The Real Charlotte

by Edith Somerville

  “And might one be permitted to ask how long you’re going to wait?” she said, with quivering lips drawn back; “will six months be enough for you, or do you consider the orthodox widower’s year too long to wait? I daresay you’ll have found out what spending there is in twenty-five pounds before that, and ye’ll go whimpering to Roddy Lambert, and asking him to make ye Number Two, and to pay your debts and patch up your character!”

  “Roddy Lambert!” cried Francie, bursting out into shrill unpleasant laughter; “I think I’ll try and do better than that, thank ye, though you’re so kind in making him a present to me!” then, firing a random shot; “I’ll not deprive you of him, Charlotte, you may keep him all to yourself!”

  It is quite within the bounds of possibility that Charlotte might at this juncture have struck Francie, and thereby have put herself for ever into a false position, but her guardian angel, in the shape of Susan, the grey tom-cat, intervened. He had jumped in at the window during the discussion, and having rubbed himself unnoticed against Charlotte’s legs with stiff, twitching tail, and cold eyes fixed on her face, he, at this critical instant, sprang upwards at her, and clawed on to the bosom of her dress, hanging there in expectation of the hand that should help him to the accustomed perch on his mistress’s shoulder. The blow that was so near being Francie’s descended upon the cat’s broad confident face and hurled him to the ground. He bolted out of the window again, and when he was safely on the gravel walk, turned and looked back with an expression of human anger and astonishment.

  When Charlotte spoke her voice was caught away from her as Christopher Dysart’s had been the day before. All the passions have but one instrument to play on when they wish to make themselves heard, and it will yield but a broken sound when it is too hardly pressed.

  “Dare to open your mouth to me again, and I’ll throw you out of the window after the cat!” was what she said in that choking whisper. “Ye can go out of this house to-morrow and see which of your lovers will keep ye the longest, and by the time that they’re tired of ye, maybe ye’ll regret that your impudence got ye turned out of a respectable house!” She turned at the last word, and, like a madman who is just sane enough to fear his own madness, flung out of the room without another glance at her cousin.

  Susan sat on the gravel path, and in the intervals of licking his paws in every crevice and cranny, surveyed his mistress’s guest with a stony watchfulness as she leaned her head against the window-sash and shook in a paroxysm of sobs.

  * * *

  CHAPTER XXXV.

  More than the half of September had gone by. A gale or two had browned the woods, and the sky was beginning to show through the trees a good deal. Miss Greely removed the sun-burned straw hats from her window, and people lighted their fires at afternoon tea-time, and daily said to each other, with sapient gloom, that the evenings were closing in very much. The summer visitors had gone, and the proprietors of lodgings had moved down from the attics to the front parlours, and were restoring to them their usual odour of old clothes, sour bread, and apples. All the Dysarts, with the exception of Sir Benjamin, were away; the Bakers had gone to drink the waters at Lisdoonvarna; the Beatties were having their yearly outing at the Sea Road in Galway; the Archdeacon had exchanged duties with an English cleric, who was married, middle-aged, and altogether unadvantageous, and Miss Mullen played the organ, and screamed the highest and most ornate tunes, in company with the attenuated choir.

  The barracks kept up an outward seeming of life and cheerfulness, imparted by the adventitious aid of red coats and bugle-blowing, but their gaiety was superficial, and even upon Cursiter, steam-launching to nowhere in particular and back again, had begun to pall. He looked forward to his subaltern’s return with an eagerness quite out of proportion to Mr. Hawkins’ gifts of conversation or companionship; solitude and steam-launching were all very well in moderation, but he could not get the steam-launch in after dinner to smoke a pipe, and solitude tended to unsettling reflections on the vanity of his present walk of life. Hawkins, when he came, was certainly a variant in the monotony, but Cursiter presently discovered that he would have to add to the task of amusing himself the still more arduous one of amusing his companion. Hawkins dawdled, moped, and grumbled, and either spent the evenings in moody silence, or in endless harangues on the stone-broken nature of his finances, and the contrariety of things in general. He admitted his engagement to Miss Coppard with about as ill a grace as was possible, and when allied about it, became sulky and snappish, but of Francie he never spoke, and Cursiter augured no good from these indications. Captain Cursiter knew as little as the rest of Lismoyle as to the reasons of Miss Fitzpatrick’s abrupt disappearance from Tally Ho, but, unlike the generality of Francie’s acquaintances, had accepted the fact unquestioningly, and with a simple gratitude to Providence for its interposition in the matter. If only partridge-shooting did not begin in Ireland three weeks later than in any civilised country, thought this much harassed child’s guide, it would give them both something better to do than loafing about the lake in the Serpolette. Well, anyhow, the 20th was only three days off now, and Dysart had given them leave to shoot as much as they liked over Bruff, and, thank the Lord, Hawkins was fond of shooting, and there would be no more of this talk of running up to Dublin for two or three days to have his teeth overhauled, or to get a new saddle, or some nonsense of that kind. Neither Captain Cursiter nor Mr. Hawkins paid visits to anyone at this time; in fact, were never seen except when, attired in all his glory, one or the other took the soldiers to church, and marched them back again with as little delay as possible; so that the remnant of Lismoyle society pronounced them to have become very stuck-up and unsociable, and mourned for the days of the Tipperary Foragers.

  It was on the first day of the partridge shooting that Mr. Lambert came back to Rosemount. The far-away banging of the guns down on the farms by the lake was the first thing he heard as he drove up from the station; and the thought that occurred to him as he turned in at his own gate was that public opinion would scarcely allow him to shoot this season. He had gone away as soon after his wife’s funeral as was practicable, and having honeymooned with his grief in the approved fashion (combining with this observance the settling of business matters with his wife’s trustees in Limerick), the stress of his new position might be supposed to be relaxed. He was perfectly aware that the neighbourhood would demand no extravagance of sorrow from him; no one could expect him to be more than decently regretful for poor Lucy. He had always been a kind husband to her, he reflected, with excusable satisfaction; that is to say, he had praised her housekeeping, and generally bought her whatever she asked for, out of her own money. He was glad now that he had had the good sense to marry her; it had made her very happy, poor thing, and he was certainly now in a better position than he could ever have hoped to be if he had not done so. All these soothing and comfortable facts, however, did not prevent his finding the dining-room very dreary and silent when he came downstairs next morning in his new black clothes. His tea tasted as if the water had not been boiled, and the urn got in his way when he tried to prop up the newspaper in his accustomed manner; the bacon dish had been so much more convenient, and the knowledge that his wife was there, ready to receive gratefully any crumb of news that he might feel disposed to let fall, had given a zest to the reading of his paper that was absent now. Even Muffy’s basket was empty, for Muffy, since his mistress’s death, had relinquished all pretence at gentility, and, after a day of miserable wandering about the house, had entered into a league with the cook and residence in the kitchen.

  Lambert surveyed all his surroundings with a loneliness that surprised himself: the egg-cosy that his wife had crocheted for him, the half empty medicine bottle on the chimney-piece, the chair in which she used to sit, and felt that he did not look forward to the task before him of sorting her papers and going through her affairs generally. He got to work at eleven o’clock, taking first the letters and papers that were locked up in a work-table, a
walnuttopped and silken-fluted piece of furniture that had been given to Mrs. Lambert by a Limerick friend, and, having been considered too handsome for everyday use, had been consecrated by her to the conservation of letters and of certain valued designs for Berlin wool work and receipts for crochet stitches. Lambert lighted a fire in the drawing-room, and worked his way down through the contents of the green silk pouch, finding there every letter, every note, even, that he had ever written to his wife, and committing them to the flames with a curious sentimental regret. He had not remembered that he had written her so many letters, and he said to himself that he wished those old devils of women in Lismoyle, who, he knew, had always been so keen to pity Lucy, could know what a good husband he had been to her. Inside the envelope of one of his own letters was one from Francie Fitzpatrick, evidently accidentally thrust there; a few crooked lines to say that she had got the lodgings for Mrs. Lambert in Charles St., but the landlady wouldn’t be satisfied without she got two and sixpence extra for the kitchen fire. Lambert put the note into his pocket, where there was already another document in the same handwriting, bearing the Bray postmark with the date of September 18, and when all was finished, and the grate full of flaky spectral black heaps, he went upstairs and unlocked the door of what had been his wife’s room. The shutters were shut, and the air of the room had a fortnight’s closeness in it. When he opened the shutters there was a furious buzzing of flies, and although he had the indifference about fresh air common to his class, he flung up the window, and drew a long breath of the brilliant morning before he went back to his dismal work of sorting and destroying. What was he to do with such things as the old photographs of her father and mother, her work-basket, her salts-bottle, the handbag that she used to carry into Lismoyle with her? He was not an imaginative man, but he was touched by the smallness, the familiarity of these only relics of a trivial life, and he stood and regarded the sheeted furniture, and the hundred odds and ends that lay about the room, with an acute awakening to her absence that, for the time, almost obliterated his own figure, posing to the world as an interesting young man, who, while anxious to observe the decencies of bereavement, could not be expected to be inconsolable for a woman so obviously beneath his level.

  A voice downstairs called his name, a woman’s voice, saying, “Roderick!” and for a moment a superstitious thrill ran through him. Then he heard a footstep in the passage, and the voice called him again, “Are you there, Roderick?”

  This time he recognised Charlotte Mullen’s voice, and went out on to the landing to meet her. The first thing that he noticed was that she was dressed in new clothes, black and glossy and well made. He took them in with the glance that had to be responsive as well as observant, as Charlotte advanced upon him, and, taking his hand in both hers, shook it long and silently.

  “Well, Roderick,” she said at length, “I’m glad to see you back again, though it’s a sad home-coming for you and for us all.”

  Lambert pressed her large well-known hand, while his eyes rested solemnly upon her face. “Thank you, Charlotte, I’m very much obliged to you for coming over to see me this way, but it’s no more than what I’d have expected of you.”

  He had an ancient confidence in Charlotte and an ease in her society—after all, there are very few men who will not find some saving grace in a woman whose affections they believe to be given to them— and he was truly glad to see her at this juncture. She was exactly the person that he wanted to help him in the direful task that he had yet to perform; her capable hands should undertake all the necessary ransacking of boxes and wardrobes, while he sat and looked on at what was really much more a woman’s work than a man’s. These thoughts passed through his mind while he and Charlotte exchanged conventionalities suitable to the occasion, and spoke of Mrs. Lambert as “she,” without mentioning her name.

  “Would you like to come downstairs, Charlotte, and sit in the drawing-room?” he said, presently; “if it wasn’t that I’m afraid you might be tired after your walk, I’d ask you to help me with a very painful bit of work that I was just at when you came.”

  They had been standing in the passage, and Charlotte’s eyes darted towards the half-open door of Mrs. Lambert’s room.

  “You’re settling her things, I suppose?” she said, her voice treading eagerly upon the heels of his; “is it that you want me to help you with?”

  He led the way into the room without answering, and indicated its contents with a comprehensive sweep of his hand.

  “I turned the key in this door myself when I came back from the funeral, and not a thing in it has been touched since. Now I must set to work to try and get the things sorted, to see what I should give away, and what I should keep, and what should be destroyed,” he said, his voice resuming its usual business tone, tinged with just enough gloom to mark his sense of the situation.

  Charlotte peeled off her black gloves and stuffed them into her pocket. “Sit down, my poor fellow, sit down, and I’ll do it all,” she said, stripping an armchair of its sheet and dragging it to the window; “this is no fit work for you.”

  There was no need to press this view upon Lambert; he dropped easily into the chair provided for him, and in a couple of minutes the work was under weigh.

  “Light your pipe now and be comfortable,” said Charlotte, issuing from the wardrobe with an armful of clothes and laying them on the bed; “there’s work here for the rest of the morning.” She took up a black satin skirt and held it out in front of her; it had been Mrs. Lambert’s “Sunday best,” and it seemed to Lambert though he could hear his wife’s voice asking anxiously if he thought the day was fine enough for her to wear it. “Now what would you wish done with this?” said Charlotte, looking at it fondly, and holding the band against her own waist to see the length. “It’s too good to give to a servant.”

  Lambert turned his head away. There was a crudeness about this way of dealing that was a little jarring at first.

  “I don’t know what’s to be done with it,” he said, with all a man’s helpless dislike of such details.

  “Well, there’s this, and her sealskin, and a lot of other things that are too good to be given to servants,” went on Charlotte, rapidly bringing forth more of the treasures of the poor turkey-hen’s wardrobe, and proceeding to sort them into two heaps on the floor. “What would you think of making up the best of the things and sending them up to one of those dealers in Dublin? It’s a sin to let them go to loss.”

  “Oh, damn it, Charlotte! I can’t sell her clothes!” said Lambert hastily. He pretended to no sentiment about his wife, but some masculine instinct of chivalry gave him a shock at the thought of making money out of the conventional sanctities of a woman’s apparel.

  “Well, what else do you propose to do with them?” said Charlotte, who had already got out a pencil and paper and was making a list. “Upon my soul, I don’t know,” said Lambert, beginning to realise that there was but one way out of the difficulty, and perceiving with irritated amusement that Charlotte had driven him towards it like a sheep, “unless you’d like them yourself?”

  “And do you think I’d accept them from you?” demanded Charlotte, with an indignation so vivid that even the friend of her youth was momentarily deceived and almost frightened by it; “I, that was poor Lucy’s oldest friend! Do you think I could bear—”

  Lambert saw the opportunity that had been made for him.

  “It’s only because you were her oldest friend that I’d offer them to you,” he struck in; “and if you won’t have them yourself, I thought you might know of someone that would.”

  Charlotte swallowed her wrath with a magnanimous effort. “Well, Roddy, if you put it in that way, I don’t like to refuse,” she said, wiping a ready tear away with a black-edged pocket handkerchief; “it’s quite true, I know plenty would be glad of a help. There’s that unfortunate Letitia Fitzpatrick, that I’ll be bound hasn’t more than two gowns to her back, I might send her a bundle.”

  “Send them to who you l
ike,” said Lambert, ignoring the topic of the Fitzpatricks as intentionally as it had been introduced; “but I’d be glad if you could find some things for Julia Duffy; I suppose she’ll be coming out of the Infirmary soon. What we’re to do about that business I don’t know,” he continued, filling another pipe. “Dysart said he wouldn’t have her put out if she could hold on there anyway at all—”

  “Heavenly powers!” exclaimed Charlotte, letting fall a collection of rolled up kid gloves, “d’ye mean to say you didn’t hear she’s in the Ballinasloe Asylum? She was sent there three days ago.”

  “Great Scott! Is she gone mad? I was thinking all this time what I was to do with her!”

  “Well, you needn’t trouble your head about her any more. Her wits went as her body mended, and a board of J.P.’s and M.D.’s sat upon her, and as one of them was old Fatty Ffolliott, you won’t be surprised to hear that that was the end of Julia Duffy.”

  Both laughed, and both felt suddenly the incongruity of laughter in that room. Charlotte went back to the chest of drawers whose contents she was ransacking, and continued:

  “They say she sits all day counting her fingers and toes and calling them chickens and turkeys, and saying that she has the key of Gurthnamuckla in her pocket, and not a one can get into it without her leave.”

  “And are you still on for it?” said Lambert, half reluctantly, as it seemed to Charlotte’s acute ear, “for if you are, now’s your time. I might have put her out of it two years ago for non-payment of rent, and I’ll just take possession and sell off what she has left behind her towards the arrears.”

  “On for it? Of course I am. You might know I’m not one to change my mind about a thing I’m set upon. But you’ll have to let me down easy with the fine, Roddy. There isn’t much left in the stocking these times, and one or two of my poor little dabblings in the money-market have rather ‘gone agin me.’”