The Real Charlotte

by Edith Somerville

  “I am afraid I can’t stay any longer,” he said, in a voice that was at once quieter and rougher than its wont; “you must forgive me if anything that I said has—has hurt you—I didn’t mean it to hurt you.” He stopped short and walked towards the door. As he opened it, he looked back at her for an instant, but he did not speak again.

  END OF VOL. II.

  VOLUME III.

  CHAPTER XXXIV.

  The kitchen at Tally Ho generally looked its best at ten o’clock in the morning. Its best is, in this case, a relative term, implying the temporary concealment of the plates, loaves of bread, dirty rubbers, and jampots full of congealed dripping that usually adorned the tables, and the sweeping of out-lying potato-skins and cinders into a chasm beneath the disused hot hearth. When these things had been done, and Bid Sal and her bare feet had been effaced into some outer purlieu, Norry felt that she was ready to receive the Queen of England if necessary, and awaited the ordering of dinner with her dress let down to its full length, a passably clean apron, and an expression of severe and exalted resignation. On the morning now in question Charlotte was standing in her usual position, with her back to the fire and her hands spread behind her to the warmth, scanning with a general’s eye the routed remnants of yesterday’s dinner, and debating with herself as to the banner under which they should next be rallied.

  “A curry I think, Norry,” she called out; “plenty of onions and apples in it, and that’s all ye want.”

  “Oh, musha! God knows ye have her sickened with yer curries,” replied Norry’s voice from the larder, “‘twas ere yestherday ye had the remains of th’ lrish stew in curry, an’ she didn’t ate what’d blind your eye of it. Wasn’t Louisa tellin’ me!”

  “And so I’m to order me dinners to please Miss Francie!” said Charlotte, in tones of surprising toleration; “well, ye can make a haricot of it if ye like. Perhaps her ladyship will eat that.”

  “Faith ‘tis aiqual to me what she ates—” here came a clatter of crockery, and a cat shot like a comet from the larder door, followed by Norry’s foot and Norry’s blasphemy—”or if she never ate another bit. And where’s the carrots to make a haricot? Bid Sal’s afther tellin’ me there’s ne’er a one in the garden; but sure, if ye sent Bid Sal to look for salt wather in the say she wouldn’t find it!”

  Miss Mullen laughed approvingly. “There’s carrots in plenty; and see here, Norry, you might give her a jam dumpling—use the gooseberry jam that’s going bad. I’ve noticed meself that the child isn’t eating, and it won’t do to have the people saying we’re starving her.”

  “Whoever’ll say that, he wasn’t looking at me yestherday, and I makin’ the cake for herself and Misther Dysart! Eight eggs, an’ a cupful of sugar and a cupful of butther, and God knows what more went in it, an’ the half of me day gone bating it, and afther all they left it afther thim!”

  “And whose fault was that but your own for not sending it up in time?” rejoined Charlotte, her voice sharpening at once to vociferative argument; “Miss Francie told me that Mr. Dysart was forced to go without his tea.”

  “Late or early I’m thinkin’ thim didn’t ax it nor want it,” replied Norry, issuing from the larder with a basketful of crumpled linen in her arms, and a visage of the utmost sourness; “there’s your clothes for ye now, that was waitin’ on me yestherday to iron them, in place of makin’ cakes.”

  She got a bowl of water and began to sprinkle the clothes and roll them up tightly, preparatory to ironing them, her ill-temper imparting to the process the air of whipping a legion of children and putting them to bed. Charlotte came over to the table and, resting her hands on it, watched Norry for a few seconds in silence.

  “What makes you say they didn’t want anything to eat?” she asked; “was Miss Francie ill, or was anything the matter with her?”

  “How do I know what ailed her?” replied Norry, pounding a pillow-case with her fist before putting it away; “I have somethin’ to do besides follyin’ her or mindin’ her.”

  “Then what are ye talking about?”

  “Ye’d betther ax thim that knows. ‘Twas Louisa seen her within in the dhrawn’-room, an’ whatever was on her she was cryin’; but, sure, Louisa tells lies as fast as a pig’d gallop.”

  “What did she say?” Charlotte darted the question at Norry as a dog snaps at a piece of meat.

  “Then she said plinty, an’ ‘tis she that’s able. If ye told that one a thing and locked the doore on her the way she couldn’t tell it agin, she’d bawl it up the chimbley.”

  “Where’s Louisa?” interrupted Charlotte impatiently.

  “Meself can tell ye as good as Louisa,” said Norry instantly taking offence; “she landed into the dhrawn-room with the tay, and there was Miss Francie sittin’ on the sofa and her handkerchief in her eyes, and Misther Dysart beyond in the windy and not a word nor a stir out of him, only with his eyes shtuck out in the garden, an’ she cryin’ always.”

  “Psha! Louisa’s a fool! How does she know Miss Francie was cryin’? I’ll bet a shillin’ ‘twas only blowing her nose she was.”

  Norry had by this time spread a ragged blanket on the table, and, snatching up the tongs, she picked out of the heart of the fire a red-hot heater and thrust it into a box-iron with unnecessary violence.

  “An’ why wouldn’t she cry? Wasn’t I listenin’ to her cryin’ in her room lasht night an’ I goin’ up to bed?” She banged the iron down on the table and began to rub it to and fro on the blanket. “But what use is it to cry, even if ye dhragged the hair out of yer head? Ye might as well be singin’ an’ dancin’.”

  She flung up her head, and stared across the kitchen under the wisps of hair that hung over her unseeing eyes with such an expression as Deborah the Prophetess might have worn. Charlotte gave a grunt of contempt, and picking Susan up from the bar of the table, she put him on her shoulder and walked out of the kitchen.

  Francie had been since breakfast sitting by the window of the dining-room, engaged in the cheerless task of darning a stocking on a soda-water bottle. Mending stockings was not an art that she excelled in; she could trim a hat or cut out a dress, but the dark, unremunerative toil of mending stockings was as distasteful to her as stone-breaking to a tramp, and the simile might easily be carried out by comparing the results of the process to macadamising. It was a still, foggy morning; the boughs of the scarlet-blossomed fuchsia were greyed with moisture, and shining drops studded the sash of the open window like sea-anemones. It was a day that was both close and chilly, and intolerable as the atmosphere of the Tally Ho dining-room would have been with the window shut, the breakfast things still on the table, and the all-pervading aroma of cats, the damp, lifeless air seemed only a shade better to Francie as she raised her tired eyes from time to time and looked out upon the discouraging prospect. Everything stood in the same trance of stillness in which it had been when she had got up at five o’clock and looked out at the sluggish dawn broadening in blank silence upon the fields. She had leaned out of her window till she had become cold through and through, and after that had unlocked her trunk, taken out Hawkins’ letters, and going back to bed had read and re-read them there. The old glamour was about them; the convincing sincerity and assurance that was as certain of her devotion as of his own, and the unfettered lavishness of expression that made her turn hot and cold as she read them. She had time to go through many phases of feeling before the chapel-bell began to ring for eight o’clock matins, and she stole down to the kitchen to see if the post had come in. The letters were lying on the table; three or four for Charlotte, the local paper, a circular about peat litter addressed to the Stud-groom, Tally Ho, and, underneath all, the thick, rough envelope with the ugly boyish writing that had hardly changed since Mr. Hawkins had written his first letters home from Cheltenham College. Francie caught it up, and was back in her own room in the twinkling of an eye. It contained only a few words.

  “Dearest Francie, only time for a line to-day to say that I am staying on
here for another week, but I hope ten days will see me back at the old mill. I want you like a good girl to keep things as dark as possible. I don’t see my way out of this game yet. No more to-day. Just off to play golf, the girls here are nailers at it. Thine ever, Gerald.”

  This was the ration that had been served out to her hungry heart, the word that she had wearied for for a week; that once more he had contrived to postpone his return, and that the promise he had made to her under the tree in the garden was as far from being fulfilled as ever. Christopher Dysart would not have treated her this way, she thought to herself as she stooped over her darning and bit her lip to keep it from quivering, but then she would not have minded much whether he wrote to her or not— that was the worst of it. Francie had always confidently announced to her Dublin circle of friends her intention of marrying a rich man, good-looking, and a lord if possible, but certainly rich. But here she was, on the morning after what had been a proposal, or what had amounted to one, from a rich young man who was also nice-looking, and almost the next thing to a lord, and instead of sitting down triumphantly to write the letter that should thrill the North Side down to its very grocers’ shops, she was darning stockings, red-eyed and dejected, and pondering over how best to keep from her cousin any glimmering of what had happened. All her old self-posed and struck attitudes before the well-imagined mirror of her friends’ minds, and the vanity that was flattered by success cried out petulantly against the newer soul that enforced silence upon it. She felt quite impartially how unfortunate it was that she should have given her heart to Gerald in this irrecoverable way, and then with a headlong charge of ideas she said to herself that there was no one like him, and she would always, always care for him and nobody else.

  This point having been emphasised by a tug at her needle that snapped the darning cotton, Miss Fitzpatrick was embarking upon a more pleasurable train of possibilities when she heard Charlotte’s foot in the hall, and fell all of a sudden down to the level of the present. Charlotte came in and shut the door with her usual decisive slam; she went over to the side-board and locked up the sugar and jam with a sharp glance to see if Louisa had tampered with either, and then sat down at her davenport near Francie and began to look over her account books.

  “Well, I declare,” she said after a minute or two, “it’s a funny thing that I have to buy eggs, with my yard full of hens! This is a state of things unheard of till you came into the house, my young lady!”

  Francie looked up and saw that this was meant as a pleasantry.

  “Is it me? I wouldn’t touch an egg to save my life!”

  “Maybe you wouldn’t,” replied Charlotte with the same excessive jocularity, “but you can give tea-parties, and treat your friends to sponge-cakes that are made with nothing but eggs!”

  Francie scented danger in the air, and having laughed nervously to show appreciation of the jest, tried to change the conversation.

  “How do you feel to-day, Charlotte?” she asked, working away at her stocking with righteous industry; “is your headache gone? I forgot to ask after it at breakfast.”

  “Headache? I’d forgotten I’d ever had one. Three tabloids of antipyrin and a good night’s rest; that was all I wanted to put me on my pegs again. But if it comes to that, me dear child, I’d trouble you to tell me what makes you the colour of blay calico last night and this morning? It certainly wasn’t all the cake you had at afternoon tea. I declare I was quite vexed when I saw that lovely cake in the larder, and not a bit gone from it.”

  Francie coloured. “I was up very early yesterday making that cross, and I daresay that tired me. Tell me, did Mr. Lambert say anything about it? Did he like it?”

  Charlotte looked at her, but could discern no special expression in the piquant profile that was silhouetted against the light.

  “He had other things to think of besides your wreath,” she said coarsely; “when a man’s wife isn’t cold in her coffin, he has something to think of besides young ladies’ wreaths!”

  There was silence after this, and Francie wondered what had made Charlotte suddenly get so cross for nothing; she had been so good-natured for the last week. The thought passed through her mind that possibly Mr. Lambert had taken as little notice of Charlotte as of the wreath; she was just sufficiently aware of the state of affairs to know that such a cause might have such an effect, and she wished she had tried any other topic of conversation. Darning is, however, an occupation that does not tend to unloose the strings of the tongue, and even when carried out according to the unexacting methods of Macadam, it demands a certain degree of concentration, and Francie left to Charlotte the task of finding a more congenial subject. It was chosen with unexpected directness.

  “What was the matter with you yesterday afternoon when Louisa brought in the tea?”

  Francie felt as though a pistol had been let off at her ear; the blood surged in a great wave from her heart to her head, her heart gave a shattering thump against her side, and then went on beating again in a way that made her hands shake.

  “Yesterday afternoon, Charlotte?” she said, while her brain sought madly for a means of escape and found none; “there—there was nothing the matter with me.”

  “Look here now, Francie;” Charlotte turned away from her davenport, and faced her cousin with her fists clenched on her knees; “I’m in loco parentis to you for the time being—your guardian, if you understand that better—and there’s no good in your beating about the bush with me. What happened between you and Christopher Dysart yesterday afternoon?”

  “Nothing happened at all,” said Francie in a voice that gave the lie to her words.

  “You’re telling me a falsehood! How have you the face to tell me there was nothing happened when even that fool Louisa could see that something had been going on to make you cry, and to send him packing out of the house not a quarter of an hour after he came into it!”

  “I told you before he couldn’t wait,” said Francie, trying to keep the tremble out of her voice. She held the conventional belief that Charlotte was queer, but very kind and jolly, but she had a fear of her that she could hardly have given a reason for. It must have been by that measuring and crossing of weapons that takes place unwittingly and yet surely in the consciousness of everyone who lives in intimate connection with another, that she had learned, like her great-aunt before her, the weight of the real Charlotte’s will, and the terror of her personality.

  “Stuff and nonsense!” broke out Miss Mullen, her eyes beginning to sparkle ominously; “thank God I’m not such an ass as the people you’ve taken in before now, ye’ll not find it so easy to make a fool of me as ye think! Did he make ye an offer or did he not?” She leaned forward with her mouth half open, and Francie felt her breath strike on her face, and shrank back.

  “He—he did not.”

  Charlotte dragged her chair a pace nearer so that her knees touched Francie.

  “Ye needn’t tell me any lies, miss; if he didn’t propose he said something that was equivalent to a proposal. Isn’t that the case?”

  Francie had withdrawn herself as far into the corner of the window as was possible, and the dark folds of the maroon rep curtain made a not unworthy background for her fairness. Her head was turned childishly over her shoulder in the attempt to get as far as she could from her tormentor, and her eyes travelled desperately and yet unconsciously over the dingy lines of the curtain.

  “I told you already, Charlotte, that he didn’t propose to me,” she answered; “he just paid a visit here like anyone else, and then he had to go away early.”

  “Don’t talk such baldherdash to me! I know what he comes here for as well as you do, and as well as every soul in Lismoyle knows it, and I’ll trouble ye to answer one question—do ye mean to marry him?” She paused, and gave the slight and shapely arm a compelling squeeze.

  Francie wrenched her arm away. “No, I don’t!” she said, sitting up and facing Charlotte with eyes that had a dawning light of battle in them.

 
Charlotte pushed back her chair, and with the same action was on her feet.

  “Oh, my God!” she bawled, flinging up both her arms with the fists clenched; “d’ye hear that? She dares to tell me that to me face after all I’ve done for her!” Her hands dropped down, and she stared at Francie with her thick lips working in a dumb transport of rage. “And who are ye waiting for? Will ye tell me that! You, that aren’t fit to lick the dirt off Christopher Dysart’s boots!” she went on, with the uncontrolled sound in her voice that told that rage was bringing her to the verge of tears; “for the Prince of Wales’ son, I suppose? Or are ye cherishing hopes that your friend Mr. Hawkins would condescend to take a fancy to you again?” She laughed repulsively, waiting with a heaving chest for the reply, and Francie felt as if the knife had been turned in the wound.

  “Leave me alone! What is it to you who I marry?” she cried passionately; “I’ll marry who I like, and no thanks to you!”

  “Oh, indeed,” said Charlotte, breathing hard and loud between the words; “it’s nothing to me, I suppose, that I’ve kept the roof over your head and put the bit into your mouth, while ye’re carrying on with every man that ye can get to look at ye!”

  “I’m not asking you to keep me,” said Francie, starting up in her turn and standing in the window facing her cousin; “I’m able to keep myself, and to wait as long as I choose till I get married; I’m not afraid of being an old maid!”

  They glared at each other, the fire of anger smiting on both their faces, lighting Francie’s cheek with a malign brilliance, and burning in ugly purple-red on Charlotte’s leathery skin. The girl’s aggressive beauty was to Charlotte a keener taunt than the rudimentary insult of her words; it brought with it a swarm of thoughts that buzzed and stung in her soul like poisonous flies.