The kitchen at Tally Ho generally looked its best at ten o’clock in the
morning. Its best is, in this case, a relative term, implying the
temporary concealment of the plates, loaves of bread, dirty rubbers, and
jam-pots full of congealed dripping that usually adorned the tables,
and the sweeping of out-lying potato-skins and cinders into a chasm
beneath the disused hothearth. When these things had been done, and Bid
Sal and her bare feet had been effaced into some outer purlieu, Norry
felt that she was ready to receive the Queen of England if necessary,
and awaited the ordering of dinner with her dress let down to its full
length, a passably clean apron, and an expression of severe and exalted
resignation. On the morning now in question Charlotte was standing in
her usual position, with her back to the fire and her hands spread
behind her to the warmth, scanning with a general’s eye the routed
remnants of yesterday’s dinner, and debating with herself as to the
banner under which they should next be rallied.
“A curry, I think, Norry,” she called out; “plenty of onions and apples
in it, and that’s all ye want.”
“Oh, musha! God knows ye have her sickened with yer curries,” replied
Norry’s voice from the larder, “’twas ere yestherday ye had the remains
of th’ Irish stew in curry, an’ she didn’t ate what’d blind your eye of
it. Wasn’t Louisa tellin’ me!”
“And so I’m to order me dinners to please Miss Francie!” said Charlotte,
in tones of surprising toleration; “well, ye can make a haricot of it if
ye like. Perhaps her ladyship will eat that.”
“Faith ’tis aiqual to me what she ates--” here came a clatter of
crockery, and a cat shot like a comet from the larder door, followed by
Norry’s foot and Norry’s blasphemy--“or if she never ate another bit.
And where’s the carrots to make a haricot? Bid Sal’s afther tellin’ me
there’s ne’er a one in the garden; but sure, if ye sent Bid Sal to look
for salt wather in the say she wouldn’t find it!”
Miss Mullen laughed approvingly. “There’s carrots in plenty; and see
here, Norry, you might give her a jam dumpling--use the gooseberry jam
that’s going bad. I’ve noticed meself that the child isn’t eating, and
it won’t do to have the people saying we’re starving her.”
“Whoever’ll say that, he wasn’t looking at me yestherday, and I makin’
the cake for herself and Misther Dysart! Eight eggs, an’ a cupful of
sugar and a cupful of butther, and God knows what more went in it, an’
the half of me day gone bating it, and afther all they left it afther
thim!”
“And whose fault was that but your own for not sending it up in time?”
rejoined Charlotte, her voice sharpening at once to vociferative
argument; “Miss Francie told me that Mr. Dysart was forced to go without
his tea.”
“Late or early I’m thinkin’ thim didn’t ax it nor want it,” replied
Norry, issuing from the larder with a basketful of crumpled linen in her
arms, and a visage of the utmost sourness; “there’s your clothes for ye
now, that was waitin’ on me yestherday to iron them, in place of makin’
cakes.”
She got a bowl of water and began to sprinkle the clothes and roll them
up tightly, preparatory to ironing them, her ill-temper imparting to the
process the air of whipping a legion of children and putting them to
bed. Charlotte came over to the table, and, resting her hands on it,
watched Norry for a few seconds in silence.
“What makes you say they didn’t want anything to eat?” she asked; “was
Miss Francie ill, or was anything the matter with her?”
“How do I know what ailed her?” replied Norry, pounding a pillow-case
with her fist before putting it away; “I have somethin’ to do besides
followin’ her or mindin’ her.”
“Then what are ye talking about?”
“Ye’d betther ax thim that knows. ’Twas Louisa seen her within in the
dhrawn’-room, an’ whatever was on her she was cryin’; but, sure, Louisa
tells lies as fast as a pig’d gallop.”
“What did she say?” Charlotte darted the question at Norry as a dog
snaps at a piece of meat.
“Then she said plinty, an’ ’tis she that’s able. If ye told that one a
thing and locked the doore on her the way she couldn’t tell it agin,
she’d bawl it up the chimbley.”
“Where’s Louisa?” interrupted Charlotte impatiently.
“Meself can tell ye as good as Louisa,” said Norry instantly taking
offence; “she landed into the dhrawn’-room with the tay, and there was
Miss Francie sittin’ on the sofa and her handkerchief in her eyes, and
Misther Dysart beyond in the windy and not a word nor a stir out of him,
only with his eyes shtuck out in the garden, an’ she cryin’ always.”
“Psha! Louisa’s a fool! How does she know Miss Francie was crying? I’ll
bet a shilling ’twas only blowing her nose she was.”
Norry had by this time spread a ragged blanket on the table, and,
snatching up the tongs, she picked out of the heart of the fire a
red-hot heater and thrust it into a box-iron with unnecessary violence.
“An’ why wouldn’t she cry? Wasn’t I listenin’ to her cryin’ in her room
lasht night an’ I goin’ up to bed?” She banged the iron down on the
table and began to rub it to and fro on the blanket. “But what use is it
to cry, even if ye dhragged the hair out of yer head? Ye might as well
be singin’ and dancin’.”
She flung up her head, and stared across the kitchen under the wisps of
hair that hung over her unseeing eyes with such an expression as Deborah
the Prophetess might have worn. Charlotte gave a grunt of contempt, and
picking Susan up from the bar of the table, she put him on her shoulder
and walked out of the kitchen.
Francie had been since breakfast sitting by the window of the
dining-room, engaged in the cheerless task of darning a stocking on a
soda-water bottle. Mending stockings was not an art that she excelled
in; she could trim a hat or cut out a dress, but the dark,
unremunerative toil of mending stockings was as distasteful to her as
stone-breaking to a tramp, and the simile might easily be carried out by
comparing the results of the process to macadamising. It was a still,
foggy morning; the boughs of the scarlet-blossomed fuchsia were greyed
with moisture, and shining drops studded the sash of the open window
like sea-anemones. It was a day that was both close and chilly, and
intolerable as the atmosphere of the Tally Ho dining-room would have
been with the window shut, the breakfast things still on the table, and
the all-pervading aroma of cats, the damp, lifeless air seemed only a
shade better to Francie as she raised her tired eyes from time to time
and looked out upon the discouraging prospect. Everything stood in the
same trance of stillness in which it had been when she had got up at
five o’clock and looked out at the sluggish dawn broadening in blank
silence upon the fields. She had leaned out of her window till she had
become cold through and through, and after that had unlocked her trunk,
taken out Hawkins’ letters, and going back to bed had read and re-read
them there. The old glamour was about them; the convincing sincerity and
assurance that was as certain of her devotion as of his own, and the
unfettered lavishness of expression that made her turn hot and cold as
she read them. She had time to go through many phases of feeling before
the chapel-bell began to ring for eight o’clock Mass, and she stole down
to the kitchen to see if the post had come in. The letters were lying on
the table; three or four for Charlotte, the local paper, a circular
about peat litter addressed to the Stud-groom, Tally Ho, and, underneath
all, the thick, rough envelope with the ugly boyish writing that had
hardly changed since Mr. Hawkins had written his first letters home from
Cheltenham College. Francie caught it up, and was back in her own room
in the twinkling of an eye. It contained only a few words.
“Dearest Francie, only time for a line to-day to say that I am staying
on here for another week, but I hope ten days will see me back at the
old mill. I want you like a good girl to keep things as dark as
possible. I don’t see my way out of this game yet. No more to-day. Just
off to play golf; the girls here are nailers at it. Thine ever, Gerald.”
This was the ration that had been served out to her hungry heart, the
word that she had wearied for for a week; that once more he had
contrived to postpone his return, and that the promise he had made to
her under the tree in the garden was as far from being fulfilled as
ever. Christopher Dysart would not have treated her this way, she
thought to herself, as she stooped over her darning and bit her lip to
keep it from quivering, but then she would not have minded much whether
he wrote to her or not--that was the worst of it. Francie had always
confidently announced to her Dublin circle of friends her intention of
marrying a rich man, good-looking, and a lord if possible, but certainly
rich. But here she was, on the morning after what had been a proposal,
or what had amounted to one, from a rich young man who was also
nice-looking, and almost the next thing to a lord, and instead of
sitting down triumphantly to write the letter that should thrill the
North Side down to its very grocers’ shops, she was darning stockings,
red-eyed and dejected, and pondering over how best to keep from her
cousin any glimmering of what had happened. All her old self posed and
struck attitudes before the well-imagined mirror of her friends’ minds,
and the vanity that was flattered by success cried out petulantly
against the newer soul that enforced silence upon it. She felt quite
impartially how unfortunate it was that she should have given her heart
to Gerald in this irrecoverable way, and then with a headlong change of
ideas she said to herself that there was no one like him, and she would
always, _always_ care for him, and nobody else.
This point having been emphasised by a tug at her needle that snapped
the darning cotton, Miss Fitzpatrick was embarking upon a more
pleasurable train of possibilities when she heard Charlotte’s foot in
the hall, and fell all of a sudden down to the level of the present.
Charlotte came in and shut the door with her usual decisive slam; she
went over to the sideboard and locked up the sugar and jam with a sharp
glance to see if Louisa had tampered with either, and then sat down at
her davenport near Francie and began to look over her account books.
“Well, I declare,” she said after a minute or two, “it’s a funny thing
that I have to buy eggs, with my yard full of hens! This is a state of
things unheard of till you came into the house, my young lady!”
Francie looked up and saw that this was meant as a pleasantry.
“Is it me? I wouldn’t touch an egg to save my life!”
“Maybe you wouldn’t,” replied Charlotte with the same excessive
jocularity, “but you can give tea-parties, and treat your friends to
sponge-cakes that are made with nothing but eggs!”
Francie scented danger in the air, and having laughed nervously to show
appreciation of the jest, tried to change the conversation.
“How do you feel to-day, Charlotte?” she asked, working away at her
stocking with righteous industry; “is your headache gone? I forgot to
ask after it at breakfast.”
“Headache? I’d forgotten I’d ever had one. Three tabloids of antipyrin
and a good night’s rest; that was all _I_ wanted to put me on my pegs
again. But if it comes to that, me dear child, I’d trouble you to tell
me what makes you the colour of blay calico last night and this morning?
It certainly wasn’t all the cake you had at afternoon tea. I declare I
was quite vexed when I saw that lovely cake in the larder, and not a bit
gone from it.”
Francie coloured. “I was up very early yesterday making that cross, and
I daresay that tired me. Tell me, did Mr. Lambert say anything about it?
Did he like it?”
Charlotte looked at her, but could discern no special expression in the
piquant profile that was silhouetted against the light.
“He had other things to think of besides your wreath,” she said
coarsely; “when a man’s wife isn’t cold in her coffin, he has something
to think of besides young ladies’ wreaths!”
There was silence after this, and Francie wondered what had made
Charlotte suddenly get so cross for nothing; she had been so
good-natured for the last week. The thought passed through her mind that
possibly Mr. Lambert had taken as little notice of Charlotte as of the
wreath; she was just sufficiently aware of the state of affairs to know
that such a cause might have such an effect, and she wished she had
tried any other topic of conversation. Darning is, however, an
occupation that does not tend to unloose the strings of the tongue, and
even when carried out according to the unexacting methods of Macadam, it
demands a certain degree of concentration, and Francie left to Charlotte
the task of finding a more congenial subject. It was chosen with
unexpected directness.
“What was the matter with you yesterday afternoon when Louisa brought in
the tea?”
Francie felt as though a pistol had been let off at her ear; the blood
surged in a great wave from her heart to her head, her heart gave a
shattering thump against her side, and then went on beating again in a
way that made her hands shake.
“Yesterday afternoon, Charlotte?” she said, while her brain sought madly
for a means of escape and found none; “there--there was nothing the
matter with me.”
“Look here now, Francie;” Charlotte turned away from her davenport, and
faced her cousin with her fists clenched on her knees; “I’m in _loco
parentis_ to you for the time being--your guardian, if you understand
that better--and there’s no good in your beating about the bush with me.
What happened between you and Christopher Dysart yesterday afternoon?”
“Nothing happened at all,” said Francie in a low voice that gave the lie
to her words.
“You’re telling me a falsehood! How have you the face to tell me there
was nothing happened when even that fool Louisa could see that something
had been going on to make you cry, and to send him packing out of the
house not a quarter of an hour after he came into it!”
“I told you before he couldn’t wait,” said Francie, trying to keep the
tremble out of her voice. She held the conventional belief that
Charlotte was queer, but very kind and jolly, but she had a fear of her
that she could hardly have given a reason for. It must have been by that
measuring and crossing of weapons that takes place unwittingly and yet
surely in the consciousness of everyone who lives in intimate connection
with another, that she had learned, like her great-aunt before her, the
weight of the real Charlotte’s will, and the terror of her personality.
“Stuff and nonsense!” broke out Miss Mullen, her eyes beginning to
sparkle ominously; “thank God I’m not such an ass as the people you’ve
taken in before now; ye’ll not find it so easy to make a fool of me as
ye think! Did he make ye an offer or did he not?” She leaned forward
with her mouth half open, and Francie felt her breath strike on her
face, and shrank back.
“He--he did not.”
Charlotte dragged her chair a pace nearer so that her knees touched
Francie.
“Ye needn’t tell me any lies, Miss; if he didn’t propose, he said
something that was equivalent to a proposal. Isn’t that the case?”
Francie had withdrawn herself as far into the corner of the window as
was possible, and the dark folds of the maroon rep curtain made a not
unworthy background for her fairness. Her head was turned childishly
over her shoulder in the attempt to get as far as she could from her
tormentor, and her eyes travelled desperately and yet unconsciously
over the dingy lines of the curtain.
“I told you already, Charlotte, that he didn’t propose to me,” she
answered; “he just paid a visit here like anyone else, and then he had
to go away early.”
“Don’t talk such baldherdash to me! I know what he comes here for as
well as you do, and as well as every soul in Lismoyle knows it, and I’ll
trouble ye to answer one question--do ye mean to marry him?” She paused
and gave the slight and shapely arm a compelling squeeze.
Francie wrenched her arm away. “No, I don’t!” she said, sitting up and
facing Charlotte with eyes that had a dawning light of battle in them.
Charlotte pushed back her chair, and with the same action was on her
feet.
“Oh, my God!” she bawled, flinging up both her arms with the fists
clenched; “d’ye hear that? She dares to tell me that to me face after
all I’ve done for her!” Her hands dropped down, and she stared at
Francie with her thick lips working in a dumb transport of rage. “And
who are ye waiting for? Will ye tell me that! You, that aren’t fit to
lick the dirt off Christopher Dysart’s boots!” she went on, with the
uncontrolled sound in her voice that told that rage was bringing her to
the verge of tears; “for the Prince of Wales’ son, I suppose? Or are ye
cherishing hopes that your friend Mr. Hawkins would condescend to take a
fancy to you again?” She laughed repulsively, waiting with a heaving
chest for the reply, and Francie felt as if the knife had been turned in
the wound.
“Leave me alone! What is it to you who I marry?” she cried passionately;
“I’ll marry who I like, and no thanks to you!”
“Oh, indeed,” said Charlotte, breathing hard and loud between the words;
“it’s nothing to me, I suppose, that I’ve kept the roof over your head
and put the bit into your mouth, while ye’re carrying on with every man
that ye can get to look at ye!”
“I’m not asking you to keep me,” said Francie, starting up in her turn
and standing in the window facing her cousin; “I’m able to keep myself,
and to wait as long as I choose till I get married; _I_’m not afraid of
being an old maid!”
They glared at each other, the fire of anger smiting on both their
faces, lighting Francie’s cheek with a malign brilliance, and burning in
ugly purple-red on Charlotte’s leathery skin. The girl’s aggressive
beauty was to Charlotte a keener taunt than the rudimentary insult of
her words; it brought with it a swarm of thoughts that buzzed and stung
in her soul like poisonous flies.
“And might one be permitted to ask how long you’re going to wait?” she
said, with quivering lips drawn back; “will six months be enough for
you, or do you consider the orthodox widower’s year too long to wait? I
daresay you’ll have found out what spending there is in twenty-five
pounds before that, and ye’ll go whimpering to Roddy Lambert, and asking
him to make ye Number Two, and to pay your debts and patch up your
character!”
“Roddy Lambert!” cried Francie, bursting out into shrill unpleasant
laughter; “I think I’ll try and do better than that, thank ye, though
you’re so kind in making him a present to me!” Then, firing a random
shot, “I’ll not deprive you of him, Charlotte; you may keep him all to
yourself!”
It is quite within the bounds of possibility that Charlotte might at
this juncture have struck Francie, and thereby have put herself for ever
into a false position, but her guardian angel, in the shape of Susan,
the grey tom-cat, intervened. He had jumped in at the window during the
discussion, and having rubbed himself unnoticed against Charlotte’s legs
with stiff, twitching tail, and cold eyes fixed on her face, he, at this
critical instant, sprang upwards at her, and clawed on to the bosom of
her dress, hanging there in expectation of the hand that should help him
to the accustomed perch on his mistress’s shoulder. The blow that was so
near being Francie’s descended upon the cat’s broad confident face and
hurled him to the ground. He bolted out of the window again, and when he
was safely on the gravel walk, turned and looked back with an expression
of human anger and astonishment.
When Charlotte spoke her voice was caught away from her as Christopher
Dysart’s had been the day before. All the passions have but one
instrument to play on when they wish to make themselves heard, and it
will yield but a broken sound when it is too hardly pressed.
“Dare to open your mouth to me again, and I’ll throw you out of the
window after the cat!” was what she said in that choking whisper. “Ye
can go out of this house to-morrow and see which of your lovers will
keep ye the longest, and by the time that they’re tired of ye, maybe
ye’ll regret that your impudence got ye turned out of a respectable
house!” She turned at the last word, and, like a madman who is just sane
enough to fear his own madness, flung out of the room without another
glance at her cousin.
Susan sat on the gravel path, and in the intervals of licking his paws
in every crevice and cranny, surveyed his mistress’s guest with a stony
watchfulness as she leaned her head against the window-sash and shook in
a paroxysm of sobs.