The Real Charlotte Part 7

"I'll come into the garden with you," he said stepping aside to let her pa.s.s out. "But are you sure your head is well enough for you to go out in this sun?"

"Sun your granny!" responded Francie, walking gingerly across the gravel in her high-heeled house shoes, "I'm as well as ever I was."

"Well, you don't look it," he said with a concerned glance at the faint colour in her cheeks and the violet shadows under her eyes. "Come and sit down in the shade; it's about all you're good for."

A path skirted the flower-beds and bent round the evergreen-covered slope that rose between the house and the road, and at the bend a lime-tree spread its flat, green boughs lavishly over the path, shading a seat made of half-rotten larch poles that extended its dilapidated arms to the pa.s.ser-by.

"Well now tell me all about it," began Lambert as soon as they had sat down. "What did you feel like when you began to remember it all? Were you very angry with me?"

"Yes, of course, I was angry with you, and I am now this minute, and haven't I a good right, with my new hat at the bottom of the lake?"

"I can tell you we were both pretty nearly at the bottom of the lake along with it," said Lambert, who disapproved of this frivolous way of treating the affair. "I don't suppose I ever was nearer death than I was when the sail was on top of me."

Francie looked at him for one instant with awestruck eyes, and Lambert was congratulating himself on having made her realise the seriousness of the situation, when she suddenly burst out laughing.

"Oh!" she apologised, "the thought just came into my head of the look of Mrs. Lambert in a widow's cap, and how she'd adore to wear one! You know she would, now don't you?"

"And I suppose you'd adore to see her in one?"

"Of course I would!" She gave him a look that was equivalent to the wag of the tail with which a dog a.s.sures the obtuse human being that its worrying and growling are only play. "You might know that without being told. And now perhaps you'll tell me how poor Mrs. Lambert is? I hear she was greatly upset by the fright she got about you, and indeed you're not worthy of it."

"She's much better, thank you."

He looked at Francie under his lowered lids, and tried to find it in his heart to wish that she could sometimes be a little more grown up and serious. She was leaning back with her hat crushed against a trunk of the tree, so that its brim made a halo round her face, and the golden green light that filtered through the leaves of the lime moved like water over her white dress. If he had ever heard the story of "Undine" it might have afforded him the comforting hypothesis that this delicate, cool, youthful creature, with her provoking charm, could not possibly be weighted with the responsibility of a soul; but an unfortunate lack of early culture denied to Mr. Lambert this excuse for the levity with which she always treated him-a man sixteen years older than she was, her oldest friend, as he might say, who had always been kind to her ever since she was a scut of a child. Her eyes were closed; but an occasional quiver of the long lashes told him that she had no intention of sleeping; she was only pretending to be tired, "out of tricks," he thought angrily. He waited for a moment or two, and then he spoke her name. The corners of her mouth curved a little, but the eyelashes were not raised.

"Are you tired, or are you shamming?"

"Shamming," was the answer, still with closed eyes.

"Don't you think you could open your eyes?"

"No."

Another short period of silence ensued, and the sound of summer in the air round them strengthened and deepened, as the colour strengthens and deepens in a blush. A wasp strayed in under the canopy of the lime and idled inquisitively about Francie's hat and the bunch of mignonette in her belt, but she lay so still under this supreme test that Lambert thought she must be really asleep, and taking out his handkerchief prepared to rout the invader. At the same moment there came a sound of wheels and a fast-trotting horse on the road; it neared them rapidly, and Miss Fitzpatrick leaped to her feet and put aside the leaves of the lime just in time to see the back of Mr. Hawkins' head as his polo-cart spun past the Tally Ho gate.

"I declare I thought it was Mr. Dysart," she said, looking a little ashamed of herself; "I wonder where in the name of fortune is Mr. Hawkins going!"

"I thought you were so dead asleep you couldn't hear anything," said Lambert, with a black look; "he's not coming here, anyhow."

She dropped back into the corner of the seat again as if the start forward had tired her.

"Oh! I was so frightened at the wasp, and I wouldn't let on!"

"I wonder why you're always so unfriendly with me now," began Lambert suddenly, fixing his eyes upon her; "there was once on a time when we were great friends, and you used to write to me, and you'd say you were glad to see me when I went up to town, but now you're so set up with your Dysarts and your officers that you don't think your old friends worth talking to."

"Oh!" Francie sat up and faced her accuser valiantly, but with an inwardly-stricken conscience. "You know that's a dirty, black lie!"

"I came over here this afternoon," pursued Lambert, "very anxious about you, and wanting to tell you how sorry I was, and how I accused myself for what had happened-and how am I treated? You won't so much as take the trouble to speak to me. I suppose if I was one of your swell new friends-Christopher Dysart, for instance, who you are looking out for so hard-it would be a very different story."

By the time this indictment was delivered, Francie's face had more colour in it than it had known for some days; she kept her eyes on the ground and said nothing.

"I knew it was the way of the world to kick a fellow out of the way when you had got as much as you wanted out of him, and I suppose as I am an old married man I have no right to expect anything better, but I did think you'd have treated me better than this!"

"Don't," she said brokenly, looking up at him with her eyes full of tears; "I'm too tired to fight you."

Lambert took her hand quickly. "My child," he said, in a voice rough with contrition and pity, "I didn't mean to hurt you; I didn't know what I was saying." He tenderly stroked the hand that lay limply in his. "Tell me you're not vexed with me."

"No," said Francie, with a childish sob; "but you said horrid things to me-"

"Well, I never will again," he said soothingly. "We'll always be friends, won't we?" with an interrogatory pressure of the hand. He had never seen her in such a mood as this; he forgot the inevitable effect on her nerves of what she had gone through, and his egotism made him believe that this collapse of her usual supple hardihood was due to the power of his reproaches.

"Yes," she answered, with the dawn of a smile.

"Till the next time, anyhow," continued Lambert, still holding her hand in one of his, and fumbling in his breast pocket with the other. "And, now, look here what I brought you to try and make up to you for nearly drowning you." He gently pulled her hand down from her eyes, and held up a small gold bangle, with a horse-shoe in pearls on it. "Isn't that a pretty thing?"

Francie looked at it incredulously, with the tears still shining on her eyelashes.

"Oh, Mr. Lambert, you don't mean you got that for me? I couldn't take it. Why, it's real gold!"

"Well, you've got to take it. Look what's written on it."

She took it from him, and saw engraved inside the narrow band of gold, her own name and the date of the accident.

"Now, you see it's yours already," he said. "No, you mustn't refuse it," as she tried to put it back into his hand again. "There," snapping it quickly on to her wrist, "you must keep it as a sign you're not angry with me."

"It's like a policeman putting on a handcuff," said Francie, with a quivering laugh. "I've often seen them putting them on the drunken men in Dublin."

"And you'll promise not to chuck over your old friends?" said Lambert urgently.

"No, I won't chuck them over," she replied, looking confidingly at him.

"Not for anybody?" He weighted the question with all the expression he was capable of.

"No, not for anybody," she repeated, rather more readily than he could have wished.

"And you're sure you're not angry with me?" he persisted, "and you like the bangle?"

She had taken it off to re-examine it, and she held it up to him.

"Here, put it on me again, and don't be silly," she said, the old spirit beginning to wake in her eyes.

"Do you remember when you were a child the way you used to thank me when I gave you anything?" he asked, pressing her hand hard.

"But I'm not a child now!"

Lambert, looking in her face, saw the provoking smile spread like sunshine from her eyes to her lips, and, intoxicated by it, he stooped his head and kissed her.

Steps came running along the walk towards them, and the fat face and red head of the Protestant orphan appeared under the boughs of the lime-tree.

"A messenger from Bruff's afther bringing this here, Miss Francie," she panted, tendering a letter in her fingers, "an' Miss Charlotte lef' me word I should get tea when ye'd want it, an' will I wet it now?"

Christopher had shirked the expression of Miss Fitzpatrick's grat.i.tude.

CHAPTER XVII.

"Tally Ho Lodge.

"My Dearest f.a.n.n.y, "Although I'm nearly dead after the bazaar I must write you a line or two to tell you what it was like. It was scrumshous. I wore my white dress with the embroidery the first day and the pink dress that you and I bought together the second day and everybody liked me best in the white one. It was fearful hot and it was great luck it was at the flower stall Mrs. Gascogne asked me to sell. Kathleen Baker and the Beatties had the refreshments and if you saw the colour of their faces with the heat at tea-time I declare you'd have to laugh. The Dysarts brought in a lovely lot of flowers and Mr. Dysart was very nice helping me to tie them up. You needn't get on with any of your nonsence about him, he'd never think of flirting with me or anyone though he's fearfully polite and you'd be in fits if you saw the way Miss Hopedrummond the girl I told you about was running after him and anyone could see he'd sooner talk to his sister or his mother and I don't wonder for their both very nice which is more than she is. Roddy Lambert was there of course and poor Mrs. L. in a puce dress and everybody from the whole country round. Mr. Hawkins was grand fun. Nothing would do him but to come behind the counter with me and Mrs. Gascogne and go on with the greatest nonsence selling b.u.t.tonholes to the old ladies and making them buy a lot of old rotten jeranium cuttings that was all Charlotte would give to the stall. The second day it was only just the townspeople that were there and I couldn't be bothered selling to them all day and little thanks you get from them. The half of them came thinking they'd get everything for nothing because it was the last day and you'd hear them fighting Mrs. Gascogne as if she was a shopwoman. I sat up in the gallery with Hawkins most of the evening and he brought up tea there and strawberries and Charlotte was shouting and roaring round the place looking for me and n.o.body knew where we were. 'Twas lovely-"

At this point Miss Fitzpatrick became absorbed in meditation, and the portrayal on the blotting-paper of a profile of a conventionally cla.s.sic type, which, by virtue of a moustache and a cigarette, might be supposed to represent Mr. Hawkins. She did not feel inclined to give further details of her evening, even to f.a.n.n.y Hemphill. As a matter of fact she had in her own mind pressed the possibilities of her acquaintance with Mr. Hawkins to their utmost limit, and it seemed to her not impossible that soon she might have a good deal more to say on the subject; but, nevertheless, she could not stifle a certain anxiety as to whether, after all, there would ever be anything definite to tell. Hawkins was more or less an unknown quant.i.ty; his mere idioms and slang were the language of another world. It was easy to diagnose Tommy Whitty or Jimmy Jemmison and their fellows, but this was a totally new experience, and the light of previous flirtations had no illuminating power. She had, at all events, the satisfaction of being sure that on f.a.n.n.y Hemphill not even the remotest shadow of an allusion would be lost, and that, whatever the future might bring forth, she would be eternally credited with the subjugation of an English officer.

The profile with the moustache and the cigarette was repeated several times on the blotting-paper during this interval, but not to her satisfaction; her new bangle pressed its pearly horse-shoes into the whiteness of her wrist and hurt her, and she took it off and laid it on the table. It also, and the circ.u.mstances of its bestowal, were among the things that she had not seen fit to mention to the friend of her bosom. It was nothing of course; of no more significance than the kiss that had accompanied it, except that she had been glad to have the bangle, and had cared nothing for the kiss; but that was just what she would never be able to get f.a.n.n.y Hemphill to believe.

The soft, clinging tread of bare feet became audible in the hall, and a crack of the dining-room door was opened.

"Miss Francie," said a voice through the crack, "th' oven's hot."

"Have you the eggs and everything ready, Bid?" asked Francie, who was adding a blotted smoke-wreath to the cigarette of the twentieth profile.

"I have, miss," replied the invisible Bid Sal, "an' Norry says to be hurrying for 'tis short till Miss Charlotte 'll be comin' in."

Francie closed the blotter on her half-finished letter, and pursued the vanishing figure to the kitchen. Norry was not to be seen, but on the table were bowls with eggs, sugar, and b.u.t.ter, and beside them was laid a bunch of twigs, tied together like a miniature birch-rod. The making of a sponge-cake was one of Francie's few accomplishments, and putting on an ap.r.o.n of dubious cleanliness, lent by Louisa, she began operations by breaking the eggs, separating the yolks from the whites, and throwing the sh.e.l.ls into the fire with professional accuracy of aim.

"Where's the egg-whisk, Bid?" she demanded.

"'Tis thim that she bates the eggs with, miss," answered Bid Sal in the small, bashful voice by which she indicated her extreme humility towards those in authority over her, handing the birch-rod to Francie as she spoke.

"Mercy on us! What a thing! I'd be all night beating them with that!"

"Musha, how grand ye are!" broke in Norry's voice from the scullery, in tones of high disdain; "if ye can't bate eggs with that ye'd betther lave it to thim that can!" Following her words came Norry herself, bearing an immense saucepanful of potatoes, and having hoisted it on to the fire, she addressed herself to Bid Sal. "Get out from undher me feet out o' this! I suppose it's to make cakes ye'd go, in place of feedin' the pigs! G.o.d knows I have as much talked since breakfast as'd sicken an a.s.s, but, indeed, I might as well be playin' the pianna as tellin' yer business to the likes o' ye."

A harsh yell at this point announced that a cat's tail had been trodden on, but, far from expressing compunction, Norry turned with fury upon the latest offender, and seizing from a corner beside the dresser an ancient carriage whip, evidently secreted for the purpose, she flogged the whole a.s.semblage of cats out of the kitchen. Bid Sal melted away like snow in a thaw, and Norry, s.n.a.t.c.hing the bowl of eggs from Francie, began to thrash them with the birch rod, scolding and grumbling all the time.

"That ye may be happy!" (This pious wish was with Norry always ironical.) "G.o.d knows ye should be ashamed, filling yer shtummicks with what'll sicken thim, and dhraggin' the people from their work to be runnin' afther ye!"

"I don't want you to be running after me," began Francie humbly.

"Faith thin that's the thruth!" returned the inexorable Norry; "if ye have thim ofcers running afther ye ye're satisfied. Here, give me the bowl till I b.u.t.ther it. I'd sooner b.u.t.ther it meself than to be lookin' at ye doin' it!"

A loud cough, coming from the scullery, of the peculiarly doleful type affected by beggars, momentarily interrupted this tirade.

"Sha'se mick, Nance! Look at that, now, how ye have poor Nance the Fool waitin' on me till I give her the empty bottle for Julia Duffy."

Francie moved towards the scullery door, urged by a natural curiosity to see what manner of person Nance the Fool might be, and saw, squatted on the damp flags, an object which could only be described as a bundle of rags with a cough in it. The last characteristic was exhibited in such detail at the sight of Francie that she retired into the kitchen again, and ventured to suggest to Norry that the bottle should be given as soon as possible, and the scullery relieved of Nance the Fool's dreadful presence.

"There it is for her on the dhresser," replied Norry, still furiously whipping the eggs; "ye can give it yerself."

From the bundle of rags, as Francie approached it, there issued a claw, which s.n.a.t.c.hed the bottle and secreted it, and Francie just caught a glimpse, under the swathing of rags, of eyes so inflamed with crimson that they seemed to her like pools of blood, and heard mouthings and mumblings of Irish which might have been benedictions, but, if so, were certainly blessings in disguise.

"That poor craythur walked three miles to bring me the bottle I have there on the dhresser. It's yerr'b tay that Julia Duffy makes for thim that has the colic." Norry was softening a little as the whites of the eggs rose in stiff and silvery froth. "Julia's a cousin of me own, through the mother's family, and she's able to docthor as good as e'er a docthor there's in it."

"I don't think I'd care to have her doctoring me," said Francie, mindful of the touzled head and dirty face that had looked down upon her from the window at Gurthnamuckla.

"And little shance ye'd have to get her!" retorted Norry; "'tis little she regards the likes o' you towards thim that hasn't a Christhian to look to but herself." Norry defiantly shook the foam from the birch rod, and proceeded with her eulogy of Julia Duffy. "She's as wise a woman and as good a scholar as what's in the country, and many's the poor craythure that's prayin' hard for her night and morning for all she done for thim. B'leeve you me, there's plinty would come to her funeral that'd be follyin' their own only for her and her doctherin'."

"She has a very pretty place," remarked Francie who wished to be agreeable, but could not conscientiously extol Miss Duffy; "it's a pity she isn't able to keep the house nicer."

"Nice! What way have she to keep it nice that hasn't one but herself to look to! And if it was clane itself, it's all the good it'd do her that they'd throw her out of it quicker."

"Who'd throw her out?"

"I know that meself." Norry turned away and banged open the door of the oven. "There's plinty that's ready to pull the bed from undher a lone woman if they're lookin' for it for theirselves."

The mixture had by this time been poured into its tin shape, and, having placed it in the oven, Francie seated herself on the kitchen table to superintend its baking. The voice of conscience told her to go back to the dining-room and finish her letter, but she repressed it, and, picking up a kitten that had lurked, unsuspected, between a frying-pan and the wall during the rout of its relatives, she proceeded to while away the time by tormenting it, and insulting the c.o.c.katoo with frivolous questions.

Miss Mullen's weekly haggle with the butcher did not last quite as long as usual this Friday morning. She had, in fact, concluded it by herself taking the butcher's knife, and with jocose determination, had proceeded to cut off the special portion of the "rack" which she wished for, in spite of Mr. Driscoll's protestations that it had been bespoke by Mrs. Gascogne. Exhilarated by this success, she walked home at a brisk pace, regardless of the heat, and of the weight of the rusty black tourists, bag which she always wore, slung across her shoulders by a strap, on her expeditions into the town. There was no one to be seen in the house when she came into it, except the exiled cats, who were sleeping moodily in a patch of sunshine on the hall-mat, and after some pa.s.sing endearments, their mistress went on into the dining-room, in which, by preference, as well as for economy, she sat in the mornings. It had, at all events, one advantage over the drawing-room, in possessing a sunny French window, opening on to the little gra.s.s-garden-a few untidy flower-beds, with a high, unclipped hedge surrounding them, the resort of cats and their breakfast dishes, but for all that a pleasant outlook on a hot day. Francie had been writing at the dinner-table, and Charlotte sat down in the chair that her cousin had vacated, and began to add up the expenses of the morning. When she had finished, she opened the blotter to dry her figures, and saw, lying in it, the letter that Francie had begun.

In the matter of reading a letter not intended for her eye, Miss Mullen recognised only her own inclinations, and the facilities afforded to her by fate, and in this instance one played into the hands of the other. She read the letter through quickly, her mouth set at its grimmest expression of attention, and replaced it carefully in the blotting-case where she found it. She sat still, her two fists clenched on the table before her, and her face rather redder than even the hot walk from Lismoyle had made it.

There had been a good deal of information in the letter that was new to her, and it seemed important enough to demand much consideration. The reflection on her own contribution to the bazaar did not hurt her in the least, in fact, it slightly raised her opinion of Francie that she should have noticed it; but that ingenuous confidence about the evening spent in the gallery was another affair. At this point in her reflections, she became aware that her eye was attracted by something glittering on the green baize of the dinnertable, half-hidden under two or three loose sheets of paper. It was the bangle that she remembered having seen on Francie's wrist, and she took it up and looked curiously at the double horse-shoes as she appraised its value. She never thought of it as being real-Francie was not at all above an effective imitation-and she glanced inside to see what the mark might be. There was the eighteen-carat mark sure enough, and there also was Francie's name and the date, July 1st, 189-. A moment's reflection enabled Charlotte to identify this as the day of the yacht accident, and another moment sufficed for her to determine that the giver of the bangle had been Mr. Hawkins. She was only too sure that it had not been Christopher, and certainly no glimmer of suspicion crossed her mind that the first spendings from her loan to Mr. Lambert were represented by the bangle.

She opened the blotter, and read again that part of the letter that treated of Christopher Dysart. "P'yah!" she said to herself, "the little fool! what does she know about him?" At this juncture, the wheezing of the spring of the pa.s.sage-door gave kindly signal of danger, and Charlotte deftly slipped the letter back into the blotter, replaced the bangle under the sheets of paper, and was standing outside the French window when Francie came into the room, with flushed cheeks, a dirty white ap.r.o.n, and in her hands a plate bearing a sponge-cake of the most approved shade of golden-brown. At sight of Charlotte she stopped guiltily, and, as the latter stepped in at the window, she became even redder than the fire had made her.

"Oh-I've just made this, Charlotte-" she faltered; "I bought the eggs and the b.u.t.ter myself; I sent Bid for them, and Norry said-she thought you wouldn't mind-"

On an ordinary occasion Charlotte might have minded considerably even so small a thing as the heating of the oven and the amount of flour and sugar needed for the construction of the cake; but a slight, a very slight sense of wrong-doing, conspired, with a little confusion, consequent on the narrowness of her escape, to dispose her to compliance.

"Why, me dear child, why would I mind anything so agreeable to me and all concerned as that splendour of a cake that I see there? I declare I never gave you credit for being able to do anything half as useful! 'Pon me honour, I'll give a tea-party on the strength of it." Even as she spoke she had elaborated the details of a scheme of which the motor should be the cake that Francie's own hand had constructed.

The choir practice was poorly attended that afternoon. A long and heavy shower, coming at the critical moment, had combined with a still longer and heavier luncheon-party given by Mrs. Lynch, the solicitor's wife, to keep away several members. Francie had evaded her duties by announcing that her only pair of thick boots had gone to be soled, and only the most ardent mustered round Mrs. Gascogne's organ bench. Of these was Pamela Dysart, faithful, as was her wont, in the doing of what she had undertaken; and as Charlotte kicked off her goloshes at the gallery door, and saw Pamela's figure in its accustomed place, she said to herself that consistency was an admirable quality. Her approbation was still warm when she joined Pamela at the church door after the practice was over, and she permitted herself the expression of it.

"Miss Dysart, you're the only young woman of the rising generation in whom I place one ha'porth of reliance; I can tell you, not one step would I have stirred out on the chance of meeting any other member of the choir on a day of this kind, but I knew I might reckon on meeting you here."

"Oh, I like coming to the practices," said Pamela, wondering why Miss Mullen should specially want to see her. They were standing in the church porch, waiting for Pamela's pony-cart, while the rain streamed off the roof in a white veil in front of them. "You must let me drive you home," she went on; "but I don't think the trap will come till this downpour is over."

Under the gallery stairs stood a bench, usually appropriated to the umbrellas and cloaks of the congregation; and after the rest of the choir had launched themselves forth upon the yellow torrent that took the place of the path through the churchyard, Pamela and Miss Mullen sat themselves down upon it to wait. Mrs. Gascogne was practising her Sunday voluntary, and the stairs were trembling with the vibrations of the organ; it was a Largo of Bach's, and Pamela would infinitely have preferred to listen to it than to lend a polite ear to Charlotte's less tuneful but equally reverberating voice.

"I think I mentioned to you, Miss Dysart, that I have to go to Dublin next week for three or four days; teeth, you know, teeth-not that I suppose you have any experience of such miseries yet!"

Pamela did not remember, nor, beyond a sympathetic smile, did she at first respond. Her attention had been attracted by the dripping, deplorable countenance of Max, which was pleading to her round the corner of the church door for that sanctuary which he well knew to be eternally denied to him. There had been a time in Max's youth when he had gone regularly with Pamela to afternoon service, lying in a corner of the gallery in discreet slumber. But as he emerged from puppydom he had developed habits of snoring and scratching which had betrayed his presence to Mrs. Gascogne, and the climax had come one Sunday morning when, in defiance of every regulation, he had flung himself from the drawing-room window at Bruff, and followed the carriage to the church at such speed as his crooked legs could compa.s.s. Finding the gallery door shut, he had made his way nervously up the aisle until, when nearing the chancel steps, he was so overcome with terror at the sight of the surpliced figure of the Archdeacon sternly fulminating the Commandments, that he had burst out into a loud fit of hysterical barking. Pamela and the culprit had made an abject visit to the Rectory next day, but the sentence of ex-communication went forth, and Max's religious exercises were thenceforth limited to the churchyard. But on this unfriendly afternoon the sight of his long melancholy nose, and ears dripping with rain, was too much for even Pamela's rect.i.tude.

"Oh, yes, teeth are horrible things," she murmured, stealthily patting her waterproof in the manner known to all dogs as a signal of encouragement.