The Real Charlotte Part 13

"It's a sin to see that lovely pasture going to waste," said Lambert, leaning back and puffing at his pipe. "Peter Joyce hasn't six head of cattle on it this minute."

"If you and I had it, Roddy," said Charlotte, eyeing him with a curious, guarded tenderness, "it wouldn't be that way."

Some vibration of the strong, incongruous tremor that pa.s.sed through her as she spoke, reached Lambert's indolent perception and startled it. It reminded him of the nebulous understanding that taking her money seemed to have involved him in; he believed he knew why she had given it to him, and though he knew also that he held his advantage upon precarious terms, even his coa.r.s.e-fibred nature found something repellent in the thought of having to diplomatise with such affections as Charlotte's.

"I was up at Murphy's yesterday," he said, as if his train of ideas had not been interrupted. "He has a grand filly there that I'd buy to-morrow if I had the money, or any place to put her. There's a pot of money in her."

"Well, if you'll get me Gurthnamuckla," said Charlotte with a laugh, in which nervousness was strangely apparent, "you may buy up every young horse in the country and stable them in the parlour, so long as you'll leave the attics for me and the cats."

Lambert turned his head upon its cushion, and looked at her.

"I think I'll leave you a little more s.p.a.ce than that, Charlotte, if ever we stable our horses together."

She glanced at him, as aware of the double entendre, and as stirred by it as he had intended her to be. Perhaps a little more than he had intended; at all events, he jerked himself into a sitting position, and, getting on to his feet, stretched himself with almost ostentatious ease.

"Where's Francie?" he asked, yawning.

"At home, dressmaking," replied Miss Mullen. She was a little paler than usual. "I think I'll go in now and have a cup of tea with Lucy," she said, rising from the garden bench with something like an effort.

"Well, I daresay I'll take the mare down to Tally Ho, and make Francie go for a ride," said Lambert; "it's a pity for anyone to be stewing in the house on a day like this."

"I wanted her to come here with me, but she wouldn't," Charlotte called after him as he turned towards the path that led to the stables. "Maybe she thought there might be metal more attractive for her at home!"

She grinned to herself as she went up the steps. "Me gentleman may put that in his pipe and smoke it!" she thought; "that little hussy would let him think it was for him she was sitting at home!"

Ever since Mrs. Lambert's first entrance into Lismoyle society, she had found in Charlotte her most intimate and reliable ally. If Mr. Lambert had been at all uneasy as to his bride's reception by Miss Mullen, he must have been agreeably surprised to find that after a month or so Charlotte had become as useful and pleasant to Mrs. Lambert as in older days she had been to him. That Charlotte should have recognised the paramount necessity of his marrying money, had been to Lambert a proof of her eminent common sense. He had always been careful to impress his obvious destiny upon her, and he had always been grateful to that destiny for having harmlessly fulfilled itself, while yet old Mrs. Mullen's money was in her own keeping, and her niece was, beyond all question, ineligible. That was Mr. Lambert's view of the situation; whatever Charlotte's opinion was, she kept it to herself.

Mrs. Lambert was more than usually delighted to see her ever-sympathising friend on this hot afternoon. One of her chiefest merits in the turkey-hen's eyes was that she "was as good as any doctor, and twice better than Dr. Rattray, who would never believe the half she went through with palpitations, and buzzings in her ears and roarings in her head," and the first half hour or so of her visit was consumed in minute detail of her more recent symptoms. The fact that large numbers of women entertain their visitors with biographies, mainly abusive, of their servants, has been dwelt on to weariness by many writers; but, nevertheless, in no history of Mrs. Lambert could this characteristic be conscientiously omitted.

"Oh, my dear," she said, as her second cup of sweet weak tea was entered upon, "you know that Eliza Hackett, that I got with the highest recommendations from the Honourable Miss Carrick, and thinking she'd be so steady, being a Protestant? Well, last Sunday she went to ma.s.s!" She paused, and Charlotte, one of whose most genuine feelings was a detestation of Roman Catholics, exclaimed: "Goodness alive! what did you let her do that for?"

"How could I stop her?" answered Mrs. Lambert plaintively, "she never told one in the house she was going, and this morning, when I was looking at the meat with her in the larder, I took the opportunity to speak to her about it. 'Oh,' says she, turning round as cool as you please, 'I consider the Irish Church hasn't the Apostolic succession!'"

"You don't tell me that fat-faced Eliza Hackett said that?" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Charlotte.

"She did, indeed," replied Mrs. Lambert deplorably; "I was quite upset. 'Eliza,' says I, 'I wonder you have the impudence to talk to me like that. You that was taught better by the Honourable Miss Carrick.' 'Ma'am,' says she, up to my face, 'Moses and Aaron was two holy Roman Catholic priests, and that's more than you can say of the archdeacon!' 'Indeed, no,' says I, 'thank G.o.d he's not!' but I ask you, Charlotte, what could I say to a woman like that, that would wrest the Scriptures to her own purposes?"

Even Charlotte's strong brain reeled in the attempt to follow the arguments of Eliza the cook and Mrs. Lambert, "Well, upon my word, Lucy, it's little I'd have argued with her. I'd have just said to her, 'Out of my house you march, if you don't go to your church!' I think that would have composed her religious scruples."

"Oh! but, Charlotte," pleaded the turkey-hen, "I couldn't part her; she knows just what gentlemen like, and Roderick's so particular about savouries. When I told him about her, he said he wouldn't care if she was a Mormon and had a dozen husbands, so long as she made good soup."

Charlotte laughed out loud. Mr. Lambert's turn of humour had a robustness about it that always roused a sympathetic chord in her.

"Well, that's a man all over! His stomach before anyone else's soul!"

"Oh, Charlotte, you shouldn't say such things! Indeed, Roderick will often take only the one cut of meat at his dinner these times, and if it isn't to his liking he'll take nothing; he's a great epicure. I don't know what's over him those last few weeks," continued Mrs. Lambert gloomily, "unless it's the hot weather, and all the exercise he's taking that's making him cross."

"Well, from all I've ever seen of men," said Charlotte, with a laugh, "the hotter they get the better pleased they are. Take my word for it, there's no time a man's so proud of himself as when he's 'larding the lean earth!'"

Mrs. Lambert looked bewildered, but was too much affaired with her own thoughts to ask for an explanation of what seemed to her a strange term in cookery.

"Did he know Francie Fitzpatrick much in Dublin?" she said after a pause, in which she had given a saucerful of cream and sopped cake to her dog.

Charlotte looked at her hostess suddenly and searchingly as she stooped with difficulty to take up the saucer.

"He's known her since she was a child," she replied, and waited for further developments.

"I thought it must be that way," said Mrs. Lambert, with a dissatisfied sound in her voice; "they're so very familiar-like talking to each other."

Charlotte's heart paused for an instant in its strong, regular course. Was it possible, she thought, that wisdom was being perfected in the mouth of Lucy Lambert?

"I never noticed anything so wonderfully familiar," she said, in a tone meant to provoke further confidence; "I never knew Roddy yet that he wasn't civil to a pretty girl; and as for Francie, any man comes handy to her! Upon my word, she'd dote on a tongs, as they say!"

Mrs. Lambert fidgeted nervously with her long gold watch chain. "Well, Charlotte," she said, a little defiantly, "I've been married to him five years now, and I've never known him particular with any girl."

"Then, my dear woman, what's this nonsense you're talking about him and Francie?" said Charlotte, with Mephistophelian gaiety.

"Oh, Charlotte!" said Mrs. Lambert, suddenly getting very red, and beginning to whimper, "I never thought to speak of it-" she broke off and began to root for her handkerchief, while her respectable middle-aged face began to wrinkle up like a child's, "and, indeed, I don't want to say anything against the girl, for she's a nice girl, and so I've always found her, but I can't help noticing-" she broke off again.

"What can't ye help noticing?" demanded Charlotte roughly.

Mrs. Lambert drew a long breath that was half-suffocated by a sob. "Oh, I don't know," she cried helplessly; "he's always going down to Tally Ho, by the way he'll take her out riding or boating or something, and though he doesn't say much, a little thing'll slip out now and again, and you can't say a word to him but he'll get cross."

"Maybe he's in trouble about money unknown to you," suggested Charlotte, who, for some reason or other, was not displaying her usual capacity for indictment, "or maybe he finds life's not worth living because of the liver!" she ended, with a mirthless laugh.

"Oh, no, no, Charlotte; indeed, it's no laughing joke at all-" Mrs. Lambert hesitated, then, with a little hysterical burst of sobs, "he talks about her in his sleep!" she quavered out, and began to cry miserably.

Charlotte sat perfectly still, looking at Mrs. Lambert with eyes that saw, but held no pity for, her abundant tears. How far more serious was this thing, if true, to her, than to that contemptible whining creature, whose snuffling gasps were exasperating her almost beyond the bounds of endurance. She waited till there was a lull.

"What did he say about her?" she asked in a hard jeering voice.

"Oh, Charlotte, how can I tell you? all sorts of things he says, nonsense like, and springing up and saying she'll be drowned."

"Well, if it's any comfort to you," said Charlotte, "she cares no more for him than the man in the moon! She has other fish to fry, I can tell you!"

"But what signifies that, Charlotte," sighed Mrs. Lambert, "so long as he thinks about her?"

"Tell him he's a fool to waste his time over her," suggested Charlotte scoffingly.

"Is it me tell him such a thing!" The turkey-hen lifted her wet red eyes from her saturated pocket handkerchief and began to laugh hysterically. "Much regard he has for what I say to him! Oh, don't make me laugh, Charlotte-" a frightened look came over her face, as if she had been struck, and she fell back in her chair. "It's the palpitations," she said faintly, with her hand on her heart. "Oh, I'm going-I'm going-"

Charlotte ran to the chimney-piece, and took from it a bottle of smelling salts. She put it to Mrs. Lambert's nose with one hand, and with the other unfastened the neck of her dress without any excitement or fuss. Her eyes were keen and quiet as she bent over the pale blotched face that lay on the antimaca.s.sar; and when Mrs. Lambert began to realise again what was going on round her, she was conscious of a hand chafing her own, a hand that was both gentle and skilful.

CHAPTER XXIX.

"Metal more attractive!" Lambert thought there could not be a more offensive phrase in the English language than this, that had rung in his ears ever since Charlotte had flung it at him when he parted from her on his own avenue. He led the black mare straight to the dilapidated loose-box at Tally Ho Lodge, in which she had before now waited so often and so dismally, with nothing to do except nose about the broken manger for a stray oat or two, or make spiteful faces through the rails at her comrade, the chestnut, in the next stall. Lambert swung open the stable door, and was confronted by the p.r.i.c.ked ears and interested countenance of a tall bay horse, whom he instantly recognised as being one of the Bruff carriage horses, looking out of the loose-box. Mr. Lambert's irritation culminated at this point in appropriate profanity; he felt that all these things were against him, and the thought that he would go straight back to Rosemount made him stand still on the doorstep. But the next moment he had a vision of himself and the two horses turning in at the Rosemount gate, with the certain prospect of being laughed at by Charlotte and condoled with by his wife, and without so much as a sight of that maddening face that was every day thrusting itself more and more between him and his peace. It would be a confession of defeat at the hands of Christopher Dysart, which alone would be intolerable; besides, there wasn't a doubt but that, if Francie were given her choice, she would rather go out riding with him than anything.

Buoyed up by this reflection, he put the chestnut into the stable, and the mare into the cow-shed, and betook himself to the house. The hall door was open, he knocked lightly at the drawing-room door, and walked in without waiting for an answer. Christopher was sitting with his back to him, holding one end of a folded piece of pink cambric, while Francie, standing up in front of him, was cutting along the fold towards him, with a formidable pair of scissors.

"Must I hold on to the end?" he was saying, as the scissors advanced in leaps towards his fingers.

"I'll kill you if you let go!" answered Francie, rather thickly, by reason of a pin between her front teeth. "Goodness, Mr. Lambert! you frightened the heels off me! I thought you were Louisa with the tea."

"Good evening, Francie; good evening, Dysart," said Lambert with solemn frigidity.

Christopher reddened a little as he looked round. "I'm afraid I can't shake hands with you, Lambert," with an unavoidably foolish laugh, "I'm dressmaking."

"So I see," replied Mr. Lambert, with something as near a sneer as he dared. He always felt it a special unkindness of Providence to have placed this young man to reign over him, and the practical sentiment that it is well not to quarrel with your bread and b.u.t.ter, had not unfrequently held him back from a much-desired jibe. "I came, Francie," he went on with the same portentous politeness, "to see if you'd care to come for a ride with me."

"When? Now?" said Francie, without much enthusiasm.

"Oh, not unless you like," he replied, in a palpably offended tone.

"Well, how d'ye know I wouldn't like? Keep quiet now, Mr. Dysart, I've another one for you to hold!"

"I'm afraid I must be going-" began Christopher, looking helplessly at the billows of pink cambric which surrounded him on the floor. Lambert's arrival had suddenly made the situation seem vulgar.

"Ah, can't you sit still now?" said Francie, thrusting another length of material into his hand, and beginning to cut swiftly towards him. "I declare you're very idle!"

Lambert stood silent while this went on, and then, with an angry look at Francie, he said, "I understand then that you're not coming out riding to-day?"

"Do you?" asked Francie, pinning the seam together with marvellous rapidity; "take care your understanding isn't wrong! Have you the horse down here?"

"Of course I have."

"Well, I'll tell you what we'll do; we'll have tea first, and then we'll ride back with Mr. Dysart; will that do you?"

"I wanted to ride in the opposite direction," said Lambert, "I had some business-"

"Oh, bother your old business!" interrupted Francie, "anyway, I hear her bringing in the tea."

"Oh, I hope you'll ride home with me," said Christopher, "I hate riding by myself."

"Much I pity you!" said Francie, flashing a sidelong look at him as she went over to the tea-table; "I suppose you'd be frightened!"

"Quite so. Frightened and bored. That is what I feel like when I ride by myself," said Christopher, trying to eliminate from his manner the constraint that Lambert's arrival had imparted to it, "and my horse is just as bored; I feel apologetic all the time and wishing I could do something to amuse him that wouldn't be dangerous. Do come; I'm sure he'd like it."

"Oh, how anxious you are about him!" said Francie cutting bread and b.u.t.ter with a dexterous hand from the loaf that Louisa had placed on the table in frank confession of incapacity, "I don't know what I'll do till I've had my tea. Here now, here's yours poured out for both of you; I suppose you'd like me to come and hand it to you!" with a propitiatory look at Lambert.

Thus adjured, the two men seated themselves at the table on which Francie had prepared their tea and bread and b.u.t.ter with a propriety that reminded Christopher of his nursery days. It was a very agreeable feeling, he thought; and as he docilely drank his tea and laughed at Francie for the amount of sugar that she put into hers, the idealising process to which he was unconsciously subjecting her advanced a stage. He was beginning to lose sight of her vulgarity, even to wonder at himself for ever having applied that crudely inappropriate word to her. She had some reflected vulgarities of course, thought the usually hypercritical Mr. Christopher Dysart, and her literary progress along the lines he had laid down for her was slow; but lately, since his missionary resolve to let the light of culture illuminate her darkness, he had found out subtle depths of sweetness and sympathy that were, in their responsiveness, equivalent to intellect.

When Francie went up a few minutes later to put on her habit, Christopher did not seem disposed to continue the small talk in which his proficiency had been more surprising than pleasing to Mr. Lambert.

He strolled over to the window, and looked meditatively out at Mrs. Bruff and a great-grandchild or two embowered in a tangle of nasturtiums, and putting his hands in his pockets began to whistle sotto voce. Lambert looked him up and down, from his long thin legs to his small head, on which the light brown hair grew rather long, with a wave in it that was to Lambert the height of effeminacy. He began to drum with his fingers on the table to show that he too was quite undisturbed and at his ease.

"By the bye, Dysart," he observed presently, "have you heard anything of Hawkins since he left?"

Christopher turned round. "No, I don't know anything about him except that he's gone to Hythe."

"Gone to hide, d'ye say?" Lambert laughed noisily in support of his joke.

"No, Hythe."

"It seems to me it's more likely it's a case of hide," Lambert went on with a wink; he paused, fiddled with his teaspoon, and smiled at his own hand as he did so. "P'raphs he thought it was time for him to get away out of this."

"Really?" said Christopher, with a lack of interest that was quite genuine.

Lambert's pulse bounded with the sudden desire to wake this supercilious young hound up for once, by telling him a few things that would surprise him.

"Well, you see it's a pretty strong order for a fellow to carry on as Hawkins did, when he happens to be engaged."

The fact of Mr. Hawkins' engagement had, it need scarcely be said, made its way through every highway and by-way of Lismoyle; inscrutable as to its starting-point, impossible of verification, but all the more fascinating for its mystery. Lambert had no wish to claim its authorship; he had lived among gentlemen long enough to be aware that the second-hand confidences of a servant could not creditably be quoted by him. What he did not know, however, was whether the story had reached Bruff, or been believed there, and it was extremely provoking to him now that instead of being able to observe its effect on Christopher, whose back was to the light, his discoveries should be limited to the fact that his own face had become very red as he spoke.

"I suppose he knows his own affairs best," said Christopher, after a silence that might have meant anything, or nothing.

"Well," leaning back and putting his hands in his pockets, "I don't pretend to be straight-laced, but d-n it, you know, I think Hawkins went a bit too far."

"I don't think I have heard who it is that he is engaged to," said Christopher, who seemed remarkably unaffected by Mr. Hawkins' misdemeanours.

"Oh, to a Yorkshire girl, a Miss-what's this her name is-Coppard. Pots of money, but mighty plain about the head, I believe. He kept it pretty dark, didn't he?"

"Apparently it got out, for all that."

Lambert thought he detected a tinge of ridicule in the voice, whether of him or of Hawkins he did not know; it gave just the necessary spur to that desire to open Christopher's eyes for him a bit.

"Oh, yes, it got out," he said, putting his elbow on the table, and balancing his teaspoon on his fore-finger, "but I think there are very few that know for certain it's a fact,-fortunately for our friend."

"Why fortunately? I shouldn't think it made much difference to anyone."

"Well, as a rule, girls don't care to flirt with an engaged man."

"No, I suppose not," said Christopher, yawning with a frankness that was a singular episode in his demeanour towards his agent.

Lambert felt his temper rising every instant. He was a man whose jealousy took the form of reviling the object of his affections, if, by so doing, he could detach his rivals.

"Well, Francie Fitzpatrick knows it for one; but perhaps she's not one of the girls who object to flirting with an engaged man."

Lambert got up and walked to the window; he felt that he could no longer endure seeing nothing of Christopher except a lank silhouette with an offensive repose of att.i.tude. He propped his back against one of the shutters, and obviously waited for a comment.

"I should think it was an inexpensive amus.e.m.e.nt," said Christopher, in his most impersonal and academic manner, "but likely to pall."

"Pall! Deuce a bit of it!" Lambert put a toothpick in his mouth, and began to chew it, to convey the effect of ease. "I can tell you I've known that girl since she was the length of my stick, and I never saw her that she wasn't up to some game or other; and she wasn't over particular about engagements or anything else!"