The Real Charlotte Part 17

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 coa.r.s.ely; "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 pa.s.sed 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 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 G.o.d I'm not such an a.s.s 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 G.o.d!" 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 cheris.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.sionately; "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 pa.s.sions 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 x.x.xV.

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 advent.i.tious 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 companions.h.i.+p; 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 contrariety of things in general. He admitted his engagement to Miss Coppard with about as ill a grace as was possible, and when allied 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 grat.i.tude 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 hara.s.sed 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 p.r.o.nounced them to have become 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 fas.h.i.+on (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 m.u.f.fy's basket was empty, for m.u.f.fy, 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 walnuttopped 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 st.i.tches. 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 St., 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 doc.u.ment 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 cla.s.s, 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 superst.i.tious thrill ran through him. Then he heard a footstep in the pa.s.sage, 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sage, 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 armchair 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 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, d.a.m.n 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 sanct.i.ties 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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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 Let.i.tia Fitzpatrick, that I'll be bound hasn't more than two gowns to her back, I might send her a bundle."

"Send them to who 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 there 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 Scott! 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 blus.h.i.+ng 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 f.a.n.n.y 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 gra.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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 p.r.o.nounced. He looked at his watch.

"Half-past twelve, by Jove! Look here, Charlotte, let's come down and have a gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s 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 friends.h.i.+p, any more than she need be expected to refuse another half gla.s.s 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 tr.i.m.m.i.n.g his nails with a pocketknife, 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 grat.i.tude 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 hoa.r.s.eness 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 x.x.xVI.

The house that the Fitzpatricks had taken in Bray for the winter was not situated in what is known as the fas.h.i.+onable 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 cla.s.s 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, not 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 b.u.t.ter, 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, pa.s.sed 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 s.h.i.+eld 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.