She had taken it off to re-examine it, and she held it up to him.
“Here, put it on me again, and don’t be silly,” she said, the old spirit beginning to wake in her eyes.
“Do you remember when you were a child the way you used to thank me when I gave you anything?” he asked, pressing her hand hard.
“But I’m not a child now!”
Lambert, looking in her face, saw the provoking smile spread like sunshine from her eyes to her lips, and, intoxicated by it, he stooped his head and kissed her.
Steps came running along the walk towards them, and the fat face and red head of the Protestant orphan appeared under the boughs of the lime-tree.
“A messenger from Bruff’s afther bringing this here, Miss Francie,” she panted, tendering a letter in her fingers, “an’ Miss Charlotte lef’ me word I should get tea when ye’d want it, an’ will I wet it now?”
Christopher had shirked the expression of Miss Fitzpatrick’s gratitude.
“Tally Ho Lodge.“My Dearest Fanny,“Although I’m nearly dead after the bazaar I must write you a line or two to tell you what it was like. It was scrumshous. I wore my white dress with the embroidery the first day and the pink dress that you and I bought together the second day and everybody liked me best in the white one. It was fearful hot and it was great luck it was at the flower stall Mrs. Gascogne asked me to sell. Kathleen Baker and the Beatties had the refreshments and if you saw the colour of their faces with the heat at tea-time I declare you’d have to laugh. The Dysarts brought in a lovely lot of flowers and Mr. Dysart was very nice helping me to tie them up. You needn’t get on with any of your nonsense about him, he’d never think of flirting with me or anyone though he’s fearfully polite and you’d be in fits if you saw the way Miss Hopedrummond the girl I told you about was running after him and anyone could see he’d sooner talk to his sister or his mother and I don’t wonder for their both very nice which is more than she is. Roddy Lambert was there of course and poor Mrs. L. in a puce dress and everybody from the whole country round. Mr. Hawkins was grand fun. Nothing would do him but to come behind the counter with me and Mrs. Gascogne and go on with the greatest nonsense selling buttonholes to the old ladies and making them buy a lot of old rotten jeranium cuttings that was all Charlotte would give to the stall. The second day it was only just the townspeople that were there and I couldn’t be bothered selling to them all day and little thanks you get from them. The half of them came thinking they’d get every thing for nothing because it was the last day and you’d hear them fighting Mrs. Gascogne as if she was a shopwoman. I sat up in the gallery with Hawkins most of the evening and he brought up tea there and strawberries and Charlotte was shouting and roaring round the place looking for me and nobody knew where we were. ’Twas lovely—”
“Tally Ho Lodge.
“My Dearest Fanny,
“Although I’m nearly dead after the bazaar I must write you a line or two to tell you what it was like. It was scrumshous. I wore my white dress with the embroidery the first day and the pink dress that you and I bought together the second day and everybody liked me best in the white one. It was fearful hot and it was great luck it was at the flower stall Mrs. Gascogne asked me to sell. Kathleen Baker and the Beatties had the refreshments and if you saw the colour of their faces with the heat at tea-time I declare you’d have to laugh. The Dysarts brought in a lovely lot of flowers and Mr. Dysart was very nice helping me to tie them up. You needn’t get on with any of your nonsense about him, he’d never think of flirting with me or anyone though he’s fearfully polite and you’d be in fits if you saw the way Miss Hopedrummond the girl I told you about was running after him and anyone could see he’d sooner talk to his sister or his mother and I don’t wonder for their both very nice which is more than she is. Roddy Lambert was there of course and poor Mrs. L. in a puce dress and everybody from the whole country round. Mr. Hawkins was grand fun. Nothing would do him but to come behind the counter with me and Mrs. Gascogne and go on with the greatest nonsense selling buttonholes to the old ladies and making them buy a lot of old rotten jeranium cuttings that was all Charlotte would give to the stall. The second day it was only just the townspeople that were there and I couldn’t be bothered selling to them all day and little thanks you get from them. The half of them came thinking they’d get every thing for nothing because it was the last day and you’d hear them fighting Mrs. Gascogne as if she was a shopwoman. I sat up in the gallery with Hawkins most of the evening and he brought up tea there and strawberries and Charlotte was shouting and roaring round the place looking for me and nobody knew where we were. ’Twas lovely—”
At this point Miss Fitzpatrick became absorbed in meditation, and the portrayal on the blotting-paper of a profile of a conventionally classic type, which, by virtue of a moustache and a cigarette, might be supposed to represent Mr. Hawkins. She did not feel inclined to give further details of her evening, even to Fanny Hemphill. As a matter of fact she had in her own mind pressed the possibilities of her acquaintance with Mr. Hawkins to their utmost limit, and it seemed to her not impossible that soon she might have a good deal more to say on the subject; but, nevertheless, she could not stifle a certain anxiety as to whether, after all, there would ever be anything definite to tell. Hawkins was more or less an unknown quantity; his mere idioms and slang were the language of another world. It was easy to diagnose Tommy Whitty or Jimmy Jemmison and their fellows, but this was a totally new experience, and the light of previous flirtations had no illuminating power. She had, at all events, the satisfaction of being sure that on Fanny Hemphill not even the remotest shadow of an allusion would be lost, and that, whatever the future might bring forth, she would be eternally credited with the subjugation of an English officer.
The profile with the moustache and the cigarette was repeated several times on the blotting-paper during this interval, but not to her satisfaction; her new bangle pressed its pearly horse-shoes into the whiteness of her wrist and hurt her, and she took it off and laid it on the table. It also, and the circumstances of its bestowal, were among the things that she had not seen fit to mention to the friend of her bosom. It was nothing of course; of no more significance than the kiss that had accompanied it, except that she had been glad to have the bangle, and had cared nothing for the kiss; but that was just what she would never be able to get Fanny Hemphill to believe.
The soft, clinging tread of bare feet became audible in the hall, and a crack of the dining-room door was opened.
“Miss Francie,” said a voice through the crack, “th’ oven’s hot.”
“Have you the eggs and everything ready, Bid?” asked Francie, who was adding a blotted smoke-wreath to the cigarette of the twentieth profile.
“I have, miss,” replied the invisible Bid Sal, “an’ Norrysays to be hurrying, for ’tis short till Miss Charlotte ’ll be comin’ in.”
Francie closed the blotter on her half-finished letter, and pursued the vanishing figure to the kitchen. Norry was not to be seen, but on the table were bowls with flour, eggs, and sugar, and beside them was laid a bunch of twigs, tied together like a miniature birch-rod. The making of a sponge-cake was one of Francie’s few accomplishments, and putting on an apron of dubious cleanliness, lent by Louisa, she began operations by breaking the eggs, separating the yolks from the whites, and throwing the shells into the fire with professional accuracy of aim.
“Where’s the egg-whisk, Bid?” she demanded.
“’Tis thim that she bates the eggs with, Miss,” answered Bid Sal in the small, bashful voice by which she indicated her extreme humility towards those in authority over her, handing the birch-rod to Francie as she spoke.
“Mercy on us! What a thing! I’d be all night beating them with that!”
“Musha, how grand ye are!” broke in Norry’s voice from the scullery, in tones of high disdain; “if ye can’t bate eggs with that ye’d better lave it to thim that can!” Following her words came Norry herself, bearing an immense saucepanful of potatoes, and having hoisted it on to the fire, she addressed herself to Bid Sal. “Get out from undher me feet out o’ this! I suppose it’s to make cakes ye’d go, in place of feedin’ the pigs! God knows I have as much talked since breakfast as’d sicken an ass, but, indeed, I might as well be playin’ the pianna as tellin’ yer business to the likes o’ ye.”
A harsh yell at this point announced that a cat’s tail had been trodden on, but, far from expressing compunction, Norry turned with fury upon the latest offender, and seizing from a corner beside the dresser an ancient carriage whip, evidently secreted for the purpose, she flogged the whole assemblage of cats out of the kitchen. Bid Sal melted away like snow in a thaw, and Norry, snatching the bowl of eggs from Francie, began to thrash them with the birch rod, scolding and grumbling all the time.
“That ye may be happy!” (This pious wish was with Norry always ironical.) “God knows ye should be ashamed,filling yer shtummucks with what’ll sicken thim, and dhraggin’ the people from their work to be runnin’ afther ye!”
“I don’t want you to be running after me,” began Francie humbly.
“Faith thin that’s the truth!” returned the inexorable Norry; “if ye have thim off’cers running afther ye ye’re satisfied. Here, give me the bowl till I butther it. I’d sooner butther it meself than to be lookin’ at ye doin’ it!”
A loud cough, coming from the scullery, of the peculiarly doleful type affected by beggars, momentarily interrupted this tirade.
“Sha’se mick, Nance! Look at that, now, how ye have poor Nance the Fool waitin’ on me till I give her the empty bottle for Julia Duffy.”
Francie moved towards the scullery door, urged by a natural curiosity to see what manner of person Nance the Fool might be, and saw, squatted on the damp flags, an object which could only be described as a bundle of rags with a cough in it. The last characteristic was exhibited in such detail at the sight of Francie that she retired into the kitchen again, and ventured to suggest to Norry that the bottle should be given as soon as possible, and the scullery relieved of Nance the Fool’s dreadful presence.
“There it is for her on the dhresser,” replied Norry, still furiously whipping the eggs; “ye can give it yerself.”
From the bundle of rags, as Francie approached it, there issued a claw, which snatched the bottle and secreted it, and Francie just caught a glimpse, under the swathing of rags, of eyes so inflamed with crimson that they seemed to her like pools of blood, and heard mouthings and mumblings of Irish which might have been benedictions, but, if so, were certainly blessings in disguise.
“That poor craythur walked three miles to bring me the bottle I have there on the dhresser. It’s yerr’b tay that Julia Duffy makes for thim that has the colic.” Norry was softening a little as the whites of the eggs rose in stiff and silvery froth. “Julia’s a cousin of me own, through the mother’s family, and she’s able to docthor as good as e’er a docthor there’s in it.”
“I don’t think I’d care to have her doctoring me,” saidFrancie, mindful of the touzled head and dirty face that had looked down upon her from the window at Gurthnamuckla.
“And little shance ye’d have to get her!” retorted Norry; “’tis little she regards the likes o’ you towards thim that hasn’t a Christhian to look to but herself.” Norry defiantly shook the foam from the birch rod, and proceeded with her eulogy of Julia Duffy. “She’s as wise a woman and as good a scholar as what’s in the country, and many’s the poor craythure that’s prayin’ hard for her night and morning for all she done for thim. B’leeve you me, there’s plinty would come to her funeral that’d be follyin’ their own only for her and her doctherin’.”
“She has a very pretty place,” remarked Francie, who wished to be agreeable, but could not conscientiously extol Miss Duffy; “it’s a pity she isn’t able to keep the house nicer.”
“Nice! What way have she to keep it nice that hasn’t one but herself to look to! And if it was clane itself, it’s all the good it’d do her that they’d throw her out of it quicker.”
“Who’d throw her out?”
“I know that meself.” Norry turned away and banged open the door of the oven. “There’s plinty that’s ready to pull the bed from undher a lone woman if they’re lookin’ for it for theirselves.”
The mixture had by this time been poured into its tin shape, and, having placed it in the oven, Francie seated herself on the kitchen table to superintend its baking. The voice of conscience told her to go back to the dining-room and finish her letter, but she repressed it, and, picking up a kitten that had lurked, unsuspected, between a frying-pan and the wall during the rout of its relatives, she proceeded to while away the time by tormenting it, and insulting the cockatoo with frivolous questions.
Miss Mullen’s weekly haggle with the butcher did not last quite as long as usual this Friday morning. She had, in fact, concluded it by herself taking the butcher’s knife, and, with jocose determination, had proceeded to cut off the special portion of the “rack” which she wished for, in spite of Mr. Driscoll’s protestations that it had been bespokeby Mrs. Gascogne. Exhilarated by this success, she walked home at a brisk pace, regardless of the heat, and of the weight of the rusty black tourists’ bag which she always wore, slung across her shoulders by a strap, on her expeditions into the town. There was no one to be seen in the house when she came into it, except the exiled cats, who were sleeping moodily in a patch of sunshine on the hall-mat, and after some passing endearments, their mistress went on into the dining-room, in which, by preference, as well as for economy, she sat in the mornings. It had, at all events, one advantage over the drawing-room, in possessing a sunny French window, opening on to the little grass-garden—a few untidy flower-beds, with a high, unclipped hedge surrounding them, the resort of cats and their breakfast dishes, but for all that a pleasant outlook on a hot day. Francie had been writing at the dinner-table, and Charlotte sat down in the chair that her cousin had vacated, and began to add up the expenses of the morning. When she had finished, she opened the blotter to dry her figures, and saw, lying in it, the letter that Francie had begun.
In the matter of reading a letter not intended for her eye, Miss Mullen recognised only her own inclinations, and the facilities afforded to her by fate, and in this instance one played into the hands of the other. She read the letter through quickly, her mouth set at its grimmest expression of attention, and replaced it carefully in the blotting-case where she found it. She sat still, her two fists clenched on the table before her, and her face rather redder than even the hot walk from Lismoyle had made it.
There had been a good deal of information in the letter that was new to her, and it seemed important enough to demand much consideration. The reflection on her own contribution to the bazaar did not hurt her in the least, in fact it slightly raised her opinion of Francie that she should have noticed it; but that ingenuous confidence about the evening spent in the gallery was another affair. At this point in her reflections, she became aware that her eye was attracted by something glittering on the green baize of the dinner-table, half-hidden under two or three loose sheets of paper. It was the bangle that she remembered having seen on Francie’s wrist, and she took it up and looked curiouslyat the double horse-shoes as she appraised its value. She never thought of it as being real—Francie was not at all above an effective imitation—and she glanced inside to see what the mark might be. There was the eighteen-carat mark sure enough, and there also was Francie’s name and the date, July 1st, 189—. A moment’s reflection enabled Charlotte to identify this as the day of the yacht accident, and another moment sufficed for her to determine that the giver of the bangle had been Mr. Hawkins. She was only too sure that it had not been Christopher, and certainly no glimmer of suspicion crossed her mind that the first spendings from her loan to Mr. Lambert were represented by the bangle.
She opened the blotter, and read again that part of the letter that treated of Christopher Dysart. “P’yah!” she said to herself, “the little fool! what does she know about him?” At this juncture, the wheezing of the spring of the passage-door gave kindly signal of danger, and Charlotte deftly slipped the letter back into the blotter, replaced the bangle under the sheets of paper, and was standing outside the French window when Francie came into the room, with flushed cheeks, a dirty white apron, and in her hands a plate bearing a sponge-cake of the most approved shade of golden-brown. At sight of Charlotte she stopped guiltily, and, as the latter stepped in at the window, she became even redder than the fire had made her.
“Oh—I’ve just made this, Charlotte—” she faltered; “I bought the eggs and the butter myself; I sent Bid for them, and Norry said—she thought you wouldn’t mind—”
On an ordinary occasion Charlotte might have minded considerably even so small a thing as the heating of the oven and the amount of flour and sugar needed for the construction of the cake; but a slight, a very slight sense of wrong-doing, conspired with a little confusion, consequent on the narrowness of her escape, to dispose her to compliance.
“Why, me dear child, why would I mind anything so agreeable to me and all concerned as that splendour of a cake that I see there? I declare I never gave you credit for being able to do anything half as useful! ’Pon me honour, I’ll give a tea-party on the strength of it.” Even asshe spoke she had elaborated the details of a scheme of which the motor should be the cake that Francie’s own hand had constructed.
The choir practice was poorly attended that afternoon. A long and heavy shower, coming at the critical moment, had combined with a still longer and heavier luncheon-party given by Mrs. Lynch, the solicitor’s wife, to keep away several members. Francie had evaded her duties by announcing that her only pair of thick boots had gone to be soled, and only the most ardent mustered round Mrs. Gascogne’s organ bench. Of these was Pamela Dysart, faithful, as was her wont, in the doing of what she had undertaken; and as Charlotte kicked off her goloshes at the gallery door, and saw Pamela’s figure in its accustomed place, she said to herself that consistency was an admirable quality. Her approbation was still warm when she joined Pamela at the church door after the practice was over, and she permitted herself the expression of it.
“Miss Dysart, you’re the only young woman of the rising generation in whom I place one ha’porth of reliance; I can tell you, not one step would I have stirred out on the chance of meeting any other member of the choir on a day of this kind, but I knew I might reckon on meetingyouhere.”
“Oh, I like coming to the practices,” said Pamela, wondering why Miss Mullen should specially want to see her. They were standing in the church porch waiting for Pamela’s pony-cart, while the rain streamed off the roof in a white veil in front of them. “You must let me drive you home,” she went on; “but I don’t think the trap will come till this downpour is over.”
Under the gallery stairs stood a bench, usually appropriated to the umbrellas and cloaks of the congregation; and after the rest of the choir had launched themselves forth upon the yellow torrent that took the place of the path through the churchyard, Pamela and Miss Mullen sat themselves down upon it to wait. Mrs. Gascogne was practising her Sunday voluntary, and the stairs were trembling with the vibrations of the organ; it was a Largo of Bach’s, and Pamela would infinitely have preferred to listen to it than to lend a polite ear to Charlotte’s less tuneful but equally reverberating voice.
“I think I mentioned to you, Miss Dysart, that I have to go to Dublin next week for three or four days; teeth, you know, teeth—not that I suppose you have any experience of such miseries yet!”
Pamela did not remember, nor, beyond a sympathetic smile, did she at first respond. Her attention had been attracted by the dripping, deplorable countenance of Max, which was pleading to her round the corner of the church door for that sanctuary which he well knew to be eternally denied to him. There had been a time in Max’s youth when he had gone regularly with Pamela to afternoon service, lying in a corner of the gallery in discreet slumber. But as he emerged from puppydom he had developed habits of snoring and scratching which had betrayed his presence to Mrs. Gascogne, and the climax had come one Sunday morning when, in defiance of every regulation, he had flung himself from the drawing-room window at Bruff, and followed the carriage to the church, at such speed as his crooked legs could compass. Finding the gallery door shut, he had made his way nervously up the aisle until, when nearing the chancel steps, he was so overcome with terror at the sight of the surpliced figure of the Archdeacon sternly fulminating the Commandments, that he had burst out into a loud fit of hysterical barking. Pamela and the culprit had made an abject visit to the Rectory next day, but the sentence of excommunication went forth, and Max’s religious exercises were thenceforth limited to the churchyard. But on this unfriendly afternoon the sight of his long melancholy nose, and ears dripping with rain, was too much for even Pamela’s rectitude.
“Oh, yes, teeth are horrible things,” she murmured, stealthily patting her waterproof in the manner known to all dogs as a signal of encouragement.
“Horrible things! Upon my word they are! Beaks, that’s what we ought to have instead of them! I declare I don’t know which is the worst, cutting your first set of teeth, or your last! But that’s not what’s distressing me most about going to Dublin.”
“Really,” said Pamela, who, conscious that Max was now securely hidden behind her petticoats, was able to give her whole attention to Miss Mullen; “I hope it’s nothing serious.”
“Well, Miss Dysart,” said Charlotte, with a sudden burst of candour, “I’ll tell you frankly what it is. I’m not easy in my mind about leaving that girl by herself—Francie y’know—she’s very young, and I suppose I may as well tell the truth, and say she’s very pretty.” She paused for the confirmation that Pamela readily gave. “So you’ll understand now, Miss Dysart, that I feel anxious about leaving her in a house by herself, and the reason I wanted to see you so specially to-day was to ask if you’d do me a small favour, which, being your mother’s daughter, I’m sure you’ll not refuse.” She looked up at Pamela, showing all her teeth. “I want you to be the good angel that you always are, and come in and look her up sometimes if you happen to be in town.”
The lengthened prelude to this modest request might have indicated to a more subtle soul than Pamela’s that something weightier lay behind it; but her grey eyes met Miss Mullen’s restless brown ones with nothing in them except kindly surprise that it was such a little thing that she had been asked to do.
“Of course I will,” she answered; “mamma and I will have to come in about clearing away the rest of that awful bazaar rubbish, and I shall be only too glad to come and see her, and I hope she will come and lunch at Bruff some day while you are away.”
This was not quite what Charlotte was aiming at, but still it was something.
“You’re a true friend, Miss Dysart,” she said gushingly, “I knew you would be; it’ll only be for a few days, at all events, that I’ll bother you with me poor relation! I’m sure she’ll be able to amuse herself in the evenings and mornings quite well, though indeed, poor child, I’m afraid she’ll be lonely enough!”
Mrs. Gascogne, putting on her gloves at the top of the stairs, thought to herself that Charlotte Mullen might be able to impose upon Pamela, but other people were not so easily imposed on. She leaned over the staircase railing, and said, “Are you aware, Pamela, that your trap is waiting at the gate?” Pamela got up, and Max, deprived of the comfortable shelter of her skirts, crawled forth from under the bench and sneaked out of the church door. “Iwouldn’t have that dog’s conscience for a good deal,” went on Mrs. Gascogne as she came downstairs. “In fact, I am beginning to think that the only people who get everything they want are the people who have no consciences at all.”
“There’s a pretty sentiment for a clergyman’s wife!” exclaimed Charlotte. “Wait till I see the Archdeacon and ask him what sort of theology that is! Now wasn’t that the very image of Mrs. Gascogne?” she continued as Pamela and she drove away; “the best and the most religious woman in the parish, but no one’s able to say a sharper thing when she likes, and you never know what heterodoxy she’ll let fly at you next!”
The rain was over, and the birds were singing loudly in the thick shrubs at Tally Ho as Pamela turned the roan pony in at the gate; the sun was already drawing a steamy warmth from the be-puddled road, and the blue of the afternoon sky was glowing freshly and purely behind a widening proscenium of clouds.
“Now you might just as well come in and have a cup of tea; it’s going to be a lovely evening after all, and I happen to know there’s a grand sponge-cake in the house.” Thus spoke Charlotte, with hospitable warmth, and Pamela permitted herself to be persuaded. “It was Francie made it herself; she’ll be as proud as Punch at having you to—” Charlotte stopped short with her hand on the drawing-room door, and then opened it abruptly.
There was no one to be seen, but on the table were two half-empty cups of tea, and the new sponge-cake, reduced by one-third, graced the centre of the board. Miss Mullen glared round the room. A stifled giggle broke from the corner behind the piano, and Francie’s head appeared over the top, instantly followed by that of Mr. Hawkins.
“We thought ’twas visitors when we heard the wheels,” said Miss Fitzpatrick, still laughing, but looking very much ashamed of herself, “and we went to hide when they passed the window for fear we’d be seen.” She paused, not knowing what to say, and looked entreatingly at Pamela. “I never thought it’d be you—”
It was borne in on her suddenly that this was not the manner in which Miss Dysart would have acted undersimilar circumstances, and for the first time a doubt as to the fitness of her social methods crossed her mind.
Pamela, as she drove home after tea, thought she understood why it was that Miss Mullen did not wish her cousin to be left to her own devices in Lismoyle.
Therewas no sound in the red gloom, except the steady trickle of running water, and the anxious breathing of the photographer. Christopher’s long hands moved mysteriously in the crimson light, among phials, baths, and cases of negatives, while uncanny smells of various acids and compounds thickened the atmosphere. Piles of old trunks towered dimly in the corners, a superannuated sofa stood on its head by the wall, with its broken hind-legs in the air, three old ball skirts hung like ghosts of Bluebeard’s wives upon the door, from which, to Christopher’s developing tap, a narrow passage forced its angular way.
There was presently a step on the uncarpeted flight of attic stairs, accompanied by a pattering of broad paws, and Pamela, closely attended by the inevitable Max, slid with due caution into the room.
“Well, Christopher,” she began, sitting gingerly down in the darkness on an old imperial, a relic of the period when Sir Benjamin posted to Dublin in his own carriage, “Mamma says sheisto come!”
“Lawks!” said Christopher succinctly, after a pause occupied by the emptying of one photographic bath into another.
“Mamma said she ‘felt Charlotte Mullen’s position so keenly in having to leave that girl by herself,’”pursued Pamela, “‘that it was only common charity to take her in here while she was away.’”
“Well, my dear, and what are you going to do with her?” said Christopher cheerfully.
“Oh, I can’t think,” replied Pamela despairingly; “and I know that Evelyn does not care about her; only last night she said she dressed like a doll at a bazaar.”
Christopher busied himself with his chemicals and said nothing.
“The fact is, Christopher,” went on his sister decisively, “youwill have to undertake her. Of course, I’ll help you, but I really cannot face the idea of entertaining both her and Evelyn at the same time. Just imagine how they would hate it.”
“Let them hate it,” said Christopher, with the crossness of a good-natured person who feels that his good nature is going to make him do a disagreeable thing.
“Ah, Christopher, be good; it will only be for three days, and she’s very easy to talk to; in fact,” ended Pamela apologetically, “I think I rather like her!”
“Well, do you know,” said Christopher, “the curious thing is, that though I can’t talk to her and she can’t talk to me, I rather like her, too—when I’m at the other end of the room.”
“That’s all very fine,” returned Pamela dejectedly; “it may amuse you to study her through a telescope, but it won’t do anyone else much good; after all, you are the person who is really responsible for her being here. You saved her life.”
“I know I did,” replied her brother irritably, staring at the stumpy candle behind the red glass of the lantern, unaware of the portentous effect of its light upon his eyeglass, which shone like a ball of fire; “that’s much the worst feature of the case. It creates a dreadful bond of union. At that infernal bazaar, whenever I happened to come within hail of her, Miss Mullen collected a crowd and made a speech at us. I will say for her that she hid with Hawkins as much as she could, and did her best to keep out of my way. As I said before, I have no personal objection to her, but I have no gift for competing with young women. Why not have Hawkins to dinner every night and to luncheon every day? It’s much the simplest way of amusing her, and it will save me a great deal of wear and tear that I don’t feel equal to.”
Pamela got up from the imperial.
“I hate you when you begin your nonsense of theorising about yourself as if you were a mixture of Methuselah and Diogenes; I have seen you making yourself just as agreeable to young women as Mr. Hawkins or anyone;” she paused at the door. “She’ll be here the day after to-morrow,” with a sudden collapse into pathos. “Oh, Christopher, youmusthelp me to amuse her.”
Two days afterwards Miss Mullen left for Dublin by the early train, and in the course of the morning her cousin got upon an outside car in company with her trunk, and embarked upon the preliminary stage of her visit to Bruff. She was dressed in the attire which in her own mind she specified as her “Sunday clothes,” and as the car rattled through Lismoyle, she put on a pair of new yellow silk gloves with a confidence in their adequacy to the situation that was almost touching. She felt a great need of their support. Never since she was grown up had she gone on a visit, except for a night or two to the Hemphills’ summer lodgings at Kingstown, when such “things” as she required were conveyed under her arm in a brown paper parcel, and she and the three Miss Hemphills had sociably slept in the back drawing-room. She had been once at Bruff, a visit of ceremony, when Lady Dysart only had been at home, and she had sat and drunk her tea in unwonted silence, wishing that there were sugar in it, but afraid to ask for it, and respecting Charlotte for the ease with which she accepted her surroundings, and discoursed of high and difficult matters with her hostess. It was only the thought of writing to her Dublin friends to tell them of how she had stayed at Sir Benjamin Dysart’s place that really upheld her during the drive; no matter how terrible her experiences might be, the fact would remain to her, sacred and unalterable.
Nevertheless, its consolations seemed very remote at the moment when the car pulled up at the broad steps of Bruff, and Gorman the butler came down them, and solemnly assisted her to alight, while the setter and spaniel, who had greeted her arrival with the usual official chorus of barking, smelt round her politely but with extreme firmness. She stood forlornly in the big cool hall, waiting till Gorman should be pleased to conduct her to the drawing-room, uncertain as to whether she ought to take off her coat, uncertain what to do with her umbrella, uncertain of all things except of her own ignorance. A white stone double staircase rose overawingly at the end of the hall; the floorunder her feet was dark and slippery, and when she did at length prepare to follow the butler, she felt that visiting at grand houses was not as pleasant as it sounded.
A door into the hall suddenly opened, and there issued from it the hobbling figure of an old man wearing a rusty tall hat down over his ears, and followed by a cadaverous attendant, who was holding an umbrella over the head of his master, like a Siamese courtier.
“D—n your eyes, James Canavan!” said Sir Benjamin Dysart, “can’t you keep the rain off my new hat, you blackguard!” Then spying Francie, who was crossing the hall, “Ho-ho! That’s a fine girl, begad! What’s she doing in my hall?”
“Oh, hush, hush, Sir Benjamin!” said James Canavan, in tones of shocked propriety. “That is a young lady visitor.”
“Then she’smyvisitor,” retorted Sir Benjamin, striking his ponderous stick on the ground, “and a devilish pretty visitor, too! I’ll drive her out in my carriage to-morrow.”
“You will, Sir Benjamin, you will,” answered his henchman, hurrying the master of the house along towards the hall door; while Francie, with a new and wholly unexpected terror added to those she had brought with her, followed the butler to the drawing-room.
It was a large room. Francie felt it to be the largest she had ever been in, as she advanced round a screen, and saw Lady Dysart at an immeasurable distance working at a heap of dingy serge, and behind her, still further off, the well-curled head of Miss Hope-Drummond just topping the cushion of a low arm-chair.
“Oh, how do you do,” said Lady Dysart, getting up briskly, and dropping as she did so a large pair of scissors and the child’s frock at which she had been working. “You are very good to have come over so early.”
The geniality of Lady Dysart’s manner might have assured anyone less alarmed than her visitor that there was no ill intention in this remark; but such discernment was beyond Francie.
“Miss Mullen told me to be over here by twelve, Lady Dysart,” she said abjectly, “and as she had the car ordered for me I didn’t like—”
Lady Dysart began to laugh, with the large and yet refinedbonhommiethat was with her the substitute for tact.
“Why shouldn’t you come early, my dear child?” she said, looking approvingly at Francie’s embarrassed countenance. “I’ll tell Pamela you are here. Evelyn, don’t you know Miss Fitzpatrick?”
Miss Hope-Drummond, thus adjured, raised herself languidly from her chair, and shook hands with the new-comer, as Lady Dysart strode from the room with her customary business-like rapidity. Silence reigned for nearly a minute after the door closed; but at length Miss Hope-Drummond braced herself to the exertion of being agreeable.
“Very hot day, isn’t it?” looking at Francie’s flushed cheeks.
“It is indeed, roasting! I was nearly melting with the heat on the jaunting-car coming over,” replied Francie, with a desire to be as responsive as possible, “but it’s lovely and cool in here.”
She looked at Miss Hope-Drummond’s spotless white gown, and wished she had not put on her Sunday terra-cotta.
“Oh, is it?”
Silence; during which Francie heard the wheels of her car grinding away down the avenue, and wished that she were on it.
“Have you been out on the lake much lately, Miss Hope-Drummond?”
Francie’s wish was merely the laudable one of trying to keep the heavy ball of conversation rolling, but the question awoke a slumbering worm of discontent in her companion’s well-ordered breast. Christopher was even now loosing from his moorings at the end of the park, without having so much as mentioned that he was going out; and Captain Cursiter, her own compatriot, attached—almost linked—to her by the bonds of mutual acquaintances, and her thorough knowledge of the Lincolnshire Cursiters, had not risen to the fly that she had only yesterday thrown over him on the subject of the steam-launch.
“No; I had rather more than I cared for the last time we were out, the day of the picnic. I’ve had neuralgia inmy face ever since that evening, we were all kept out so late.”
“Oh, my! That neuralgia’s a horrid thing,” said Francie sympathetically. “I didn’t get any harm out of it with all the wetting and the knock on my head and everything. I thought it was lovely fun! But”—forgetting her shyness in the interest of the moment—“Mr. Hawkins told me that Cursiter said to him the world wouldn’t get him to take out ladies in his boat again!”
Miss Hope-Drummond raised her dark eyebrows.
“Really? That is very crushing of Captain Cursiter.”
Francie felt in a moment an emphasis on the word Captain; but tried to ignore her own confusion.
“It doesn’t crushme, I can tell you! I wouldn’t give a pin to go in his old boat. I’d twice sooner go in a yacht, upsets and all!”
“Oh!”
Miss Hope-Drummond said no more than this, but her tone was sufficient. Her eyes strayed towards the book that lay in her lap, and the finger inserted in its pages showed, as if unconsciously, a tendency to open it again.
There was another silence, during which Francie studied the dark and unintelligible oil-paintings on the expanses of wall, the flowers, arranged with such easy and careless lavishness in strange and innumerable jars and vases; and lastly, Dinah, in a distant window, catching and eating flies with disgusting avidity. She felt as if her petticoats showed her boots more than was desirable, that her gloves were of too brilliant a tint, and that she ought to have left her umbrella in the hall. At this painful stage of her reflections she heard Lady Dysart’s incautious voice outside:
“It’s always the way with Christopher; he digs a hole and buries himself in it whenever he’s wanted. Take her out and let her eat strawberries now; and then in the afternoon—” the voice suddenly sank as if in response to an admonition, and Francie’s already faint heart sank along with it. Oh, to be at the Hemphills, making toffee on the parlour fire, remote from the glories and sufferings of aristocratic houses! The next moment she was shaking hands with Pamela, and becoming gradually aware that she was in an atmosphere of ease and friendliness, much as theslow pleasure of a perfume makes itself slowly felt. The fact that Pamela had on a grass hat of sunburnt maturity, and a skirt which bore the imprint of dogs’ paws was in itself reassuring, and as they went together down a shrubbery walk, and finally settled upon the strawberry beds in the wide, fragrant kitchen-garden, the first terrors began to subside in Francie’s trembling soul, and she found herself breathing more naturally in this strange, rarefied condition of things. Even luncheon was less formidable than she had expected. Christopher was not there, the dreaded Sir Benjamin was not there, and Lady Dysart consulted her about the cutting-out of poor clothes, and accepted with an almost alarming enthusiasm the suggestions that Francie diffidently brought up from the depths of past experience of the Fitzpatrick wardrobe.
The long, unusual leisure of the afternoon passed by her like a pleasant dream, in which, as she sat in a basket-chair under the verandah outside the drawing-room windows, illustrated papers, American magazines, the snoring lethargy of the dogs, and the warm life and stillness of the air were about equally blended. Miss Hope-Drummond lay aloof in a hammock under a horse-chestnut tree at the end of the flower-garden, working at the strip of Russian embroidery that some day was to languish neglected on the stall of an English bazaar; Francie had seen her trail forth with her arms full of cushions, and dimly divined that her fellow-guest was hardly tolerating the hours that were to her like fragments collected from all the holidays she had ever known. No wonder, she thought, that Pamela wore a brow of such serenity, when days like this were her ordinary portion. Five o’clock came, and with it, with the majestic punctuality of a heavenly body, came Gorman and the tea equipage, attended by his satellite, William, bearing the tea-table. Francie had never heard the word idyllic, but the feeling that it generally conveys came to her as she lay back in her chair, and saw the roses swaying about the pillars of the verandah, and watched the clots of cream sliding into her cup over the broad lip of the cream jug, and thought how incredibly brilliant the silver was, and that Miss Dysart’s hands looked awfully pretty while she was pouring out tea, and weren’t a bit spoiled by being rather brown.It was consolatory that Miss Hope-Drummond had elected to have her tea conveyed to her in the hammock; it was too much trouble to get out of it, she called, in her shrill, languid voice, and no one had argued the matter with her. Lady Dysart, who had occupied herself during the afternoon in visiting the garden-beds and giving a species of clinical lecture on each to the wholly unimpressed gardener, had subsided into a chair beside Francie, and began to discuss with her the evangelical preachers of Dublin, a mark of confidence and esteem which Pamela noticed with astonishment. Francie had got to her second cup of tea, and had evinced an edifying familiarity with Lady Dysart’s most chosen divines, when the dogs, who had been seated opposite Pamela, following with lambent eyes the passage of each morsel to her lips, rushed from the verandah, and charged with furious barkings across the garden and down the lawn towards two figures, whom in their hearts they knew to be the sons of the house, but whom, for histrionic purposes, they affected to regard as dangerous strangers.
Miss Hope-Drummond sat up in her hammock and pinned her hat on straight.
“Mr. Dysart,” she called, as Christopher and Garry neared her chestnut tree, “you’ve just come in time to get me another cup of tea.”
Christopher dived under the chestnut branches, and presently, with what Miss Hope-Drummond felt to be unexampled stupidity, returned with it, but without his own. He had even the gaucherie to commend her choice of the hammock, and having done so, to turn and walk back to the verandah, and Miss Hope-Drummond asked herself for the hundredth time how the Castlemorescouldhave put up with him.
“I met the soldiers out on the lake to-day,” Christopher remarked as he sat down; “I told them to come and dine to-morrow.” He looked at Pamela with an eye that challenged her gratitude, but before she could reply, Garry interposed in tones muffled by cake.
“He did, the beast; and he might have remembered it was my birthday, and the charades and everything.”
“Oh, Garry,mustwe have charades?” said Pamela lamentably.
“Well, of course we must, you fool,” returned Garry with Scriptural directness; “I’ve told all the men about the place, and Kitty Gascogne’s coming to act, and James Canavan’s going to put papa to bed early and help us—’ Garry’s voice sank to the fluent complaining undertone that distinguishes a small boy with a grievance, and Christopher turned to his mother’s guest.
“I suppose you’ve acted in charades, Miss Fitzpatrick?”
“Is it me act? Oh goodness, no, Mr. Dysart! I never did such a thing but once, when I had to read Lady Macbeth’s part at school, and I thought I’d died laughing the whole time.”
Pamela and Lady Dysart exchanged glances as they laughed at this reminiscence. Would Christopher ever talk to a girl with a voice like this? was the interpretation of Pamela’s glance, while Lady Dysart’s was a mere note of admiration for the way that the sunlight caught the curls on Francie’s forehead as she sat up to speak to Christopher, and for the colour that had risen in her cheeks since his arrival, more especially since his announcement that Captain Cursiter and Mr. Hawkins were coming to dinner. There are few women who can avoid some slight change of manner and even of appearance, when a man is added to the company, and it may at once be said that Francie was far from trying to repress her increased interest on such an occasion.
“What made you think I could act, Mr. Dysart?” she said, looking at him a little self-consciously; “do you think I look like an actress?”
The question was interrupted by a cry from the chestnut tree, and Miss Hope-Drummond’s voice was heard appealing to someone to come and help her out of the hammock.
“She can get out jolly well by herself,” remarked Garry, but Christopher got up and lounged across the grass in response to the summons, and Francie’s question remained unanswered. Lady Dysart rose too, and watched her son helping Miss Hope-Drummond on to her feet, and strolling away with her in the direction of the shrubbery. Then she turned to Francie.
“Now, Miss Fitzpatrick, you shall come and explain thatDorcas Society sleeve to me, and I should not be surprised if you could help me with the acrostic.”
Lady Dysart considered herself to be, before all things, a diplomatist.
Dinnerwas over. Gorman was regaling his fellows in the servants’ hall with an account of how Miss Fitzpatrick had eaten her curry with a knife and fork, and her Scotch woodcock with a spoon, and how she had accepted every variety of wine that he had offered her, and taken only a mouthful of each, an eccentricity of which William was even now reaping the benefit in the pantry. Mrs. Brady, the cook, dared say that by all accounts it was the first time the poor child had seen a bit served the way it would be fit to put into a Christian’s mouth, and, indeed, it was little she’d learn of behaviour or dinners from Miss Mullen, except to make up messes for them dirty cats—a remark which obtained great acceptance from her audience. Mr. Gorman then gave it as his opinion that Miss Fitzpatrick was as fine a girl as you’d meet between this and Dublin, and if he was Mr. Christopher, he’d prefer her to Miss Hope-Drummond, even though the latter might be hung down with diamonds.
The object of this criticism was meantime congratulating herself that she had accomplished the last and most dreaded of the day’s ceremonies, and, so far as she knew, had gone through it without disaster. She certainly felt as if she never had eaten so much in her life, and she thought to herself that, taking into consideration the mental anxiety and the loss of time involved in the consumption of one of these grand dinners, she infinitely preferred the tea and poached eggs which formed her ordinary repast. Pamela was at the piano, looking a long way off in the dim pink light of the shaded room, and was playing such strange music as Francie had never heard before, and secretly hoped never to hear again. She had always believed herself to be extremely fond of music, and was wont to feel very sentimental when she and one of that tribe whom it is to be feared she spoke of as her “fellows,” sat on the rocks at theback of Kingstown pier and listened to the band playing “Dorothy,” or “The Lost Chord,” in the dark of the summer evening; but these minor murmurings, that seemed to pass by steep and painful chromatic paths from one woe to another, were to her merely exercises of varying difficulty and ugliness, in which Miss Dysart never seemed to get the chords quite right. She was too shy to get up and search for amusement among the books and papers upon a remote table, and accordingly she lay back in her chair and regarded Lady Dysart and Miss Hope-Drummond, both comfortably absorbed in conversation, and wondered whether she should ever have money enough to buy herself a tea-gown.
The door opened, and Christopher sauntered in; he looked round the room through his eye-glass, and then wandered towards the piano, where he sat down beside Pamela. Francie viewed this proceeding with less resentment than if he had been any other man in the world; she did not so much mind a neglect in which Miss Hope-Drummond was equally involved, and she was rather frightened than otherwise, when soon afterwards she saw him, in evident obedience to a hint from his sister, get up and come towards her with a large photograph-book under his arm. He sat down beside her, and, with what Pamela, watching from the distant piano, felt to be touching docility, began to expound its contents to her. He had done this thing so often before, and he knew, or thought he knew so well what people were going to say, that nothing but the unfailing proprietary interest in his own handiwork supported him on these occasions. He had not, however, turned many pages before he found that Francie’s comments were by no means of the ordinary tepid and perfunctory sort. The Oxford chapels were, it is true, surveyed by her in anxious silence; but a crowd of undergraduates leaning over a bridge to look at an eight—an instantaneous photograph of a bump-race, with its running accompaniment of maniacs on the bank—Christopher’s room, with Dinah sitting in his armchair with a pipe in her mouth—were all examined and discussed with fervid interest, and a cry of unfeigned excitement greeted the page on which his own photography made itsdébutwith a deep-brown portrait of Pamela.
“Mercy on us! That’s not Miss Dysart! What has she her face blackened for?”
“Oh, I did that when I didn’t know much about it last winter, and it’s rather over-exposed,” answered Christopher, regarding his work of art with a lenient parental eye.
“The poor thing! And was it the cold turned her black that way?”
Christopher glanced at his companion’s face to see whether this ignorance was genuine, but before he had time to offer the scientific explanation, she had pounced on a group below.
“Why, isn’t that the butler? Goodness! he’s the dead image of the Roman Emperors in Mangnall’s questions! And who are all the other people? I declare, one of them’s that queer man I saw in the hall with the old gentleman—” She stopped and stammered as she realised that she had touched on what must necessarily be a difficult subject.
“Yes, this is a photograph of the servants,” said Christopher, filling the pause with compassionate speed, “and that’s James Canavan. You’ll see him to-morrow night taking a leading part in Garry’s theatricals.”
“Why, d’ye tell me that man can act?”
“Act? I should think so!” he laughed, as if at some recollection or other. “He can do anything he tries, or thinks he can. He began by being a sort of hedge-schoolmaster, but he was too mad to stick to it. Anyhow, my father took him up, and put him into the agency office, and now he’s his valet, and teaches Garry arithmetic when he’s at home, and writes poems and plays. I envy you your first sight of James Canavan on the boards,” he ended, laughing again.
“The boards!” Francie thought to herself, “I wonder is it like a circus?”
The photographs progressed serenely after this. Francie began to learn something of the discreetness that must be observed in inspecting amateur portrait photography, and Christopher, on his side, found he was being better entertained by Miss Mullen’s cousin than he could have believed possible. They turned page after page steadily and conversationally, until Christopher made a pause of unconsciouspride and affection at a group of photographs of yachts in different positions.
“These are some of the best I have,” he said; “that’s my boat, and that is Mr. Lambert’s.”
“Oh, the nasty thing! I’m sure I don’t want to seeheragain! and I shouldn’t think you did either!” with an uncertain glance at him. It had seemed to her when, once or twice before, she had spoken of the accident to him, that it was a subject he did not care about. “Mr. Lambert says that the upsetting wasn’t her fault a bit, and he likes going out in her just the same. I think he’s a very brave man, don’t you?”
“Oh, very,” replied Christopher perfunctorily; “but he rather overdoes it, I think, sometimes, and you know you got the worst of that business.”
“I thinkyoumust have had the worst of it,” she said timidly. “I never was able to half thank you—” Even the equalising glow from the pink lampshades could not conceal the deepening of the colour in her cheeks.
“Oh, please don’t try,” interrupted Christopher, surprised into a fellow-feeling of shyness, and hastily turning over the yachting page; “it was nothing at all.”
“Indeed, I wanted to say it to you before,” persevered Francie, “that time at the bazaar, but there always were people there. Charlotte told me that only for you the pike would be eating me at the bottom of the lake!” she ended with a nervous laugh.
“What a very unpleasant thing to say, and not strictly true,” said Christopher lightly. “Do you recognise Miss Mullen in this?” he went on, hurrying from the subject.
“Oh, how pretty!” cried Francie, peering into a small and dark picture; “but I don’t see Charlotte. It’s the waterfall in the grounds, isn’t it?”
Pamela looked over from the piano again, amazed to hear her brother’s voice raised in loud laughter. There was no denying that the picture was like a waterfall, and Francie at first rejected with scorn the explanation that it represented a Sunday-school feast.
“Ah, go on, Mr. Dysart! Why, I see the white water and the black rocks, and all!”
“That’s the table-cloth, and the black rocks are the children’s faces, and that’s Miss Mullen.”
“Well, I’m very glad you never took any Sunday-school feast everIwas at, if that’s what you make them look like.”
“You don’t mean to say you go to Sunday-school feasts?”
“Yes, why wouldn’t I? I never missed one till this year; they’re the grandest fun out!”
Christopher stared at her. He was not prepared for a religious aspect in Miss Mullen’s remarkable young cousin.
“Do you teach in Sunday-schools?” He tried to keep the incredulity out of his voice, but Francie caught the tone.
“You’re very polite! I suppose you think I know nothing at all, but I can tell you I could say down all the judges of Israel, or the journeyings of St. Paul this minute, and that’s more than you could do!”
“By Jove, it is!” answered Christopher, with another laugh. “And is that what you talk about at school feasts?”
Francie laid her head back on the cushion of her chair, and looked at him from under her lowered eyelashes. “Wouldn’t you like to know?” she said. She suddenly found that this evening she was not in the least afraid of Mr. Dysart. There were some, notably Roddy Lambert, who called him a prig, but she said to herself that she’d tell him as soon as she saw him that Mr. Dysart was a very nice young man, and not a bit stuck-up.
“Very much,” Christopher replied, sticking his eye-glass into his eye, “that was why I asked.” He really felt curious to know more of this unwonted young creature, with her ingenuous impudence and her lovely face. If anyone else had said the things that she had said, he would have been either bored or revolted, and it is possibly worth noting that, concurrently with a nascent interest in Francie, he was consciously surprised that he was neither bored nor revolted. Perhaps it was the influence of the half-civilised northern music that Pamela was playing, with its blood-stirring freshness, like the whistling wind of dawn, and its strange snatches of winding sweetness, that woke some slumbering part of him to a sense of her charm and youth. But Pamelaguessed nothing of what Grieg’s “Peer Gynt” was doing for her brother, and only thought how gallantly he was fulfilling her behest.
Before he said good-night to Francie, Christopher had learned a good deal that he did not know before. He had heard how she and Mr. Whitty, paraphrased as “a friend of mine,” had got left behind on Bray Head, while the rest of the Sunday-school excursion was being bundled into the train, and how she and the friend had missed three trains, from causes not thoroughly explained, and how Mr. Lambert, who had gone there with her, just for the fun of the thing, had come back to look for them, and had found them having tea in the station refreshment room, and had been mad. He had heard also of her stay at Kingstown, and of how a certain Miss Carrie Jemmison—sister, as was explained, of another “friend”—was wont to wake her up early to go out bathing, by the simple expedient of pulling a string which hung out of the bedroom window over the hall door, and led thence to Miss Fitzpatrick’s couch, where it was fastened to her foot; in fact, by half-past ten o’clock, he had gathered a surprisingly accurate idea of Miss Fitzpatrick’s manner of life, and had secretly been a good deal taken aback by it.
He said to himself, as he smoked a final cigarette, that she must be a nice girl somehow not to have been more vulgar than she was, and she really must have a soul to be saved. There was something about her—some limpid quality—that kept her transparent and fresh like a running stream, and cool, too, he thought, with a grin and with a great deal of reflective stroking of Dinah’s apathetic head, as she lay on his uncomfortable lap trying to make the best of a bad business. He had not failed to notice the recurrence of Mr. Lambert’s name in these recitals, and was faintly surprised that he could not call to mind having heard Miss Fitzpatrick mentioned by that gentleman until just before her arrival in Lismoyle. Lambert was not usually reticent about the young ladies of his acquaintance, and from Francie’s own showing he must have known her very well indeed. He wondered how she came to be such a friend of his; Lambert was a first-rate man of business and all that, but there was nothing else first-rate about himthat he could see. It showed the social poverty of the land that she should speak of him with confidence and even admiration; it was almost pathetic that she should know no better than to think Roddy Lambert a fine fellow. His thoughts wandered to the upset of theDaphne; what an ass Lambert had made of himself then. If she could know how remarkably near her friend, Mr. Lambert, had come to drowning her on that occasion, she would not, perhaps, have quoted him so largely as a final opinion upon all matters. No one blamed a man for not being able to swim, but the fact that he was a bad swimmer was no excuse for his losing his head and coming cursing and swearing and doing his best to drown everyone else.
Christopher let Dinah slip on to the floor, and threw the end of his cigarette out of the open window of his room. He listened to the sleepy quacking of a wild-duck, and the far-away barking of the gate-house dog. The trees loomed darkly at the end of the garden; between them glimmered the pale ghost of the lake, streaked here and there with the long quivering reflections of the stars, and in and through the warm summer night, the darting flight of the bats wove a phantom net before his eyes. The Grieg music still throbbed an untiring measure in his head, and the thought of Lambert gave way to more accustomed meditations. He had leaned his elbows on the sill, and did not move till some time afterwards, when a bat brushed his face with her wings in an attempt to get into the lighted room. Then he got up and yawned a rather dreary yawn.
“Well, the world’s a very pretty place,” he said to himself; “it’s a pity it doesn’t seem to meet all the requirements of the situation.”
He was still young enough to forget at times the conventionality of cynicism.
Lieutenant Gerald Hawkinssurveyed his pink and newly shaven face above his white tie and glistening shirt-front with a smile of commendation. His moustache was looking its best, and showing most conspicuously. Therewas, at least, that advantage in a complexion that burned red, he thought to himself, that it made a fair moustache tell. In his button-hole was a yellow rose, given him by Mrs. Gascogne on condition, as she said (metaphorically it is to be presumed), that he “rubbed it well into Lady Dysart” that she had no blossom to equal it in shape and beauty. A gorgeous red silk sachet with his initials embroidered in gold upon it lay on the table, and as he took a handkerchief out of it his eye fell on an open letter that had lain partially hidden beneath one side of the sachet. His face fell perceptibly; taking it up he looked through it quickly, a petulant wrinkle appearing between his light eyebrows.
“Hang it! She ought to know I can’t get any leave now before the Twelfth, and then I’m booked to Glencairn. It’s all rot going on like this—” He took the letter in both hands as if to tear it up, but changing his mind, stuffed it in among the pocket handkerchiefs, and hurried downstairs in response to a shout from below. His polo-cart was at the door, and in it sat Captain Cursiter, wearing an expression of dismal patience that scarcely warranted Mr. Hawkins’ first remark.
“Well, you seem to be in a good deal of a hurry, old chap. Is it your dinner or is it Hope-Drummond?”
“When I’m asked to dinner at eight, I like to get there before half-past,” replied Cursiter sourly; “and when you’re old enough to have sense you will too.”
Mr. Hawkins drove at full pace out of the barrack gates before he replied, “It’s all very fine for you to talk as if you were a thousand, Snipey, but, by George! we’re all getting on a bit.” His ingenuous brow clouded under the peak of his cap, and his thoughts reverted to the letter that he had thrust into the sachet. “I’ve been pretty young at times, I admit, but that’s the sort of thing that makes you a lot older afterwards.”
“Good thing, too,” put in Cursiter unsympathetically.
“Yes, by Jove!” continued Mr. Hawkins; “I’ve often said I’d take a pull, and somehow it never came off, but I’m dashed if I’m not going to do it this time.”
Captain Cursiter held his peace, and waited for the confidence that experience had told him would inevitablyfollow. It did not come quite in the shape in which he had expected it.
“I suppose there isn’t the remotest chance of my getting any leave now, is there?”
“No, not the faintest; especially as you want to go away for the Twelfth.”
“Yes, I’m bound to go then,” acknowledged Mr. Hawkins with a sigh not unmixed with relief; “I suppose I’ve just got to stay here.”
Cursiter turned round and looked up at his young friend. “What are you up to now?”
“Don’t be such an owl, Cursiter,” responded Mr. Hawkins testily; “why should there be anything up because I want all the leave I can get? It’s a very common complaint.”
“Yes, it’s a very common complaint,” replied Cursiter, with a certain acidity in his voice that was not lost upon Hawkins; “but what gave it to you this time?”
“Oh, hang it all, Cursiter! I know what you’re driving at well enough; but you’re wrong. You always think you’re the only man in the world who has any sense about women.”
“I didn’t think I had said anything about women,” returned the imperturbable Cursiter, secretly much amused at the sensitiveness of Mr. Hawkins’ conscience.
“Perhaps you didn’t; but you’re always thinking about them and imagining other people are doing the same,” retorted Hawkins; “and may I ask what my wanting leave has to say to the question?”
“You’re in a funk,” said Cursiter; “though mind you,” he added, “I don’t blame you for that.”
Mr. Hawkins debated with himself for an instant, and a confession as to the perturbed condition of that overworked organ, his heart, trembled on his lips. He even turned round to speak, but found something so discouraging to confidence in the spare, brown face, with its uncompromisingly bitten moustache and observant eyes, that the impulse was checked.
“Since you seem to know so much about me and the reasons why I want leave, and all the rest of it, I need say no more.”
Captain Cursiter laughed. “Oh! don’t on my account.”
Hawkins subsided into a dignified silence, which Cursiter, as was his wont, did not attempt to break. He fell into meditation on the drift of what had been said to him, and thought that he would write to Greer (Greer was the adjutant), and see about getting Hawkins away from Lismoyle; and he was doing so well here, he grumbled mentally, and getting so handy in the launch. If only this infernal Fitzpatrick girl would have stayed with her cads in Dublin everything would have been as right as rain. There was no other woman here that signified except Miss Dysart, and it didn’t seem likely she’d look at him, though you never could tell what a woman would or would not do.
Captain Cursiter was “getting on,” as captains go, and he was the less disposed to regard his junior’s love affairs with an indulgent eye, in that he had himself served a long and difficult apprenticeship in such matters, and did not feel that he had profited much by his experiences. It had happened to him at an early age to enter ecstatically into the house of bondage, and in it he had remained with eyes gradually opening to its drawbacks, until, a few years before, the death of the only apparent obstacle to his happiness had brought him face to face with its realisation. Strange to say, when this supreme moment arrived, Captain Cursiter was disposed for further delay; but it shows the contrariety of human nature, that when he found himself superseded by his own subaltern, an habitually inebriated viscount, instead of feeling grateful to his preserver, he committed the imbecility of horse-whipping him; and finding it subsequently advisable to leave his regiment, he exchanged into the infantry with a settled conviction that all women were liars.
The coach-house at Bruff, though not apparently adapted for theatrical purposes, had been for many years compelled to that use by Garry Dysart, and when, at half-past nine o’clock that night, Lady Dysart and her guests proceeded thither, they found that it had been arranged to the best possible advantage. The seats were few, and the carriages, ranging from an ancestral yellow chariot to Pamela’s pony-trap, were drawn up for the use of the rest of the audience. A dozen or so of the workmen and farm labourers lined the walls in respectful silence; and the servants of the household were divided between the outside car and the chariot. In front of a door leading to the harness-room, two clothes-horses, draped with tablecloths, a long ottoman, once part of the furniture of a pre-historic yacht of Sir Benjamin’s, two chairs, and a ladder, indicated the stage, and four stable-lanterns on the floor served as footlights. Lady Dysart, the Archdeacon, and Mrs. Gascogne sat in three chairs of honour; the landau was occupied by the rest of the party, with the exception of Francie and Hawkins, who had followed the others from the drawing-room at a little distance. When they appeared, the coach-box of the landau seemed their obvious destination; but at the same instant the wrangling voices of the actors in the harness-room ceased, the play began, and when Pamela next looked round neither Francie nor Mr. Hawkins was visible, and from the open window of an invalided brougham that had been pushed into the background, came sounds of laughter that sufficiently indicated their whereabouts.
The most able and accustomed of dramatic critics would falter in the attempt to master the leading idea of one of Garry’s entertainments; so far as this performance made itself intelligible, it consisted of nightmare snatches of “Kenilworth,” subordinated to the exigencies of stage properties, chiefest among these being Sir Benjamin’s deputy-lieutenant’s uniform. The sword and cocked hat found their obvious wearer in the Earl of Leicester, and the white plume had been yielded to Kitty Gascogne, whose small crimson face grinned consciously beneath the limp feathers. Lady Dysart’s white bernouse was felt to confer an air of simplicity appropriate to the part of Amy Robsart, and its owner could not repress a groan as she realised that the heroine would inevitably be consigned to the grimy depths of the yacht ottoman, a receptacle long consecrated to the office of stage tomb. At present, however, it was employed as a sofa, on which sat Leicester and Amy, engaged in an exhausting conversation on State matters, the onus of which fell entirely upon the former, his companion’s part in it consisting mainly of a sustained giggle. It presently became evident that even Garry was flagging, and glances towards the door of the harness-room told that expected relief delayed its coming.
“He’s getting a bit blown,” remarked Mr. Hawkins from the window of the brougham. “Go it, Leicester!”
Garry’s only reply was to rise and stalk towards the door with a dignity somewhat impaired by the bagginess of the silver-laced trousers. The deserted countess remained facing the audience in an agony of embarrassment that might have softened the heart of anyone except her lord, whose direction, “Talk about Queen Elizabeth, you ass!” was audible to everyone in the coach-house. Fortunately for Kitty Gascogne, her powers of soliloquy were not long tested. The door burst open, Garry hurried back to the ottoman, and had only time to seize Amy Robsart’s hand and kneel at her feet when a tall figure took the stage with a mincing amble. James Canavan had from time immemorial been the leading lady in Garry’s theatricals, and his appearance as Queen Elizabeth was such as to satisfy his oldest admirers. He wore a skirt which was instantly recognised by the household as belonging to Mrs. Brady the cook, a crown made of gold paper inadequately restrained his iron-grey locks, a ham-frill ruff concealed his whiskers, and the deputy-lieutenant’s red coat, with the old-fashioned long tails and silver epaulettes, completed his equipment.