The Real Charlotte - Edith Somerville [117]
“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 God. Roddy was saying this morning he’d have to put me and Muffy 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 Muffy, 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 assailant 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