“Sir Benjamin,” began Julia again, “I know your memory’s failing you, but you might remember that after the death of my father, Hubert Duffy—” Julia felt all the Protestant and aristocratic associations of the name as she said it—”you made a promise to me in your office that I should never be disturbed in my holding of the land.”
“Devil so ugly a man as Hubert Duffy ever I saw,” said Sir Benjamin, with a startling flight of memory; “and you’re his daughter, are you? Begad, the dairymaid didn’t distinguish herself!”
“Yes, I am his daughter, Sir Benjamin,” replied Julia, catching at this flattering recognition. “I and my family have always lived on your estate, and my grandfather has often had the honour of entertaining you and the rest of the gentry, when they came fox-hunting through Gurthnamuckla. I am certain that it is by no wish of yours, or of your kind and honourable son, Mr. Christopher, that your agent is pairsecuting me to make me leave the farm—” Her voice failed her, partly from the suffocating anger that rose in her at her own words, and partly from a dizziness that made the bath-chair, Sir Benjamin, and James Canavan, float up and down in the air before her.
Sir Benjamin suddenly began to brandish his stick. “What the devil is she saying about Christopher? What has Christopher to say to my tenants. D—n his insolence! He ought to be at school!”
The remarkable grimaces which James Canavan made at Julia from the back of the bath-chair informed her that she had lighted upon the worst possible method of ingratiating herself with her landlord, but the information came too late.
“Send that woman away, James Canavan!” he screamed, making sweeps at her with his oak stick. “She shall never put her d—d splay foot upon my avenue again. I’ll thrash her and Christopher out of the place! Turn her out, I tell you, James Canavan!”
Julia stood motionless and aghast beyond the reach of the stick, until James Canavan motioned to her to move aside; she staggered back among the long arms of a lignum vitæ, and the bath-chair, with its still cursing, gesticulating occupant, went by her at a round pace. Then she came slowly and uncertainly out on to the path again, and looked after the chariot wheels of the Cæsar to whom she had appealed.
James Canavan’s coat-tails were standing out behind him as he drove the bath-chair round the corner of the path, and Sir Benjamin’s imprecations came faintly back to her as she stood waiting till the throbbing giddiness should cease sufficiently for her to begin the homeward journey that stretched, horrible and impossible, before her. Her head ached wildly, and as she walked down the avenue she found herself stumbling against the edge of the grass, now on one side and now on the other. She said to herself that the people would say she was drunk, but she didn’t care now what they said. It would be shortly till they saw her a disgraced woman, with the sheriff coming to put her out of her father’s house on to the road. She gave a hard, short sob as this occurred to her, and she wondered if she would have the good luck to die, supposing she let herself fall down on the grass, and lay there in the burning sun and took no more trouble about anything. Her thoughts came to her slowly and with great difficulty, but, once come, they whirled and hammered in her brain with the reiteration of chiming bells. She walked on, out of the gate, and along the road to Lismoyle, mechanically going in the shade where there was any, and avoiding the patches of broken stones, as possibly a man might who was walking out to be shot, but apathetically unconscious of what was happening.
At about this time the person whose name Julia Duffy had so unfortunately selected to conjure with was sitting under a tree on the slope opposite the hall door at Tally Ho reading aloud a poem of Rossetti’s. “Her eyes were like the wave within,
Like water reeds the poise
Of her soft body, dainty thin;
And like the water’s noise
Her plaintive voice. “For him the stream had never welled
In desert tract malign
So sweet; nor had he ever felt
So faint in the sunshine
Of Palestine.” Francie’s attention, which had revived at the description of the Queen, began to wander again. The sound in Christopher’s voice told that the words were touching something deeper than his literary perception, and her sympathy answered to the tone, though the drift of the poem was dark to her. The music of the lines had just power enough upon her ear to predispose her to sentiment, and at present, sentiment with Francie meant the tender repose of her soul upon the thought of Mr. Gerald Hawkins.
A pause at turning over a leaf recalled her again to the fact of Christopher, with a transition not altogether unpleasant; she looked down at him as he lay on the grass, and began to wonder, as she had several times wondered before, if he really were in love with her. Nothing seemed more unlikely. Francie admitted it to herself as she watched his eyes following the lines in complete absorption, and knew that she had neither part nor lot in the things that touched him most nearly.
But the facts were surprising, there was no denying that. Even without Charlotte to tell her so she was aware that Christopher detested the practice of paying visits even more sincerely than most men, and was certainly not in the habit of visiting in Lismoyle. Except to see her, there was no reason that could bring him to Tally Ho. Surer than all fact, however, and rising superior to mere logic, was her instinctive comprehension of men and their ways, and sometimes she was almost sure that he came, not from kindness, or from that desire to improve her mind which she had discerned and compassionated, but because he could not help himself. She had arrived at one of these thrilling moments of certainty when Christopher’s voice ceased upon the words, “Thy jealous God,” and she knew that the time had come for her to say something appropriate.
“Oh thank you, Mr. Dysart—that’s—that’s awfully pretty. It’s a sort of religious thing, isn’t it?
“Yes, I suppose so,” answered Christopher, looking at her with a wavering smile, and feeling as if he had stepped suddenly to the ground out of a dream of flying; “the hero’s a pilgrim, and that’s always something.”
“I know a lovely song called ‘The Pilgrim of Love,’” said Francie timidly; “of course it wasn’t the same thing as what you were reading, but it was awfully nice too.”
Christopher looked up at her, and was almost convinced that she must have absorbed something of the sentiment if not the sense of what he had read, her face was so sympathetic and responsive. With that expression in her limpid eyes it gave him a peculiar sensation to hear her say the name of Love; it was even a delight, and fired his imagination with the picturing of what it would be like to hear her say it with all her awakened soul. He might have said something that would have suggested his feeling, in the fragmentary, inferential manner that Francie never knew what to make of, but that her eyes strayed away at a click of the latch of the avenue gate, and lost their unworldliness in the sharp and easy glance that is the unvalued privilege of the keen-sighted.
“Who in the name of goodness is this?” she said, sitting up and gazing at a black figure in the avenue; “it’s some woman or other, but she looks very queer.”
“I can’t see that it matters much who it is,” said Christopher irritably, “so long as she doesn’t come up here, and she probably will if you let her see you.”
“Mercy on us! she looks awful!” exclaimed Francie incautiously; “why, it’s Miss Duffy, and her face as red as I don’t know what—oh, she’s seen us!”
The voice had evidently reached Julia Duffy’s ears; she came stumbling on, with her eyes fixed on the light blue dress under the beech tree, and when Christopher had turned, and got his eye-glass up, she was standing at the foot of the slope, looking at him with a blurred recognition.
“Mr. Dysart,” she said in a hoarse voice, that, combined with her flushed face and staring eyes, made Christopher think she was drunk, “Sir Benjamin has driven me out of his place like a beggar; me, whose family is as long on his estate as himself; and his agent wants to drive me out of my farm that was promised to me by yo
ur father I should never be disturbed in it.”
“You’re Miss Duffy from Gurthnamuckla, are you not?” interrupted Christopher, eyeing her with natural disfavour, as he got up and came down the slope towards her.
“I am, Mr. Dysart, I am,” she said defiantly, “and you and your family have a right to know me, and I ask you now to do me justice, that I shall not be turned out into the ditch for the sake of a lying double-faced schemer—” Her voice failed, as it had failed before when she spoke to Sir Benjamin, and the action of her hand that carried on her meaning had a rage in it that hid its despair.
“I think if you have anything to say you had better write it,” said Christopher, beginning to think that Lambert had some excuse for his opinion of Miss Duffy, but beginning also to pity what he thought was a spectacle of miserable, middle-aged drunkenness; “you may be sure that no injustice will be done to you—”
“Is it injustice?” broke in Julia, while the fever cloud seemed to roll its weight back for a moment from her brain; “maybe you’d say there was injustice if you knew all I know. Where’s Charlotte Mullen, till I tell her to her face that I know her plots and her thricks? ‘Tis to say that to her I came here, and to tell her ‘twas she lent money to Peter Joyce that was grazing my farm, and refused it to him secondly, the way he’d go bankrupt on me, and she’s to have my farm and my house that my grandfather built, thinking to even herself with the rest of the gentry—”
Her voice had become wilder and louder, and Christopher, uncomfortably aware that Francie could hear this indictment of Miss Mullen as distinctly as he did, intervened again.
“Look here, Miss Duffy,” he said in a lower voice, “it’s no use talking like this. If I can help you I will, but it would be a good deal better if you went home now. You—you seem ill, and it’s a great mistake to stay here exciting yourself and making a noise. Write to me, and I’ll see that you get fair play.”
Julia threw back her head and laughed, with a venom that seemed too concentrated for drunkenness.
“Ye’d better see ye get fair play yerself before you talk so grand about it!” She pointed up at Francie. “Mrs. Dysart indeed!”—she bowed with a sarcastic exaggeration, that in saner moments she would not have been capable of—”Lady Dysart of Bruff, one of these days I suppose!”—she bowed again. “That’s what Miss Charlotte Mullen has laid out for ye,” addressing herself to Christopher, “and ye’ll not get away from that one till ye’re under her foot!”
She laughed again; her face became vacant and yet full of pain, and she staggered away down the avenue, talking violently and gesticulating with her hands
* * *
.
CHAPTER XXXII.
Mrs. Lambert gathered up her purse, her list, her bag, and her parasol from the table in Miss Greely’s wareroom, and turned to give her final directions.
“Now, Miss Greely, before Sunday for certain; and you’ll be careful about the set of the skirt, that it doesn’t firk up at the side, the way the black one did—”
“We understand the set of a skirt, Mrs. Lambert,” interposed the elder Miss Greely in her most aristocratic voice; “I think you may leave that to us.”
Mrs. Lambert retreated, feeling as snubbed as it was intended that she should feel, and with a last injunction to the girl in the shop to be sure not to let the Rosemount messenger leave town on Saturday night without the parcel that he’d get from upstairs, she addressed herself to the task of walking home. She was in very good spirits, and the thought of a new dress for church next Sunday was exhilarating; it was a pleasant fact also that Charlotte Mullen was coming to tea, and she and Muffy, the Maltese terrier, turned into Barrett’s to buy a teacake in honour of the event. Mrs. Beattie was also there, and the two ladies and Mrs. Barrett had a most enjoyable discussion on tea; Mrs. Beattie advocating “the one and threepenny from the Stores,” while Mrs. Barrett and her other patroness agreed in upholding the Lismoyle three-and-sixpenny against all others. Mrs. Lambert set forth again with her teacake in her hand, and with such a prosperous expression of countenance that Nance the Fool pursued her down the street with a confidence that was not unrewarded.
“That the hob of heaven may be yer scratching post!” she screamed, in the midst of one of her most effective fits of coughing, as Mrs. Lambert’s round little dolmaned figure passed complacently onward, “that Pether and Paul may wait on ye, and that the saints may be surprised at yer success! She’s sharitable, the craythur,” she ended in a lower voice, as she rejoined the rival and confederate who had yielded to her the right of plundering the last passer-by, “and sign’s on it, it thrives with her; she’s got very gross!”
“Faith it wasn’t crackin’ blind nuts made her that fat,” said the confidante unamiably, “and with all her riches she didn’t give ye the price of a dhrink itself!”
Mrs. Lambert entered her house by the kitchen, so as to give directions to Eliza Hackett about the teacake, and when she got upstairs she found Charlotte already awaiting her in the dining-room, occupied in reading a pamphlet on stall feeding, with apparently as complete a zest as if it had been one of those yellow paper-covered volumes whose appearance aroused such a respectful horror in Lismoyle.
“Well, Lucy, is this the way you receive your visitors?” she began jocularly, as she rose and kissed her hostess’s florid cheek; “I needn’t ask how you are, as you’re looking blooming.”
“I declare I think this hot summer suits me. I feel stronger than I did this good while back, thank God. Roddy was saying this morning he’d have to put me and Muffy on banting, we’d both put up so much flesh.”
The turkey-hen looked so pleased as she recalled this conjugal endearment that Charlotte could not resist the pleasure of taking her down a peg or two.
“I think he’s quite right,” she said with a laugh; “nothing ages ye like fat, and no man likes to see his wife turning into an old woman.”
Poor Mrs. Lambert took the snub meekly, as was her wont. “Well, anyway, it’s a comfort to feel a little stronger, Charlotte; isn’t it what they say, ‘laugh and grow fat.’” She took off her dolman and rang the bell for tea. “Tell me, Charlotte,” she went on, “did you hear anything about that poor Miss Duffy?”
“I was up at the infirmary this morning asking the Sister about her. It was Rattray himself found her lying on the road, and brought her in; he says its inflammation of the brain, and if she pulls through she’ll not be good for anything afterwards.”
“Oh, my, my!” said Mrs. Lambert sympathetically. “And to think of her being at our gate lodge that very day! Mary Holloran said she had that dying look in her face you couldn’t mistake.”
“And no wonder, when you think of the way she lived,” said Charlotte angrily; “starving there in Gurthnamuckla like a rat that’d rather die in his hole than come out of it.”
“Well, she’s out of it now, poor thing,” ventured Mrs. Lambert.
“She is! and I think she’ll stay out of it. She’ll never be right in her head again, and her things’ll have to be sold to support her and pay some one to look after her, and if they don’t fetch that much she’ll have to go into the county asylum. I wanted to talk to Roddy about that very thing,” went on Charlotte, irritation showing itself in her voice; “but I suppose he’s going riding or boating or amusing himself somehow, as usual.”
“No, he’s not!” replied Mrs. Lambert, with just a shade of triumph “He’s taken a long walk by himself. He thought perhaps he’d better look after his figure as well as me and Muffy, and he wanted to see a horse he’s thinking of buying. He says he’d like to be able to leave me the mare to draw me in the phaeton.”
“Where will he get the money to buy it?” asked Charlotte sharply.
“Oh! I leave all the money matters to him,” said Mrs. Lambert, with that expression of serene satisfaction in her husband that had already had a malign effect on Miss Mullen’s temper. “I know I can trust him.”
“You’ve a very different story to-day to
what you had the last time I was here,” said Charlotte with a sneer. “Are all your doubts of him composed?”
The entrance of the tea-tray precluded all possibility of answer; but Charlotte knew that her javelin was quivering in the wound. The moment the door closed behind the servant, Mrs. Lambert turned upon her assailant with the whimper in her voice that Charlotte knew so well.
“I greatly regretted, Charlotte,” she said, with as much dignity as she could muster, “speaking to you the way I did, for I believe now I was totally mistaken.”
It might be imagined that Charlotte would have taken pleasure in Mrs. Lambert’s security, inasmuch as it implied her own; but, so far from this being the case, it was intolerable to her that her friend should be blind to the fact that tortured her night and day.
“And what’s changed your mind, might I ask?”
“His conduct has changed my mind, Charlotte,” replied Mrs. Lambert severely; “and that’s enough for me.”
“Well, I’m glad you’re pleased with his conduct, Lucy; but if he was my husband I’d find out what he was doing at Tally Ho every day in the week before I was so rejoiced about him.”
Charlotte’s face had flushed in the heat of argument, and Mrs. Lambert felt secretly a little frightened.
“Begging your pardon, Charlotte,” she said, still striving after dignity, “he’s not there every day, and when he does go it’s to talk business with you he goes, about Gurthnamuckla and money and things like that.”
Charlotte sat up with a dangerous look about her jaw. She could hardly believe that Lambert could have babbled her secrets to this despised creature in order to save himself. “He appears to tell you a good deal about his business affairs,” she said, her eyes quelling the feeble resistance in Mrs. Lambert’s; “but he doesn’t seem to tell you the truth about other matters. He’s telling ye lies about what takes him to Tally Ho; it isn’t to talk business—” the colour deepened in her face. “I tell ye once for all, that as sure as God’s in heaven he’s fascinated with that girl! This isn’t the beginning of it—ye needn’t think it! She flirted with him in Dublin, and though she doesn’t care two snaps of her fingers for him she’s flirting with him now!”
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