Part 14 (1/2)

Christopher slightly s.h.i.+fted his position, but did not speak, and Lambert went on: ”I'm very fond of the girl, and she's a good-hearted little thing; but, by Jove! I was sorry to see the way she went on with that fellow Hawkins. Here he was, morning, noon, and night, walking with her, and steam-launching, and spooning, and setting all the old women in the place prating. I spoke to her about it, and much thanks I got, though there was a time she was ready enough to mind what I said to her.” During this recital Mr. Lambert's voice had been deficient in the accent of gentlemanlike self-importance that in calmer moments he was careful to impart to it, and the raw Limerick brogue was on top as he said, ”Yes, by George! I remember the time when she wasn't above fancying your humble servant!”

He had almost forgotten his original idea; his own position, long brooded over, rose up out of all proportion, and confused his mental perspective, till Christopher Dysart's opinions were lost sight of. He was recalled to himself by a startling expression on the face of his confidant, an expression of almost unconcealed disgust, that checked effectively any further outpourings. Christopher did not look at him again, but turned from the window, and, taking up Miss Mullen's photograph-book, proceeded to a minute inspection of its contents. Neither he nor Lambert quite knew what would happen next, each in his own way being angry enough for any emergency, and both felt an extreme relief when Francie's abrupt entrance closed the situation.

”Well, I wasn't long now, was I?” she said breathlessly; ”but what'll I do? I can't find my gloves!” She swept out of the corner of the sofa a cat that had been slumbering unseen behind a cus.h.i.+on. ”Here they are! and full of fleas I'll be bound, after Clementina sleeping on them! Oh, goodness! Are both of you too angry to speak to me? I didn't think I was so long. Come on out to the yard; you can't say I'm keeping you now.”

She whirled out of the room, and by the time Lambert and Christopher got into the yard, she had somehow dragged the black mare out of the cowshed and was clambering on to her back with the aid of a wheel-barrow.

Riding has many charms, but none of its eulogists have properly dwelt on the advantages it offers to the unconversational. To ride in silence is the least marked form of unsociability, for something of the same reason that talking on horseback is one of the pleasantest modes of converse. The power of silence cuts both ways, and simplifies either confidence or its reverse amazingly. It so happened, however, that had Lambert had the inclination to make himself agreeable to his companions he could not have done so. Christopher's carriage-horse trotted with the machine-like steadiness of its profession, and the black mare, roused to emulation, flew along beside him, ignoring the feebly expressed desire of her rider that she should moderate her pace. Christopher, indeed, seldom knew or cared at what pace his horse was going, and was now by no means sorry to find that the question of riding along with Lambert had been settled for him. The rough, young chestnut was filled with a vain-glory that scorned to trot, and after a great deal of brilliant ramping and curveting he fell into a kind of heraldic action, half-canter, half-walk, that left him more and more hopelessly in the rear, and raised Lambert's temper to boiling point.

”We're going very fast, aren't we?” panted Francie, trying to push down her rebellious habit-skirt with her whip, as they sped along the flat road between Lismoyle and Bruff. ”I'm afraid Mr. Lambert can't keep up. That's a dreadfully wild horse he's riding.”

”Are we?” said Christopher vaguely. ”Shall we pull up? Here, woa, you brute!” He pulled the carriage-horse into a walk, and looked at Francie with a laugh. ”I'm beginning to hope you're as bad a rider as I am,” he said sympathetically. ”Let me hold your reins, while you're pinning up that plait.”

”Oh, botheration take it! Is my hair down again? It always comes down if I trot fast,” bewailed Francie, putting up her hands to her dishevelled hair, that sparkled like gold in the sun.

”Do you know, the first time I ever saw you, your hair had come down out riding,” said Christopher, looking at her as he held her rein, and not giving a thought to the intimate appearance they presented to the third member of the party; ”if I were you I should start with it down my back.”

”Ah, nonsense, Mr. Dysart; why would you have me make a Judy of myself that way?”

”Because it's the loveliest hair I've ever seen,” answered Christopher, the words coming to his lips almost without his volition, and in their utterance causing his heart to give one or two unexpected throbs.

”Oh!” There was as much astonishment as pleasure in the exclamation, and she became as red as fire. She turned her head away, and looked back to see where Lambert was.

She had heard from Hawkins only this morning, asking her for a piece of the hair that Christopher had called lovely. She had cut off a little curl from the place he had specified, near her temple, and had posted it to him this very afternoon after Charlotte went out; but all the things that Hawkins had said of her hair did not seem to her so wonderful as that Mr. Dysart should pay her a compliment.

Lambert was quite silent after he joined them. In his heart he was cursing everything and everyone, the chestnut, Christopher, Francie, and most of all himself, for having said the things that he had said. All the good he had done was to leave no doubt in Christopher's mind that Hawkins was out of the running, and as for telling him that Francie was a flirt, an a.s.s like that didn't so much as know the meaning of the word flirting. He knew now that he had made a fool of himself, and the remembrance of that disgusted expression on Christopher's face made his better judgment return as burningly as the blood into veins numbed with cold. At the cross-roads next before Bruff, he broke in upon the exchange of experiences of the Dublin theatres that was going on very enjoyably beside him.

”I'm afraid we must part company here, Dysart,” he said in as civil a voice as he could muster; ”I want to speak to a farmer who lives down this way.”

Christopher made his farewells, and rode slowly down the hill towards Bruff. It was a hill that had been cut down in the Famine, so that the fields on either side rose high above its level, and the red poppies and yellowing corn nodded into the sky over his head. The bay horse was collecting himself for a final trot to the avenue gates, when he found himself stopped, and, after a moment of hesitation on the part of his rider, was sent up the hill again a good deal faster than he had come down. Christopher pulled up again on the top of the hill. He was higher now than the corn, and, looking across its mult.i.tudinous, rustling surface, he saw the figure that some errant impulse had made him come back to see. Francie's head was turned towards Lambert, and she was evidently talking to him. Christopher's eyes followed the pair till they were out of sight, and then he again turned his horse, and went home to Bruff.

CHAPTER x.x.x.

One fine morning towards the end of August, Julia Duffy was sitting on a broken chair in her kitchen, with her hands in her lap, and her bloodshot eyes fixed on vacancy. She was so quiet that a party of ducks, which had hung uncertainly about the open door for some time, filed slowly in, and began to explore an empty pot or two with their long, dirty bills. The ducks knew well that Miss Duffy, though satisfied to accord the freedom of the kitchen to the hens and turkeys, had drawn the line at them and their cousins the geese, and they adventured themselves within the forbidden limits with the utmost caution, and with many side glances from their blinking, beady eyes at the motionless figure in the chair. They had made their way to a plate of potato skins and greasy cabbage on the floor by the table, and, forgetful of prudence, were clattering their bills on the delf as they gobbled, when an arm was stretched out above their heads, and they fled in c.u.mbrous consternation.

The arm, however, was not stretched out in menace; Julia Duffy had merely extended it to take a paper from the table, and having done so, she looked at its contents in entire obliviousness of the ducks and their maraudings. Her misfortunes were converging. It was not a week since she had heard of the proclaimed insolvency of the man who had taken the grazing of Gurthnamuckla, and it was not half an hour since she had been struck by this last arrow of outrageous fortune, the letter threatening to process her for the long arrears of rent that she had felt lengthening hopelessly with every sunrise and sunset. She looked round the dreary kitchen that had about it all the added desolation of past respectability, at the rusty hooks from which she could remember the portly hams and flitches of bacon hanging; at the big fire-place where her grandfather's Sunday sirloin used to be roasted. Now, cobwebs dangled from the hooks, and the old grate had fallen to pieces, so that the few sods of turf smouldered on the hearthstone. Everything spoke of bygone plenty and present wretchedness.

Julia put the letter into its envelope again and groaned a long miserable groan. She got up and stood for a minute, staring out of the open door with her hands on her hips, and then went slowly and heavily up the stairs, groaning again to herself from the exertion and from the blinding headache that made her feel as though her brain were on fire. She went into her room and changed her filthy gown for the stained and faded black rep that hung on the door. From a band-box of tanned antiquity she took a black bonnet that had first seen the light at her mother's funeral, and tied its clammy satin strings with shaking hands. Flashes of light came and went before her eyes, and her pallid face was flushed painfully as she went downstairs again, and finding, after long search, the remains of the bottle of blacking, laboriously cleaned her only pair of boots. She was going out of the house when her eye fell upon the plate from which the ducks had been eating; she came back for it, and, taking it out with her, scattered its contents to the turkeys, mechanically holding her dress up out of the dirt as she did so. She left the plate on the kitchen window-sill, and set slowly forth down the avenue.

Under the tree by the gate, Billy Grainy was sitting, engaged, as was his custom in moments of leisure, in counting the coppers in the bag that hung round his neck. He looked in amazement at the unexpected appearance of his patroness, and as she approached him he pushed the bag under his s.h.i.+rt.

”Where are ye goin'?” he asked.

Julia did not answer; she fumbled blindly with the bit of stick that fastened the gate, and, having opened it, went on without attempting to shut it.

”Where are ye goin' at all?” said Billy again, his bleared eyes following the unfamiliar outline of bonnet and gown.

Without turning, she said, ”Lismoyle,” and as she walked on along the sunny road, she put up her hand and tried to wipe away the tears that were running down her face. Perhaps it was the excitement with which every nerve was trembling that made the three miles to Rosemount seem as nothing to this woman, who, for the last six months, had been too ill to go beyond her own gate; and probably it was the same unnatural strength that prevented her from breaking down, when, with her mind full of ready-framed sentences that were to touch Mr. Lambert's heart and appeal to his sense of justice, she heard from Mary Holleran at the gate that he was away for a couple of days in Limerick. Without replying to Mary Holleran's exclamations of pious horror at the distance she had walked, and declining all offers of rest or food, she turned and walked on towards Lismoyle.

She had suddenly determined to herself that she would walk to Bruff and see her landlord, and this new idea took such possession of her that she did not realise at first the magnitude of the attempt. But by the time she had reached the gate of Tally Ho the physical power that her impulse gave her began to be conscious of its own limits. The flashes were darting like lightning before her eyes, and the nausea that was her constant companion robbed her of her energy. After a moment of hesitation she decided that she would go in and see her kinswoman, Norry the Boat, and get a gla.s.s of water from her before going further. It wounded her pride somewhat to go round to the kitchen-she, whose grandfather had been on nearly the same social level as Miss Mullen's; but Charlotte was the last person she wished to meet just then. Norry opened the kitchen door, beginning, as she did so, her usual snarling maledictions on the supposed beggar, which, however, were lost in a loud invocation of her patron saint as she recognised her first cousin, Miss Duffy.

”And is it to leg it in from Gurthnamuckla ye done?” said Norry, when the first greetings had been exchanged, and Julia was seated in the kitchen, ”and you looking as white as the dhrivelling snow this minnit.”

”I did,” said Julia feebly, ”and I'd be thankful to you for a drink of water. The day's very close.”

”Faith ye'll get no wather in this house,” returned Norry in grim hospitality; ”I'll give ye a sup of milk, or would it be too much delay on ye to wait till I bile the kittle for a cup o' tay? Bad cess to Bid Sal! There isn't as much hot wather in the house this minute as'd write yer name!”

”I'm obliged to ye, Norry,” said Julia stiffy, her sick pride evolving a supposition that she could be in want of food; ”but I'm only after my breakfast myself. Indeed,” she added, a.s.suming from old habit her usual att.i.tude of medical adviser, ”you'd be the better yourself for taking less tea.”

”Is it me?” replied Norry indignantly. ”I take me cup o' tay morning and evening, and if 'twas throwing after me I wouldn't take more.”

”Give me the cold wather, anyway,” said Julia wearily; ”I must go on out of this. It's to Bruff I'm going.”

”In the name o' G.o.d what's taking ye into Bruff, you that should be in yer bed, in place of sthreelin' through the counthry this way?”

”I got a letter from Lambert to-day,” said Julia, putting her hand to her aching head, as if to collect herself, ”and I want to speak to Sir Benjamin about it.”

”Ah, G.o.d help yer foolish head!” said Norry impatiently; ”sure ye might as well be talking to the bird above there,” pointing to the c.o.c.katoo, who was looking down at them with ghostly solemnity. ”The owld fellow's light in his head this long while.”

”Then I'll see some of the family,” said Julia; ”they remember my fawther well, and the promise I had about the farm, and they'll not see me wronged.”

”Throth, then, that's thrue,” said Norry, with an unwonted burst of admiration; ”they was always and ever a fine family, and thim that they takes in their hands has the luck o' G.o.d! But what did Lambert say t'ye?” with a keen glance at her visitor from under her heavy eyebrows.

Julia hesitated for a moment.

”Norry Kelly,” she said, her voice shaking a little; ”if it wasn't that you're me own mother's sister's child, I would not reveal to you the disgrace that man is trying to put upon me. I got a letter from him this morning saying he'd process me if I didn't pay him at once the half of what's due. And Joyce that has the grazing is bankrupt, and owes me what I'll never get from him.”

”Blast his sowl!” interjected Norry, who was peeling onions with furious speed.

”I know there's many would be thankful to take the grazing,” continued Julia, pa.s.sing a dingy pocket handkerchief over her forehead; ”but who knows when I'd be paid for it, and Lambert will have me out on the road before that if I don't give him the rent.”

Norry looked to see whether both the kitchen doors were shut, and then, putting both her hands on the table, leaned across towards her cousin.

”Herself wants it,” she said in a whisper.

”Wants what? What are you saying?”

”Wants the farm, I tell ye, and it's her that's driving Lambert.”

”Is it Charlotte Mullen?” asked Julia, in a scarcely audible voice.

”Now ye have it,” said Norry, returning to her onions, and shutting her mouth tightly.

The c.o.c.katoo gave a sudden piercing screech, like a note of admiration. Julia half got up, and then sank back into her chair.