That evening when Mrs. Fitzpatrick was putting on her best cap and her
long cameo ear-rings she said to her husband:
“Well now, Robert, you mark my words, he’s after her.”
“Tchah!” replied Mr. Fitzpatrick, who was not in a humour to admit that
any woman could be attractive, owing to the postponement of his tea by
his wife so that cakes might be baked in Mr. Lambert’s honour; “you
can’t see a man without thinking he’s in love with someone or other.”
“I suppose you think it’s to see yourself he’s come all the way from
Lismoyle,” rejoined Mrs. Fitzpatrick with becoming spirit, “and says
he’s going to stop at Breslin’s Hotel for a week?”
“Oh, very well, have it your own way,” said Mr. Fitzpatrick
acrimoniously, “I suppose you have it all settled, and he’ll be married
to her by special license before the week’s out.”
“Well, I don’t care, Robert, you wouldn’t think to look at him that he’d
only buried his wife four months and a half ago--though I will say he’s
in deep mourning--but for all that no one’d blame him that he didn’t
think much of that poor creature, and ’twould be a fine match for
Francie if she’d take him.”
“Would she take him!” echoed Mr. Fitzpatrick scornfully; “would a duck
swim? I never saw the woman yet that wouldn’t half hang herself to get
married!”
“Ah, have done being so cross, Robert, Christmas day and all; I wonder
you married at all since you think so little of women.”
Finding this argument not easy to answer, Mr. Fitzpatrick said nothing,
and his wife, too much interested to linger over side issues, continued,
“The girls say they heard him asking her to drive to the Dargle with him
to-morrow, and he’s brought a grand box of sweets for the children as a
Christmas box, and six lovely pair of gloves for Francie! ’Pon me word,
I call her a very lucky girl!”
“Well, if I was a woman it isn’t that fellow I’d fancy,” said Mr.
Fitzpatrick, unexpectedly changing his ground, “but as, thank God, I’m
not, it’s no affair of mine.” Having delivered himself of this
sentiment, Mr. Fitzpatrick went downstairs. The smell of hot cakes rose
deliciously upon the air, and, as his niece emerged from the kitchen
with a plateful of them in her hand, and called to him to hurry before
they got cold, he thought to himself that Lambert would have the best of
the bargain if he married her.
Francie found the evening surprisingly pleasant. She was, as she had
always been, entirely at her ease with Mr. Lambert, and did not endure,
on his account, any vicarious suffering because the table-cloth was far
from clean, and the fact that Bridget put on the coal with her fingers
was recorded on the edges of the plates. If he chose to come and eat hot
cakes in the bosom of the Fitzpatrick family instead of dining at his
hotel, he was just as well able to do without a butter-knife as she was,
and, at all events, he need not have stayed unless he liked, she
thought, with a little flash of amusement and pride that her power over
him, at least, was not lost. There had been times during the last month
or two when she had believed that he, like everyone else, had forgotten
her, and it was agreeable to find that she had been mistaken.
The next day proved to be one of the softest and sunniest of the winter,
and, as they flew along the wet road towards the Dargle, on the smartest
of the Bray outside cars, a great revival took place in Francie’s
spirits. They left their car at the gate of the glen to which the Dargle
river has given its name, and strolled together along the private road
that runs from end to end of it. A few holiday-makers had been tempted
down from Dublin by the fine day, but there was nothing that even
suggested the noisy pleasure parties that vulgarise the winding beauty
of the ravine on summer bank holidays.
“Doesn’t it look fearful lonely to-day?” said Francie, who had made her
last visit there as a member of one of these same pleasure parties, and
had enjoyed herself highly. “You can’t hear a thing but the running of
the water.”
They were sitting on the low parapet of the road, looking down the brown
slope of the tree-tops to the river, that was running a foaming race
among the rocks at the bottom of the cleft.
“I don’t call it lonely,” said Lambert, casting a discontented side-long
glance at a couple walking past arm-in-arm, evidently in the silently
blissful stage of courtship; “how many more would you like?”
“Oh, lots,” replied Francie, “but I’m not going to tell you who they
are!”
“I know one, anyhow,” said Lambert, deliberately leading up to a topic
that up to this had been only slightly touched on.
When he had walked home from the church with Francie the evening before,
he had somehow not been able to talk to her consecutively; he had felt a
nervous awkwardness that he had not believed himself capable of, and the
fact that he was holding an umbrella over her head and that she had
taken his arm had seemed the only thing that he could give his mind to.
“Who do you know?”
Francie had plucked a ribbon of hart’s-tongue from the edge of the wall,
and was drawing its cold satiny length across her lips.
“Wouldn’t you like it now if you saw--” he paused and looked at
Francie--“who shall we say--Charlotte Mullen coming up the road?”
“I wouldn’t care.”
“Wouldn’t you though! You’d run for your life, the way you did before
out of Lismoyle,” said Lambert, looking hard at her and laughing not
quite genuinely.
The strip of hart’s-tongue could not conceal a rising glow in the face
behind it, but Francie’s voice was as undaunted as ever as she replied,
“Who told you I ran for my life?”
“You told me so yourself.”
“I didn’t. I only told you I’d had a row with her.”
“Well, that’s as good as saying you had to run. You don’t suppose I
thought you’d get the better of Charlotte?”
“I daresay you didn’t, because you’re afraid of her yourself!”
There was a degree of truth in this that made Mr. Lambert suddenly
realise Francie’s improper levity about serious things.
“I’ll tell you one thing I’m afraid of,” he said severely, “and that is
that you made a mistake in fighting with Charlotte. If you’d chosen
to--to do as she wished, she’s easy enough to get on with.”
Francie flung her fern over the parapet and made no answer.
“I suppose you know she’s moved into Gurthnamuckla?” he went on.
“I know nothing about anything,” interrupted Francie; “I don’t know how
long it isn’t since you wrote to me, and when you do you never tell me
anything. You might be all dead and buried down there for all I know or
care!”
The smallest possible glance under her eyelids tempered this statement
and confused Mr. Lambert’s grasp of his subject.
“Do you mean that, about not caring if I was dead or no? I daresay you
do. No one cares now what happens to me.”
He almost meant what he said, her elusiveness was so exasperating, and
his voice told his sincerity. Last summer she would have laughed
pitilessly at his pathos, and made it up with him afterwards. But she
was changed since last summer, and now as she looked at him she felt a
forlorn kinship with him.
“Ah, what nonsense!” she said caressingly. “I’d be awfully sorry if
anything happened you.” As if he could not help himself he took her
hand, but before he could speak she had drawn it away. “Indeed, you
might have been dead,” she went on hurriedly, “for all you told me in
your letters. Begin now and tell me the Lismoyle news. I think you said
the Dysarts were away from Bruff still, didn’t you?”
Lambert felt as if a hot and a cold spray of water had been turned on
him alternately. “The Dysarts? Oh, yes, they’ve been away for some
time,” he said, recovering himself; “they’ve been in London, I believe,
staying with her people, since you’re so anxious to know about them.”
“Why wouldn’t I want to know about them?” said Francie, getting off the
wall. “Come on and walk a bit; it’s cold sitting here.”
Lambert walked on by her side rather sulkily; he was angry with himself
for having let his feelings run away with him, and he was angry with
Francie for pulling him up so quickly.
“Christopher Dysart’s off again,” he said abruptly; “he’s got another of
these diplomatic billets.” He believed that Francie would find the
information unpleasant, and he was in some contradictory way
disappointed that she seemed quite unaffected by it. “He’s unpaid
_attaché_ to old Lord Castlemore at Copenhagen,” he went on; “he started
last week.”
So Christopher was gone from her too, and never wrote her a line before
he went. They’re all the same, she thought, all they want is to spoon a
girl for a bit, and if she lets them do it they get sick of her, and
whatever she does they forget her the next minute. And there was Roddy
Lambert trying to squeeze her hand just now, and poor Mrs. Lambert, that
was worth a dozen of him, not dead six months. She walked on, and forced
herself to talk to him, and to make inquiries about the Bakers, Dr.
Rattray, Mr. Corkran, and other lights of Lismoyle society. It was
absurd, but it was none the less true that the news that Mr. Corkran was
engaged to Carrie Beattie gave her an additional pang. The enamoured
glances of the curate were fresh in her memory, and the thought that
they were being now bestowed upon Carrie Beattie’s freckles and watering
eyes was, though ludicrous, not altogether pleasing. She burst out
laughing suddenly.
“I’m thinking of what all the Beatties will look like dressed as
bridesmaids,” she explained; “four of them, and every one of them
roaring, crying, and their noses bright red!”
The day was clouding over a little, and a damp wind began to stir among
the leaves that still hung red on the beech trees. Lambert insisted with
paternal determination that Francie should put on the extra coat that he
was carrying for her, and the couple who had recently passed them, and
whom they had now overtaken, looked at them sympathetically, and were
certain that they also were engaged. It took some time to reach the far
gate of the Dargle, sauntering as they did from bend to bend of the
road, and stopping occasionally to look down at the river, or up at the
wooded height opposite, with conventional expressions of admiration; and
by the time they had passed down between the high evergreens at the
lodge, to where the car was waiting for them, Francie had heard all that
Lambert could tell her of Lismoyle news. She had also been told what a
miserable life Mr. Lambert’s was, and how lonely he was at Rosemount
since poor Lucy’s death, and she knew how many young horses he had at
grass on Gurthnamuckla, but neither mentioned the name of Mr. Hawkins.
The day of the Dargle expedition was Tuesday, and during the remainder
of the week Mr. Lambert became so familiar a visitor at Albatross Villa,
that Bridget learned to know his knock, and did not trouble herself to
pull down her sleeves, or finish the mouthful of bread and tea with
which she had left the kitchen, before she opened the door. Aunt Tish
did not attempt to disguise her satisfaction when he was present, and
rallied Francie freely in his absence; the children were quite aware of
the state of affairs, having indeed discussed the matter daily with
Bridget; and Uncle Robert, going gloomily up to his office in Dublin,
had to admit to himself that Lambert was certainly paying her great
attention, and that after all, all things considered, it would be a good
thing for the girl to get a rich husband for herself when she had the
chance. It was rather soon after his wife’s death for a man to come
courting, but of course the wedding wouldn’t come off till the twelve
months were up, and at the back of these reflections was the remembrance
that he, Uncle Robert, was Francie’s trustee, and that the security in
which he had invested her five hundred pounds was becoming less sound
than he could have wished.
As is proverbially the case, the principal persons concerned were not as
aware as the lookers-on of the state of the game. Francie, to whom
flirtation was as ordinary and indispensable as the breath of her
nostrils, did not feel that anything much out of the common was going
on, though she knew quite well that Mr. Lambert was very fond of her;
and Mr. Lambert had so firmly resolved on allowing a proper interval to
elapse between his wife’s death and that election of her successor upon
which he was determined, that he looked upon the present episode as of
small importance, and merely a permissible relaxation to a man whose
hunting had been stopped, and who had, in a general way, been having the
devil of a dull time. He was to go back to Lismoyle on Monday, the first
of the year; and it was settled that he was to take Francie on Sunday
afternoon to walk on Kingstown pier. The social laws of Mrs
Fitzpatrick’s world were not rigorous, still less was her interpretation
of them; an unchaperoned expedition to Kingstown pier would not, under
any circumstances, have scandalised her, and considering that Lambert
was an old friend and had been married, the proceeding became almost
prudishly correct. As she stood at her window and saw them turn the
corner of the road on their way to the station, she observed to Mabel
that there wouldn’t be a handsomer couple going the pier than what they
were, Francie had that stylish way with her that she always gave a nice
set to a skirt, and it was wonderful the way she could trim up an old
hat the same as new.
It was a very bright clear afternoon, and a touch of frost in the air
gave the snap and brilliancy that are often lacking in an Irish winter
day. On such a Sunday Kingstown pier assumes a fair semblance of its
spring and summer gaiety; the Kingstown people walk there because there
is nothing else to be done at Kingstown, and the Dublin people come down
to snatch what they can of sea air before the short afternoon darkens,
and the hour arrives when they look out for members of the St. George’s
Yacht Club to take them in to tea. There was a fair sprinkling of people
on the long arm of granite that curves for a mile into Dublin Bay, and
as Mr. Lambert paced along it he was as agreeably conscious as his
companion of the glances that met and followed their progress. It
satisfied his highest ambition that the girl of his choice should be
thus openly admired by men whom, year after year, he had looked up at
with envious respect as they stood in the bow-window of Kildare Street
Club, with figures that time was slowly shaping to its circular form, on
the principle of correspondence with environment. He was a man who had
always valued his possessions according to other people’s estimation of
them, and this afternoon Francie gained a new distinction in his eyes.
Abstract admiration, however, was one thing, but the very concrete
attentions of Mr. Thomas Whitty were quite another affair. Before they
had been a quarter of an hour on the pier, Francie was hailed by her
Christian name, and this friend of her youth, looking more unmistakably
than ever a solicitor’s clerk, joined them, flushed with the effort of
overtaking them, and evidently determined not to leave them again.
“I spotted you by your hair, Francie,” Mr. Whitty was pleased to
observe, after the first greetings; “you must have been getting a new
dye for it; I could see it a mile off!”
“Oh, yes,” responded Francie, “I tried a new bottle the other day, the
same you use for your moustache, y’know! I thought I’d like people to be
able to see it without a spy-glass.”
As Mr. Whitty’s moustache was represented by three sickly hairs and a
pimple, the sarcasm was sufficiently biting to yield Lambert a
short-lived gratification.
“Mr. Lambert dyes his black,” continued Francie, without a change of
countenance. She had the Irish love of a scrimmage in her, and she
thought it would be great fun to make Mr. Lambert cross.
“D’ye find the colour comes off?” murmured Tommy Whitty, eager for
revenge, but too much afraid of Lambert to speak out loud.
Even Francie, though she favoured the repartee with a giggle, was glad
that Lambert had not heard.
“D’ye find you want your ears boxed?” she returned in the same tone of
voice; “I won’t walk with you if you don’t behave.” Inwardly, however,
she decided that Tommy Whitty was turning into an awful cad, and felt
that she would have given a good deal to have wiped out some lively
passages in her previous acquaintance with him.
At the end of half an hour Mr. Whitty was still with them, irrepressibly
intimate and full of reminiscence. Lambert, after determined efforts to
talk to Francie, as if unaware of the presence of a third person, had
sunk into dangerous silence, and Francie had ceased to see the amusing
side of the situation, and was beginning to be exhausted by much walking
to and fro. The sun set in smoky crimson behind the town, the sun-set
gun banged its official recognition of the fact, followed by the wild,
clear notes of a bugle, and a frosty after-glow lit up the sky, and
coloured the motionless water of the harbour. A big bell boomed a
monotonous summons to afternoon service, and people began to leave the
pier. Those who had secured the entrée of the St. George’s Yacht Club
proceeded comfortably thither for tea, and Lambert felt that he would
have given untold sums for the right to take Francie in under the
pillared portico, leaving Tommy Whitty and his seedy black coat in outer
darkness. The party was gloomily tending towards the station, when the
happy idea occurred to Mr. Lambert of having tea at the Marine Hotel; it
might not have the distinction of the club, but it would at all events
give him the power of shaking off that damned presuming counter-jumper,
as in his own mind he furiously designated Mr. Whitty.
“I’m going to take you up to the hotel for tea, Francie,” he said
decisively, and turned at once towards the gate of the Marine gardens.
“Good evening, Whitty.”
The look that accompanied this valedictory remark was so conclusive that
the discarded Tommy could do no more than accept the position. Francie
would not come to his help, being indeed thankful to get rid of him, and
he could only stand and look after the two figures, and detest Mr.
Lambert with every fibre of his little heart. The coffee-room at the
hotel was warm and quiet, and Francie sank thankfully into an armchair
by the fire.
“I declare this is the nicest thing I’ve done to-day,” she said, with a
sigh of tired ease; “I was dead sick of walking up and down that old
pier.”
This piece of truckling was almost too flagrant, and Lambert would not
even look at her as he answered,
“I thought you seemed to be enjoying yourself, or I’d have come away
sooner.”
Francie felt none of the amusement that she would once have derived from
seeing Mr. Lambert in a bad temper; he had stepped into the foreground
of her life and was becoming a large and serious object there, too
important and powerful to be teased with any degree of pertinacity.
“Enjoy myself!” she exclaimed, “I was thinking all the time that my
boots would be cut to pieces with the horrid gravel; and,” she
continued, laying her head on the plush-covered back of her chair, and
directing a laughing, propitiatory glance at her companion, “you know I
had to talk twice as much to poor Tommy because you wouldn’t say a word
to him. Besides, I knew him long before I knew you.”
“Oh, of course if you don’t mind being seen with a fellow that looks
like a tailor’s apprentice, I have nothing to say against it,” replied
Lambert, looking down on her, as he stood fingering his moustache, with
one elbow on the chimney-piece. His eyes could not remain implacable
when they dwelt on the face that was upturned to him, especially now,
when he felt both in face and manner something of pathos and gentleness
that was as new as it was intoxicating.
If he had known what it was that had changed her he might have been
differently affected by it; as it was, he put it down to the
wretchedness of life at Albatross Villa, and was glad of the adversity
that was making things so much easier for him. His sulkiness melted away
in spite of him; it was hard to be sulky, with Francie all to himself,
pouring out his tea and talking to him with an intimateness that was
just tipped with flirtation; in fact, as the moments slipped by, and the
thought gripped him that the next day would find him alone at Rosemount,
every instant of this last afternoon in her society became unspeakably
precious. The _tête-à-tête_ across the tea-table prolonged itself so
engrossingly that Lambert forgot his wonted punctuality, and their
attempt to catch the five o’clock train for Bray resulted in bringing
them breathless to the station as their train steamed out of it.