The Real Charlotte

by Edith Somerville

  “Just look at them, Mr. Lambert,” Francie called out in cheerful complaint. “They’re having a race to see which of them will finish their bit of grass first, and they won’t let me stir, though I’m nearly mad with the flies!”

  She had a waving branch of mountain-ash in her hand; the big straw hat that she had trimmed for herself with dog-roses the night before was on the back of her head; her hair clustered about her white temples, and the colour that fighting the flies had brought to her face lent a lovely depth to eyes that had the gaiety and the soullessness of a child. Lambert had forgotten most of his classics since he had left school, and it is probable that even had he remembered them it would not have occurred to him to regard anything in them as applicable to modern times. At all events Francie’s Dryad-like fitness to her surroundings did not strike him, as it struck another more dispassionate onlooker, when an occasional lift of the Hope-Drummond parasol revealed the white-clad finger with its woody background to Christopher.

  “It seems to me you’re very well able to take care of yourself,” was Lambert’s reply to Miss Fitzpatrick’s appeal. He turned his back upon her, and interrupted Charlotte in the middle of a story by asking her if she would walk with him across the island and have a look at the ruins of Ochery Chapel.

  One habit at least of Mr. Lambert’s school life remained with him. He was still a proficient at telling tales.

  * * *

  CHAPTER XIII.

  Innishochery Island lay on the water like a great green bouquet, with a narrow grey lace edging of stony beach. From the lake it seemed that the foliage stood in a solid impenetrable mass, and that nothing but the innumerable wood-pigeons could hope to gain its inner recesses; even the space of grass which, at the side of the landing-place, drove a slender wedge up among the trees, had still the moss-grown stumps upon it that told it had been recovered by force from the possession of the tall pines and thick hazel and birch scrub. The end of the wedge narrowed into a thread of a path which wound its briary way among the trees with such sinuous vagueness, and such indifference to branches overhead and rocks underfoot, that to follow it was both an act of faith and a penance. Near the middle of the island it was interrupted by a brook that slipped along whispering to itself through the silence of the wood, and though the path made a poor shift to maintain its continuity with stepping-stones, it expired a few paces farther on in the bracken of a little glade.

  It was a glade that had in some elfish way acquired an expression of extremest old age. The moss grew deep in the grass, lay deep on the rocks; stunted birch-trees encircled it with pale twisted arms hoary with lichen, and, at the farther end of it, a grey ruined chapel, standing over the pool that was the birthplace of the stream, fulfilled the last requirement of romance. On this hot summer afternoon the glade had more than ever its air of tranced meditation upon other days and superiority to the outer world, lulled in its sovereignty of the island by the monotone of humming insects, while on the topmost stone of the chapel a magpie gabbled and cackled like a court jester. Christopher thought, as he sat by the pool smoking a cigarette, that he had done well in staying behind under the pretence of photographing the yacht from the landing-place, and thus eluding the rest of the party. He was only intermittently unsociable, but he had always had a taste for his own society, and, as he said to himself, he had been going strong all the morning, and the time had come for solitude and tobacco.

  He was a young man of a reflective turn, and had artistic aspirations which, had he been of a hardier nature, would probably have taken him further than photography. But Christopher’s temperament held one or two things unusual in the amateur. He had the saving, or perhaps fatal power of seeing his own handiwork with as unflattering an eye as he saw other people’s. He had no confidence in anything about himself except his critical ability, and as he did not satisfy that, his tentative essays in painting died an early death. It was the same with everything else. His fastidious dislike of doing a thing indifferently was probably a form of conceit, and though it was a higher form than the common vanity whose geese are all swans, it brought about in him a kind of deadlock. His relations thought him extremely clever, on the strength of his university career and his intellectual fastidiousness, and he himself was aware that he was clever, and cared very little for the knowledge. Half the people in the world were clever nowadays, he said to himself with indolent irritability, but genius was another affair; and, having torn up his latest efforts in water-colour and verse, he bought a camera, and betook himself to the more attainable perfection of photography.

  It was delightful to lie here with the delicate cigarette smoke keeping the flies at bay, and the grasshoppers whirring away in the grass, like fairy sewing-machines, and with the soothing knowledge that the others had been through the glade, had presumably done the ruin thoroughly, and were now cutting their boots to pieces on the water-fretted limestone rocks as they scrambled round from the shore to the landing-place. This small venerable wood, and the boulders that had lain about the glade through sleepy centuries till the moss had smothered their outlines, brought to Christopher’s mind the enchanted country through which King Arthur’s knights rode; and he lay there mouthing to himself fragments of half-remembered verse, and wondering at the chance that had reserved for him this backwater in a day of otherwise dubious enjoyment. He even found himself piecing together a rhyme or two on his own account; but, as is often the case, inspiration was paralysed by the overwhelming fulness of the reality; the fifth line refused to express his idea, and the interruption of lyric emotion caused by the making and lighting of a fresh cigarette proved fatal to the prospects of the sonnet. He felt disgusted with himself and his own futility. When he had been at Oxford not thus had the springs of inspiration ceased to flow. He had begun to pass the period of water-colours then, but not the period when ideas are as plenty and as full of novelty as leaves in spring, and the knowledge has not yet come that they, like the leaves, are old as the world itself.

  For the past three or four years the social exigencies of Government House life had not proved conducive to fervour of any kind, and now, while he was dawdling away his time at Bruff, in the uninterested expectation of another appointment, he found that he not only could not write, but that he seemed to have lost the wish to try.

  “I suppose I am sinking into the usual bucolic stupor,” he said to himself, as he abandoned the search for the vagrant rhyme. “If I only could read the Field, and had a more spontaneous habit of cursing, I should be an ideal country gentleman.”

  He crumpled into his pocket again the envelope on the back of which he had been scribbling, and told himself that it was more philosophic and more simple to enjoy things in the homely, pre-historic manner, without trying to express them elaborately for the benefit of others. He was intellectually effete, and what made his effeteness more hopeless was that he recognised it himself. “I am perfectly happy if I let myself alone,” was the sum of his reflections. “They gave me a little more culture than I could hold, and it ran over the edge at first. Now I think I’m just about sufficiently up in the bottle for Lismoyle form.” He tilted his straw hat over his nose, shut his eyes, and, leaning back, soon felt the delicious fusion into his brain of the surrounding hum and soft movement that tells of the coming of out-of-door summer sleep.

  It is deplorable to think of what figure Christopher must cut in the eyes of those whose robuster taste demands in a young man some more potent and heroic qualities, a gentlemanly hardihood in language and liquor, an interesting suggestion of moral obliquity, or, at least, some hereditary vice on which the character may make shipwreck with magnificent helplessness. Christopher, with his preference for his sister’s society, and his lack of interest in the majority of manly occupations, from hunting to music halls, has small claim to respect or admiration. The invertebrateness of his character seemed to be expressed in his attitude, as he lay, supine, under the birch trees, with the grass making a luxurious couch for his lazy limbs, and the faint b
reeze just stirring about him. His sleep was not deep enough to still the breath of summer in his ears, but it had quieted the jabber of the magpie to a distant purring, and he was fast falling into the abyss of unconsciousness, when a gentle, regular sound made itself felt, the fall of a footstep and the brushing of a skirt through the grass. He lay very still, and cherished an ungenial hope that the white-stemmed birches might mercifully screen him from the invader. The step came nearer, and something in its solidity and determination gave Christopher a guess as to whose it was, that was speedily made certainty by a call that jarred all the sleepy enchantment of the glade.

  “Fran-cie!”

  Christopher shrank lower behind a mossy stone, and wildly hoped that his unconcealable white flannels might be mistaken for the stem of a fallen birch.

  “Fran-cie!”

  It had come nearer, and Christopher anticipated the inevitable discovery by getting up and speaking.

  “I’m afraid she’s not here, Miss Mullen. She has not been here for half an hour at least.” He did not feel bound to add that when he first sat down by the pool, he had heard Miss Fitzpatrick’s and Mr. Hawkins’ voices in high and agreeable altercation on the opposite side of the island to that taken by the rest of the party.

  The asperity that had been discernible in Miss Mullen’s summons to her cousin vanished at once.

  “My goodness me! Mr. Dysart! To think of your being here all the time, ‘Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife!’ Here I am hunting for that naughty girl to tell her to come and help to make tea, instead of letting your poor sister have all the trouble by herself.”

  Charlotte was rather out of breath, and looked hot and annoyed, in spite of the smile with which she lubricated her remark.

  “Oh, my sister is used to that sort of thing,” said Christopher, “and Miss Hope-Drummond is there to help, isn’t she?”

  Charlotte had seated herself on a rock, and was fanning herself with her pocket-handkerchief; evidently going to make herself agreeable, Christopher thought, with an irritability that lost no detail of her hand’s ungainly action.

  “I don’t think Miss Hope-Drummond is much in the utilitarian line,” she said, with a laugh that was as slighting as she dared to make it. “Hers is the purely ornamental, I should imagine. Now, I will say for poor Francie, if she was there, no one would work harder than she would, and, though I say it that shouldn’t, I think she’s ornamental too.”

  “Oh, highly ornamental,” said Christopher politely. “I don’t think there can be any doubt about that.”

  “You’re very good to say so,” replied Charlotte effusively; “but I can tell you, Mr. Dysart, that poor child has had to make herself useful as well as ornamental before now. From what she tells me I suspect there were few things she didn’t have to put her hand to before she came down to me here.”

  “Really!” said Christopher, as politely as before, “that was very hard luck.”

  “You may say that it was!” returned Charlotte, planting a hand on each knee with elbows squared outwards, as was her wont in moments of excitement, and taking up her parable against the Fitzpatricks with all the enthusiasm of a near relation. “Her uncle and aunt are very good people in their way, I suppose, but beyond feeding her and putting clothes on her back, I don’t know what they did for her.”

  Charlotte had begun her sentence with comparative calm, but she had gathered heat and velocity as she proceeded. She paused with a snort, and Christopher, who had never before been privileged to behold her in her intenser moments, said, without a very distinct idea of what was expected of him:

  “Oh, really, and who are these amiable people?”

  “Fitzpatricks!” spluttered Miss Mullen, “and no better than the dirt under my poor cousin Isabella Mullen’s feet. It’s through her Francie’s related to me, and not through the Fitzpatricks at all. I’m no relation of the Fitzpatricks, thank God! My father’s brother married a Butler, and Francie’s grandmother was a Butler too—”

  “It’s very intricate,” murmured Christopher; “it sounds as if she ought to have been a parlour-maid.”

  “And that’s the only connection I am of the Fitzpatricks,” continued Miss Mullen at lightning speed, oblivious of interruption; “but Francie takes after her mother’s family and her grandmother’s family, and your poor father would tell you if he was able, that the Butlers of Tally Ho were as well known in their time as the Dysarts of Bruff!”

  “I’m sure he would,” said Christopher feebly, thinking as he spoke that his conversations with his father had been wont to treat of more stirring and personal topics than the bygone glories of the Butlers.

  “Yes, indeed, as good a family as any in the county. People laugh at me, and say I’m mad about family and pedigree; but I declare to goodness, Mr. Dysart, I think the French are right when they say, ‘bong song ne poo mongtir,’ and there’s nothing like good blood after all.”

  Charlotte possessed the happy quality of believing in the purity of her own French accent, and she felt a great satisfaction in rounding her peroration with a quotation in that tongue. She had, moreover, worked off some of the irritation which had, from various causes, been seething within her when she met Christopher; and when she resumed her discourse it was in the voice of the orator, who, having ranted out one branch of his subject, enters upon the next with almost awful quietness.

  “I don’t know why I should bore you about a purely family matter, Mr. Dysart, but the truth is, it cuts me to the heart when I see your sister—your charming sister—yes, and Miss Hope-Drummond too—not that I’d mention her in the same breath with Miss Dysart—with every advantage that education can give them, and then to think of that poor girl, brought up from hand to mouth, and her little fortune that should have been spent on herself going, as I may say, to fill the stomachs of the Fitzpatricks’ brood!”

  Christopher raised himself from the position of leaning against a tree, in which he had listened, not without interest, to the recital of Francie’s wrongs.

  “I don’t think you need apologise for Miss Fitzpatrick,” he said, rather more coldly than he had yet spoken. He had ceased to be amused by Miss Mullen; eccentricity was one thing, but vulgar want of reserve was another; he wondered if she discussed her cousin’s affairs thus openly with all his friends.

  “It’s very kind of you to say so,” rejoined Miss Mullen eagerly,” but I know very well you’re not blind, any more than I am, and all my affection for the girl can’t make me shut my eyes to what’s unlady-like or bad style, though I know it’s not her fault.”

  Christopher looked at his watch surreptitiously.

  “Now I’m delaying you in a most unwarrantable way,” said Charlotte, noting and interpreting the action at once, “but I got so hot and tired running about the woods that I had to take a rest. I was trying to get a chance to say a word to your sister about Francie to ask her to be kind to her, but I daresay it’ll come to the same thing now that I’ve had a chat with you,” she concluded, rising from her seat and smiling with luscious affability.

  A little below the pond two great rocks leaned towards each other, and between them a hawthorn bush had pressed itself up to the light. Something like a path was trodden round the rocks, and a few rags impaled on the spikes of the thorn bush denoted that it marked the place of a holy well. Conspicuous among these votive offerings were two white rags, new and spotless, and altogether out of keeping with the scraps of red flannel and dirty frieze that had been left by the faithful in lieu of visiting cards for the patron saint of the shrine. Christopher and Charlotte’s way led them within a few yards of the spot; the latter’s curiosity induced her, as she passed, to examine the last contributions to the thorn bush.

  “I wonder who has been tearing up their best pocket-handkerchiefs for a wish?” said Christopher, putting up his eye-glass and peering at the rags.

  “Two bigger fools than the rest of them, I suppose,” said Miss Mullen shortly; “we’d better hurry on now, Mr. Dysar
t, or we’ll get no tea.”

  She swept Christopher in front of her along the narrow path before he had time to see that the last two pilgrims had determined that the saint should make no mistake about their identity, and had struck upon the thorn bush the corners of their handkerchiefs, one of them, a silken triangle, having on it the initials G. H., while on the other was a large and evidently home-embroidered F.

  * * *

  CHAPTER XIV.

  Late that afternoon, when the sun was beginning to stoop to the west, a wind came creeping down from somewhere back of the mountains, and began to stretch tentative cats’ paws over the lake. It had pushed before it across the Atlantic a soft mass of orange-coloured cloud, that caught the sun’s lowered rays, and spread them in a mellow glare over everything. The lake turned to a coarse and furious blue; all the rocks and tree stems became like red gold, and the polished brass top of the funnel of the steam-launch looked as if it were on fire as Captain Cursiter turned the Serpolette’s sharp snout to the wind, and steamed at full speed round Ochery Point. The yacht had started half an hour before on her tedious zig-zag journey home, and was already far down to the right, her sails all aglow as she leaned aslant like a skater, swooping and bending under the freshening breeze.

  It was evident that Lambert wished to make the most of his time, for almost immediately after the Daphne had gone about with smooth precision, and had sprung away on the other tack, the party on the launch saw a flutter of white, and a top-sail was run up.

  “By Jove! Lambert didn’t make much on that tack,” remarked Captain Cursiter to his brother-in-arms, as with an imperceptible pressure of the wheel he serenely headed the launch straight for her destination, “I don’t believe he’s done himself much good with that top-sail either.”