The Real Charlotte

by Edith Somerville

  There was surprise and disfavour in Miss Mullen’s eye as she extended her hand to him.

  “This is an unexpected pleasure, Mr. Hawkins,” she said.

  “Yes,” answered Mr. Hawkins cheerfully, taking the hand and doing his best to shake it at the height prescribed by existing fashion, “I thought it would be; Miss. Fitzpatrick asked me to come in this afternoon; didn’t you?” addressing himself to Francie. “I got rather a nasty jar when I heard you were all out, but I thought I’d wait for a bit. I knew Miss Dysart always gives ‘em fits at the choir practice. All the same, you know, I should have begun to eat the cake if you hadn’t come in.”

  The round table in the middle of the room was spread, in Louisa’s accustomed fashion, as if for breakfast, and in the centre was placed a cake, coldly decked in the silver paper trappings that it had long worn in the grocer’s window.

  “‘Twas well for you you didn’t!” said Francie, with, as it seemed to Christopher, a most familiar and challenging laugh.

  “Why?” inquired Hawkins, looking at her with a responsive eye. “What would you have done?”

  “Plenty,” returned Francie unhesitatingly; “enough to make you sorry anyway!”

  Mr. Hawkins looked delighted, and was opening his mouth for a suitable rejoinder, when Miss Mullen struck in sharply:

  “Francie, go tell Louisa that I suppose she expects us to stir our tea with our fingers, for there’s not a spoon on the table.”

  “Oh, let me go,” said Hawkins, springing to open the door; “I know Louisa; she was very kind to me just now. She hunted all the cats out of the room.” Francie was already in the hall, and he followed her.

  The search for Louisa was lengthy, involving much calling for her by Francie, with falsetto imitations by Mr. Hawkins, and finally a pause, during which it might be presumed that the pantry was being explored. Pamela brought her chair nearer to Miss Mullen, who had begun wrathfully to stir her tea with the sugar-tongs, and entered upon a soothing line of questions as to the health and numbers of the cats; and Christopher, having cut the grocer’s cake, and found that it was the usual conglomerate of tallow, saw-dust, bad eggs, and gravel, devoted himself to thick bread and butter, and to conversation with Miss Hope-Drummond. The period of second cups was approaching, when laughter, and a jingle of falling silver in the hall told that the search for Louisa was concluded, and Francie and Mr. Hawkins re-entered the drawing-room, the latter endeavouring, not unsuccessfully, to play the bones with four of Charlotte’s best electro-plated teaspoons, while his brown boots moved in the furtive rhythm of an imaginary breakdown. Miss Mullen did not even raise her eyes, and Christopher and Miss Hope-Drummond continued their conversation unmoved; only Pamela acknowledged the histrionic intention with a sympathetic but nervous smile. Pamela’s finger was always instinctively on the pulse of the person to whom she was talking, and she knew better than either Francie or Hawkins that they were in disgrace.

  “I’d be obliged to you for those teaspoons, Mr. Hawkins, when you’ve quite done with them,” said Charlotte, with an ugly look at the chief offender’s self-satisfied countenance; “it’s a good thing no one except myself takes sugar in their tea.”

  “We couldn’t help it,” replied Mr. Hawkins unabashed; “Louisa was out for a walk with her young man, and Miss Fitzpatrick and I had to polish up the teaspoons ourselves.”

  Charlotte received this explanation and the teaspoons in silence as she poured out the delinquents’ tea; there were moments when she permitted herself the satisfaction of showing disapproval if she felt it. Francie accepted her cousin’s displeasure philosophically, only betraying her sense of the situation by the expressive eye which she turned towards her companion in disgrace over the rim of her tea-cup. But Mr. Hawkins rose to the occasion. He gulped his tepid and bitter cup of tea with every appearance of enjoyment, and having arranged his small moustache with a silk handkerchief, addressed himself undauntedly to Miss Mullen.

  “Do you know I don’t believe you have ever been out in our tea-kettle, Miss Mullen. Captain Cursiter and I are feeling very hurt about it.”

  “If you mean by ‘tea-kettle’ that steamboat thing that I’ve seen going about the lake,” replied Charlotte, making an effort to resume her first attitude of suave and unruffled hospitality, and at the same time to administer needed correction to Mr. Hawkins, “I certainly have not. I have always been taught that it was manners to wait till you’re asked.”

  “I quite agree with you, Miss Mullen,” struck in Pamela; “we also thought that for a long time, but we had to give it up in the end and ask ourselves! You are much more honoured than we were.”

  “Oh, I say, Miss Dysart, you know it was only our grovelling humility,” expostulated Hawkins, “and you always said it dirtied your frock and spoiled the poetry of the lake. You quite put us off taking anybody out. But we’ve pulled ourselves together now, Miss Mullen, and if you and Miss Fitzpatrick will fix an afternoon to go down the lake, perhaps if Miss Dysart says she’s sorry we’ll let her come too, and even, if she’s very good, bring whoever she likes with her.”

  Mr. Hawkins’ manner towards ladies had precisely that tone of self-complacent gallantry that Lady Dysart felt to be so signally lacking in her own son, and it was not without its effect even upon Charlotte. It is possible had she been aware that this special compliment to her had been arranged during the polishing of the teaspoons, it might have lost some of its value; but the thought of steaming forth with the Bruff party and “th’ officers,” under the very noses of the Lismoyle matrons, was the only point of view that presented itself to her.

  “Well, I’ll give you no answer till I get Mr. Dysart’s opinion. He’s the only one of you that knows the lake,” she said more graciously. “If you say the steamboat is safe, Mr. Dysart, and you’ll come and see we’re not drowned by these harum-scarum soldiers, I’ve no objection to going.”

  Further discussion was interrupted by a rush and a scurry on the gravel of the garden path, and a flying ball of fur dashed up the outside of the window, the upper half of which was open, and suddenly realising its safety, poised itself on the sash, and crooned and spat with a collected fury at Mr. Hawkins’ bull terrier, who leaped unavailingly below.

  “Oh! me poor darling Bruffy!” screamed Miss Mullen, springing up and upsetting her cup of tea; “she’ll be killed! Call off your dog, Mr. Hawkins!”

  As if in answer to her call, a tall figure darkened the window, and Mr. Lambert pushed Mrs. Bruff into the room with the handle of his walking-stick.

  “Hullo, Charlotte! Isn’t that Hawkins’ dog?” he began, putting his head in at the window, then, with a sudden change of manner as he caught sight of Miss Mullen’s guests, “oh—I had no idea you had anyone here,” he said, taking off his hat to as much of Pamela and Miss Hope-Drummond as was not hidden by Charlotte’s bulky person, “I only thought I’d call round and see if Francie would like to come out for a row before dinner.”

  * * *

  CHAPTER X.

  Washerwomen do not, as a rule, assimilate the principles of their trade. In Lismoyle, the row of cottages most affected by ladies of that profession was, indeed, planted by the side of the lake, but except in winter, when the floods sent a muddy wash in at the kitchen doors of Ferry Row, the customers’ linen alone had any experience of its waters. The clouds of steam from the cauldrons of boiling clothes ascended from morning till night, and hung in beads upon the sooty cobwebs that draped the rafters; the food and wearing apparel of the laundresses and their vast families mingled horribly with their professional apparatus, and, outside in the road, the filthy children played among puddles that stagnated under an iridescent scum of soap-suds. A narrow strip of goose-nibbled grass divided the road from the lake shore, and at almost any hour of the day there might be seen a slatternly woman or two kneeling by the water’s edge, pounding the wet linen on a rock with a flat wooden weapon, according to the immemorial custom of their savage class.

  The Row ended at the
ferry pier, and perhaps one reason for the absence of self-respect in the appearance of its inhabitants lay in the fact that the only passers-by were the country people on their way to the ferry, which here, where the lake narrowed to something less than a mile, was the route to the Lismoyle market generally used by the dwellers on the opposite side. The coming of a donkey-cart down the Row was an event to be celebrated with hooting and stone-throwing by the children, and, therefore, it can be understood that when, on a certain still, sleepy afternoon Miss Mullen drove slowly in her phaeton along the line of houses, she created nearly as great a sensation as she would have made in Piccadilly.

  Miss Mullen had one or two sources of income which few people knew of, and about which, with all her loud candour, she did not enlighten even her most intimate friends. Even Mr. Lambert might have been surprised to know that two or three householders in Ferry Row paid rent to her, and that others of them had money dealings with her of a complicated kind, not easy to describe, but simple enough to the strong financial intellect of his predecessor’s daughter. No account books were taken with her on these occasions. She and her clients were equally equipped with the absolutely accurate business memory of the Irish peasant, a memory that in few cases survives education, but, where it exists, may be relied upon more than all the generations of ledgers and account books.

  Charlotte’s visits to Ferry Row were usually made on foot, and were of long duration, but her business on this afternoon was of a trivial character, consisting merely in leaving a parcel at the house of Dinny Crimeen, the tailor, and of convincing her washerwoman of iniquity in a manner that brought every other washerwoman to her door, and made each offer up thanks to her most favoured saint that she was not employed by Miss Mullen.

  The long phaeton was at last turned, with draggings at the horse’s mouth and grindings of the fore-carriage; the children took their last stare, and one or two ladies whose payments were in arrear emerged from their back gardens and returned to their washing-tubs. If they flattered themselves that they had been forgotten, they were mistaken; Charlotte had given a glance of grim amusement at the deserted washing-tubs, and as her old phaeton rumbled slowly out of Ferry Row, she was computing the number of customers, and the consequent approximate income of each defaulter.

  To the deep and plainly expressed chagrin of the black horse, he was not allowed to turn in at the gate of Tally Ho, but was urged along the road which led to Rosemount. There again he made a protest, but, yielding to the weighty arguments of Charlotte’s whip, he fell into his usual melancholy jog, and took the turn to Gurthnamuckla with dull resignation. Once steered into that lonely road, Charlotte let him go at his own pace, and sat passive, her mouth tightly closed, and her eyes blinking quickly as she looked straight ahead of her with a slight furrow of concentration on her low forehead. She had the unusual gift of thinking out in advance her line of conversation in an interview, and, which is even less usual, she had the power of keeping to it. By sheer strength of will she could force her plan of action upon other people, as a conjuror forces a card, till they came to believe it was of their own choosing; she had done it so often that she was now confident of her skill, and she quite understood the inevitable advantage that a fixed scheme of any sort has over indefinite opposition. When the clump of trees round Gurthnamuckla rose into view, Charlotte had determined her order of battle, and was free to give her attention to outward circumstances. It was a long time since she had been out to Miss Duffy’s farm, and as the stony country began to open its arms to the rich, sweet pastures, an often repressed desire asserted itself, and Charlotte heaved a sigh that was as romantic in its way as if she had been sweet and twenty, instead of tough and forty.

  Julia Duffy did not come out to meet her visitor, and when Charlotte walked into the kitchen, she found that the mistress of the house was absent, and that three old women were squatted on the floor in front of the fire, smoking short clay pipes, and holding converse in Irish that was punctuated with loud sniffs and coughs. At sight of the visitor the pipes vanished in the twinkling of an eye, and one of the women scrambled to her feet.

  “Why, Mary Holloran, what brings you here?” said Charlotte, recognising the woman who lived in the Rosemount gate lodge.

  “It was a sore leg I have, yer honour, miss,” whined Mary Holloran; “it’s running with me now these three weeks, and I come to thry would Miss Duffy give me a bit o’ a plashther.”

  “Take care it wouldn’t run away with you altogether,” replied Charlotte facetiously; “and where’s Miss Duffy herself?”

  “She’s sick, the craythure,” said one of the other women, who, having found and dusted a chair, now offered it to Miss Mullen; “she have a wakeness like in her head, and an impression on her heart, and Billy Grainy came afther Peggy Roche here, the way she’d mind her.”

  Peggy Roche groaned slightly, and stirred a pot of smutty gruel with an air of authority.

  “Could I see her d’ye think?” asked Charlotte, sitting down and looking about her with sharp appreciation of the substantial excellence of the smoke-blackened walls and grimy woodwork. “There wouldn’t be a better kitchen in the country,” she thought, “if it was properly done up.”

  “Ye can, asthore, ye can go up,” replied Peggy Roche, “but wait a while till I have the sup o’ grool hated, and maybe yerself ‘ll take it up to herself.”

  “Is she eating nothing but that?” asked Charlotte, viewing the pasty compound with disgust.

  “Faith, ‘tis hardly she’ll ate that itself.” Peggy Roche rose as she spoke, and, going to the dresser, returned with a black bottle. “As for a bit o’ bread, or a pratie, or the like o’ that, she couldn’t use it, nor let it past her shest; with respects to ye, as soon as she’d have it shwallied it’d come up as simple and pleashant as it wint down.” She lifted the little three-legged pot off its heap of hot embers, and then took the cork out of the black bottle with nimble, dirty fingers.

  “What in the name of goodness is that ye have there?” demanded Charlotte hastily.

  Mrs. Roche looked somewhat confused and murmured something about “a weeshy suppeen o’ shperits to wet the grool.”

  Charlotte snatched the bottle from her, and smelled it.

  “Faugh!” she said, with a guttural at the end of the word that no Saxon gullet could hope to produce; “it’s potheen! that’s what it is, and mighty bad potheen too. D’ye want to poison the woman?”

  A loud chorus of repudiation arose from the sick-nurse and her friends.

  “As for you, Peggy Roche, you’re not fit to tend a pig, let alone a Christian. You’d murder this poor woman with your filthy fresh potheen, and when your own son was dying, you begrudged him the drop of spirits that’d have kept the life in him.”

  Peggy flung up her hands with a protesting howl.

  “May God forgive ye that word, Miss Charlotte! If ‘twas the blood of me arrm, I didn’t begridge it to him; the Lord have mercy on him—”

  “Amen! amen! You would not, asthore,” groaned the other women.

  “—but does’nt the world know it’s mortial sin for a poor craythure to go into th’ other world with the smell of dhrink on his breath!”

  “It’s mortal sin to be a fool,” replied Miss Mullen whose medical skill had often been baffled by such winds of doctrine; “here, give me the gruel. I’ll go give it to the woman before you have her murdered.” She deftly emptied the pot of gruel into a bowl, and, taking the spoon out of the old woman’s hand, she started on her errand of mercy.

  The stairs were just outside the door, and making their dark and perilous ascent in safety, she stood still in a low passage into which two or three other doors opened. She knocked at the first of these, and, receiving no answer, turned the handle quietly and looked in. There was no furniture in it except a broken wooden bedstead; innumerable flies buzzed on the closed window, and in the slant of sunlight that fell through the dim panes was a box from which a turkey reared its red throat, and regarded her with a su
spicion born, like her chickens, of long hatching. Charlotte closed the door and noiselessly opened the next. There was nothing in the room, which was of the ordinary low-ceiled cottage type, and after a calculating look at the broken flooring and the tattered wall-paper, she went quietly out into the passage again. “Good servants’ room,” she said to herself, “but if she’s here much longer it’ll be past praying for.”

  If she had been in any doubt as to Miss Duffy’s whereabouts, a voice from the room at the end of the little passage now settled the matter. “Is that Peggy?” it called.

  Charlotte pushed boldly into the room with the bowl of gruel.

  “No, Miss Duffy, me poor old friend, it’s me, Charlotte Mullen,” she said in her most cordial voice; “they told me below you were ill, but I thought you’d see me, and I brought your gruel up in my hand. I hope you’ll like it none the less for that!”

  The invalid turned her night-capped head round from the wall and looked at her visitor with astonished, bloodshot eyes. Her hatchety face was very yellow, her long nose was rather red, and her black hair thrust itself out round the soiled frill of her night-cap in dingy wisps.

  “You’re welcome, Miss Mullen,” she said with a pitiable attempt at dignity; “won’t you take a cheer?”

  “Not till I’ve seen you take this,” replied Charlotte, handing her the bowl of gruel with even broader bonhommie than before.

  Julia Duffy reluctantly sat up among her blankets, conscious almost to agony of the squalor of all her surroundings, conscious even that the blankets were of the homespun, madder-dyed flannel such as the poor people use, and taking the gruel, she began to eat it in silence. She tried to prop herself in this emergency with the recollection that Charlotte Mullen’s grandfather drank her grandfather’s port wine under this very roof, and that it was by no fault of hers that she had sunk while Charlotte had risen, but the worn-out boots that lay on the floor where she had thrown them off, and the rags stuffed into the broken panes in the window, were facts that crowded out all consolation from bygone glories.