The morning after Lambert received the telegram announcing Sir
Benjamin’s death, he despatched one to Miss Charlotte Mullen at
Gurthnamuckla, in which he asked her to notify his immediate return to
his household at Rosemount. He had always been in the habit of relying
on her help in small as well as great occasions, and now that he had had
that unexpectedly civil letter from her, he had turned to her at once
without giving the matter much consideration. It was never safe to trust
to a servant’s interpretation of the cramped language of a telegram, and
moreover, in his self-sufficient belief in his own knowledge of women,
he thought that it would flatter her and keep her in good humour if he
asked her to give directions to his household. He would have been less
confident of his own sagacity had he seen the set of Miss Mullen’s jaw
as she read the message, and heard the laugh which she permitted to
herself as soon as Louisa had left the room.
“It’s a pity he didn’t hire me to be his major-domo as well as his
steward and stud-groom!” she said to herself, “and his financier into
the bargain! I declare I don’t know what he’d do without me!”
The higher and more subtle side of Miss Mullen’s nature had exacted of
the quivering savage that had been awakened by Lambert’s second marriage
that the answer to his letter should be of a conventional and
non-committing kind; and so, when her brain was still on fire with
hatred and invective, her facile pen glided pleasantly over the paper in
stale felicitations and stereotyped badinage. It is hard to ask pity for
Charlotte, whose many evil qualities have without pity been set down,
but the seal of ignoble tragedy had been set on her life; she had not
asked for love, but it had come to her, twisted to burlesque by the
malign hand of fate. There is pathos as well as humiliation in the
thought that such a thing as a soul can be stunted by the trivialities
of personal appearance, and it is a fact not beyond the reach of
sympathy that each time Charlotte stood before her glass her ugliness
spoke to her of failure, and goaded her to revenge.
It was a wet morning, but at half-past eleven o’clock the black horse
was put into the phaeton, and Miss Mullen, attired in a shabby
mackintosh, set out on her mission to Rosemount. A cold north wind drove
the rain in her face as she flogged the old horse along through the
shelterless desolation of rock and scrub, and in spite of her mackintosh
she felt wet and chilled by the time she reached Rosemount yard. She
went into the kitchen by the back door, and delivered her message to
Eliza Hackett, whom she found sitting in elegant leisure, retrimming a
bonnet that had belonged to the late Mrs. Lambert.
“And is it the day after to-morrow, Miss, please?” demanded Eliza
Hackett with cold resignation.
“It is, me poor woman, it is,” replied Charlotte, in the tone of
facetious intimacy that she reserved for other people’s servants.
“You’ll have to stir your stumps to get the house ready for them.”
“The house is cleaned down and ready for them as soon as they like to
walk into it,” replied Eliza Hackett with dignity, “and if the new lady
faults the drawing-room chimbley for not being swep, the master will
know it’s not me that’s to blame for it, but the sweep that’s gone
dhrilling with the Mileetia.”
“Oh, she’s not the one to find fault with a man for being a soldier any
more than yourself, Eliza!” said Charlotte, who had pulled off her wet
gloves and was warming her hands. “Ugh! How cold it is! Is there any
place upstairs where I could sit while you were drying my things for
me?”
The thought had occurred to her that it would not be uninteresting to
look round the house, and as it transpired that fires were burning in
the dining-room and in Mr. Lambert’s study she left her wet cloak and
hat in the kitchen and ascended to the upper regions. She glanced into
the drawing-room as she passed its open door, and saw the blue rep
chairs ranged in a solemn circle, gazing with all their button eyes at a
three-legged table in the centre of the room; the blinds were drawn
down, and the piano was covered with a sheet; it was altogether as
inexpressive of everything, except bad taste, as was possible. Charlotte
passed on to the dining-room and stationed herself in front of an
indifferent fire there, standing with her back to the chimney-piece and
her eyes roving about in search of entertainment. Nothing was changed,
except that the poor turkey-hen’s medicine bottles and pill boxes no
longer lurked behind the chimney-piece ornaments; the bare dinner-table
suggested only how soon Francie would be seated at its head, and
Charlotte presently prowled on to Mr. Lambert’s study at the end of the
passage, to look for a better fire, and a room less barren of incident.
The study grate did not fail of its reputation of being the best in the
house, and Mr. Lambert’s chair stood by the hearthrug in wide-armed
invitation to the visitor. Charlotte sat down in it and slowly warmed
one foot after the other, while the pain rose hot and unconquerable in
her heart. The whole room was so gallingly familiar, so inseparably
connected with the time when she had still a future, vague and
improbable as it was, and could live in sufficient content on its slight
sustenance. Another future had now to be constructed, she had already
traced out some lines of it, and in the perfecting of these she would
henceforward find the cure for what she was now suffering. She roused
herself, and glancing towards the table saw that on it lay a heap of
unopened newspapers and letters; she got up with alacrity, and
addressed herself to the congenial task of examining each letter in
succession.
“H’m! They’re of a very bilious complexion,” she said to herself.
“There’s one from Langford,” turning it over and looking at the name on
the back. “I wonder if he’s ordering a Victoria for her ladyship? I
wouldn’t put it past him. Perhaps he’d like me to tell her whose money
it was paid Langford’s bill last year!”
She fingered the letter longingly, then, taking a hairpin from the heavy
coils of her hair, she inserted it under the flap of the envelope. Under
her skilful manipulation it opened easily, and without tearing, and she
took out its contents. They consisted of a short but severe letter from
the head of the firm, asking for “a speedy settlement of this account,
now so long overdue,” and of the account in question. It was a bill of
formidable amount, from which Charlotte soon gathered the fact that
twenty pounds only of the money she had lent Lambert last May had found
its way into the pockets of the coachbuilder. She replaced the bill and
letter in the envelope, and, after a minute of consideration, took up
for the second time two large and heavy letters that she had thrown
aside when first looking through the heap. They had the stamp of the
Lismoyle bank upon them, and obviously contained bank-books. Charlotte
saw at a glance that the hairpin would be of no avail with these
envelopes, and after another pause for deliberation she replaced all the
letters in their original position, and went down the passage to the top
of the kitchen stairs.
“Eliza,” she called out, “have ye a kettle boiling down there? Ah,
that’s right--” as Eliza answered in the affirmative. “I never knew a
well kept kitchen yet without boiling water in it! I’m chilled to me
bones, Eliza,” she continued, “I wonder could you put your hand on a
drop of spirits anywhere, and I’d ask ye for a drop of hot grog to keep
the life in me, and”--as Eliza started with hospitable speed in search
of the materials,--“let me mix it meself, like a good woman; I know very
well I’d be in the lock-up before night if I drank what _you’d_ brew for
me!”
Retiring on this jest, Miss Mullen returned to the study, and was
sitting over the fire with a newspaper when the refreshment she had
asked for was brought in.
“I cut ye a sandwich to eat with it, Miss,” said Eliza Hackett, on whom
Charlotte’s generosity in the matter of Mrs. Lambert’s clothing had not
been thrown away; “I know meself that as much as the smell itself o’
sperrits would curdle under me nose, takin’ them on an empty stomach.
Though, indeed, if ye walked Lismoyle ye’d get no better brandy than
what’s in that little bottle. ’Tis out o’ the poor mistress’s medicine
chest I got it. Well, well, she’s where she won’t want brandy now!”
Eliza withdrew with a well-ordered sigh, that, as Charlotte knew, was
expressive of future as well as past regret, and Mr. Lambert’s “oldest
friend” was left in sole possession of his study. She first proceeded to
mix herself a tumbler of brandy and water, and then she lifted the lid
of the brass punch kettle, and taking one of the envelopes that
contained the bank-books, she held it in the steam till the gum of the
flap melted. The book in it was Lambert’s private banking account, and
Charlotte studied it for some time with greedy interest, comparing the
amounts of the drafts and cash payments with the dates against each.
Then she opened the other envelope, keeping a newspaper ready at hand to
throw over the books in case of interruption, and found, as she had
anticipated, that it was the bank-book of the Dysart estate. After this
she settled down to hard work for half an hour, comparing one book with
another, making lists of figures, sipping her brandy and water
meanwhile, and munching Eliza Hackett’s sandwiches. Having learned what
she could of the bank-books, she fastened them up in their envelopes,
and, again having recourse to the kettle that was simmering on the hob,
she made, with slow, unslaked avidity, an examination of some of the
other letters on the table. When everything was tidy again she leaned
back in the chair, and remained in deep meditation over her paper of
figures, until the dining-room clock sent a muffled reminder through the
wall that it was two o’clock.
Ferry Row had, since Charlotte’s change of residence, breathed a freer
air. Even her heavy washing was now done at home, and her visits to her
tenantry might be looked forward to only when rents were known to be
due. There was nothing that they expected less than that, on this wet
afternoon, so soon, too, after a satisfactory quarter-day, they should
hear the well-known rattle of the old phaeton, and see Miss Mullen, in
her equally well-known hat and waterproof, driving slowly past house
after house, until she arrived at the disreputable abode of Dinny Lydon
the tailor. Having turned the cushions of the phaeton upside down to
keep them dry, Miss Mullen knocked at the door, and was admitted by Mrs.
Lydon, a very dirty woman, with a half-finished waistcoat over her arm.
“Oh, ye’re welcome, Miss Mullen, ye’re welcome! Come in out o’ the rain,
asthore,” she said, with a manner as greasy as her face. “Himself have
the coat waitin’ on ye these three days to thry on.”
“Then I’m afraid the change for death must be on Dinny if he’s beginning
to keep his promises,” replied Charlotte, adventuring herself fearlessly
into the dark interior. “I’d be thrown out in all me calculations,
Dinny, if ye give up telling me lies.”
This was addressed through a reeking fog of tobacco smoke to a
half-deformed figure seated on a table by the window.
“Oh, with the help o’ God I’ll tell yer honour a few lies yet before I
die,” replied Dinny Lydon, removing his pipe and the hat which, for
reasons best known to himself, he wore while at work, and turning on
Charlotte a face that, no less than his name, told of Spanish, if not
Jewish blood.
“Well, that’s the truth, anyway,” said Charlotte, with a friendly laugh;
“but I won’t believe in the coat being ready till I see it. Didn’t ye
lose your apprentice since I saw ye?”
“Is it that young gobsther?” rejoined Mrs. Lydon acridly, as she
tendered her unsavoury assistance to Charlotte in the removal of her
waterproof; “if that one was in the house yer coat wouldn’t be finished
in a twelvemonth with all the time Dinny lost cursing him. Faith! it was
last week he hysted his sails and away with him. Mind ye, ’twas he was
the first-class puppy!”
“Was it the trade he didn’t like?” asked Charlotte; “or was it the
skelpings he got from Dinny?”
“Throth, it was not, but two plates in the sate of his breeches was what
he faulted, and the divil mend him!”
“Two plates!” exclaimed Charlotte, in not unnatural bewilderment; “what
in the name of fortune was he doing with them?”
“Well, indeed, Miss Mullen, with respex t’ye, when he came here he
hadn’t as much rags on him as’d wipe a candlestick,” replied Mrs. Lydon,
with fluent spitefulness; “yerself knows that ourselves has to be losing
with puttin’ clothes on thim apprentices, an’ feedin’ them as lavish and
as natty as ye’d feed a young bonnuf, an’ afther all they’d turn about
an’ say they never got so much as the wettin’ of their mouths of male
nor tay nor praties--” Mrs. Lydon replenished her lungs with a long
breath,--“and this lad the biggest dandy of them all, that wouldn’t be
contint without Dinny’d cut the brea’th of two fingers out of a lovely
throusers that was a little sign bulky on him and was gethered into nate
plates--”
“Oh, it’s well known beggars can’t bear heat,” said Charlotte,
interrupting for purposes of her own a story that threatened to expand
unprofitably, “and that was always the way with all the M‘Donaghs.
Didn’t I meet that lad’s cousin, Shamus Bawn, driving a new side-car
this morning, and his father only dead a week. I suppose now he’s got
the money he thinks he’ll never get to the end of it, though indeed it
isn’t so long since I heard he was looking for money, and found it hard
enough to get it.”
Mrs. Lydon gave a laugh of polite acquiescence, and wondered inwardly
whether Miss Mullen had as intimate a knowledge of everyone’s affairs as
she seemed to have of Shamus Bawn’s.
“Oh, they say a manny a thing--” she observed with well-simulated
inanity. “Arrah! _dheen dheffeth_, Dinny! _thurrum cussoge um’na_.”
“Yes, hurry on and give me the coat, Dinny,” said Charlotte, displaying
that knowledge of Irish that always came as a shock to those who were
uncertain as to its limitations.
The tailor untwisted his short legs and descended stiffly to the floor,
and having helped Charlotte into the coat, pushed her into the light of
the open door, and surveyed his handiwork with his large head on one
side, and the bitten ends of thread still hanging on his lower lip.
“It turrned well,” he said, passing his hand approvingly over Miss
Mullen’s thick shoulder; “afther all, the good stuff’s the best; that’s
fine honest stuff that’ll wear forty of thim other thrash. That’s the
soort that’ll shtand.”
“To the death!” interjected Mrs. Lydon fervently.
“How many wrinkles are there in the back?” said Charlotte; “tell me the
truth now, Dinny; remember ’twas only last week you were ‘making your
sowl’ at the mission.”
“Tchah!” said Dinny Lydon contemptuously, “it’s little I regard the
mission, but I wouldn’t be bothered tellin’ ye lies about the likes o’
this,” surreptitiously smoothing as he spoke a series of ridges above
the hips; “that’s a grand clane back as ever I see.”
“How independent he is about his missions!” said Charlotte jibingly.
“Ha! Dinny me man, if you were sick you’d be the first to be roaring for
the priest!”
“Faith, divil a roar,” returned the atheistical Dinny; “if I couldn’t
knock the stone out of the gap for meself, the priest couldn’t do it for
me.”
“Oh, Gaad! Dinny, have conduct before Miss Mullen!” cried Mrs. Lydon.
“He may say what he likes, if he wouldn’t drop candle grease on my
jacket,” said Charlotte, who had taken off the coat and was critically
examining every seam; “or, indeed, Mrs. Lydon, I believe it was yourself
did it!” she exclaimed, suddenly intercepting an indescribable glance of
admonition from Mrs. Dinny to her husband; “that’s wax candle grease! I
believe you wore it yourself at Michael M‘Donagh’s wake, and that’s why
it was finished four days ago.”
Mrs. Lydon uttered a shriek of merriment at the absurdity of the
suggestion, and then fell to disclaimers so voluble as at once to
convince Miss Mullen of her guilt. The accusation was not pressed home,
and Dinny’s undertaking to remove the grease with a hot iron was
accepted with surprising amiability. Charlotte sat down on a chair whose
shattered frame bore testimony to the renowned violence of Mrs. Lydon
when under the influence of liquor, and encouraging the singed and
half-starved cat on to her lap, she addressed herself to conversation.
“Wasn’t Michael M‘Donagh husband to your mother’s cousin?” she said to
the tailor; “I’m told he had a very large funeral.”
“He had that,” answered Dinny, pushing the black hair back from his high
forehead, and looking more than ever like a Jewish rabbi; “three
priests, an’ five an’ twenty cars, an’ fifteen pounds of althar money.”
“Well, the three priests have a right to pray their big best for him,
with five pounds apiece in their pockets,” remarked Charlotte; “I
suppose it was the M‘Donagh side gave the most of the altar. Those
brothers of old Michael’s are all stinking of money.”
“Oh, they’re middlin’ snug,” said Dinny, who had just enough family
feeling for the M‘Donaghs to make him chary of admitting their wealth;
“annyway, they’re able to slap down their five shillin’s or their ten
shillin’ bit upon the althar as well as another.”
“Who got the land?” asked Charlotte, stroking the cat’s filthy head, and
thereby perfuming her fingers with salt fish.
“Oh, how do I know what turning and twisting of keys there was in it
afther himself dyin’?” said the tailor, with the caution which his
hearers understood to be a fatiguing but inevitable convention; “they
say the daughter got the biggest half, an’ Shamus Bawn got the other.
There’s where the battle’ll be between them.” He laughed sardonically,
as he held up the hot iron and spat upon it to ascertain its heat.
“He’d better let his sister alone,” said Charlotte. “Shamus Bawn has
more land this minute than he has money enough to stock, with that farm
he got from Mr. Lambert the other day, without trying to get more.”
“Oh, Jim’s not so poor altogether that he couldn’t bring the law on her
if he’d like,” said Dinny, immediately resenting the slighting tone; “he
got a good lump of a fortune with the wife.”
“Ah, what’s fifty pounds!” said Charlotte scornfully. “I daresay he
wanted every penny of it to pay the fine on Knocklara.”
“Arrah, fifty pounds! God help ye!” exclaimed Dinny Lydon with superior
scorn. “No, but a hundhred an’ eighty was what he put down on the table
to Lambert for it, and it’s little but he had to give the two hundhred
itself.”
Mrs. Lydon looked up from the hearth where she was squatted, fanning the
fire with her red petticoat to heat another iron for her husband. “Sure
I know Dinny’s safe tellin’ it to a lady,” she said, rolling her
dissolute cunning eye from her husband to Miss Mullen; “but ye’ll not
spake of it asthore. Jimmy had some dhrink taken when he shown Dinny the
docket, because Lambert said he wouldn’t give the farm so chape to e’er
a one but Jimmy, an’ indeed Jimmy’d break every bone in our body if he
got the wind of a word that ’twas through us the neighbours had it to
say he had that much money with him. Jimmy’s very close in himself that
way.”
Charlotte laughed good-humouredly. “Oh, there’s no fear of me, Mrs.
Lydon. It’s no affair of mine either way,” she said reassuringly. “Here,
hurry with me jacket, Dinny; I’ll be glad enough to have it on me going
home.”