Hawkins had, like Mrs. Baker, been in no hurry to call upon the bride.
He had seen her twice in church, he had once met her out driving with
her husband, and, lastly, he had come upon her face to face in the
principal street of Lismoyle, and had received a greeting of
aristocratic hauteur, as remarkable as the newly acquired English accent
in which it was delivered. After these things a visit to her was
unavoidable, and, in spite of a bad conscience, he felt, when he at last
set out for Rosemount, an excitement that was agreeable after the calm
of life at Lismoyle.
There was no one in the drawing-room when he was shown into it, and as
the maid closed the door behind him he heard a quick step run through
the hall and up the stairs. “Gone to put on her best bib and tucker,” he
said to himself with an increase of confidence; “I’ll bet she saw me
coming.” The large photograph alluded to by Miss Baker was on the
chimneypiece, and he walked over and examined it with great interest. It
obeyed the traditions of honeymoon portraits, and had the inevitable
vulgarity of such; Lambert, sitting down, turned the leaves of a book,
and Francie, standing behind him, rested one hand on his shoulder, while
the other held a basket of flowers. In spite of its fatuity as a
composition, both portraits were good, and they had moreover an air of
prosperity and new clothes that Mr. Hawkins found to be almost
repulsive. He studied the photograph with deepening distaste until he
was aware of a footstep at the door, and braced himself for the
encounter, with his heart beating uncomfortably and unexpectedly.
They shook hands with the politeness of slight acquaintance, and sat
down, Hawkins thinking he had never seen her look so pretty or so smart,
and wondering what he was going to talk to her about. It was evidently
going to be war to the knife, he thought, as he embarked haltingly upon
the weather, and found that he was far less at his ease than he had
expected to be.
“Yes, it’s warmer here than it was in England,” said Francie, looking
languidly at the rings on her left hand; “we were perished there after
Paris.”
She felt that the familiar mention of such names must of necessity place
her in a superior position, and she was so stimulated by their
associations with her present grandeur that she raised her eyes, and
looked at him. Their eyes met with as keen a sense of contact as if
their hands had suddenly touched, and each, with a perceptible jerk,
looked away.
“You say that Paris was hot, was it?” said Hawkins, with something of an
effort. “I haven’t been there since I went with some people the year
before last, and it was as hot then as they make it. I thought it rather
a hole.”
“Oh, indeed?” said Francie, chillingly; “Mr. Lambert and I enjoyed it
greatly. You’ve been here all the spring, I suppose?”
“Yes; I haven’t been out of this place, except for Punchestown, since I
came back from leave;” then with a reckless feeling that he would break
up this frozen sea of platitudes, “since that time that I met you on the
pier at Kingstown.”
“Oh yes,” said Francie, as if trying to recall some unimportant
incident; “you were there with the Dysarts, weren’t you?”
Hawkins became rather red. She was palpably overdoing it, but that did
not diminish the fact that he was being snubbed, and though he might, in
a general and guarded way, have admitted that he deserved it, he
realised that he bitterly resented being snubbed by Francie.
“Yes,” he said, with an indifference as deliberately exaggerated as her
own, “I travelled over with them. I remember how surprised we were to
see you and Mr. Lambert there.”
She felt the intention on his part to say something disagreeable, and it
stung her more than the words.
“Why were you surprised?” she asked coolly.
“Well--er--I don’t exactly know,” stammered Mr. Hawkins, a good deal
taken aback by the directness of the inquiry; “we didn’t exactly know
where you were--thought Lambert was at Lismoyle, you know.” He began to
wish he had brought Cursiter with him; no one could have guessed that
she would have turned into such a cat and given herself such airs; her
ultra-refinement, and her affected accent, and her exceeding
prettiness, exasperated him in a way that he could not have explained,
and though the visit did not fail of excitement, he could not flatter
himself that he was taking quite the part in it that he had expected.
Certainly Mrs. Lambert was not maintaining the rôle that he had allotted
her; huffiness was one thing, but infernal swagger was quite another. It
is painful for a young man of Mr. Hawkins’ type to realise that an
affection that he has inspired can wane and even die, and Francie’s
self-possession was fast robbing him of his own.
“I hear that your regiment is after being ordered to India?” she said
cheerfully, when it became apparent that Hawkins could find no more to
say.
“Yes, so they say; next trooping season will about see us, I expect, and
they’re safe to send us to Aldershot first, so we may be out of this at
any minute.” He glanced at her as he spoke, to see how she took it.
“Oh, that’ll be very nice for you,” answered Francie, still more
cheerfully. “I suppose,” she went on with her most aristocratic drawl,
“that you’ll be married before you go out?”
She had arranged the delivery of this thrust before she came downstairs,
and it glided from her tongue as easily as she could have wished.
“Yes, I daresay I shall,” he answered defiantly, though the provokingly
ready blush of a fair man leaped to his face. He looked at her, angry
with himself for reddening, and angrier with her for blazoning her
indifference, by means of a question that seemed to him the height of
bad taste and spitefulness. As he looked, the colour that burned in his
own face repeated itself in hers with slow relentlessness; at the sight
of it a sudden revulsion of feeling brought him dangerously near to
calling her by her name, with reproaches for her heartlessness, but
before the word took form she had risen quickly, and, saying something
incoherent about ordering tea, moved towards the bell, her head turned
from him with the helpless action of a shy child.
Hawkins, hardly knowing what he was doing, started forward, and as he
did so the door opened, and a well-known voice announced,
“Miss Charlotte Mullen!”
The owner of the voice advanced into the room, and saw, as anyone must
have seen, the flushed faces of its two occupants, and felt that
nameless quality in the air that tells of interruption.
“I took the liberty of announcing myself,” she said, with her most
affable smile; “I knew you were at home, as I saw Mr. Hawkins’ trap at
the door, and I just walked in.”
As she shook hands and sat down she expanded easily into a facetious
description of the difficulties of getting her old horse along the road
from Gurthnamuckla, and by the time she had finished her story Hawkins’
complexion had regained its ordinary tone, and Francie had resumed the
air of elegant nonchalance appropriate to the importance of the married
state. Nothing, in fact, could have been more admirable than Miss
Mullen’s manner. She praised Francie’s new chair covers and Indian tea;
she complimented Mr. Hawkins on his new pony; even going so far as to
reproach him for not having been out to Gurthnamuckla to see her, till
Francie felt some pricks of conscience about the sceptical way that she
and Lambert had laughed together over Charlotte’s amiability when she
paid her first visit to them. She found inexpressible ease in the
presence of a third person as capable as Charlotte of carrying on a
conversation with the smallest possible assistance; sheltered by it she
slowly recovered from her mental overthrow, and, furious as she was with
Hawkins for his part in it, she was beginning to be able to patronise
him again by the time that he got up to go away.
“Well, Francie, my dear child,” began Charlotte, as soon as the door had
closed behind him, “I’ve scarcely had a word with you since you came
home. You had such a reception the last day I was here that I had to
content myself with talking to Mrs. Beattie, and hearing all about the
price of underclothes. Indeed I had a good mind to tell her that only
for your magnanimity she wouldn’t be having so much to say about
Carrie’s trousseau!”
“Indeed she was welcome to him!” said Francie, putting her chin in the
air, “that little wretch, indeed!”
It was one of the moments when she touched the extreme of satisfaction
in being married, and in order to cover, for her own and Charlotte’s
sake, the remembrance of that idiotic blush, she assumed a little extra
bravado.
“Talking of your late admirers--” went on Charlotte, “for I hope for
poor Roddy’s sake they’re not present ones--I never saw a young fellow
so improved in his manners as Mr. Hawkins. There was a time I didn’t
fancy him--as you may remember, though we’ve agreed to say nothing more
about our old squabbles--but I think he’s chastened by adversity. That
engagement, you know--” she paused, and cast a side-long, unobtrusive
glance at Francie. “He’s not the first young man that’s been whipped in
before marriage as well as after it, and I think the more he looks at it
the less he likes it.”
“He’s been looking at it a long time now,” said Francie with a laugh
that was intended to be careless, but into which a sneer made its way.
“I wonder Roddy isn’t in,” she continued, changing the subject to one in
which no pitfalls lurked; “I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d gone to
Gurthnamuckla to see you, Charlotte; he’s been saying ever since we came
back he wanted to have a talk with you, but he’s been so busy he hadn’t
a minute.”
“If I’m not greatly mistaken,” said Charlotte, standing up so as to be
able to see out of the window, “here’s the man of the house himself.
What horse is that he’s on?” her eyes taking in with unwilling
admiration the swaggering ease of seat and squareness of shoulder that
had so often captivated her taste, as Lambert, not unaware of spectators
at the window, overcame much callow remonstrance on the part of the
young horse he was riding, at being asked to stand at the door till a
boy came round to take him.
“Oh, that’s the new four-year-old that Roddy had taken in off
Gurthnamuckla while we were away,” said Francie, leaning her elbow
against the shutter and looking out too. “He’s an awful wild young brat
of a thing! Look at the way he’s hoisting now! Roddy says he’ll have me
up on him before the summer’s out, but I tell him that if he does I
won’t be on him long.” Her eyes met her husband’s, and she laughed and
tapped on the glass, beckoning imperiously to him to come in.
Charlotte turned away from the window, and when, a few minutes
afterwards, Mr. Lambert came into the room, the visitor had put her
gloves on, and was making her farewells to her hostess.
“No, Roddy,” she said, “I must be off now. I’m like the beggars, ‘tay
and turn out’ is my motto. But supposing now that you bring this young
lady over to lunch with me to-morrow--no, not to-morrow, that’s
Sunday--come on Monday. How would that suit your book?”
Lambert assented with a good grace that struck Francie as being
wonderfully well assumed, and followed Miss Mullen out to put her in her
phaeton.
Francie closed the door behind them, and sat down. She was glad she had
met Hawkins and got it over, and as she reviewed the incidents of his
visit, she thought that on the whole she had come very near her own
ideal of behaviour. Cool, sarcastic, and dignified, even though she had,
for one moment, got a little red, he could not but feel that she had
acted as became a married lady, and shown him his place once for all. As
for him, he had been horrible, she thought bitterly; sitting up and
talking to her as if he had never seen her before, and going on as if he
had never--she got up hastily as if to escape from the hateful memories
of last year that thrust themselves suddenly into her thoughts. How
thankful she was that she had shown him she was not inconsolable; she
wished that Roddy had come in while he was there, and had stood over
him, and overshadowed him with his long legs and broad shoulders, and
his air of master of the house. Why on earth had Charlotte praised him?
Gurthnamuckla must have had the most extraordinarily sweetening effect
upon her, for she seemed to have a good word for everybody now, and
Roddy’s notion that she would want to be coaxed into a good temper was
all nonsense, and conceited nonsense too, and so she would tell him. It
was not in Francie’s light, wholesome nature to bear malice; the least
flutter of the olive branch, the faintest glimmer of the flag of truce,
was enough to make her forgive an injury and forget an insult.
When her husband came back she turned towards him with a sparkle in her
eye.
“Well, Roddy, I hope you squeezed her hand when you were saying
good-bye! I daresay now you’ll want me to believe that it’s all in
honour of you that she’s asked us over to lunch to-morrow, and I
suppose that’s what she was telling you out in the hall? Aren’t you
sorry you didn’t marry her instead of me?”
Lambert did not answer, but came over to where she was standing, and
putting his arm round her, drew her towards him and kissed her with a
passion that seemed too serious an answer to her question. She could not
know, as she laughed and hid her face from him, that he was saying to
himself, “Of course he was bound to come and call, he’d have had to do
that no matter who she was!”