The pre-eminently domestic smell of black currant jam pervaded Tally Ho
next day. The morning had been spent by Charlotte and her retainers in
stripping the straggling old bushes of the berries that resembled
nothing so much as boot-buttons in size, colour and general consistency;
the preserving pan had been borrowed, according to immemorial custom,
from Miss Egan of the hotel, and at three o’clock of the afternoon the
first relay was sluggishly seething and bubbling on the kitchen fire,
and Charlotte, Norry, and Bid Sal were seated at the kitchen table
snipping the brown tips of the shining fruit that still awaited its
fate.
It was a bright, steamy day, when the hot sun and the wet earth turned
the atmosphere into a Turkish bath, and the cats sat out of doors, but
avoided the grass like the plague. Francie had docilely picked currants
with the others. She was accustomed to making herself useful, and it
did not occur to her to shut herself up in her room, or go for a walk,
or, in fact, isolate herself with her troubles in any way. She had too
little self-consciousness for these deliberate methods, and she moved
among the currant bushes in her blue gown, and was merely
uncomplainingly thankful that she was able to pull the broad leaf of her
hat down so as to hide the eyes that were heavy from a sleepless night
and red from the sting of tears. She went over again what Lambert had
told her, as she mechanically dropped the currants into her tin can; the
soldier-servant had read the letters, and had told Michael, the
Rosemount groom, and Michael had told Mr. Lambert. She wouldn’t have
cared a pin about his being engaged if he had only told her so at first.
She had flirted with engaged men plenty of times, and it hadn’t done
anybody any harm, but this was quite different. She couldn’t believe,
after the way he went on, that he cared about another girl all the time,
and yet Michael had said that the soldier had said that they were to be
married at Christmas. Well, thank goodness, she thought, with a half
sob, she knew about it now; he’d find it hard to make a fool of her
again.
After the early dinner the practical part of the jam-making began, and
for an hour Francie snipped at the currant-tops as industriously as
Charlotte herself. But by the time that the first brew was ready for the
preserving pan, the heat of the kitchen, and the wearisomeness of
Charlotte’s endless discussions with Norry, made intolerable the
headache that had all day hovered about her forehead, and she fetched
her hat and a book and went out into the garden to look for coolness and
distraction. She wandered up to the seat where she had sat on the day
that Lambert gave her the bangle, and, sitting down, opened her book, a
railway novel, bought by Charlotte on her journey from Dublin. She read
its stodgily sensational pages with hot tired eyes, and tried hard to
forget her own unhappiness in the infinitely more terrific woes of its
heroine; but now and then some chance expression, or one of those terms
of endearment that were lavished throughout its pages, would leap up
into borrowed life and sincerity, and she would shut her eyes and drift
back into the golden haze on Lough Moyle, when his hand had pressed her
head down on his shoulder, and his kisses had touched her soul. At such
moments all the heated stillness of the lake was round her, with no
creature nearer than the white cottages on the far hillsides; and when
the inevitable present swam back to her, with carts rattling past on the
road, and insects buzzing and blundering against her face, and Bid Sal’s
shrill summoning of the hens to their food, she would fling herself
again into the book to hide from the pursuing pain and the undying,
insane voice of hope.
Hope mastered pain, and reality mastered both, when, with the
conventionality of situation to which life sometimes condescends, there
came steps on the gravel, and looking up she saw that Hawkins was coming
towards her. Her heart stopped and rushed on again like a startled
horse, but all the rest of her remained still and almost impassive, and
she leaned her head over her book to keep up the affectation of not
having seen him.
“I saw your dress through the trees as I was coming up the drive,” he
said after a moment of suffocating silence, “and so--” he held out his
hand, “aren’t you going to shake hands with me?”
“How d’ye do, Mr. Hawkins?” she gave him a limp hand and withdrew it
instantly.
Hawkins sat down beside her, and looked hard at her half-averted face.
He had solved the problem of her treatment of him last night in a way
quite satisfactory to himself, and he thought that now that he had been
sharp enough to have found her here, away from Miss Mullen’s eye, things
would be very different. He had quite forgiven her her share in the
transgression; in fact, if the truth were known he had enjoyed himself
considerably after she had left Mrs. Beattie’s party, and had gone back
to Captain Cursiter and disingenuously given him to understand that he
had hardly spoken a word to Miss Fitzpatrick the whole evening.
“So you wouldn’t dance with me last night,” he said, as if he were
speaking to a child; “wasn’t that very unkind of you?”
“No it was not,” she replied, without looking at him.
“Well, _I_ think it was,” he said, lightly touching the hand that held
the novel.
Francie took her hand sharply away.
“I think you are being very unkind now,” he continued; “aren’t you even
going to look at me?”
“Oh yes, I’ll look at you if you like,” she said, turning upon him in a
kind of desperation; “it doesn’t do me much harm, and I don’t suppose it
does you much good.”
The cool, indifferent manner that she had intended to assume was already
too difficult for her, and she sought a momentary refuge in rudeness. He
showed all the white teeth, that were his best point, in a smile that
was patronisingly free from resentment.
“Why, what’s the matter with her?” he said caressingly. “I believe I
know what it’s all about. She’s been catching it about that day in the
launch! Isn’t that it?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr. Hawkins,” said Francie,
with an indifferent attempt at hauteur; “but since you’re so clever at
guessing things I suppose there’s no need of me telling you.”
Hawkins came closer to her, and forcibly took possession of her hands.
“What’s the matter with you?” he said in a low voice; “why are you angry
with me? Don’t you know I love you?” The unexpected element of
uncertainty sharpened the edge of his feelings and gave his voice an
earnestness that was foreign to it.
Francie started visibly; “No, I know you don’t,” she said, facing him
suddenly, like some trapped creature; “I know you’re in love with
somebody else!”
His eyes flinched as though a light had been flashed in them. “What do
you mean?” he said quickly, while a rush of blood darkened his face to
the roots of his yellow hair, and made the veins stand out on his
forehead; “who told you that?”
“It doesn’t matter who told me,” she said with a miserable satisfaction
that her bolt had sped home; “but I know it’s true.”
“I give you my honour it’s not!” he said passionately; “you might have
known better than to believe it.”
“Oh yes, I might,” she said with all the scorn she was master of; “but I
think ’twas as good for me I didn’t.” Her voice collapsed at the end of
the sentence, and the dry sob that rose in her throat almost choked her.
She stood up and turned her face away to hide the angry tears that in
spite of herself had sprung to her eyes.
Hawkins caught her hand again and held it tightly. “I know what it is. I
suppose they’ve been telling you of that time I was in Limerick; and
that was all rot from beginning to end; anyone could tell you that.”
“It’s not that; I heard all about that--”
Hawkins jumped up. “I don’t care what you heard,” he said violently.
“Don’t turn your head away from me like that, I won’t have it. I know
that you care about me, and I know that I shouldn’t care if everyone in
the world was dead, so long as you were here.” His arm was round her,
but she shook herself free.
“What about Miss Coppard?” she said; “what about being married before
Christmas?”
For a moment Hawkins could find no words to say. “So you’ve got hold of
that, have you,” he said, after some seconds of silence that seemed
endless to Francie. “And do you think that will come between us?”
“Of course it must come between us,” she said in a stifled voice; “and
you knew that all through.”
Mr. Hawkins’ engagement was a painful necessity about which he affaired
himself as little as possible. He recognised it as a certain and not
disagreeable road to paying his debts, which might with good luck be
prolonged till he got his company, and, latterly, it had fallen more
than ever into the background. That it should interfere with his
amusements in any way made it an impertinence of a wholly intolerable
kind.
“It shall _not_ come between us!” he burst out; “I don’t care what
happens, I won’t give you up! I give you my honour I never cared
twopence about her--I’ve never thought of her since I first saw
you--I’ve thought of no one but you.”
His hot, stammering words were like music to her, but that staunchness
of soul that was her redeeming quality still urged her to opposition.
“It’s no good your going on like this. You know you’re going to marry
her. Let me go.”
But Mr. Hawkins was not in the habit of being baulked of anything on
which he had set his heart.
“No, I will not let you go,” he said, drawing her towards him with
bullying tenderness. “In the first place, you’re not able to stand, and
in the second place, I’m not going to marry anybody but you.”
He spoke with a certainty that convinced himself; the certainty of a
character that does not count the cost either for itself or for others;
and, in the space of a kiss, her distrust was left far behind her as a
despicable thing.