There was no sound in the red gloom, except the steady trickle of
running water, and the anxious breathing of the photographer.
Christopher’s long hands moved mysteriously in the crimson light, among
phials, baths, and cases of negatives, while uncanny smells of various
acids and compounds thickened the atmosphere. Piles of old trunks
towered dimly in the corners, a superannuated sofa stood on its head by
the wall, with its broken hind-legs in the air, three old ball skirts
hung like ghosts of Bluebeard’s wives upon the door, from which, to
Christopher’s developing tap, a narrow passage forced its angular way.
There was presently a step on the uncarpeted flight of attic stairs,
accompanied by a pattering of broad paws, and Pamela, closely attended
by the inevitable Max, slid with due caution into the room.
“Well, Christopher,” she began, sitting gingerly down in the darkness on
an old imperial, a relic of the period when Sir Benjamin posted to
Dublin in his own carriage, “Mamma says she _is_ to come!”
“Lawks!” said Christopher succinctly, after a pause occupied by the
emptying of one photographic bath into another.
“Mamma said she ‘felt Charlotte Mullen’s position so keenly in having to
leave that girl by herself,’” pursued Pamela, “‘that it was only common
charity to take her in here while she was away.’”
“Well, my dear, and what are you going to do with her?” said Christopher
cheerfully.
“Oh, I can’t think,” replied Pamela despairingly; “and I know that
Evelyn does not care about her; only last night she said she dressed
like a doll at a bazaar.”
Christopher busied himself with his chemicals and said nothing.
“The fact is, Christopher,” went on his sister decisively, “_you_ will
have to undertake her. Of course, I’ll help you, but I really cannot
face the idea of entertaining both her and Evelyn at the same time. Just
imagine how they would hate it.”
“Let them hate it,” said Christopher, with the crossness of a
good-natured person who feels that his good nature is going to make him
do a disagreeable thing.
“Ah, Christopher, be good; it will only be for three days, and she’s
very easy to talk to; in fact,” ended Pamela apologetically, “I think I
rather like her!”
“Well, do you know,” said Christopher, “the curious thing is, that
though I can’t talk to her and she can’t talk to me, I rather like her,
too--when I’m at the other end of the room.”
“That’s all very fine,” returned Pamela dejectedly; “it may amuse you to
study her through a telescope, but it won’t do anyone else much good;
after all, you are the person who is really responsible for her being
here. You saved her life.”
“I know I did,” replied her brother irritably, staring at the stumpy
candle behind the red glass of the lantern, unaware of the portentous
effect of its light upon his eyeglass, which shone like a ball of fire;
“that’s much the worst feature of the case. It creates a dreadful bond
of union. At that infernal bazaar, whenever I happened to come within
hail of her, Miss Mullen collected a crowd and made a speech at us. I
will say for her that she hid with Hawkins as much as she could, and did
her best to keep out of my way. As I said before, I have no personal
objection to her, but I have no gift for competing with young women. Why
not have Hawkins to dinner every night and to luncheon every day? It’s
much the simplest way of amusing her, and it will save me a great deal
of wear and tear that I don’t feel equal to.”
Pamela got up from the imperial.
“I hate you when you begin your nonsense of theorising about yourself as
if you were a mixture of Methuselah and Diogenes; I have seen you making
yourself just as agreeable to young women as Mr. Hawkins or anyone;”
she paused at the door. “She’ll be here the day after to-morrow,” with a
sudden collapse into pathos. “Oh, Christopher, you _must_ help me to
amuse her.”
Two days afterwards Miss Mullen left for Dublin by the early train, and
in the course of the morning her cousin got upon an outside car in
company with her trunk, and embarked upon the preliminary stage of her
visit to Bruff. She was dressed in the attire which in her own mind she
specified as her “Sunday clothes,” and as the car rattled through
Lismoyle, she put on a pair of new yellow silk gloves with a confidence
in their adequacy to the situation that was almost touching. She felt a
great need of their support. Never since she was grown up had she gone
on a visit, except for a night or two to the Hemphills’ summer lodgings
at Kingstown, when such “things” as she required were conveyed under her
arm in a brown paper parcel, and she and the three Miss Hemphills had
sociably slept in the back drawing-room. She had been once at Bruff, a
visit of ceremony, when Lady Dysart only had been at home, and she had
sat and drunk her tea in unwonted silence, wishing that there were sugar
in it, but afraid to ask for it, and respecting Charlotte for the ease
with which she accepted her surroundings, and discoursed of high and
difficult matters with her hostess. It was only the thought of writing
to her Dublin friends to tell them of how she had stayed at Sir Benjamin
Dysart’s place that really upheld her during the drive; no matter how
terrible her experiences might be, the fact would remain to her, sacred
and unalterable.
Nevertheless, its consolations seemed very remote at the moment when the
car pulled up at the broad steps of Bruff, and Gorman the butler came
down them, and solemnly assisted her to alight, while the setter and
spaniel, who had greeted her arrival with the usual official chorus of
barking, smelt round her politely but with extreme firmness. She stood
forlornly in the big cool hall, waiting till Gorman should be pleased to
conduct her to the drawing-room, uncertain as to whether she ought to
take off her coat, uncertain what to do with her umbrella, uncertain of
all things except of her own ignorance. A white stone double staircase
rose overawingly at the end of the hall; the floor under her feet was
dark and slippery, and when she did at length prepare to follow the
butler, she felt that visiting at grand houses was not as pleasant as it
sounded.
A door into the hall suddenly opened, and there issued from it the
hobbling figure of an old man wearing a rusty tall hat down over his
ears, and followed by a cadaverous attendant, who was holding an
umbrella over the head of his master, like a Siamese courtier.
“D--n your eyes, James Canavan!” said Sir Benjamin Dysart, “can’t you
keep the rain off my new hat, you blackguard!” Then spying Francie, who
was crossing the hall, “Ho-ho! That’s a fine girl, begad! What’s she
doing in my hall?”
“Oh, hush, hush, Sir Benjamin!” said James Canavan, in tones of shocked
propriety. “That is a young lady visitor.”
“Then she’s _my_ visitor,” retorted Sir Benjamin, striking his ponderous
stick on the ground, “and a devilish pretty visitor, too! I’ll drive her
out in my carriage to-morrow.”
“You will, Sir Benjamin, you will,” answered his henchman, hurrying the
master of the house along towards the hall door; while Francie, with a
new and wholly unexpected terror added to those she had brought with
her, followed the butler to the drawing-room.
It was a large room. Francie felt it to be the largest she had ever been
in, as she advanced round a screen, and saw Lady Dysart at an
immeasurable distance working at a heap of dingy serge, and behind her,
still further off, the well-curled head of Miss Hope-Drummond just
topping the cushion of a low arm-chair.
“Oh, how do you do,” said Lady Dysart, getting up briskly, and dropping
as she did so a large pair of scissors and the child’s frock at which
she had been working. “You are very good to have come over so early.”
The geniality of Lady Dysart’s manner might have assured anyone less
alarmed than her visitor that there was no ill intention in this remark;
but such discernment was beyond Francie.
“Miss Mullen told me to be over here by twelve, Lady Dysart,” she said
abjectly, “and as she had the car ordered for me I didn’t like--”
Lady Dysart began to laugh, with the large and yet refined _bonhommie_
that was with her the substitute for tact.
“Why shouldn’t you come early, my dear child?” she said, looking
approvingly at Francie’s embarrassed countenance. “I’ll tell Pamela you
are here. Evelyn, don’t you know Miss Fitzpatrick?”
Miss Hope-Drummond, thus adjured, raised herself languidly from her
chair, and shook hands with the new-comer, as Lady Dysart strode from
the room with her customary business-like rapidity. Silence reigned for
nearly a minute after the door closed; but at length Miss Hope-Drummond
braced herself to the exertion of being agreeable.
“Very hot day, isn’t it?” looking at Francie’s flushed cheeks.
“It is indeed, roasting! I was nearly melting with the heat on the
jaunting-car coming over,” replied Francie, with a desire to be as
responsive as possible, “but it’s lovely and cool in here.”
She looked at Miss Hope-Drummond’s spotless white gown, and wished she
had not put on her Sunday terra-cotta.
“Oh, is it?”
Silence; during which Francie heard the wheels of her car grinding away
down the avenue, and wished that she were on it.
“Have you been out on the lake much lately, Miss Hope-Drummond?”
Francie’s wish was merely the laudable one of trying to keep the heavy
ball of conversation rolling, but the question awoke a slumbering worm
of discontent in her companion’s well-ordered breast. Christopher was
even now loosing from his moorings at the end of the park, without
having so much as mentioned that he was going out; and Captain Cursiter,
her own compatriot, attached--almost linked--to her by the bonds of
mutual acquaintances, and her thorough knowledge of the Lincolnshire
Cursiters, had not risen to the fly that she had only yesterday thrown
over him on the subject of the steam-launch.
“No; I had rather more than I cared for the last time we were out, the
day of the picnic. I’ve had neuralgia in my face ever since that
evening, we were all kept out so late.”
“Oh, my! That neuralgia’s a horrid thing,” said Francie sympathetically.
“I didn’t get any harm out of it with all the wetting and the knock on
my head and everything. I thought it was lovely fun! But”--forgetting
her shyness in the interest of the moment--“Mr. Hawkins told me that
Cursiter said to him the world wouldn’t get him to take out ladies in
his boat again!”
Miss Hope-Drummond raised her dark eyebrows.
“Really? That is very crushing of Captain Cursiter.”
Francie felt in a moment an emphasis on the word Captain; but tried to
ignore her own confusion.
“It doesn’t crush _me_, I can tell you! I wouldn’t give a pin to go in
his old boat. I’d twice sooner go in a yacht, upsets and all!”
“Oh!”
Miss Hope-Drummond said no more than this, but her tone was sufficient.
Her eyes strayed towards the book that lay in her lap, and the finger
inserted in its pages showed, as if unconsciously, a tendency to open it
again.
There was another silence, during which Francie studied the dark and
unintelligible oil-paintings on the expanses of wall, the flowers,
arranged with such easy and careless lavishness in strange and
innumerable jars and vases; and lastly, Dinah, in a distant window,
catching and eating flies with disgusting avidity. She felt as if her
petticoats showed her boots more than was desirable, that her gloves
were of too brilliant a tint, and that she ought to have left her
umbrella in the hall. At this painful stage of her reflections she heard
Lady Dysart’s incautious voice outside:
“It’s always the way with Christopher; he digs a hole and buries himself
in it whenever he’s wanted. Take her out and let her eat strawberries
now; and then in the afternoon--” the voice suddenly sank as if in
response to an admonition, and Francie’s already faint heart sank along
with it. Oh, to be at the Hemphills, making toffee on the parlour fire,
remote from the glories and sufferings of aristocratic houses! The next
moment she was shaking hands with Pamela, and becoming gradually aware
that she was in an atmosphere of ease and friendliness, much as the
slow pleasure of a perfume makes itself slowly felt. The fact that
Pamela had on a grass hat of sunburnt maturity, and a skirt which bore
the imprint of dogs’ paws was in itself reassuring, and as they went
together down a shrubbery walk, and finally settled upon the strawberry
beds in the wide, fragrant kitchen-garden, the first terrors began to
subside in Francie’s trembling soul, and she found herself breathing
more naturally in this strange, rarefied condition of things. Even
luncheon was less formidable than she had expected. Christopher was not
there, the dreaded Sir Benjamin was not there, and Lady Dysart consulted
her about the cutting-out of poor clothes, and accepted with an almost
alarming enthusiasm the suggestions that Francie diffidently brought up
from the depths of past experience of the Fitzpatrick wardrobe.
The long, unusual leisure of the afternoon passed by her like a pleasant
dream, in which, as she sat in a basket-chair under the verandah outside
the drawing-room windows, illustrated papers, American magazines, the
snoring lethargy of the dogs, and the warm life and stillness of the air
were about equally blended. Miss Hope-Drummond lay aloof in a hammock
under a horse-chestnut tree at the end of the flower-garden, working at
the strip of Russian embroidery that some day was to languish neglected
on the stall of an English bazaar; Francie had seen her trail forth with
her arms full of cushions, and dimly divined that her fellow-guest was
hardly tolerating the hours that were to her like fragments collected
from all the holidays she had ever known. No wonder, she thought, that
Pamela wore a brow of such serenity, when days like this were her
ordinary portion. Five o’clock came, and with it, with the majestic
punctuality of a heavenly body, came Gorman and the tea equipage,
attended by his satellite, William, bearing the tea-table. Francie had
never heard the word idyllic, but the feeling that it generally conveys
came to her as she lay back in her chair, and saw the roses swaying
about the pillars of the verandah, and watched the clots of cream
sliding into her cup over the broad lip of the cream jug, and thought
how incredibly brilliant the silver was, and that Miss Dysart’s hands
looked awfully pretty while she was pouring out tea, and weren’t a bit
spoiled by being rather brown. It was consolatory that Miss
Hope-Drummond had elected to have her tea conveyed to her in the
hammock; it was too much trouble to get out of it, she called, in her
shrill, languid voice, and no one had argued the matter with her. Lady
Dysart, who had occupied herself during the afternoon in visiting the
garden-beds and giving a species of clinical lecture on each to the
wholly unimpressed gardener, had subsided into a chair beside Francie,
and began to discuss with her the evangelical preachers of Dublin, a
mark of confidence and esteem which Pamela noticed with astonishment.
Francie had got to her second cup of tea, and had evinced an edifying
familiarity with Lady Dysart’s most chosen divines, when the dogs, who
had been seated opposite Pamela, following with lambent eyes the passage
of each morsel to her lips, rushed from the verandah, and charged with
furious barkings across the garden and down the lawn towards two
figures, whom in their hearts they knew to be the sons of the house, but
whom, for histrionic purposes, they affected to regard as dangerous
strangers.
Miss Hope-Drummond sat up in her hammock and pinned her hat on straight.
“Mr. Dysart,” she called, as Christopher and Garry neared her chestnut
tree, “you’ve just come in time to get me another cup of tea.”
Christopher dived under the chestnut branches, and presently, with what
Miss Hope-Drummond felt to be unexampled stupidity, returned with it,
but without his own. He had even the gaucherie to commend her choice of
the hammock, and having done so, to turn and walk back to the verandah,
and Miss Hope-Drummond asked herself for the hundredth time how the
Castlemores _could_ have put up with him.
“I met the soldiers out on the lake to-day,” Christopher remarked as he
sat down; “I told them to come and dine to-morrow.” He looked at Pamela
with an eye that challenged her gratitude, but before she could reply,
Garry interposed in tones muffled by cake.
“He did, the beast; and he might have remembered it was my birthday, and
the charades and everything.”
“Oh, Garry, _must_ we have charades?” said Pamela lamentably.
“Well, of course we must, you fool,” returned Garry with Scriptural
directness; “I’ve told all the men about the place, and Kitty Gascogne’s
coming to act, and James Canavan’s going to put papa to bed early and
help us--’ Garry’s voice sank to the fluent complaining undertone that
distinguishes a small boy with a grievance, and Christopher turned to
his mother’s guest.
“I suppose you’ve acted in charades, Miss Fitzpatrick?”
“Is it me act? Oh goodness, no, Mr. Dysart! I never did such a thing but
once, when I had to read Lady Macbeth’s part at school, and I thought
I’d died laughing the whole time.”
Pamela and Lady Dysart exchanged glances as they laughed at this
reminiscence. Would Christopher ever talk to a girl with a voice like
this? was the interpretation of Pamela’s glance, while Lady Dysart’s was
a mere note of admiration for the way that the sunlight caught the curls
on Francie’s forehead as she sat up to speak to Christopher, and for the
colour that had risen in her cheeks since his arrival, more especially
since his announcement that Captain Cursiter and Mr. Hawkins were coming
to dinner. There are few women who can avoid some slight change of
manner and even of appearance, when a man is added to the company, and
it may at once be said that Francie was far from trying to repress her
increased interest on such an occasion.
“What made you think I could act, Mr. Dysart?” she said, looking at him
a little self-consciously; “do you think I look like an actress?”
The question was interrupted by a cry from the chestnut tree, and Miss
Hope-Drummond’s voice was heard appealing to someone to come and help
her out of the hammock.
“She can get out jolly well by herself,” remarked Garry, but Christopher
got up and lounged across the grass in response to the summons, and
Francie’s question remained unanswered. Lady Dysart rose too, and
watched her son helping Miss Hope-Drummond on to her feet, and strolling
away with her in the direction of the shrubbery. Then she turned to
Francie.
“Now, Miss Fitzpatrick, you shall come and explain that Dorcas Society
sleeve to me, and I should not be surprised if you could help me with
the acrostic.”
Lady Dysart considered herself to be, before all things, a diplomatist.