The Real Charlotte Part 19

"Don't they ever make it hot for you there?" asked Lady Dysart, unable to resist the chance of poking fun at Mr. Hawkins, even though in so doing she violated her own cherished regulations on the subject of slang. All her old partiality for him had revived since Francie's departure from Lismoyle, and she found the idea of his engagement far more amusing than he did.

"No, Lady Dysart, they never do," said Hawkins, getting very red, and feebly trying to rise to the occasion; "they're always very nice and kind to me."

"Oh, I daresay they are!" replied Lady Dysart archly, with a glance at Pamela like that of a naughty child who glories in its naughtiness. "And is it fair to ask when the wedding is to come off? We heard something about the spring!"

"Who gave you that interesting piece of news?" said Hawkins, trying not to look foolish.

"A bridesmaid," said Lady Dysart, closing her lips tightly, and leaning back with an irrepressible gleam in her eye.

"Well, she knows more than I do. All I know about it is, that I believe the regiment goes to Aldershot in May, and I suppose it will be some time after that." Mr. Hawkins spoke with a singularly bad grace, and before further comment could be made he turned to Pamela. "I saw a good deal of Miss Hope-Drummond in the north," he said, with an effort so obvious and so futile at turning the conversation that Lady Dysart began to laugh.

"Why, she was the bridesmaid-" she began incautiously, when the slackening of the engines set her thoughts flying from the subject in hand to settle in agony upon the certainty that Doyle would forget to put her scent-bottle into her dressing-bag, and the whole party went up on deck.

It was dark, and the revolving light on the end of the east pier swung its red eye upon the steamer as she pa.s.sed within a few yards of it, churning a curving road towards the double line of lamps that marked the jetty. The lights of Kingstown mounted row upon row, like an embattled army of stars, the great sweep of Dublin Bay was p.r.i.c.ked out in lessening yellow points, and a new moon that looked pale green by contrast, sent an immature shaft along the sea in meek a.s.sertion of her presence. The paddles dropped their blades more and more languidly into the water, then they ceased, and the vessel slid silently alongside the jetty, with the sentient ease of a living thing. The warps were flung ash.o.r.e, the gangways thrust on board, and in an instant the sailors were running ash.o.r.e with the mail bags on their backs, like a string of ants with their eggs. The usual crowd of loafers and people who had come to meet their friends formed round the pa.s.sengers' gangway, and the pa.s.sengers filed down it in the brief and uncoveted distinction that the exit from a steamer affords.

Lady Dysart headed her party as they left the steamer, and her imposing figure in her fur-lined cloak so filled the gangway that Pamela could not, at first, see who it was that met her mother as she stepped on to the platform. The next moment she found herself shaking hands with Mr. Lambert, and then, to her unbounded astonishment, with Miss Fitzpatrick. The lamps were throwing strong light and shadow upon Francie's face, and Pamela's first thought was how much thinner she had become.

"Mr. Lambert and I missed our train back to Bray," Francie began at once in a hurried deprecating voice, "and we came down to see the boat come in just to pa.s.s the time-" Her voice stopped as if she had suddenly gasped for breath, and Pamela heard Hawkins' voice say behind her: "How de do, Miss Fitzpatrick? Who'd have thought of meetin' you here?" in a tone of cheerfully casual acquaintanceship.

Even Pamela, with all her imaginative sympathy, did not guess what Francie felt in that sick and flinching moment, when everything rung and tingled round her as if she had been struck; the red had deserted her cheek like a cowardly defender, and the ground felt uneven under her feet, but the instinct of self-control that is born of habit and convention in the feeblest of us came mechanically to her help.

"And I never thought I'd see you either," she answered, in the same tone; "I suppose you're all going to Lismoyle together, Miss Dysart?"

"No, we stay in Dublin to-night," said Pamela, with sufficient consciousness of the situation to wish to shorten it. "Oh, thank you, Mr. Hawkins, I should be very glad if you would put these rugs in the carriage."

Hawkins disappeared with the rugs in the wake of Lady Dysart, and Lambert and Pamela and Francie followed slowly together in the same direction. Pamela was in the difficult position of a person who is full of a sympathy that it is wholly out of the question to express.

"I am so glad that we chanced to meet you here," she said, "we have not heard anything of you for such a long time."

The kindness in her voice had the effect of conveying to Francie how much in need of kindness she was, and the creeping smart of tears gathered under her eyelids.

"It's awfully kind of you to say so, Miss Dysart," she said, with something in her voice that made even the Dublin brogue pathetic; "I didn't think anyone at Lismoyle remembered me now."

"Oh, we don't forget people quite so quickly as that," said Pamela, thinking that Mr. Hawkins must have behaved worse than she had believed; "I see this is our carriage. Mamma, did you know that Miss Fitzpatrick was here?"

Lady Dysart was already sitting in the carriage, her face fully expressing the perturbation that she felt, as she counted the parcels that Mr. Hawkins was bestowing in the netting.

"Oh yes," she said, with a visible effort to be polite, "I saw her just now; do get in, my dear, the thing may start at any moment."

If her mind had room for anything beside the anxieties of travelling, it was disapprobation of Francie and of the fact that she was going about alone with Mr. Lambert, and the result was an absence of geniality that added to Francie's longing to get away as soon as possible. Lambert was now talking to Pamela, blocking up the doorway of the carriage as he stood on the step, and over his shoulder she could see Hawkins, still with his back to her, and still apparently very busy with the disposal of the dressing-bags and rugs. He was not going to speak to her again, she thought, as she stood a little back from the open door with the frosty air nipping her through her thin jacket; she was no more to him than a stranger, she, who knew every turn of his head, and the feeling of his yellow hair that the carriage lamp was shining upon. The very look of the first-cla.s.s carriage seemed to her, who had seldom, if ever, been in one, to emphasise the distance that there was between them. The romance that always clung to him even in her angriest thoughts, was slaughtered by this glimpse of him, like some helpless atom of animal life by the pa.s.sing heel of a schoolboy. There was no scaffold, with its final stupendous moment, and incentive to heroism; there was nothing but an ign.o.ble end in commonplace neglect.

The ticket-collector slammed the door of the next carriage, and Francie stepped back still further to make way for Lambert as he got off the step. She had turned her back on the train, and was looking vacantly at the dark outlines of the steamer when she became aware that Hawkins was beside her.

"Er-good-bye-" he said awkwardly, "the train's just off."

"Good-bye," replied Francie, in a voice that sounded strangely to her, it was so everyday and conventional.

"Look here," he said, looking very uncomfortable, and speaking quickly, "I know you're angry with me. I couldn't help it. I tried to get out of it, but it-it couldn't be done. I'm awfully sorry about it-"

If Francie had intended to reply to this address, it was placed beyond her power to do so. The engine, which had been hissing furiously for some minutes, now set up the continuous ear-piercing shriek that precedes the departure of the boat train, and the guard, hurrying along the platform, signified to Hawkins in dumb show that he was to take his seat. The whistle continued unrelentingly; Hawkins put out his hand, and Francie laid hers in it. She looked straight at him for a second, and then, as she felt his fingers close hard round her hand in dastardly a.s.surance of friendship if not affection, she pulled it away, and turned to Lambert, laughing and putting her hands up to her ears to show that she could hear nothing in the din. Hawkins jumped into the carriage again, Pamela waved her hand at the window, and Francie was left with Lambert on the platform, looking at the red light on the back of the guard's van, as the train wound out of sight into the tunnel.

CHAPTER x.x.xIX.

It was cold, east-windy morning near the middle of March, when the roads were white and dusty, and the clouds were grey, and Miss Mullen, seated in her new dining-room at Gurthnamuckla, was finishing her Sat.u.r.day balancing of accounts. Now that she had become a landed proprietor, the process was more complicated than it used to be. A dairy, pigs, and poultry cannot be managed and made to pay without thought and trouble, and, as Charlotte had every intention of making Gurthnamuckla pay, she spared neither time nor account books, and was beginning to be well satisfied with the result. She had laid out a good deal of money on the house and farm, but she was going to get a good return for it, or know the reason why; and, as no tub of skim milk was given to the pigs, or barrow of turnips to the cows, without her knowledge, the chances of success seemed on her side.

She had just entered, on the page headed Receipts, the sale of two pigs at the fair, and surveyed the growing amount, in its neat figures, with complacency; then, laying down her pen, she went to the window, and directed a sharp eye at the two men who were spreading gravel on the reclaimed avenue, and straightening the edges of the gra.s.s.

"'Pon my word, it's beginning to look like a gentleman's avenue," she said to herself, eyeing approvingly the arch of the elm tree branches, and the clumps of yellow daffodils, the only spots of light in the colourless landscape, while the cawing of the building rooks had a pleasant, manorial sound in her ears. A young horse came galloping across the lawn, with floating mane and tail, and an intention to jump the new wooden railings that only failed him at the last moment, and resulted in two soapy slides in the gra.s.s, that Charlotte viewed from her window with wonderful equanimity. "I'll give Roddy a fine blowing up when he comes over," she thought, as she watched the colt cutting capers among the daffodils; "I'll ask him if he'd like me to have his four precious colts in to tea. He's as bad about them as I am about the cats!" Miss Mullen's expression denoted that the reproof would not be of the character to which Louisa was accustomed, and Mrs. Bruff, who had followed her mistress into the window, sprang on a chair, and, arching her back, leaned against the well-known black alpaca ap.r.o.n with a feeling that the occasion was exceptionally propitious. The movements of Charlotte's character, for it cannot be said to possess the power of development, were akin to those of some amphibious thing; whose strong, darting course under the water is only marked by a bubble or two, and it required almost an animal instinct to note them. Every bubble betrayed the creature below, as well as the limitations of its power of hiding itself, but people never thought of looking out for these indications in Charlotte, or even suspected that she had anything to conceal. There was an almost blatant simplicity about her, a humorous rough and readiness which, joined with her literary culture, proved business capacity, and dreaded temper, seemed to leave no room for any further aspect, least of all of a romantic kind.

Having opened the window for a minute to scream abusive directions to the men who were spreading gravel, she went back to the table, and, gathering her account-books together, she locked them up in her davenport. The room that, in Julia Duffy's time, had been devoted to the storage of potatoes, was now beginning life again, dressed in the faded attire of the Tally Ho dining-room. Charlotte's books lined one of its newly-papered walls; the fox-hunting prints that dated from old Mr. Butler's reign at Tally Ho hung above the chimney-piece, and the maroon rep curtains were those at which Francie had stared during her last and most terrific encounter with their owner. The air of occupation was completed by a basket on the rug in front of the fire with four squeaking kittens in it, and by the Bible and the grey manual of devotion out of which Charlotte read daily prayers to Louisa the orphan and the cats. It was an ugly room, and nothing could ever make it anything else, but with the aid of the bra.s.s-mounted grate, a few bits of Mrs. Mullen's silver on the sideboard, and the deep-set windows, it had an air of respectability and even dignity that appealed very strongly to Charlotte. She enjoyed every detail of her new possessions, and, unlike Norry and the cats, felt no regret for the urban charms and old a.s.sociations of Tally Ho. Indeed, since her aunt's death, she had never liked Tally Ho. There was a strain of superst.i.tion in her that, like her love of land, showed how strongly the blood of the Irish peasant ran in her veins; since she had turned Francie out of the house she had not liked to think of the empty room facing her own, in which Mrs. Mullen's feeble voice had laid upon her the charge that she had not kept; her dealings with table-turning and spirit-writing had expanded for her the boundaries of the possible, and made her the more accessible to terror of the supernatural. Here, at Gurthnamuckla, there was nothing to harbour these suggestions; no brooding evergreens rustling outside her bedroom window, no rooms alive with the little incidents of a past life, no doors whose opening and shutting were like familiar voices reminding her of the footsteps that they had once heralded. This new house was peopled only by the pleasant phantoms of a future that she had fashioned for herself out of the slightest and vulgarest materials, and her wakeful nights were spent in schemings in which the romantic and the practical were logically blended.

Norry the Boat did not, as has been hinted, share her mistress's satisfaction in Gurthnamuckla. For four months she had reigned in its kitchen, and it found no more favour in her eyes than on the day when she, with her roasting-jack in one hand and the c.o.c.katoo's cage in the other, had made her official entry into it. It was not so much the new range, or the barren tidyness of the freshly-painted cupboards, these things had doubtless been at first very distressing, but time had stored the cupboards with the miscellanies that Norry loved to h.o.a.rd, and Bid Sal had imparted a home-like feeling to the range by wrenching the hinge of the oven-door so that it had to be kept closed with the poker. Even the unpleasantly dazzling whitewash was now turning a comfortable yellow brown, and the cobwebs were growing about the hooks in the ceiling. But none of these things thoroughly consoled Norry. Her complaints, it is true, did not seem adequate to account for her general aspect of discontent. Miss Mullen heard daily lamentations over the ravages committed by Mr. Lambert's young horses on the clothes bleaching on the furze-bushes, the loss of "the clever little shcullery that we had in Tally Ho," and the fact that "if a pairson was on his dying bed for the want of a grain o' tay itself, he should thravel three miles before he'd get it," but the true grievance remained locked in Norry's bosom. Not to save her life would she have admitted that what was really lacking in Gurthnamuckla was society. The messengers from the shops, the pedlar-women; above all, the beggars; of these she had been deprived at a blow, and life had become a lean ill-nurtured thing without the news with which they had daily provided her. Billy Grainy and Nance the Fool were all that remained to her of this choice company, the former having been retained in his offices of milk-seller, messenger, and post-boy, and the latter, like Abdiel, faithful among the faithless, was undeterred by the distance that had discouraged the others of her craft, and limped once a week to Gurthnamuckla for the sake of old times and a mug of dripping.

By these inadequate channels a tardy rill of news made its way to Miss Mullen's country seat, but it came poisoned by the feeling that every one else in Lismoyle had known it for at least a week, and Norry felt herself as much aggrieved as if she had been charged "pence apiece" for stale eggs.

It was therefore the more agreeable that, on this same raw, grey Sat.u.r.day morning, when Norry's temper had been unusually tried by a search for the nest of an out-lying hen, Mary Holloran, the Rosemount lodgewoman, should have walked into the kitchen.

"G.o.d save all here!" she said, sinking on to a chair, and wiping away with her ap.r.o.n the tears that the east wind had brought to her eyes; "I'm as tired as if I was afther walking from Galway with a bag o' male!"

"Musha, then, cead failthe, Mary," replied Norry with unusual geniality; "is it from Judy Lee's wake ye're comin'?"

"I am, in throth; Lord ha' mercy on her!" Mary Holloran raised her eyes to the ceiling and crossed herself, and Norry and Bid Sal followed her example. Norry was sitting by the fire singeing the yellow carcase of a hen, and the brand of burning paper in her hand heightened the effect of the gesture in an almost startling way. "Well now," resumed Mary Holloran, "she was as nice a woman as ever threw a tub of clothes on the hill, and an honest poor crayture through all. She battled it out well, as owld as she was."

"Faith thin, an' if she did die itself she was in the want of it," said Norry sardonically; "sure there isn't a winther since her daughther wint to America that she wasn't anointed a couple of times. I'm thinkin' the people th' other side o' death will be throuncin' her for keepin' them waitin' on her this way!"

Mary Holloran laughed a little and then wiped her face with the corner of her ap.r.o.n, and sighed so as to restore a fitting tone to the conversation.

"The neighbours was all gethered in it last night," she observed; "they had the two rooms full in it, an' a half gallon of whisky, and porther and all sorts. Indeed, her sisther's two daughthers showed her every respect; there wasn't one comin' in it, big nor little, but they'd fill them out a gla.s.s o' punch before they'd sit down. G.o.d bless ye, Bid Sal," she went on, as if made thirsty by the recollection; "have ye a sup o' tay in that taypot that's on th' oven? I'd drink the lough this minute!"

"Is it the like o' that ye'd give the woman?" vociferated Norry in furious hospitality, as Bid Sal moved forward to obey this behest; "make down the fire and bile a dhrop o' wather the way she'll get what'll not give her a sick shtummuck. Sure, what's in that pot's the lavin's afther Miss Charlotte's breakfast for Billy Grainy when he comes with the post; and good enough for the likes of him."

"There was a good manny axing for ye last night," began Mary Holloran again, while Bid Sal broke up a box with the kitchen cleaver, and revived the fire with its fragments and a little paraffin oil. "And you a near cousin o' the corp'. Was it herself wouldn't let you in it?"

"Whether she'd let me in it or no I have plenty to do besides running to every corp'-house in the counthry," returned Norry with an acerbity that showed how accurate Mary Holloran's surmise had been; "if thim that was in the wake seen me last night goin' out to the cow that's afther calvin' with the quilt off me bed to put over her, maybe they'd have less chat about me."

Mary Holloran was of a pacific turn, and she tried another topic. "Did ye hear that John Kenealy was afther summonsing me mother before the binch?" she said, unfastening her heavy blue cloak and putting her feet up on the fender of the range.

"Ah, G.o.d help ye, how would I hear annything?" grumbled Norry; "it'd be as good for me to be in heaven as to be here, with ne'er a one but Nance the Fool comin' next or nigh me."

"Oh, indeed, that's the thruth," said Mary Holloran with polite but transient sympathy. "Well, whether or no, he summonsed her, and all the raison he had for putting that scandal on her, was thim few little hins and ducks she have, that he seen different times on his land, themselves and an owld goat thravellin' the fields, and not a bit nor a bite before them in it that they'd stoop their heads to, only what sign of gra.s.s was left afther the winther, and faith! that's little. 'Twas last Tuesday, Lady Day an' all, me mother was bringin' in a goaleen o' turf, an' he came thundherin' round the house, and every big rock of English he had he called it to her, and every soort of liar and blagyard -oh, indeed, his conduck was not fit to tell to a jacka.s.s -an' he summonsed her secondly afther that. Ye'd think me mother'd lose her life when she seen the summons, an' away she legged it into Rosemount to meself, the way I'd spake to the masther to lane heavy on Kenealy the day he'd bring her into coort. 'An' indeed,' says I to the masther, 'is it to bring me mother into coort!' says I; 'sure she's hardly able to lave the bed,' says I, 'an owld little woman that's not four stone weight! She's not that size,' says I-" Mary Holloran measured accurately off the upper joints of her first two fingers-"'Sure ye'd blow her off yer hand! And Kenealy sayin' she pelted the pavement afther him, and left a backward sthroke on him with the shovel!' says I. But, in any case the masther gave no satisfaction to Kenealy, and he arbithrated him the way he wouldn't be let bring me mother into coort, an' two shillin' she paid for threspa.s.s, and thank G.o.d she's able to do that same, for as desolate as Kenealy thinks her."

"Lambert's a fine arbithrator," said Norry, dispa.s.sionately. "Here, Bid Sal, run away out to the lardher and lave this within in it," handing over the singed hen, "and afther that, go on out and cut cabbages for the pigs. Divil's cure to ye! Can't ye make haste! I suppose ye think it's to be standin' lookin' at the people that ye get four pounds a year an' yer dite! Thim gerrls is able to put annyone that'd be with them into a decay," she ended, as Bid Sal reluctantly withdrew, "and there's not a word ye'll say but they'll gallop through the counthry tellin' it." Then, dropping into a conversational tone, "Nance was sayin' Lambert was gone to Dublin agin, but what signifies what the likes of her'd say, it couldn't be he'd be goin' in it agin and he not home a week from it."

Mary Holloran pursed up her mouth portentously.

"Faith he could go in it, and it's in it he's gone," she said, beginning upon a new cup of tea, as dark and sweet as treacle, that Norry had prepared for her. "Ah musha! Lord have mercy on thim that's gone; 'tis short till they're forgotten!"

Norry contented herself with an acquiescing sound, devoid of interrogation, but dreary enough to be encouraging. Mrs. Holloran's saucer had received half the contents of her cup, and was now delicately poised aloft on the outspread fingers of her right hand, while her right elbow rested on the table according to the etiquette of her cla.s.s, and Norry knew that the string of her friend's tongue would loosen of its own accord.

"Seven months last Monday," began Mary Holloran in the voice of a professional reciter; "seven months since he berrid her, an' if he gives three more in the widda ye may call me a liar."

"Tell the truth!" exclaimed Norry, startled out of her self-repression and stopping short in the act of poking the fire. "D'ye tell me it's to marry again he'd go, an' the first wife's clothes on his cook this minnit?"

Mary Holloran did not reveal by look or word the gratification that she felt. "G.o.d forbid I'd rise talk or dhraw scandal," she continued with the same pregnant calm, "but the thruth it is an' no slandher, for the last month there's not a week-arrah what week! No, but there's hardly the day, but a letther goes to the post for-for one you know well, an' little boxeens and rejestered envelopes an' all sorts. An' letthers coming from that one to him to further ordhers! Sure I'd know the writin'. Hav'nt she her name written the size of I don't know what on her likeness that he have shtuck out on the table."

Mary Holloran broke off like a number of a serial story, with a carefully interrupted situation, and sipped her tea a.s.siduously. Norry advanced slowly from the fireplace with the poker still clutched in her hand, and her glowing eyes fixed upon her friend, as if she were stalking her.

"For the love o' G.o.d, woman!" she whispered, "is it Miss Francie?"

"Now ye have it," said Mary Holloran.

Norry clasped her hands, poker and all, and raised them in front of her face, while her eyes apparently communed with a familiar spirit at the other end of the kitchen. They puzzled Mary Holloran, who fancied she discerned in them a wild and quite irrelevant amus.e.m.e.nt, but before further opinions could be interchanged, a dragging step was heard at the back door, a fumbling hand lifted the latch, and Billy Grainy came in with the post-bag over his shoulder and an empty milk-can in his hand.

"Musha, more power to ye, Billy!" said Mary Holloran, concealing her disgust at the interruption with laudable good breeding, and making a grimace of lightning quickness at Norry, expressive of the secrecy that was to be observed; "'tis you're the grand post-boy!"

"Och thin I am," mumbled Billy sarcastically, as he let the post-bag slip from his shoulders to the table, "divil a boot nor a leg is left on me with the thravelling!" He hobbled over to the fireplace, and, taking the teapot off the range, looked into it suspiciously. "This is a quare time o' day for a man to be atin' his breakfast! Divil dom the bit I'd ate in this house agin' if it wasn't for the nathure I have for the place-"

Norry banged open a cupboard, and took from it a mug with some milk in it, and a yellow pie-dish, in which were several stale ends of loaves.

"Take it or lave it afther ye!" she said, putting them down on the table. "If ye had nathure for risin' airly out o' yer bed the tay wouldn't be waitin' on ye this way, an' if ourselves can't plaze ye, ye can go look for thim that will. 'Thim that's onaisy let thim quit!'" Norry cared little whether Billy Grainy was too deaf to take in this retort or no. Mary Holloran and her own self-respect were alike gratified, and taking up the post-bag she proceeded with it to the dining-room.

"Well, Norry," said Charlotte jocularly, looking round from the bookshelf that she was tidying, "is it only now that old thief's brought the post? or have ye been flirting with him in the kitchen all this time?"

Norry retired from the room with a snarl of indescribable scorn, and Charlotte unlocked the bag and drew forth its contents. There were three letters for her, and she laid one of them aside at once while she read the other two. One was from a resident in Ferry Lane, an epistle that began startlingly, "Honored Madman," and slanted over two sides of the note-paper in lamentable entreaties for a reduction of the rent and a little more time to pay it in. The other was an invitation from Mrs. Corkran to meet a missionary, and tossing both down with an equal contempt, she addressed herself to the remaining one. She was in the act of opening it when she caught sight of the printed name of a hotel upon its flap, and she suddenly became motionless, her eyes staring at the name, and her face slowly reddening all over.

"Bray!" she said between her teeth, "what takes him to Bray, when he told me to write to him to the Shelbourne?"

She opened the letter, a long and very neatly written one, so neat, in fact, as to give to a person who knew Mr. Lambert's handwriting in all its phases the idea of very unusual care and a rough copy.

"My dear Charlotte," it began, "I know you will be surprised at the news I have to tell you in this letter, and so will many others; indeed I am almost surprised at it myself." Charlotte's left hand groped backwards till it caught the back of a chair and held on to it, but her eyes still flew along the lines. "You are my oldest and best friend, and so you are the first I would like to tell about it, and I would value your good wishes far beyond any others that might be offered to me, especially as I hope you will soon be my relation as well as my friend. I am engaged to Francie Fitzpatrick, and we are to be married as soon as possible."

The reader sat heavily down upon the chair behind her, her colour fading from red to a dirty yellow as she read on. "I am aware that many will say that I am not showing proper respect towards poor dear Lucy in doing this, but you, or any one that knew her well, will support me in saying that I never was wanting in that to her when she was alive, and that she would be the last to wish I should live a lonely and miserable life now that she is gone. It is a great pleasure to me to think that she always had such a liking for Francie, for her own sake as well as because she was your cousin. It was my intention to have put off the marriage for a year, but I heard a couple of days ago from Robert Fitzpatrick that the investment that Francie's little fortune had been put into was in a very shaky state, and that there is no present chance of dividends from it. He offered to let her live with them as usual, but they have not enough to support themselves. Francie was half starved there, and it is no place for her to be, and so we have arranged to be married very quietly down here at Bray, on the twentieth-just a week from to-day. I will take her to London, or perhaps a little farther for a week or so, and about the first or second week in April I hope to be back in Rosemount. I know my dear Charlotte, my dear old friend, that this must appear a sudden and hasty step, but I have considered it well and thoroughly. I know too that when Francie left your house there was some trifling little quarrel between you, but I trust that you will forget all about that, and that you will be the first to welcome her when she returns to her new home. She begs me to say that she is sorry for anything she said to annoy you, and would write to you if she thought you would like to hear from her. I hope you will be as good a friend to her as you have always been to me, and will be ready to help and advise her in her new position. I would be greatly obliged to you if you would let the Lismoyle people know of my marriage, and of the reasons that I have told you for hurrying it on this way; you know yourself how glad they always are to get hold of the wrong end of a story. I am going to write to Lady Dysart myself. Now, my dear Charlotte, I must close this letter. The above will be my address for a week, and I will be very anxious to hear from you. With much love from Francie and myself, I remain your attached friend, "Roderick Lambert."

A human soul when it has broken away from its diviner part, and is left to the anarchy of the lower pa.s.sions, is a poor and humiliating spectacle, and it is unfortunate that in its animal want of self-control it is seldom without a ludicrous aspect. The weak side of Charlotte's nature was her ready abandonment of herself to fury that was, as often as not, wholly incompatible with its cause, and now that she had been dealt the hardest blow that life could give her, there were a few minutes in which rage, and hatred, and thwarted pa.s.sion took her in their fierce hands, and made her, for the time, a wild beast. When she came to herself she was standing by the chimney-piece, panting and trembling; the letter lay in pieces on the rug, torn by her teeth, and stamped here and there with the semicircle of her heel; a chair was lying on its side on the floor, and Mrs. Bruff was crouching aghast under the sideboard, looking out at her mistress with terrified inquiry.

Charlotte raised her hand and drew it across her mouth with the unsteadiness of a person in physical pain, then, grasping the edge of the chimney-piece, she laid her forehead upon it and drew a few long shuddering breaths. It is probable that if anyone had then come into the room, the human presence, with its mysterious electric quality, would have drawn the storm outwards in a burst of hysterics; but solitude seems to be a non-conductor, and a parched sob, that was strangled in its birth by an imprecation, was the only sound that escaped from her. As she lifted her head again her eyes met those of a large cabinet photograph of Lambert that stared brilliantly at her with the handsome fatuity conferred by an overtouched negative. It was a recent one, taken during one of those recent visits to Dublin whose object had been always so plausibly explained to her, and, as she looked at it, the biting thought of how she had been hoodwinked and fooled, by a man to whom she had all her life laid down the law, drove her half mad again. She plucked it out of its frame with her strong fingers, and thrust it hard down into the smouldering fire.

"If it was h.e.l.l I'd do the same for you!" she said, with a moan like some furious feline creature, as she watched the picture writhe in the heat, "and for her too!" She took up the poker, and with it drove and battered the photograph into the heart of the fire, and then, flinging down the poker with a crash that made Louisa jump as she crossed the hall, she sat down at the dinner-table and made her first effort at self-control.

"His old friend!" she said, gasping and choking over the words; "the cur, the double-dyed cur! Lying and cringing to me, and borrowing my money, and-and-"-even to herself she could not now admit that he had gulled her into believing that he would eventually marry her-"and sneaking after her behind my back all the time! And now he sends me her love-her love! Oh, my G.o.d Almighty-" she tried to laugh, but instead of laughter came tears, as she saw herself helpless, and broken, and aimless for the rest of her life-"I won't break down-I won't break down-" she said, grinding her teeth together with the effort to repress her sobs. She staggered blindly to the sideboard, and, unlocking it, took out a bottle of brandy. She put the bottle to her mouth and took a long gulp from it, while the tears ran down her face.

CHAPTER XL.

Sometimes there comes in Paris towards the beginning of April a week or two of such weather as is rarely seen in England before the end of May. The horse-chestnut buds break in vivid green against the sober blue of the sky, there is a warmth about the pavements that suggests the coming blaze of summer, the gutter-rivulets and the fountains sparkle with an equal gaiety, and people begin to have their coffee out of doors again. The spring, that on the day Francie was married at Bray, was still mainly indicated by east wind and fresh mackerel, was burgeoning in the woods at Versailles with a hundred delicate surprises of blossom and leaf and thick white storm of buds, and tourists were being forced, like asparagus, by the fine weather, and began to appear in occasional twos and threes on the wide square in front of the palace. A remnant of the winter quiet still hung over everything, and a score or two of human beings, dispersed through the endless rooms and gardens, only made more emphatic the greatness of the extent, and of the solitude. They certainly did not bring much custom to the little woman who had been beguiled by the fine weather to set up her table of cakes and oranges in a sunny angle of the palace wall, and sat by it all day, picturesque and patient in her white cap, while her strip of embroidery lengthened apace in the almost unbroken leisure. Even the first Sunday of April, from which she had hoped great things, brought her, during many bland and dazzling hours, nothing except the purchase of a few sous worth of sweets, and the afternoon was well advanced before she effected a sale of any importance. A tall gentleman, evidently a Monsieur Anglais, was wandering about, and she called to him to tell him of the excellence of her brioches and the beauty of her oranges. Ordinarily she had not found that English gentlemen were attracted by her wares, but there was something helpless about this one that gave her confidence. He came up to her table and inspected its dainties with bewildered disfavour, while a comfortable clink of silver came from the pocket in which one hand was fumbling.

"Pain d'epices! Des gateaux! Ver' goot, ver' sveet!" she said encouragingly, bringing forth her entire English vocabulary with her most winning smile.

"I wish to goodness I knew what the beastly things are made of," the Englishman murmured to himself. "I can't go wrong with oranges anyhow. Er-cela, et cela s'il vous plait," producing in his turn his whole stock of French, "combieng." He had only indicated two oranges, but the little woman had caught the anxious glance at her cakes, and without more ado chose out six of the most highly-glazed brioches, and by force of will and volubility made her customer not only take them but pay her two francs for them and the oranges.

The tall Englishman strode away round the corner of the palace with these provisions, and along the great terrace towards a solitary figure sitting forlornly at the top of one of the flights of steps that drop in n.o.ble succession down to the expanses of artificial water that seem to stretch away into the heart of France.

"I couldn't find anywhere to get tea," he said as soon as he was within speaking distance; "I couldn't find anything but an old woman selling oranges, and I got you some of those, and she made me get some cakes as well-I don't know if they're fit to eat."

Mr. Lambert spoke with a very unusual timorousness, as he placed his sticky purchases in Francie's lap, and sat down on the step beside her.

"Oh, thank you awfully, Roddy, I'm sure they're lovely," she answered, looking at her husband with a smile that was less spontaneous than it used to be, and looking away again immediately.

There was something ineffably wearying to her in the adoring, proprietary gaze that she found so unfailingly fixed upon her whenever she turned her eyes towards him; it seemed to isolate her from other people and set her upon a ridiculous pedestal, with one foolish worshipper declaiming his devotion with the fervour and fatuity of those who for two hours shouted the praises of Diana of the Ephesians. The supernatural mist that blurs the irksome and the ludicrous till it seems like a glory was not before her eyes; every outline was clear to her, with the painful distinctness of a caricature.

"I don't think you could eat the oranges here," he said, "they'd be down on us for throwing the skins about. Are you too tired to come on down into the gardens where they wouldn't spot us?" He laid his hand on hers, "You are tired. What fools we were to go walking round all those infernal rooms! Why didn't you say you'd had enough of it?"

Francie was aching with fatigue from walking slowly over leagues of polished floor, with her head thrown back in perpetual perfunctory admiration of gilded ceilings and battle pictures, but she got up at once, as much to escape from the heavy warmth of his hand as from the mental languor that made discussion an effort. They went together down the steps, too much jaded by uncomprehended sight-seeing to take heed of the supreme expression of art in nature that stretched out before them in mirrors of Triton and dolphin-guarded water, and ordered ma.s.ses of woodland, and walked slowly along a terrace till they came to another flight of steps that fell suddenly from the stately splendours of the terraces down to the simplicities of a path leading into a grove of trees.

The path wound temptingly on into the wood, with primroses and celandine growing cool and fresh in the young gra.s.s on either side of it; the shady greenness was like the music of stringed instruments after the brazen heroics of a military band. They loitered along, and Francie slipped her hand into Lambert's arm, feeling, unconsciously, a little more in sympathy with him, and more at ease with life. She had never pretended either to him or to herself that she was in love with him; her engagement had been the inevitable result of poverty, and aimlessness, and bitterness of soul, but her instinctive leniency towards any man who liked her, joined with her old friendliness for Mr. Lambert, made it as easy a way out of her difficulties as any she could have chosen. There was something flattering in the knowledge of her power over a man whom she had been accustomed to look up to, and something, too, that appealed incessantly to her good nature; besides which there is to nearly every human being some comfort in being the first object of another creature's life. She was almost fond of him as she walked beside him, glad to rest her weight on his arm, and to feel how big and reliable he was. There was nothing in the least romantic about having married him, but it was eminently creditable. Her friends in the north side of Dublin had been immensely impressed by it, and she knew enough of Lismoyle society to be aware that there also she would be regarded with gratifying envy. She quite looked forward to meeting Hawkins again, that she might treat him with the cool and a.s.sured patronage proper to the heights of her new position; he had himself seared the wound that he had given her, and now she felt that she was thankful to him.

"Hang this path! it has as many turns as a corkscrew," remarked Mr. Lambert, bending his head to avoid a downstretched branch of hawthorn, covered with baby leaves and giant thorns. "I thought we'd have come to a seat long before this; if it was Stephen's Green there'd have been twenty by this time."

"There would, and twenty old men sitting on each of them!" retorted Francie. "Mercy! who's that hiding behind the tree? Oh, I declare, it's only one of those everlasting old statues, and look at a lot more of them! I wonder if it was that they hadn't room enough for them up in the house that they put them out here in the woods?"

They had come to an enclosed green s.p.a.ce in the wood, a daisy-starred oval of gra.s.s, holding the spring sunshine in serene remoteness from all the outer world of terraces and gardens, and made mysterious and poetical as a vale in Ida by the strange pale presences that peopled every nook of an ivy-grown crag at its further side. A clear pool reflected them, but waveringly, because of the ripples caused by a light drip from the overhanging rock; the trees towered on the encircling high ground and made a wall of silence round the intenser silences of the statues as they leaned and postured in a trance of suspended activity; the only sound was the monotone of the falling water, dropping with a cloistered gravity in the melodious hollow of the cave.

"I'm not going to walk another foot," said Francie, sitting down on the gra.s.s by the water's edge; "here, give me the oranges, Roddy, no one'll catch us eating them here, and we can peg the skins at that old thing with its clothes dropping off and the harp in its hand."

It was thus that Mrs. Lambert described an Apollo with a lyre who was regarding them from the opposite rock with cla.s.sic preoccupation. Lambert lighted a cigar, and leaning back on his elbow in the gra.s.s, watched Francie's progress through her inelegant meal with the pride of the provider. He looked at her half wonderingly, she was so lovely in his eyes, and she was so incredibly his own; he felt a sudden insanity of tenderness for her that made his heart throb and his cheek redden and would have enn.o.bled him to the pitch of dying for her on the spot, had such an extravagance been demanded of him. He longed to put his arms round her, and tell her how dear, how adorable, how entirely delightful she was, but he knew that she would probably only laugh at him in that maddening way of hers, or at all events, make him feel that she was far less interested in the declaration than he was. He gave a quick sigh, and stretching out his hand laid it on her shoulder as if to a.s.sure himself of his ownership of her.

"That dress fits you awfully well. I like you better in that than in anything."

"Then I'd better take care and not get the juice on it," Francie replied, with her mouth full of orange; "lend me a loan of your handkerchief."

Lambert removed a bundle of letters and a guide-book from his pocket, and finally produced the handkerchief.

"Why, you've a letter there from Charlotte, haven't you?" said Francie, with more interest than she had yet shown, "I didn't know you had heard again from her."

"Yes, I did," said Lambert, putting the letters back in his pocket, "I wish to goodness we hadn't left our address at the Charing Cross Hotel. People might let a man alone when he's on his honeymoon."

"What did she say?" inquired Francie lightly. "Is she cross? The other one she wrote was as sweet as syrup, and 'Love to dear Francie' and all."