Part 8 (1/2)
”Horrible things! Upon my word they are! Beaks, that's what we ought to have instead of them! I declare I don't know which is the worst, cutting your first set of teeth, or your last! But that's not what's distressing me most about going to Dublin.”
”Really,” said Pamela, who, conscious that Max was now securely hidden behind her petticoats, was able to give her whole attention to Miss Mullen; ”I hope it's nothing serious.”
”Well, Miss Dysart,” said Charlotte, with a sudden burst of candour, ”I'll tell you frankly what it is. I'm not easy in my mind about leaving that girl by herself-Francie y' know-she's very young, and I suppose I may as well tell the truth, and say she's very pretty.” She paused for the confirmation that Pamela readily gave. ”So you'll understand now, Miss Dysart, that I feel anxious about leaving her in a house by herself, and the reason I wanted to see you so specially to-day was to ask if you'd do me a small favour, which, being your mother's daughter, I'm sure you'll not refuse.” She looked up at Pamela, showing all her teeth. ”I want you to be the good angel that you always are, and come in and look her up sometimes if you happen to be in town.”
The lengthened prelude to this modest request might have indicated to a more subtle soul than Pamela's that something weightier lay behind it; but her grey eyes met Miss Mullen's restless brown ones with nothing in them except kindly surprise that it was such a little thing that she had been asked to do.
”Of course I will,” she answered; ”mamma and I will have to come in about clearing away the rest of that awful bazaar rubbish, and I shall be only too glad to come and see her, and I hope she will come and lunch at Bruff some day while you are away.”
This was not quite what Charlotte was aiming at, but still it was something.
”You're a true friend, Miss Dysart,” she said gus.h.i.+ngly, ”I knew you would be; it'll only be for a few days, at all events, that I'll bother you with me poor relation! I'm sure she'll be able to amuse herself in the evenings and mornings quite well, though indeed, poor child, I'm afraid she'll be lonely enough!”
Mrs. Gascogne, putting on her gloves at the top of the stairs, thought to herself that Charlotte Mullen might be able to impose upon Pamela, but other people were not so easily imposed on. She leaned over the staircase railing, and said, ”Are you aware, Pamela, that your trap is waiting at the gate?” Pamela got up, and Max, deprived of the comfortable shelter of her skirts, crawled forth from under the bench and sneaked out of the church door. ”I wouldn't have that dog's conscience for a good deal,” went on Mrs. Gascogne as she came downstairs. ”In fact, I am beginning to think that the only people who get everything they want are the people who have no consciences at all.”
”There's a pretty sentiment for a clergyman's wife!” exclaimed Charlotte. ”Wait till I see the Archdeacon and ask him what sort of theology that is! Now wasn't that the very image of Mrs. Gascogne?” she continued as Pamela and she drove away; ”the best and the most religious woman in the parish, but no one's able to say a sharper thing when she likes, and you never know what heterodoxy she'll let fly at you next!”
The rain was over, and the birds were singing loudly in the thick shrubs at Tally Ho as Pamela turned the roan pony in at the gate; the sun was already drawing a steamy warmth from the bepuddled road, and the blue of the afternoon sky was glowing freshly and purely behind a widening proscenium of clouds.
”Now you might just as well come in and have a cup of tea; it's going to be a lovely evening after all, and I happen to know there's a grand sponge-cake in the house.” Thus spoke Charlotte, with hospitable warmth, and Pamela permitted herself to be persuaded. ”It was Francie made it herself; she'll be as proud as Punch at having you to-” Charlotte stopped short with her hand on the drawing-room door, and then opened it abruptly.
There was no one to be seen but on the table were two half-empty cups of tea, and the new sponge-cake, reduced by one-third, graced the centre of the board. Miss Mullen glared round the room. A stifled giggle broke from the corner behind the piano, and Francie's head appeared over the top, instantly followed by that of Mr. Hawkins.
”We thought 'twas visitors when we heard the wheels,” said Miss Fitzpatrick, still laughing, but looking very much ashamed of herself, ”and we went to hide when they pa.s.sed the window for fear we'd be seen.” She paused, not knowing what to say, and looked entreatingly at Pamela. ”I never thought it'd be you-”
It was borne in on her suddenly that this was not the manner in which Miss Dysart would have acted under similar circ.u.mstances, and for the first time a doubt as to the fitness of her social methods crossed her mind.
Pamela, as she drove home after tea, thought she understood why it was that Miss Mullen did not wish her cousin to be left to her own devices in Lismoyle.
CHAPTER XVIII.
There was no sound in the red gloom, except the steady trickle of running water, and the anxious breathing of the photographer. Christopher's long hands moved mysteriously in the crimson light, among phials, baths, and cases of negatives, while uncanny smells of various acids and compounds thickened the atmosphere. Piles of old trunks towered dimly in the corners, a superannuated sofa stood on its head by the wall, with its broken hindlegs in the air, three old ball skirts hung like ghosts of Bluebeard's wives upon the door, from which, to Christopher's developing tap, a narrow pa.s.sage forced its angular way.
There was presently a step on the uncarpeted flight of attic stairs, accompanied by a pattering of broad paws, and Pamela, closely attended by the inevitable Max, slid with due caution into the room.
”Well, Christopher,” she began, sitting gingerly down in the darkness on an old imperial, a relic of the period when Sir Benjamin posted to Dublin in his own carriage, ”mamma says she is to come!”
”Lawks!” said Christopher succinctly, after a pause occupied by the emptying of one photographic bath into another.
”Mamma said she 'felt Charlotte Mullen's position so keenly in having to leave that girl by herself,'” pursued Pamela, ”'that it was only common charity to take her in here while she was away.'”
”Well, my dear, and what are you going to do with her?” said Christopher cheerfully.
”Oh, I can't think,” replied Pamela despairingly; ”and I know that Evelyn does not care about her; only last night she said she dressed like a doll at a bazaar.”
Christopher busied himself with his chemicals, and said nothing.
”The fact is, Christopher,” went on his sister decisively, ”you will have to undertake her. Of course, I'll help you, but I really cannot face the idea of entertaining both her and Evelyn at the same time. Just imagine how they would hate it.”
”Let them hate it,” said Christopher, with the crossness of a good-natured person who feels that his good nature is going to make him do a disagreeable thing.
”Ah, Christopher, be good; it will only be for three days, and she's very easy to talk to; in fact,” ended Pamela apologetically, ”I think I rather like her!”
”Well, do you know,” said Christopher, ”the curious thing is, that though I can't talk to her and she can't talk to me, I rather like her, too- when I'm at the other end of the room.”
”That's all very fine,” returned Pamela dejectedly; ”it may amuse you to study her through a telescope, but it won't do anyone else much good; after all, you are the person who is really responsible for her being here. You saved her life.”
”I know I did,” replied her brother irritably, staring at the stumpy candle behind the red gla.s.s of the lantern, unaware of the portentous effect of its light upon his eye-gla.s.s, which shone like a ball of fire; ”that's much the worst feature of the case. It creates a dreadful bond of union. At that infernal bazaar, whenever I happened to come within hail of her, Miss Mullen collected a crowd and made a speech at us. I will say for her that she hid with Hawkins as much as she could, and did her best to keep out of my way. As I said before, I have no personal objection to her, but I have no gift for competing with young women. Why not have Hawkins to dinner every night and to luncheon every day? It's much the simplest way of amusing her, and it will save me a great deal of wear and tear that I don't feel equal to.”
Pamela got up from the imperial.
”I hate you when you begin your nonsense of theorising about yourself as if you were a mixture of Methuselah and Diogenes; I have seen you making yourself just as agreeable to young women as Mr. Hawkins or anyone;” she paused at the door. ”She'll be here the day after to-morrow,” with a sudden collapse into pathos. ”Oh, Christopher, you must help me to amuse her!”
Two days afterwards Miss Mullen left for Dublin by the early train, and in the course of the morning her cousin got upon an outside car in company with her trunk, and embarked upon the preliminary stage of her visit to Bruff. She was dressed in the attire which in her own mind she specified as her ”Sunday clothes,” and as the car rattled through Lismoyle, she put on a pair of new yellow silk gloves with a confidence in their adequacy to the situation that was almost touching. She felt a great need of their support. Never since she was grown up had she gone on a visit, except for a night or two to the Hemphill's summer lodgings at Kingstown, when such ”things” as she required were conveyed under her arm in a brown paper parcel, and she and the three Miss Hemphills had sociably slept in the back drawing-room. She had been once at Bruff, a visit of ceremony, when Lady Dysart only had been at home, and she had sat and drunk her tea in unwonted silence, wis.h.i.+ng that there were sugar in it, but afraid to ask for it, and respecting Charlotte for the ease with which she accepted her surroundings, and discoursed of high and difficult matters with her hostess. It was only the thought of writing to her Dublin friends to tell them of how she had stayed at Sir Benjamin Dysart's place that really upheld her during the drive; no matter how terrible her experiences might be, the fact would remain to her, sacred and unalterable.
Nevertheless, its consolations seemed very remote at the moment when the car pulled up at the broad steps of Bruff, and Gorman the butler came down them, and solemnly a.s.sisted her to alight, while the setter and spaniel, who had greeted her arrival with the usual official chorus of barking, smelt round her politely but with extreme firmness. She stood forlornly in the big cool hall, waiting till Gorman should be pleased to conduct her to the drawing-room, uncertain as to whether she ought to take off her coat, uncertain what to do with her umbrella, uncertain of all things except of her own ignorance. A white stone double staircase rose overawingly at the end of the hall; the floor under her feet was dark and slippery, and when she did at length prepare to follow the butler, she felt that visiting at grand houses was not as pleasant as it sounded.
A door into the hall suddenly opened, and there issued from it the hobbling figure of an old man wearing a rusty tall hat down over his ears, and followed by a cadaverous attendant, who was holding an umbrella over the head of his master, like a Siamese courtier.
”D-n your eyes, James Canavan!” said Sir Benjamin Dysart, ”can't you keep the rain off my new hat, you blackguard!” Then spying Francie, who was crossing the hall, ”Ho-ho! That's a fine girl, begad! What's she doing in my hall?”
”Oh, hush, hush, Sir Benjamin!” said James Canavan, in tones of shocked propriety. ”That is a young lady visitor.”
”Then she's my visitor,” retorted Sir Benjamin, striking his ponderous stick on the ground, ”and a devilish pretty visitor, too! I'll drive her out in my carriage to-morrow.”
”You will, Sir Benjamin, you will,” answered his henchman, hurrying the master of the house along towards the hall door; while Francie, with a new and wholly unexpected terror added to those she had brought with her, followed the butler to the drawing-room.
It was a large room. Francie felt it to be the largest she had ever been in, as she advanced round a screen, and saw Lady Dysart at an immeasurable distance working at a heap of dingy serge, and behind her, still further off, the well-curled head of Miss Hope-Drummond just topping the cus.h.i.+on of a low arm-chair.
”Oh, how do you do!” said Lady Dysart, getting up briskly, and dropping as she did so a large pair of scissors and the child's frock at which she had been working. ”You are very good to have come over so early.”
The geniality of Lady Dysart's manner might have a.s.sured anyone less alarmed than her visitor that there was no ill intention in this remark; but such discernment was beyond Francie.
”Miss Mullen told me to be over here by twelve, Lady Dysart,” she said abjectly, ”and as she had the car ordered for me I didn't like-”
Lady Dysart began to laugh, with the large and yet refined bonhommie that was with her the subst.i.tute for tact.
”Why shouldn't you come early, my dear child?” she said, looking approvingly at Francie's embarra.s.sed countenance. ”I'll tell Pamela you are here. Evelyn, don't you know Miss Fitzpatrick?”
Miss Hope-Drummond, thus adjured, raised herself languidly from her chair, and shook hands with the newcomer, as Lady Dysart strode from the room with her customary business-like rapidity. Silence reigned for nearly a minute after the door closed; but at length Miss Hope-Drummond braced herself to the exertion of being agreeable.
”Very hot day, isn't it?” looking at Francie's flushed cheeks.
”It is indeed, roasting! I was nearly melting with the heat on the jaunting-car coming over,” replied Francie, with a desire to be as responsive as possible, ”but it's lovely and cool in here.”