The Real Charlotte Part 11

"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 anaesthetic 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 p.r.o.nouns 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 blase 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 grat.i.tude 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 goodbye.

"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 pa.s.sion 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 Uhlanlike 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 mottoes 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 s.n.a.t.c.h 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 ma.s.sive proportions of his employer, Mr. Lynch. In this a.s.semblage, 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 rechauffe 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 fearfully 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 ba.s.s, 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 a.s.s, 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 tow-row 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 m.u.f.fled 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."