Part 24 (1/2)

”Oh, I don't know-I don't care-” moving again restlessly in his chair; ”he's such a rotten, cold-blooded devil, you can't tell what he's at.” Even at this juncture it gave him pleasure to make little of Christopher to Francie. ”He asked me the most beastly questions he could think of, in that d-d stammering way of his. He's to write to me in two or three days, and I know well what he'll say,” he went on with a stabbing sigh; ”I suppose he'll have it all over the country in a week's time. He's been to the bank and seen the estate account, and that's what's done me. I asked him plump and plain if he hadn't been put up to it, and he didn't deny it, but there's no one could have known what was paid into that account but Baker or one of the clerks, and they knew nothing about the fines-I mean-they couldn't understand enough to tell him anything. But what does it matter who told him. The thing's done now, and I may as well give up.”

”What will you do?” said Francie faintly.

”If it wasn't for you I think I'd put a bullet through my head,” he answered, his innately vulgar soul prompting him to express the best thought that was in him in conventional heroics, ”but I couldn't leave you, Francie-I couldn't leave you-” he broke down again-”it was for our honeymoon I took the most of the money-” He could not go on, and her whole frame was shaken by his sobs.

”Don't, Roddy, don't cry,” she murmured, feeling cold and sick.

”He knows I took the money,” Lambert went on incoherently; ”I'll have to leave the country-I'll sell everything-” he got up and began to walk about the room-”I'll pay him-d.a.m.n him-I'll pay him every farthing. He sha'n't have it to say he was kept waiting for his money! He shall have it this week!”

”But how will you pay him if you haven't the money?” said Francie, with the same lifelessness of voice that had characterised her throughout.

”I'll borrow the money-I'll raise it on the furniture; I'll send the horses up to Sewell's, though G.o.d knows what price I'll get for them this time of year, but I'll manage it somehow. I'll go out to Gurthnamuckla this very afternoon about it. Charlotte's got a head on her shoulders-” He stood still, and the idea of borrowing from Charlotte herself took hold of him. He felt that such trouble as this must command her instant sympathy, and awaken all the warmth of their old friends.h.i.+p, and his mind turned towards her stronger intelligence with a reliance that was creditable to his ideas of the duties of a friend. ”I could give her a bill of sale on the horses and furniture,” he said to himself.

His eyes rested for the first time on Francie, who had sunk into the chair from which he had risen, and was looking at him as if she did not see him. Her hair was ruffled from lying on his shoulder, and her eyes were wild and fixed, like those of a person who is looking at a far-off spectacle of disaster and grief.

CHAPTER L.

The expected rain had not come, though the air was heavy and damp with the promise of it. It hung unshed, above the thirsty country, looking down gloomily upon the dusty roads, and the soft and straight young gra.s.s in the meadows; waiting for the night, when the wind would moan and cry for it, and the newborn leaves would shudder in the dark at its coming.

At three o'clock Francie was sure that the afternoon would be fine, and soon afterwards she came downstairs in her habit, and went into the drawingroom to wait for the black mare to be brought to the door. She was going to ride towards Gurthnamuckla to meet Lambert, who had gone there some time before; he had made Francie promise to meet him on his way home, and she was going to keep her word. He had become quite a different person to her since the morning, a person who no longer appealed to her admiration or her confidence, but solely and distressingly to her pity. She had always thought of him as invincible, self-sufficing, and possesed of innumerable interests besides herself; she knew him now as dishonest and disgraced, and miserable, stripped of all his pretensions and vanities, but she cared for him to-day more than yesterday. It was against her will that his weakness appealed to her; she would have given worlds for a heart that did not smite her at its claim, but her pride helped out her compa.s.sion. She told herself that she could not let people have it to say that she ran away from Roddy because he was in trouble.

She felt chilly, and she s.h.i.+vered as she stood by the fire, whose unseasonable extravagance daily vexed the righteous soul of Eliza Hackett. Hawkins' note was in her hand, and she read it through twice while she waited; then, as she heard the sound of wheels on the gravel, she tore it in two and threw it into the fire, and, for the second time that morning, ran to the window.

It was Christopher Dysart again. He saw her at the window and took off his cap, and before he had time to ring the bell, she had opened the hall door. She had, he saw at once, been crying, and her paleness, and the tell-tale heaviness of her eyes, contrasted pathetically with the smartness of her figure in her riding habit, and the boyish jauntiness of her hard felt hat.

”Mr. Lambert isn't in, Sir Christopher,” she began at once, as if she had made up her mind whom he had come to see; ”but won't you come in?”

”Oh-thank you-I-I haven't much time-I merely wanted to speak to your husband,” stammered Christopher.

”Oh, please come in,” she repeated, ”I want to speak to you.” Her eyes suddenly filled with tears, and she turned quickly from him and walked towards the drawing-room.

Christopher followed her with the mien of a criminal. He felt that he would rather have been robbed twenty times over than see the eyes that, in his memory, had always been brilliant and undefeated, avoiding his as if they were afraid of him, and know that he was the autocrat before whom she trembled. She remained standing near the middle of the room, with one hand on the corner of the piano, whose gaudy draperies had, even at this juncture, a painful sub-effect upon Christopher; her other hand fidgeted restlessly with a fold of the habit that she was holding up, and it was evident that whatever her motive had been in bringing him in, her courage was not equal to it. Christopher waited for her to speak, until the silence became unendurable.

”I intended to have been here earlier,” he said, saying anything rather than nothing, ”but there was a great deal to be got through at the Bench to-day, and I've only just got away. You know I'm a magistrate now, and indifferently minister justice-”

”I'm glad I hadn't gone out when you came,” she interrupted, as though, having found a beginning, she could not lose a moment in using it. ”I wanted to say that if you-if you'll only give Roddy a week's time he'll pay you. He only meant to borrow the money, like, and he thought he could pay you before; but, indeed, he says he'll pay you in a week.” Her voice was low and full of the bitterest humiliation, and Christopher wished that before he had arraigned his victim, and offered him up as an oblation to his half-hearted sense of duty, he had known that his infirmity of purpose would have brought him back three hours afterwards to offer the culprit a way out of his difficulties. It would have saved him from his present hateful position, and what it would have saved her was so evident, that he turned his head aways he spoke, rather than look at her.

”I came back to tell your husband that-that he could arrange things in-in some such way,” he said, as guiltily and awkwardly as a boy. ”I'm. sorry- more sorry than I can say-that he should have spoken to you about it. Of course, that was my fault. I should have told him then what I came to tell him now.”

”He's gone out now to see about selling his horses and the furniture,” went on Francie, scarcely realising all of Christopher's leniency in her desire to prove Lambert's severe purity of action. Her mind was not capable of more than one idea-one, that is, in addition to the question that had monopolised it since yesterday afternoon, and Christopher's method of expressing himself had never been easily understood by her.

”Oh, he mustn't think of doing that!” exclaimed Christopher, horrified that she should think him a Shylock, demanding so extreme a measure of rest.i.tution; ”it wasn't the actual money question that- that we disagreed about; he can take as long as he likes about repaying me. In fact-in fact you can tell him from me that-he said something this morning about giving up the agency. Well, I-I should be glad if he would keep it.”

He had stultified himself now effectually; he knew that he had acted like a fool, and he felt quite sure that Mr. Lambert's sense of grat.i.tude would not prevent his holding the same opinion. He even foresaw Lambert's complacent a.s.sumption that Francie had talked him over, but he could not help himself. The abstract justice of allowing the innocent to suffer with the guilty was beyond him; he forgot to theorise, and acted on instinct as simply as a savage. She also had acted on instinct. When she called him in she had nerved herself to ask for reprieve, but she never hoped for forgivenness, and as his intention penetrated the egotism of suffering, the thought leaped with it that, if Roddy were to be let off, everything would be on the same footing that it had been yesterday evening. A blush that was incomprehensible to Christopher swept over her face; the grasp of circ.u.mstances relaxed somewhat, and a jangle of unexplainable feelings confused what self-control she had left.

”You're awfully good,” she began half hysterically. ”I always knew you were good; I wish Roddy was like you! Oh, I wish I was like you! I can't help it-I can't help crying; you were always too good to me, and I never was worth it!” She sat down on one of the high stiff chairs, for which her predecessor had worked beaded seats, and hid her eyes in her handkerchief. ”Please don't talk to me; please don't say anything to me-” She stopped suddenly. ”What's that? Is that anyone riding up?”

”No. It's your horse coming round from the yard,” said Christopher, taking a step towards the window, and trying to keep up the farce of talking as if nothing had happened.

”My horse!” she exclaimed, starting up. ”Oh, yes, I must go and meet Roddy. I mustn't wait any longer.” She began, as if unconscious of Christopher's presence, to look for the whip and gloves that she had laid down. He saw them before she did and handed them to her.

”Good-bye,” he said, taking her cold, trembling hand, ”I must go too. You will tell your husband that it's-it's all right.”

”Yes. I'll tell him. I'm going to meet him. I must start now,” she answered, scarcely seeming to notice what he said, and withdrawing her hand from his, she began hurriedly to b.u.t.ton on her gloves.

Christopher did not wait for further dismissal, but when his hand was on the door, her old self suddenly woke.

”Look at me letting you go away without telling you a bit how grateful I am to you!” she said, with a lift of her tear-disfigured eyes that was like a changeling of the look he used to know; ”but don't you remember what Mrs. Baker said about me, that 'you couldn't expect any manners from a Dublin Jackeen.'”

She laughed weakly, and Christopher stammering more than ever in an attempt to say that there was nothing to be grateful for, got himself out of the room.

After he had gone, Francie gave herself no time to think. Everything was reeling round her as she went out on to the steps, and even Michael, the groom, thought to himself that if he hadn't the trap to wash, he'd put the saddle on the chestnut and folly the misthress, she had that thrimulous way with her when he put the reins into her hands, and only for it was the mare she was riding he wouldn't see her go out by herself. It was the first of June, and the gaiety of the spring was nearly gone. The flowers had fallen from the hawthorn, the bluebells and primroses were vanis.h.i.+ng as quietly as they came, the meadows were already swarthy, and the breaths of air that sent pale s.h.i.+mmers across them, were full of the unspeakable fragrance of the ripening gra.s.s. Under the trees, near Rosemount, the shadowing greenness had saturated the daylight with its gloom, but out among the open pastures and meadows the large grey sky seemed almost bright, and, in the rich sobriety of tone, the red cattle were brilliant spots of colour.

The black mare and her rider were now on thoroughly confidential terms, and, so humiliatingly interwoven are soul and body, as the exercise quickened the blood in her veins, Francie's incorrigible youth rose up, and while it brightened her eyes and drove colour to her cheeks, it whispered that somehow or other happiness might come to her. She rode fast till she reached the turn to Gurthnamuckla, and there, mindful of her husband's injunctions that she was not to ride up to the house, but to wait for him on the road, she relapsed into a walk.

As she slackened her pace, all the thoughts that she had been riding away from came up with her again. What claim had Roddy on her now? She had got him out of his trouble, and that was the most he could expect her to do for him. He hadn't thought much about the trouble he was bringing on her; he never as much as said he was sorry for the disgrace it would be to her. Why should she break her heart for him, and Gerald's heart too?-as she said Hawkins' name to herself, her hands fell into her lap, and she moaned aloud. Every step the mare was taking was carrying her farther from him, but yet she could not turn back. She was changed since yesterday; she had seen her husband's soul laid bare, and it had shown her how tremendous were sin and duty; it had touched her slumbering moral sense as well as her kindness, and though she rebelled she did not dare to turn back.

It was not till she heard a pony's quick gallop behind her, and, looking back, saw Hawkins riding after her at full speed, that she knew how soon she was to be tested. She had scarcely time to collect herself before he was pulling up the pony beside her, and had turned a flushed and angry face towards her.

”Didn't you get my note? Didn't you know I was coming?” he began in hot remonstrance. Then, seeing in a moment how ill and strange she looked, ”What's the matter? Has anything happened?”

”Roddy came home yesterday evening,” she said, with her eyes fixed on the mare's mane.

”Well, I know that,” interrupted Hawkins. ”Do you mean that he was angry? Did he find out anything about me? If he did see the note I wrote you, there was nothing in that.” Francie shook her head. ”Then it's nothing? It's only that you've been frightened by that brute,” he said, kicking his pony up beside the mare, and trying to look into Francie's downcast eyes. ”Don't mind him. It won't be for long.”

”You mustn't say that,” she said hurriedly. ”I was very wrong yesterday, and I'm sorry for it now.”

”I know you're not!” he burst out, with all the conviction that he felt. ”You can't unsay what you said to me yesterday. I sat up the whole night thinking the thing over and thinking of you, and at last I thought of a fellow I know out in New Zealand, who told me last year I ought to chuck the army and go out there.” He dropped his reins on the pony's neck, and took Francie's hand. ”Why shouldn't we go there together, Francie? I'll give up everything for you, my darling!”

She feebly tried to take her hand away, but did not reply.

”I've got three hundred a year of my own, and we can do ourselves awfully well on that out there. We'll always have lots of horses, and it's a ripping climate-and-and I love you, and I'll always love you!”

He was carried away by his own words, and, stooping his head, he kissed her hand again and again.

Every pulse in her body answered to his touch, and when she drew her hand away, it was with an effort that was more than physical.

”Ah! stop, stop,” she cried. ”I've changed-I didn't mean it.”

”Didn't mean what?” demanded Hawkins, with his light eyes on fire.

”Oh, leave me alone,” she said, turning her distracted face towards him. ”I'm nearly out of my mind as it is. What made you follow me out here? I came out so as I wouldn't see you, and I'm going to meet Roddy now.”

Hawkins' colour died slowly down to a patchy white. ”What do you think it was that made me follow you? Do you want to make me tell you over again what you know already?” She did not answer, and he went on, trying to fight against his own fears by speaking very quietly and rationally. ”I don't know what you're at, Francie. I don't believe you know what you're saying. Something must have happened, and it would be fairer to tell me what it is, than to drive me distracted in this sort of way.”