Part 17 (2/2)

”Light your pipe now and be comfortable,” said Charlotte, issuing from the wardrobe with an armful of clothes and laying them on the bed; ”there's work here for the rest of the morning.” She took up a black satin skirt and held it out in front of her; it had been Mrs. Lambert's ”Sunday best,” and it seemed to Lambert though he could hear his wife's voice asking anxiously if he thought the day was fine enough for her to wear it. ”Now what would you wish done with this?” said Charlotte, looking at it fondly, and holding the band against her own waist to see the length. ”It's too good to give to a servant.”

Lambert turned his head away. There was a crudeness about this way of dealing that was a little jarring at first.

”I don't know what's to be done with it,” he said, with all a man's helpless dislike of such details.

”Well, there's this, and her sealskin, and a lot of other things that are too good to be given to servants,” went on Charlotte, rapidly bringing forth more of the treasures of the poor turkey-hen's wardrobe, and proceeding to sort them into two heaps on the floor. ”What would you think of making up the best of the things and sending them up to one of those dealers in Dublin? It's a sin to let them go to loss.”

”Oh, d.a.m.n it, Charlotte! I can't sell her clothes!” said Lambert hastily. He pretended to no sentiment about his wife, but some masculine instinct of chivalry gave him a shock at the thought of making money out of the conventional sanct.i.ties of a woman's apparel.

”Well, what else do you propose to do with them?” said Charlotte, who had already got out a pencil and paper and was making a list. ”Upon my soul, I don't know,” said Lambert, beginning to realise that there was but one way out of the difficulty, and perceiving with irritated amus.e.m.e.nt that Charlotte had driven him towards it like a sheep, ”unless you'd like them yourself?”

”And do you think I'd accept them from you?” demanded Charlotte, with an indignation so vivid that even the friend of her youth was momentarily deceived and almost frightened by it; ”I, that was poor Lucy's oldest friend! Do you think I could bear-”

Lambert saw the opportunity that had been made for him.

”It's only because you were her oldest friend that I'd offer them to you,” he struck in; ”and if you won't have them yourself, I thought you might know of someone that would.”

Charlotte swallowed her wrath with a magnanimous effort. ”Well, Roddy, if you put it in that way, I don't like to refuse,” she said, wiping a ready tear away with a black-edged pocket handkerchief; ”it's quite true, I know plenty would be glad of a help. There's that unfortunate Let.i.tia Fitzpatrick, that I'll be bound hasn't more than two gowns to her back, I might send her a bundle.”

”Send them to who you like,” said Lambert, ignoring the topic of the Fitzpatricks as intentionally as it had been introduced; ”but I'd be glad if you could find some things for Julia Duffy; I suppose she'll be coming out of the Infirmary soon. What we're to do about that business I don't know,” he continued, filling another pipe. ”Dysart said he wouldn't have her put out if she could hold on there anyway at all-”

”Heavenly powers!” exclaimed Charlotte, letting fall a collection of rolled up kid gloves, ”d'ye mean to say you didn't hear she's in the Ballinasloe Asylum? She was sent there three days ago.”

”Great Scott! Is she gone mad? I was thinking all this time what I was to do with her!”

”Well, you needn't trouble your head about her any more. Her wits went as her body mended, and a board of J.P.'s and M.D.'s sat upon her, and as one of them was old Fatty Ffolliott, you won't be surprised to hear that that was the end of Julia Duffy.”

Both laughed, and both felt suddenly the incongruity of laughter in that room. Charlotte went back to the chest of drawers whose contents she was ransacking, and continued: ”They say she sits all day counting her fingers and toes and calling them chickens and turkeys, and saying that she has the key of Gurthnamuckla in her pocket, and not a one can get into it without her leave.”

”And are you still on for it?” said Lambert, half reluctantly, as it seemed to Charlotte's acute ear, ”for if you are, now's your time. I might have put her out of it two years ago for non-payment of rent, and I'll just take possession and sell off what she has left behind her towards the arrears.”

”On for it? Of course I am. You might know I'm not one to change my mind about a thing I'm set upon. But you'll have to let me down easy with the fine, Roddy. There isn't much left in the stocking these times, and one or two of my poor little dabblings in the money-market have rather 'gone agin me.'”

Lambert thought in a moment of those hundreds that had been lent to him, and stirred uneasily in his chair. ”By the way Charlotte,” he said, trying to speak like a man to whom such things were trifles, ”about that money you lent me-I'm afraid I can't let you have it back for a couple of months or so. Of course, I needn't tell you, poor Lucy's money was only settled on me for my life, and now there's some infernal delay before they can hand even the interest over to me; but, if you don't mind waiting a bit, I can make it all square for you about the farm I know.”

He inwardly used a stronger word than infernal as he reflected that if Charlotte had not got that promise about the farm out of him when he was in a hole about money, he might have been able, somehow, to get it himself now.

”Don't mention that-don't mention that,” said Charlotte, absolutely blus.h.i.+ng a little, ”it was a pleasure to me to lend it to you, Roddy; if I never saw it again I'd rather that than that you should put yourself out to pay me before it was convenient to you.” She caught up a dress and shook its folds out with unnecessary vehemence. ”I won't be done all night if I delay this way. Ah! how well I remember this dress! Poor dear Lucy got it for f.a.n.n.y Waller's wedding. Who'd ever think she'd have kept it for all those years! Roddy, what stock would you put on Gurthnamuckla?”

”Dry stock,” answered Lambert briefly.

”And how about the young horses? You don't forget the plan we had about them? You don't mean to give it up I hope?”

”Oh, that's as you please,” replied Lambert. He was very much interested in the project, but he had no intention of letting Charlotte think so.

She looked at him, reading his thoughts more clearly than he would have liked, and they made her the more resolved upon her own line of action. She saw herself settled at Gurthnamuckla, with Roddy riding over three or four times a week to see his young horses, that should graze her gra.s.s and fill her renovated stables, while she, the bland lady of the manor, should show what a really intelligent woman could do at the head of affairs; and the three hundred pound debt should never be spoken of, but should remain, like a brake, in readiness to descend and grip at the discretion of the driver. There was no fear of his paying it of his own accord. He was not the man she took him for if he paid a debt without due provocation; he had a fine crop of them to be settled as it was, and that would take the edge off his punctilious scruples with regard to keeping her out of her money.

The different heaps on the floor increased materially while these reflections pa.s.sed through Miss Mullen's brain. It was characteristic of her that a distinct section of it had never ceased from appraising and apportioning dresses, dolmans and bonnets, with a nice regard to the rival claims of herself, Eliza Hackett the cook, and the rest of the establishment, and still deeper in its busy convolutions-though this simile is probably unscientific-lurked and grew the consciousness that Francie's name had not yet been mentioned. The wardrobe was cleared at last, a scarlet flannel dressing-gown topping the heap that was destined for Tally Ho, and Charlotte had already settled the question as to whether she should bestow her old one upon Norry or make it into a bed for a cat. Lambert finished his second pipe, and stretching himself, yawned drearily, as though, which was indeed the case, the solemnity of the occasion had worn off and its tediousness had become p.r.o.nounced. He looked at his watch.

”Half-past twelve, by Jove! Look here, Charlotte, let's come down and have a gla.s.s of sherry.”

Charlotte got up from her knees with alacrity, though the tone in which she accepted the invitation was fittingly lugubrious. She was just as glad to leave something unfinished for the afternoon, and there was something very intimate and confidential about a friendly gla.s.s of sherry in the middle of a joint day's work. It was not until Lambert had helped himself a second time from the decanter of brown sherry that Miss Mullen saw her opportunity to approach a subject that was becoming conspicuous by its absence. She had seated herself, not without consciousness, in what had been Mrs. Lambert's chair; she was feeling happier than she had been since the time when Lambert was a lanky young clerk in her father's office, with a precocious moustache and an affectionately free-and-easy manner, before Rosemount had been built, or Lucy Galvin thought of. She could think of Lucy now without resentment, even with equanimity, and that last interview, when her friend had died on the very spot where the sunlight was now resting at her feet, recurred to her without any unpleasantness. She had fought a losing battle against fate all her life, and she could not be expected to regret having accepted its first overture of friends.h.i.+p, any more than she need be expected to refuse another half gla.s.s of that excellent brown sherry that Lambert had just poured out for her. ”Charlotte could take her whack,” he was wont to say to their mutual friends in that tone of humorous appreciation that is used in connection with a gentlemanlike capacity for liquor.

”Well, how are you all getting on at Tally Ho?” he said presently, and not all the self-confidence induced by the sherry could make his voice as easy as he wished it to be; ”I hear you've lost your young lady?”

Charlotte was provoked to feel the blood mount slowly to her face and remain like a hot straddle across her cheeks and nose.

”Oh yes,” she said carelessly, inwardly cursing the strength of Lambert's liquor, ”she took herself off in a huff, and I only hope she's not repenting of it now.”

”What was the row about? Did you smack her for pulling the cats' tails?” Lambert had risen from the table and was tr.i.m.m.i.n.g his nails with a pocketknife, but out of the tail of his eye he was observing his visitor very closely.

”I gave her some good advice, and I got the usual amount of grat.i.tude for it,” said Charlotte, in the voice of a person who has been deeply wounded, but is not going to make a fuss about it. She had no idea how much Lambert knew, but she had, at all events, one line of defence that was obvious and secure.

Lambert, as it happened, knew nothing except that there had been what the letter in his pocket described as ”a real awful row,” and his mordant curiosity forced him to the question that he knew Charlotte was longing for him to ask.

”What did you give her advice about?”

”I may have been wrong,” replied Miss Mullen. with the liberality that implies the certainty of having been right, ”but when I found that she was carrying on with that good-for-nothing Hawkins, I thought it my duty to give her my opinion, and upon me word, as long as he's here she's well out of the place.”

”How did you find out she was carrying on with Hawkins?” asked Lambert, with a hoa.r.s.eness in his voice that belied its indifference.

”I knew that they were corresponding, and when I taxed her with carrying on with him she didn't attempt to deny it, and told me up to my face that she could mind her own affairs without my interference. 'Very well, miss,' says I, 'you'll march out of my house!' and off she took herself next morning, and has never had the decency to send me a line since.”

”Is she in Dublin now?” asked Lambert with the carelessness that was so much more remarkable than an avowed interest.

”No; she's with those starving rats of Fitzpatricks; they were glad enough to get hold of her to squeeze what they could out of her twenty-five pounds a year, and I wish them joy of their bargain!”

Charlotte pushed back her chair violently, and her hot face looked its ugliest as some of the hidden hatred showed itself. But Lambert felt that she did well to be angry. In the greater affairs of life he believed in Charlotte, and he admitted to himself that she had done especially well in sending Francie to Bray.

CHAPTER x.x.xVI.

The house that the Fitzpatricks had taken in Bray for the winter was not situated in what is known as the fas.h.i.+onable part of the town. It commanded no view either of the Esplanade or of Bray Head; it had, in fact, little view of any kind except the backs of other people's houses, and an oblique glimpse of a railway bridge at the end of the road. It was just saved from the artisan level by a tiny bow window on either side of the hall door, and the name, Albatross Villa, painted on the gate posts; and its crowning claim to distinction was the fact that by standing just outside the gate it was possible to descry, under the railway bridge, a small square of esplanade and sea that was Mrs. Fitzpatrick's justification when she said gallantly to her Dublin friends that she'd never have come to Bray for the winter only for being able to look out at the waves all day long.

Poor Mrs. Fitzpatrick did not tell her friends that she had, nowadays, things to occupy herself with that scarcely left her time for taking full advantage of this privilege. From the hour of the awakening of her brood to that midnight moment when, with fingers roughened and face flushed from the darning of stockings, she toiled up to bed, she was scarcely conscious that the sea existed, except when Dottie came in with her boots worn into holes by the pebbles of the beach, or Georgie's Sunday trousers were found to be smeared with tar from riding astride the upturned boats. There were no longer for her the afternoon naps that were so pleasantly composing after four o'clock dinner; it was now her part to clear away and wash the dishes and plates, so as to leave Bridget, the ”general,” free to affair herself with the clothes-lines in the back garden, whereon the family linen streamed and ballooned in the east wind that is the winter prerogative of Bray. She had grown perceptibly thinner under this discipline, and her eyes had dark swellings beneath them that seemed pathetically unbecoming to anyone who, like Francie, had last seen her when the rubicund prosperity of Mountjoy Square had not yet worn away. Probably an Englishwoman of her cla.s.s would have kept her household in comparative comfort with less effort and more success, but Aunt Tish was very far from being an Englishwoman; her eyes were not formed to perceive dirt, not her nose to apprehend smells, and her idea of domestic economy was to indulge in no extras of soap or scrubbing brushes, and to feed her family on strong tea and indifferent bread and b.u.t.ter, in order that Ida's and Mabel's hats might be no whit less ornate than those of their neighbours.

Francie had plunged into the heart of this squalor with characteristic recklessness; and the effusion of welcome with which she had been received, and the comprehensive abuse lavished by Aunt Tish upon Charlotte, were at first sufficient to make her forget the frouziness of the dining-room, and the fact that she had to share a bedroom with her cousins, the two Misses Fitzpatrick. Francie had kept the particulars of her fight with Charlotte to herself. Perhaps she felt that it would not be easy to make the position clear to Aunt Tish's comprehension, which was of a rudimentary sort in such matters, and apt to jump to crude conclusions. Perhaps she had become aware that even the ordinary atmosphere of her three months at Lismoyle was as far beyond Aunt Tish's imagination as the air of Paradise, but she certainly was not inclined to enlarge on her sentimental experiences to her aunt and cousins; all that they knew was, that she had ”moved in high society,” and that she had fought with Charlotte Mullen on general and laudable grounds. It was difficult at times to parry the direct questions of Ida, who, at sixteen, had already, with the horrible precocity prevalent in her grade of society, pa.s.sed through several flirtations of an out-door and illicit kind; but if Ida's curiosity could not be parried it could be easily misled, and the family belief in Francie's power of breaking, impartially, the hearts of all the young men whom she met, was a s.h.i.+eld to her when she was pressed too nearly about ”young Mr. Dysart,” or ”th' officers.” Loud, of course, and facetious were the lamentations that Francie had not returned ”promised” to one or other of these heroes of romance, but not even Ida's cultured capacity could determine which had been the more probable victim. The family said to each other in private that Francie had ”got very close”; even the boys were conscious of a certain strangeness about her, and did not feel inclined to show her, as of yore, the newest subtlety in catapults, or the latest holes in their coats.

She herself was far more conscious of strangeness and remoteness; though, when she had first arrived at Albatross Villa, the crowded, carpetless house, and the hourly conflict of living were reviving and almost amusing after the thunderous gloom of her exit from Tally Ho. Almost the first thing she had done had been to write to Hawkins to tell him of what had happened; a letter that her tears had dropped on, and that her pen had flown in the writing of, telling how she had been turned out because she had refused-or as good as refused-Mr. Dysart for his-Gerald's- sake, and how she hoped he hadn't written to Tally Ho, for it's little chance there'd be Charlotte would send on the letter. Francie had intended to break off at this point, and leave to Gerald's own conscience the application of the hint; but an unused half sheet at the end of her letter tempted her on, and before she well knew what she was saying, all the jealousy and hurt tenderness and helpless craving of the past month were uttered without a thought of diplomacy or pride. Then a long time had gone by, and there had been no answer from Hawkins. The outflung emotion that had left her spent and humbled, came back in bitterness to her, as the tide gives back in a salt flood the fresh waters of a river, and her heart closed upon it, and bore the pain as best it might.

It was not till the middle of October that Hawkins answered her letter. She knew before she opened the envelope that she was going to be disappointed; how could anyone explain away a silence of two months on one sheet of small note-paper, one side of which, as she well knew, was mainly occupied by the regimental crest, much less reply in the smallest degree to that letter that had cost so much in the writing, and so much more in the repenting of its length and abandonment? Mr. Hawkins had wisely steered clear of both difficulties by saying no more than that he had been awfully glad to hear from her, and he would have written before if he could, but somehow he never could find a minute to do so. He would have given a good deal to have seen that row with Miss Mullen, and as far as Dysart was concerned, he thought Miss Mullen had the rights of it; he was going away on first leave now, and wouldn't be back at Lismoyle till the end of the year, when he hoped he would find her and old Charlotte as good friends as ever. He, Mr. Hawkins, was really not worth fighting about; he was stonier broke than he had ever been, and, in conclusion, he was hers (with an illegible hieroglyphic to express the exact amount), Gerald Hawkins.

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