The Real Charlotte Part 10

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 pa.s.sed up the lake just now, and he shouted out to me to say that he'd be at the turfboat 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 rechauffe 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 cla.s.s 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 sh.o.r.e, 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 darkgreen 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 sh.o.r.e 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 plat.i.tudes, 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 Jonsonian 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 compet.i.tion, 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 a.s.sure 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 pigstye. 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!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed 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 att.i.tude was as evident as if she had spoken.

"Hawkins is very popular in Lismoyle," observed Lambert, tepidly.

"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's 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 a.s.sure 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 into 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 s.p.a.ce 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 sh.o.r.e, 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 peac.o.c.k. 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 bra.s.s taps, to throw sentiment for a s.p.a.ce 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 s.p.a.ces 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 pa.s.sionate, 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 anaesthetic, 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 sh.o.r.e 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 ash.o.r.e 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 could'nt 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.