The barracks kept up an outward seeming of life and cheerfulness, imparted by the adventitious aid of red coats and bugle-blowing, but their gaiety was superficial, and even upon Cursiter, steam-launching to nowhere in particular and back again, had begun to pall. He looked forward to his subaltern’s return with an eagerness quite out of proportion to Mr. Hawkins’ gifts of conversation or companionship; solitude and steam-launching were all very well in moderation, but he could not get the steam-launch in after dinner to smoke a pipe, and solitude tended to unsettling reflections on the vanity of his present walk of life. Hawkins, when he came, was certainly a variant in the monotony, but Cursiter presently discovered that he would have to add to the task of amusing himself the still more arduous one of amusing his companion. Hawkins dawdled, moped, and grumbled, and either spent the evenings in moody silence, or in endless harangues on the stone-broken nature of his finances, and the contrariness of things in general. He admitted his engagement to Miss Coppard with about as ill a grace as was possible, and when rallied about it, became sulky and snappish, but of Francie he never spoke, and Cursiter augured no good from these indications. Captain Cursiter knew as little as the rest of Lismoyle as to the reasons of Miss Fitzpatrick’s abrupt disappearance from Tally Ho, but, unlike the generality of Francie’s acquaintances, had accepted the fact unquestioningly, and with a simple gratitude to Providence for its interposition in the matter. If only partridge-shooting did not begin in Ireland three weeks later than in any civilised country, thought this much harassed child’s guide, it would give them both something better to do than loafing about the lake in the Serpolette. Well, anyhow, the 20th was only three days off now, and Dysart had given them leave to shoot as much as they liked over Bruff, and, thank the Lord, Hawkins was fond of shooting, and there would be no more of this talk of running up to Dublin for two or three days to have his teeth overhauled, or to get a new saddle, or some nonsense of that kind. Neither Captain Cursiter nor Mr. Hawkins paid visits to anyone at this time; in fact, were never seen except when, attired in all his glory, one or the other took the soldiers to church, and marched them back again with as little delay as possible; so that the remnant of Lismoyle society pronounced them very stuck-up and unsociable, and mourned for the days of the Tipperary Foragers.
It was on the first day of the partridge shooting that Mr. Lambert came back to Rosemount. The far-away banging of the guns down on the farms by the lake was the first thing he heard as he drove up from the station; and the thought that occurred to him as he turned in at his own gate was that public opinion would scarcely allow him to shoot this season. He had gone away as soon after his wife’s funeral as was practicable, and having honeymooned with his grief in the approved fashion (combining with this observance the settling of business matters with his wife’s trustees in Limerick), the stress of his new position might be supposed to be relaxed. He was perfectly aware that the neighbourhood would demand no extravagance of sorrow from him; no one could expect him to be more than decently regretful for poor Lucy. He had always been a kind husband to her, he reflected, with excusable satisfaction; that is to say, he had praised her housekeeping, and generally bought her whatever she asked for, out of her own money. He was glad now that he had had the good sense to marry her; it had made her very happy, poor thing, and he was certainly now in a better position than he could ever have hoped to be if he had not done so. All these soothing and comfortable facts, however, did not prevent his finding the dining-room very dreary and silent when he came downstairs next morning in his new black clothes. His tea tasted as if the water had not been boiled, and the urn got in his way when he tried to prop up the newspaper in his accustomed manner; the bacon dish had been so much more convenient, and the knowledge that his wife was there, ready to receive gratefully any crumb of news that he might feel disposed to let fall, had given a zest to the reading of his paper that was absent now. Even Muffy’s basket was empty, for Muffy, since his mistress’s death, had relinquished all pretence at gentility, and after a day of miserable wandering about the house, had entered into a league with the cook and residence in the kitchen.
Lambert surveyed all his surroundings with a loneliness that surprised himself: the egg-cosy that his wife had crocheted for him, the half-empty medicine bottle on the chimney-piece, the chair in which she used to sit, and felt that he did not look forward to the task before him of sorting her papers and going through her affairs generally. He got to work at eleven o’clock, taking first the letters and papers that were locked up in a work-table, a walnut-topped and silken-fluted piece of furniture that had been given to Mrs. Lambert by a Limerick friend, and, having been considered too handsome for everyday use, had been consecrated by her to the conservation of letters and of certain valued designs for Berlin wool work and receipts for crochet stitches. Lambert lighted a fire in the drawing-room, and worked his way down through the contents of the green silk pouch, finding there every letter, every note even, that he had ever written to his wife, and committing them to the flames with a curious sentimental regret. He had not remembered that he had written her so many letters, and he said to himself that he wished those old devils of women in Lismoyle, who, he knew, had always been so keen to pity Lucy, could know what a good husband he had been to her. Inside the envelope of one of his own letters was one from Francie Fitzpatrick, evidently accidentally thrust there; a few crooked lines to say that she had got the lodgings for Mrs. Lambert in Charles Street, but the landlady wouldn’t be satisfied without she got two and sixpence extra for the kitchen fire. Lambert put the note into his pocket, where there was already another document in the same handwriting, bearing the Bray postmark with the date of September 18, and when all was finished, and the grate full of flaky spectral black heaps, he went upstairs and unlocked the door of what had been his wife’s room. The shutters were shut, and the air of the room had a fortnight’s closeness in it. When he opened the shutters there was a furious buzzing of flies, and although he had the indifference about fresh air common to his class, he flung up the window, and drew a long breath of the brilliant morning before he went back to his dismal work of sorting and destroying. What was he to do with such things as the old photographs of her father and mother, her work-basket, her salts-bottle, the handbag that she used to carry into Lismoyle with her? He was not an imaginative man, but he was touched by the smallness, the familiarity of these only relics of a trivial life, and he stood and regarded the sheeted furniture, and the hundred odds and ends that lay about the room, with an acute awakening to her absence that, for the time, almost obliterated his own figure, posing to the world as an interesting young man, who, while anxious to observe the decencies of bereavement, could not be expected to be inconsolable for a woman so obviously beneath his level.
A voice downstairs called his name, a woman’s voice, saying, “Roderick!” and for a moment a superstitious thrill ran through him. Then he heard a footstep in the passage, and the voice called him again, “Are you there, Roderick?”
This time he recognised Charlotte Mullen’s voice, and went out on to the landing to meet her. The first thing that he noticed was that she was dressed in new clothes, black and glossy and well made. He took them in with the glance that had to be responsive as well as observant, as Charlotte advanced upon him, and, taking his hand in both hers, shook it long and silently.
“Well, Roderick,” she said at length, “I’m glad to see you back again, though it’s a sad home-coming for you and for us all.”
Lambert pressed her large well-known hand, while his eyes rested solemnly upon her face. “Thank you, Charlotte, I’m very much obliged to you for coming over to see me this way, but it’s no more than what I’d have expected of you.”
He had an ancient confidence in Charlotte and an ease in her society—after all, there are very few men who will not find some saving grace in a woman whose affections they believe to be given to them—and he was truly glad to see her at this juncture. She was exactly the person that he wanted to help him in the direful task that he had yet to perform; her capable hands should undertake all the necessary ransacking of boxes and wardrobes, while he sat and looked on at what was really much more a woman’s work than a man’s. These thoughts passed through his mind while he and Charlotte exchanged conventionalities suitable to the occasion, and spoke of Mrs. Lambert as “she,” without mentioning her name.
“Would you like to come downstairs, Charlotte, and sit in the drawing-room?” he said, presently; “if it wasn’t that I’m afraid you might be tired after your walk, I’d ask you to help me with a very painful bit of work that I was just at when you came.”
They had been standing in the passage, and Charlotte’s eyes darted towards the half-open door of Mrs. Lambert’s room.