Christopher Dysart drove to Rosemount next morning to see Mr. Lambert on
business. He noticed Mrs. Lambert standing at the drawing-room window as
he drove up, but she left the window before he reached the hall door,
and he went straight to Mr. Lambert’s study without seeing her again.
Francie returned listlessly to the seat that she had sprung from with a
terrified throb of the heart at the thought that the wheels might be
those of Hawkins’ trap, and, putting her elbow on the arm of the chair,
rested her forehead on her hand; her other hand drooped over the side
of the chair, holding still in it the sprig of pink hawthorn that her
husband had given her in the garden an hour before. Her attitude was
full of languor, but her brain was working at its highest pressure, and
at this moment she was asking herself what Sir Christopher would say
when he heard that she had gone away with Gerald. She had seen him
vaguely as one of the crowd of contemptuous or horror-stricken faces
that had thronged about her pillow in the early morning, but his opinion
had carried no more restraining power than that of Aunt Tish, or Uncle
Robert, or Charlotte. Nothing had weighed with her then; the two
principal figures in her life contrasted as simply and convincingly as
night and day, and like night and day, too, were the alternative futures
that were in her hand to choose from. Her eyes were open to her
wrong-doing, but scarcely to her cruelty; it could not be as bad for
Roddy, she thought, to live without her as for her to stay with him and
think of Gerald in India, gone away from her for ever. Her reasoning
power was easily mastered, her conscience was a thing of habit, and not
fitted to grapple with this turbulent passion. She swept towards her
ruin like a little boat staggering under more sail than she can carry.
But the sight of Christopher, momentary as it was, had startled for an
instant the wildness of her thoughts; the saner breath of the outside
world had come with him, and a touch of the self-respect that she had
always gained from him made her press her hot forehead against her hand,
and realise that the way of transgressors would be hard.
She remained sitting there, almost motionless, for a long time. She had
no wish to occupy herself with anything; all the things about her had
already the air of belonging to a past existence; her short sovereignty
was over, and even the furniture that she had, a few weeks ago, pulled
about and rearranged in the first ardour of possession seemed to look at
her in a decorous, clannish way, as if she were already an alien. At
last she heard the study door open, and immediately afterwards,
Christopher’s dog-cart went down the drive. It occurred to her that now,
if ever, was the time to go to her husband and see whether, by
diplomacy, she could evade the ride that he had asked her to take with
him that afternoon. Hawkins had sent her a note saying that he would
come to pay a farewell visit, a cautiously formal note that anyone might
have seen, but that she was just as glad had not been seen by her
husband, and at all hazards she must stay in to meet him. She got up and
went to the study with a nervous colour in her cheeks, glancing out of
the hall window as she passed it, with the idea that the threatening
grey of the sky would be a good argument for staying at home. But if it
rained, Roddy might stay at home too, she thought, and that would be
worse than anything. That was her last thought as she went into the
study.
Lambert was standing with his hands in his pockets, looking down at the
pile of papers and books on the table, and Francie was instantly struck
by something unwonted in his attitude, something rigid and yet spent,
that was very different from his usual bearing. He looked at her with
heavy eyes, and going to his chair let himself drop into it; then, still
silently, he held out his hand to her. She thought he looked older, and
that his face was puffy and unattractive, and in the highly-strung state
of her nerves she felt a repugnance to him that almost horrified her. It
is an unfortunate trait of human nature that a call for sympathy from a
person with whom sympathy has been lost has a repellent instead of an
attractive power, and if a strong emotion does not appear pathetic, it
is terribly near the ludicrous. In justice to Francie it must be said
that her dominant feeling as she gave Lambert her hand and was drawn
down on to his knee was less repulsion than a sense of her own
hypocrisy.
“What’s the matter, Roddy?” she asked, after a second or two of silence,
during which she felt the labouring of his breath.
“I’m done for,” he said, “that’s what’s the matter.”
“Why! what do you mean?” she exclaimed, turning her startled face half
towards him, and trying not to shrink as his hot breath struck on her
cheek.
“I’ve lost the agency.”
“Lost the agency!” repeated Francie, feeling as though the world with
all the things she believed to be most solid were rocking under her
feet. “Do you mean he’s after dismissing you?”
Lambert moved involuntarily, from the twitch of pain that the word gave
him. It was this very term that Lismoyle would soon apply to him, as if
he were a thieving butler or a drunken coachman.
“That’s about what it will come to,” he said bitterly. “He was too
damned considerate to tell me so to-day, but he’s going to do it. He’s
always hated me just as I have hated him, and this is his chance, though
God knows what’s given it to him.”
“You’re raving!” cried Francie incredulously; “what on earth would make
him turn you away?” She felt that her voice was sharp and unnatural, but
she could not make it otherwise. The position was becoming momently more
horrible from the weight of unknown catastrophe, the sight of her
husband’s suffering and the struggle to sympathise with it, and the
hollow disconnection between herself and everything about her.
“I can’t tell you--all in a minute,” he said with difficulty. “Wouldn’t
you put your arm round my neck, Francie, as if you were sorry for me?
You might be sorry for me, and for yourself too. We’re ruined. Oh my
God!” he groaned, “we’re ruined!”
She put her arm round his neck, and pity, and a sense that it was
expected of her, made her kiss his forehead. At the touch of her lips
his sobs came suddenly and dreadfully, and his arms drew her
convulsively to him. She lay there helpless and dry-eyed, enduring a
wretchedness that in some ways was comparable to his own, but never
becoming merged in the situation, never quite losing her sense of
repulsion at his abasement.
“I never meant to touch a farthing of his--in the long run--” he went
on, recovering himself a little; “I’d have paid him back every
half-penny in the end--but, of course, he doesn’t believe that. What
does he care what I say!”
“Did you borrow money from him, or what was it?” asked Francie gently.
“Yes, I did,” replied Lambert, setting his teeth; “but I didn’t tell
him. I was eaten up with debts, and I had to--to borrow some of the
estate money.” It was anguish to lower himself from the pedestal of
riches and omnipotence on which he had always posed to her, and he spoke
stumblingly. “It’s very hard to explain these things to you--it’s--it’s
not so unusual as you’d think--and then, before I’d time to get things
square again, some infernal mischief-maker has set him on to ask to see
the books, and put him up to matters that he’d never have found out for
himself.”
“Was he angry?” she asked, with the quietness that was so unlike her.
“Oh, I don’t know--I don’t care--” moving again restlessly in his chair;
“he’s such a rotten, cold-blooded devil, you can’t tell what he’s at.”
Even at this juncture it gave him pleasure to make little of Christopher
to Francie. “He asked me the most beastly questions he could think of,
in that d--d stammering way of his. He’s to write to me in two or three
days, and I know well what he’ll say,” he went on with a stabbing sigh;
“I suppose he’ll have it all over the country in a week’s time. He’s
been to the bank and seen the estate account, and that’s what’s done me.
I asked him plump and plain if he hadn’t been put up to it, and he
didn’t deny it, but there’s no one could have known what was paid into
that account but Baker or one of the clerks, and they knew nothing about
the fines--I mean--they couldn’t understand enough to tell him anything.
But what does it matter who told him. The thing’s done now, and I may as
well give up.”
“What will you do?” said Francie faintly.
“If it wasn’t for you I think I’d put a bullet through my head,” he
answered, his innately vulgar soul prompting him to express the best
thought that was in him in conventional heroics, “but I couldn’t leave
you, Francie--I couldn’t leave you--” he broke down again--“it was for
our honeymoon I took the most of the money--” He could not go on, and
her whole frame was shaken by his sobs.
“Don’t, Roddy, don’t cry,” she murmured, feeling cold and sick.
“He knows I took the money,” Lambert went on incoherently; “I’ll have to
leave the country--I’ll sell everything--” he got up and began to walk
about the room--“I’ll pay him--damn him--I’ll pay him every farthing. He
sha’n’t have it to say he was kept waiting for his money! He shall have
it this week!”
“But how will you pay him if you haven’t the money?” said Francie, with
the same lifelessness of voice that had characterised her throughout.
“I’ll borrow the money--I’ll raise it on the furniture; I’ll send the
horses up to Sewell’s, though God knows what price I’ll get for them
this time of year, but I’ll manage it somehow. I’ll go out to
Gurthnamuckla this very afternoon about it. Charlotte’s got a head on
her shoulders--” He stood still, and the idea of borrowing from
Charlotte herself took hold of him. He felt that such trouble as this
must command her instant sympathy, and awaken all the warmth of their
old friendship, and his mind turned towards her stronger intelligence
with a reliance that was creditable to his ideas of the duties of a
friend. “I could give her a bill of sale on the horses and furniture,”
he said to himself.
His eyes rested for the first time on Francie, who had sunk into the
chair from which he had risen, and was looking at him as if she did not
see him. Her hair was ruffled from lying on his shoulder, and her eyes
were wild and fixed, like those of a person who is looking at a far-off
spectacle of disaster and grief.