The Real Charlotte

by Edith Somerville

  Possibly, also, the fact that she had no children placed her at a disadvantage with the matrons of Lismoyle, all of whom could have spoken fearlessly with their enemies in the gate; it deprived conversation with her of the antiphonal quality, when mother answers unto mother of vaccination and teething-rash, and the sins of the nursery-maids are visited upon the company generally.

  “Ah, she’s a poor peenie-weenie thing!” said Mrs. Baker, who was usually the mouth-piece of Lismoyle opinion, “and it’s no wonder that Lambert’s for ever flourishing about the country in his dog-trap, and she never seeing a sight of him from morning till night. I’d like to see Mr. Baker getting up on a horse and galloping around the roads after bank hours, instead of coming in for his cup of tea with me and the girls!”

  Altogether the feeling was that Mrs. Lambert was a failure, and in spite of her undoubted amiability, and the creditable fact that Mr. Lambert was the second husband that the eight thousand pounds ground out by her late father’s mills had procured for her, her spouse was regarded with a certain regretful pity as the victim of circumstance.

  In spite of his claims upon the sympathy of Lismoyle, Mr. Lambert looked remarkably well able to compete with his lot in life, as he sat smoking his pipe in his dinner costume of carpet slippers and oldest shooting coat, a couple of evenings after Francie’s arrival. As a rule the Lamberts preferred to sit in their dining-room. The hard magnificence of the blue rep chairs in the drawing-room appealed to them from different points of view; Mrs. Lambert holding that they were too good to be used except by “company,” while Mr. Lambert truly felt that no one who was not debarred by politeness from the power of complaint would voluntarily sit upon them. An unshaded lamp was on the table, its ugly glare conflicting with the soft remnants of June twilight that stole in between the half-drawn curtains; a tumbler of whisky and water stood on the corner of the table beside the comfortable leather-covered armchair in which the master of the house was reading his paper, while opposite to him, in a basket chair, his wife was conscientiously doing her fancy work. She was a short woman with confused brown eyes and distressingly sloping shoulders; a woman of the turkey hen type, dejected and timorous in voice, and an habitual wearer of porous plasters. Her toilet for the evening consisted in replacing by a white cashmere shawl the red knitted one which she habitually wore, and a languid untidyness in the pale brown hair that hung over her eyes intimated that she had tried to curl her fringe for dinner.

  Neither were speaking; it seemed as if Mr. Lambert were placidly awaiting the arrival of his usual after-dinner sleep; the Maltese terrier was already snoring plethorically on his mistress’s lap, in a manner quite disproportioned to his size, and Mrs. Lambert’s crochet needles were moving more and more slowly through the mazes of the “bosom friend” that she was making for herself, the knowledge that the minute hand of the black marble clock was approaching the hour at which she took her post-prandial pill alone keeping her from also yielding to the soft influences of a substantial meal. At length she took the box from the little table beside her, where it stood between a bottle of smelling-salts and a lump of camphor, and having sat with it in her hand till the half hour was solemnly boomed from the chimney-piece, swallowed her pill with practised ease. At the slight noise of replacing the box her husband opened his eyes.

  “By the way, Lucy,” he said in a voice that had no trace of drowsiness in it, “did Charlotte Mullen say what she was going to do to-morrow?”

  “Oh, yes, Roderick,” replied Mrs. Lambert a little anxiously, “indeed, I was wanting to tell you—Charlotte asked me if I could drive her over to Mrs. Waller’s to-morrow afternoon. I forgot to ask you before if you wanted the horses.”

  Mr. Lambert’s fine complexion deepened by one or two shades.

  “Upon my soul, Charlotte Mullen has a good cheek! She gets as much work out of my horses as I do myself. I suppose you told her you’d do it?”

  “Well, what else could I do?” replied Mrs. Lambert with tremulous crossness; “I’m sure it’s not once in the month I get outside the place, and, as for Charlotte, she has not been to the Waller’s since before Christmas, and you know very well old Captain couldn’t draw her eight miles there and eight miles back any more than the cat.”

  “Cat be hanged! Why the devil can’t she put her hand in her pocket and take a car for herself?” said Lambert, uncrossing his legs and sitting up straight; “I suppose I’ll hear next that I’m not to order out my own horses till I’ve sent round to Miss Mullen to know if she wants them first! If you weren’t so infernally under her thumb you’d remember there were others to be consulted besides her.”

  “I’m not under her thumb, Roderick; I’ll beg you’ll not say such a thing,” replied Mrs. Lambert huffily, her eyes blinking with resentment. “Charlotte Mullen’s an old friend of mine, and yours too, and it’s a hard thing I can’t take her out driving without remarks being passed, and I never thought you’d want the horses. I thought you said you’d be in the office all to-morrow,” ended the poor turkey hen, whose feathers were constitutionally incapable of remaining erect for any length of time.

  Lambert did not answer immediately. His eyes rested on her flushed face with just enough expression in them to convey to her that her protest was beside the point. Mrs. Lambert was apparently used to this silent comment on what she said, for she went on still more apologetically:

  “If you like, Roderick, I’ll send Michael over early with a note to Charlotte to tell her we’ll go some other day.”

  Mr. Lambert leaned back as if to consider the question, and began to fill his pipe for the second time.

  “Well,” he said slowly, “if it makes no difference to you, Lucy, I’d be rather glad if you did. As a matter of fact I have to ride out to Gurthnamuckla to-morrow, on business, and I thought I’d take Francie Fitzpatrick with me there on the black mare. She’s no great shakes of a rider, and the black mare is the only thing I’d like to put her on. But, of course, if it was for your own sake and not Charlotte’s that you wanted to go to the Waller’s, I’d try and manage to take Francie some other day. For the matter of that I might put her on Paddy; I daresay he’d carry a lady.”

  Mr. Lambert’s concession had precisely the expected effect. Mrs. Lambert gave a cry of consternation.

  “Roderick! you wouldn’t! Is it put that girl up on that mad little savage of a pony! Why, it’s only yesterday, when Michael was driving me into town, and Mr. Corkran passed on his tricycle, he tore up on to his hind heels and tried to run into Ryan’s public house! Indeed, if that was the way, not all the Charlottes in the world would make me go driving to-morrow.”

  “Oh, all right,” said Lambert graciously; “if you’d rather have it that way, we’ll send a note over to Charlotte.”

  “Would you mind—” said Mrs. Lambert hesitatingly. “I mean, don’t you think it would be better if—supposing you wrote the note? She always minds what you say, and, I declare, I don’t know how in the world I’d make up the excuse, when she’d settled the whole thing, and even got me to leave word with the sweep to do her drawing-room chimney that’s thick with jackdaws’ nests, because the family’d be from home all the afternoon.”

  “Why, what was to happen to Francie?” asked Lambert quickly.

  “I think Charlotte said she was to come with us,” yawned Mrs. Lambert, whose memory for conversation was as feeble as the part she played in it; “they had some talk about it at all events. I wouldn’t be sure but Francie Fitzpatrick said first she’d go for a walk to see the town—yes, so she did, and Charlotte told her what she was going for was to try and see the officers, and Francie said maybe it was, or maybe she’d come and have afternoon tea with you. They had great joking about it, but I’m sure, after all, it was settled she was to come with us. Indeed,” continued Mrs. Lambert meditatively; “I think Charlotte’s quite right not to have her going through the town that way by herself; for, I declare, Roderick, that’s a lovely girl.”

  “Oh, she’s well able to
take care of herself,” said Lambert, with the gruff deprecation that is with some people the method of showing pleasure at a compliment. “She’s not such a fool as she looks, I can tell you,” he went on, feeling suddenly quite companionable; “the Fitzpatricks didn’t take such wonderful care of her that Charlotte need be bothering herself to put her in cotton wool at this time of day.”

  Mrs. Lambert crocheted on in silence for a few moments, inwardly counting her stitches till she came to the end of the row, then she withdrew the needle and scratched her head ruminatingly with it.

  “Isn’t it a strange thing, Roderick, what makes Charlotte have anyone staying in the house with her? I never remember such a thing to happen before.”

  “She has to have her, and no thanks to her. Old Fitzpatrick’s been doing bad business lately, and the little house he’s had to take at Bray is a tight fit for themselves and the children; so, as he said to me, he thought it was time for Charlotte to do something for her own cousin’s child, and no such great thanks to her either, seeing she got every halfpenny the old woman had.”

  Mrs. Lambert realised that she was actually carrying on a conversation with her husband, and nervously cast about in her mind for some response that should be both striking and stimulating.

  “Well, now, if you want my opinion,” she said, shutting both her eyes and shaking her head with the peculiar arch sagacity of a dull woman, “I wouldn’t be surprised if Charlotte wasn’t so sorry to have her here after all. Maybe she thinks she might snap up one of the officers—or there’s young Charley Flood—or, Roderick!” Mrs. Lambert almost giggled with delight and excitement—”I wouldn’t put it past Charlotte to be trying to ketch Mr. Dysart.”

  Roderick laughed in a disagreeable way.

  “I’d wish her joy of him if she got him! A fellow that’d rather stick at home there at Bruff having tea with his sister than go down like any other fellow and play a game of pool at the hotel! A sort of chap that says, if you offer him a whisky and soda in a friendly way, ‘Th—thanks—I don’t c—care about anything at this t—t—time of day.’ I think Francie’d make him sit up!” Mr. Lambert felt his imitation of Christopher. Dysart’s voice to be a success, and the shrill burst of laughter with which Mrs. Lambert greeted it gave him for the moment an unusual tinge of respect for her intelligence. “That’s about the size of it, Lucy, what?”

  “Oh, Roderick, how comical you are!” responded the dutiful turkey hen, wiping her watery eyes; “it reminds me of the days when you used to be talking of old Mr. Mullen and Charlotte fighting in the office till I’d think I was listening to themselves.”

  “God help the man that’s got to fight with Charlotte, anyhow!” said Lambert, finishing his whisky and water as if toasting the sentiment; “and talking of Charlotte, Lucy, you needn’t mind about writing that note to her; I’ll go over myself and speak to her in the morning.”

  “Oh, yes, Roderick, ‘twill be all right if you see herself, and you might say to her that I’ll be expecting her to come in to tea.”

  Mr. Lambert, who had already taken up his newspaper again, merely grunted an assent. Mrs. Lambert patiently folded her small bony hands upon her dog’s back, and closing her eyes and opening her mouth, fell asleep in half a dozen breaths.

  Her husband read his paper for a short time, while the subdued duet of snoring came continuously from the chair opposite. The clock struck nine in its sonorous, gentlemanlike voice, and at the sound Lambert threw down his paper as if an idea had occurred to him. He got up and went over to the window, and putting aside the curtains, looked out into the twilight of the June evening. The world outside was still awake, and the air was tender with the remembrance of the long day of sunshine and heat; a thrush was singing loudly down by the seringa bush at the end of the garden; the cattle were browsing and breathing audibly in the field beyond, and some children were laughing and shouting on the road. It seemed to Lambert much earlier than he had thought, and as he stood there, the invitation of the summer evening began to appeal to him with seductive force; the quiet fields lay grey and mysterious under the pale western glow, and his eye travelled several times across them to a distant dark blot—the clump of trees and evergreens in which Tally Ho Lodge lay buried.

  He turned from the window at last, and coming back into the lamplit room, surveyed it and its unconscious occupants with a feeling of intolerance for their unlovely slumber. His next step was the almost unprecedented one of changing his slippers for boots, and in a few minutes he had left the house.

  * * *

  CHAPTER VI.

  Norry the Boat toiled up the back stairs with wrath in her heart. She had been listening for some minutes with grim enjoyment to cries from the landing upstairs; unavailing calls for Louisa, interspersed with the dumb galvanic quiver of a bell-less bellwire, and at last Francie’s voice at the angle half-way down the kitchen stairs had entreated her to find and despatch to her the missing Protestant orphan. Then Norry had said to herself, while she lifted the pot of potatoes off the fire, “Throuble-the-house! God knows I’m heart-scalded with the whole o’ yees!” And then aloud, “She’s afther goin’ out to the dhryin’ ground to throw out a few aper’rns to blaych.”

  “Well, I must have somebody; I can’t get my habit on,” the voice had wailed in reply. “Couldn’t you come, Norry?”

  As we have said, Norry ascended the stairs with wrath in her heart, as gruesome a lady’s-maid as could well be imagined, with an apron mottled with grease spots, and a stale smell of raw onions pervading her generally. Francie was standing in front of the dim looking-glass with which Charlotte chastened the vanity of her guests, trying with stiff and tired fingers to drag the buttons of a brand new habit through the unyielding buttonholes that tailors alone have the gift of making, and Norry’s anger was forgotten in prayerful horror, as her eyes wandered from the hard felt hat to the trousered ankle that appeared beneath the skimpy and angular skirt.

  “The Lord look down in pity on thim that cut that petticoat!” she said. “Sure, it’s not out in the sthreets ye’re goin’ in the like o’ that! God knows it’d be as good for ye to be dhressed like a man altogether!”

  “I wouldn’t care what I was dressed like if I could only make the beastly thing meet,” said Francie, her face flushed with heat and effort; “wasn’t I the fool to tell him to make it tight in the waist!”

  The subsequent proceedings were strenuous, but in the end successful, and finally Miss Fitzpatrick walked stiffly downstairs, looking very slender and tall, with the tail of the dark green habit—she had felt green to be the colour consecrated to sport— drawn tightly round her, and a silver horse-shoe brooch at her throat.

  Charlotte was standing at the open hall door talking to Mr. Lambert.

  “Come along, child,” she said genially, “you’ve been so long adorning yourself that nothing but his natural respect for the presence of a lady kept this gentleman from indulging in abusive language.”

  Charlotte, in her lighter moods, was addicted to a ponderous persiflage, the aristocratic foster-sister of her broader peasant jestings in the manner of those whom she was fond of describing as “the bar purple.”

  Mr. Lambert did not trouble himself to reply to this sally. He was looking at the figure in the olive-green habit, that was advancing along the path of sunlight to the doorway, and thinking that he had done well to write that letter on the subject of the riding that Francie might expect to have at Lismoyle. Charlotte turned her head also to look at the radiant, sunlit figure.

  “Why, child, were you calling Norry just now to melt you down and pour you into that garment? I never saw such a waist! Take care and don’t let her fall off, Roddy, or she’ll snap in two!” She laughed loudly and discordantly, looking to Mr. Lambert’s groom for the appreciation that was lacking in the face of his master; and during the arduous process of getting Miss Fitzpatrick into her saddle she remained on the steps, offering facetious suggestions and warnings, with her short arms akimbo, and a smile that w
as meant to be jovial accentuating the hard lines of her face.

  At last the green habit was adjusted, the reins placed properly between Francie’s awkward fingers, and Mr. Lambert had mounted his long-legged young chestnut and was ready to start.

  “Don’t forget Lucy expects you to tea, Charlotte,” he said as he settled himself in his saddle.

  “And don’t you forget what I told you,” replied Charlotte, sinking her voice confidentially; “don’t mind her if she opens her mouth wide, it’ll take less to shut it than ye’d think.”

  Lambert nodded and rode after Francie, who, in compliance with the wishes of the black mare, had hurried on towards the gate. The black mare was a lady of character, well-mannered but firm, and the mere sit of the saddle on her back told her that this was a case when it would be well to take matters into her own control; she accordingly dragged as much of the reins as she required from Francie’s helpless hands, and by the time she had got on to the high road had given her rider to understand that her position was that of tenant at will.