The Real Charlotte - Edith Somerville [102]
At this point in her reflections, congratulation began to wane. She thought she knew every twist and turn in Roddy Lambert, but lately she had not been able to explain him at all to her satisfaction. He was always coming to Tally Ho, and he always seemed in a bad temper when he was there; in fact she had never known him as ill-mannered as he was last week, one day when he and Christopher were there together, and she had tried, for various excellent reasons, to get him off into the dining-room to talk business. She couldn’t honestly say that Francie was running after him, though of course she had that nasty flirty way with every man, old or young, married or single; but all the same, there was something in it she didn’t like. The girl was more trouble than she was worth; and if it wasn’t for Christopher Dysart she’d have sent her packing back to Letitia Fitzpatrick, and told her that whether she could manage it or not she must keep her. But of course to have Sir Christopher Dysart of Bruff—she rolled the title on her tongue—as a cousin was worthy of patience.
As she walked up the trim Rosemount avenue she spied the owner of the house lying in a basket-chair in the shade, with a pipe in his mouth, and in his hand that journal politely described by Mrs. Rattray as “the pink one.”
“Hallo, Charlotte!” he said lazily, glancing up at her from under the peak of his cap, “you look warm.”
“And you look what you are, and that’s cool, in manners and body,” retorted Miss Mullen, coming and standing beside him, “and if you had tramped on your four bones through the dust, maybe you’d be as hot as I am.”
“What do you wear that thick coat for?” he said, looking at it with a disfavour that he took no trouble to hide.
Charlotte became rather red. She had the Irish peasant-woman’s love of heavy clothing and dislike of abating any item of it in summer.
“If you had my tendency to bronchitis, me fine fellow,” she said, seating herself on the uncomfortable garden bench beside which his chair had been placed, “you’d think more of your health than your appearance.”
“Very likely,” said Mr. Lambert, yawning and relapsing into silence.
“Well, Roddy,” resumed Charlotte more amicably, “I didn’t walk all the way here to discuss the fashions with you. Have y’any more news from the seat of war?”
“No; confound her, she won’t stir, and I don’t see what’s going to make her unless I evict her.”
“Why don’t ye writ her for the money?” said Charlotte, the spirit of her attorney grandfather gleaming in her eyes; “that’d frighten her!”
“I don’t want to do that if I can help it. I spoke o her about the lodge that Lady Dysart said she could have, and the old devil was fit to be tied; but we might get her to it before we’ve done with her.”
“If it was me I’d writ her now,” repeated Charlotte venomously; “you’ll find you’ll have to come to it in the end.”
“It’s a sin to see that lovely pasture going to waste,” said Lambert, leaning back and puffing at his pipe. “Peter Joyce hasn’t six head of cattle on it this minute.”
“If you and I had it, Roddy,” said Charlotte, eyeing him with a curious, guarded tenderness, “it wouldn’t be that way.”
Some vibration of the strong, incongruous tremor that passed through her as she spoke, reached Lambert’s indolent perception and startled it. It reminded him of the nebulous understanding that taking her money seemed to have involved him in; he believed he knew why she had given it to him, and though he knew also that he held his advantage upon precarious terms, even his coarse-fibred nature found something repellent in the thought of having to diplomatise with such affections as Charlotte’s.
“I was up at Murphy’s yesterday,” he said, as if his train of ideas had not been interrupted. “He has a grand filly there that I’d buy to-morrow if I had the money, or any place to put her. There’s a pot of money in her.”
“Well, if you’ll get me Gurthnamuckla,