Part 15 (2/2)
She emphasised each word between her closed teeth, and her large face was so close to Mrs. Lambert's, by the time she had finished speaking, that the latter shrank back.
”I don't believe you, Charlotte,” she said with trembling lips; how do you know it?”
Charlotte had no intention of telling that her source of information had been the contents of a writingcase of Francie's, an absurd receptacle for photographs and letters that bore the word ”Papeterie” on its greasy covers, and had a lock bearing a family resemblance to the lock of Miss Mullen's work-box. But a cross-examination by the turkey-hen was easily evaded.
”Never you mind how I know it. It's true.” Then, with a connection of ideas that she would have taken more pains to conceal in dealing with anyone else, ”Did ye ever see any of the letters she wrote to him when she was in Dublin?”
”No, Charlotte; I'm not in the habit of looking at my husband's letters. I think the tea is drawn,” she continued, making a last struggle to maintain her position, ”and I'd be glad to hear no more on the subject.” She took the cosy off the tea-pot, and began to pour out the tea, but her hands were shaking, and Charlotte's eye made her nervous. ”Oh, I'm very tired-I'm too long without my tea. Oh, Charlotte, why do you annoy me this way when you know it's so bad for me!” She put down the teapot, and covered her face with her hands. ”Is it me own dear husband that you say such things of? Oh, it couldn't be true, and he always so kind to me, indeed, it isn't true, Charlotte,” she protested piteously between her sobs.
”Me dear Lucy,” said Charlotte, laying her broad hand on Mrs. Lambert's knee, ”I wish I could say it wasn't, though of course the wisest of us is liable to error. Come now!” she said, as if struck by a new idea. ”I'll tell ye how we could settle the matter! It's a way you won't like, and it's a way I don't like either, but I solemnly think you owe it to yourself, and to your position as a wife. Will you let me say it to you?”
”Oh, you may, Charlotte, you may,” said Mrs. Lambert tearfully.
”Well, my advice to you is this, to see what old letters of hers he has, and ye'll be able to judge for yourself what the truth of the case is. If there's no harm in them I'll be only too ready to congratulate ye on proving me in the wrong, and if there is, why, ye'll know what course to pursue.”
”Is it look at Roddy's letters?” cried Mrs. Lambert, emerging from her handkerchief with a stare of horror; ”he'd kill me if he thought I looked at them!”
”Ah, nonsense, woman, he'll never know you looked at them,” said Charlotte, scanning the room quickly; ”is it in his study he keeps his private letters?”
”No, I think it's in his old despatch-box up on the shelf there,” answered Mrs. Lambert, a little taken with the idea, in spite of her scruples.
”Then ye're done,” said Charlotte, looking up at the despatch-box in its absolute security of Bramah lock; ”of course he has his keys with him always.”
”Well then, d'ye know,” said Mrs. Lambert hesitatingly, ”I think I heard his keys jingling in the pocket of the coat he took off him before he went out, and I didn't notice him taking them out of it-but, oh, my dear, I wouldn't dare to open any of his things. I might as well quit the house if he found it out.”
”I tell you it's your privilege as a wife, and your plain duty besides, to see those letters,” urged Charlotte, ”I'd recommend you to go up and get those keys now, this minute; it's like the hand of Providence that he should leave them behind him.”
The force of her will had its effect. Mrs. Lambert got up, and, after another declaration that Roderick would kill her, went out of the room and up the stairs at a pace that Charlotte did not think her capable of. She heard her step hurrying into the room overhead, and in a surprisingly short time she was back again, uttering pants of exhaustion and alarm, but holding the keys in her hand.
”Oh,” she said, ”I thought every minute I heard him coming to the door! Here they are for you, Charlotte, take them! I'll not have anything more to say to them.”
She flung the keys into Miss Mullen's lap, and prepared to sink into her chair again. Charlotte jumped up, and the keys rattled on to the floor.
”And d'ye think I'd lay a finger on them?” she said, in such a voice that Mrs. Lambert checked herself in the action of sitting down, and m.u.f.fy fled under his mistress's chair and barked in angry alarm. ”Pick them up yourself! It's no affair of mine!” She pointed with a fateful finger at the keys, and Mrs. Lambert obediently stooped for them. ”Now, there's the desk, ye'd better not lose any more time, but get it down.”
The shelf on which the desk stood was the highest one of a small book-case, and was just above the level of Mrs. Lambert's head, so that when, after many a frightened look out of the window, she stretched up her short arms to take it down, she found the task almost beyond her.
”Come and help me, Charlotte,” she cried; ”I'm afraid it'll fall on me!”
”I'll not put a hand to it,” said Charlotte, without moving, while her ugly, mobile face twitched with excitement; ”it's you have the right and no one else, and I'd recommend ye to hurry!”
The word hurry acted electrically on Mrs. Lambert; she put forth all her feeble strength, and lifting the heavy despatch-box from the shelf, she staggered with it to the dinner-table.
”Oh, it's the weight of the house!” she gasped, collapsing on to a chair beside it.
”Here, open it now quickly, and we'll talk about the weight of it afterwards,” said Charlotte so imperiously that Mrs. Lambert, moved by a power that was scarcely her own, fumbled through the bunch for the key.
”There it is! Don't you see the Brahmah key?” exclaimed Charlotte, hardly repressing the inclination to call her friend a fool and to s.n.a.t.c.h the bunch from her; ”press it in hard now, or ye'll not get it to turn.”
If the lock had not been an easy one, it is probable that Mrs. Lambert's helpless fingers would never have turned the key, but it yielded to the first touch, and she lifted the lid. Charlotte craned over her shoulder with eyes that ravened on the contents of the box.
”No, there's nothing there,” she said, taking in with one look the papers that lay in the tray; ”lift up the tray!”
Mrs. Lambert, now past remonstrance, did as she was bid, and some bundles of letters and a few photographs were brought to light.
”Show the photographs!” said Charlotte in one fierce breath.
But here Mrs. Lambert's courage failed. ”Oh, I can't, don't ask me!” she wailed, clasping her hands on her bosom, with a terror of some irrevocable truth that might await her adding itself to the fear of discovery.
Charlotte caught one of her hands, and, with a guttural sound of contempt, forced it down on to the photograph.
”Show it to me!”
Her victim took up the photographs, and, turning them round, revealed two old pictures of Lambert in riding clothes, with Francie beside him in a very badly made habit and with her hair down her back.
”What d'ye think of that?” said Charlotte. She was gripping Mrs. Lambert's sloping shoulder, and her breath was coming hard and short. ”Now, get out her letters. There they are in the corner!”
”Ah, she's only a child in that picture,” said Mrs. Lambert in a tone of relief, as she hurriedly put the photographs back.
”Open the letters and ye'll see what sort of a child she was.”
Mrs. Lambert made no further demur. She took out the bundle that Charlotte pointed to, and drew the top one from its retaining india-rubber strap. Even in affairs of the heart Mr. Lambert was a tidy man.
”My dear Mr. Lambert,” she read aloud, in a deprecating, tearful voice that was more than ever like the quivering chirrup of a turkey-hen, ”the cake was scrumptious, all the girls were after me for a bit of it, and asking where I got it, but I wouldn't tell. I put it under my pillow three nights, but all I dreamt of was Uncle Robert walking round and round Stephen's Green in his night-cap. You must have had a grand wedding. Why didn't you ask me there to dance at it? So now no more from your affectionate friend, F. Fitzpatrick.”
Mrs. Lambert leaned back, and her hands fell into her lap.
”Well, thank G.o.d there's no harm in that, Charlotte,” she said, closing her eyes with a sigh that might have been relief, though her voice sounded a little dreamy and bewildered.
”Ah, you began at the wrong end,” said Charlotte, little attentive to either sigh or tone, ”that was written five years ago. Here, what's in this?” She indicated the one lowest in the packet.
Mrs. Lambert opened her eyes.
”The drops!” she said with sudden energy, ”on the side-board-oh, save me-!”
Her voice fainted away, her eyes closed, and her head fell limply on to her shoulder. Charlotte sprang instinctively towards the side-board, but suddenly stopped and looked from Mrs. Lambert to the bundle of letters. She caught it up, and plucking out a couple of the most recent, read them through with astonis.h.i.+ng speed. She was going to take out another when a slight movement from her companion made her throw them down.
Mrs. Lambert was slipping off the high dining-room chair on which she was sitting, and there was a look about her mouth that Charlotte had never seen there before. Charlotte had her arm under her in a moment, and, letting her slip quietly down, laid her flat on the floor. Through the keen and crowding contingencies of the moment came a sound from outside, a well-known voice calling and whistling to a dog, and in the same instant Charlotte had left Mrs. Lambert and was deftly and swiftly replacing letters and photographs in the despatch-box. She closed the lid noiselessly, put it back on its shelf with scarcely an effort, and after a second of uncertainty, slipped the keys into Mrs. Lambert's pocket. She knew that Lambert would never guess at his wife's one breach of faith. Then, with a quickness almost incredible in a woman of her build, she got the drops from the sideboard, poured them out, and, on her way back to the inert figure on the floor, rang the bell violently. m.u.f.fy had crept from under the table to snuff with uncanny curiosity at his mistress's livid face, and as Charlotte approached, he put his tail between his legs and yapped shrilly at her.
”Get out, ye d.a.m.ned cur!” she exclaimed, the coa.r.s.e, superst.i.tious side of her nature coming uppermost now that the absorbing stress of those acts of self-preservation was over. Her big foot lifted the dog and sent him flying across the room, and she dropped on her knees beside the motionless, tumbled figure on the floor. ”She's dead! she's dead!” she cried out, and as if in protest against her own words she flung water upon the unresisting face, and tried to force the drops between the closed teeth. But the face never altered; it only acquired momentarily the immovable placidity of death, that a.s.serted itself in silence, and gave the feeble features a supreme dignity, in spite of the thin dabbled fringe and the gold ear-rings and brooch, that were instinct with the vulgarities of life.
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