“There, Roddy,” said Miss Mullen, as she opened the gate, “there’s where I had to banish them, and I don’t think they’re too badly off.”
The young horses were feeding at the farthest point of the field, fetlock deep in the flowery grass, with the sparkling blue of the lake making a background to their slender shapes.
“They look like money, Charlotte, I think. That brown filly ought to bring a hundred at least next Ballinasloe fair, when she knows how to jump,” said Lambert, as he and Charlotte walked across the field, leaving Francie, who saw no reason for pretending an interest that was not expected of her, to amuse herself by picking cowslips near the gate.
“I’m glad to hear you say that, Roddy,” replied Charlotte. “It’s a comfort to think anything looks like money these bad times; I’ve never known prices so low.”
“They’re lower than I ever thought they’d go, by Jove,” Lambert answered gloomily. “I’m going up to Mayo, collecting, next week, and if I don’t do better there than I’ve done here, I daresay Dysart won’t think so much of his father’s shoes after all.”
He was striding along, taking no trouble to suit his pace to Charlotte’s, and perhaps the indifference to her companionship that it showed, as well as the effort involved in keeping beside him, had the effect of irritating her.
“Maybe he might think them good enough to kick people out with,” she said with a disagreeable laugh; “I remember, in the good old times, when my father and Sir Benjamin ruled the roast, we heard very little about bad collections.”
It struck Lambert that though this was the obvious moment for that business talk that he had come over for, it was not a propitious one. “I wonder if the macaroni cheese disagreed with her,” he thought; “it was beastly enough to do it, anyhow. You may remember,” he said aloud, “that in the good old times the property was worth just about double what it is now, and a matter of three or four hundred pounds either way made no difference to signify.”
“D’ye think ye’ll be that much short this time?”
She darted the question at him with such keenness that Lambert inwardly recoiled before it, though it was the point to which he had wished to bring her.
“Oh, of course one can’t be sure,” he said, retreating from his position; “but I’ve just got a sort of general idea that I’ll be a bit under the mark this time.”
He was instinctively afraid of Charlotte, but in this moment he knew, perhaps for the first time, how much afraid. In theory he believed in his old power over her, and clung to the belief with the fatuity of a vain man, but he had always been uncomfortably aware that she was intellectually his master, and though he thought he could still sway her heart with a caress, he knew he could never outwit her.
“Oh, no one knows better than I do what a thankless business it is, these times,” said Charlotte with a reassuring carelessness; “it’s a case of ‘pull, devil, pull, baker,’ though indeed I don’t know under which head poor Christopher Dysart comes. And as we’ve got on to the sordid topic of money, Roddy—I’m not going to ask yer honour for a reduction of the rint, ye needn’t be afraid—but I’ve been rather pinched by the expense I’ve been put to in doing up the house and stocking the farm, and it would be mighty convaynient to me, if it would be convaynient to you, to let me have a hundred or so of that money I lent you last year.”
“Well—Charlotte—” began Lambert, clearing his throat, and striking with his stick at the heads of the buttercups, “that’s the very thing I’ve been anxious to talk to you about. The fact is, I’ve had an awful lot of expense myself this last twelve months, and, as I told you, I can’t lay a finger on anything except the interest of what poor Lucy left me—and—er—I’d give you any percentage you like, you know—?” He broke off for an instant, and then began again. “You can see for yourself what a sin it would be to sell those things now,” he pointed at the three young horses, “when they’ll just bring three times the money this time next year.”
“Oh yes,” said Charlotte, “but my creditors might say it was more of a sin for me not to pay my debts.”
Lambert stood still, and dug his stick into the ground, and Charlotte, watching him, knew that she had put in her sickle and reaped her first sheaf.
“All right,” he said, biting his lip, “if your creditors can manage to hold out till after the fair next week, I daresay by selling every horse I’ve got I could let you have your money then.” As he made the offer, he trusted that its quixotic heroism would make Charlotte ashamed of herself; no woman could possibly expect such a sacrifice as that from a man, and the event proved that he was right.
This was not the sacrifice that Miss Mullen wished for.
“Oh, pooh, pooh, Roddy! you needn’t take me up in such earnest as that,” she said in her most friendly voice, and Lambert congratulated himself upon his astuteness; “I only meant that if you could let me have a hundred or so in the course of the next month, it would be a help to my finances.”
Lambert could not bring himself to admit that he was as little able to pay her one hundred as three; at all events, a month would give him time to look about him, and if he made a good collection he could easily borrow it from the estate account.
“Oh, if that’s all,” he answered, affecting more relief than he felt, “I can let you have it in a fortnight or so.”
They were near the lake by this time, and the young horses feeding by its margin flung up their heads and stared in statuesque surprise at their visitors.
“They’ll not let you near them,” said Charlotte, as Lambert walked slowly towards them; “they’re as wild as hawks. And, goodness me! that girl’s gone out of the field and left the gate open! Wait a minute till I go back and shut it.”
Lambert stood and looked after her as she hastened cumbrously back towards the gate, and wondered how he had ever liked her, or brought himself to have any dealings with her, and his eye left her quickly to follow the red parasol that, moving slowly along above the grey wall, marked Francie’s progress along the lane. Charlotte hurried on towards the gate, well satisfied with the result of her conversation, and she was within some fifty yards of it when a loud and excited shout from Lambert, combined with the thud of galloping hoofs, made her start round. The young horses had been frightened by Lambert’s approach, and after one or two circling swoops, had seen the open gate, and, headed by the brown filly, were careering towards it.
“The gate! Charlotte!” roared Lambert, rushing futilely after the horses, “shut the gate!”
Charlotte was off in an instant, realising as quickly as Lambert what might happen if Francie were charged in the narrow lane by this living avalanche; even in the first instant of comprehension another idea had presented itself. Should she stumble and so not reach the gate in time? It was fascinatingly simple, but it was too simple, and it was by no means certain.
Charlotte ran her hardest, and, at some slight personal risk, succeeded in slamming the gate in the face of the brown filly, as she and her attendant squires dashed up to it. There was a great deal of slipping about and snorting, before the trio recovered themselves, and retired to pass off their discomfiture in a series of dislocating bucks and squealing snaps at each other, and then Charlotte, purple from her exertions, advanced to meet Lambert with the smile of the benefactor broad upon her face. His was blotched white and red with fright and running; without a breath left to thank her, he took her hand, and wrung it with a more genuine emotion than he had ever before felt for her.
Francie, meanwhile, strolled slowly up the lane towards the house, with her red parasol on her shoulder and her bunch of cowslips in her hand. She knew that the visit to the Stone Field was only the preliminary to a crawling inspection of every cow, sheep, and potato ridge on the farm, and she remembered that she had seen a novel of attractive aspect on the table in the drawing-room. She felt singularly uninterested in everything; Gurthnamuckla was nothing but Tally Ho over again on a larger and rather cleaner scale; the same servants, th
e same cats, the same cockatoo, the same leathery pastry and tough mutton. Last summer these things had mingled themselves easily into her everyday enjoyment of life, as amusing and not unpleasant elements; now she promised herself that, no matter what Roddy said, this was the last time she would come to lunch with Charlotte.
Roddy was very good to her and all that, but there was nothing new about him either, and marriage was an awful humdrum thing after all. She looked back with something of regret to the crowded drudging household at Albatross Villa; she had at least had something to do there, and she had not been lonely; she often found herself very lonely at Rosemount. Before she reached the house she decided that she would ask Ida Fitzpatrick down to stay with her next month, and give her her return ticket, and a summer dress, and a new—her thoughts came to a startling full stop, as, round the corner of the house, she found herself face to face with Mr. Hawkins.
She had quite made up her mind that when she next saw him she would merely bow to him, but she had not reckoned on the necessities of such an encounter as this, and before she had time to collect herself she was shaking hands with him and listening to his explanation of what had brought him there.
“I met Miss Mullen after church yesterday,” he said awkwardly, “and she asked me to come over this afternoon. I was just going out to look for her.”
“Oh, really,” said Francie, moving on towards the hall door; “she and Mr. Lambert are off in those fields there.”
Hawkins stood looking irresolutely at her as she walked up to the open door that in Miss Duffy’s time had been barricaded against all comers. She went in as unswervingly as if she had already forgotten his existence, and then yielding, according to his custom, to impulse, he followed her.
She had already taken up a book, and was seated in a chair by the window when he came in, and she did not even lift her eyes at his entrance. He went over to the polished centre table, and, opening a photograph book, turned over a few of the leaves noisily. There was a pause, tense on both sides as silence and self-consciousness could make it, and broken only by the happy, persistent call of the cuckoo and the infant caws of the young rooks in the elms by the gate. The photograph book was shut with a bang, and Hawkins, taking his resolution in both hands, came across the room, and stood in front of Francie.
“Look here!” he said, with a strange mixture of anger and entreaty in his voice; “how much longer is this sort of thing to go on? Are you always going to treat me in this sort of way?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” answered Francie, looking up at him with eyes of icy blue, and then down at her book again. Her heart was beating in leaps, but of this Hawkins was naturally not aware.
“You can’t pretend not to know what I mean— this sort of rot of not speaking to me, and looking as if you had never seen me before. I told you I was sorry and all that. I don’t know what more you want!”
“I don’t want ever to speak to you again.” She turned over a page of her book, and forced her eyes to follow its lines.
“You know that’s impossible; you know you’ve got to speak to me again, unless you want to cut me and kick up a regular row. I don’t know why you’re going on like this. It’s awfully unfair, and it’s awfully hard lines.” Since his visit to Rosemount, the conviction had been growing on him that in marrying another man she had treated him heartlessly, and he spoke with the fervour of righteous resentment.
“Oh, that comes well from you!” exclaimed Francie, dropping the book, and sitting up with all her pent-in wrath ablaze at last; “you that behaved in a way anyone else would be ashamed to think of! Telling me lies from first to last, and trying to make a fool of me—It was a good thing I didn’t believe more than the half you said!”
“I told you no lie,” said Hawkins, trying to stand his ground. “All I did was that I didn’t answer your letters because I couldn’t get out of that accursed engagement, and I didn’t know what to say to you, and then the next thing I knew was that you were engaged, without a word of explanation to me or anything.”
“And will you tell me what call there was for me to explain anything to you?” burst out Francie, looking, with the hot flash in her eyes, more lovely than he had ever seen her; “for all I knew of you, you were married already to your English heiress— Miss Coppers, or whatever her name is—I wonder at your impudence in daring to say things like that to me!” The lift of her head, and the splendid colour in her cheeks would have befitted an angry goddess, and it is not surprising that Hawkins did not take offence at the crudity of the expression, and thought less of the brogue in which it was uttered than of the quiver of the young voice that accused him.
“Look here,” he said, for the second time, but with a new and very different inflection, “don’t let us abuse each other any more. I couldn’t answer your letters. I didn’t know what to say, except to tell you that I was a cad and a beast, and I didn’t see much good in doing that. Evidently,” he added, with a bitterness that was at least half genuine, “it didn’t make much difference to you whether I did or not.”
She did not reply, except by a glance that was intended to express more than words could convey of her contempt for him, but somewhere in it, in spite of her, he felt a touch of reproach, and it was it that he answered as he said:
“Of course if you won’t believe me you won’t, and it don’t make much odds now whether you do or no; but I think if you knew how—” he stammered, and then went on with a rush—”how infernally I’ve suffered over the whole thing, you’d be rather sorry for me.”
Francie shaped her lips to a thin and tremulous smile of disdain, but her hands clutched each other under the book in her lap with the effort necessay to answer him. “Oh, yes, I am sorry for you; I’d be sorry for anyone that would behave the way you did,” she said, with a laugh that would have been more effective had it been steadier; “but I can’t say you look as if you wanted my pity.”
Hawkins turned abruptly away and walked towards the door, and then, as quickly, came back to her side.
“They’re coming across the lawn now,” he said; “before they come, don’t you think you could forgive me—or just say you do, anyhow. I did behave like a brute, but I never thought you’d have cared. You may say the worst things about me you can think of, if you’ll only tell me you forgive me.” His voice broke on the last words in a way that gave them irresistible conviction.
Francie glanced out of the window, and saw her husband and Charlotte slowly approaching the house. “Oh, very well,” she said proudly, without turning her head; “after all there’s nothing to forgive.”
* * *
CHAPTER XLV.
Lambert and Francie were both very silent as they drove away from Gurthnamuckla. He was the first to speak.
“I’ve asked Charlotte to come over and stay with you while I’m away next week. I find I can’t get through the work in less than a fortnight, and I may be kept even longer than that, because I’ve got to go to Dublin.”
“Asked Charlotte!” said Francie, in a tone of equal surprise and horror. “What on earth made you do that?”
“Because I didn’t wish you should be left by yourself all that time.”
“I think you might have spoken to me first,” said Francie, with deepening resentment. “I’d twice sooner be left by myself than be bothered with that old cat.”
Lambert looked quickly at her. He had come back to the house with his nerves still strained from his fright about the open gate, and his temper shaken by his financial difficulties, and the unexpected discovery of Hawkins in the drawing-room with his wife had not been soothing.
“I don’t choose that you should be left by yourself,” he said, in the masterful voice that had always, since her childhood, roused Francie’s opposition. “You’re a deal too young to be left alone, and—” with an involuntary softening of his voice—”and a deal too pretty, confound you!” He cut viciously with his whip at a long-legged greyhound of a pig that was rooting by the side of the ro
ad.
“D’ye mean me or the pig?” said Francie, with a laugh that was still edged with defiance.
“I mean that I’m not going to have the whole country prating about you, and they would if I left you here by yourself.”
“Very well, then, if you make me have Charlotte to stay with me I’ll give tea-parties every day, and dinners and balls every night. I’ll make the country prate, I can tell you, and the money fly too!”
Her eyes were brighter than usual, and there was a fitfulness about her that stirred and jarred him, though he could hardly tell why.
“I think I’ll take you with me,” he said, with the impotent wrath of a lover who knows that the pain of farewell will be all on his side. “I won’t trust you out of my sight.”
“All right! I’ll go with you,” she said, becoming half serious. “I’d like to go.”
They were going slowly up hill, and the country lay bare and desolate in the afternoon sun, without a human being in sight. Lambert took the reins in his right hand, and put his arm round her.
“I don’t believe you. I know you wouldn’t care a hang if I never came back—kiss me!” She lifted her face obediently, and as her eyes met his she wondered at the unhappiness in them. “I can’t take you, my darling,” he whispered; “I wish to God I could, I’m going to places you couldn’t stay at, and—and it would cost too much.”
The Real Charlotte Page 39
