The Real Charlotte

by Edith Somerville

  “I didn’t. I only told you I’d had a row with her.”

  “Well, that’s as good as saying you had to run. You don’t suppose I thought you’d get the better of Charlotte?”

  “I daresay you didn’t, because you’re afraid of her yourself!”

  There was a degree of truth in this that made Mr. Lambert suddenly realise Francie’s improper levity about serious things.

  “I’ll tell you one thing I’m afraid of,” he said severely, “and that is that you made a mistake in fighting with Charlotte. If you’d chosen to—to do as she wished, she’s easy enough to get on with.”

  Francie flung her fern over the parapet and made no answer.

  “I suppose you know she’s moved into Gurthnamuckla?” he went on.

  “I know nothing about anything,” interrupted Francie; “I don’t know how long it isn’t since you wrote to me, and when you do you never tell me anything. You might be all dead and buried down there for all I know or care!”

  The smallest possible glance under her eyelids tempered this statement and confused Mr. Lambert’s grasp of his subject.

  “Do you mean that, about not caring if I was dead or no? I daresay you do. No one cares now what happens to me.”

  He almost meant what he said, her exclusiveness was so exasperating, and his voice told his sincerity. Last summer she would have laughed pitilessly at his pathos, and made it up with him afterwards. But she was changed since last summer, and now as she looked at him she felt a forlorn kinship with him.

  “Ah, what nonsense!” she said caressingly. “I’d be awfully worry if anything happened you.” As if he could not help himself he took her hand, but before he could speak she had drawn it away. “Indeed, you might have been dead,” she went on hurriedly,”for all you told me in your letters. Begin now and tell me the Lismoyle news. I think you said the Dysarts were away from Bruff still, didn’t you?”

  Lambert felt as if a hot and a cold spray of water had been turned on him alternately. “The Dysarts? Oh, yes, they’ve been away for some time,” he said, recovering himself, “they’ve been in London I believe, staying with her people, since you’re so anxious to know about them.”

  “Why wouldn’t I want to know about them?” said Francie, getting off the wall. “Come on and walk a bit, it’s cold sitting here.”

  Lambert walked on by her side rather sulkily; he was angry with himself for having let his feelings run away with him, and he was angry with Francie for pulling him up so quickly.

  “Christopher Dysart’s off again,” he said abruptly; “he’s got another of these diplomatic billets. He believed that Francie would find the information unpleasant, and he was in some contradictory way disappointed that she seemed quite unaffected by it. “He’s unpaid attaché to old Lord Castlemore at Copenhagen,” he went on; “he started last week.”

  So Christopher was gone from her too, and never wrote her a line before he went. They’re all the same, she thought, all they want is to spoon a girl for a bit, and if she lets them do it they get sick of her, and whatever she does they forget her the next minute. And there was Roddy Lambert trying to squeeze her hand just now, and poor Mrs. Lambert that was worth a dozen of him, not dead six months. She walked on, and forced herself to talk to him, and to make inquiries about the Bakers, Dr. Rattray, Mr. Corkran, and other lights of Lismoyle society. It was absurd, but it was none the less true that the news that Mr. Corkran was engaged to Carrie Beattie gave her an additioanl pang. The enamoured glances of the curate were fresh in her memory, and the thought that they were being now bestowed upon Carrie Beattie’s freckles and watering eyes, was, though ludicrous, not altogether pleasing. She burst out laughing suddenly.

  “I’m thinking of what all the Beatties will look like dressed as bridesmaids,” she explained, “four of them, and every one of them roaring crying, and their noses bright red!”

  The day was clouding over a little, and a damp wind began to stir among the leaves that still hung red on the beech trees. Lambert insisted with paternal determination that Francie should put on the extra coat that he was carrying for her, and the couple who had recently passed them, and whom they had now overtaken, looked at them sympathetically, and were certain that they also were engaged. It took some time to reach the far gate of the Dargle, sauntering as they did from bend to bend of the road, and stopping occassionally to look down at the river, or up at the wooded height opposite, with conventional expressions of admiration; and by the time they had passed down between the high evergreens at the lodge, to where the car was waiting for them, Francie had heard all that Lambert could tell her of Lismoyle news. She had also been told what a miserable life. Mr. Lambert’s was, and how lonely he was at Rosemount since poor Lucy’s death, and she knew how many young horses he had at grass on Gurthnamuckla, but neither mentioned the name of Mr. Hawkins.

  The day of the Dargle expedition was Tuesday, and during the remainder of the weeek Mr. Lambert became so familiar a visitor at Albatross Villa, that Bridget learned to know his knock, and did not trouble herself to pull down her sleeves, or finish the mouthful of bread and tea with which she had left the kitchen, before she opened the door. Aunt Tish did not attempt to disguise her satisfaction when he was present, and rallied Francie freely in his absence; the children were quite aware of the state of affairs, having indeed discussed the matter daily with Bridget; and Uncle Robert, going gloomily up to his office in Dublin, had to admit to himself that Lambert was certainly paying her great attention, and that after all, all things considered, it would be a good thing for the girl to get a rich husband for herself when she had the chance. It was rather soon after his wife’s death for a man to come courting, but of course the wedding wouldn’t come off till the twelve months were up, and at the back of these reflections was the remembrance that he, Uncle Robert, was Francie’s trustee, and that the security in which he had invested her five hundred pounds was becoming less sound than he could have wished.

  As is proverbially the case, the principal persons concerned were not as aware as the lookers-on of the state of the game. Francie, to whom flirtation was as ordinary and indispensable as the breath of her nostrils, did not feel that anything much out of the common was going on, though she knew quite well that Mr. Lambert was very fond of her; and Mr. Lambert had so firmly resolved on allowing proper interval to elapse between his wife’s death and that election of her successor upon which he was determined, that he looked upon the present episode as of small importance, and merely a permissible relaxation to a man whose hunting had been stopped, and who had, in a general way, been having the devil of a dull time. He was to go back to Lismoyle on Monday, the first of the year; and it was settled that he was to take Francie on Sunday afternoon to walk on kingstown pier. The social laws of Mrs. Fitzpatrick’s world were not rigorous, still less was her interpretation of them; an unchaperoned expedition to Kingstown pier would not, under any circumstances, have scandalised her, and considering that Lambert was an old friend and had been married, the proceeding became almost prudishly correct. As she stood at her window and saw them turn the corner of the road on their way to the station, she observed to Mabel that there wouldn’t be a handsomer couple going the pier than what they were, Francie had that stylish way with her that she always gave a nice set to a skirt, and it was wonderful the way she could trim up an old hat the same as new.

  It was very bright clear afternoon, and a touch of frost in the air gave the snap and brilliancy that are often lacking in an Irish winter day. On such a Sunday Kingstown pier assumes a fair semblance of its spring and summer gaiety; the Kingstown people walk there because there is nothing else to be done at Kingstown, and the Dublin people come down to snatch what they can of sea air before the short afternoon darkens, and the hour arrives when they look out for members of the St. George’s Yacht Club to take them in to tea. There was a fair sprinkling of people on the long arm of granite that curves for a mile into Dublin Bay, and as Mr. Lambert paced along it he was as a
greeably conscious and his companion of the glances that met and followed their progress. It satisfied his highest ambition that the girl of his choice should be thus openly admired by men whom, year after year, he had opened up at with envious respect as they stood in the bow-window of Kildare St. Club, with figures that time was slowly shaping to its circular form, on the principle of correspondence with environment. He was a man who had always valued his possessions according to other people’s estimation of them, and this afternoon Francie gained a new distinction in his eyes.

  Abstract admiration, however, was one thing, but the very concrete attentions of Mr. Thomas Whitty were quite another affair. Before they had been a quarter of an hour on the pier, Francie was hailed by her Christian name, and this friend of her youth, looking more unmistakably than ever a solicitor’s clerk, joined them, flushed with the effort of overtaking them, and evidently determined not to leave them again.

  “I spotted you by your hair, Francie,” Mr Whitty was pleased to observe, after the first greetings; “you must have been getting a new dye for it; I could see it a mile off!”

  “Oh, yes,” responded Francie, “I tried a new bottle the other day, the same you use for your moustache y’know! I thought I’d like people to be able to see it without a spy-glass.”

  As Mr. Whitty’s moustache was represented by three sickly hairs and a pimple, the sarcasm was sufficiently biting to yield Lambert a short-lived gratification.

  “Mr. Lambert dyes his black,” continued Francie, without a change of countenance. She had the Irish love of a scrimmage in her, and she thought it would be great fun to make Mr. Lambert cross.

  “D’ye find the colour comes off?” murmured Tommy Whitty, eager for revenge, but too much afraid to Lambert to speak out loud.

  Even Francie, though she favoured the repartee with a giggle, was glad that Lambert had not heard.

  “D’ye find you want you ears boxed?” she returned in the same tone of voice; “I won’t walk with you if you don’t behave.” Inwardly, however, she decided that Tommy Whitty was turning into an awful cad, and felt that she would have given a good deal to have wipped out some lively passages in her previous acquaintanced with him.

  At the end of half an hour Mr. Whitty was still with them, irrepressibly intimate and full of reminiscence. Lambert, after determined efforts to talk to Francie, as if unaware of the presence of a third person, had sunk into dangerous silence, and Francie had ceased to see the amusing side of the situation, and was beginning to the exhausted by much walking to and fro. The sun set in smoky crimson behind the town, the sun-set gun banged its official recognition of the fact, followed by the wild, clear notes of a bugle, and a frosty after-glow lit up the sky, and coloured the motionless water of the harbour. A big bell boomed a monotonous summons to afternoon service, and people began to leave the pier. Those who had secured the entrée of the St. George’s Yacht Club proceeded comfortably thither for tea, and Lambert felt that he would have given untold sums for the right to take Francie in under the pillared portico, leaving Tommy Whitty and his seedy black coat in outer darkness. The party was gloomily tending towards the station, when the happy idea occurred to Mr. Lambert of having tea at the Marine Hotel; it might not have the distinction of the club, but it would at all events give him the power of shaking off that damned presuming counter-jumper, as his own mind he furiously designated Mr. Whitty.

  “I’m going to take up to the hotel for tea, Francie,” he said decisively, and turned at once towards the gate of the Marine gardens. “Good evening, Whitty.”

  The look that accompanied this valedictory remark was so conclusive that the discarded Tommy could do no more than accept the position. Francie would not come to his help, being indeed thankful to get rid of him, and he could only stand and look after the two figures, and detest Mr. Lambert, with every fibre of his little heart. The coffee-room at the hotel was warm and quiet, and Francie sank thankfully into an armchair by the fire.

  “I declare this is the nicest thing I’ve done to-day,” she said, with a sigh of tired ease; “I was dead sick of walking up and down that old pier.”

  This piece of truckling was almost too flagrant, and Lambert would not even look at her as he answered,

  “I thought you seemed to be enjoying yourself, or I’d have come away sooner.”

  Francie felt none of the amusement that she would once have derived from seeing Mr. Lambert in a bad temper; he had stepped into the foreground of her life and was becoming a large and serious object there, too important and powerful to be teased with any degree of pertinacity.

  “Enjoy myself!” she exclaimed, “I was thinking all the time that my boots would be cut to pieces with the horrid gravel; and,” she continued, laying her head on the plush-covered back of her chair, and directing a laughing, propitiatory glance at her companion, “you know I had to talk twice as much to poor Tommy because you wouldn’t say a word to him. Beside, I knew him long before I knew you.”

  “Oh, of course if you don’t mind being seen with a fellow that looks like a tailor’s apprentice, I have nothing to say against it,” replied Lambert, looking down on her, as he stood fingering his moustache, with one elbow on the chimney-piece. His eyes could not remain implacable when they dwelt on the face that was upturned to him, especially now, whe he felt both in face and manner something of pathos and gentleness that was as new as it was intoxicating.

  If he had known what it was that had changed her he might have been differently affected by it; as it was, he put it down to the wretchedness of life at Albatross Villa, and was glad of the adversity that was making things so much easier for him. His sulkiness melted away in spite of him; it was hard to be sulky, with Francie all to himself, pouring out his tea and talking to him with an intimateness that was just tipped with flirtation; in fact, as the moments slipped by, and the thought gripped him that the next day would find him alone at Rosemount, every instant of this last afternoon in her society became unspeakably precious. The tête-è-tête across the tea-table prolonged itself so engrossingly that Lambert forgot his wonted punctuality, and their attempt to catch the five o’clock train for Bray resulted in bringing them breathless to the station as their train steamed out of it.

  CHAPTER XXXVIII.

  The Irish mail-boat was well up to time on that frosty thirty-first of December. She had crossed from Holyhead on an even keel, and when the Bailey light on the end of Howth had been sighted, the passengers began to think that they might risk congratulations on the clemency of the weather, and some of the hardier had ordered tea in the saloon, and were drinking it with incredulous enjoyment.

  “I shall go mad, Pamela, perfectly mad, if you cannot think of any word for that tenth light. C. and H.—can’t you think of anything with C. and H.? I found out all the othrs in the train, and the least you might do is to think of this one for me. That dreadful woman snoring on the sofa just outside my berth put everything else out of my head.”

  This plaint, uttered in a deep and lamentable contralto, naturally drew some attention towards Lady Dysart, as she swept down the saloon towards the end of the table, and Pamela, becoming aware that the lady referred to was among the audience, trod upon her mother’s dress and thus temprarily turned the conversation.

  “C. and H.,” she repeated, “I’m afraid I can’t think of anything; the only word I can think of beginning with C is Christopher.”

  “Christopher!” cried Lady Dysart, “why, Christopher ends with an R.”

  As Lady Dysart for the second time pronounced her son’s name the young man who had just come below, and was having a whisky and soda at the bar at the end of the saloon, turned quickly round and put down his glass. Lady Dysart and her daughter were sitting with their backs to him, but Mr. Hawkins did not require a second glance, and made his way to them at once.

  “And so you’ve been seeing poor Christopher off to the North Pole,” he said, after the first surpirse and explanations had been got over. “I can’t say I envy him. They
make it quite cold enough in York-shire to suit me.”

  “Don’t they ever make it hot for you there?” asked Lady Dysart, unable to resist the chance of poking fun at Mr. Hawkins, even though in so doing she violated her own cherished regulations on the subject of slang. All her old partiality for him had revived since Francie’s departure from Lismoyle, and she found the idea of his engagement far more amusing than he did.

  “No, Lady Dysart, they never do,” said Hawkins, getting very red, and feebly trying to rise to the occasion; “they’re always very nice and kind to me.”

  “Oh, I daresay they are!” replied Lady Dysart archly, with a glance at Pamela like that of a naughty child who glories in its naughtiness. “And is it fair to ask when the wedding is to come off? We heard something about the spring!”

  “Who gave you that interesting piece of news?” said Hawkins, trying not to look foolish.

  “A bridesmaid,” said Lady Dysart, closing her lips tightly, and leaning back with an irrepressible gleam in her eye.

  “Well, she knows more than I do. All I know about it is, that I believe the regiment goes to Aldershot in May, and I suppose it will be some time after that.” Mr. Hawkins spoke with a singularly bad grace, and before further comment could be made he turned to Pamela. “I saw a good deal of Miss Hope-Drummond in the north,” he said, with an effort so obvious and so futile at turning the conversation that Lady Dysart began to laugh.

  “Why, she was the bridesmaid—” she began incautiously, when the slackening of the engines set her thoughts flying from the subject in hand to settle in agony upon the certainty that Doyle would forget to put her scent-bottle into her dressing-bag, and the whole party went up on deck.

  It was dark, and the revolving light on the end of the east pier swung its red eye upon the steamer as she passed within a few yards of it, churning a curving road towards the double line of lamps that marked the jetty. The lights of Kingstown mounted row upon row, like an embattled army of stars, the great sweep of Dublin Bay was pricked out in lessening yellow points, and a new moon that looked pale green by contrast, sent an immature shaft along the sea in meek assertion of her presence. The paddles dropped their blades more and more languidly into the water, then they ceased, and the vessel slid silently alongside the jetty, with the sentient ease of a living thing. The warps were flung ashore, the gangways thrust on board, and in an instant the sailors were running ashore with the mail bags on their backs, like a string of ants with their eggs. The usual crowd of loafers and people who had come to meet their friends formed round the passengers’ gangway, and the passengers filed down it in the brief and uncoveted distinction that the exit from a steamer affords.