The Real Charlotte - Edith Somerville [119]
“No, Charlotte; I’m not in the habit of looking at my husband’s letters. I think the tea is drawn,” she continued, making a last struggle to maintain her position, “and I’d be glad to hear no more on the subject.” She took the cosy off the tea-pot, and began to pour out the tea, but her hands were shaking, and Charlotte’s eye made her nervous. “Oh, I’m very tired—I’m too long without my tea. Oh, Charlotte, why do you annoy me this way when you know it’s so bad for me!” She put down the teapot, and covered her face with her hands. “Is it me own dear husband that you say such things of? Oh, it couldn’t be true, and he always so kind to me, indeed, it isn’t true, Charlotte,” she protested piteously between her sobs.
“Me dear Lucy,” said Charlotte, laying her broad hand on Mrs. Lambert’s knee, “I wish I could say it wasn’t, though of course the wisest of us is liable to error. Come now!” she said, as if struck by a new idea. “I’ll tell ye how we could settle the matter! It’s a way you won’t like, and it’s a way I don’t like either, but I solemnly think you owe it to yourself, and to your position as a wife. Will you let me say it to you?”
“Oh, you may, Charlotte, you may,” said Mrs. Lambert tearfully.
“Well, my advice to you is this, to see what old letters of hers he has, and ye’ll be able to judge for yourself what the truth of the case is. If there’s no harm in them I’ll be only too ready to congratulate ye on proving me in the wrong, and if there is, why, ye’ll know what course to pursue.”
“Is it look at Roddy’s letters?” cried Mrs. Lambert, emerging from her handkerchief with a stare of horror; “he’d kill me if he thought I looked at them!”
“Ah, nonsense, woman, he’ll never know you looked at them,” said Charlotte, scanning the room quickly; “is it in his study he keeps his private letters?”
“No, I think it’s in his old despatch-box up on the shelf there,” answered Mrs. Lambert, a little taken with the idea, in spite of her scruples.
“Then ye’re done,” said Charlotte, looking up at the despatch-box in its absolute security of Bramah lock; “of course he has his keys with him always.”
“Well then, d’ye know,” said Mrs. Lambert hesitatingly, “I think I heard his keys jingling in the pocket of the coat he took off him before he went out, and I didn’t notice him taking them out of it—but, oh, my dear, I wouldn’t dare to open any of his things. I might as well quit the house if he found it out.”
“I tell you it’s your privilege as a wife, and your plain duty besides, to see those letters,” urged Charlotte, “I’d recommend you to go up and get those keys now, this minute; it’s like the hand of Providence that he should leave them behind him.”
The force of her will had its effect. Mrs. Lambert got up, and, after another declaration that Roderick would kill her, went out of the room and up the stairs at a pace that Charlotte did not think her capable of. She heard her step hurrying into the room overhead, and in a surprisingly short time she was back again, uttering pants of exhaustion and alarm, but holding the keys in her hand.
“Oh,” she said, “I thought every minute I heard him coming to the door! Here they are for you, Charlotte, take them! I’ll not have anything more to say to them.”
She flung the keys into Miss Mullen’s lap, and prepared to sink into her chair again. Charlotte jumped up, and the keys rattled on to the floor.
“And d’ye think I’d lay a finger on them?” she said, in such a voice that Mrs. Lambert checked herself in the action of sitting down, and Muffy fled under his mistress’s chair and barked in angry alarm. “Pick them up yourself! It’s no affair of mine!” She pointed with a fateful finger at the keys, and Mrs. Lambert obediently stooped for them. “Now, there’s the desk, ye’d better not lose any more time, but get it down.”
The shelf on which the desk stood was the highest one of a small book-case, and was just above the level of Mrs. Lambert’s head, so that when, after many a frightened look out of the window, she stretched up her short arms to take it down, she found the task almost beyond