The Real Charlotte Part 15

"You're Miss Duffy from Gurthnamuckla, are you not?" interrupted Christopher, eyeing her with natural disfavour, as he got up and came down the slope towards her.

"I am, Mr. Dysart, I am," she said defiantly, "and you and your family have a right to know me, and I ask you now to do me justice, that I shall not be turned out into the ditch for the sake of a lying double-faced schemer-" Her voice failed, as it had failed before when she spoke to Sir Benjamin, and the action of her hand that carried on her meaning had a rage in it that hid its despair.

"I think if you have anything to say you had better write it," said Christopher, beginning to think that Lambert had some excuse for his opinion of Miss Duffy, but beginning also to pity what he thought was a spectacle of miserable, middle-aged drunkenness; "you may be sure that no injustice will be done to you-"

"Is it injustice?" broke in Julia, while the fever cloud seemed to roll its weight back for a moment from her brain; "maybe you'd say there was injustice if you knew all I know. Where's Charlotte Mullen, till I tell her to her face that I know her plots and her thricks? 'Tis to say that to her I came here, and to tell her 'twas she lent money to Peter Joyce that was grazing my farm, and refused it to him secondly, the way he'd go bankrupt on me, and she's to have my farm and my house that my grandfather built, thinking to even herself with the rest of the gentry-"

Her voice had become wilder and louder, and Christopher, uncomfortably aware that Francie could hear this indictment of Miss Mullen as distinctly as he did, intervened again.

"Look here, Miss Duffy," he said in a lower voice, "it's no use talking like this. If I can help you I will, but it would be a good deal better if you went home now. You-you seem ill, and it's a great mistake to stay here exciting yourself and making a noise. Write to me, and I'll see that you get fair play."

Julia threw back her head and laughed, with a venom that seemed too concentrated for drunkenness.

"Ye'd better see ye get fair play yerself before you talk so grand about it!" She pointed up at Francie. "Mrs. Dysart indeed!"-she bowed with a sarcastic exaggeration, that in saner moments she would not have been capable of-"Lady Dysart of Bruff, one of these days I suppose!"-she bowed again. "That's what Miss Charlotte Mullen has laid out for ye," addressing herself to Christopher, "and ye'll not get away from that one till ye're under her foot!"

She laughed again; her face became vacant and yet full of pain, and she staggered away down the avenue, talking violently and gesticulating with her hands

CHAPTER x.x.xII.

Mrs. Lambert gathered up her purse, her list, her bag, and her parasol from the table in Miss Greely's wareroom, and turned to give her final directions.

"Now, Miss Greely, before Sunday for certain; and you'll be careful about the set of the skirt, that it doesn't firk up at the side, the way the black one did-"

"We understand the set of a skirt, Mrs. Lambert," interposed the elder Miss Greely in her most aristocratic voice; "I think you may leave that to us."

Mrs. Lambert retreated, feeling as snubbed as it was intended that she should feel, and with a last injunction to the girl in the shop to be sure not to let the Rosemount messenger leave town on Sat.u.r.day night without the parcel that he'd get from upstairs, she addressed herself to the task of walking home. She was in very good spirits, and the thought of a new dress for church next Sunday was exhilarating; it was a pleasant fact also that Charlotte Mullen was coming to tea, and she and m.u.f.fy, the Maltese terrier, turned into Barrett's to buy a teacake in honour of the event. Mrs. Beattie was also there, and the two ladies and Mrs. Barrett had a most enjoyable discussion on tea; Mrs. Beattie advocating "the one and threepenny from the Stores," while Mrs. Barrett and her other patroness agreed in upholding the Lismoyle three-and-sixpenny against all others. Mrs. Lambert set forth again with her teacake in her hand, and with such a prosperous expression of countenance that Nance the Fool pursued her down the street with a confidence that was not unrewarded.

"That the hob of heaven may be yer scratching post!" she screamed, in the midst of one of her most effective fits of coughing, as Mrs. Lambert's round little dolmaned figure pa.s.sed complacently onward, "that Pether and Paul may wait on ye, and that the saints may be surprised at yer success! She's sharitable, the craythur," she ended in a lower voice, as she rejoined the rival and confederate who had yielded to her the right of plundering the last pa.s.ser-by, "and sign's on it, it thrives with her; she's got very gross!"

"Faith it wasn't crackin' blind nuts made her that fat," said the confidante unamiably, "and with all her riches she didn't give ye the price of a dhrink itself!"

Mrs. Lambert entered her house by the kitchen, so as to give directions to Eliza Hackett about the teacake, and when she got upstairs she found Charlotte already awaiting her in the dining-room, occupied in reading a pamphlet on stall feeding, with apparently as complete a zest as if it had been one of those yellow paper-covered volumes whose appearance aroused such a respectful horror in Lismoyle.

"Well, Lucy, is this the way you receive your visitors?" she began jocularly, as she rose and kissed her hostess's florid cheek; "I needn't ask how you are, as you're looking blooming."

"I declare I think this hot summer suits me. I feel stronger than I did this good while back, thank G.o.d. Roddy was saying this morning he'd have to put me and m.u.f.fy on banting, we'd both put up so much flesh."

The turkey-hen looked so pleased as she recalled this conjugal endearment that Charlotte could not resist the pleasure of taking her down a peg or two.

"I think he's quite right," she said with a laugh; "nothing ages ye like fat, and no man likes to see his wife turning into an old woman."

Poor Mrs. Lambert took the snub meekly, as was her wont. "Well, anyway, it's a comfort to feel a little stronger, Charlotte; isn't it what they say, 'laugh and grow fat.'" She took off her dolman and rang the bell for tea. "Tell me, Charlotte," she went on, "did you hear anything about that poor Miss Duffy?"

"I was up at the infirmary this morning asking the Sister about her. It was Rattray himself found her lying on the road, and brought her in; he says its inflammation of the brain, and if she pulls through she'll not be good for anything afterwards."

"Oh, my, my!" said Mrs. Lambert sympathetically. "And to think of her being at our gate lodge that very day! Mary Holloran said she had that dying look in her face you couldn't mistake."

"And no wonder, when you think of the way she lived," said Charlotte angrily; "starving there in Gurthnamuckla like a rat that'd rather die in his hole than come out of it."

"Well, she's out of it now, poor thing," ventured Mrs. Lambert.

"She is! and I think she'll stay out of it. She'll never be right in her head again, and her things'll have to be sold to support her and pay some one to look after her, and if they don't fetch that much she'll have to go into the county asylum. I wanted to talk to Roddy about that very thing," went on Charlotte, irritation showing itself in her voice; "but I suppose he's going riding or boating or amusing himself somehow, as usual."

"No, he's not!" replied Mrs. Lambert, with just a shade of triumph "He's taken a long walk by himself. He thought perhaps he'd better look after his figure as well as me and m.u.f.fy, and he wanted to see a horse he's thinking of buying. He says he'd like to be able to leave me the mare to draw me in the phaeton."

"Where will he get the money to buy it?" asked Charlotte sharply.

"Oh! I leave all the money matters to him," said Mrs. Lambert, with that expression of serene satisfaction in her husband that had already had a malign effect on Miss Mullen's temper. "I know I can trust him."

"You've a very different story to-day to what you had the last time I was here," said Charlotte with a sneer. "Are all your doubts of him composed?"

The entrance of the tea-tray precluded all possibility of answer; but Charlotte knew that her javelin was quivering in the wound. The moment the door closed behind the servant, Mrs. Lambert turned upon her a.s.sailant with the whimper in her voice that Charlotte knew so well.

"I greatly regretted, Charlotte," she said, with as much dignity as she could muster, "speaking to you the way I did, for I believe now I was totally mistaken."

It might be imagined that Charlotte would have taken pleasure in Mrs. Lambert's security, inasmuch as it implied her own; but, so far from this being the case, it was intolerable to her that her friend should be blind to the fact that tortured her night and day.

"And what's changed your mind, might I ask?"

"His conduct has changed my mind, Charlotte," replied Mrs. Lambert severely; "and that's enough for me."

"Well, I'm glad you're pleased with his conduct, Lucy; but if he was my husband I'd find out what he was doing at Tally Ho every day in the week before I was so rejoiced about him."

Charlotte's face had flushed in the heat of argument, and Mrs. Lambert felt secretly a little frightened.

"Begging your pardon, Charlotte," she said, still striving after dignity, "he's not there every day, and when he does go it's to talk business with you he goes, about Gurthnamuckla and money and things like that."

Charlotte sat up with a dangerous look about her jaw. She could hardly believe that Lambert could have babbled her secrets to this despised creature in order to save himself. "He appears to tell you a good deal about his business affairs," she said, her eyes quelling the feeble resistance in Mrs. Lambert's; "but he doesn't seem to tell you the truth about other matters. He's telling ye lies about what takes him to Tally Ho; it isn't to talk business-" the colour deepened in her face. "I tell ye once for all, that as sure as G.o.d's in heaven he's fascinated with that girl! This isn't the beginning of it-ye needn't think it! She flirted with him in Dublin, and though she doesn't care two snaps of her fingers for him she's flirting with him now!"

The real Charlotte had seldom been nearer the surface than at this moment; and Mrs. Lambert cowered before the manifestation.

"You're very unkind to me, Charlotte," she said in a voice that was tremulous with fright and anger; "I wonder at you, that you could say such things to me about my own husband."

"Well, perhaps you'd rather I said it to you now in confidence than that every soul in Lismoyle should be prating and talking about it, as they will be if ye don't put down yer foot, and tell Roddy he's making a fool of himself!"

Mrs. Lambert remained stunned for a few seconds at the bare idea of putting down her foot where Roderick was concerned, or of even insinuating that that supreme being could make a fool of himself, and then her eyes filled with tears of mortification.

"He is not making a fool of himself, Charlotte," she said, endeavouring to pluck up spirit, "and you've no right to say anything of the kind. You might have more respect for your family than to be trying to raise scandal this way, and upsetting me, and I not able for it!"

Charlotte looked at her, and kept back with an effort the torrent of bullying fury that was seething in her. She had no objection to upsetting Mrs. Lambert, but she preferred that hysterics should be deferred until she had established her point. Why she wished to establish it she did not explain to herself, but her restless jealousy, combined with her intolerance of the Fool's Paradise in which Mrs. Lambert had entrenched herself, made it impossible for her to leave the subject alone.

"I think ye know it's not my habit to raise scandal, Lucy, and I'm not one to make an a.s.sertion without adequate grounds for it," she said in her strong, acrid voice; "as I said before, this flirtation is an old story. I have my own reasons for knowing that there was more going on than anyone suspected, from the time she was in short frocks till she came down here, and now, if she hadn't another affair on hand, she'd have the whole country in a blaze about it. Why, d'ye know that habit she wears? It was your husband paid for that!"

She emphasised each word between her closed teeth, and her large face was so close to Mrs. Lambert's, by the time she had finished speaking, that the latter shrank back.

"I don't believe you, Charlotte," she said with trembling lips; how do you know it?"

Charlotte had no intention of telling that her source of information had been the contents of a writingcase of Francie's, an absurd receptacle for photographs and letters that bore the word "Papeterie" on its greasy covers, and had a lock bearing a family resemblance to the lock of Miss Mullen's work-box. But a cross-examination by the turkey-hen was easily evaded.

"Never you mind how I know it. It's true." Then, with a connection of ideas that she would have taken more pains to conceal in dealing with anyone else, "Did ye ever see any of the letters she wrote to him when she was in Dublin?"

"No, Charlotte; I'm not in the habit of looking at my husband's letters. I think the tea is drawn," she continued, making a last struggle to maintain her position, "and I'd be glad to hear no more on the subject." She took the cosy off the tea-pot, and began to pour out the tea, but her hands were shaking, and Charlotte's eye made her nervous. "Oh, I'm very tired-I'm too long without my tea. Oh, Charlotte, why do you annoy me this way when you know it's so bad for me!" She put down the teapot, and covered her face with her hands. "Is it me own dear husband that you say such things of? Oh, it couldn't be true, and he always so kind to me, indeed, it isn't true, Charlotte," she protested piteously between her sobs.

"Me dear Lucy," said Charlotte, laying her broad hand on Mrs. Lambert's knee, "I wish I could say it wasn't, though of course the wisest of us is liable to error. Come now!" she said, as if struck by a new idea. "I'll tell ye how we could settle the matter! It's a way you won't like, and it's a way I don't like either, but I solemnly think you owe it to yourself, and to your position as a wife. Will you let me say it to you?"

"Oh, you may, Charlotte, you may," said Mrs. Lambert tearfully.

"Well, my advice to you is this, to see what old letters of hers he has, and ye'll be able to judge for yourself what the truth of the case is. If there's no harm in them I'll be only too ready to congratulate ye on proving me in the wrong, and if there is, why, ye'll know what course to pursue."

"Is it look at Roddy's letters?" cried Mrs. Lambert, emerging from her handkerchief with a stare of horror; "he'd kill me if he thought I looked at them!"

"Ah, nonsense, woman, he'll never know you looked at them," said Charlotte, scanning the room quickly; "is it in his study he keeps his private letters?"

"No, I think it's in his old despatch-box up on the shelf there," answered Mrs. Lambert, a little taken with the idea, in spite of her scruples.

"Then ye're done," said Charlotte, looking up at the despatch-box in its absolute security of Bramah lock; "of course he has his keys with him always."

"Well then, d'ye know," said Mrs. Lambert hesitatingly, "I think I heard his keys jingling in the pocket of the coat he took off him before he went out, and I didn't notice him taking them out of it-but, oh, my dear, I wouldn't dare to open any of his things. I might as well quit the house if he found it out."

"I tell you it's your privilege as a wife, and your plain duty besides, to see those letters," urged Charlotte, "I'd recommend you to go up and get those keys now, this minute; it's like the hand of Providence that he should leave them behind him."

The force of her will had its effect. Mrs. Lambert got up, and, after another declaration that Roderick would kill her, went out of the room and up the stairs at a pace that Charlotte did not think her capable of. She heard her step hurrying into the room overhead, and in a surprisingly short time she was back again, uttering pants of exhaustion and alarm, but holding the keys in her hand.

"Oh," she said, "I thought every minute I heard him coming to the door! Here they are for you, Charlotte, take them! I'll not have anything more to say to them."

She flung the keys into Miss Mullen's lap, and prepared to sink into her chair again. Charlotte jumped up, and the keys rattled on to the floor.

"And d'ye think I'd lay a finger on them?" she said, in such a voice that Mrs. Lambert checked herself in the action of sitting down, and m.u.f.fy fled under his mistress's chair and barked in angry alarm. "Pick them up yourself! It's no affair of mine!" She pointed with a fateful finger at the keys, and Mrs. Lambert obediently stooped for them. "Now, there's the desk, ye'd better not lose any more time, but get it down."

The shelf on which the desk stood was the highest one of a small book-case, and was just above the level of Mrs. Lambert's head, so that when, after many a frightened look out of the window, she stretched up her short arms to take it down, she found the task almost beyond her.

"Come and help me, Charlotte," she cried; "I'm afraid it'll fall on me!"

"I'll not put a hand to it," said Charlotte, without moving, while her ugly, mobile face twitched with excitement; "it's you have the right and no one else, and I'd recommend ye to hurry!"

The word hurry acted electrically on Mrs. Lambert; she put forth all her feeble strength, and lifting the heavy despatch-box from the shelf, she staggered with it to the dinner-table.

"Oh, it's the weight of the house!" she gasped, collapsing on to a chair beside it.

"Here, open it now quickly, and we'll talk about the weight of it afterwards," said Charlotte so imperiously that Mrs. Lambert, moved by a power that was scarcely her own, fumbled through the bunch for the key.

"There it is! Don't you see the Brahmah key?" exclaimed Charlotte, hardly repressing the inclination to call her friend a fool and to s.n.a.t.c.h the bunch from her; "press it in hard now, or ye'll not get it to turn."

If the lock had not been an easy one, it is probable that Mrs. Lambert's helpless fingers would never have turned the key, but it yielded to the first touch, and she lifted the lid. Charlotte craned over her shoulder with eyes that ravened on the contents of the box.

"No, there's nothing there," she said, taking in with one look the papers that lay in the tray; "lift up the tray!"

Mrs. Lambert, now past remonstrance, did as she was bid, and some bundles of letters and a few photographs were brought to light.

"Show the photographs!" said Charlotte in one fierce breath.

But here Mrs. Lambert's courage failed. "Oh, I can't, don't ask me!" she wailed, clasping her hands on her bosom, with a terror of some irrevocable truth that might await her adding itself to the fear of discovery.

Charlotte caught one of her hands, and, with a guttural sound of contempt, forced it down on to the photograph.

"Show it to me!"

Her victim took up the photographs, and, turning them round, revealed two old pictures of Lambert in riding clothes, with Francie beside him in a very badly made habit and with her hair down her back.

"What d'ye think of that?" said Charlotte. She was gripping Mrs. Lambert's sloping shoulder, and her breath was coming hard and short. "Now, get out her letters. There they are in the corner!"

"Ah, she's only a child in that picture," said Mrs. Lambert in a tone of relief, as she hurriedly put the photographs back.

"Open the letters and ye'll see what sort of a child she was."

Mrs. Lambert made no further demur. She took out the bundle that Charlotte pointed to, and drew the top one from its retaining india-rubber strap. Even in affairs of the heart Mr. Lambert was a tidy man.

"My dear Mr. Lambert," she read aloud, in a deprecating, tearful voice that was more than ever like the quivering chirrup of a turkey-hen, "the cake was scrumptious, all the girls were after me for a bit of it, and asking where I got it, but I wouldn't tell. I put it under my pillow three nights, but all I dreamt of was Uncle Robert walking round and round Stephen's Green in his night-cap. You must have had a grand wedding. Why didn't you ask me there to dance at it? So now no more from your affectionate friend, F. Fitzpatrick."

Mrs. Lambert leaned back, and her hands fell into her lap.

"Well, thank G.o.d there's no harm in that, Charlotte," she said, closing her eyes with a sigh that might have been relief, though her voice sounded a little dreamy and bewildered.

"Ah, you began at the wrong end," said Charlotte, little attentive to either sigh or tone, "that was written five years ago. Here, what's in this?" She indicated the one lowest in the packet.

Mrs. Lambert opened her eyes.

"The drops!" she said with sudden energy, "on the side-board-oh, save me-!"

Her voice fainted away, her eyes closed, and her head fell limply on to her shoulder. Charlotte sprang instinctively towards the side-board, but suddenly stopped and looked from Mrs. Lambert to the bundle of letters. She caught it up, and plucking out a couple of the most recent, read them through with astonis.h.i.+ng speed. She was going to take out another when a slight movement from her companion made her throw them down.

Mrs. Lambert was slipping off the high dining-room chair on which she was sitting, and there was a look about her mouth that Charlotte had never seen there before. Charlotte had her arm under her in a moment, and, letting her slip quietly down, laid her flat on the floor. Through the keen and crowding contingencies of the moment came a sound from outside, a well-known voice calling and whistling to a dog, and in the same instant Charlotte had left Mrs. Lambert and was deftly and swiftly replacing letters and photographs in the despatch-box. She closed the lid noiselessly, put it back on its shelf with scarcely an effort, and after a second of uncertainty, slipped the keys into Mrs. Lambert's pocket. She knew that Lambert would never guess at his wife's one breach of faith. Then, with a quickness almost incredible in a woman of her build, she got the drops from the sideboard, poured them out, and, on her way back to the inert figure on the floor, rang the bell violently. m.u.f.fy had crept from under the table to snuff with uncanny curiosity at his mistress's livid face, and as Charlotte approached, he put his tail between his legs and yapped shrilly at her.

"Get out, ye d.a.m.ned cur!" she exclaimed, the coa.r.s.e, superst.i.tious side of her nature coming uppermost now that the absorbing stress of those acts of self-preservation was over. Her big foot lifted the dog and sent him flying across the room, and she dropped on her knees beside the motionless, tumbled figure on the floor. "She's dead! she's dead!" she cried out, and as if in protest against her own words she flung water upon the unresisting face, and tried to force the drops between the closed teeth. But the face never altered; it only acquired momentarily the immovable placidity of death, that a.s.serted itself in silence, and gave the feeble features a supreme dignity, in spite of the thin dabbled fringe and the gold ear-rings and brooch, that were instinct with the vulgarities of life.