Mrs. Lambert gathered up her purse, her list, her bag, and her parasol
from the table in Miss Greely’s wareroom, and turned to give her final
directions.
“Now, Miss Greely, before Sunday for certain; and you’ll be careful
about the set of the skirt, that it doesn’t firk up at the side, the way
the black one did--”
“_We_ understand the set of a skirt, Mrs. Lambert,” interposed the elder
Miss Greely in her most aristocratic voice; “I think you may leave that
to us.”
Mrs. Lambert retreated, feeling as snubbed as it was intended that she
should feel, and with a last injunction to the girl in the shop to be
sure not to let the Rosemount messenger leave town on Saturday night
without the parcel that he’d get from upstairs, she addressed herself to
the task of walking home. She was in very good spirits, and the thought
of a new dress for church next Sunday was exhilarating; it was a
pleasant fact also that Charlotte Mullen was coming to tea, and she and
Muffy, the Maltese terrier, turned into Barrett’s to buy a tea-cake in
honour of the event. Mrs. Beattie was also there, and the two ladies and
Mrs. Barrett had a most enjoyable discussion on tea; Mrs. Beattie
advocating “the one and threepenny from the Stores,” while Mrs. Barrett
and her other patroness agreed in upholding the Lismoyle
three-and-sixpenny against all others. Mrs. Lambert set forth again with
her tea-cake in her hand, and with such a prosperous expression of
countenance that Nance the Fool pursued her down the street with a
confidence that was not unrewarded.
“That the hob of heaven may be your scratching post!” she screamed, in
the midst of one of her most effective fits of coughing, as Mrs.
Lambert’s round little dolmaned figure passed complacently onward, “that
Pether and Paul may wait on ye, and that the saints may be surprised at
yer success! She’s sharitable, the craythur,” she ended in a lower
voice, as she rejoined the rival and confederate who had yielded to her
the right of plundering the last passer-by, “and sign’s on it, it
thrives with her; she’s got very gross!”
“Faith it wasn’t crackin’ blind nuts made her that fat,” said the
confidante unamiably, “and with all her riches she didn’t give ye the
price of a dhrink itself!”
Mrs. Lambert entered her house by the kitchen, so as to give directions
to Eliza Hackett about the tea-cake, and when she got upstairs she found
Charlotte already awaiting her in the dining-room, occupied in reading a
pamphlet on stall feeding, with apparently as complete a zest as if it
had been one of those yellow paper-covered volumes whose appearance
aroused such a respectful horror in Lismoyle.
“Well, Lucy, is this the way you receive your visitors?” she began
jocularly, as she rose and kissed her hostess’s florid cheek; “I needn’t
ask how you are, as you’re looking blooming.”
“I declare I think this hot summer suits me. I feel stronger than I’ve
done this good while back, thank God. Roddy was saying this morning he’d
have to put me and Muffy on banting, we’d both put up so much flesh.”
The turkey-hen looked so pleased as she recalled this conjugal
endearment that Charlotte could not resist the pleasure of taking her
down a peg or two.
“I think he’s quite right,” she said with a laugh; “nothing ages ye like
fat, and no man likes to see his wife turning into an old woman.”
Poor Mrs. Lambert took the snub meekly, as was her wont. “Well, anyway,
it’s a comfort to feel a little stronger, Charlotte; isn’t it what they
say, ‘laugh and grow fat.’” She took off her dolman and rang the bell
for tea. “Tell me, Charlotte,” she went on, “did you hear anything about
that poor Miss Duffy?”
“I was up at the infirmary this morning asking the Sister about her. It
was Rattray himself found her lying on the road, and brought her in; he
says it’s inflammation of the brain, and if she pulls through she’ll not
be good for anything afterwards.”
“Oh, my, my!” said Mrs. Lambert sympathetically. “And to think of her
being at our gate lodge that very day! Mary Holloran said she had that
dying look in her face you couldn’t mistake.”
“And no wonder, when you think of the way she lived,” said Charlotte
angrily; “starving there in Gurthnamuckla like a rat that’d rather die
in his hole than come out of it.”
“Well, she’s out of it now, poor thing,” ventured Mrs. Lambert.
“She is! and I think she’ll stay out of it. She’ll never be right in her
head again, and her things’ll have to be sold to support her and pay
some one to look after her, and if they don’t fetch that much she’ll
have to go into the county asylum. I wanted to talk to Roddy about that
very thing,” went on Charlotte, irritation showing itself in her voice;
“but I suppose he’s going riding or boating or amusing himself somehow,
as usual.”
“No, he’s not!” replied Mrs. Lambert, with just a shade of triumph.
“He’s taken a long walk by himself. He thought perhaps he’d better look
after his figure as well as me and Muffy, and he wanted to see a horse
he’s thinking of buying. He says he’d like to be able to leave me the
mare to draw me in the phaeton.”
“Where will he get the money to buy it?” asked Charlotte sharply.
“Oh! I leave all the money matters to him,” said Mrs. Lambert, with that
expression of serene satisfaction in her husband that had already had a
malign effect on Miss Mullen’s temper. “I know I can trust him.”
“You’ve a very different story to-day to what you had the last time I
was here,” said Charlotte with a sneer. “Are all your doubts of him
composed?”
The entrance of the tea-tray precluded all possibility of answer; but
Charlotte knew that her javelin was quivering in the wound. The moment
the door closed behind the servant, Mrs. Lambert turned upon her
assailant with the whimper in her voice that Charlotte knew so well.
“I greatly regretted, Charlotte,” she said, with as much dignity as she
could muster, “speaking to you the way I did, for I believe now I was
totally mistaken.”
It might be imagined that Charlotte would have taken pleasure in Mrs.
Lambert’s security, inasmuch as it implied her own; but, so far from
this being the case, it was intolerable to her that her friend should be
blind to the fact that tortured her night and day.
“And what’s changed your mind, might I ask?”
“His conduct has changed my mind, Charlotte,” replied Mrs. Lambert
severely; “and that’s enough for me.”
“Well, I’m glad you’re pleased with his conduct, Lucy; but if he was
_my_ husband I’d find out what he was doing at Tally Ho every day in the
week before I was so rejoiced about him.”
Charlotte’s face had flushed in the heat of argument, and Mrs. Lambert
felt secretly a little frightened.
“Begging your pardon, Charlotte,” she said, still striving after
dignity, “he’s not there every day, and when he does go it’s to talk
business with you he goes, about Gurthnamuckla and money and things like
that.”
Charlotte sat up with a dangerous look about her jaw. She could hardly
believe that Lambert could have babbled her secrets to this despised
creature in order to save himself. “He appears to tell you a good deal
about his business affairs,” she said, her eyes quelling the feeble
resistance in Mrs. Lambert’s; “but he doesn’t seem to tell you the truth
about other matters. He’s telling ye lies about what takes him to Tally
Ho; it isn’t to talk business--” the colour deepened in her face. “I
tell ye once for all, that as sure as God’s in heaven he’s fascinated
with that girl! This isn’t the beginning of it--ye needn’t think it! She
flirted with him in Dublin, and though she doesn’t care two snaps of her
fingers for him she’s flirting with him now!”
The real Charlotte had seldom been nearer the surface than at this
moment; and Mrs. Lambert cowered before the manifestation.
“You’re very unkind to me, Charlotte,” she said in a voice that was
tremulous with fright and anger; “I wonder at you, that you would say
such things to me about my own husband.”
“Well, perhaps you’d rather I said it to you now in confidence than that
every soul in Lismoyle should be prating and talking about it, as they
will be if ye don’t put down yer foot, and tell Roddy he’s making a fool
of himself!”
Mrs. Lambert remained stunned for a few seconds at the bare idea of
putting down her foot where Roderick was concerned, or of even
insinuating that that supreme being could make a fool of himself, and
then her eyes filled with tears of mortification.
“He is _not_ making a fool of himself, Charlotte,” she said,
endeavouring to pluck up spirit, “and you’ve no right to say anything of
the kind. You might have more respect for your family than to be trying
to raise scandal this way and upsetting me, and I not able for it!”
Charlotte looked at her, and kept back with an effort the torrent of
bullying fury that was seething in her. She had no objection to
upsetting Mrs. Lambert, but she preferred that hysterics should be
deferred until she had established her point. Why she wished to
establish it she did not explain to herself, but her restless jealousy,
combined with her intolerance of the Fool’s Paradise in which Mrs.
Lambert had entrenched herself, made it impossible for her to leave the
subject alone.
“I think ye know it’s not my habit to raise scandal, Lucy, and I’m not
one to make an assertion without adequate grounds for it,” she said in
her strong, acrid voice; “as I said before, this flirtation is an old
story. I have my own reasons for knowing that there was more going on
than anyone suspected, from the time she was in short frocks till she
came down here, and now, if she hadn’t another affair on hand, she’d
have the whole country in a blaze about it. Why, d’ye know that habit
she wears? It was your husband paid for that!”
She emphasised each word between her closed teeth, and her large face
was so close to Mrs. Lambert’s, by the time she had finished speaking,
that the latter shrank back.
“I don’t believe you, Charlotte,” she said with trembling lips; “how do
you know it?”
Charlotte had no intention of telling that her source of information had
been the contents of a writing-case of Francie’s, an absurd receptacle
for photographs and letters that bore the word “Papeterie” on its greasy
covers, and had a lock bearing a family resemblance to the lock of Miss
Mullen’s work-box. But a cross-examination by the turkey-hen was easily
evaded.
“Never you mind how I know it. It’s true.” Then, with a connection of
ideas that she would have taken more pains to conceal in dealing with
anyone else, “Did ye ever see any of the letters she wrote to him when
she was in Dublin?”
“No, Charlotte; I’m not in the habit of looking at my husband’s letters.
I think the tea is drawn,” she continued, making a last struggle to
maintain her position, “and I’d be glad to hear no more on the subject.”
She took the cosy off the tea-pot, and began to pour out the tea, but
her hands were shaking, and Charlotte’s eye made her nervous. “Oh, I’m
very tired--I’m too long without my tea. Oh, Charlotte, why do you annoy
me this way when you know it’s so bad for me?” She put down the tea-pot,
and covered her face with her hands. “Is it me own dear husband that you
say such things of? Oh, it couldn’t be true, and he always so kind to
me; indeed, it isn’t true, Charlotte,” she protested piteously between
her sobs.
“Me dear Lucy,” said Charlotte, laying her broad hand on Mrs. Lambert’s
knee, “I wish I could say it wasn’t, though of course the wisest of us
is liable to error. Come now!” she said, as if struck by a new idea.
“I’ll tell ye how we could settle the matter! It’s a way you won’t like,
and it’s a way I don’t like either, but I solemnly think you owe it to
yourself, and to your position as a wife. Will you let me say it to
you?”
“Oh, you may, Charlotte, you may,” said Mrs. Lambert tearfully.
“Well, my advice to you is this, to see what old letters of hers he has,
and ye’ll be able to judge for yourself what the truth of the case is.
If there’s no harm in them I’ll be only too ready to congratulate ye on
proving me in the wrong, and if there is, why, ye’ll know what course to
pursue.”
“Is it look at Roddy’s letters?” cried Mrs. Lambert, emerging from her
handkerchief with a stare of horror; “he’d kill me if he thought I
looked at them!”
“Ah, nonsense, woman, he’ll never know you looked at them,” said
Charlotte, scanning the room quickly; “is it in his study he keeps his
private letters?”
“No, I think it’s in his old despatch-box up on the shelf there,”
answered Mrs. Lambert, a little taken with the idea, in spite of her
scruples.
“Then ye’re done,” said Charlotte, looking up at the despatch-box in its
absolute security of Bramah lock; “of course he has his keys with him
always.”
“Well then, d’ye know,” said Mrs. Lambert hesitatingly, “I think I heard
his keys jingling in the pocket of the coat he took off before he went
out, and I didn’t notice him taking them out of it--but, oh, my dear, I
wouldn’t dare to open any of his things. I might as well quit the house
if he found it out.”
“I tell you it’s your privilege as a wife, and your plain duty besides,
to see those letters,” urged Charlotte. “I’d recommend you to go up and
get those keys now, this minute; it’s like the hand of Providence that
he should leave them behind him.”
The force of her will had its effect. Mrs. Lambert got up, and, after
another declaration that Roderick would kill her, went out of the room
and up the stairs at a pace that Charlotte did not think her capable of.
She heard her step hurrying into the room overhead, and in a
surprisingly short time she was back again, uttering pants of
exhaustion and alarm, but holding the keys in her hand.
“Oh,” she said, “I thought every minute I heard him coming to the door!
Here they are for you, Charlotte, take them! I’ll not have anything more
to say to them.”
She flung the keys into Miss Mullen’s lap, and prepared to sink into her
chair again. Charlotte jumped up, and the keys rattled on to the floor.
“And d’ye think I’d lay a finger on them?” she said, in such a voice
that Mrs. Lambert checked herself in the action of sitting down, and
Muffy fled under his mistress’s chair and barked in angry alarm. “Pick
them up yourself! It’s no affair of mine!” She pointed with a fateful
finger at the keys, and Mrs. Lambert obediently stooped for them. “Now,
there’s the desk, ye’d better not lose any more time, but get it down.”
The shelf on which the desk stood was the highest one of a small
book-case, and was just above the level of Mrs. Lambert’s head, so that
when, after many a frightened look out of the window, she stretched up
her short arms to take it down, she found the task almost beyond her.
“Come and help me, Charlotte,” she cried; “I’m afraid it’ll fall on me!”
“I’ll not put a hand to it,” said Charlotte, without moving, while her
ugly, mobile face twitched with excitement; “it’s you have the right and
no one else, and I’d recommend ye to hurry!”
The word hurry acted electrically on Mrs. Lambert; she put forth all her
feeble strength, and lifting the heavy despatch-box from the shelf, she
staggered with it to the dinner-table.
“Oh, it’s the weight of the house!” she gasped, collapsing on to a chair
beside it.
“Here, open it now quickly, and we’ll talk about the weight of it
afterwards,” said Charlotte so imperiously that Mrs. Lambert, moved by a
power that was scarcely her own, fumbled through the bunch for the key.
“There it is! Don’t you see the Bramah key?” exclaimed Charlotte, hardly
repressing the inclination to call her friend a fool and to snatch the
bunch from her; “press it in hard now, or ye’ll not get it to turn.”
If the lock had not been an easy one, it is probable that Mrs. Lambert’s
helpless fingers would never have turned the key, but it yielded to the
first touch, and she lifted the lid. Charlotte craned over her shoulder
with eyes that ravened on the contents of the box.
“No, there’s nothing there,” she said, taking in with one look the
papers that lay in the tray; “lift up the tray!”
Mrs. Lambert, now past remonstrance, did as she was bid, and some
bundles of letters and a few photographs were brought to light.
“Show the photographs!” said Charlotte in one fierce breath.
But here Mrs. Lambert’s courage failed. “Oh, I can’t, don’t ask me!” she
wailed, clasping her hands on her bosom, with a terror of some
irrevocable truth that might await her adding itself to the fear of
discovery.
Charlotte caught one of her hands, and, with a guttural sound of
contempt, forced it down on to the photograph.
“Show it to me!”
Her victim took up the photographs, and turning them round, revealed two
old pictures of Lambert in riding clothes, with Francie beside him in a
very badly made habit, with her hair down her back.
“What d’ye think of that?” said Charlotte. She was gripping Mrs.
Lambert’s sloping shoulder, and her breath was coming hard and short.
“Now, get out her letters. There they are in the corner!”
“Ah, she’s only a child in that picture,” said Mrs. Lambert in a tone of
relief, as she hurriedly put the photographs back.
“Open the letters and ye’ll see what sort of a child she was.”
Mrs. Lambert made no further demur. She took out the bundle that
Charlotte pointed to, and drew the top one from its retaining
india-rubber strap. Even in affairs of the heart Mr. Lambert was a tidy
man.
“My dear Mr. Lambert,” she read aloud, in a deprecating, tearful voice
that was more than ever like the quivering chirrup of a turkey-hen, “the
cake was scrumptious, all the girls were after me for a bit of it, and
asking where I got it, but I wouldn’t tell. I put it under my pillow
three nights, but all I dreamt of was Uncle Robert walking round and
round Stephen’s Green in his night-cap. You must have had a grand
wedding. Why didn’t you ask me there to dance at it? So now no more from
your affectionate friend, F. Fitzpatrick.”
Mrs. Lambert leaned back, and her hands fell into her lap.
“Well, thank God there’s no harm in that, Charlotte,” she said, closing
her eyes with a sigh that might have been relief, though her voice
sounded a little dreamy and bewildered.
“Ah, you began at the wrong end,” said Charlotte, little attentive to
either sigh or tone, “that was written five years ago. Here, what’s in
this?” She indicated the one lowest in the packet.
Mrs. Lambert opened her eyes.
“The drops!” she said with sudden energy, “on the sideboard--oh, save
me--!”
Her voice fainted away, her eyes closed, and her head fell limply on to
her shoulder. Charlotte sprang instinctively towards the sideboard, but
suddenly stopped and looked from Mrs. Lambert to the bundle of letters.
She caught it up, and plucking out a couple of the most recent, read
them through with astonishing speed. She was going to take out another
when a slight movement from her companion made her throw them down.
Mrs. Lambert was slipping off the high dining-room chair on which she
was sitting, and there was a look about her mouth that Charlotte had
never seen there before. Charlotte had her arm under her in a moment,
and, letting her slip quietly down, laid her flat on the floor. Through
the keen and crowding contingencies of the moment came a sound from
outside, a well-known voice calling and whistling to a dog, and in the
same instant Charlotte had left Mrs. Lambert and was deftly and swiftly
replacing letters and photographs in the despatch-box. She closed the
lid noiselessly, put it back on its shelf with scarcely an effort, and
after a moment of uncertainty, slipped the keys into Mrs. Lambert’s
pocket. She knew that Lambert would never guess at his wife’s one breach
of faith. Then, with a quickness almost incredible in a woman of her
build, she got the drops from the sideboard, poured them out, and, on
her way back to the inert figure on the floor, rang the bell violently.
Muffy had crept from under the table to snuff with uncanny curiosity at
his mistress’s livid face, and as Charlotte approached, he put his tail
between his legs and yapped shrilly at her.
“Get out, ye damned cur!” she exclaimed, the coarse, superstitious side
of her nature coming uppermost now that the absorbing stress of those
acts of self-preservation was over. Her big foot lifted the dog and sent
him flying across the room, and she dropped on her knees beside the
motionless, tumbled figure on the floor. “She’s dead! she’s dead!” she
cried out, and as if in protest against her own words she flung water
upon the unresisting face, and tried to force the drops between the
closed teeth. But the face never altered; it only acquired momentarily
the immovable preoccupation of death, that asserted itself in silence,
and gave the feeble features a supreme dignity, in spite of the thin
dabbled fringe and the gold ear-rings and brooch, that were instinct
with the vulgarities of life.