himself. The abstract justice of allowing
the innocent to suffer with the guilty was beyond him; he forgot to
theorise, and acted on instinct as simply as a savage. She also had
acted on instinct. When she called him in she had nerved herself to ask
for reprieve, but she never hoped for forgiveness, and as his intention
penetrated the egotism of suffering, the thought leaped with it that, if
Roddy were to be let off, everything would be on the same footing that
it had been yesterday evening. A blush that was incomprehensible to
Christopher swept over her face; the grasp of circumstances relaxed
somewhat, and a jangle of unexplainable feelings confused what
self-control she had left.
“You’re awfully good,” she began half hysterically. “I always knew you
were good; I wish Roddy was like you! Oh, I wish I was like you! I can’t
help it--I can’t help crying; you were always too good to me, and I
never was worth it!” She sat down on one of the high stiff chairs, for
which her predecessor had worked beaded seats, and hid her eyes in her
handkerchief. “Please don’t talk to me; please don’t say anything to
me--” She stopped suddenly. “What’s that? Is that anyone riding up?”
“No. It’s your horse coming round from the yard,” said Christopher,
taking a step towards the window, and trying to keep up the farce of
talking as if nothing had happened.
“My horse!” she exclaimed, starting up. “Oh, yes, I must go and meet
Roddy. I mustn’t wait any longer.” She began, as if unconscious of
Christopher’s presence, to look for the whip and gloves that she had
laid down. He saw them before she did, and handed them to her.
“Good-bye,” he said, taking her cold, trembling hand, “I must go too.
You will tell your husband that it’s--it’s all right.”
“Yes. I’ll tell him. I’m going to meet him. I must start now,” she
answered, scarcely seeming to notice what he said, and withdrawing her
hand from his, she began hurriedly to button on her gloves.
Christopher did not wait for further dismissal, but when his hand was on
the door, her old self suddenly woke.
“Look at me letting you go away without telling you a bit how grateful I
am to you!” she said, with a lift of her tear-disfigured eyes that was
like a changeling of the look he used to know; “but don’t you remember
what Mrs. Baker said about me, that ‘you couldn’t expect any manners
from a Dublin Jackeen.’?”
She laughed weakly, and Christopher, stammering more than ever in an
attempt to say that there was nothing to be grateful for, got himself
out of the room.
After he had gone, Francie gave herself no time to think. Everything was
reeling round her as she went out on to the steps, and even Michael the
groom thought to himself that if he hadn’t the trap to wash, he’d put
the saddle on the chestnut and folly the misthress, she had that
thrimulous way with her when he put the reins into her hands, and only
for it was the mare she was riding he wouldn’t see her go out by
herself.
It was the first of June, and the gaiety of the spring was nearly gone.
The flowers had fallen from the hawthorn, the bluebells and primroses
were vanishing as quietly as they came, the meadows were already
swarthy, and the breaths of air that sent pale shimmers across them,
were full of the unspeakable fragrance of the ripening grass. Under the
trees, near Rosemount, the shadowing greenness had saturated the
daylight with its gloom, but out among the open pastures and meadows the
large grey sky seemed almost bright, and, in the rich sobriety of tone,
the red cattle were brilliant spots of colour.
The black mare and her rider were now on thoroughly confidential terms,
and, so humiliatingly interwoven are soul and body, as the exercise
quickened the blood in her veins, Francie’s incorrigible youth rose up,
and while it brightened her eyes and drove colour to her cheeks, it
whispered that somehow or other happiness might come to her. She rode
fast till she reached the turn to Gurthnamuckla, and there, mindful of
her husband’s injunctions that she was not to ride up to the house, but
to wait for him on the road, she relapsed into a walk.
As she slackened her pace, all the thoughts that she had been riding
away from came up with her again. What claim had Roddy on her now? She
had got him out of his trouble, and that was the most he could expect
her to do for him. He hadn’t thought much about the trouble he was
bringing on her; he never as much as said he was sorry for the disgrace
it would be to her. Why should she break her heart for him and Gerald’s
heart too?--as she said Hawkins’ name to herself, her hands fell into
her lap, and she moaned aloud. Every step the mare was taking was
carrying her farther from him, but yet she could not turn back. She was
changed since yesterday; she had seen her husband’s soul laid bare, and
it had shown her how tremendous were sin and duty; it had touched her
slumbering moral sense as well as her kindness, and though she rebelled
she did not dare to turn back.
It was not till she heard a pony’s quick gallop behind her, and looking
back, saw Hawkins riding after her at full speed, that she knew how soon
she was to be tested. She had scarcely time to collect herself before he
was pulling up the pony beside her, and had turned a flushed and angry
face towards her.
“Didn’t you get my note? Didn’t you know I was coming?” he began in hot
remonstrance. Then, seeing in a moment how ill and strange she looked,
“What’s the matter? Has anything happened?”
“Roddy came home yesterday evening,” she said, with her eyes fixed on
the mare’s mane.
“Well, I know that,” interrupted Hawkins. “Do you mean that he was
angry? Did he find out anything about me? If he did see the note I wrote
you, there was nothing in that.” Francie shook her head. “Then it’s
nothing? It’s only that you’ve been frightened by that brute,” he said,
kicking his pony up beside the mare, and trying to look into Francie’s
downcast eyes. “Don’t mind him. It won’t be for long.”
“You mustn’t say that,” she said hurriedly. “I was very wrong yesterday,
and I’m sorry for it now.”
“I know you’re not!” he burst out, with all the conviction that he felt.
“You can’t unsay what you said to me yesterday. I sat up the whole night
thinking the thing over and thinking of you, and at last I thought of a
fellow I know out in New Zealand, who told me last year I ought to
chuck the army and go out there.” He dropped his reins on the pony’s
neck, and took Francie’s hand. “Why shouldn’t we go there together,
Francie? I’ll give up everything for you, my darling!”
She feebly tried to take her hand away, but did not reply.
“I’ve got three hundred a year of my own, and we can do ourselves
awfully well on that out there. We’ll always have lots of horses, and
it’s a ripping climate--and--and I love you, and I’ll always love you!”
He was carried away by his own words, and, stooping his head, he kissed
her hand again and again.
Every pulse in her body answered to his touch, and when she drew her
hand away, it was with an effort that was more than physical.
“Ah! stop, stop,” she cried. “I’ve changed--I didn’t mean it.”
“Didn’t mean what?” demanded Hawkins, with his light eyes on fire.
“Oh, leave me alone,” she said, turning her distracted face towards him.
“I’m nearly out of my mind as it is. What made you follow me out here? I
came out so as I wouldn’t see you, and I’m going to meet Roddy now.”
Hawkins’ colour died slowly down to a patchy white.
“What do you think it was that made me follow you? Do you want to make
me tell you over again what you know already?” She did not answer, and
he went on, trying to fight against his own fears by speaking very
quietly and rationally. “I don’t know what you’re at, Francie. I don’t
believe you know what you’re saying. Something must have happened, and
it would be fairer to tell me what it is, than to drive me distracted in
this sort of way.”
There was a pause of several seconds, and he was framing a fresh
remonstrance when she spoke.
“Roddy’s in great trouble. I wouldn’t leave him,” she said, taking
refuge in a prevarication of the exact truth.
Something about her told Hawkins that things were likely to go hard with
him, and there was something, too, that melted his anger as it rose; but
her pale face drew him to a height of passion that he had not known
before.
“And don’t you think anything about _me_?” he said with a breaking
voice. “Are you ready to throw me overboard just because he’s in
trouble, when you know he doesn’t care for you a tenth part as much as I
do? Do you mean to tell me that you want me to go away, and say good-bye
to you for ever? If you do, I’ll go, and if you hear I’ve gone to the
devil, you’ll know who sent me.”
The naïve selfishness of this argument was not perceived by either.
Hawkins felt his position to be almost noble, and did not in the least
realise what he was asking Francie to sacrifice for him. He had even
forgotten the idea that had occurred to him last night, that to go to
New Zealand would be a pleasanter way of escaping from his creditors
than marrying Miss Coppard. Certainly Francie had no thought of his
selfishness or of her own sacrifice. She was giddy with struggle; right
and wrong had lost their meaning and changed places elusively; the only
things that she saw clearly were the beautiful future that had been
offered to her, and the look in Roddy’s face when she had told him that
wherever he had to go she would go with him.
The horses had moved staidly on, while these two lives stood still and
wrestled with their fate, and the summit was slowly reached of the long
hill on which Lambert had once pointed out to her the hoof-prints of
Hawkins’ pony. The white road and the grey rock country stretched out
before them, colourless and discouraging under the colourless sky, and
Hawkins still waited for his answer. Coming towards them up the tedious
slope was a string of half-a-dozen carts, with a few people walking on
either side; an unremarkable procession, that might have meant a
wedding, or merely a neighbourly return from market, but for a long,
yellow coffin that lay, hemmed in between old women, in the midmost
cart. Francie felt a superstitious thrill as she saw it; a country
funeral, with its barbarous and yet fitting crudity, always seemed to
bring death nearer to her than the plumed conventionalities of the
hearses and mourning coaches that she was accustomed to. She had once
been to the funeral of a fellow Sunday-school child in Dublin, and the
first verse of the hymn that they had sung then, came back, and began to
weave itself in with the beat of the mare’s hoofs.
“Brief life is here our portion,
Brief sorrow, short-lived care,
The life that knows no ending,
The tearless life is there.”
“Francie, are you going to answer me? Come away with me this very day.
We could catch the six o’clock train before any one knew--dearest, if
you love me--” His roughened, unsteady voice seemed to come to her from
a distance, and yet was like a whisper in her own heart.
“Wait till we are past the funeral,” she said, catching, in her agony,
at the chance of a minute’s respite.
At the same moment an old man, who had been standing by the side of the
road, leaning on his stick, turned towards the riders, and Francie
recognised in him Charlotte’s retainer, Billy Grainy. His always
bloodshot eyes were redder than ever, his mouth dribbled like a baby’s,
and the smell of whisky poisoned the air all around him.
“I’m waitin’ on thim here this half-hour,” he began, in a loud drunken
mumble, hobbling to Francie’s side, and moving along beside the mare,
“as long as they were taking her back the road to cry her at her own
gate. Owld bones is wake, asthore, owld bones is wake!” He caught at the
hem of Francie’s habit to steady himself; “be cripes! Miss Duffy was a
fine woman, Lord ha’ maircy on her. And a great woman! And divil blasht
thim that threw her out of her farm to die in the Union--the dom
ruffins.”
As on the day, now very long ago, when she had first ridden to
Gurthnamuckla, Francie tried to shake his hand off her habit; he
released it stupidly, and staggering to the side of the road, went on
grumbling and cursing. The first cart, creaking and rattling under its
load of mourners, was beside them by this time, and Billy, for the
benefit of its occupants, broke into a howl of lamentation.
“Thanks be to God Almighty, and thanks be to His Mother, the crayture
had thim belonging to her that would bury her like a Christian.” He
shook his fist at Francie. “Ah--ha! go home to himself and owld
Charlotte, though it’s little thim regards you--” He burst into drunken
laughter, bending and tottering over his stick.
Francie, heedless of the etiquette that required that she and Hawkins
should stop their horses till the funeral passed, struck the mare, and
passed by him at a quickened pace. The faces in the carts were all
turned upon her, and she felt as if she were enduring, in a dream, the
eyes of an implacable tribunal; even the mare seemed to share in her
agitation, and sidled and fidgeted on the narrow strip of road, that
was all the space left to her by the carts. The coffin was almost
abreast of Francie now, and her eyes rested with a kind of fascination
on its bare, yellow surface. She became dimly aware that Norry the Boat
was squatted beside it on the straw, when one of the other women began
suddenly to groan and thump on the coffin-lid with her fists, in
preparation for a burst of the Irish Cry, and at the signal Norry fell
upon her knees, and flung out her arms inside her cloak, with a gesture
that made her look like a great vulture opening its wings for flight.
The cloak flapped right across the mare’s face, and she swerved from the
cart with a buck that loosened her rider in the saddle, and shook her
hat off. There was a screech of alarm from all the women, the frightened
mare gave a second and a third buck, and at the third Francie was shot
into the air, and fell, head first, on the road.
CHAPTER LI.
The floor of the potato loft at Gurthnamuckla had for a long time needed
repairs, a circumstance not in itself distressing to Miss Mullen, who
held that effort after mere theoretical symmetry was unjustifiable waste
of time in either housekeeping or farming. On this first of June,
however, an intimation from Norry that “there’s ne’er a pratie ye have
that isn’t ate with the rats,” given with the thinly-veiled triumph of
servants in such announcements, caused a truculent visit of inspection
to the potato loft; and in her first spare moment of the afternoon, Miss
Mullen set forth with her tool-basket, and some boards from a
packing-case, to make good the breaches with her own hands. Doing it
herself saved the necessity of taking the men from their work, and
moreover ensured its being properly done.
So she thought, as, having climbed the ladder that led from the cowhouse
to the loft, she put her tools on the ground, and surveyed with a
workman’s eye the job she had set herself. The loft was hot and airless,
redolent of the cowhouse below, as well as of the clayey mustiness of
the potatoes that were sprouting in the dirt on the floor, and even
sending pallid, worm-like roots down into space through the cracks in
the boards. Miss Mullen propped the window-shutter open with the
largest potato, and, pinning up her skirt, fell to work.
She had been hammering and sawing for a quarter of an hour when she
heard the clatter of a horse’s hoofs on the cobble-stones of the yard,
and, getting up from her knees, advanced to the window with caution and
looked out. It was Mr. Lambert, in the act of pulling up his awkward
young horse, and she stood looking down at him in silence while he
dismounted, with a remarkable expression on her face, one in which some
acute mental process was mixed with the half-unconscious and yet
all-observant recognition of an intensely familiar object.
“Hullo, Roddy!” she called out at last, “is that you? What brings you
over so early?”
Mr. Lambert started with more violence than the occasion seemed to
demand.
“Hullo!” he replied, in a voice not like his own, “is that where you
are?”
“Yes, and it’s where I’m going to stay. This is the kind of fancy work
I’m at,” brandishing her saw; “so if you want to talk to me you must
come up here.”
“All right,” said Lambert, gloomily, “I’ll come up as soon as I put the
colt in the stable.”
It is a fact so improbable as to be worth noting, that before Lambert
found his way up the ladder, Miss Mullen had unpinned her skirt and
fastened up the end of a plait that had escaped from the massive coils
at the back of her head.
“Well, and where’s the woman that owns you?” she asked, beginning to
work again, while her visitor stood in obvious discomfort, with his head
touching the rafters, and the light from the low window striking sharply
up against his red and heavy eyes.
“At home,” he replied, almost vacantly. “I’d have been here half an hour
ago or more,” he went on after a moment or two, “but the colt cast a
shoe, and I had to go on to the forge beyond the cross to get it put
on.”
Charlotte, with a flat pencil in her mouth, grunted responsively, while
she measured off a piece of board, and, holding it with her knee on the
body of a legless wheelbarrow, began to saw it across. Lambert looked
on, provoked and disconcerted by this engrossing industry. With his
brimming sense of collapse and crisis, he felt that even this temporary
delay of sympathy was an unkindness.
“That colt must be sold this week, so I couldn’t afford to knock his
hoof to bits on the hard road.” His manner was so portentous that
Charlotte looked up again, and permitted herself to remark on what had
been apparent to her the moment she saw him.
“Why, what’s the matter with you, Roddy? Now I come to see you, you look
as if you’d been at your own funeral.”
“I wish to God I had! It would be the best thing could happen me.”
He found pleasure in saying something to startle her, and in seeing that
her face became a shade hotter than the stifling air and the stooping
over her work had made it.
“What makes you talk like that?” she said, a little strangely, as it
seemed to him.
He thought she was moved, and he immediately felt his position to be
more pathetic than he had believed. It would be much easier to explain
the matter to Charlotte than to Francie, he felt at once; Charlotte
understood business matters, a formula which conveyed to his mind much
comfortable flexibility in money affairs.
“Charlotte,” he said, looking down at her with eyes that self-pity and
shaken self-control were moistening again, “I’m in most terrible
trouble. Will you help me?”
“Wait till I hear what it is and I’ll tell you that,” replied Charlotte,
with the same peculiar, flushed look on her face, and suggestion in her
voice of strong and latent feeling. He could not tell how it was, but he
felt as if she knew what he was going to say.
“I’m four hundred pounds in debt to the estate, and Dysart has found it
out,” he said, lowering his voice as if afraid that the spiders and
wood-lice might repeat his secret.
“Four hundred,” thought Charlotte; “that’s more than I reckoned;” but
she said aloud, “My God! Roddy, how did that happen?”
“I declare to you I don’t know how it happened. One thing and another
came against me, and I had to borrow this money, and before I could pay
it he found out.”
Lambert was a pitiable figure as he made his confession, his head, his
shoulders, and even his moustache drooping limply, and his hands
nervously twisting his ash plant.
“That’s a bad business,” said Charlotte reflectively, and was silent for
a moment, while Lambert realised the satisfaction of dealing with an
intelligence that could take in such a situation instantaneously,
without alarm or even surprise.
“Is he going to give you the sack?” she asked.
“I don’t know yet. He didn’t say anything definite.”
Lambert found the question hard to bear, but he endured it for the sake
of the chance it gave him to lead up to the main point of the interview.
“If I could have that four hundred placed to his credit before I see him
next, I believe there’d be an end of it. Not that I’d stay with him,” he
went on, trying to bluster, “or with any man that treated me this kind
of way, going behind my back to look at the accounts.”
“Is that the way he found you out?” asked Charlotte, taking up the lid
of the packing-case and twisting a nail out of it with her hammer. “He
must be smarter than you took him for.”
“Someone must have put him up to it,” said Lambert, “someone who’d got
at the books. It beats me to make it out. But what’s the good of
thinking of that? The thing that’s setting me mad is to know how to pay
him.” He waited to see if Charlotte would speak, but she was occupied in
straightening the nail against the wall with her hammer, and he went on
with a dry throat. “I’m going to sell all my horses, Charlotte, and I
daresay I can raise some money on the furniture; but it’s no easy job to
raise money in such a hurry as this, and if I’m to be saved from being
disgraced, I ought to have it at once to stop his mouth. I believe if I
could pay him at once he wouldn’t have spunk enough to go any further
with the thing.” He waited again, but the friend of his youth continued
silent. “Charlotte, no man ever had a better friend, through thick and
thin, than I’ve had in you. There’s no other person living that I’d put
myself under an obligation to but yourself. Charlotte, for the sake of
all that’s ever been between us, would you lend me the money?”
Her face was hidden from him as she knelt, and he stooped and placed a
clinging, affectionate hand upon her shoulder. Miss Mullen got up
abruptly, and Lambert’s hand fell.
“All that’s ever been between us is certainly a very weighty argument,
Roddy,” she said with a smile that deepened the ugly lines about her
mouth, and gave Lambert a chilly qualm. “There’s a matter of three
hundred pounds between us, if that’s what you mean.”
“I know, Charlotte,” he said hastily. “No one remembers that better than
I do. But this is a different kind of thing altogether. I’d give you a
bill of sale on everything at Rosemount--and there are the horses out
here too. Of course, I suppose I might be able to raise the money at the
bank or somewhere, but it’s a very different thing to deal with a
friend, and a friend who can hold her tongue too. You never failed me
yet, Charlotte, old girl, and I don’t believe you’ll do it now!”
His handsome, dark eyes were bent upon her face with all the pathos he
was master of, and he was glad to feel tears rising in them.
“Well, I’m afraid that’s just what I’ll have to do,” she said, flinging
away the nail that she had tried to straighten, and fumbling in her
pocket for another; “I may be able to hold my tongue, but I don’t hold
with throwing good money after bad.”
Lambert stood quite still, staring at her, trying to believe that this
was the Charlotte who had trembled when he kissed her, whose love for
him had made her his useful and faithful thrall.
“Do you mean to say that you’ll see me ruined and disgraced sooner than
put out your hand to help me?” he said passionately.
“I thought you said you could get the money somewhere else,” she
replied, with undisturbed coolness, “and you might know that coming to
me for money is like going to the goat’s house for wool. I’ve got
nothing more to lend, and no one ought to know that better than
yourself!”
Charlotte was standing, yellow-faced and insolent, opposite to Lambert,
with her hands in the pockets of her apron; in every way a contrast to
him, with his flushed forehead and suffused eyes. The dull, white light
that struck up into the roof from the whitewashed kitchen wall, showed
Lambert the furrowed paths of implacability in his adversary’s face, as
plainly as it showed her his defeat and desperation.
“_You’ve_ got no more money to lend, d’ye say!” he repeated, with a
laugh that showed he had courage enough left to lose his temper; “I
suppose you’ve got all the money you got eighteen months ago from the
old lady lent out? ’Pon my word, considering you got Francie’s share of
it for yourself, I think it would have been civiller to have given her
husband the first refusal of a loan! I daresay I’d have given you as
good interest as your friends in Ferry Lane!”
Charlotte’s eyes suddenly lost their exaggerated indifference.
“And if she ever had the smallest claim to what ye call a share!” she
vociferated, “haven’t you had it twenty times over? Was there ever a
time that ye came cringing and crawling to me for money that I refused
it to ye? And how do you thank me? By embezzling the money I paid for
the land, and then coming to try and get it out of me over again,
because Sir Christopher Dysart is taught sense to look into his own
affairs, and see how his agent is cheating him!”
Some quality of triumph in her tone, some light of previous knowledge in
her eye, struck Lambert.
“Was it you told him?” he said hoarsely, “was it you spoke to Dysart?”
Even now and then in the conduct of her affairs, Miss Mullen permitted
the gratification of her temper to take the place of the slower pleasure
of secrecy.
“Yes, I told him,” she answered, without hesitation.
“You went to Dysart, and set him on to ruin me!” said Lambert, in a
voice that had nearly as much horror as rage in it.
“And may I ask you what you’ve ever done for me,” she said, gripping her
hammer with a strong, trembling hand, “that I was to keep your tricks
from being found out for you? What reason was there in God’s earth that
I wasn’t to do my plain duty by those that are older friends than you?”
“What reason!” Lambert almost choked from the intolerable audacity and
heartlessness of the question. “Are you in your right mind to ask me
that? You, that’s been like a--a near relation to me all these years, or
pretending to be! There was a time you wouldn’t have done this to me,
you know it damned well, and so do I. You were glad enough to do
anything for me then, so long as I’d be as much as civil to you, and
now, I suppose, this is your dirty devilish spite, because you were cut
out by someone else!”
She did not flinch as the words went through and through her.
“Take care of yourself!” she said, grinning at him, “perhaps you’re not
the one to talk about being cut out! Oh, I don’t think ye need look as
if ye didn’t understand me. At all events, all ye have to do is to go
home and ask your servants--or, for the matter of that, anyone in the
streets of Lismoyle--who it is that’s cut ye out, and made ye the
laughing-stock of the country?”
She put her hand on the dusty beam beside her, giddy with her gratified
impulse, as she saw him take the blow and wither under it.
She scarcely heard at first the strange and sudden sound of commotion
that had sprung up like a wind in the house opposite. The windows were
all open, and through them came the sound of banging doors and running
footsteps, and then Norry’s voice screaming something as she rushed from
room to room. She was in the kitchen now, and the words came gasping and
sobbing through the open door.
“Where’s Miss Charlotte? Where is she? O God! O God! Where is she? Miss
Francie’s killed, her neck’s broke below on the road! O God of Heaven,
help us!”
Neither Charlotte nor Lambert heard clearly what she said, but the
shapeless terror of calamity came about them like a vapour and blanched
the hatred in their faces. In a moment they were together at the window,
and at the same instant Norry burst out into the yard, with outflung
arms and grey hair streaming. As she saw Lambert, her strength seemed to
go from her. She staggered back, and, catching at the door for support,
turned from him and hid her face in her cloak.
FINIS.
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