The Real Charlotte

by Edith Somerville

  “And do you like being stationed here, Mr Hawkins?” said Mrs. Rattray after a pause.

  “Eh? what? Oh yes, of course I do—awfully! you’re all such delightful people y’know!”

  Mrs. Rattray bridled with pleasure at this audacity.

  “Oh, Mr. Hawkins, I’m afraid you’re a terrible flatterer! Do you know that one of the officers of the Foragers said he thought it was a beastly spawt!”

  “Beastly what? Oh yes, I see. I don’t agree with him at all; I think it’s a capital good spot.” (Why did that old ass, Mrs. Corkran stick her great widow’s cap just between him and the curtain? Francie had leaned forward and looked at him that very second, and that infernal white tow-row had got in his way.)

  Mrs. Rattray thought it was time to play her trump card.

  “I suppose you read a great deal, Mr. Hawkins? Dr. Rattray takes the—a—the Pink One I think he calls it—I know, of course, it’s only a paper for gentlemen,” she added hurriedly, “but I believe it’s very comical, and the doctor would be most happy to lend it to you.”

  Mr. Hawkins, whose Sunday mornings would have been a blank without the solace of the Sporting Times, explained that the loan was unnecessary, but Mrs. Rattray felt that she had nevertheless made her point, and resolved that she would next Sunday study the Pink One’s inscrutable pages, so that she and Mr. Hawkins might have, at least, one subject in common.

  By this time the younger members of the company had finished their tea, and those nearest the door began to make a move. The first to leave the room were Francie and Lambert, and poor Hawkins, who had hoped that his time of release had at length come, found it difficult to behave as becomes a gentleman and a soldier, when Mrs. Rattray, with the air of one who makes a concession, said she thought she could try another saucer of raspberries, Before they left the table the piano had begun again upstairs, and a muffled thumping, that shook flakes from the ceiling down on to the tea-table, told that the realities of the evening had begun at last.

  “I knew the young people would be at that before the evening was out,” said Mrs. Beattie with an indulgent laugh, “though the girls let on to me it was only a musical party they wanted.”

  “Ah well, they’ll never do it younger!” said Mrs. Baker, leaning back with her third cup of tea in her hand. “Girls will be girls, as I’ve just been saying to Miss Mullen.”

  “Girls will be tom-fools!” said Miss Mullen with a brow of storm, thrusting her hands into her gloves, while her eyes followed Hawkins, who had at length detached Mrs. Rattray from the pleasures of the table, and was hurrying her out of the room.

  “Oh now, Miss Mullen, you mustn’t be so cynical,” said Mrs. Beattie from behind the tea-urn; “we have six girls, and I declare now Mr. Beattie and I wouldn’t wish to have one less.”

  “Well, they’re a great responsibility,” said Mrs. Corkran with a slow wag of her obtrusively widowed head, “and no one knows that better than a mother. I shall never forget the anxiety I went through—it was just before we came to this parish—when my Bessy had an offer. Poor Mr. Corkran and I disapproved of the young man, and we were both quite distracted about it. Indeed we had to make it a subject of prayer, and a fortnight afterwards the young man died. Oh, doesn’t it show the wonderful force of prayer?”

  “Well now I think it’s a pity you didn’t let it alone,” said Mr. Lynch, with something resembling a wink at Miss Mullen.

  “I daresay Bessy’s very much of your opinion,” said Charlotte, unable to refrain from a jibe at Miss Corkran, pre-occupied though she was with her own wrath. She pushed her chair brusquely back from the table. “I think, with your kind permission, Mrs. Beattie, I’ll go upstairs and see what’s going on. Don’t stir Mr. Lynch, I’m able to get that far by myself.”

  When Miss Mullen arrived at the top of the steep flight of stairs, she paused on the landing amongst the exiled drawing-room chairs and tables, and looked in at seven or eight couples revolving in a space so limited as to make movement a difficulty, if not a danger, and in an atmosphere already thickened with dust from the carpet. She saw to her surprise that her cousin was dancing with Lambert, and, after a careful survey of the room, espied Mr. Hawkins standing partnerless in one of the windows.

  “I wonder what she’s at now,” thought Charlotte to herself; “is she trying to play Roddy off against him? The little cat, I wouldn’t put it past her!”

  As she looked at them wheeling slowly round in the cramped circle she could see that neither he or Francie spoke to each other, and when, the dance being over, they sat down together in the corner of the room, they seemed scarcely more disposed to talk than they had been when dancing.

  “Aha! Roddy’s a good fellow,” she thought, “he’s doing his best to help me by keeping her away from that young scamp.”

  At this point the young scamp in question crossed the room and asked Miss Fitzpatrick for the next dance in a manner that indicated just displeasure. The heat of the room and the exertion of dancing on a carpet had endued most of the dancers with the complexions of ripe plums, but Francie seemed to have been robbed of all colour. She did not look up at him as he proffered his request.

  “I’m engaged for the next dance.”

  Hawkins became very red. “Well the next after that,” he persisted, trying to catch her eye.

  “There isn’t any next,” said Francie, looking suddenly at him with defiant eyes; “after the next we’re going home.”

  Hawkins stared for a brief instant at her with a sparkle of anger in his eyes. “Oh, very well,” he said with exaggerated politeness of manner, “I thought I was engaged to you for the first dance after supper, that was all.”

  He turned away at once and walked out of the room, brushing past Charlotte at the door, and elbowed his way through the uproarious throng that crowded the staircase. Mrs. Beattie, coming up from the tea-table with her fellow matrons, had no idea of permitting her prize guest to escape so early. Hawkins was captured, his excuses were disregarded, and he was driven up the stairs again.

  “Very well,” he said to himself, “if she chooses to throw me over, I’ll let her see that I can get on without her.” It did not occur to him that Francie was only acting in accordance with the theory of the affair that he had himself presented to Captain Cursiter. His mind was now wholly given to revenging the snub he had received, and, spurred by this desire, he advanced to Miss Lynch, who was reposing in an armchair in a corner of the landing, while her partner played upon her heated face with the drawing-room bellows, and secured her for the next dance.

  When Mr. Hawkins gave his mind to rollicking, there were few who could do it more thoroughly, and the ensuing polka was stamped through by him and Miss Lynch with a vigour that scattered all opposing couples like ninepins. Even his strapping partner appealed for mercy.

  “Oh, Mr. Hawkins,” she panted, “wouldn’t you chassy now please? If you twirl me any more, I think I’ll die!”

  But Mr. Hawkins was deaf to entreaty; far from moderating his exertions, he even snatched the eldest Miss Beattie from her position as on-looker, and, compelling her to avail herself of the dubious protection of his other arm, whirled her and Miss Lynch round the room with him in a many-elbowed triangle. The progress of the other dancers was necessarily checked by this performance, but it was viewed with the highest favour by all the matrons, especially those whose daughters had been selected to take part in it. Francie looked on from the doorway, whither she and her partner, the Reverend Corkran, had been driven for safety, with a tearing pain at her heart. Her lips were set in a fixed smile —a smile that barely kept their quivering in check— and her beautiful eyes shone upon the dazzled curate through a moisture that was the next thing to tears.

  “I want to find Miss Mullen,” she said at last, dragging Mr. Corkran towards the stairs, when a fresh burst of applause from the dancing-room made them both look back. Hawkins’ two partners had, at a critical turn, perfidiously let him go with such suddenness that he had fallen flat on the
floor, and having pursued them as they polkaed round the room, he was now encircling both with one arm, and affecting to box their ears with his other hand, encouraged thereto by cries of, “Box them, Mr. Hawkins!” from Mrs. Beattie. “Box them well!”

  Charlotte was in the dining-room, partaking of a gentlemanly glass of Marsala with Mr. Beattie, and other heads of families.

  “Great high jinks they’re having upstairs!” she remarked, as the windows and tea-cups rattled from the stamping overhead, and Mr. Beattie cast many an anxious eye towards the ceiling. “I suppose my young lady’s in the thick of it, whatever it is!” She always assumed the attitude of the benevolently resigned chaperon when she talked about Francie, and Mr. Lynch was on the point of replying in an appropriate tone of humorous condolence, when the young lady herself appeared on Mr. Corkran’s arm, with an expression that at once struck Charlotte as being very unlike high jinks.

  “Why, child, what do you want down here?” she said. “Are you tired dancing?”

  “I am; awfully tired; would you mind going home, Charlotte?”

  “What a question to ask before our good host here! Of course I mind going home!” eyeing Francie narrowly as she spoke; “but I’ll come if you like.”

  “Why, what people you all are for going home!” protested Mr. Beattie hospitably; “there was Hawkins that we only stopped by main strength, and Lambert slipped away ten minutes ago, saying Mrs. Lambert wasn’t well, and he had to go and look after her! What’s your reverence about letting her go away now, when they’re having the fun of Cork upstairs?”

  Francie smiled a pale smile, but held to her point, and a few minutes afterwards she and Charlotte had made their way through the knot of loafers at the garden gate, and were walking through the empty moon-lit streets of Lismoyle towards Tally Ho. Charlotte did not speak till the last clanging of the Bric-à-brac polka had been left behind, and then she turned to Francie with a manner from which the affability had fallen like a garment.

  “And now I’ll thank you to tell me what’s the truth of this I hear from everyone in the town about you and that young Hawkins being out till all hours of the night in the steam-launch by yourselves?”

  “It wasn’t our fault. We were in by half-past nine.” Francie had hardly spirit enough to defend herself, and the languor in her voice infuriated Charlotte.

  “Don’t give me any of your fine-lady airs,” she said brutally; “I can tell ye this, that if ye can’t learn how to behave yourself decently I’ll pack ye back to Dublin!”

  The words passed over Francie like an angry wind, disturbing, but without much power to injure.

  “All right, I’ll go away when you like.”

  Charlotte hardly heard her. “I’ll be ashamed to look me old friend, Lady Dysart, in the face!” She stormed on. “Disgracing her house by such goings on with an unprincipled blackguard that has no more idea of marrying you than I have—not that that’s anything to be regretted! An impudent little upstart without a halfpenny in his pocket, and as for family—” her contempt stemmed her volubility for a mouthing moment. “God only knows what gutter he sprang from; I don’t suppose he has a drop of blood in his whole body!”

  “I’m not thinking of marrying him no more than he is of marrying me,” answered Francie in the same lifeless voice, but this time faltering a little. “You needn’t bother me about him, Charlotte, he’s engaged.”

  “Engaged!” yelled Charlotte, squaring round at her cousin, and standing stock still in her amazement. “Why didn’t you tell me so before? When did you hear it?”

  “I heard it some time ago from a person whose name I won’t give you,” said Francie, walking on. “They’re to be married before Christmas.” The lump rose at last in her throat, and she trod hard on the ground as she walked, in the effort to keep the tears back.

  Charlotte girded her velveteen skirt still higher, and hurried clumsily after the light graceful figure.

  “Wait, child! Can’t ye wait for me? Are ye sure it’s true?”

  Francie nodded.

  “The young reprobate! To be making you so remarkable and to have the other one up his sleeve all the time! Didn’t I say he had no notion of marrying ye?”

  Francie made no reply, and Charlotte with some difficulty disengaged her hand from her wrappings and patted her on the back.

  “Well, never mind, me child,” she said with noisy cheerfulness; “you’re not trusting to the likes of that fellow! wait till ye’re me Lady Dysart of Bruff, and it’s little ye’ll think of him then!”

  They had reached the Tally Ho gate by this time; Francie opened it, and plunged into the pitch-dark tunnel of evergreens without a word.

  * * *

  CHAPTER XXVII.

  The pre-eminently domestic smell of black currant jam pervaded Tally Ho next day. The morning had been spent by Charlotte and her retainers in stripping the straggling old bushes of the berries that resembled nothing so much as boot-buttons in size, colour, and general consistency; the preserving pan had been borrowed, according to immemorial custom, from Miss Egan of the hotel, and at three o’clock of the afternoon the first relay was sluggishly seething and bubbling on the kitchen fire, and Charlotte, Norry, and Bid Sal were seated at the kitchen table snipping the brown tips off the shining fruit that still awaited its fate.

  It was a bright, steamy day, when the hot sun and the wet earth turned the atmosphere into a Turkish bath, and the cats sat out of doors, but avoided the grass like the plague. Francie had docilely picked currants with the others. She was accustomed to making herself useful, and it did not occur to her to shut herself up in her room, or go for a walk, or, in fact, isolate herself with her troubles in any way. She had too little self-consciousness for these deliberate methods, and she moved among the currant bushes in her blue gown, and was merely uncomplainingly thankful that she was able to pull the broad leaf of her hat down so as to hide the eyes that were heavy from a sleepless night and red from the sting of tears. She went over again what Lambert had told her, as she mechanically dropped the currants into her tin can; the soldier-servant had read the letters, and had told Michael, the Rosemount groom, and Michael had told Mr. Lambert. She wouldn’t have cared a pin about his being engaged if he had only told her so at first. She had flirted with engaged men plenty of times, and it hadn’t done anybody any harm, but this was quite different. She couldn’t believe, after the way he went on, that he cared about another girl all the time, and yet Michael had said that the soldier had said that they were to be married at Christmas. Well, thank goodness, she thought, with a half sob, she knew about it now; he’d find it hard to make a fool of her again.

  After the early dinner the practical part of the jam-making began, and for an hour Francie snipped at the currant-tops as industriously as Charlotte herself. But by the time that the first brew was ready for the preserving pan, the heat of the kitchen, and the wearisomeness of Charlotte’s endless discussions with Norry, made intolerable the headache that had all day hovered about her forehead, and she fetched her hat and a book and went out into the garden to look for coolness and distraction. She wandered up to the seat where she had sat on the day that Lambert gave her the bangle, and, sitting down, opened her book, a railway novel, bought by Charlotte on her journey from Dublin. She read its stodgily sensational pages with hot tired eyes, and tried hard to forget her own unhappiness in the infinitely more terrific woes of its heroine; but now and then some chance expression’ or one of those terms of endearment that were lavished throughout its pages, would leap up into borrowed life and sincerity, and she would shut her eyes and drift back into the golden haze on Lough Moyle, when his hand had pressed her head down on to his shoulder, and his kisses had touched her soul. At such moments all the heated stillness of the lake was round her, with no creature nearer than the white cottages on the far hillsides; and when the inevitable present swam back to her, with carts rattling past on the road, and insects buzzing and blundering against her face, and Bid Sal’s shrill summoning
of the hens to their food, she would fling herself again into the book to hide from the pursuing pain and the undying, insane voice of hope.

  Hope mastered pain, and reality mastered both, when, with the conventionality of situation to which life sometimes condescends, there came steps on the gravel, and looking up she saw that Hawkins was coming towards her. Her heart stopped and rushed on again like a startled horse, but all the rest of her remained still and almost impassive, and she leaned her head over her book to keep up the affectation of not having seen him.

  “I saw your dress through the trees as I was coming up the drive,” he said after a moment of suffocating silence, “and so—” he held out his hand, “aren’t you going to shake hands with me?”

  “How d’ye do, Mr. Hawkins?” she gave him a limp hand and withdrew it instantly.

  Hawkins sat down beside her, and looked hard at her half-averted face. He had solved the problem of her treatment of him last night in a way quite satisfactory to himself, and he thought that now that he had been sharp enough to have found her here, away from Miss Mullen’s eye, things would be very different. He had quite forgiven her her share in the transgression; in fact, if the truth were known, he had enjoyed himself considerably after she had left Mrs. Beattie’s party, and had gone back to Captain Cursiter and disingenuously given him to understand that he had hardly spoken a word to Miss Fitzpatrick the whole evening.