The Real Charlotte

by Edith Somerville

  Mr. Hawkins turned a sour eye upon the Daphne and said laconically, “Silly ass; he’ll smother her.”

  “Upon my word, I don’t think he’ll get in much before nine o’clock to-night,” continued Cursiter; “it’s pretty nearly dead in his teeth, and he doesn’t make a hundred yards on each tack.”

  Mr. Hawkins slammed the lid of the coal-bunker, and stepped past his chief into the after-part of the launch.

  “I say, Miss Mullen,” he began with scarcely suppressed malignity, “Captain Cursiter says you won’t see your niece before to-morrow morning. You’ll be sorry you wouldn’t let her come home in the launch after all.”

  “If she hadn’t been so late for her tea,” retorted Miss Mullen, “Mr. Lambert could have started half an hour before he did.”

  “Half an hour will be neither here nor there in this game. What Lambert ought to have done was to have started after luncheon, but I think I may remind you, Miss Mullen, that you took him off to the holy well then.”

  “Well, and if I did, I didn’t leave my best pocket handkerchief hanging in rags on the thorn-bush, like some other people I know of!” Miss Mullen felt that she had scored, and looked for sympathy to Pamela, who, having as was usual with her, borne the heat and burden of the day in the matter of packings and washings-up, was now sitting, pale and tired, in the stern, with Dinah solidly implanted in her lap, and Max huddled miserably on the seat beside her. Miss Hope-Drummond, shrouded in silence and a long plaid cloak, paid no attention to anyone or anything. There are few who can drink the dregs of the cup of pleasuring with any appearance of enjoyment, and Miss Hope-Drummond was not one of them. The alteration in the respective crews of the yacht and the steam-launch had been made by no wish of hers, and it is probable that but for the unexpected support that Cursiter had received from Miss Mullen, his schemes for Mr. Hawkins’ welfare would not have prospered. The idea had indeed occurred to Miss Hope-Drummond that the proprietor of the launch had perhaps a personal motive in suggesting the exchange, but when she found that Captain Cursiter was going to stand with his back to her, and steer, she wished that she had not yielded her place in the Daphne to a young person whom she already thought of as “that Miss Fitzpatrick,” applying in its full force the demonstrative pronoun that denotes feminine animosity more subtly and expressively than is in the power of any adjective. Hawkins she felt was out of her jurisdiction and unworthy of attention, and she politely ignored Pamela’s attempts to involve her in conversation with him. Her neat brown fringe was out of curl; long strands of hair blew unbecomingly over her ears; her feet were very cold, and she finally buried herself to the nose in a fur boa that gave her the effect of a moustached and bearded Russian noble, and began, as was her custom during sermons and other periods of tedium, to elaborate the construction of a new tea-gown.

  To do Mr. Hawkins justice, he, though equally ill-treated by fate, rose superior to his disappointment. After his encounter with Miss Mullen he settled confidentially down in the corner beside Pamela, and amused himself by pulling Dinah’s short, fat tail, and puffing cigarette smoke in her face, while he regaled her mistress with an assortment of the innermost gossip of Lismoyle.

  On board the Daphne, the aspect of things was less comfortable. Although the wind was too much in her teeth for her to make much advance for home, there was enough to drive her through the water at a pace that made the long tacks from side to side of the lake seem as nothing, and to give Francie as much as she could do to keep her big hat on her head. She was sitting up on the weather side with Lambert, who was steering; and Christopher, in the bows, was working the head sails, and acting as movable ballast when they went about. At first, while they were beating out of the narrow channel of Ochery, Francie had found it advisable to lie in a heap beneath a tarpaulin, to avoid the onslaught of the boom at each frequent tack, but now that they were out on the open lake, with the top-sail hoisted, she had risen to her present position, and, in spite of her screams as the sharp squalls came down from the mountains and lifted her hat till it stood on end like a rearing horse, was enjoying herself amazingly. Unlike Miss Hope-Drummond, she was pre-eminently one of those who come home unflagging from the most prolonged outing, and to-day’s entertainment, so far from being exhausting, had verified to the utmost her belief in the charms of the British officer, as well as Miss Fanny Hemphill’s prophecies of her success in such quarters. Nevertheless she was quite content to return in the yacht; it was salutary for Mr. Hawkins to see that she could do without him very well, it took her from Charlotte’s dangerous proximity, and it also gave her an opportunity of appeasing Mr. Lambert, who, as she was quite aware, was not in the best of tempers. So far her nimble tongue had of necessity been idle. Christopher’s position in the bows isolated him from all conversation of the ordinary pitch, and Lambert had been at first too much occupied with the affairs of his boat to speak to her, but now, as a sharper gust nearly snatched her hat from her restraining hand, he turned to her.

  “If it wasn’t that you seem to enjoy having that hat blown inside out every second minute,” he said chillingly, “I’d offer to lend you a cap.”

  “What sort is it?” demanded Francie. “If it’s anything like that old deerstalker thing you have on your head now, I wouldn’t touch it with the tongs!”

  Lambert’s only reply was to grope under the seat with one hand, and to bring out a red knitted cap of the conventional sailoring type, which he handed to Francie without so much as looking at her. Miss Fitzpatrick recognised its merits with half a glance, and, promptly putting it on her head, stuffed the chef d’æuvre of the night before under the seat among the deck-swabs and ends of rope that lurked there. Christopher, looking aft at the moment, saw the change of head-gear, and it was, perhaps, characteristic of him that even while he acknowledged the appropriateness of the red cap of liberty to the impertinence of the brilliant face beneath it, he found himself reminded of the extra supplement, in colours, of any Christmas number— indubitably pretty but a trifle vulgar.

  In the meantime the object of this patronising criticism, feeling herself now able to give her undivided attention to conversation, regarded Mr. Lambert’s sulky face with open amusement, and said:

  “Well, now, tell me what made you so cross all day. Was it because Mrs. Lambert wasn’t out?”

  Lambert looked at her for an instant without speaking. “Ready about,” he called out. “Mind your head! Lee helm!”

  The little yacht hung and staggered for a moment, and then, with a diving plunge, started forward, with every sail full and straining. Francie scrambled with some difficulty to the other side of the tiny cockpit, and climbed up on to the seat by Mr. Lambert, just in time to see a very fair imitation of a wave break on the weather bow and splash a sparkling shower into Christopher’s face.

  “Oh, Mr. Dysart! are you drowned?” she screamed ecstatically.

  “Not quite,” he called back, his hair hanging in dripping points on his forehead as he took off his cap and shook the water out of it. “I say, Lambert, it’s beginning to blow pretty stiff; I’d take that top-sail off her, if I were you.”

  “She’s often carried it in worse weather than this,” returned Lambert; “a drop of water will do no one any harm.”

  Mr. Lambert in private, and as much as possible in public, affected to treat his employer’s son as a milksop, and few things annoyed him more than the accepted opinion on the lake that there was no better man in a boat than Christopher Dysart. His secret fear that it was true made it now all the more intolerable that Christopher should lay down the law to him on a point of seamanship, especially with Francie by, ready in that exasperating way of hers to laugh at him on the smallest provocation.

  “It’ll do him no harm if he does get a drop of water over him,” he said to her in a low voice, forgetting for the moment his attitude of disapproval. “Take some of the starch out of him for once!” He took a pull on the main sheet, and, with a satisfied upward look at the top-sail in question, applied h
imself to conversation. The episode had done him good, and it was with almost fatherly seriousness that he began:

  “Now, Francie, you were telling me a while ago that I was cross all day. I’m a very old friend of yours, and I don’t mind saying that I was greatly put out by the way”—he lowered his voice—”by the way you were going on with that fellow Hawkins.”

  “I don’t know what you mean by ‘going on,’” interrupted Francie, with a slight blush. “What’s the harm in talking to him if he likes to talk to me?”

  “Plenty of harm,” returned Lambert quickly, “when he makes a fool of you the way he did to-day. If you don’t care that Miss Dysart and the rest of them think you know no better than to behave like that, I do!”

  “Behave like what?”

  “Well, for one thing, to let him and Garry Dysart go sticking grass in your stockings that way after luncheon; and for another to keep Miss Dysart waiting tea for you for half an hour, and your only excuse to be to tell her that he was ‘teaching you to make ducks and drakes’ the other side of the island.” The fatherly quality had died out of his voice, and the knuckles of the hand that held the tiller grew white from a harder grip.

  Francie instinctively tucked away her feet under her petticoats. She was conscious that the green pattern still adorned her insteps, and that tell-tale spikes of grass still projected on either side of her shoes.

  “How could I help it? It was just a silly game that he and Garry Dysart made up between them; and as for Miss Dysart being angry with me, she never said a word to me; she was awfully good; and she and her brother had kept the teapot hot for me, and everything.” She looked furtively at Christopher, who was looking out at the launch, now crossing their path some distance ahead. It was more than you’d have done for me!”

  “Yes, very likely it was; but I wouldn’t have been laughing at you in my sleeve all the time as they were, or at least as he was, anyhow!”

  “I believe that’s a great lie,” said Francie unhesitatingly; “and I don’t care a jack-rat what he thought, or what you think either. Mr. Hawkins is a very nice young man, and I’ll talk to him just as much as I like! And he’s coming to tea at Tally Ho to-morrow; and what’s more, I asked him! So now!”

  “Oh, all right!” said Lambert, in such a constrained voice of anger, that even Francie felt a little afraid of him. “Have him to tea by all means; and if I were you I should send down to Limerick and have Miss M’Carthy up to meet him!”

  “What are you saying? Who’s Miss M’Carthy?” asked Francie, with a disappointing sparkle of enjoyment in her eyes.

  “She’s the daughter of a George’s Street tobacconist that your friend Mr. Hawkins was so sweet about a couple of months ago that they packed him off here to be out of harm’s way. Look out, Dysart, I’m going about now,” he continued without giving Francie time to reply. “Leehelm!”

  “Oh, I’m sick of you and your old ‘leehelm’!” cried Francie, as she grovelled again in the cockpit to avoid the swing of the boom. “Why can’t you go straight like Captain Cursiter’s steamer, instead of bothering backwards and forwards, side-ways, like this? And you always do it just when I want to ask you something.”

  This complaint, which was mainly addressed to Mr. Lambert’s canvas yachting shoes, received no attention. When Francie came to the surface she found that the yacht was at a more uncomfortable angle than ever, and with some difficulty she established herself on the narrow strip of deck, outside the coaming, with her feet hanging into the cockpit.

  “Now, Mr. Lambert,” she began at once, “you’d better tell me Miss M’Carthy’s address, and all about her, and perhaps if you’re good I’ll ask you to meet her too.”

  As she spoke, a smart squall struck the yacht, and Lambert luffed her hard up to meet it. A wave with a ragged white edge flopped over her bows, wetting Christopher again, and came washing aft along the deck behind the coaming.

  “Look out aft there!” he shouted, “She’s putting her nose into it! I tell you that top-sail’s burying her, Lambert.”

  Lambert made no answer to either Francie or Christopher. He had as much as he could do to hold the yacht, which was snatching at the tiller like a horse at its bit, and ripping her way deep through the waves in a manner too vigorous to be pleasant, It was about seven o’clock, and though the sun was still some height above the dark jagged wall of the mountains, the clouds had risen in a tawny fleece across his path, and it was evident that he would be seen no more that day. The lake had turned to indigo. The beds of reeds near the shore were pallid by contrast as they stooped under the wind; the waves that raced towards the yacht had each an angry foam-crest, having, after the manner of lake waves, lashed themselves into a high state of indignation on very short notice, and hissed and effervesced like soda-water all along the lee gunwale of the flying yacht. A few seagulls that were trying to fight their way back down to the sea, looked like fluttering scraps of torn white paper against the angry bronze of the clouds, and the pine trees on the point, under the lee of which they were scudding, were tossing like the black plumes of a hearse.

  Lambert put the yacht about, and headed back across the lake.

  “We did pretty well on that tack, Dysart,” he shouted. “We ought to get outside Screeb Point with the next one, and then we’ll get the wind a point fairer, and make better weather of it the rest of the way home.”

  He could see the launch, half a mile or so beyond the point, ploughing steadily along on her way to Lismoyle, and in his heart he wished that Francie was on board of her. He also wished that Christopher had held his confounded tongue about the top-sail. If he hadn’t shoved in his oar where he wasn’t wanted, he’d have had that top-sail off her twenty minutes ago; but he wasn’t going to stand another man ordering him about in his own boat.

  “Look here, Francie,” he said, “you must look out for yourself when I’m going about next time. It’s always a bit squally round this point, so you’d better keep down in the cockpit till we’re well on the next tack.”

  “But I’ll get all wet down there,” objected Francie, “and I’d much rather stay up here and see the fun.”

  “You talk as if it was the top of a tram in Sackville Street,” said Lambert, snatching a glance of provoked amusement at her unconcerned face. “I can tell you it will take a good deal more holding on to than that does. Promise me now, like a good child,” he went on, with a sudden thrill of anxiety at her helplessness and ignorance, “that you’ll do as I tell you. You used to mind what I said to you.”

  He leaned towards her as he spoke, and Francie raised her eyes to his with a laugh in them that made him for the moment forgetful of everything else. They were in the open water in the centre of the lake by this time, and in that second a squall came roaring down upon them.

  “Luff!” shouted Christopher, letting go the head sheets. “Luff, or we’re over!”

  Lambert let go the main sheet and put the tiller hard down with all the strength he was master of, but he was just too late. In that moment, when he had allowed his thoughts to leave his steering, the yacht had dragged herself a thought beyond his control. The rough hand of the wind struck her, and, as she quivered and reeled under the blow, another and fiercer gust caught hold of her, and flung her flat on her side on the water.

  Before Christopher had well realised what had happened, he had gone deep under water, come to the surface again, and was swimming, with a vision before him of a white figure with a red cap falling headlong from its perch. He raised himself and shook the water out of his eyes, and swimming a stroke or two to get clear of the mast, with its sails heaving prone on the water like the pinions of a great wounded bird, he saw over the shoulders of the hurrying waves the red cap and the white dress drifting away to leeward. Through the noise of the water in his ears, and the confusion of his startled brain, he heard Lambert’s voice shouting frantically he did not know what; the whole force of his nature was set and centred on overtaking the red cap to which each stroke was bringin
g him nearer and nearer as it appeared and reappeared ahead of him between the steely backs of the waves. She lay horribly still, with the water washing over her face; and as Christopher caught her dress, and turned, breathless, to try to fight his way back with her to the wrecked yacht, he seemed to hear a hundred voices ringing in his ears and telling him that she was dead. He was a good and practised swimmer, but not a powerful one. His clothes hung heavily about him, and with one arm necessarily given to his burden, and the waves and wind beating him back, he began to think that his task was more than he would be able to accomplish. He had up to this, in the intensity of the shock and struggle, forgotten Lambert’s existence, but now the agonised shouts that he had heard came back to him, and he raised himself high in the water and stared about with a new anxiety. To his intense relief he saw that the yacht was still afloat, was, in fact, drifting slowly down towards him, and in the water not ten yards from him was her owner, labouring towards him with quick splashing strokes, and evidently in a very exhausted state. His face was purple-red, his eyes half starting out of his head, and Christopher could hear his hard breathing as he slowly bore down upon him.

  “She’s all right, Lambert!” Christopher cried out, though his heart belied the words. “I’ve got her! Hold hard; the yacht will be down on us in a minute.”

  Whether Lambert heard the words or no was not apparent. He came struggling on, and as soon as he got within reach, made a snatch at Francie’s dress. Christopher had contrived to get his left arm round her waist, and to prop her chin on his shoulder, so that her face should be above the water, and, as Lambert’s weight swung on him, it was all he could do to keep her in this position.

  “You’ll drown us all if you don’t let go!” Uttermost exertion and want of breath made Christopher’s voice wild and spasmodic. “Can’t you tread water till the boat gets to us?”

  Lambert still speechlessly and convulsively dragged at her, his breath breaking from him in loud gasps, and his face working.