“Ye never spoke a truer word than that, Mary Norris,” replied a voice that sent a chill down Christopher’s back; “when I come into Lismoyle, it’s not to buy rotten fish from a drunken fish-fag, that’ll be begging for crusts at my hall-door to-morrow. If I hear another word out of yer mouth I’ll give you and your fish to the police, and the streets’ll be rid of you and yer infernal tongue for a week, at all events, and the prison’ll have a treat that it’s pretty well used to!”
Another titter rewarded this sally, and Charlotte, well pleased, turned to walk away. As she did so, she caught sight of Christopher, looking at her with an expression from which he had not time to remove his emotions, and for a moment she wished that the earth would open and swallow her up. She reddened visibly, but recovered herself, and at once made her way out into the street towards him.
“How are you again, Mr. Dysart? You just came in time to get a specimen of the res angusta domi,” she said, in a voice that contrasted almost ludicrously with her last utterances. “People like David, who talk about the advantages of poverty, have probably never tried buying fish in Lismoyle. It’s always the way with these drunken old hags. They repay your charity by impudence and bad language, and one has to speak pretty strongly to them to make one’s meaning penetrate to their minds.”
Her eyes were still red and swollen from her violent crying at the funeral. But for them, Christopher could hardly have believed that this was the same being whom he had last seen on the sofa at Tally Ho, with the black gloves and the sal volatile.
“Oh yes, of course,” he said vaguely; “everyone has to undergo Mary Norris some time or other. If you are going back to Tally Ho now, I can drive you there.”
The invitation was lukewarm as it well could be, but had it been the most fervent in the world Charlotte had no intention of accepting it.
“No thank you, Mr. Dysart. I’m not done my marketing yet, but Francie’s at home and she’ll give you tea. Don’t wait for me. I’ve no appetite for anything to-day. I only came out to get a mouthful of fresh air, in hopes it might give me a better night, though, indeed, I’ve small chance of it after what I’ve gone through.”
Christopher drove on, and tried not to think of Miss Mullen or of his mother or Pamela, while his too palpably discreet hostess elbowed her way through the crowd in the opposite direction.
Francie was sitting in the drawing-room awaiting her visitor. She had been up very early making the wreath of white asters that Charlotte had laid on Mrs. Lambert’s coffin, and had shed some tears over the making of it, for the sake of the kindly little woman who had never been anything but good to her. She had spent a trying morning in ministering to Charlotte; after her early dinner she had dusted the drawing-room, and refilled the vases in a manner copied as nearly as possible from Pamela’s arrangement of flowers; and she was now feeling as tired as might reasonably have been expected. About Christopher she felt thoroughly disconcerted and out of conceit with herself. It was strange that she, like him, should least consider her own position when she thought about the things that Julia Duffy had said to them; her motive was very different, but it touched the same point. It was the effect upon Christopher that she ceaselessly pictured, that she longed to understand: whether or not he believed what he had heard, and whether, if he believed, he would ever be the same to her. His desertion would have been much less surprising than his allegiance, but she would have felt it very keenly, with the same aching resignation with which we bear one of nature’s acts of violence. When she met him this morning her embarrassment had taken the simple form of distance and avoidance, and a feeling that she could never show him plainly enough that she, at least, had no designs upon him; yet, through it all, she clung to the belief that he would not change towards her. It was burning humiliation to see Charlotte spread her nets in the sight of the bird, but it did not prevent her from dressing herself as becomingly as she could when the afternoon came, nor, so ample are the domains of sentiment, did some nervous expectancy in the spare minutes before Christopher arrived deter her from taking out of her pocket a letter worn by long sojourn there, and reading it with delaying and softened eyes.
Her correspondence with Hawkins had been fraught with difficulties; in fact, it had been only by the aid of a judicious shilling and an old pair of boots bestowed on Louisa, that she had ensured to herself a first sight of the contents of the post-bag, before it was conveyed, according to custom, to Miss Mullen’s bedroom. Somehow since Mr. Hawkins had left Hythe and gone to Yorkshire the quantity and quality of his letters had dwindled surprisingly. The three thick weekly budgets of sanguine anticipation and profuse endearments had languished into a sheet or two every ten days of affectionate retrospect in which less and less reference was made to breaking off his engagement with Miss Coppard, that trifling and summary act which was his ostensible mission in going to his fiancée’s house; and this, the last letter from him, had been merely a few lines of excuse for not having written before, ending with regret that his leave would be up in a fortnight, as he had had a ripping time on old Coppard’s moor, and the cubbing was just beginning, a remark which puzzled Francie a good deal, though its application was possibly clearer to her than the writer had meant it to be. Inside the letter was a photograph of himself, that had been done at Hythe, and was transferred by Francie from letter to letter, in order that it might never leave her personal keeping; and, turning from the barren trivialities over which she had been poring, Francie fell to studying the cheerful, unintellectual face therein portrayed above the trim glories of a mess jacket.