More than the half of September had gone by. A gale or two had browned
the woods, and the sky was beginning to show through the trees a good
deal. Miss Greely removed the sun-burned straw hats from her window, and
people lighted their fires at afternoon tea-time, and daily said to each
other with sapient gloom, that the evenings were closing in very much.
The summer visitors had gone, and the proprietors of lodgings had moved
down from the attics to the front parlours, and were restoring to them
their usual odour of old clothes, sour bread, and apples. All the
Dysarts, with the exception of Sir Benjamin, were away; the Bakers had
gone to drink the waters at Lisdoonvarna; the Beatties were having their
yearly outing at the Sea Road in Galway; the Archdeacon had exchanged
duties with an English cleric, who was married, middle-aged, and
altogether unadvantageous, and Miss Mullen played the organ, and
screamed the highest and most ornate tunes in company with the
attenuated choir.
The barracks kept up an outward seeming of life and cheerfulness,
imparted by the adventitious aid of red coats and bugle-blowing, but
their gaiety was superficial, and even upon Cursiter, steam-launching
to nowhere in particular and back again, had begun to pall. He looked
forward to his subaltern’s return with an eagerness quite out of
proportion to Mr. Hawkins’ gifts of conversation or companionship;
solitude and steam-launching were all very well in moderation, but he
could not get the steam-launch in after dinner to smoke a pipe, and
solitude tended to unsettling reflections on the vanity of his present
walk of life. Hawkins, when he came, was certainly a variant in the
monotony, but Cursiter presently discovered that he would have to add to
the task of amusing himself the still more arduous one of amusing his
companion. Hawkins dawdled, moped, and grumbled, and either spent the
evenings in moody silence, or in endless harangues on the stone-broken
nature of his finances, and the contrariness of things in general. He
admitted his engagement to Miss Coppard with about as ill a grace as was
possible, and when rallied about it, became sulky and snappish, but of
Francie he never spoke, and Cursiter augured no good from these
indications. Captain Cursiter knew as little as the rest of Lismoyle as
to the reasons of Miss Fitzpatrick’s abrupt disappearance from Tally Ho,
but, unlike the generality of Francie’s acquaintances, had accepted the
fact unquestioningly, and with a simple gratitude to Providence for its
interposition in the matter. If only partridge-shooting did not begin in
Ireland three weeks later than in any civilised country, thought this
much harassed child’s guide, it would give them both something better to
do than loafing about the lake in the _Serpolette_. Well, anyhow, the
20th was only three days off now, and Dysart had given them leave to
shoot as much as they liked over Bruff, and, thank the Lord, Hawkins was
fond of shooting, and there would be no more of this talk of running up
to Dublin for two or three days to have his teeth overhauled, or to get
a new saddle, or some nonsense of that kind. Neither Captain Cursiter
nor Mr. Hawkins paid visits to anyone at this time; in fact, were never
seen except when, attired in all his glory, one or the other took the
soldiers to church, and marched them back again with as little delay as
possible; so that the remnant of Lismoyle society pronounced them very
stuck-up and unsociable, and mourned for the days of the Tipperary
Foragers.
It was on the first day of the partridge shooting that Mr. Lambert came
back to Rosemount. The far-away banging of the guns down on the farms by
the lake was the first thing he heard as he drove up from the station;
and the thought that occurred to him as he turned in at his own gate was
that public opinion would scarcely allow him to shoot this season. He
had gone away as soon after his wife’s funeral as was practicable, and
having honeymooned with his grief in the approved fashion (combining
with this observance the settling of business matters with his wife’s
trustees in Limerick), the stress of his new position might be supposed
to be relaxed. He was perfectly aware that the neighbourhood would
demand no extravagance of sorrow from him; no one could expect him to be
more than decently regretful for poor Lucy. He had always been a kind
husband to her, he reflected, with excusable satisfaction; that is to
say, he had praised her housekeeping, and generally bought her whatever
she asked for, out of her own money. He was glad now that he had had the
good sense to marry her; it had made her very happy, poor thing, and he
was certainly now in a better position than he could ever have hoped to
be if he had not done so. All these soothing and comfortable facts,
however, did not prevent his finding the dining-room very dreary and
silent when he came downstairs next morning in his new black clothes.
His tea tasted as if the water had not been boiled, and the urn got in
his way when he tried to prop up the newspaper in his accustomed manner;
the bacon dish had been so much more convenient, and the knowledge that
his wife was there, ready to receive gratefully any crumb of news that
he might feel disposed to let fall, had given a zest to the reading of
his paper that was absent now. Even Muffy’s basket was empty, for Muffy,
since his mistress’s death, had relinquished all pretence at gentility,
and after a day of miserable wandering about the house, had entered into
a league with the cook and residence in the kitchen.
Lambert surveyed all his surroundings with a loneliness that surprised
himself: the egg-cosy that his wife had crocheted for him, the
half-empty medicine bottle on the chimney-piece, the chair in which she
used to sit, and felt that he did not look forward to the task before
him of sorting her papers and going through her affairs generally. He
got to work at eleven o’clock, taking first the letters and papers that
were locked up in a work-table, a walnut-topped and silken-fluted piece
of furniture that had been given to Mrs. Lambert by a Limerick friend,
and, having been considered too handsome for everyday use, had been
consecrated by her to the conservation of letters and of certain valued
designs for Berlin wool work and receipts for crochet stitches. Lambert
lighted a fire in the drawing-room, and worked his way down through the
contents of the green silk pouch, finding there every letter, every note
even, that he had ever written to his wife, and committing them to the
flames with a curious sentimental regret. He had not remembered that he
had written her so many letters, and he said to himself that he wished
those old devils of women in Lismoyle, who, he knew, had always been so
keen to pity Lucy, could know what a good husband he had been to her.
Inside the envelope of one of his own letters was one from Francie
Fitzpatrick, evidently accidentally thrust there; a few crooked lines to
say that she had got the lodgings for Mrs. Lambert in Charles Street,
but the landlady wouldn’t be satisfied without she got two and sixpence
extra for the kitchen fire. Lambert put the note into his pocket, where
there was already another document in the same handwriting, bearing the
Bray postmark with the date of September 18, and when all was finished,
and the grate full of flaky spectral black heaps, he went upstairs and
unlocked the door of what had been his wife’s room. The shutters were
shut, and the air of the room had a fortnight’s closeness in it. When he
opened the shutters there was a furious buzzing of flies, and although
he had the indifference about fresh air common to his class, he flung up
the window, and drew a long breath of the brilliant morning before he
went back to his dismal work of sorting and destroying. What was he to
do with such things as the old photographs of her father and mother, her
work-basket, her salts-bottle, the handbag that she used to carry into
Lismoyle with her? He was not an imaginative man, but he was touched by
the smallness, the familiarity of these only relics of a trivial life,
and he stood and regarded the sheeted furniture, and the hundred odds
and ends that lay about the room, with an acute awakening to her
absence that, for the time, almost obliterated his own figure, posing to
the world as an interesting young man, who, while anxious to observe the
decencies of bereavement, could not be expected to be inconsolable for a
woman so obviously beneath his level.
A voice downstairs called his name, a woman’s voice, saying, “Roderick!”
and for a moment a superstitious thrill ran through him. Then he heard a
footstep in the passage, and the voice called him again, “Are you there,
Roderick?”
This time he recognised Charlotte Mullen’s voice, and went out on to the
landing to meet her. The first thing that he noticed was that she was
dressed in new clothes, black and glossy and well made. He took them in
with the glance that had to be responsive as well as observant, as
Charlotte advanced upon him, and, taking his hand in both hers, shook it
long and silently.
“Well, Roderick,” she said at length, “I’m glad to see you back again,
though it’s a sad home-coming for you and for us all.”
Lambert pressed her large well-known hand, while his eyes rested
solemnly upon her face. “Thank you, Charlotte, I’m very much obliged to
you for coming over to see me this way, but it’s no more than what I’d
have expected of you.”
He had an ancient confidence in Charlotte and an ease in her
society--after all, there are very few men who will not find some saving
grace in a woman whose affections they believe to be given to them--and
he was truly glad to see her at this juncture. She was exactly the
person that he wanted to help him in the direful task that he had yet to
perform; her capable hands should undertake all the necessary ransacking
of boxes and wardrobes, while he sat and looked on at what was really
much more a woman’s work than a man’s. These thoughts passed through his
mind while he and Charlotte exchanged conventionalities suitable to the
occasion, and spoke of Mrs. Lambert as “she,” without mentioning her
name.
“Would you like to come downstairs, Charlotte, and sit in the
drawing-room?” he said, presently; “if it wasn’t that I’m afraid you
might be tired after your walk, I’d ask you to help me with a very
painful bit of work that I was just at when you came.”
They had been standing in the passage, and Charlotte’s eyes darted
towards the half-open door of Mrs. Lambert’s room.
“You’re settling her things, I suppose?” she said, her voice treading
eagerly upon the heels of his; “is it _that_ you want me to help you
with?”
He led the way into the room without answering, and indicated its
contents with a comprehensive sweep of his hand.
“I turned the key in this door myself when I came back from the funeral,
and not a thing in it has been touched since. Now I must set to work to
try and get the things sorted, to see what I should give away, and what
I should keep, and what should be destroyed,” he said, his voice
resuming its usual business tone, tinged with just enough gloom to mark
his sense of the situation.
Charlotte peeled off her black gloves and stuffed them into her pocket.
“Sit down, my poor fellow, sit down, and I’ll do it all,” she said,
stripping an arm-chair of its sheet and dragging it to the window; “this
is no fit work for you.”
There was no need to press this view upon Lambert; he dropped easily
into the chair provided for him, and in a couple of minutes the work was
under weigh.
“Light your pipe now and be comfortable,” said Charlotte, issuing from
the wardrobe with an armful of clothes and laying them on the bed;
“there’s work here for the rest of the morning.” She took up a black
satin skirt and held it out in front of her; it had been Mrs. Lambert’s
“Sunday best,” and it seemed to Lambert as though he could hear his
wife’s voice asking anxiously if he thought the day was fine enough for
her to wear it. “Now what would you wish done with this?” said
Charlotte, looking at it fondly, and holding the band against her own
waist to see the length. “It’s too good to give to a servant.”
Lambert turned his head away. There was a crudeness about this way of
dealing that was a little jarring at first.
“I don’t know what’s to be done with it,” he said, with all a man’s
helpless dislike of such details.
“Well, there’s this, and her sealskin, and a lot of other things that
are too good to be given to servants,” went on Charlotte, rapidly
bringing forth more of the treasures of the poor turkey-hen’s wardrobe,
and proceeding to sort them into two heaps on the floor. “What would you
think of making up the best of the things and sending them up to one of
those dealers in Dublin? It’s a sin to let them go to loss.”
“Oh, damn it, Charlotte! I can’t sell her clothes!” said Lambert
hastily. He pretended to no sentiment about his wife, but some masculine
instinct of chivalry gave him a shock at the thought of making money out
of the conventional sanctities of a woman’s apparel.
“Well, what else do you propose to do with them?” said Charlotte, who
had already got out a pencil and paper and was making a list.
“Upon my soul, I don’t know,” said Lambert, beginning to realise that
there was but one way out of the difficulty, and perceiving with
irritated amusement that Charlotte had driven him towards it like a
sheep, “unless you’d like them yourself?”
“And do you think I’d accept them from you?” demanded Charlotte, with an
indignation so vivid that even the friend of her youth was momentarily
deceived and almost frightened by it; “I, that was poor Lucy’s oldest
friend! Do you think I could bear--”
Lambert saw the opportunity that had been made for him.
“It’s only because you were her oldest friend that I’d offer them to
you,” he struck in; “and if you won’t have them yourself, I thought you
might know of someone that would.”
Charlotte swallowed her wrath with a magnanimous effort. “Well, Roddy,
if you put it in that way, I don’t like to refuse,” she said, wiping a
ready tear away with a black-edged pocket handkerchief; “it’s quite
true, I know plenty would be glad of a help. There’s that unfortunate
Letitia Fitzpatrick, that I’ll be bound hasn’t more than two gowns to
her back; I might send her a bundle.”
“Send them to whom you like,” said Lambert, ignoring the topic of the
Fitzpatricks as intentionally as it had been introduced; “but I’d be
glad if you could find some things for Julia Duffy; I suppose she’ll be
coming out of the infirmary soon. What we’re to do about that business I
don’t know,” he continued, filling another pipe. “Dysart said he
wouldn’t have her put out if she could hold on anyway at all--”
“Heavenly powers!” exclaimed Charlotte, letting fall a collection of
rolled-up kid gloves, “d’ye mean to say you didn’t hear she’s in the
Ballinasloe Asylum? She was sent there three days ago.”
“Great Scot! Is she gone mad? I was thinking all this time what I was to
do with her!”
“Well, you needn’t trouble your head about her any more. Her wits went
as her body mended, and a board of J.P.’s and M.D.’s sat upon her, and
as one of them was old Fatty Ffolliott, you won’t be surprised to hear
that that was the end of Julia Duffy.”
Both laughed, and both felt suddenly the incongruity of laughter in that
room. Charlotte went back to the chest of drawers whose contents she was
ransacking, and continued:
“They say she sits all day counting her fingers and toes and calling
them chickens and turkeys, and saying that she has the key of
Gurthnamuckla in her pocket, and not a one can get into it without her
leave.”
“And are you still on for it?” said Lambert, half reluctantly, as it
seemed to Charlotte’s acute ear, “for if you are, now’s your time. I
might have put her out of it two years ago for non-payment of rent, and
I’ll just take possession and sell off what she has left behind her
towards the arrears.”
“On for it? Of course I am. You might know I’m not one to change my mind
about a thing I’m set upon. But you’ll have to let me down easy with the
fine, Roddy. There isn’t much left in the stocking these times, and one
or two of my poor little dabblings in the money-market have rather ‘gone
agin me.’”
Lambert thought in a moment of those hundreds that had been lent to him,
and stirred uneasily in his chair. “By the way, Charlotte,” he said,
trying to speak like a man to whom such things were trifles, “about that
money you lent me--I’m afraid I can’t let you have it back for a couple
of months or so. Of course, I needn’t tell you, poor Lucy’s money was
only settled on me for my life, and now there’s some infernal delay
before they can hand even the interest over to me; but, if you don’t
mind waiting a bit, I can make it all square for you about the farm, I
know.”
He inwardly used a stronger word than infernal as he reflected that if
Charlotte had not got that promise about the farm out of him when he was
in a hole about money, he might have been able, somehow, to get it
himself now.
“Don’t mention that--don’t mention that,” said Charlotte, absolutely
blushing a little, “it was a pleasure to me to lend it to you, Roddy; if
I never saw it again I’d rather that than that you should put yourself
out to pay me before it was convenient to you.” She caught up a dress
and shook its folds out with unnecessary vehemence. “I won’t be done all
night if I delay this way. Ah! how well I remember this dress! Poor dear
Lucy got it for Fanny Waller’s wedding. Who’d ever think she’d have kept
it for all those years! Roddy, what stock would you put on
Gurthnamuckla?”
“Dry stock,” answered Lambert briefly.
“And how about the young horses? You don’t forget the plan we had about
them? You don’t mean to give it up, I hope?”
“Oh, that’s as you please,” replied Lambert. He was very much interested
in the project, but he had no intention of letting Charlotte think so.
She looked at him, reading his thoughts more clearly than he would have
liked, and they made her the more resolved upon her own line of action.
She saw herself settled at Gurthnamuckla, with Roddy riding over three
or four times a week to see his young horses, that should graze her
grass and fill her renovated stables, while she, the bland lady of the
manor, should show what a really intelligent woman could do at the head
of affairs; and the three hundred pound debt should never be spoken of,
but should remain, like a brake, in readiness to descend and grip at the
discretion of the driver. There was no fear of his paying it of his own
accord. He was not the man she took him for if he paid a debt without
due provocation; he had a fine crop of them to be settled as it was,
and that would take the edge off his punctilious scruples with regard to
keeping her out of her money.
The different heaps on the floor increased materially while these
reflections passed through Miss Mullen’s brain. It was characteristic of
her that a distinct section of it had never ceased from appraising and
apportioning dresses, dolmans and bonnets, with a nice regard to the
rival claims of herself, Eliza Hackett the cook, and the rest of the
establishment, and still deeper in its busy convolutions--though this
simile is probably unscientific--lurked and grew the consciousness that
Francie’s name had not yet been mentioned. The wardrobe was cleared at
last, a scarlet flannel dressing-gown topping the heap that was destined
for Tally Ho, and Charlotte had already settled the question as to
whether she should bestow her old one upon Norry or make it into a bed
for a cat. Lambert finished his second pipe, and stretching himself,
yawned drearily, as though, which was indeed the case, the solemnity of
the occasion had worn off and its tediousness had become pronounced. He
looked at his watch.
“Half-past twelve, by Jove! Look here, Charlotte, let’s come down and
have a glass of sherry.”
Charlotte got up from her knees with alacrity, though the tone in which
she accepted the invitation was fittingly lugubrious. She was just as
glad to leave something unfinished for the afternoon, and there was
something very intimate and confidential about a friendly glass of
sherry in the middle of a joint day’s work. It was not until Lambert had
helped himself a second time from the decanter of brown sherry that Miss
Mullen saw her opportunity to approach a subject that was becoming
conspicuous by its absence. She had seated herself, not without
consciousness, in what had been Mrs. Lambert’s chair; she was feeling
happier than she had been since the time when Lambert was a lanky young
clerk in her father’s office, with a precocious moustache and an
affectionately free and easy manner, before Rosemount had been built, or
Lucy Galvin thought of. She could think of Lucy now without resentment,
even with equanimity, and that last interview, when her friend had died
on the very spot where the sunlight was now resting at her feet,
recurred to her without any unpleasantness. She had fought a losing
battle against fate all her life, and she could not be expected to
regret having accepted its first overture of friendship, any more than
she need be expected to refuse another half glass of that excellent
brown sherry that Lambert had just poured out for her. “Charlotte could
take her whack,” he was wont to say to their mutual friends in that tone
of humorous appreciation that is used in connection with a gentlemanlike
capacity for liquor.
“Well, how are you all getting on at Tally Ho?” he said presently, and
not all the self-confidence induced by the sherry could make his voice
as easy as he wished it to be; “I hear you’ve lost your young lady?”
Charlotte was provoked to feel the blood mount slowly to her face and
remain like a hot straddle across her cheeks and nose.
“Oh yes,” she said carelessly, inwardly cursing the strength of
Lambert’s liquor, “she took herself off in a huff, and I only hope she’s
not repenting of it now.”
“What was the row about? Did you smack her for pulling the cats’ tails?”
Lambert had risen from the table and was trimming his nails with a
pocket-knife, but out of the tail of his eye he was observing his
visitor very closely.
“I gave her some good advice, and I got the usual amount of gratitude
for it,” said Charlotte, in the voice of a person who has been deeply
wounded, but is not going to make a fuss about it. She had no idea how
much Lambert knew, but she had, at all events, one line of defence that
was obvious and secure.
Lambert, as it happened, knew nothing except that there had been what
the letter in his pocket described as “a real awful row,” and his
mordant curiosity forced him to the question that he knew Charlotte was
longing for him to ask.
“What did you give her advice about?”
“I may have been wrong,” replied Miss Mullen, with the liberality that
implies the certainty of having been right, “but when I found that she
was carrying on with that good-for-nothing Hawkins, I thought it my duty
to give her my opinion, and upon me word, as long as he’s here she’s
well out of the place.”
“How did you find out she was carrying on with Hawkins?” asked Lambert,
with a hoarseness in his voice that belied its indifference.
“I knew that they were corresponding, and when I taxed her with carrying
on with him she didn’t attempt to deny it, and told me up to my face
that she could mind her own affairs without my interference. ‘Very well,
Miss,’ says I, ‘you’ll march out of my house!’ and off she took herself
next morning, and has never had the decency to send me a line since.”
“Is she in Dublin now?” asked Lambert with the carelessness that was so
much more remarkable than an avowed interest.
“No; she’s with those starving rats of Fitzpatricks; they were glad
enough to get hold of her to squeeze what they could out of her
twenty-five pounds a year, and I wish them joy of their bargain!”
Charlotte pushed back her chair violently, and her hot face looked its
ugliest as some of the hidden hatred showed itself. But Lambert felt
that she did well to be angry. In the greater affairs of life he
believed in Charlotte, and he admitted to himself that she had done
especially well in sending Francie to Bray.