It was generally felt in Lismoyle that Mr. Roderick Lambert held an
unassailable position in society. The Dysart agency had always been
considered to confer brevet rank as a country gentleman upon its owner,
apart even from the intimacy with the Dysarts which it implied; and as,
in addition to these advantages, Mr. Lambert possessed good looks, a
wife with money, and a new house at least a mile from the town, built
under his own directions and at his employer’s expense, Lismoyle placed
him unhesitatingly at the head of its visiting list. Of course his wife
was placed there too, but somehow or other Mrs. Lambert was a person of
far less consequence than her husband. She had had the money certainly,
but that quality was a good deal overlooked by the Lismoyle people in
their admiration for the manner in which her husband spent it. It was
natural that they should respect the captor rather than the captive,
and, in any case, Mr. Roderick Lambert’s horses and traps were more
impressive facts than the Maltese terrier and the shelf of patent
medicines that were Mrs. Lambert’s only extravagances.
Possibly, also, the fact that she had no children placed her at a
disadvantage with the matrons of Lismoyle, all of whom could have spoken
fearlessly with their enemies in the gate; it deprived conversation with
her of the antiphonal quality, when mother answers unto mother of
vaccination and teething-rash and the sins of the nursery-maids are
visited upon the company generally.
“Ah, she’s a poor peenie-weenie thing!” said Mrs. Baker, who was usually
the mouthpiece of Lismoyle opinion, “and it’s no wonder that Lambert’s
for ever flourishing about the country in his dog-trap, and she never
seeing a sight of him from morning till night. I’d like to see Mr. Baker
getting up on a horse and galloping around the roads after bank hours,
instead of coming in for his cup of tea with me and the girls!”
Altogether the feeling was that Mrs. Lambert was a failure, and in spite
of her undoubted amiability, and the creditable fact that Mr. Lambert
was the second husband that the eight thousand pounds ground out by her
late father’s mills had procured for her, her spouse was regarded with a
certain regretful pity as the victim of circumstance.
In spite of his claims upon the sympathy of Lismoyle, Mr. Lambert looked
remarkably well able to compete with his lot in life, as he sat smoking
his pipe in his dinner costume of carpet slippers and oldest shooting
coat, a couple of evenings after Francie’s arrival. As a rule the
Lamberts preferred to sit in their dining-room. The hard magnificence of
the blue rep chairs in the drawing-room appealed to them from different
points of view; Mrs. Lambert holding that they were too good to be used
except by “company,” while Mr. Lambert truly felt that no one who was
not debarred by politeness from the power of complaint would voluntarily
sit upon them. An unshaded lamp was on the table, its ugly glare
conflicting with the soft remnants of June twilight that stole in
between the half-drawn curtains; a tumbler of whisky and water stood on
the corner of the table beside the comfortable leather-covered armchair
in which the master of the house was reading his paper, while opposite
to him, in a basket chair, his wife was conscientiously doing her fancy
work. She was a short woman with confused brown eyes and distressingly
sloping shoulders; a woman of the turkey hen type, dejected and timorous
in voice, and an habitual wearer of porous plasters. Her toilet for the
evening consisted in replacing by a white cashmere shawl the red knitted
one which she habitually wore, and a languid untidiness in the pale
brown hair that hung over her eyes intimated that she had tried to curl
her fringe for dinner.
Neither were speaking; it seemed as if Mr Lambert were placidly awaiting
the arrival of his usual after-dinner sleep; the Maltese terrier was
already snoring plethorically on his mistress’s lap, in a manner quite
disproportioned to his size, and Mrs. Lambert’s crochet needles were
moving more and more slowly through the mazes of the “bosom friend” that
she was making for herself, the knowledge that the minute hand of the
black marble clock was approaching the hour at which she took her
postprandial pill alone keeping her from also yielding to the soft
influences of a substantial meal. At length she took the box from the
little table beside her, where it stood between a bottle of
smelling-salts and a lump of camphor, and having sat with it in her hand
till the half hour was solemnly boomed from the chimneypiece, swallowed
her pill with practised ease. At the slight noise of replacing the box,
her husband opened his eyes.
“By the way, Lucy,” he said in a voice that had no trace of drowsiness
in it, “did Charlotte Mullen say what she was going to do to-morrow?”
“Oh, yes, Roderick,” replied Mrs. Lambert a little anxiously, “indeed, I
was wanting to tell you--Charlotte asked me if I could drive her over to
Mrs. Waller’s to-morrow afternoon. I forgot to ask you before if you
wanted the horses.”
Mr. Lambert’s fine complexion deepened by one or two shades.
“Upon my soul, Charlotte Mullen has a good cheek! She gets as much work
out of my horses as I do myself. I suppose you told her you’d do it?”
“Well, what else could I do?” replied Mrs. Lambert with tremulous
crossness; “I’m sure it’s not once in the month I get outside the place,
and, as for Charlotte, she has not been to the Waller’s since before
Christmas, and you know very well old Captain couldn’t draw her eight
miles there and eight miles back any more than the cat.”
“Cat be hanged! Why the devil can’t she put her hand in her pocket and
take a car for herself?” said Lambert, uncrossing his legs and sitting
up straight; “I suppose I’ll hear next that I’m not to order out my own
horses till I’ve sent round to Miss Mullen to know if she wants them
first! If you weren’t so infernally under her thumb you’d remember there
were others to be consulted besides her.”
“I’m not under her thumb, Roderick; I beg you’ll not say such a thing,”
replied Mrs. Lambert huffily, her eyes blinking with resentment.
“Charlotte Mullen’s an old friend of mine, and yours too, and it’s a
hard thing I can’t take her out driving without remarks being passed,
and I never thought you’d want the horses. I thought you said you’d be
in the office all to-morrow,” ended the poor turkey hen, whose feathers
were constitutionally incapable of remaining erect for any length of
time.
Lambert did not answer immediately. His eyes rested on her flushed face
with just enough expression in them to convey to her that her protest
was beside the point. Mrs. Lambert was apparently used to this silent
comment on what she said, for she went on still more apologetically:
“If you like, Roderick, I’ll send Michael over early with a note to
Charlotte to tell her we’ll go some other day.”
Mr. Lambert leaned back as if to consider the question, and began to
fill his pipe for the second time.
“Well,” he said slowly, “if it makes no difference to you, Lucy, I’d be
rather glad if you did. As a matter of fact I have to ride out to
Gurthnamuckla to-morrow, on business, and I thought I’d take Francie
Fitzpatrick with me there on the black mare. She’s no great shakes of a
rider, and the black mare is the only thing I’d like to put her on. But,
of course, if it was for your own sake and not Charlotte’s that you
wanted to go to the Waller’s, I’d try and manage to take Francie some
other day. For the matter of that I might put her on Paddy; I daresay
he’d carry a lady.”
Mr. Lambert’s concession had precisely the expected effect. Mrs. Lambert
gave a cry of consternation:
“Roderick! you wouldn’t! Is it put that girl up on that mad little
savage of a pony! Why, it’s only yesterday, when Michael was driving me
into town, and Mr. Corkran passed on his tricycle, he tore up on to his
hind heels and tried to run into Ryan’s public-house! Indeed, if that
was the way, not all the Charlottes in the world would make me go
driving to-morrow.”
“Oh, all right,” said Lambert graciously; “if you’d rather have it that
way, we’ll send a note over to Charlotte.”
“Would you mind--” said Mrs. Lambert hesitatingly. “I mean, don’t you
think it would be better if--supposing you wrote the note? She always
minds what you say, and, I declare, I don’t know how in the world I’d
make up the excuse, when she’d settled the whole thing, and even got me
to leave word with the sweep to do her drawing-room chimney that’s thick
with jackdaws’ nests, because the family’d be from home all the
afternoon.”
“Why, what was to happen to Francie?” asked Lambert quickly.
“I think Charlotte said she was to come with us,” yawned Mrs. Lambert,
whose memory for conversation was as feeble as the part she played in
it; “they had some talk about it, at all events. I wouldn’t be sure but
Francie Fitzpatrick said first she’d go for a walk to see the town--yes,
so she did, and Charlotte told her what she was going for was to try and
see the officers, and Francie said maybe it was, or maybe she’d come and
have afternoon tea with you. They had great joking about it, but I’m
sure, after all, it was settled she was to come with us. Indeed,”
continued Mrs. Lambert meditatively, “I think Charlotte’s quite right
not to have her going through the town that way by herself; for, I
declare, Roderick, that’s a lovely girl.”
“Oh, she’s well able to take care of herself,” said Lambert, with the
gruff deprecation that is with some people the method of showing
pleasure at a compliment. “She’s not such a fool as she looks, I can
tell you,” he went on, feeling suddenly quite companionable; “the
Fitzpatricks didn’t take such wonderful care of her that Charlotte need
be bothering herself to put her in cotton wool at this time of day.”
Mrs. Lambert crocheted on in silence for a few moments, inwardly
counting her stitches till she came to the end of the row, then she
withdrew the needle and scratched her head ruminatingly with it.
“Isn’t it a strange thing, Roderick, what makes Charlotte have anyone
staying in the house with her? I never remember such a thing to happen
before.”
“She has to have her, and no thanks to her. Old Fitzpatrick’s been
doing bad business lately, and the little house he’s had to take at Bray
is a tight fit for themselves and the children; so, as he said to me, he
thought it was time for Charlotte to do something for her own cousin’s
child and no such great thanks to her either, seeing she got every
halfpenny the old woman had.”
Mrs. Lambert realised that she was actually carrying on a conversation
with her husband, and nervously cast about in her mind for some response
that should be both striking and stimulating.
“Well, now, if you want my opinion,” she said, shutting both her eyes
and shaking her head with the peculiar arch sagacity of a dull woman, “I
wouldn’t be surprised if Charlotte wasn’t so sorry to have her here
after all. Maybe she thinks she might snap up one of the officers--or
there’s young Charley Flood--or, Roderick!” Mrs. Lambert almost giggled
with delight and excitement--“I wouldn’t put it past Charlotte to be
trying to ketch Mr. Dysart.”
Roderick laughed in a disagreeable way.
“I’d wish her joy of him if she got him! A fellow that’d rather stick at
home there at Bruff having tea with his sister than go down like any
other fellow and play a game of pool at the hotel! A sort of chap that
says, if you offer him a whisky and soda in a friendly way,
‘Th--thanks--I don’t c--care about anything at this t--t--time of day.’
I think Francie’d make him sit up!” Mr. Lambert felt his imitation of
Christopher Dysart’s voice to be a success, and the shrill burst of
laughter with which Mrs. Lambert greeted it gave him for the moment an
unusual tinge of respect for her intelligence. “That’s about the size of
it, Lucy--what?”
“Oh, Roderick, how comical you are!” responded the dutiful turkey hen,
wiping her watery eyes; “it reminds me of the days when you used to be
talking of old Mr. Mullen and Charlotte fighting in the office till I’d
think I was listening to themselves.”
“God help the man that’s got to fight with Charlotte, anyhow!” said
Lambert, finishing his whisky and water as if toasting the sentiment;
“and talking of Charlotte, Lucy, you needn’t mind about writing that
note to her; I’ll go over myself and speak to her in the morning.”
“Oh, yes, Roderick, ’twill be all right if you see herself, and you
might say to her that I’ll be expecting her to come in to tea.”
Mr. Lambert, who had already taken up his newspaper again, merely
grunted an assent. Mrs. Lambert patiently folded her small bony hands
upon her dog’s back, and closing her eyes and opening her mouth, fell
asleep in half a dozen breaths.
Her husband read his paper for a short time, while the subdued duet of
snoring came continuously from the chair opposite. The clock struck nine
in its sonorous, gentlemanlike voice, and at the sound Lambert threw
down his paper as if an idea had occurred to him. He got up and went
over to the window, and putting aside the curtains, looked out into the
twilight of the June evening. The world outside was still awake, and the
air was tender with the remembrance of the long day of sunshine and
heat; a thrush was singing loudly down by the seringa bush at the end of
the garden; the cattle were browsing and breathing audibly in the field
beyond, and some children were laughing and shouting on the road. It
seemed to Lambert much earlier than he had thought, and as he stood
there, the invitation of the summer evening began to appeal to him with
seductive force; the quiet fields lay grey and mysterious under the pale
western glow, and his eye travelled several times across them to a
distant dark blot--the clump of trees and evergreens in which Tally Ho
Lodge lay buried.
He turned from the window at last, and coming back into the lamplit
room, surveyed it and its unconscious occupants with a feeling of
intolerance for their unlovely slumber. His next step was the almost
unprecedented one of changing his slippers for boots, and in a few
minutes he had left the house.