It was 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 terror that 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. The _blasé_ calm 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’s _adieux_
made 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 it _is_ true,” 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 the _convenances_, 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 when
she 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 at Christmas, 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 little girl 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 a
_rechauffé_ of 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 was _fear_fully 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 the _Engineer_ with 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.