“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’ Norry says 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,” said Francie,
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 bespoke
by 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 curiously at 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 as she
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 meeting
_you_ here.”
“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. “I wouldn’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 under similar 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.