His entrance brought down the house; even Lady Dysart forgot her anxiety to find out where Mr. Hawkins’ voice had come from, and collapsed into a state afterwards described by the under-housemaid as “her ladyship in splits.”
“Oh fie, fie, fie!” said Queen Elizabeth in a piping falsetto, paying no heed to the demonstrations in her favour; “Amy Robsart and Leicester! Oh, dear, dear, this will never do!”
Leicester still stooped over Amy’s hand, but even the occupants of the brougham heard the whisper in which he said, “You’re not half angry enough! Go on again!”
Thus charged, Queen Elizabeth swept to the back of the stage, and, turning there, advanced again upon the lovers, stamping her feet and gesticulating with clenched fists. “What! Amy Robsart and Leicester! Shocking! disgraceful!” she vociferated; then with a final burst, “D—n it! I can’t stand this!”
A roar of delight broke from the house; the delightalways provoked in rural audiences by the expletive that age has been powerless to wither or custom to stale. Hawkins’ amusement found vent in such a stentorian “Bravo!” that Lady Dysart turned quickly at the sound, and saw his head and Francie’s at the window of the brougham. Even in the indifferent light of the lamps, Francie discerned disapproval in her look. She sat back precipitately.
“Oh, Mr. Hawkins!” she exclaimed, rashly admitting that she felt the position to be equivocal; “I think I’d better get out.”
Now, if ever, was the time for Mr. Hawkins to take that pull of which he had spoken so stoutly to Captain Cursiter, but in addition to other extenuating circumstances, it must be admitted that Sir Benjamin’s burgundy had to some slight extent made summer in his veins, and caused him to forget most things except the fact that the prettiest girl he had ever seen was sitting beside him.
“No, you sha’n’t,” he replied, leaning back out of the light, and taking her hand as if to prevent her from moving; “you won’t go, will you?”
He suddenly felt that he was very much in love, and threw such entreaty into the foregoing unremarkable words that Francie’s heart beat foolishly, and her efforts to take away her hand were very feeble.
“You don’t want to go away, do you? You like sitting here with me?”
The powers of repartee that Tommy Whitty had often found so baffling failed Francie unaccountably on this occasion. She murmured something that Hawkins chose to take for assent, and in a moment he had passed his arm round her waist, and possessed himself of the other hand.
“Now, you see, you can’t get away,” he whispered, taking a wary look out of the window of the brougham. All the attention of the audience was engrossed upon the stage, where, at this moment, Queen Elizabeth having chased Amy and Leicester round the ottoman, was now doing her best not to catch them as they together scaled the clothes-horse. The brougham was behind everyone; no one was even thinking of them, and Hawkins leaned towards Francie till his lips almost touched her cheek. She drew back from him, but the kiss came and went in a moment, and was followed by more, that she did not try to escape. The loud clapping of the audience on the exit of Queen Elizabeth brought Hawkins back to his senses; he heard the quick drawing of Francie’s breath and felt her tremble as he pressed her to him, and he realised that so far from “taking a pull,” he had let himself get out of hand without a struggle. For this rash, enchanting evening, at all events, it was too late to try to recover lost ground. What could he do now but hold her hand more tightly than before, and ask her unrepentingly whether she forgave him. The reply met with an unlooked-for interruption.
The drama on the stage had proceeded to its climax. Amy Robsart was understood to have suffered a violent death in the harness-room, and her entombment in the ottoman had followed as a matter of course. The process had been difficult; in fact, but for surreptitious aid from the corpse, the burial could scarcely have been accomplished; but the lid was at length closed, and the bereaved earl flung himself on his knees by the grave in an abandonment of grief. Suddenly from the harness-room came sounds of discordant triumph, and Queen Elizabeth bounded upon the stage, singing a war-song, of which the refrain,
“With me long sword, saddle, bridle,Whack, fol de rol!”
“With me long sword, saddle, bridle,Whack, fol de rol!”
“With me long sword, saddle, bridle,Whack, fol de rol!”
was alone intelligible. Amy Robsart’s white plume was stuck in the queen’s crown in token of victory, and its feathers rose on end as, with a flourish of the drawing-room poker which she carried as her sceptre, she leaped upon the grave, and continued her dance and song there. Clouds of dust and feathers rose from the cushions, and encouraged by the shouts of her audience, the queen’s dance waxed more furious. There was a stagger, a crash, and a shrill scream rose from the corpse, as the lid gave way, and Queen Elizabeth stood knee-deep in Amy Robsart’s tomb. An answering scream came from Mrs. Gascogne and Lady Dysart, both of whom rushed from their places on to the stage, and dragged forth the unhappy Kitty, smothered in dust, redder in the face than ever, but unhurt, and still giggling.
Francie and Hawkins emerged from the brougham, and mingled quietly with the crowd in the general break-up that followed. The point at issue between them had not been settled, but arrangements had been made for the following day that ensured a renewal of the argument.
Thecrash of the prayer gong was the first thing that Francie heard next morning. She had not gone to sleep easily the night before. It had been so much pleasanter to lie awake, that she had done so till she had got past the stage when the process of going to sleep is voluntary, and she had nearly exhausted the pleasant aspect of things and got to their wrong side when the dawn stood at her window, a pallid reminder of the day that was before her, and she dropped into prosaic slumber. She came downstairs in a state of some anxiety as to whether the chill that she had perceived last night in Lady Dysart’s demeanour would be still apparent. Breakfast was nearly over when she got into the room, and when she said good morning to Lady Dysart, she felt, though she was not eminently perceptive of the shades in a well-bred manner, that she had not been restored to favour.
She sat down at the table, with the feeling that was very familiar to her of being in disgrace, combating with the excitement and hurry of her nerves in a way that made her feel almost hysterical; and the fear that the strong revealing light of the long windows opposite to which she was sitting would show the dew of tears in her eyes, made her bend her head over her plate and scarcely raise it to respond to Pamela’s good-natured efforts to put her at her ease. Miss Hope-Drummond presently looked up from her letters and took a quiet stare at the discomposed face opposite to her. She had no particular dislike for Francie beyond the ordinary rooted distrust which she felt as a matter of course for those whom she regarded as fellow-competitors, but on general principles she was pleased that discomfiture had come to Miss Fitzpatrick. It occurred to her that a deepening of the discomfiture would suit wellwith Lady Dysart’s present mood, and might also be to her own personal advantage.
“I hope your dress did not suffer last night, Miss Fitzpatrick? Mine was ruined, but that was because Mr. Dysartwouldmake me climb on to the box for the last scene.”
“No, thank you, Miss Hope-Drummond—at least, it only got a little sign of dust.”
“Really? How nice! How lucky you were, weren’t you!”
“She may have been lucky about her dress,” interrupted Garry, “but I’m blowed if she could have seen much of the acting! Why on earth did you let Hawkins jam you into that old brougham, Miss Fitzpatrick?”
“Garry,” said Lady Dysart with unusual asperity, “how often am I to tell you not to speak of grown-up gentlemen as if they were little boys like yourself? Run off to your lessons. If you have finished, Miss Fitzpatrick,” she continued, her voice chilling again, “I think we will go into the drawing-room.”
It is scarcely to be wondered at that Francie found the atmosphere of the drawing-room rather oppressive. She was exceedingly afraid of her hostess; her sense of her misdoings was, like a dog’s, entirely shaped upon other people’s opinions, and depended in no way upon her own conscience; and she had now awakened to a belief that she had transgressed very badly indeed. “And if she” (“she” was Lady Dysart, and for the moment Francie’s standard of morality) “was so angry about me sitting in the brougham with him,” she thought to herself, as, having escaped from the house, she wandered alone under the oaks of the shady back avenue, “what would she think if she knew the whole story?”
In Francie’s society “the whole story” would have been listened to with extreme leniency, if not admiration; in fact, some episodes of a similar kind had before now been confided by our young lady to Miss Fanny Hemphill, and had even given her a certain standing in the eyes of that arbiter of manners and morals. But on this, as on a previous occasion, she did not feel disposed to take Miss Hemphill into her confidence. For one thing, she was less distinct in her recollection of what had happened than was usual. It had seemed to her that she had lost her wonted clear and mocking remembrance of events from the moment when he had taken her hand, and what followed was blurred in her memory as a landscape is blurred by the quiver of heat in the air. For another, she felt it all to be so improbable, so uncertain, that she could not quite believe in it herself. Hawkins was so radically different from any other man she had ever known; so much more splendid in all ways, the very texture of his clothes, the scent on his handkerchief, breathed to her his high estate. That she should have any part in this greatness was still a little beyond belief, and as she walked softly in the deep grass under the trees, she kept saying to herself that he could not really care for her, that it was too good to be true.
It was almost pathetic that this girl, with her wild-rose freshness and vivid spring-like youth, should be humble enough to think that she was not worthy of Mr. Hawkins, and sophisticated enough to take his love-making as a matter of common occurrence, that in no way involved anything more serious. Whatever he might think about it, however, she was certain that he would come here to-day, and being wholly without the power of self-analysis, she passed easily from such speculations to the simpler mental exercise of counting how many hours would have to crawl by before she could see him again. She had left the avenue, and she strolled aimlessly across a wide marshy place between the woods and the lake, that had once been covered by the water, but was now so far reclaimed that sedgy grass and bog-myrtle grew all over it, and creamy meadow-sweet and magenta loose-strife glorified the swampy patches and the edges of the drains. The pale azure of the lake lay on her right hand, with, in the distance, two or three white sails just tilted enough by the breeze to make them look like acute accents, gaily emphasising the purpose of the lake and giving it its final expression. In front of her spread a long, low wood, temptingly cool and green, with a gate pillared by tall fir-trees, from which, as she lifted the latch, a bevy of wood-pigeons dashed out startling her with the sudden frantic clapping of their wings. It was a curious wood—very old, judging by its scattered knots of hoary, weather-twisted pine-trees; very young, judging by the growth of ash saplings and slender larches that made dense every inch of space except where rides had been cut through them for the woodcock shooting. Francie walked along the quiet path, thinking little of the beauty that surrounded her, but unconsciously absorbing its rich harmonious stillness. The little grey rabbits did not hear her coming, and hopped languidly across the path, “for all the world like toys from Robinson’s,” thought Francie; the honeysuckle hung in delicious tangle from tree to tree; the wood-pigeons crooned shrilly in the fir-trees, and every now and then a bumble-bee started from a clover blossom in the grass with a deep resentful note, as when one plucks the lowest string of a violoncello. She had noticed a triple wheel-track over the moss and primrose leaves of the path, and vaguely wondered what had brought it there; but at a turn where the path took a long bend to the lake she was no longer left in doubt. Drawn up under a solemn pine-tree near the water’s edge was Sir Benjamin’s bath-chair, and in it the dreaded Sir Benjamin himself, vociferating at the top of his cracked old voice, and shaking his oaken staff at some person or persons not apparent.
Francie’s first instinct was flight, but before she had time to turn, her host had seen her, and changing his tone of fury to one of hideous affability he called to her to come and speak to him. Francie was too uncertain as to the exact extent of his intellect to risk disobedience, and she advanced tremblingly.
“Come here, Miss,” said Sir Benjamin, goggling at her through his gold spectacles. “You’re the pretty little visitor, and I promised I’d take you out driving in my carriage and pair. Come here and shake hands with me Miss. Where’s your manners?”
This invitation was emphasised by a thump of his stick on the floor of the chair, and Francie, with an almost prayerful glance round for James Canavan, was reluctantly preparing to comply with it, when she heard Garry’s voice calling her.
“Miss Fitzpatrick! Hi! Come here!”
Miss Fitzpatrick took one look at the tremulous, irritableold claw outstretched for her acceptance, and plunged incontinently down a ride in the direction of the voice. In front of her stood a sombre ring of immense pine-trees, and in their shadow stood Garry and James Canavan, apparently in committee upon some small object that lay on the thick mat of moss and pine-needles.
“I heard the governor talking to you,” said Garry with a grin of intelligence, “and I thought you’d sooner come and look at the rat that’s just come out of this hole. Stinking Jemima’s been in there for the last half hour after rabbits. She’s my ferret, you know, a regular ripper,” he went on in excited narration, “and I expect she’s got the muzzle off and is having a high old time. She’s just bolted this brute.”
The brute in question was a young rat that lay panting on its side, unable to move, with blood streaming from its face.
“Oh! the creature!” exclaimed Francie with compassionate disgust; “what’ll you do with it?”
“I’ll take it home and try and tame it,” replied Garry; “it’s quite young enough. Isn’t it, Canavan?”
James Canavan, funereal in his black coat and rusty tall hat, was regarding the rat meditatively, and at the question he picked up Garry’s stick and balanced it in his hand.
“Voracious animals that we hate,Cats, rats, and bats deserve their fate,”
“Voracious animals that we hate,Cats, rats, and bats deserve their fate,”
“Voracious animals that we hate,Cats, rats, and bats deserve their fate,”
he said pompously, and immediately brought the stick down on the rat’s head with a determination that effectually disposed of all plans for its future, educational or otherwise.
Garry and Francie cried out together, but James Canavan turned his back unregardingly upon them and his victim, and stalked back to Sir Benjamin, whose imprecations, since Francie’s escape, had been pleasantly audible.
“The old beast!” said Garry, looking resentfully after his late ally; “you never know what he’ll do next. I believe if mother hadn’t been there last night, he’d have gone on jumping on Kitty Gascogne till he killed her. By the bye, Miss Fitzpatrick, Hawkins passed up the lake just now, and he shouted out to me to say that he’d be at theturf-boat pier at four o’clock, and he hoped none of you were going out.”
Then he had not forgotten her; he was going to keep his word, thought Francie, with a leap of the heart, but further thoughts were cut short by the sudden appearance of Pamela, Christopher, and Miss Hope-Drummond at the end of the ride. The treacherous slaughter of the rat was immediately recounted to Pamela at full length by Garry, and Miss Fitzpatrick addressed herself to Christopher.
“How sweet your woods are, Mr. Dysart,” she began, feeling that some speech of the kind was suitable to the occasion. “I declare, I’d never be tired walking in them!”
Christopher was standing a little behind the others, looking cool and lank in his flannels, and feeling a good deal less interested in things in general than he appeared. He had an agreeably craven habit of simulating enjoyment in the society of whoever fate threw him in contact with, not so much from a wish to please as from a politeness that had in it an unworthy fear of exciting displeasure; and so ably had he played the part expected of him that Miss Hope-Drummond had felt, as she strolled with him and his sister through the sunshiny wood, that he really was far more interested in her than she had given him credit for, and that if that goose Pamela were not so officious in always pursuing them about everywhere, they would have got on better still. She did not trouble her brothers in this way, and the idea that Mr. Dysart would not have come at all without his sister did not occur to her. She was, therefore, by no means pleased when she heard him suggest to Miss Fitzpatrick that she should come and see the view from the point, and saw them walk away in that direction without any reference to the rest of the party.
Christopher himself could hardly have explained why he did it. It is possible that he felt Francie’s ingenuous, unaffected vulgarity to be refreshing after the conversation in which Miss Hope-Drummond’s own especial tastes and opinions had shed their philosophy upon arechaufféof the society papers, and recollections of Ascot and Hurlingham. Perhaps also, after his discovery that Francie had a soul to be saved, he resented the absolute possession that Hawkins had taken of her the night before. Hawkins was a goodlittle chap, but not the sort of person to develop a nascent intellectuality, thought this sage of seven-and-twenty.
“Why did you come out here by yourself?” he said to her, some little time after they had left the others.
“And why shouldn’t I?” answered Francie, with the pertness that seldom failed her, even when, as on this morning, she felt a little uninterested in every subject except one.
“Because it gave us the trouble of coming out to look for you.”
“To see I didn’t get into mischief, I suppose!”
“That hadn’t occurred to me. Do you always get into mischief when you go out by yourself?”
“I would if I thought you were coming out to stop me!”
“But why should I want to stop you?” asked Christopher, aware that this class of conversation was of a very undeveloping character, but feeling unable to better it.
“Oh, I don’t know; I think everyone’s always wanting to stop me,” replied Francie with a cheerful laugh; “I declare I think it’s impossible for me to do anything right.”
“Well, you don’t seem to mind it very much,” said Christopher, the thought of how like she was to a typical “June” in a Christmas Number striking him for the second time; “but perhaps that’s because you’re used to it.”
“Oh, then, I can tell you Iamused to it, but, indeed, I don’t like it any better for that.”
There was a pause after this. They scrambled over the sharp loose rocks, and between the stunted fir-trees of the lake shore, until they gained a comparatively level tongue of sandy gravel, on which the sinuous line of dead rushes showed how high the fretful waves had thrust themselves in winter. A glistening bay intervened between this point and the promontory of Bruff, a bay dotted with the humped backs of the rocks in the summer shallows, and striped with dark green beds of rushes, among which the bald coots dodged in and out with shrill metallic chirpings. Outside Bruff Point the lake spread broad and mild, turned to a translucent lavender grey by an idly-drifting cloud; the slow curve of the shore was followed by the woods, till the hay fields of Lismoyle showed faintly beyond them, and, further on, the rival towers of church and chapel gave a finish to the landscape that not even conventionality could depriveof charm. Christopher knew every detail of it by heart. He had often solaced himself with it when, as now, he had led forth visitors to see the view, and had discerned their boredom with a keenness that was the next thing to sympathy; he had lain there on quiet Autumn evenings, and tried to put into fitting words the rapture and the despair of the sunset, and had gone home wondering if his emotions were not mere self-conscious platitudes, rather more futile and contemptible than the unambitious adjectives, or even the honest want of interest, of the average sight-seer. He waited rather curiously to see whether Miss Fitzpatrick’s problematic soul would here utter itself. From his position a little behind her he could observe her without seeming to do so; she was looking down the lake with a more serious expression than he had yet seen on her face, and when she turned suddenly towards him, there was a wistfulness in her eyes that startled him.
“Mr. Dysart,” she began, rather more shyly than usual; “d’ye know whose is that boat with the little sail, going away down the lake now?”
Christopher’s mood received an unpleasant jar.
“That’s Mr. Hawkins’ punt,” he replied shortly.
“Yes, I thought it was,” said Francie, too much preoccupied to notice the flatness of her companion’s tone.
There was another pause, and then she spoke again.
“Mr. Dysart, d’ye think—would you mind telling me, was Lady Dysart mad with me last night?” She blushed as she looked at him, and Christopher was much provoked to feel that he also became red.
“Last night?” he echoed in a tone of as lively perplexity as he could manage; “what do you mean? Why should my mother be angry with you?” In his heart he knew well that Lady Dysart had been, as Francie expressed it, “mad.”
“I know she was angry,” pursued Francie. “I saw the look she gave me when I was getting out of the brougham, and then this morning she was angry too. I didn’t think it was any harm to sit in the brougham.”
“No more it is. I’ve often seen her do it herself.”
“Ah! Mr. Dysart, I didn’t think you’d make fun of me,” she said with an accent on the “you” that was flattering,but did not altogether please Christopher. “You know,” she went on, “I’ve never stayed in a house like this before. I mean—you’re all so different—”
“I think you must explain that remarkable statement,” said Christopher, becoming Johnsonian as was his wont when he found himself in a difficulty. “It seems to me we’re even depressingly like ordinary human beings.”
“You’re different to me,” said Francie in a low voice, “and you know it well.”
The tears came to her eyes, and Christopher, who could not know that this generality covered an aching thought of Hawkins, was smitten with horrified self-questioning as to whether anything he had said or done could have wounded this girl, who was so much more observant and sensitive than he could have believed.
“I can’t let you say things like that,” he said clumsily. “If we are different from you, it is so much the worse for us.”
“You’re trying to pay me a compliment now to get out of it,” said Francie, recovering herself; “isn’t that just like a man?”
She felt, however, that she had given him pain, and the knowledge seemed to bring him more within her comprehension.
Thereare few things that so stimulate life, both social and vegetable, in a country neighbourhood, as the rivalry that exists, sometimes unconfessed, sometimes bursting into an open flame, among the garden owners of the district. The Bruff garden was a little exalted and removed from such competition, but the superiority had its depressing aspect for Lady Dysart in that it was counted no credit to her to excel her neighbours, although those neighbours took to themselves the highest credit when they succeeded in excelling her. Of all these Mr. Lambert was the one she most feared and respected. He knew as well, if not better than she, the joints in the harness of Doolan the gardener, the weak battalions in his army of bedding-out plants, the failures in the ranks of his roses. Doolan himself, thedespotic and self-confident, felt an inward qualm when he saw Mr. Lambert strolling slowly through the garden with her ladyship, as he was doing this very afternoon, his observant eye taking in everything that Doolan would have preferred that it should not take in, while he paid a fitting attention to Lady Dysart’s conversation.
“I cannot understand why these Victor Verdiers have not better hearts,” she was saying, with the dejection of a clergyman disappointed in his flock. “Mrs. Waller told me they were very greedy feeders, and so I gave them the cleanings of the scullery drain, but they don’t seem to care for it. Doolan, of course, said Mrs. Waller was wrong, but I should like to know what you thought about it.”
Mr. Lambert delivered a diplomatic opinion, which sufficiently coincided with Lady Dysart’s views, and yet kept her from feeling that she had been entirely in the right. He prided himself as much on his knowledge of women as of roses, and there were ultra feminine qualities in Lady Dysart, which made her act up to his calculations on almost every point. Pamela did not lend herself equally well to his theories; “she hasn’t half the go of her mother. She’d as soon talk to an old woman as to the smartest chap in Ireland,” was how he expressed the fine impalpable barrier that he always felt between himself and Miss Dysart. She was now exactly fulfilling this opinion by devoting herself to the entertainment of his wife, while the others were amusing themselves down at the launch; and being one of those few who can go through unpleasant social duties with “all grace, and not with half disdain hid under grace,” not even Lambert could guess that she desired anything more agreeable.
“Isn’t it disastrous that young Hynes is determined upon going to America?” remarked Lady Dysart presently, as they left the garden; “just when he had learned Doolan’s ways, and Doolanisso hard to please.”
“America is the curse of this country,” responded Mr. Lambert gloomily; “the people are never easy till they get there and make a bit of money, and then they come swaggering back, saying Ireland’s not fit to live in, and end by setting up a public-house and drinking themselves to death. They’re sharp enough to know the only way ofmaking money in Ireland is by selling drink.” Lambert spoke with the conviction of one who is sure, not only of his facts, but of his hearer’s sympathy. Then seeing his way to a discussion of the matter that had brought him to Bruff, he went on, “I assure you, Lady Dysart, the amount of money that’s spent in drink in Lismoyle would frighten you. It’s easy to know where the rent goes, and those that aren’t drunken are thriftless, and there isn’t one of them has the common honesty to give up their land when they’ve ruined it and themselves. Now, there’s that nice farm, Gurthnamuckla, down by the lake-side, all going to moss from being grazed year after year, and the house falling to pieces for the want of looking after; and as for paying her rent—” he broke off with a contemptuous laugh.
“Oh, but what can you expect from that wretched old Julia Duffy?” said Lady Dysart good-naturedly; “she’s too poor to keep the place in order.”
“I can expect one thing of her,” said Lambert, with possibly a little more indignation than he felt; “that she’d pay up some of her arrears, or if she can’t, that she’d go out of the farm. I could get a tenant for it to-morrow that would give me a good fine for it and put the house to rights into the bargain.”
“Of course, that would be an excellent thing, and I can quite see that she ought to go,” replied Lady Dysart, falling away from her first position; “but what would happen to the poor old creature if she left Gurthnamuckla?”
“That’s just what your son says,” replied Lambert with an almost irrepressible impatience; “he thinks she oughtn’t to be disturbed because of some promise that she says Sir Benjamin made her, though there isn’t a square inch of paper to prove it. But I think there can be no doubt that she’d be better and healthier out of that house; she keeps it like a pig-stye. Of course, as you say, the trouble is to find some place to put her.”
Lady Dysart turned upon him a face shining with the light of inspiration.
“The back-lodge!” she said, with Delphic finality. “Let her go into the back-lodge when Hynes goes out of it!”
Mr. Lambert received this suggestion with as much admiration as if he had not thought of it before.
“By Jove! Lady Dysart, I always say that you have a better head on your shoulders than any one of us! That’s a regular happy thought.”
Any new scheme, no matter how revolutionary, was sure to be viewed with interest, if not with favour, by Lady Dysart, and if she happened to be its inventor, it was endowed with virtues that only flourished more strongly in the face of opposition. In a few minutes she had established Miss Duffy in the back-lodge, with, for occupation, the care of the incubator recently imported to Bruff, and hitherto a failure except as a cooking-stove; and for support, the milk of a goat that should be chained to a laurel at the back of the lodge, and fed by hand. While these details were still being expanded, there broke upon the air a series of shrill, discordant whistles, coming from the direction of the lake.
“Good heavens!” ejaculated Lady Dysart. “What can that be? Something must be happening to the steam-launch; it sounds as if it were in danger!”
“It’s more likely to be Hawkins playing the fool,” replied Lambert ill-temperedly. “I saw him on the launch with Miss Fitzpatrick just after we left the pier.”
Lady Dysart said nothing, but her expression changed with such dramatic swiftness from vivid alarm to disapproval, that her mental attitude was as evident as if she had spoken.
“Hawkins is very popular in Lismoyle,” observed Lambert, trepidly.
“That I can very well understand,” said Lady Dysart, opening her parasol with an abruptness that showed annoyance, “since he takes so much trouble to make himself agreeable to the Lismoyle young ladies.”
Another outburst of jerky, amateur whistles from the steam launch gave emphasis to the remark.
“Oh, the trouble’s a pleasure,” said Lambert acidly. “I hope the pleasure won’t be a trouble to the young ladies one of these days.”
“Why, what do you mean?” cried Lady Dysart, much interested.
“Oh, nothing,” said Lambert, with a laugh, “except that he’s been known to love and ride away before now.”
He had no particular object in lowering Hawkins in Lady Dysart’s eyes, beyond the fact that it was an outlet for his indignation at Francie’s behaviour in leaving him, her oldest friend, to go and make a common laughing-stock of herself with that young puppy, which was the form in which the position shaped itself in his angry mind. He almost decided to tell Lady Dysart the episode of the Limerick tobacconist’s daughter, when they saw Miss Hope-Drummond and Captain Cursiter coming up the shrubbery path towards them, and he was obliged to defer it to a better occasion.
“What was all that whistling about, Captain Cursiter?” asked Lady Dysart, with a certain vicarious severity.
Captain Cursiter seemed indisposed for discussion. “Mr. Hawkins was trying the whistle, I think,” he replied with equal severity.
“Oh, yes, Lady Dysart!” broke in Miss Hope-Drummond, apparently much amused; “Mr. Hawkins has nearly deafened us with that ridiculous whistle; theywouldgo off down the lake, and when we called after them to ask where they were going, and told them they would be late for tea, they did nothing but whistle back at us in that absurd way.”
“Why? What? Who have gone? Whom do you mean by they?” Lady Dysart’s handsome eyes shone like stars as they roved in wide consternation from one speaker to another.
“Miss Fitzpatrick and Mr. Hawkins!” responded Miss Hope-Drummond with childlike gaiety; “we were all talking on the pier, and we suddenly heard them calling out ‘good-bye!’ And Mr. Hawkins said he couldn’t stop the boat, and off they went down the lake! I don’t know when we shall see them again.”
Lady Dysart’s feelings found vent in a long-drawn groan. “Not able to stop the boat! Oh, Captain Cursiter, is there any danger? Shall I send a boat after them? Oh, how I wish this house was in the Desert of Sahara, or that that intolerable lake was at the bottom of the sea!”
This was not the first time that Captain Cursiter had been called upon to calm Lady Dysart’s anxieties in connection with the lake, and he now unwillingly felt himself bound to assure her that Hawkins thoroughly understood the management of theSerpolette, that he would certainly be back in a few minutes, and that in any case, the lake was as calm as the conventional mill-pond. Inwardly he was cursing himself for having yielded to Hawkins in putting in to Bruff; he was furious with Francie for the vulgar liberties taken by her with the steam-whistle, an instrument employed by all true steam-launchers in the most abstemious way; and lastly, he was indignant with Hawkins for taking his boat without his permission, and leaving him here, as isolated from all means of escape, and as unprotected, as if his clothes had been stolen while he was bathing.
The party proceeded moodily into the house, and, as moodily, proceeded to partake of tea. It was just about the time that Mrs. Lambert was asking that nice, kind Miss Dysart for another cup ofveryweak tea—“Hog-wash, indeed, as Mr. Lambert calls it”—that the launch was sighted by her proprietor crossing the open space of water beyond Bruff Point, and heading for Lismoyle. Almost immediately afterwards Mrs. Lambert received the look from her husband which intimated that the time had arrived for her to take her departure, and some instinct told her that it would be advisable to relinquish the prospect of the second cup and to go at once.
If Mr. Lambert’s motive in hurrying back to Lismoyle was the hope of finding the steam-launch there, his sending along our friend the black mare, till her sleek sides were in a lather of foam, was unavailing. As he drove on to the quay theSerpolettewas already steaming back to Bruff round the first of the miniature headlands that jagged the shore, and the good turkey-hen’s twitterings on the situation received even less attention than usual, as her lord pulled the mare’s head round and drove home to Rosemount.
The afternoon dragged wearily on at Bruff; Lady Dysart’s mood alternating between anger and fright as dinner-time came nearer and nearer and there was still no sign of the launch.
“What will Charlotte Mullen say to me?” she wailed, as she went for the twentieth time to the window and saw no sign of the runaways upon the lake vista that was visible from it. She found small consolation in the other two occupants of the drawing-room. Christopher, reading thenewspaper with every appearance of absorbed interest, treated the alternative theories of drowning or elopement with optimistic indifference; and Miss Hope-Drummond, while disclaiming any idea of either danger, dwelt on the social aspect of the affair so ably as almost to reduce her hostess to despair. Cursiter was down at the pier, seriously debating with himself as to the advisability of rowing the long four miles back to Lismoyle, and giving his opinion to Mr. Hawkins in language that would, he hoped, surprise even that bland and self-satisfied young gentleman. There Pamela found him standing, as desolate as Sir Bedivere when the Three Queens had carried away King Arthur in their barge, and from thence she led him, acquiescing with sombre politeness in the prospect of dining out for the second time in one week, and wondering whether Providence would again condemn him to sit next Miss Hope-Drummond, and prattle to her about the Lincolnshire Cursiters. He felt as if talking to Pamela would make the situation more endurable. She knew how to let a man alone, and when she did talk she had something to say, and did not scream twaddle at you like a peacock. These unamiable reflections will serve to show the irritation of Captain Cursiter’s mind, and as he stalked into dinner with Lady Dysart, and found that for her sake he had better make the best of his subaltern’s iniquity, he was a man much to be pitied.
Atabout this very time it so happened that Mr. Hawkins was also beginning to be sorry for himself. The run to Lismoyle had been capital fun, and though the steering and the management of the machinery took up more of his attention than he could have wished, he had found Francie’s society more delightful than ever. The posting of a letter, which he had fortunately found in his pocket, had been the pretext for the expedition, and both he and Francie confidently believed that they would get back to Bruff at about six o’clock. It is true that Mr. Hawkins received rather a shock when, on arriving at Lismoyle, he found thatit was already six o’clock, but he kept this to himself, and lost no time in starting again for Bruff.
The excitement and hurry of the escapade had conspired, with the practical business of steering and attending to the various brass taps, to throw sentiment for a space into the background, and that question as to whether forgiveness should or should not be extended to him, hung enchantingly on the horizon, as delightful and as seductive as the blue islands that floated far away in the yellow haze of the lowered sun. There was not a breath of wind, and the launch slit her way through tranquil, oily spaces of sky that lay reflected deep in the water, and shaved the long rocky points so close that they could see the stones at the bottom looking like enormous cairngorms in the golden shallows.
“That was a near thing,” remarked Mr. Hawkins complacently, as a slight grating sound told that they had grazed one of these smooth-backed monsters. “Good business old Snipey wasn’t on board!”
“Well, I’ll tell old Snipey on you the very minute I get back!”
“Oh, you little horror!” said Mr. Hawkins.
Both laughed at this brilliant retort, and Hawkins looked down at her, where she sat near him, with an expression of fondness that he did not take the least pains to conceal.
“Hang it! you know,” he said presently, “I’m sick of holding this blooming wheel dead amidships; I’ll just make it fast, and let her rip for a bit by herself.” He suited the action to the word, and came and sat down beside her.
“Now you’re going to drown me again, I suppose, the way Mr. Lambert did,” Francie said. She felt a sudden trembling that was in no way caused by the danger of which she had spoken; she knew quite well why he had left the wheel, and her heart stood still with the expectation of that explanation that she knew was to come.
“So you think I want to drown you, do you?” said Hawkins, getting very close to her, and trying to look under the wide brim of her hat. “Turn round and look me in the face and say you’re ashamed of yourself for thinking of such a thing.”
“Go on to your steering,” responded Francie, still looking down and wondering if he saw how her hands were trembling.
“But I’m not wanted to steer, and you do want me here, don’t you?” replied Hawkins, his face flushing through the sunburn as he leaned nearer to her, “and you know you never told me last night if you were angry with me or not.”
“Well, I was.”
“Ah, not very—” A rather hot and nervous hand, burned to an unromantic scarlet, turned her face upwards against her will. “Not very?” he said again, looking into her eyes, in which love lay helpless like a prisoner.
“Don’t,” said Francie, yielding the position, powerless, indeed, to do otherwise.
Her delicate defeated face was drawn to his; her young soul rushed with it, and with passionate, innocent sincerity, thought it had found heaven itself. Hawkins could not tell how long it was before he heard again, as if in a dream, the click-clicking of the machinery, and wondered, in the dazed way of a person who is “coming to” after an anæsthetic, how the boat was getting on.
“I must go back to the wheel, darling,” he whispered in the small ear that lay so close to his lips; “I’m afraid we’re a little bit off the course.”
As he spoke, his conscience reminded him that he himself had got a good deal off his course, but he put the thought aside. The launch was duly making for the headland that separated them from Bruff, but Hawkins had not reflected that in rounding the last point he had gone rather nearer to it than was usual, and that he was consequently inside the proper course. This, however, was an easy matter to rectify, and he turned theSerpolette’shead out towards the ordinary channel. A band of rushes lay between him and it, and he steered wide of them to avoid their parent shallow. Suddenly there was a dull shock, a quiver ran through the launch, and Hawkins found himself sitting abruptly on the india-rubber matting at Francie’s feet. The launch had run at full speed upon the soft, muddy shallow that extended unconscionably far beyond the bed of rushes, and her sharp nose was now digging itself deeper and deeper into the mud. Hawkins lost notime in reversing the engine, but by the time they had gone full speed astern for five minutes, and had succeeded only in lashing the water into a thick, pea-soupy foam all round them, he began to feel exceedingly anxious as to their prospects of getting off again.
“Well, we’ve been and gone and done it this time,” he said, with a laugh that had considerably more discomfiture than mirth in it; “I expect we’ve got to stay here till we’re taken off.”
Francie looked all round the lake; not a boat was in sight, not even a cottage on the shore from which they might hope for help. She was standing up, pale, now that the tide of excitement had ebbed a little, and shaken by a giddy remembrance of that moment when the yacht heeled over and flung her into blackness.
“I told you you were going to drown me,” she said, shivering and laughing together; “and oh—! what in the name of goodness will I say to Lady Dysart?”
“Oh, we’ll tell her it was an accident, and she won’t say a word,” said Hawkins with more confidence than he felt. “If the worst comes to the worst I’ll swim ashore and get a boat.”
“Oh don’t, don’t! you mustn’t do that!” she cried, catching at his arm as if she already saw him jumping overboard; “I’d be frightened—I couldn’t bear to see you—don’t go away from me!”
Her voice failed pathetically, and, bared of all their wiles, her eyes besought him through the tears of a woman’s terror and tenderness. Hawkins looked at her with a kind of ecstacy.
“Do you care so much as all that,” he said, “you silly little thing!”
After this there was nothing to be done except sit down again, and with her head on his shoulder, allow that fatal anæsthetic to rob him of all considerations beyond Francie’s kisses.
Dinnerat Bruff was over. It had been delayed as long as possible in the belief that each moment would bring backthe culprits, and it had dragged painfully through its eight courses, in spite of Lady Dysart’s efforts to hasten Gorman and his satellite in their inexorable orbit. Everyone except Garry and Miss Hope-Drummond had been possessed by an anxiety which Lady Dysart alone had courage to express. She indeed, being a person who habitually said what other people were half afraid to think, had dilated on all possible calamities till Cursiter, whose temper was momently becoming worse, many times wished himself on the lake, rowing dinnerless and vengeful on the track of the fugitives.
The whole party was now out of doors, and on its way down to the landing-place, in the dark twilight; Lady Dysart coming last of all, and driving before her the much incensed Gorman, whom she had armed with the gong, in the idea that its warlike roar would be at once a guide and a menace to the wanderers. So far it had only had the effect of drawing together in horrified questioning all the cattle in the lower part of the park, and causing them to rush, bellowing, along by the railings that separated them from the siren who cried to them with a voice so commanding and so mysterious. Gorman was fully alive to the indignity of his position, and to the fact that Master Garry, his ancient enemy, was mocking at his humiliation; but any attempt to moderate his attack upon the gong was detected by his mistress.
“Go on, Gorman! Beat it louder! The more they bellow the better; it will guide them into the landing-place.”
Christopher’s affected misapprehension of his mother’s pronouns created a diversion for some time, as it was perhaps intended to do. He had set himself to treat the whole affair with unsympathetic levity, but, in spite of himself, an insistent thorn of anxiety made it difficult for him to make little of his mother’s vigorous panic. It was absurd, but her lamentations about the dangers of the lake and of steam-launches found a hollow echo in his heart. He remembered, with a shudder that he had not felt at the time, the white face rising and dipping in the trough of the grey lake waves; and though his sense of humour, and of the supreme inadequacy and staleness of swearing, usually deprived him of that safety valve, he was conscious that in the background of his mind the traditional adjective was monotonously coupling itself with the name of Mr. Hawkins. He was walking behind the others down the path to the pier. Here and there great trees that looked tired from their weight of foliage stood patiently spreading their arms to the dew, and in the intervals between Gorman’s fantasias on the gong, he could hear how the diffident airs from the lake whispered confidentially to the sleeping leaves. There was no moon; the sky was thickened with a light cloudiness, and in the mystical twilight the pale broad blossoms of an elder-bush looked like constellated stars in a nearer and darker firmament. Christopher walked on, that cold memory of danger and disquiet jarring the fragrance and peace of the rich summer night.
The searchers ranged themselves on the pier; the gong was stilled, and except for the occasional stamping of a hoof, or low booming complaint from the cattle, there was perfect silence. All were listening for some sound from the lake before Christopher and Cursiter carried out their intention of starting in a boat to look for the launch. Suddenly in the misty darkness into which all were staring, a vivid spark of light sprang out. It burned for a few seconds only, a sharp distinct star, and then disappeared.
“There they are!” cried Lady Dysart. “The gong, Gorman! The gong!”
Gorman sounded with a will, and the harsh, brazen blare spread and rolled over the lake, but there was no response.
“Theymusthear that,” said Cursiter to Christopher; “why the devil don’t he whistle?”
“How should I know?” answered Christopher, with a crossness which was in some irrational way the outcome of extreme relief; “I suppose he fooled with it till it broke.”
“Perhaps they are not there after all,” suggested Miss Hope-Drummond cheerfully.
“How can you say such a thing, Evelyn!” exclaimed Lady Dysart indignantly; “I know it was they, and the light was a signal of distress!”
“More likely to have been Hawkins lighting a cigarette,” said Christopher; “if everyone would stop talking at the same time we might be able to hear something.”
A question ran like a ripple through Pamela’s mind, “What makes Christopher cross to-night?” but the next instant she forgot it. A distant shout, unmistakably uttered by Hawkins, came thinly to them across the water, and in another second or two the noise of oars could be distinctly heard. The sound advanced steadily.
“Show a light there on the pier!” called out a voice that was not Hawkins’.
Cursiter struck a match, a feeble illuminant that made everything around invisible except the faces of the group on the pier, and by the time it had been tossed, like a falling star, into the tarry blackness of the water, the boat was within conversational distance.
“Is Miss Fitzpatrick there?” demanded Lady Dysart.
“She is,” said Lambert’s voice.
“What have you done with the launch?” shouted Cursiter, in a tone that made his subaltern quake.
“She’s all right,” he made haste to reply. “She’s on that mud-shallow off Curragh Point, and Lambert’s man is on board her now. Lambert saw us aground there from his window, and we were at her for an hour trying to get her off, and then it got so dark, we thought we’d better leave her and come on. She’s all right, you know.”
“Oh,” said Captain Cursiter, in, as Hawkins thought to himself, a deuced disagreeable voice.
The boat came up alongside of the pier, and in the hubbub of inquiry that arose, Francie was conscious of a great sense of protection in Lambert’s presence, angry though she knew he was. As he helped her out of the boat, she whispered tremulously:
“It was awfully good of you to come.”
He did not answer, and stepped at once into the boat again. In another minute the necessary farewells had been made, and he, Cursiter, and Hawkins, were rowing back to the launch, leaving Francie to face her tribunal alone.
Itwas noon on the following day—a soaking, windy noon. Francie felt its fitness without being aware that she did so, as she knelt in front of her trunk, stuffing her few fineries into it with unscientific recklessness, and thinking with terrorthat it still remained for her to fee the elderly English upper housemaid with the half-crown that Charlotte had diplomatically given her for the purpose.
Everything had changed since yesterday, and changed for the worse. The broad window, out of which yesterday afternoon she had leaned in the burning sunshine to see the steam-launch puffing her way up the lake, was now closed against the rain; the dirty flounces of her best white frock, that had been clean yesterday, now thrust themselves out from under the lid of her trunk in disreputable reminder of last night’s escapade; and Lady Dysart, who had been at all events moderately friendly yesterday, now evidently considered that Francie had transgressed beyond forgiveness, and had acquiesced so readily in Francie’s suggestion of going home for luncheon, that her guest felt sorry that she had not said breakfast. Even the padlock of her bonnet-box refused to lock—was “going bandy with her,” as she put it in a phrase learnt from the Fitzpatrick cook—and she was still battling with it when the sound of wheels on the gravel warned her that the ordeal of farewell was at hand. Theblasécalm with which Sarah helped her through the presentation of Charlotte’s half-crown made her feel her social inferiority as keenly as the coldness of Lady Dysart’sadieuxmade her realise that she was going away in disgrace, when she sought her hostess and tried to stammer out the few words of orthodox gratitude that Charlotte had enjoined her not to forget.
Pamela, whose sympathies were always with the sinner, was kinder than ever, even anxiously kind, as Francie dimly perceived, and in some unexpected way her kindness brought a lump into the throat of the departing guest. Francie hurried mutely out on to the steps, where, in spite of the rain, the dogs and Christopher were waiting to bid her good-bye.
“You are very punctual,” he said. “I don’t know why you are in such a hurry to go away.”
“Oh, I think you’ve had quite enough of me,” Francie replied with a desperate attempt at gaiety. “I’m sure you’re all very glad to be shut of me.”
“That isn’t a kind thing to say, and I think you ought to know that it is not true either.”
“Indeed then I know itistrue,” answered Francie, preparing in her agitation to plunge into the recesses of the landau without any further ceremonies of farewell.
“Well, won’t you even shake hands with me?”
She was already in the carriage; but at this reproach she thrust an impulsive hand out of the window. “Oh, gracious—! I mean—I beg your pardon, Mr. Dysart,” she cried incoherently, “I—I’m awfully grateful for all your kindness, and to Miss Dysart—”
She hardly noticed how tightly he held her hand in his; but, as she was driven away, and, looking back, saw him and Pamela standing on the steps, the latter holding Max in her arms, and waving one of his crooked paws in token of farewell, she thought to herself that it must be only out of good nature they were so friendly to her; but anyhow they were fearfully nice.
“Thank goodness!” said Lady Dysart fervently, as she moved away from the open hall-door—“thank goodness that responsibility is off my hands. I began by liking the creature, but never, no, never, have I seen a girl so abominably brought up.”
“Not much notion of theconvenances, has she?” observed Miss Hope-Drummond, who had descended from her morning task of writing many letters in a tall, square hand, just in time to enjoy the sight of Francie’s departure, without having the trouble of saying good-bye to her.
“Convenances!” echoed Lady Dysart, lifting her dark eyes till nothing but the whites were visible; “I don’t suppose she could tell you the meaning of the word. ‘One master passion in the breast, like Aaron’s serpent, swallows up the rest,’ and of all the man-eaters I have ever seen, she is the most cannibalistic!”
Miss Hope-Drummond laughed in polite appreciation, and rustled crisply away towards the drawing-room. Lady Dysart looked approvingly after the tall, admirably neat figure, and thought, with inevitable comparison, of Francie’s untidy hair, and uncertainly draped skirts. She turned to Christopher and Pamela, and continued, with a lowered voice:
“Do you know, even the servants are all talking about her. Of course, they can’t help noticing what goes on.”
Christopher looked at his mother with a singularly expressionless face.
“Gorman hasn’t mentioned it to me yet, or William either.”
“If you had not interrupted me, Christopher,” said poor Lady Dysart, resentful of this irreproachably filial rebuke, “I would have told you that none of the servants breathed a word on the subject to me. Evelyn was told it by her maid.”
“How Evelyn can discuss such things with her maid, I cannot imagine,” said Pamela, with unwonted heat; “and Davis is such a particularly detestable woman.”
“I do not care in the least what sort of woman she is, she does hair beautifully, which is more than I can say for you,” replied Lady Dysart, with an Uhlan-like dash into the enemy’s country.
“I suppose it was by Davis’ advice that Evelyn made a point of ignoring Miss Fitzpatrick this whole morning,” continued Pamela, with the righteous wrath of a just person.
“It was quite unnecessary for her to trouble herself,” broke in Lady Dysart witheringly; “Christopher atoned for all her deficiencies—taking advantage of Mr. Hawkins’ absence, I suppose.”
“If Hawkins had been there,” said Christopher, with the slowness that indicated that he was trying not to stammer, “it would have saved me the trouble of making c—conversation for a person who did not care about it.”
“You may make your mind easy on that point, my dear!” Lady Dysart shot this parting shaft after her son as he turned away towards the smoking-room. “To do her justice, I don’t think she is in the least particular, so long as she has a man to talk to!”
It is not to be wondered at, that, as Francie drove through Lismoyle, she felt that the atmosphere was laden with reprobation of her and her conduct.
Her instinct told her that the accident to Captain Cursiter’s launch, and her connection with it, would be a luscious topic of discourse for everyone, from Mrs. Lambert downwards; and the thought kept her from deriving full satisfaction from the Bruff carriage and pair. Even whenshe saw Annie Beattie standing at her window with a duster in her hand, the triumph of her position was blighted by the reflection that if Charlotte did not know everything before the afternoon was out, full details would be supplied to her at the party to which on this very evening they had been bidden by Mrs. Beattie.
The prospect of the cross-examination which she would have to undergo grew in portentousness during the hour and a half of waiting at Tally Ho for her cousin’s return, while, through and with her fears, the dirt and vulgarity of the house and the furniture, the sickly familiarities of Louisa, and the all-pervading smell of cats and cooking, impressed themselves on her mind with a new and repellent vigour. But Charlotte, when she arrived, was evidently still in happy ignorance of the events that would have interested her so profoundly. Her Dublin dentist had done his spiriting gently, her friends had been so hospitable that her lodging-house breakfasts had been her only expense in the way of meals, and the traditional battle with the Lismoyle car-driver and his equally inevitable defeat had raised her spirits so much that she accepted Francie’s expurgated account of her sojourn at Bruff with almost boisterous approval. She even extended a jovial feeler in the direction of Christopher.
“Well, now, after all the chances you’ve had, Francie, I’ll not give tuppence for you if you haven’t Mr. Dysart at your feet!”
It was not usually Francie’s way to object to jests of this kind, but now she shrank from Charlotte’s heavy hand.
“Oh, he was awfully kind,” she said hurriedly; “but I don’t think he’ll ever want to marry anyone, not even Miss Hope-Drummond, for all as hard as she’s trying!”
“Paugh! Let her try!She’ll not get him, not if she was to put her eyes on sticks! But believe you me, child, there never was a man yet that pretended he didn’t want to marry that wasn’t dying for a wife!”
This statement demanded no reply, and Miss Mullen departed to the kitchen to see the new kittens and to hold high inquisition into the doings of the servants during her absence.
Mrs. Beattie gave but two parties in the year—one atChristmas, on account of the mistletoe; and one in July, on account of the raspberries, for which her garden was justly famous. This, it need scarcely be said, was the raspberry party, and accordingly when the afternoon had brought a cessation of the drizzling rain, Miss Ada and Miss Flossie Beattie might have been seen standing among the wet over-arching raspberry canes, devoured by midges, scarlet from the steamy heat, and pestered by that most maddening of all created things, the common fly, but, nevertheless, filling basket after basket with fruit. Miss May and Miss Carrie spent a long and arduous day in the kitchen making tartlets, brewing syrupy lemonade, and decorating cakes with pink and white sugar devices and mottos archly stimulative of conversation. Upon Mrs. Beattie and her two remaining daughters devolved the task of arranging the drawing-room chairs in a Christy minstrel circle, and borrowing extra tea-cups from their obliging neighbour, Mrs. Lynch; while Mr. Beattie absented himself judiciously until his normal five o’clock dinner hour, when he returned to snatch a perfunctory meal at a side table in the hall, his womenkind, after their wont, declining anything more substantial than nomadic cups of tea, brewed in the kitchen tea-pot, and drunk standing, like the Queen’s health.
But by eight o’clock all preparations were completed, and the young ladies were in the drawing-room, attired alike in white muslin and rose-coloured sashes, with faces pink and glossy from soap and water. In Lismoyle, punctuality was observed at all entertainments, not as a virtue but as a pleasure, and at half-past eight the little glaring drawing-room had rather more people in it than it could conveniently hold. Mrs. Beattie had trawled Lismoyle and its environs with the purest impartiality; no one was invidiously omitted, not even young Mr. Redmond the solicitor’s clerk, who came in thick boots and a suit of dress clothes so much too big for him as to make his trousers look like twin concertinas, and also to suggest the more massive proportions of his employer, Mr. Lynch. In this assemblage, Mrs. Baker, in her celebrated maroon velvet, was a star of the first magnitude, only excelled by Miss Mullen, whose arrival with her cousin was, in a way, the event of the evening. Everyone knew that Miss Fitzpatrick had returned from Bruff that day, and trailing clouds of glory followed her in the mind’s eye of the party as she came into the room. Most people, too, knew of the steam-launch adventure, so that when, later in the proceedings, Mr. Hawkins made his appearance, poor Mrs. Beattie was given small credit for having secured this prize.
“Are they engaged, do you think?” whispered Miss Corkran, the curate’s sister, to Miss Baker.
“Engaged indeed!” echoed Miss Baker, “no more than you are! If you knew him as well as I do you’d know that flirting’s all he cares for!”
Miss Corkran, who had not the pleasure of Mr. Hawkins’ acquaintance, regarded him coldly through her spectacles, and said that for her own part she disapproved of flirting, but liked making gentlemen-friends.
“Well, I suppose I might as well confess,” said Miss Baker with a frivolous laugh, “that there’s nothing I care for like flirting, but p’pa’s awful particular! Wasn’t he for turning Dr. M‘Call out of the house last summer because he cot me curling his moustache with my curling-tongs! ‘I don’t care what you do with officers,’ says p’pa, ‘but I’ll not have you going on with that Rathgar bounder of a fellow!’ Ah, but that was when the poor ‘Foragers’ were quartered here; they were the jolliest lot we ever had!”
Miss Corkran paid scant attention to these memories, being wholly occupied with observing the demeanour of Mr. Hawkins, who was holding Miss Mullen in conversation. Charlotte’s big, pale face had an intellectuality and power about it that would have made her conspicuous in a gathering more distinguished than the present, and even Mr. Hawkins felt something like awe of her, and said to himself that she would know how to make it hot for him if she chose to cut up rough about the launch business.
As he reflected on that escapade he felt that he would have given a good round sum of money that it had not taken place. He had played the fool in his usual way, and now it didn’t seem fair to back out of it. That, at all events, was the reason he gave to himself for coming to this blooming menagerie, as he inwardly termed Mrs. Beattie’s highest social effort; it wouldn’t do to chuck the whole thing up all of a sudden, even though, of course, the littlegirl knew as well as he did that it was all nothing but a lark. This was pretty much the substance of the excuses that he had offered to Captain Cursiter; and they had seemed so successful at the time that he now soothed his guilty conscience with arechaufféof them, while he slowly and conversationally made his way round the room towards the green rep sofa in the corner, whereon sat Miss Fitzpatrick, looking charming things at Mr. Corkran, judging, at least, by the smile that displayed the reverend gentleman’s prominent teeth to such advantage. Hawkins kept on looking at her over the shoulder of the Miss Beattie to whom he was talking, and with each glance he thought her looking more and more lovely. Prudence melted in a feverish longing to be near her again, and the direction of his wandering eye became at length so apparent that Miss Carrie afterwards told her sister that “Mr. Hawkins wasfearfully gone about Francie Fitzpatrick—oh, the tender looks he cast at her!”
Mrs. Beattie’s entertainments always began with music, and the recognised musicians of Lismoyle were now contributing his or her share in accustomed succession. Hawkins waited until the time came for Mr. Corkran to exhibit his wiry bass, and then definitely took up his position on the green sofa. When he had first come into the room their eyes had met with a thrilling sense of understanding, and since then Francie had felt rather than seen his steady and diplomatic advance in her direction. But somehow, now that he was beside her, they seemed to find little to say to each other.
“I suppose they’re all talking about our running aground yesterday,” he said at last in a low voice. “Does she know anything about it yet?” indicating Miss Mullen with a scarcely perceptible turn of his eye.
“No,” replied Francie in the same lowered voice; “but she will before the evening’s out. Everyone’s quizzing me about it.” She looked at him anxiously as she spoke, and his light eyebrows met in a frown.
“Confound their cheek!” he said angrily; “why don’t you shut them up?”
“I don’t know what to say to them. They only roar laughing at me, and say I’m not born to be drowned anyway.”
“Look here,” said Hawkins impatiently, “what do they do at these shows? Have we got to sit here all the evening?”
“Hush! Look at Charlotte looking at you, and that’s Carrie Beattie just in front of us.”
“I didn’t come here to be wedged into a corner of this little beastly hole all the evening,” he answered rebelliously; “can’t we get out to the stairs or the garden or something?”
“Mercy on us!” exclaimed Francie, half-frightened and half-delighted at his temerity. “Of course we can’t! Why, they’ll be going down to tea now in a minute—after that perhaps—”
“There won’t be any perhaps about it,” said Hawkins, looking at her with an expression that made her blush and tremble, “will there?”
“I don’t know—not if you go away now,” she murmured, “I’m so afraid of Charlotte.”
“I’ve nowhere to go; I only came here to see you.”
Captain Cursiter, at this moment refilling his second pipe, would not have studied the fascinating pages of theEngineerwith such a careless rapture had he at all realised how Mr. Hawkins was fulfilling his promises of amendment.
At this juncture, however, the ringing of a bell in the hall notified that tea was ready, and before Hawkins had time for individual action, he found himself swept forward by his hostess, and charged with the task of taking Mrs. Rattray, the doctor’s bride, down to the dining-room. The supply of men did little more than yield a sufficiency for the matrons, and after these had gone forth with due state, Francie found herself in the midst of a throng of young ladies following in the wake of their seniors. As she came down the stairs she was aware of a tall man taking off his coat in a corner of the hall, and before she reached the dining-room door Mr. Lambert’s hand was laid upon her arm.