“They’ll not let you near them,” said Charlotte, as Lambert walked slowly towards them; “they’re as wild as hawks. And, goodness me! that girl’s gone out of the field and left the gate open! Wait a minute till I go back and shut it.”
Lambert stood and looked after her as she hastened cumbrously back towards the gate, and wondered how he had ever liked her, or brought himself to have any dealings with her, and his eye left her quickly to follow the red parasol that, moving slowly along above the grey wall, marked Francie’s progress along the lane. Charlotte hurried on towards the gate, well satisfied with the result of her conversation, and she was within some fifty yards of it when a loud and excited shout from Lambert, combined with the thud of galloping hoofs, made her start round. The young horses had been frightened by Lambert’s approach, and after one or two circling swoops, had seen the open gate, and, headed by the brown filly, were careering towards it.
“The gate! Charlotte!” roared Lambert, rushing futilely after the horses, “shut the gate!”
Charlotte was off in an instant, realising as quickly as Lambert what might happen if Francie were charged in the narrow lane by this living avalanche; even in the first instant of comprehension another idea had presented itself. Should she stumble and so not reach the gate in time? It was fascinatingly simple, but it was too simple, and it was by no means certain.
Charlotte ran her hardest, and, at some slight personal risk, succeeded in slamming the gate in the face of the brown filly, as she and her attendant squires dashed up to it. There was a great deal of slipping about and snorting, before the trio recovered themselves, and retired to pass off their discomfiture in a series of dislocating bucks and squealing snaps at each other, and then Charlotte, purple from her exertions, advanced to meet Lambert with the smile of the benefactor broad upon her face. His was blotched white and red with fright and running; without a breath left to thank her, he took her hand, and wrung it with a more genuine emotion than he had ever before felt for her.
Francie, meanwhile, strolled slowly up the lane towards the house, with her red parasol on her shoulder and her bunch of cowslips in her hand. She knew that the visit to the Stone Field was only the preliminary to a crawling inspection of every cow, sheep, and potato ridge on the farm, and she remembered that she had seen a novel of attractive aspect on the table in the drawing-room. She felt singularly uninterested in everything; Gurthnamuckla was nothing but Tally Ho over again on a larger and rather cleaner scale; the same servants, the same cats, the same cockatoo, the same leathery pastry and tough mutton. Last summer these things had mingled themselves easily into her every-day enjoyment of life, as amusing and not unpleasant elements; now she promised herself that, no matter what Roddy said, this was the last time she would come to lunch with Charlotte.
Roddy was very good to her and all that, but there was nothing new about him either, and marriage was an awful humdrum thing after all. She looked back with something of regret to the crowded drudging household at Albatross Villa; she had at least had something to do there, and she had not been lonely; she often found herself very lonely at Rosemount. Before she reached the house she decided that she would ask Ida Fitzpatrick down to stay with her next month, and give her her return ticket, and a summer dress, and a new— Her thoughts came to a startling full stop, as round the corner of the house, she found herself face to face with Mr. Hawkins.
She had quite made up her mind that when she next saw him she would merely bow to him, but she had not reckoned on the necessities of such an encounter as this, and before she had time to collect herself she was shaking hands with him and listening to his explanation of what had brought him there.
“I met Miss Mullen after church yesterday,” he said awkwardly, “and she asked me to come over this afternoon. I was just going out to look for her.”
“Oh, really,” said Francie, moving on towards the hall door; “she and Mr. Lambert are off in those fields there.”