“Then, my dear woman, what’s this nonsense you’re talking about him and Francie?” said Charlotte, with Mephistophelian gaiety.
“Oh, Charlotte!” said Mrs. Lambert, suddenly getting very red, and beginning to whimper, “I never thought to speak of it—” she broke off and began to root for her handkerchief, while her respectable middle-aged face began to wrinkle up like a child’s, “and, indeed, I don’t want to say anything against the girl, for she’s a nice girl, and so I’ve always found her, but I can’t help noticing—” she broke off again.
“What can’t ye help noticing?” demanded Charlotte roughly.
Mrs. Lambert drew a long breath that was half-suffocated by a sob. “Oh, I don’t know,” she cried helplessly; “he’s always going down to Tally Ho, by the way he’ll take her out riding or boating or something, and though he doesn’t say much, a little thing’ll slip out now and again, and you can’t say a word to him but he’ll get cross.”
“Maybe he’s in trouble about money unknown to you,” suggested Charlotte, who, for some reason or other, was not displaying her usual capacity for indictment, “or maybe he finds life’s not worth living because of the liver!” she ended, with a mirthless laugh.
“Oh, no, no, Charlotte; indeed, it’s no laughing joke at all—” Mrs. Lambert hesitated, then, with a little hysterical burst of sobs, “he talks about her in his sleep!” she quavered out, and began to cry miserably.
Charlotte sat perfectly still, looking at Mrs. Lambert with eyes that saw, but held no pity for, her abundant tears. How far more serious was this thing, if true, to her, than to that contemptible whining creature, whose snuffling gasps were exasperating her almost beyond the bounds of endurance. She waited till there was a lull.
“What did he say about her?” she asked in a hard jeering voice.
“Oh, Charlotte, how can I tell you? all sorts of things he says, nonsense like, and springing up and saying she’ll be drowned.”
“Well, if it’s any comfort to you,” said Charlotte, “she cares no more for him than the man in the moon! She has other fish to fry, I can tell you!”
“But what signifies that, Charlotte,” sighed Mrs. Lambert, “so long as he thinks about her?”
“Tell him he’s a fool to waste his time over her,” suggested Charlotte scoffingly.
“Is it me tell him such a thing!” The turkey-hen lifted her wet red eyes from her saturated pocket handkerchief and began to laugh hysterically. “Much regard he has for what I say to him! Oh, don’t make me laugh, Charlotte—” a frightened look came over her face, as if she had been struck, and she fell back in her chair. “It’s the palpitations,” she said faintly, with her hand on her heart. “Oh, I’m going—I’m going—”
Charlotte ran to the chimney-piece, and took from it a bottle of smelling salts. She put it to Mrs. Lambert’s nose with one hand, and with the other unfastened the neck of her dress without any excitement or fuss. Her eyes were keen and quiet as she bent over the pale blotched face that lay on the antimacassar; and when Mrs. Lambert began to realise again what was going on round her, she was conscious of a hand chafing her own, a hand that was both gentle and skilful.
* * *
CHAPTER XXIX.
“Metal more attractive!” Lambert thought there could not be a more offensive phrase in the English language than this, that had rung in his ears ever since Charlotte had flung it at him when he parted from her on his own avenue. He led the black mare straight to the dilapidated loose-box at Tally Ho Lodge, in which she had before now waited so often and so dismally, with nothing to do except nose about the broken manger for a stray oat or two, or make spiteful faces through the rails at her comrade, the chestnut, in the next stall. Lambert swung open the stable door, and was confronted by the pricked ears and interested countenance of a tall bay horse, whom he instantly recognised as being one of the Bruff carriage horses, looking out of the loose-box. Mr. Lambert’s irritation culminated at this point in appropriate profanity; he felt that all these things were against him, and the thought that he would go straight back to Rosemount made him stand still on the doorstep. But the next moment he had a vision of himself and the two horses turning in at the Rosemount gate, with the certain prospect of being laughed at by Charlotte and condoled with by his wife, and without so much as a sight of that maddening face that was every day thrusting itself more and more between him and his peace. It would be a confession of defeat at the hands of Christopher Dysart, which alone would be intolerable; besides, there wasn’t a doubt but that, if Francie were given her choice, she would rather go out riding with him than anything.
Buoyed up by this reflection, he put the chestnut into the stable, and the mare into the cow-shed, and betook himself to the house. The hall door was open, he knocked lightly at the drawing-room door, and walked in without waiting for an answer. Christopher was sitting with his back to him, holding one end of a folded piece of pink cambric, while Francie, standing up in front of him, was cutting along the fold towards him, with a formidable pair of scissors.
“Must I hold on to the end?” he was saying, as the scissors advanced in leaps towards his fingers.
“I’ll kill you if you let go!” answered Francie, rather thickly, by reason of a pin between her front teeth. “Goodness, Mr. Lambert! you frightened the heels off me! I thought you were Louisa with the tea.”
“Good evening, Francie; good evening, Dysart,” said Lambert with solemn frigidity.
Christopher reddened a little as he looked round. “I’m afraid I can’t shake hands with you, Lambert,” with an unavoidably foolish laugh, “I’m dressmaking.”
“So I see,” replied Mr. Lambert, with something as near a sneer as he dared. He always felt it a special unkindness of Providence to have placed this young man to reign over him, and the practical sentiment that it is well not to quarrel with your bread and butter, had not unfrequently held him back from a much-desired jibe. “I came, Francie,” he went on with the same portentous politeness, “to see if you’d care to come for a ride with me.”
“When? Now?” said Francie, without much enthusiasm.
“Oh, not unless you like,” he replied, in a palpably offended tone.
“Well, how d’ye know I wouldn’t like? Keep quiet now, Mr. Dysart, I’ve another one for you to hold!”
“I’m afraid I must be going—” began Christopher, looking helplessly at the billows of pink cambric which surrounded him on the floor. Lambert’s arrival had suddenly made the situation seem vulgar.
“Ah, can’t you sit still now?” said Francie, thrusting another length of material into his hand, and beginning to cut swiftly towards him. “I declare you’re very idle!”
Lambert stood silent while this went on, and then, with an angry look at Francie, he said, “I understand then that you’re not coming out riding to-day?”
“Do you?” asked Francie, pinning the seam together with marvellous rapidity; “take care your understanding isn’t wrong! Have you the horse down here?”
“Of course I have.”
“Well, I’ll tell you what we’ll do; we’ll have tea first, and then we’ll ride back with Mr. Dysart; will that do you?”
“I wanted to ride in the opposite direction,” said Lambert, “I had some business—”
“Oh, bother your old business!” interrupted Francie, “anyway, I hear her bringing in the tea.”
“Oh, I hope you’ll ride home with me,” said Christopher, “I hate riding by myself.”
“Much I pity you!” said Francie, flashing a sidelong look at him as she went over to the tea-table; “I suppose you’d be frightened!”
“Quite so. Frightened and bored. That is what I feel like when I ride by myself,” said Christopher, trying to eliminate from his manner the constraint that Lambert’s arrival had imparted to it, “and my horse is just as bored; I feel apologetic all the time and wishing I could do something to amuse him that wouldn’t be dangerous. Do come; I’m sure he’d like it.”
> “Oh, how anxious you are about him!” said Francie cutting bread and butter with a dexterous hand from the loaf that Louisa had placed on the table in frank confession of incapacity, “I don’t know what I’ll do till I’ve had my tea. Here now, here’s yours poured out for both of you; I suppose you’d like me to come and hand it to you!” with a propitiatory look at Lambert.
Thus adjured, the two men seated themselves at the table on which Francie had prepared their tea and bread and butter with a propriety that reminded Christopher of his nursery days. It was a very agreeable feeling, he thought; and as he docilely drank his tea and laughed at Francie for the amount of sugar that she put into hers, the idealising process to which he was unconsciously subjecting her advanced a stage. He was beginning to lose sight of her vulgarity, even to wonder at himself for ever having applied that crudely inappropriate word to her. She had some reflected vulgarities of course, thought the usually hypercritical Mr. Christopher Dysart, and her literary progress along the lines he had laid down for her was slow; but lately, since his missionary resolve to let the light of culture illuminate her darkness, he had found out subtle depths of sweetness and sympathy that were, in their responsiveness, equivalent to intellect.
When Francie went up a few minutes later to put on her habit, Christopher did not seem disposed to continue the small talk in which his proficiency had been more surprising than pleasing to Mr. Lambert.
He strolled over to the window, and looked meditatively out at Mrs. Bruff and a great-grandchild or two embowered in a tangle of nasturtiums, and putting his hands in his pockets began to whistle sotto voce. Lambert looked him up and down, from his long thin legs to his small head, on which the light brown hair grew rather long, with a wave in it that was to Lambert the height of effeminacy. He began to drum with his fingers on the table to show that he too was quite undisturbed and at his ease.
“By the bye, Dysart,” he observed presently, “have you heard anything of Hawkins since he left?”
Christopher turned round. “No, I don’t know anything about him except that he’s gone to Hythe.”
“Gone to hide, d’ye say?” Lambert laughed noisily in support of his joke.
“No, Hythe.”
“It seems to me it’s more likely it’s a case of hide,” Lambert went on with a wink; he paused, fiddled with his teaspoon, and smiled at his own hand as he did so. “P’raphs he thought it was time for him to get away out of this.”
“Really?” said Christopher, with a lack of interest that was quite genuine.
Lambert’s pulse bounded with the sudden desire to wake this supercilious young hound up for once, by telling him a few things that would surprise him.
“Well, you see it’s a pretty strong order for a fellow to carry on as Hawkins did, when he happens to be engaged.”
The fact of Mr. Hawkins’ engagement had, it need scarcely be said, made its way through every highway and by-way of Lismoyle; inscrutable as to its starting-point, impossible of verification, but all the more fascinating for its mystery. Lambert had no wish to claim its authorship; he had lived among gentlemen long enough to be aware that the second-hand confidences of a servant could not creditably be quoted by him. What he did not know, however, was whether the story had reached Bruff, or been believed there, and it was extremely provoking to him now that instead of being able to observe its effect on Christopher, whose back was to the light, his discoveries should be limited to the fact that his own face had become very red as he spoke.
“I suppose he knows his own affairs best,” said Christopher, after a silence that might have meant anything, or nothing.
“Well,” leaning back and putting his hands in his pockets, “I don’t pretend to be straight-laced, but d—n it, you know, I think Hawkins went a bit too far.”
“I don’t think I have heard who it is that he is engaged to,” said Christopher, who seemed remarkably unaffected by Mr. Hawkins’ misdemeanours.
“Oh, to a Yorkshire girl, a Miss—what’s this her name is—Coppard. Pots of money, but mighty plain about the head, I believe. He kept it pretty dark, didn’t he?”
“Apparently it got out, for all that.”
Lambert thought he detected a tinge of ridicule in the voice, whether of him or of Hawkins he did not know; it gave just the necessary spur to that desire to open Christopher’s eyes for him a bit.
“Oh, yes, it got out,” he said, putting his elbow on the table, and balancing his teaspoon on his fore-finger, “but I think there are very few that know for certain it’s a fact,—fortunately for our friend.”
“Why fortunately? I shouldn’t think it made much difference to anyone.”
“Well, as a rule, girls don’t care to flirt with an engaged man.”
“No, I suppose not,” said Christopher, yawning with a frankness that was a singular episode in his demeanour towards his agent.
Lambert felt his temper rising every instant. He was a man whose jealousy took the form of reviling the object of his affections, if, by so doing, he could detach his rivals.
“Well, Francie Fitzpatrick knows it for one; but perhaps she’s not one of the girls who object to flirting with an engaged man.”
Lambert got up and walked to the window; he felt that he could no longer endure seeing nothing of Christopher except a lank silhouette with an offensive repose of attitude. He propped his back against one of the shutters, and obviously waited for a comment.
“I should think it was an inexpensive amusement,” said Christopher, in his most impersonal and academic manner, “but likely to pall.”
“Pall! Deuce a bit of it!” Lambert put a toothpick in his mouth, and began to chew it, to convey the effect of ease. “I can tell you I’ve known that girl since she was the length of my stick, and I never saw her that she wasn’t up to some game or other; and she wasn’t over particular about engagements or anything else!”
Christopher slightly shifted his position, but did not speak, and Lambert went on:
“I’m very fond of the girl, and she’s a good-hearted little thing; but, by Jove! I was sorry to see the way she went on with that fellow Hawkins. Here he was, morning, noon, and night, walking with her, and steam-launching, and spooning, and setting all the old women in the place prating. I spoke to her about it, and much thanks I got, though there was a time she was ready enough to mind what I said to her.” During this recital Mr. Lambert’s voice had been deficient in the accent of gentlemanlike self-importance that in calmer moments he was careful to impart to it, and the raw Limerick brogue was on top as he said, “Yes, by George! I remember the time when she wasn’t above fancying your humble servant!”
He had almost forgotten his original idea; his own position, long brooded over, rose up out of all proportion, and confused his mental perspective, till Christopher Dysart’s opinions were lost sight of. He was recalled to himself by a startling expression on the face of his confidant, an expression of almost unconcealed disgust, that checked effectively any further outpourings. Christopher did not look at him again, but turned from the window, and, taking up Miss Mullen’s photograph-book, proceeded to a minute inspection of its contents. Neither he nor Lambert quite knew what would happen next, each in his own way being angry enough for any emergency, and both felt an extreme relief when Francie’s abrupt entrance closed the situation.
“Well, I wasn’t long now, was I?” she said breathlessly; “but what’ll I do? I can’t find my gloves!” She swept out of the corner of the sofa a cat that had been slumbering unseen behind a cushion. “Here they are! and full of fleas I’ll be bound, after Clementina sleeping on them! Oh, goodness! Are both of you too angry to speak to me? I didn’t think I was so long. Come on out to the yard; you can’t say I’m keeping you now.”
She whirled out of the room, and by the time Lambert and Christopher got into the yard, she had somehow dragged the black mare out of the cowshed and was clambering on to her back with the aid of a wheel-barrow.
Riding has many charms, but
none of its eulogists have properly dwelt on the advantages it offers to the unconversational. To ride in silence is the least marked form of unsociability, for something of the same reason that talking on horseback is one of the pleasantest modes of converse. The power of silence cuts both ways, and simplifies either confidence or its reverse amazingly. It so happened, however, that had Lambert had the inclination to make himself agreeable to his companions he could not have done so. Christopher’s carriage-horse trotted with the machine-like steadiness of its profession, and the black mare, roused to emulation, flew along beside him, ignoring the feebly expressed desire of her rider that she should moderate her pace. Christopher, indeed, seldom knew or cared at what pace his horse was going, and was now by no means sorry to find that the question of riding along with Lambert had been settled for him. The rough, young chestnut was filled with a vain-glory that scorned to trot, and after a great deal of brilliant ramping and curveting he fell into a kind of heraldic action, half-canter, half-walk, that left him more and more hopelessly in the rear, and raised Lambert’s temper to boiling point.
“We’re going very fast, aren’t we?” panted Francie, trying to push down her rebellious habit-skirt with her whip, as they sped along the flat road between Lismoyle and Bruff. “I’m afraid Mr. Lambert can’t keep up. That’s a dreadfully wild horse he’s riding.”
“Are we?” said Christopher vaguely. “Shall we pull up? Here, woa, you brute!” He pulled the carriage-horse into a walk, and looked at Francie with a laugh. “I’m beginning to hope you’re as bad a rider as I am,” he said sympathetically. “Let me hold your reins, while you’re pinning up that plait.”
“Oh, botheration take it! Is my hair down again? It always comes down if I trot fast,” bewailed Francie, putting up her hands to her dishevelled hair, that sparkled like gold in the sun.
“Do you know, the first time I ever saw you, your hair had come down out riding,” said Christopher, looking at her as he held her rein, and not giving a thought to the intimate appearance they presented to the third member of the party; “if I were you I should start with it down my back.”
The Real Charlotte Page 24