The Irish mail-boat was well up to time on that frosty thirty-first of
December. She had crossed from Holyhead on an even keel, and when the
Bailey light on the end of Howth had been sighted, the passengers began
to think that they might risk congratulations on the clemency of the
weather, and some of the hardier had ordered tea in the saloon, and were
drinking it with incredulous enjoyment.
“I shall go mad, Pamela, perfectly mad, if you cannot think of any word
for that tenth light. C and H--can’t you think of _any_thing with C and
H? I found out all the others in the train, and the least you might do
is to think of this one for me. That dreadful woman snoring on the sofa
just outside my berth put everything else out of my head.”
This plaint, uttered in a deep and lamentable contralto, naturally drew
some attention towards Lady Dysart, as she swept down the saloon towards
the end of the table, and Pamela, becoming aware that the lady referred
to was among the audience, trod upon her mother’s dress and thus
temporarily turned the conversation.
“C and H,” she repeated, “I’m afraid I can’t think of anything; the only
word I can think of beginning with C is Christopher.”
“Christopher!” cried Lady Dysart, “why, Christopher ends with an R.”
As Lady Dysart for the second time pronounced her son’s name the young
man who had just come below, and was having a whisky and soda at the bar
at the end of the saloon, turned quickly round and put down his glass.
Lady Dysart and her daughter were sitting with their backs to him, but
Mr. Hawkins did not require a second glance, and made his way to them at
once.
“And so you’ve been seeing poor Christopher off to the North Pole,” he
said, after the first surprise and explanations had been got over. “I
can’t say I envy him. They make it quite cold enough in Yorkshire to
suit me.”
“Don’t they ever make it hot for you there?” asked Lady Dysart, unable
to resist the chance of poking fun at Mr. Hawkins, even though in so
doing she violated her own cherished regulations on the subject of
slang. All her old partiality for him had revived since Francie’s
departure from Lismoyle, and she found the idea of his engagement far
more amusing than he did.
“No, Lady Dysart, they never do,” said Hawkins, getting very red, and
feebly trying to rise to the occasion; “they’re always very nice and
kind to me.”
“Oh, I daresay they are!” replied Lady Dysart archly, with a glance at
Pamela like that of a naughty child who glories in its naughtiness. “And
is it fair to ask when the wedding is to come off? _We_ heard something
about the spring!”
“Who gave you that interesting piece of news?” said Hawkins, trying not
to look foolish.
“A bridesmaid,” said Lady Dysart, closing her lips tightly, and leaning
back with an irrepressible gleam in her eye.
“Well, she knows more than I do. All I know about it is, that I believe
the regiment goes to Aldershot in May, and I suppose it will be some
time after that.” Mr. Hawkins spoke with a singularly bad grace, and
before further comment could be made he turned to Pamela. “I saw a good
deal of Miss Hope-Drummond in the north,” he said, with an effort so
obvious and so futile at turning the conversation that Lady Dysart began
to laugh.
“Why, she was the bridesmaid--” she began incautiously, when the
slackening of the engines set her thoughts flying from the subject in
hand to settle in agony upon the certainty that Doyle would forget to
put her scent-bottle into her dressing-bag, and then the whole party
went up on deck.
It was dark, and the revolving light on the end of the east pier swung
its red eye upon the steamer as she passed within a few yards of it,
churning a curving road towards the double line of lamps that marked the
jetty. The lights of Kingstown mounted row upon row, like an embattled
army of stars, the great sweep of Dublin Bay was pricked out in
lessening yellow points, and a new moon that looked pale green by
contrast, sent an immature shaft along the sea in meek assertion of her
presence. The paddles dropped their blades more and more languidly into
the water, then they ceased, and the vessel slid silently alongside the
jetty, with the sentient ease of a living thing. The warps were flung
ashore, the gangways thrust on board, and in an instant the sailors were
running ashore with the mail bags on their backs, like a string of ants
with their eggs. The usual crowd of loafers and people who had come to
meet their friends formed round the passengers’ gangway, and the
passengers filed down it in the brief and uncoveted distinction that the
exit from a steamer affords.
Lady Dysart headed her party as they left the steamer, and her imposing
figure in her fur-lined cloak so filled the gangway that Pamela could
not, at first, see who it was that met her mother as she stepped on to
the platform. The next moment she found herself shaking hands with Mr.
Lambert, and then, to her unbounded astonishment, with Miss Fitzpatrick.
The lamps were throwing strong light and shadow upon Francie’s face, and
Pamela’s first thought was how much thinner she had become.
“Mr. Lambert and I missed our train back to Bray,” Francie began at once
in a hurried deprecating voice, “and we came down to see the boat come
in just to pass the time--” Her voice stopped as if she had suddenly
gasped for breath, and Pamela heard Hawkins’ voice say behind her:
“How de do, Miss Fitzpatrick? Who’d have thought of meetin’ you here?”
in a tone of cheerfully casual acquaintanceship.
Even Pamela, with all her imaginative sympathy, did not guess what
Francie felt in that sick and flinching moment, when everything rung and
tingled round her as if she had been struck; the red had deserted her
cheek like a cowardly defender, and the ground felt uneven under her
feet, but the instinct of self-control that is born of habit and
convention in the feeblest of us came mechanically to her help.
“And I never thought I’d see you either,” she answered, in the same
tone; “I suppose you’re all going to Lismoyle together, Miss Dysart?”
“No, we stay in Dublin to-night,” said Pamela, with sufficient
consciousness of the situation to wish to shorten it. “Oh, thank you,
Mr. Hawkins, I should be very glad if you would put these rugs in the
carriage.”
Hawkins disappeared with the rugs in the wake of Lady Dysart, and
Lambert and Pamela and Francie followed slowly together in the same
direction. Pamela was in the difficult position of a person who is full
of a sympathy that it is wholly out of the question to express.
“I am so glad that we chanced to meet you here,” she said, “we have not
heard anything of you for such a long time.”
The kindness in her voice had the effect of conveying to Francie how
much in need of kindness she was, and the creeping smart of tears
gathered under her eyelids.
“It’s awfully kind of you to say so, Miss Dysart,” she said, with
something in her voice that made even the Dublin brogue pathetic; “I
didn’t think anyone at Lismoyle remembered me now.”
“Oh, we don’t forget people quite so quickly as that,” said Pamela,
thinking that Mr. Hawkins must have behaved worse than she had believed;
“I see this is our carriage. Mamma, did you know that Miss Fitzpatrick
was here?”
Lady Dysart was already sitting in the carriage, her face fully
expressing the perturbation that she felt, as she counted the parcels
that Mr. Hawkins was bestowing in the netting.
“Oh yes,” she said, with a visible effort to be polite, “I saw her just
now; do get in, my dear, the thing may start at any moment.”
If her mind had room for anything beside the anxieties of travelling, it
was disapprobation of Francie and of the fact that she was going about
alone with Mr. Lambert, and the result was an absence of geniality that
added to Francie’s longing to get away as soon as possible. Lambert was
now talking to Pamela, blocking up the doorway of the carriage as he
stood on the step, and over his shoulder she could see Hawkins, still
with his back to her, and still apparently very busy with the disposal
of the dressing-bags and rugs. He was not going to speak to her again,
she thought, as she stood a little back from the open door with the
frosty air nipping her through her thin jacket; she was no more to him
than a stranger, she, who knew every turn of his head, and the feeling
of his yellow hair that the carriage lamp was shining upon. The very
look of the first-class carriage seemed to her, who had seldom, if ever,
been in one, to emphasise the distance that there was between them. The
romance that always clung to him even in her angriest thoughts, was
slaughtered by this glimpse of him, like some helpless atom of animal
life by the passing heel of a schoolboy. There was no scaffold, with its
final stupendous moment, and incentive to heroism; there was nothing but
an ignoble end in commonplace neglect.
The ticket-collector slammed the door of the next carriage, and Francie
stepped back still further to make way for Lambert as he got off the
step. She had turned her back on the train, and was looking vacantly at
the dark outlines of the steamer when she became aware that Hawkins was
beside her.
“Er--good-bye--” he said awkwardly, “the train’s just off.”
“Good-bye,” replied Francie, in a voice that sounded strangely to her,
it was so everyday and conventional.
“Look here,” he said, looking very uncomfortable, and speaking quickly,
“I know you’re angry with me. I couldn’t help it. I tried to get out of
it, but it--it couldn’t be done. I’m awfully sorry about it--”
If Francie had intended to reply to this address, it was placed beyond
her power to do so. The engine, which had been hissing furiously for
some minutes, now set up the continuous ear-piercing shriek that
precedes the departure of the boat train, and the guard, hurrying along
the platform, signified to Hawkins in dumb show that he was to take his
seat. The whistle continued unrelentingly; Hawkins put out his hand, and
Francie laid hers in it. She looked straight at him for a second, and
then, as she felt his fingers close hard round her hand in dastardly
assurance of friendship if not affection, she pulled it away, and turned
to Lambert, laughing and putting her hands up to her ears to show that
she could hear nothing in the din. Hawkins jumped into the carriage
again, Pamela waved her hand at the window, and Francie was left with
Lambert on the platform, looking at the red light on the back of the
guard’s van, as the train wound out of sight into the tunnel.